Man O' War, стр. 14

hose, will ya?" was all he finally said to the younger man, however, deciding that the Ben Hawkes he knew was old enough to make his own friends and choose his own company.

THE DAPPLED MARE BOLTED AS SOON AS SHE REACHED the open path for the back forest. She and Hawkes left Disraeli far behind, leaving the poor retriever's piercing bark to fade quickly to nothingness. As he raced through the trees brushing close on either side, the ambassador momentarily forgot about CME, the continual pleas as well as the campaign to get him to go to Mars . . . forgot about everything except the reins in his hands and the breeze in his face.

It felt good to be back in the saddle, back in the mountains—his mountains. His throat went dry from the air rushing into his open mouth. He knew it was no way to ride, but it had been too long; the feel of the air—over his teeth, through his hair, on his head, over the back of his hands—it felt so . . . right.

The crushing pain of Washington, of Carri's demands— both in Australia and in Washington the week before— the brutal reality of Clean Mountain and their designs on his heritage . . . the weight of it all began to break up, to fold down into smaller, more manageable packages. On what seemed an hourly basis, the government was leaking stories that Hawkes would soon be leaving for Mars. Pressure had been brought from every direction to try to get him to change his mind.

So far he had refused. Send someone else, he had told Carri. Tell them I'm sick, tell them I'm dead, tell them I just don't care.

Benton Hawkes had selflessly given the world more than thirty years of his life. Now, in the end, he had little more than when he had started. His father's ranch was all he had ever wanted, and it was all he had. All his resources were tied up in keeping it going—in simply keeping it, period. He had gotten nothing out of his years of service except a handful of private gifts from grateful parties.

Yes, he thought, and a dozen powerful enemies for each piece of junk I bothered to keep.

Eventually the mare sensed her rider's growing calm and began to slow her pace. Hawkes paid scant attention. His conscious mind relaxed as he watched the birds and insects move in the forest, darting his eyes from one patch of breakthrough sunlight to another. Beneath the surface, however, he finally began to replay his meeting with Michael Carrri, trying to determine what the senator really wanted.

Can it be as simple as he laid it out? Australia was no big deal . . . I'd like to kill you, but we need you on Mars, so all is forgiven . . . pack your bags—and that's it?

Hawkes wondered if it was possible he was overcomplicating things, suspecting Carri of duplicity not because he could actually see any, but because he did not like the man's style. The thought gave him pause to remember the words of Camillo di Cavour. Hawkes studied the nineteenth-century Italian statesman's work when he had first entered the corps. One quote had been burned into his mind when he first saw it, and it never left him: "I have discovered the art of fooling diplomats," the long dead politician had said. "I speak the truth and they never believe me."

Is that what I've done? Allowed Carri to chase me off with the truth? Is it possible he doesn't want me to go to Mars? Is he using my own vanity against me?. . .

Like you've done to so many others? his cynical side asked.

Yes, he admitted, just like that.

It would have been a subtle irony, one Hawkes had not thought the senator capable of. It made sense. So far, all of the ambassador's research had failed to find any lies in what Carri had told him. The situation on Mars did look bad. Desperately bad. News traveled so slowly between the two planets, especially real news. Voices and pictures could be beamed back and forth quickly, but solid, tangible evidence that could be turned over in one's hands, that still took weeks.

Still, he wished the government would stop issuing statements that they were in negotiations with Hawkes to send him to Mars. It had been more than a week. They ought to know he was not going to go.

Of course, he thought, that could be Carri's game, as well. Since he knew damn well I wouldn't want to go, maybe he's just priming the well. "We asked, but the bastard wouldn't do it." Bad Ben Hawkes, good Mick Carri.

Disraeli glided through the ground cover next to the ambassador's mount. An old and seasoned hunter, the retriever had approached in virtual silence. Hawkes had sensed his presence more through his kinship with the large black dog than through anything else.

Looking down and smiling at his only friend, he said, "What do you think, Dizzy? I mean, on the one hand, taking this governorship would have tremendous advantages. CME certainly couldn't annex the home of a territorial governor—especially the governor of a whole planet. And, I must admit, after all the years of guys like Carri and the rest of the Beltway Circus trying to lose me in one rummy assignment after another . . . putting the end note to my career by shaping the destiny of all humanity . . . well, it is an appealing thought."

But it's not an appealing world, asked a sour voice from the back of his brain, is it?

Hawkes's mare stopped at the edge of the Scar. The ambassador looked out over the burned and ruined gash in his mountains, and suddenly all he could see was the surface of Mars. It was a lifeless vision: one of blowing dust and ten-kilometer-wide craters; frozen ground covered with permafrost; a bitter, dead world, nothing more than