Pallas Read Online Free PDF Page B

Santa Claus. He could have been described as broad. His clothes, and the sweeping gestures that formed a part of his vocabulary, accentuated it.
    At least he looked clean. Like all Outsiders, he was dressed and groomed abominably, tonight in faded denim trousers, leather sandals, and an off-white smock dyed in primitive splashes of color. His beard and hair were gray-shot, the latter shoulder-length and parted painstakingly in the middle, held behind his prominent ears with a thong. Altman’s sources stated that the man was sixty-two years old and had come to Pallas earlier than most immigrants as a laser operator with the original terraforming crew. Having lost his right leg in a construction accident, he’d apparently decided to stay where the gravity was kinder.
    From under the obnoxious shirt, strapped to his left thigh, hung a big, heavy-looking pistol which the Senator wished he’d had the Corpsman confiscate at the gate. Unfortunately, that would have breached the so-called governing document cooked up by pop-philosopher Mirelle Stein and foisted on the locals by Curringer simply because it had been his billions—along with those of a Japanese consortium he’d had under his thumb—which had financed the entire terraformation.
    More to the point, Outsiders could be very touchy about what they’d been led to believe were their rights, and the Project badly needed new markets for what it grew. Much as the proliferation of personal arms on Pallas infuriated Altman—he’d been the Senate’s foremost advocate of stripping America clean of that particular evil—he was reluctant to offend any potential customer, especially the widely respected landlord of the Nimrod Saloon & Gambling Emporium, which formed whatever social focus the ramshackle town across the lake laid claim to.
    Brody gave Alice a searching look. Winking broadly at Altman, standing a couple of meters behind her, he handed her his cane, unfa s tened the tie-down above his knee, reached up under his shirt and pulled the rig off, pistol and all, handed it to her, and reclaimed his cane. Arm sagging more under the emotional than the physical mass of the belt, weapon, and spare ammunition, she handled the ensemble as if it were a poisonous snake, but accepted it without comment and hung it on a knob of a coatrack near the door.
    Altman led the man to what served as a dining room—there wasn’t time for the customary drink and small talk in the parlor Gwen kept for such occasions—where they both sat, only to find themselves on their feet again when she entered from the kitchen.
    “Justice Aloysius Brody,” the Senator began, “my wife, Gwendolyn Hathaway Altman.”
    Gwen, who’d been supervising the cooking, removed her small apron, wiped her hands, and extended one to match the paw Brody offered. Altman thought he was going to lean down and kiss it.
    “Charmed t’be sure, Mrs. Altman, an’ at yer service.”
    “Please be seated,” she answered, “ Justice Brody?”
    Gwen had been a thin, pretty, tightly wound platinum blond of s e venteen, nine years younger than himself, when he’d first become en c hanted with her at an Inauguration ball in 2012. At the time, he hadn’t known that she was the elder daughter of the most powerful individual in his own political party. He was still pleased to recall that his ardor hadn’t heated noticeably when he’d found out who she was. It had pleased him somewhat less, after their wedding in 2013—during a period when pr e marital intimacy was less common than it had been generations earl i er—to discover that she brought her innate nervousness to bed with her.
    She had been the picture-perfect political wife. Sixteen years had given her fine lines at the corners of her eyes (nothing like the mesh d e corating Brody’s), put a little flesh on her, and added some premature silver to the platinum.
    All the patience he could muster had failed to warm the personal side of their life together. In the