Airik Shelleen didn't like traveling very much. So many things could go wrong, both on the road and back at home, and so many things were outside of his control, both on the road and back home. He had learned to his cost that if he didn't oversee things, things didn't necessarily get done to his satisfaction. To add to his difficulties, not all of his family agreed with how he was running Shelleen despite the knowledge of what the Martian Government could do to his demesne if he failed.
Increasing his irritation level, he especially didn't like traveling across a quarter of Mars with an entourage watching his every move. Before everything had blown up, Airik could travel by himself, keeping to his own schedule. If he spotted something interesting, say an unusual rock formation, he could stop and investigate. No more. Worse, all those people kept hovering around him, getting in his way, keeping him from doing his jobs and in general, being a nuisance. In his more paranoid moments, Airik wondered if the people constantly observing him were reporting back to someone else.
But these days, he had to have an entourage. He had thought about complaining but the response when he did was always the same. Thinking about it now, as he stared out at the passing steppes, he could hear the voices of the senior aunties and uncles of Shelleen, the same ones who took him to task for every mistake, and they all said the same thing.
"You're the daimyo, so get used to it! The daimyo of an important demesne like Shelleen doesn't travel by himself. Who do you think you are? One of those destitute horse lords? They sleep in the stables with their horse rather than spend the coin on a hotel room. Is that what you want? You can't be seen that way. Nobody will take you seriously and that means nobody will take Shelleen seriously."
Airik had pointedly observed that daimyos, no matter how poor, were taken seriously wherever they went. They were still daimyos and the owners of their demesne even if they didn't have hard coin stacked to the ceilings in their treasury like everyone thought a daimyo did. Nonetheless, he had to agree that he didn't want to sleep with his horse in some dirty livery stable. A clean bed with clean sheets held far more appeal.
At least on the train ride north to Panschin, he had the comforts of a private, first-class compartment. That was socially acceptable for someone of his stature. His valet, his secretary, and his bodyguard got to share a compartment, the one right next to his. That was the smallest entourage he had been able to get away with, everyone else having been already sent on to Panschin, and they all got on his nerves. Fortunately, as the daimyo, he didn't have to share his compartment unless he had work to do.
There was a lot of work. He and his secretary, Upton, kept busy on the entire endless train ride north, going over briefing papers, reports, and presentations.
That was another bone of contention within the family, particularly from those members who disapproved of the job he was doing managing Shelleen. Airik had wanted Upton as his secretary but it had raised some eyebrows. Upton was young and good-looking and male. Upton was also the logical choice from the available Shelleen family members, being reasonably capable, efficient, and loyal to the path Airik had deemed necessary to keeping Shelleen intact and unscathed in his dealings with and against the Martian government. Those were the qualities that Airik required in a secretary.
The dirty minds some people had. He just couldn't understand it. It grated that an efficient, good-looking young woman would have generated just as much talk, yet somehow would have been more socially acceptable as long as Airik didn't mind the constant innuendos and double entendres about his secretary working underneath him.
Upton's major drawback as a secretary was that he chased anything in a skirt and as he was personable, he often caught them. That was another irritation as it distracted him from the business at hand of the mining contracts but it also implied to one and all that Upton wasn't interested in his own gender. It took some of the pressure off of Airik in one direction but it added to the pressure in another.
Airik frowned out the window at the passing steppes. They were slowly greening up as Spring gradually danced north. Normally, the endless seas of grass were soothing. They demanded nothing, unlike the hordes of people he dealt with every day who all wanted something from him. The steppes didn't despise him for some of the more difficult choices he had made. The steppes had no hidden agendas, nor were they eaten up with jealousy and resentment. The steppes didn't go out of their way to undercut his decisions as grass cared nothing for the pettiness of human politics. The steppes were uninterested in his private life since the oceans of grass reproduced with the aid of the wind and not that of matchmakers. The steppes did not gossip other than with the wind.
His family did all of those things.
The last set of complaints was becoming increasingly onerous to manage, despite the assistance he had provided. He'd been quite specific about what he wanted in a wife. It should have been easy for the aunties in charge of matchmaking to arrange introductions with the detailed checklist he had supplied.
Airik had to marry, he knew that. He was the head of the family and didn't have a problem with the institution. Marriage promoted stability within the family, formed tighter bonds between demesnes, brought potential wealth in the form of dowries, and held the promise of children. He just didn't want to marry someone who was going to cling to him like a leech, keeping him from working, and he really didn't want someone who was marrying him as a steppingstone to power.
Plumes of grass had it easy. The wind worked its will, the grass set seed, and the next generation of grass was assured with no effort on anyone's part. It was clean-cut, with no messy emotions, dubious rationales or money involved. Stones had it even easier. He closed his eyes, remembering how things had changed on his last trip to Barsoom.
Every day had consisted of contentious, endless meetings and every evening had consisted of formal, endless balls. Even more than the meetings, the balls had been an ordeal. On previous trips to Barsoom Airik could count on being ignored as soon as the music began, leaving early, and getting some sleep to prepare for the next day. Those days were gone. Now, every one of those young and not so young ladies had lit up on seeing him. They weren't even subtle about showing the credit signs dancing in their eyes. Their families had been even more avaricious. It was impossible to slip out, unobserved.
It was disconcerting -- due to his newly developed sense of paranoia, no doubt -- that he now wondered if these young, eligible women's families were looking to get their own cut of Shelleen's new-found wealth. It was true that Airik was a rarity: a young, unmarried daimyo. That alone would explain the target on his back. The wealth of Shelleen made that target flash like lightning.
Still more embarrassing was meeting both of his former fiancées. They had both insinuated that they could divorce their current husbands and run away with him back to Shelleen. All he had to do was say the word. Airik rarely rolled his eyes but that had done the trick. Melissa and Bertrille had both told him when they had broken their respective engagements, in almost identical words, what a boring, stiff, dull piece of work he was and that they were overjoyed to shake off the dust of Shelleen and meet better men. Men who were more exciting, men who were wealthier, men who were better connected and had more status. Men who didn't live at in one of the more boring backwaters of Mars. Men who weren't him.
It was amazing how things could change; like sand turning into stone if you only applied enough time and pressure. He had become the most desirable man on Mars without having the so necessary personality transplant that both women had insisted he needed. It had been an ordeal extricating himself from their clutches while remaining polite. To add to his consternation, neither Melissa nor Bertrille seemed to care about any unofficial rivals as long as he was willing to officially share his newfound wealth with her family.
The Red Mercury lode had catapulted Shelleen from just another agricultural demesne to the most important one above the equator. Red Mercury was vital for the terraforming process, rarely found, and mining it would bring in a huge income for many, many years. Shelleen would be rolling in money.
There were no negatives at all to discovering the lode, other than his own life being turned completely upside down, the damage done to the peasants he'd forced to settle around the mine, the toxicity released by the mining that would be present for hundreds of years, dealing with rapacious government agents, and last, but not least, the armies of desperate, money-crazed squatters pouring in he now had to keep out of Shelleen.
That was probably the worst thing, dealing with the squatters, all so eager to strike it rich and not caring at all about the long term environmental damage they did to the demesne he loved with all his heart and soul.
Of course, the lode would be practically on the border with the government corridor and of course it would be a major government corridor with a railway and roads, and of course it would be many days travel away from the manor house and its surrounding villages through a barren wasteland. If the lode had been in the heart of Shelleen, even though it would have been a long, long way away from anywhere, nobody from outside would have been able to get to it easily.
But the lode's location meant that anybody with gumption could just hike the sixty odd klicks across the government corridor from the road, across land Shelleen could not control, slip across his border onto his land, and start trying to mine Red Mercury, poisoning the squatter and the land for all time.
The only fortunate aspect of the lode's location was that it was on the northern edge of Shelleen. The horse lords, Kenyatta in particular, were equally opposed to squatters. They didn't want the Red Mercury spread out on the steppes poisoning the grass and the land for all time. They had been more than willing to work with Shelleen to cut the deal with the Martian government and even now, their irritatingly independent vassals patrolled the corridor, keeping an eye out for unauthorized intrusions.
Airik had quickly learned to not ask too many questions about what the horsemen did when they found squatters. They kept them out and that was what mattered. Damn free-city trash, coming onto his land, trying to strip it of its wealth and poisoning it as they went. No, he did not ask questions.
He turned his attention back to the papers in the traveling desk. He needed to review the presentation on refining Red Mercury in situ with Upton, but that meant having Upton back in the compartment, filling it with his restless energy. He was probably prowling the passageways right now, chatting up all the attractive female attendants and unchaperoned passengers, rather than paying attention to his duties.
Airik wondered what that would be like, to feel so free and easy and relaxed with women. Upton hadn't married because he didn't feel the need to buy a cow when so much milk was free and he had said so, to the universal consternation of the family.
Airik smiled grimly at the papers spread out on the folding desk. If he had to marry for the good of the demesne, then so did Upton. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and drafted a letter to Auntie Zilpah, short and to the point. It was petty and he knew it, but it was something he had some control over. When he finished, Airik sealed the letter. Upton could mail it for him in the tiny post office in the observation car, but there was no need for him to know the contents until it was too late. Auntie Zilpah would rise to the challenge, he was sure, even if she hadn't yet managed his own marital challenge. She had been particularly offended by Upton's remarks and should be eager to find him a bride. It might even spur her to greater actions on his own behalf.
He looked down again at the sealed letter. He had written it hastily. Should he have reminded Zilpah about Upton's proclivities? Airik signed and decided not to rip it up and write another, more detailed letter. If Zilpah didn't know that Upton would probably cheat on whomever he married, then she was due to be replaced by someone younger and savvier. She knew, everyone in the family knew, and she was sure to take those facts into account when she selected a candidate for Upton's bride.
The train ride, despite the luxuriousness of the compartment, was boring and endless. Staying in the compartment, though small, was still better than trying to get work done in the club car, despite the tables he could commandeer and spread paperwork out on. Since word had gotten around about the Red Mercury lode, Airik had found himself being buttonholed wherever he went by people of every station, all of them with get rich quick schemes guaranteed to work.
Somehow his bodyguard, Nunzio, never seemed to keep those people far enough away. He claimed they weren't enough of a threat to break heads open like melons. He insisted that would cause still more trouble for Airik and for Shelleen. They were a threat as far as Airik was concerned. They bothered him and affected his concentration. At least Nunzio, with his hulking presence, intimidated most of the fortune hunters. Only the boldest ones tended to linger.
Elliot, the valet, had been the easiest person to get along with on the trip. He knew his job -- to keep the party correctly outfitted at all times, and to anticipate whatever was needed for daily living -- and he did it well and efficiently. When he wasn't working, he wrote in his diary. What he wrote so assiduously, Airik didn't know and he didn't care as long as it wasn't some scurrilous tell-all about Shelleen.
Airik found himself actually looking forward to Panschin, and not just to get the traveling over with. He had never visited the place. It was a center for mining with many rich lodes of various minerals in the area. Panschin was a free-city, so not under the control of a demesne, and that meant just about anything went.
For a northern city, so close to the pole, it was large and bustling, and all built under enormous domes and tunnels of glassteel. You could live outdoors in the summer in Panschin and he had been told some people did, but you didn't live outside in the winter. Not even the horse lords would do that, this far north, and they were proud of their tolerance for dreadful weather.
There were deep tunnels snaked into the bowels of Mars and Airik was looking forward to touring them and observing the minerals and soils. They would be so different from what he was used to seeing at Shelleen in its own small mining operations. He was hoping to add many prize specimens to his rock collection. That was one very nice benefit about visiting Panschin.
His contacts were all just as interested with rocks and geology as he was and they understood his fascination with minerals. Nobody here would have their eyes glaze over when he started talking about the different varieties of bauxite, how to mine them efficiently, use them in industry, and then recycle them for reuse.
That led to thoughts of Auntie Zilpah again. For the family's main matchmaker, she was doing a terrible job of finding him a wife. Was it too much to ask that a wife not be dismissive of his interests? He didn't expect a wife to be a rockhound like he was, but the young ladies he had been meeting weren't even polite about the subject.
Well, that wasn't quite true. They were, one and all, fascinated with gemstones. That topic they would discuss endlessly, along with the varieties of gold and silver and platinum they liked their gems to be set in. Jewels did not interest Airik, once he got past their usage in manufacturing, crystalline structure, and how certain chemical impurities would alter their color and hardness, but he seemed to be the only person who felt that way. He also seemed to be the only person who was more interested in the industrial properties of gold or diamonds but again, nobody else he spoke to saw his point of view.
This handicap of his did not make casual conversation easier with attractive, potential wives.