Wildeblood's Empire. Brian Stableford

Me, perhaps, more than most.

      “A moment ago,” I said, “I was joking. I said that we’d just discovered a recipe for empire. It was just a throwaway remark. But maybe it isn’t so ridiculous. Can we really have that much confidence in one another? How about Nathan? He’s a politician.... It’s the kind of power he deals in. If I find out where this drug comes from, and how to refine it...that’s power. I go ahead and do things like that—analyze things and find out where they come from—because I’m interested, because I want to know. But I shouldn’t shut my eyes to the fact that, seen through other eyes, what I’m doing is discovering potential sources of political power. Should I?”

      “You’ve got your empire,” said Karen. “It’s in your head and in your lab. Pete has his...we’re sitting inside it. Nathan doesn’t want a world of his own, to manipulate and play with like a toy.”

      “Wildeblood did,” I answered.

      “And how about you?” The question came from Pete, and it was directed at Karen. It wasn’t the kind of question I could imagine Pete asking. Karen, yes...as a snide assault on somebody else’s vanity. But coming from Karen you could ignore a remark like that as so much froth. Aimed at Karen, from Pete, it was different. Maybe he’d taken uncharacteristic offence at her offhand dismissal of his own imperial limitations.

      “I’ve got everything I need,” she replied, with some asperity.

      Maybe it wasn’t true. But I knew that whatever she wanted, it wasn’t a Wildeblood set-up. She even found it inconceivable that Nathan should want such a thing, and I wasn’t so sure that I found that particular notion inconceivable.

      But the argument wasn’t getting us anywhere. Turning it on one another was really only a way of turning it away from the real focal points: Wildeblood, Philip, and the guitar-playing Cyrano.

      “There’s no point having a row,” I said. “We can have a much bigger and better one next time Nathan’s here. We very probably will. So let’s drop it now. I’m going back to work until Conrad checks in. Call me when he does, okay?”

      Without any seeming effort, they cast the tension aside.

      “Sure,” said Pete. “Don’t bleed yourself to death.”

      “And don’t conjure up the devil by mistake,” added Karen.

      I promised that I wouldn’t. But my propensity for metaphor couldn’t resist making me ask myself whether perhaps I already had.