Emile and the Dutchman by Joel Rosenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

time.
    Although . . . I glanced down at my thumbnail; it was already a quarter past noon. "And I'm almost late now." Damn. If I'd been able either to bring one of the servants or to fly in the Northeast corridor at anything near the Hummingbird's top cruising speed, I wouldn't have had to rush.
    "Well . . ." He paused. "I just wanted to remind you that as long as you are in New Haven . . ."
    "I know. If things don't work out, there's always Yale."
    Wrong, Papa.
    I'd followed the family tradition as far as Auckland went, but that was where it stopped. New Haven, yes; Yale, no. Not with the Naval Academy's buildings beckoning at me in the distance.
    Now, there's nothing wrong with Yale—at least you don't have to play idiot games with swords the way they pressure you to at Heidelberg—but what would they teach me to do there? Manage Mark Airways as Papa was doing and Grosspapa had done before him?
    Ridiculous. Do you know how rarely the CEO of a major airways can actually get his hands on controls? Papa was lucky to get a hundred hours annually, and he'd earned his way onto the flight-test team for the first Hummingbirds, back in the nineties, before he'd let Grosspapa sidetrack him into management at Airways.
    None of that for little Emile. No, sir. I'd go through the Academy, become a flying officer, then get myself a berth as a piloting officer on a cruiser—or maybe a destroyer; destroyers have nice thrust-to-mass ratios—then maybe first officer and finally a captaincy, once my reflexes were too far gone to actually hold live controls in my hands.
    But Papa had to give it another try. "Emile. I could talk to Dean O'Donnell and have you admitted today—"
    " No , Papa."
    "Boy, you have your mother's stubbornness." I could almost hear Papa cringe at what he'd just said. Mother tyrannizes everyone else by remote control, but Papa has to sleep in the next room. "Don't tell her I said that."
    "Of course not, Papa."
    He sighed. "Very well. Just remember, you are a von du Mark—"
    "Yes, Papa. I've got to go. I'll call you tonight. Goodbye."
    " Aufwiedersehen , Emile."
    I hung the phone back on my belt as I entered the registration building. The terminals were near the door; I stuck my left thumb in the slot of the nearest one and tapped on the keyboard with my right hand as the menu came up. I made arrangements to have the Hummingbird hangared and fueled, its engines and drive train serviced, and its avionics package tested remotely, only—when the bandit's off, it's transparent to remote testing.
    Someone cleared his throat behind me.
    "I'll be done in a minute," I said, "just finishing—"
    He cleared his throat again.
    "—or you could just use another terminal."
    He tapped me on the shoulder.
    Now I was starting to get angry. "Do that again, and you'll eat that finger." I asked the machine to repeat the price list for various tiedown and hangaring services. If he was going to be annoying, I'd take more time.
    "If you are Cadet Candidate Emile von du Mark, Mister, you have exactly three seconds to turn around and come to attention, or you will be former Cadet Candidate Emile von du Mark."
    I pulled my thumb from the slot and turned around.
    "You call that attention?" he asked. Rhetorically, I assumed. He was a tall, raw-boned man in his early twenties, dressed in Academy White informals, his cap firmly on his head. I couldn't—then—read the short row of cadet ribbons over his heart, but I did see the two broken silver stripes on each sleeve.
    Goddam. He was a cadet lieutenant—not just a j.g. The ident bar on the right side of his uniform blouse said BRUBAKER. I pulled my shoulders back.
    "Never mind." Smiling sadly, he shook his head slowly. "Slouch. It comes much more naturally to you. I am Cadet Lieutenant Ernest Brubaker."
    "Pleased to—"
    "You don't speak out when you're slouching at attention. Are you Cadet Candidate Emile von du Mark?"
    "Yes, I—"
    "First lesson. Cadet Candidate Emile von du Mark. When you