F Paul Wilson - LaNague 02 by Wheels Within Wheels (v5.0) Page B

alive
today.”
                Old Pete’s
face registered the expression she had expected: shock. And something more… he
was hurt, too.
                After a
long pause, he spoke in a low voice. “How could you think such a thing?”
                “Because
it’s true! You probably talked him into that sabbatical of his. And if you
didn’t talk him into it, you could have talked him out of it. But however it was,
you got control of his stock and sent him off to be killed!”
                Old Pete
suddenly looked all of his eighty-one years. A lot of things were suddenly very
clear to him.
                “You must
believe that Junior insisted on leaving… I did my best to dissuade him, but you
can’t talk a Finch out of anything once he’s got his mind set on it. He thrust
the stock on me for safekeeping until his return – he only planned to be away a
year.”
                “But he
never returned and it all turned out very nicely for you, didn’t it?”
                “You’re not
thinking very clearly, little girl,” Old Pete said as anger began to absorb the
hurt. “Think! What did I do with that stock? Did I set myself up as
all-powerful ruler of the IBA complex? Did I remake the company in my own
image? Did I milk it dry? No! No to all of them! I set up a board of directors
to run things for me because I’d lost interest in the whole affair. Joe dead,
and then Junior dead… all within four years…” His voice softened again. “I just
didn’t feel like going on with any of it any more.”
                In the long
silence that followed, Jo was almost tempted to believe him. His hurt at what
she had said seemed so real. But she couldn’t accept it. Not yet. There was
something locked away in Old Pete, something he would never let her see. She
had no idea what it was or what it concerned, but it was there. She sensed it.
And she couldn’t let the old hatreds go. She had to have someone to blame for
losing a second parent by the time she was eleven years old, for the years
spent with an indifferent uncle and a preoccupied aunt.
                “Well,” she
faltered, “someone made him leave. Someone got him out of the picture.”
                “Yes, and
that someone was Junior himself.”
                Jo’s voice
broke. “Then he was a fool!”
                “You can’t
understand why he left, can you?” Old Pete said softly, as if seeing Jo for the
first time. “And I think I know the reason. Since you were in your teens you’ve
known what you wanted and you had to work to get it. You had to confront me,
then the board of directors, and then you had to prove yourself to the
interstellar traders.”
                He rose and
began to pace the room.
                “It was
different, however, for Junior… perhaps we shouldn’t have called him that but
it got to be a necessity when he and his father were working together. You’d
say ‘Joe’ and they’d both say ‘What?’ But anyway, it was different for him. He
grew up in your grandfather’s shadow; he was Joe Finch’s son and everything was
cut out for him. He had a prefab future in IBA and most sons would have slipped
right into the mold.
                “But not
Junior. IBA was a golden apple waiting to be plucked and he walked away. Oh, he
hung on and gave it a try for a couple of years after his father’s death, but
it just wasn’t for him. At least not yet. He didn’t feel he’d earned it. It was
no accomplishment for him to take over IBA. He balked.” Old Pete snorted. “That
Finch blood, I guess.”
                “And you
couldn’t change his mind?”
                He shook
his head. “No. Tried up to the last day. He said good-by not knowing where he
was going; I said good-by figuring to see him again in a year or so. You know
the