Heris Serrano

by Elizabeth Moon

  "We'll need comfort items," Heris said, as the other woman started away. "We have only minimal bedding—you might want to load that sort of thing."

  "She told me her yacht had had a swimming pool—is that operational?"

  "Yes, though again the walls in the gym are bare. We had the pool filled in the Golan Republic—and that's what I wanted to tell you, milady. The doctors believe that the neurochemical assault you suffered is very similar to what was done to the prince. If so, it may be reversible. However, they will need a detailed history, and your own tissues to work on. I can take you there, if you want to risk it."

  "Yes. I . . . trust . . . you . . ." Cecelia said.

  The big sprawling house that had seemed to be dozing in the afternoon sun erupted like a kicked anthill. Heris crouched on the bottom step of the stairs, holding Cecelia's hands in hers, until someone fetched another chair for her. Four or five women in blue tunics bustled in and out, up and down stairs. Boxes and suitcases began to accumulate in the front hall, as the sun slanted farther and farther through the windows into the room.

  "I . . . knew . . . you . . . would . . . come . . ." Cecelia said. Her hand squeezed Heris's. "Brun . . . knew . . . you . . . had . . . to . . . leave . . ."

  "I'm sorry I couldn't get you out right away," Heris said. "Your family blamed me—and I didn't even know about the bequest."

  "No. It's . . . all . . . right . . ."

  The lift whirred, and out came two women, a hoverchair, and another stack of boxes. Two men came in from outside and began carrying the growing pile out to the driveway. Heris heard a truck motor grinding up from the stable, and winced at the thought of Cecelia at the mercy of Driw's driving. The lift came down again, this time with what looked like a hospital bed folded up. A woman in a big apron appeared at their side with trays.

  "Milady—time for your snack." Heris watched as Cecelia managed to find the food on her plate and get it into her mouth without incident.

  "Milady, I'm sorry, but . . . are those artificial eyes?"

  "No . . . not . . . exactly. Ask . . . medical." Cecelia went on eating; Heris was suddenly ravenous and found herself engulfing one thick sandwich after another. Where, and how, had Cecelia found another great cook?

  "I should see about the shuttle schedule," Heris said finally, around a last bite of fresh bread stuffed with something delicious. She was sure it had celery and herbs and cheese in it, but what else?

  "Don't worry about that," said the cheerful woman she had first met on the stairs. "I called Annie, and she'll make sure we've got one. She thinks we should wait until the opposition lawyers have left."

  Shadows chased the sun across the driveway, and up the front of the house, leaving the windows clear to a distant blaze of sunset behind trees. Heris stood up to stretch, and walked outside. Fine brushes of cloud high overhead; the sound of buckets and boots and water faucets from the stable yard. A shaggy dog stood up to look at her, then shook itself and wandered away, tail wagging gently. So peaceful here—she wanted to stretch out and sleep the night away.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," said someone behind her, and she shifted aside. The folded bed was coming down the front steps, a mattress balanced atop and almost hiding the men carrying it.

  * * *

  The caravan started for the shuttleport well after dark. Heris, breathing in the fresh damp air, found herself wishing she could stay longer. She rode with Cecelia, two of her medical team, and a lawyer, in a real car; Driw drove the truck with supplies and equipment; another car carried the rest of the medical team. And the cook.

  The lawyer had kept Cecelia busy all evening. They could not risk alienating the magistrates with her disappearance; calls and letters had been necessary. Now he was taking notes on her orders for the next few months—who could vote which stock in which company, what to do if Berenice and Gustav tried to interfere further in the recovery of her competent status.

  Heris marveled at Cecelia's energy. She looked . . . old, sick, exhausted. But she pushed herself, kept going, stayed alert. Heris dozed, half ashamed of that, but knowing she had a long watch ahead when she must be alert.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Although it was nighttime, the shuttleport looked dark and almost deserted. Heris wondered what had gone wrong. Then someone came out of the dimly lit terminal and leaned into the driver's side of their car. "Ah—it's you. Just go on out to the runway . . . follow the yellow lights."

  In this way, the caravan trundled down a long runway to a dark shape bulked at the end of it. Heris felt she'd fallen into some surrealistic action-adventure. She had never, even in dreams, imagined herself sneaking along a darkened runway toward a clandestine shuttle. And she had a burning curiosity about what Cecelia could possibly have done to generate this level of loyalty on the planet.

  She had no time to ask while the truckload of gear was put aboard the shuttle's cargo bay, while she and the medical team carefully eased Cecelia and her attachments into the shuttle's shabby passenger compartment. They were not the only passengers, either. After Cecelia and her party were aboard, half a dozen others climbed up and settled themselves at the back of the passenger space. Perfectly ordinary, the sort of people you'd expect to find taking a shuttle flight up from the surface of any planet . . . except, Heris noticed, they all had remarkably similar bulges in their clothes.

  At the Station, Heris noticed that one of the chartered passenger ships had gone, and the corridors were almost deserted. Everyone—including the shuttle's other passengers—helped unload the shuttle and move its cargo to the yacht. There Heris found Annie—offduty, as she explained—and Oblo lounging in the loading area.

  "I thought I told you to stay aboard," Heris said to Oblo. He gave her his innocent look, and she winced inwardly. What had he been up to?

  "I am aboard," he said. "Legally—there's the line." He stretched. "I was chatting with Annie here on the Station com, and we discovered some mutual interests, so when she got offshift, she came over . . ."

  "Right. Fine. Now let's get our owner aboard, and her gear installed." Oblo looked hurt, another of his certified expressions, and vanished up the access tube. Annie gave Heris a cheerful grin, intended to disarm.

  "Thought you wouldn't mind if I came around and made sure your lady's ship was secure. Just in case those lawyers snooped, although since all our exterior videos seem to be on the blink right now . . ."

  Heris found herself smiling in spite of her annoyance. "Amazing how equipment around here seems to behave," she said. "For instance, the shuttle tonight—"

  "Had a block in the hydraulic line to the steering of the nosewheel," Annie said promptly. "They couldn't seem to get it to roll into the usual parking slot, and decided it was safer to keep it on the straight runway."

  "And yet they felt it was safe enough to fly . . . ?"

  Annie shrugged. "It got you here, didn't it? And if any nosy person was looking for unusual activity, all they saw was a dark field." Heris nodded, not bothering to mention that any decent surveillance gear would pierce the darkness like a needle into wax . . . but Annie must know that.

  "It was most convenient," Heris said instead. Annie chuckled.

  "We hoped so." Then her expression sobered. "By the way, that tech you had running errands for the ship—Skoterin, isn't it?" Heris nodded. "One of those lawyers stopped her and talked to her a few minutes. I'd given her warning they might be coming through, but I guess she was curious or something—"

  "I'll talk to her," Heris said. "They'd been briefed, of course; I'm sure she said something appropriate, but I'll check."

  "Do that," Annie said. Then, looking past Heris, her eyes lit up. "Milady—it's good to see you again. And you do look so much better."

  To Heris, Cecelia looked pale and exhausted . . . but Annie would have seen her the first time she came through, she realized. She must have looked much worse then. Now Cecelia struggled and achieved a smile.

  "Thank . . . you . . . Annie . . ."

&
nbsp; Behind Cecelia came the trail of people pushing dollies loaded with equipment, luggage, odds and ends. Heris left Cecelia with her medical people and Annie, and went on into the ship to get the crew ready for departure. To Oblo, who had been hovering in the access tube as if afraid he'd miss something, she gave the task of directing traffic.

  "Brigdis, we're going to want a fast, but very safe, course back to the Guerni Republic," she said, coming onto the bridge. She was glad to see that Sirkin looked bright-eyed and capable again; she had done much better on the trip from Guerni, and Heris hoped whatever had been wrong was now over and done with. "We don't want to take any chances with the Benignity, not with our decoy clone and Lady Cecelia aboard." Not ever, but especially not now. "Methlin—" Arkady was offwatch at the moment, "—I want our weapons ready, but not lit. If we do run into trouble, I want to be able to surprise them. Make sure standby mode is really standby."

  "I've got this course plotted already, Captain," Sirkin said. She sounded a bit tentative, but presumably her confidence would return in time. Heris looked at the string of numbers, and the display. She realized she was too tired to follow through all the calculations.

  "Did you check this with Oblo?"

  "No, ma'am, not yet . . . he's not been back to the bridge this watch. Vivi got me the latest data from the Stationmaster's nav file—I thought if she went for it, instead of calling in, nobody could tap the line . . ."

  "Good idea." For an instant, Heris wondered why Annie hadn't mentioned that when she was talking about Skoterin . . . but Annie was offwatch now, and might have been when Sirkin requested the data. It didn't really matter. The outside communications board blinked, and Heris reached for it.

  "Captain Serrano, this is Stationmaster Tadeuz." His voice sounded as friendly as Annie's. "If Annie's still over there, would you ask her to step 'round the office? I've got a question for her."

  "Of course," Heris said, wondering why he hadn't used the Station paging system.

  "Sort of a confidential thing," Tadeuz said in her ear. "Nothing to worry you, though. More like a filing problem."

  "I'll tell her right away," Heris said. "What about clearance for departure?"

  "I'd like five minutes, just to make sure nobody's coming up for a shift change, ten if you can give it to me, otherwise you're cleared." Just like that. Heris had never heard of anything so casual, anywhere.

  "I'll tell Annie," she said again, and went off shaking her head.

  Annie was still chatting with Cecelia; the tail end of the equipment train was just about to enter the access tube.

  "Stationmaster Tadeuz asked me to tell you he'd like to see you in the office," Heris said to Annie.

  "Then why didn't he—oh. Sorry, milady, but I'd better scoot. Hope to see you again soon, in even better health. Bye, Captain . . ." And Annie took off down the corridor much faster than her looks suggested.

  "I've got to go back aboard, milady," Heris said to Cecelia. "We'll be able to depart once everything is aboard and stowed."

  "And how long will that be?" asked the woman with her.

  "I'm not sure," Heris said. "I'd guess less than an hour; Lady Cecelia can come aboard now, but there's no place to sit, really. No furniture except what's just come aboard."

  "Better . . . there . . . than . . . here . . ." Cecelia's hands moved on the hoverchair controls and the chair lifted, swaying slightly.

  "Good idea," Heris said. She felt stupid not to have realized that Cecelia didn't need any other chair to sit on.

  Inside, the ship was still in chaos. The woman with Cecelia locked down the hoverchair in the lounge, and went to help the others arrange Cecelia's suite. Heris saw the clone looking out of his quarters and beckoned. "Here—why don't you keep Lady Cecelia company until we're ready to leave. Lady Cecelia, this is Gerald B. Smith, one of the prince's doubles." She didn't want to explain the clone business now. "Mr. Smith, Lady Cecelia de Marktos."

  "Yes, ma'am." Gerald B. smiled at her, and gathered some bright colored pillows to make himself a soft seat on the bare decking. "Lady Cecelia, I'm delighted to meet you again. We've met, though I was at the time impersonating my prime, the prince."

  "I . . . shall . . . call . . . you . . . Mr. . . . Smith . . ." Cecelia said. Heris decided they'd do well enough alone, and went back to her own work. Petris had the engineering figures ready for her; Haidar had computed the new load on the environmental system (well within its capabilities) and had a projection for the supplies that would be needed at Guerni. Meharry and Ginese were discussing the exact amount of power necessary to keep the weapons just below scannable levels.

  "Not Guerni scans, of course," Meharry said. "We know about them now. I think they'd know if the toothpick in your pocket was intended for offensive use . . . maybe they read minds, do you think?"

  "I don't think. Mind reading is a myth. I just wish we had their capability," Heris said. "But you think our stuff isn't scannable by normal means?"

  "We could ask the Stationmaster to look us over," Meharry said.

  "No . . ." Heris thought about it a moment longer, then shook her head. "So far I've seen no sign that anyone on this Station—or this planet—wishes Lady Cecelia ill, but why take chances? I'll trust your judgment."

  She reminded herself that she wanted to speak to Skoterin, but Skoterin was busy in the guts of the ship, resetting flow rates to accommodate the larger load on the environmental system. Haidar, on his way to help her, said he'd give her the word once all the chores were finished. No hurry, Heris thought. In fact, it was a duty so low in priority that she didn't put it into her deskcomp for a reminder request.

  Getting the Sweet Delight back into deepspace and a jump or so away from Rotterdam was all that really concerned her. She did a final walk-through inspection after the last loaders left and Lady Cecelia was settled in her bed in her own suite. Everything looked as it should, her crew alert and at their stations, and nothing lying around where it shouldn't be. Undock had none of the ceremony she was used to . . . no financial records to clear, no lists of regulations to follow . . . she wondered what would happen if any sort of government inspection ventured this far from the center of Familias space. Did they ever? Could Annie or Tadeuz adhere to rules (what rules?) if they found it necessary?

  But with the yacht in insystem drive, and the Station receding in the distance, she put that out of her mind. However it was run, by whatever gang of independents, that Station wouldn't be there without some kind of discipline. Its air had been good, its water plentiful, its power supply and gravity controls steady. The docking collars had held pressure—so what was she fretting about? Heris grinned as she realized what it was . . . she had spent so many years putting up with boring, routine double and triple checks, because she had believed them necessary. Without them, stations would fall out of the sky, air would fail, spacecraft would go boom. And here was someone ignoring—or at least seeming to ignore—the usual precautions, and doing very well anyway. She resented the time she'd wasted.

  She also resented the return of Sirkin's mysterious problem. Nothing happened on her first shift, but as they were approaching the first jump point, Oblo reported that Sirkin had left an open circuit in the communications control mechanism. Not a fatal error—yet—but a sign of carelessness. Heris was furious when he called her about it. Enough was enough. She'd replace Sirkin when they got to Guerni. She flung off the covers and dressed, thinking how to say it, and how to explain to Lady Cecelia. It was simply too bad to have to bother her now, in her condition.

  When she was dressed, she went to the bridge, where the tension needed no words to express. Ginese nodded at her, and Kulkul handed her the log, with Oblo's entry. All three of them looked as upset as she felt. Heris read it, and looked at the circuits herself. Anger and sorrow both—she hated to see someone with potential go bad, but that's what Sirkin was doing.

  "Have Sirkin report to my office," she said to Kulkul, the watch officer.

  The Sirkin who appeared see
med to be the bright-eyed, alert Sirkin she had first worked with, the young woman who should have had a successful career ahead of her.

  "Yes, ma'am?" She was even smiling, and nothing in voice or manner suggested any concern about her own duties. Heris handed her the log.

  "Can you explain that entry, Ms. Sirkin?" The formality wiped the smile from Sirkin's face; she reached for the log with the first signs of uncertainty. As she read it, her face flushed.

  "But I—it can't be!"

  "I assure you, Ms. Sirkin, that Mr. Vissisuan neither lies nor makes elementary mistakes. You signed off your shift; he found the open circuit. Those are facts; I asked for an explanation."

  Now Sirkin looked as miserable as she should. "I—I don't . . . know how it happened, Captain. I didn't—I swear I didn't leave any circuits open, but I know Oblo wouldn't . . . wouldn't make it up. I—I don't know—"