Her aunt had insisted that she must make the contact. Would they answer? And if they did, what would they say? She hoped to find that they were outsystem somewhere, a safe distance. Instead, the directory listed them not only insystem, but on the base itself. Aunt Vida's meddling, no doubt. Heris left her message in both stacks, and waited. Tried not to query her own stack every five minutes.
Finally she made herself go to lunch, then to the tailor's, for a new set of uniforms. When she came back, her desk's telltale blinked. Someone had left messages. Her heart thundered; she could hear nothing past the pulse in her ears. A long breath. She touched the controls. And there it was: a formal request for a personal meeting. Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't. She had to.
"Heris." Her mother and father stood side by side, formally, their faces as wary as hers must be.
"Come in," she said. She couldn't bring herself to call them by name.
"Thank you for seeing us." That was her mother, as usual the spokesperson.
"I . . . talked to Aunt Vida."
A quick look passed between them, the kind of sidelong glance Heris remembered so well. Her father spoke at last. "Heris, I won't try to explain—"
She wanted to say something, but couldn't. The silence stretched, until she felt that her bones were drawn out thin as wires.
"I will," her mother said finally. "I'm not a born Serrano; I don't have to play this game." Her mother, the bronze eldest of a bronze clan, the Sunier-Lucchesi, whose roots went as far back in Fleet as any. "We heard it; we didn't believe it; we expected you to come and tell us what you wanted us to do."
"So it's my fault?" Heris managed to say it calmly.
"No," her mother said. "It is not your fault. It was our fault, for listening to the wrong advice, and for not realizing that you would not come. And saying we're sorry doesn't change it. If you want to stay angry, you can."
"That's true," said Heris. But she didn't feel angry; she felt tired. "What do you mean, wrong advice?"
"Admiral Sorkangh. He called your father, and said you were determined to work your own way out of it—that if you needed help, you'd call. We didn't know until afterwards that he'd turned."
"And then you listened to Aunt Vida, who said let me alone?"
Her father grimaced. "No, then I tried to figure out some way of killing Sorkangh without getting caught, or hurting anyone else. I told him—never mind what I told him; it's on both our records now. And I called in every family member I could find. Your Aunt Vida came up with a plan—I didn't like it, but she pointed out that I had made a royal mess already."
Heris could almost smile. She could imagine her Aunt Vida making them all squirm. She was glad.
"Did she tell you about it?" her mother asked.
"She told me that she'd ordered everyone to avoid contact once I'd resigned my commission."
"Did she tell you why?"
"No—but I guessed some of it. A Serrano she believed loyal, in a perfect position to strain blackmailers and enemy agents out of the stream . . ."
"Something like that. When you got Lepescu, she felt she'd proved her point. I didn't." Her mother grimaced. "I thought that should be the end of it; you'd earned it. But your Aunt Vida—"
Heris felt tired. "I wish—" She couldn't finish; she didn't know what she wished, except that none of this had happened.
"I'm sorry," her mother said again. "But I hope you'll forgive us, in time. If not now."
If not now, when? A family saying intended to spur reluctant youngsters to try the difficult, to achieve the impossible. Forgiveness was impossible, looked at one way—the pain was still pain, the loss was still loss. In another way . . . it had been too long already. She could tell that they had suffered too; she was not alone in that.
"I missed you," Heris said, and reached out for them. "I missed you so much—"
Vida Serrano, in uniform, behind her own desk, was back to being the admiral, full of advice for younger officers.
"If you get your mind straightened out—if you learn to ask the right questions—you'll be an admiral yourself, in a few years. As for now—you did well enough with Vigilance and Paradox. We'll see what you can do with a real battle group. I'll expect you to be ready to ship out as soon as you get Vigilance back out of the yards."
A battle group. Vigilance? A real—? She looked at her aunt, and Vida grinned, a wicked grin of delight at her niece's surprise. "You've earned that much; I can't get you a star yet, but if you handle the group the way I expect, it'll come. You'll be going straight into trouble, of course—"
"What about personnel?"
"Your lover?"
"All of them," Heris said, persisting.
"I thought I'd give you Arash Livadhi as second in command," her aunt said, ignoring her question. "That should make an interesting combination, you and Arash."
"He's senior." Heris had her doubts about Arash, even now.
"He was. You're getting a promotion, remember?"
What was the right question? Did you trust me? Did you care? Heris fumbled around in her memories of the past few years, trying to untangle what she burned to know from what her aunt would consider strategic thinking.
"How did I get that first job, with Lady Cecelia?"
"Good girl." Vida's grin widened, pure approval this time. "That took a bit of pressure on the employment agency. I wanted you to have flexibility, a ship with decent legs, a wealthy employer with an irregular schedule. Lady Cecelia was the first one to meet those qualifications."
"Did you know her?"
"Not really. We'd met years back at a function she probably doesn't remember. That didn't matter. The other things did. And, since you're now on the right track, I won't make you drag the rest out piecemeal. Yes, it was more than blind good luck or your talented scavenger's native ability that put certain items in his way when you needed them—those military grade scans, that weapons-control upgrade. You'd earned that when you got Lepescu. I made sure Livadhi got the assignment to carry the prince, rather than Sorkangh's grandson. And yes, Koutsoudas was planted on you—and a good thing, too. Not that we didn't need to get him away from the trouble he'd brewed before it cost us his life and Livadhi's ship. You don't know yet how ticklish things were in Fleet after the abdication. Or how many holes I had to try to plug with too few resources."
"You're going to explain?" Heris said, doing her best not to let sarcasm edge her voice.
Vida smiled, and ignored the question. "As for the yacht, you can tell Lady Cecelia that the Fleet would be delighted to purchase it from her at a good price—we can always use ships like that on covert ops, and I really admire the beacon switch your technicians put in her."
"Uh . . . yes, sir." Admiral Vida Serrano was back to being entirely admiral.
"Welcome home," the admiral said, with just enough softening. "Welcome home and good hunting."
"No, I'm not 'trying to copy that Thornbuckle girl' as you put it." Raffa stared her mother down. "I don't have her flair. I don't even want her flair. But I do want my own life, and that life is with Ronnie Carruthers."
"I suppose you'll do it whatever I say," her mother said.
"Yes." Raffa waited while her mother worked it all out.
"Where are you going?"
"We're going to migrate over to the Polandre Group and take up an investor's claim."
"But Raffa—dear—you don't have to do that. It's all right about Ronnie; now that his parents and his aunt aren't feuding—"
"We want to do that. It's nothing to do with his parents or his aunt—we want our own lives, and we can have it out on the new lands." She hoped she didn't sound bitter; she wasn't bitter. Not really. But she wanted her children to have a chance to advance, without a layer of Rejuvenants over their heads, smothering them. She thought of the specs she'd seen, and found herself grinning. "It's not like it used to be," she said to her mother. "Pioneers these days have it much easier." Never mind that she and Ronnie had already decided to sp
end most of their money on a bigger grant, and fewer amenities. By the time her parents found out—if they ever did—she and Ronnie would have it all straightened out.
Her mother gave her a long, straight look. "You must have more of your Aunt Marta in you than I thought. Well, just be sure to keep a little back for escape if things go haywire. Your father and I didn't stay on Buriel—"
"You pioneered?"
"Not exactly. We tried to go out and run a subsidiary by ourselves—"
"And you think I take after Aunt Marta!" Raffa laughed. "Mother, you're a fraud."
"I don't want you to make our mistakes," her mother said, primly.
"We'll make our own," Raffa said.
"Keep a little back," her mother said. "But—I hope you never need it." She sounded almost wistful. "You will let us give you a good wedding, won't you?"
"As long as it's in the sculpture garden," Raffa said. "And I get to choose my own dress."
George stared moodily at the ceiling. It wasn't fair. Ronnie and Raffa running off to play pioneer over in the Polandres. Brun being mysterious and busy and having no time for old friends. Captain Serrano suddenly restored to her former rank and commanding a battle group, with no interest in helping a former Royal Aerospace Service officer transfer his commission to the regs. The clones off wherever they were. Nobody to play with.
"Moping?" George jumped; he hadn't heard his father come in.
"I feel left out," he said, and wished he hadn't. His father had that knack of extracting what you least wanted to say, fatal for many a witness.
His father came around and looked at him; he realized that his father looked older and more worn than he had seen him before. "Time to grow up, George. They have."
"It was fun," George said. He didn't like the petulance in his own voice.
"Yes. But it's over. If you want to enjoy the rest of your life, you'll have to find another way." That famous voice, which could sting like acid in a cut, or croon like a lover, spoke to him without sarcasm or contempt or anything but plain reason. He could have defended himself better against the sting or the croon.
"I don't know what to do," George said. "I'm not like Ronnie—I don't have Raffa, and Brun isn't the girl I grew up with anymore."
"You're not that boy, either, though you don't seem to know it yet. George, tell me—why didn't the clones kill you?"
George snorted. "I think I talked them to death, nearly, and it confused their circuits."
"And back on Sirialis—you influenced the men who captured you—"
"Not well enough. I got shot in the gut anyway." He shivered; whatever the experts said about the impossibility of remembering pain, he would never forget his.
"Well, then—what do you really like to do?"
"Talk," George said promptly, surprising himself. Then, more slowly, "Talk, and . . . and make people do things. Just by talking at them. Sometimes it backfires."
"Yes," his father said. "Sometimes it does, but when it works . . . you know you've just described my career."
"Law?! I wouldn't be any good at that!"
"Because you're lazy, self-indulgent, and sometimes drive people crazy?"
"That's not how I'd have put it, but yes."
"George, you've defined yourself in relation to Ronnie and Buttons and their friends for years. Rich, idle, spoiled, all that. But you're not, really. That's why they find you odious. Not because you are idle and spoiled, but because you pretend to be, and they scent it like hounds scent blood. For instance—suppose you tell me about Varioster Limited versus Transgene."
George scowled, and hesitated. It had popped into his head, but he didn't like where his father was headed. He gave a precis of the case, then said, "The only reason I know about it is that you left the brief out one time when I was trying to find your signature pad so I could get a signed excuse for class."
His father grinned. "George, most kids who want to forge a signature simply use a copy algorithm in their notepads. They don't wade through thousand-page briefs, and remember them well enough to give a cogent precis twelve years later."
"Was it that far back?" It surprised him; he'd thought it was only seven or eight, and said so.
"Not quite," his father said. "So you remember that as well, do you?" Tricked again. At least it had been by an expert. "You might not find it as boring as you think, George. After all, you've been sneaking looks at my work for years—has it been that bad?"
"Well . . . no." But law school would be. He could just imagine day after day with a cube reader.
"The thing is," his father said, "when you're in law, everyone assumes the odiousness comes from that. And you can save most of it for the courtroom."
"Law school . . ." he muttered.
"Law school is where I met your mother," his father said. "It's not all cube readers."
The ginger-haired girl he vaguely remembered from that Hunt Ball grinned at him from across the room when he went in to take the placement exam. She had certainly grown up, he thought. He had enjoyed that evening, but he hadn't seen her since he'd left Sirialis. Now—she winked at him and he winked back. She'd never called him odious. He looked at the exam, and realized it was full of things he actually knew something about.
Brigdis Sirkin reported to the crew lounge of the great liner, hoping her luck had changed. Lady Cecelia had found her this berth. She had said goodbye to Brun and Meharry and the rest the day before, over in the Regular Space Service section of Rockhouse Major. Now she was committed to a civilian life. She had few regrets.
"Brigdis Sirkin?" That was the third mate, checking crew aboard. "Welcome aboard! We've heard about you; we're all glad to have you on our ship."
Here they found her exotic. Her adventures convinced them she was extraordinary, someone of exceptional courage and wit. As the weeks passed, Sirkin relaxed, finding new friends and a lot less tension. She found it hard to define the difference; the crew were all highly competent, and the standard of courtesy was as high. But the great ship had polish without an edge, like a ceremonial, a work of art and not a weapon. She liked that. She was glad to have known Meharry and Brun and the others, glad to know what protected her and her crewmates . . . but even more glad that she was no longer trying to live up to that standard.
The curtained alcove gave them privacy; the cooks gave them the best food for light-years around. They ate slowly, taking the time to savor every nuance of flavor. Their table conversation lingered on the antics of favorite relatives: nieces and nephews, for the most part. The waiter, carrying away the remains of the fish course, commented to the kitchen worker who received the tray, "It's so nice to see real quality. Ladies who appreciate good food, who take the time to be courteous to the staff. Just sitting there talking about their families without a care in the world. Reminds me of my own auntie." Later, when they were giggling over something he didn't understand, he reported again. "Perhaps a bit tipsy—all that champagne, you know—but they're rather sweet, if you know what I mean. Perfectly harmless."
THE END
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