by Pam Uphoff
W'ufda was tapping on the comp again. "Here you go. You made the front page."
"Oh, Sand, who is that bloated tail?" Trev muttered in horror. "No mention of the DMS, though. That's good."
"Not one of your better pictures," W'ufda chewed on a claw. "We can just deny it all and no one will recognize you from that."
"How about snagging some sters from the doctor, load you up with salt and water and you'll look just like that for a day or so, go talk to the newsies, and it's done." Vee suggested.
S'ank jumped right on that one, and dragged the doctor back. "See, he's been working out, and lost weight, looks really buff. We want him to look like that picture."
"Whatever for?" the doctor was exasperated. "He's in better shape than I've ever seen him."
"Security." S'ank was firm, and apparently security overruled everything else, including medical ethics and a reluctant Trev was injected with something that was guaranteed to bloat him.
S'ank's next worry was Xaero. "Miss L'svages, I think it is time for you to leave."
Trev nodded glumly. "I'll call as soon as I figure out which way is up."
She nodded. "It's going to be strange, my parents alive."
S'trooth handed her a memory crystal. "This is a copy of your backup crystal, minus the no longer quite accurate data you stole from C'dasl. Here's the record for this time. Trev said you were the organizing mediator for the complications of the illegal sales. I've contacted several levels of my superiors, and other relevant government officials, and a judge. You are now officially the court appointed organizing mediator, with a criminal prosecution stay attached." He handed over another crystal. "Your official authorization documents, the stay, and the limits of your authority."
"Oh, sand! Threat of criminal prosecution if they don't all behave. How nasty." Xaero tucked it away carefully. "Thanks."
In public, she wasn't about to try a passionate farewell. Trev blew her a nibble and she followed her driver out.
Chapter Eight
The apartment door recognized her scale pattern and opened for her. It was empty. Empty of people, at any rate. The remodeling she'd done was undone. Her plants were just in pots, the bathroom ordinary. She did have an array of clothing in the smaller bedroom, relieving her of her last anxiety that she might have moved out and she'd have to search discreetly to find out where she lived. Poking her head in her parents' bedroom, she smiled to see all the same framed pictures of herself at various ages.
She showered, and had her first setback. The sprays to reduce and cover up airborne pheromones that would give away her fertility were missing.
Didn't I tell my parents? She wondered. The personal supplies she had in her purse took care of the problem for now, but she was going to have to do some discreet shopping soon. A search of her room, in case the, the other Xaero, kept them in there turned up some injectable hormone supplies. Oh, crap. That Xaero didn't mature. She was experimenting a bit with hormones. Yuck. I hope she doesn't have a boyfriend I'll have to ditch.
Putting the problem aside for later, she headed for the office. Except her little empire had her cousin Coureti's name tag on it. She got a cup of tea and wandered as if killing time a bit and found her name on a nice big office next to her dad's old—and now current—office. Apparently she didn't have her own secretary, but the part time attention of Marfo P'fugs would have to do. Judging by the smile and greeting, it would be better . . . except the smile was so relieved. Marfo followed her into her office.
"Are you all right, Xaero? I thought going to Imperial City with that Publisher was a bad idea."
Oh, no! A Mother Cheeper!
"I'm fine," she said. "A bit short on sleep, but I actually got some excellent information that should bring in some new clients, plus an stint as an Organizing Mediator, so it was more than worth it."
Marfo laughed at that. "I should have known you had business in mind. I was afraid that pseudomale had turned your head." She dropped her voice. "You have to be more discreet, Xaero, or everyone will notice."
A Mother Cheeper who Knows All. Except she probably knows about the artificial hormones, not the maturity.
"I know." Xaero turned on her comp and pulled out the memory crystal S'trooth had given her. "Well let's just see what we've got here." She hesitated, then brought out her own old crystal and installed all of her security programs first. Then Blozolli's crystal.
It hadn't changed much. Marfo was dumbfounded. "Good heavens, all those companies stealing from each other! There'll be plenty of billable hours in that mess."
"I'll be the organizing mediator, so it'll be a percentage. If they all cooperate, they can all stay out of jail. My, oh, my. Time for a big spreadsheet." She shooed Marfo out and got to work.
Starting with figuring out if she had anything else going on right now. Fortunately the other Xaero used the same filing system and naming protocol that she had always used, and her passwords were all the Dry Scale names of the native plants and animals, so with a bit of persistence she managed to open them all. Hmm, all right, it looked like she'd finished up most of her cases before her trip with Trev. I wonder how different he really was? To a fem he'd just met, not a male, a boss or someone who'd known him all his life?
She stifled her imagination and dealt with the boring everyday stuff, in this case three minor changes to patent licenses "she'd" drafted recently, then turned back to the REM data.
A split later her father walked in. She looked back at her comp screen, blinking away tears. He looked just like she remembered.
"What'cha got, Xaery?" He asked.
"Industrial espionage, blackmarket sales of proprietary research by the company that was supposed to be providing secure storage of same and financing the REM terrorist activities."
"How on Mars did you get this?" Kessi L'svages asked.
"From the DMS," she said bluntly. "They don't want to prosecute most of the biotech companies on the planet. I'm the court appointed mediator." She hardened her heart. "I never did understand why the Firm took Blozolli's criminal case, but it's paying off now."
He flushed and fidgeted a bit.
"So," she continued. "I will handle this carefully and privately, to avoid any number of possible complicating off shoots."
His hands twitched. "Listen Xaery, why don't you let me take this . . . "
"No." She made her voice cold and hard. "It's mine. If I bring in new clients they will be mine." She swallowed an automatic apology. "I would appreciate your calling me Xaero."
The direct assault on his parental authority knocked him breathless, as he reddened with anger. "While you are under my roof . . . "
"Do you want me to move?" she cut in. "Certainly I'm old enough, and I'm sure you and mother could use the privacy."
"It's that fat publisher. I forbid you to see any more of him." He stalked out. Half a split later her comp informed her of a blocked attempt at file transfer. She sighed. Two years of independence had changed her. To her dad the change had happened overnight. Moving out would be a really good idea.
She checked the Builtdown's very short list of vacancies, and then checked her bank account. Ouch! Daddy's little girl had done a lot better on her own. Had she actually let the firm do that much of the work on Blozolli's case? Maybe she'd better check out the cheaper areas of town.
She broke off at noon for a quick lunch at home, where she found her mother. Xella was as pretty as ever, and impeccably turned out. Xaero hugged her hard, unable to speak of her feelings. "Had a fight with Dad at work today," she warned her mother. "I'm now officially on his bad list and apartment hunting."
"Xaery! You know better, and with housing so tight and expensive I really don't see how you can get your own place."
"I know, but I think I need the separation to get Dad to realize I'm grown up and treat me like that."
"Oh, Dear! You'll always be our little Xaery."
"That's part of the problem. It is time for you two to start calling me Xaero."
That didn’t go down much better with her mother than it had her father.
Back at the office she was met by a delegation of her father, Sbozoi and Apru. "Hand over that data, right now young lady," her father ordered.
She closed the office door firmly behind them. "I think you all need to sit down and think seriously about the advantages of having a member of the family handing this who can honestly step under a lie detector and say she has no knowledge of insider trading undertaken by anyone in her firm."
That shut them up for a long moment. Sbozoi was the first to speak. "Can you say that?"
"Yes. Speculation doesn't count."
"I see." After staring at her silently for a d-split more they all left, her father with an angry backwards look.
She finished sorting out the buyers from the victims, nearly identical lists, and broke off her letter writing to catch the evening news from Imperial City.
A bloated Trev laughed off his "security detail overreacting to a minor accident." And the reporters went on to the Next Thing To Panic About.
Which was a good presentation on what had gone wrong with the Space Agency's attempted maneuvering of a small icy moon of Jupiter into a Martian orbit. The station had even sent a team out to the surface to record the reentry, and then on to a remote spot where some of the chunks had made it through the atmosphere and left fresh craters on the cratered plain. It was fascinating, as much for the parallels with her time line as for the science.
The report finished off with an interview with the Head of Imperial City's Public Works Department, who talked about the refreshed shallow permafrost zone, and lower water costs for farmers for years. Interesting. Xaero wondered if they'd dare do it again.
Trev commed shortly after, either from his handheld or more likely with the visuals off.
"It's no good," she told him. "I saw your interview on the screen."
"My looks are the least of my worries," he said. "Everyone tiptoes around me, Prince this and Yes Sir, of course Sir! I can't stand it. It's almost a relief to run into a relative; they still call me Prince Fatty. It's the first time in twenty years anyone has used that particular insult to my face—the way I remember it."
"Oh dear sand. Are you still doing the publisher thing?"
"Yes," his voice perked up. "Vee and I'll be back in two days. He's off playing the new found nephew at the moment. W'ufda has met Feritu's youngest son and is currently talking with her. Apparently their experiences differ only in the length of their affair, not in its, umm, passion level. Goodness, what a thing to find out about my nice old boss. He was having vapors all the way there, fearing she'd turned into a snot like I apparently had. However, she looked just as anxious, so I think it'll work out. I just met the kid. Fereny looks just like W'ufda, and has more brains than any three other royal brats, including myself."
"Does he know?"
"Yeah, no point in not, the kid's smart. He's fascinated by the potential paradoxes and especially your knives. He's analyzed his new improved uncle and recruited me into his campaign to attend Tech rather than Imp U."
"My knives?" she asked. "Oh, yes, they did an interesting bit of looping about, didn't they?"
"We checked. After the hoopla about the assassination attempt, your Grandfather swore to obey the laws, live in peace and even obey the Emperor. The Emperor asked him where he got the knives and his reply was 'Dry Scales always have a knife.' So Grandfather got the two from the museum that had been taken when the General was captured, and gave them back to him."
"Huh. Which he gave to me and I took back in time and gave to him."
"The two from the assassination attempt went to the museum after the forensic people were done with them, and are still there."
"And those are the only two knives there are. I always thought there were four, my two and the two in the museum. I'll have to pay them a nostalgic visit next time I'm in Imperial City."
"So, how are things with your family?" he asked.
"Strange. It's so good to see them again and they are so infuriating. I hadn't realized how much I'd changed and grown in the last two years. Now I've got a father who thinks I should obey his orders and a mother who thinks I'm her little girl. I don't think the other Xaero matured, and the way everyone treats me I'm astounded I'm a junior partner, and not an associate-for-life." She sighed. "They both call me Xaery."
Trev snorted. "I never will. I promise. My Mother was all disapproving and scolding and such about the risk I took, I was so thin, hadn't I been eating right, like I was five years old. I just stood there and let it run off. She started studying me then. I don't know if she likes the New Fatrevi or not. When she and grandfather had the DMS Special Services set up the protocols for returning time travelers, it didn't occur to her that it might be her own flesh and blood that changed. At work, only W'ufda knows, so the rest of the guys think I'm depressed or something. Apparently my failure to jump down their throats when they forget to sir or prince me is unheard of, and my actually sitting down, filling out forms in quadruplicate and writing an entire report has them talking about UFO abductions."
She snickered. "It sounds like a couple of tenths in the wilderness of Icefire might be a good idea."
"I'm really looking forward to it. With luck we can stretch it out for a year or so and maybe everyone will forget that I was just a pretty face and that even when I was undercover D'nef did the heavy lifting. Apparently in this time, Traveler had a secretary-assistant in addition to the bodyguard. D'nef says I drove him up the wall and owe him ten years of paperwork. How about you?"
"Well, my scale prints open everything and my passwords are made up the way I always have, although some of them are different in detail. How about your DNA?"
"Same as what they have on record." Voices mumbled dimly over the comm. "I've got to go, see you in two days."
She stretched happily and got back to writing letters. So simple when you've already done it once . . .
***
Two days later she was missing Miss C'ank. Everything she gave Marfo to do ended up duplicated on her father's desk, usually arriving there first. She finally did it all herself, including walking it to the mailroom, chaperoning it through the processors and hand carrying it to the postal office. Ridiculous.
She called it quits for the day and changed into her favorite copper outfit, with boots, packed a change of clothes in her briefcase, and headed for Double Moons Publishing.
To her astonishment Gold and Silver were both in the lobby. She felt odd introducing herself and saying she was here to see, oh crap what name was he using?
She was saved by a voice from above. "Miss L'svages?" Vee called down. "Mister D’herio is expecting you, please come up."
She greeted the still slightly puffy Trev circumspectly in public and enthusiastically in private.
She vaguely heard Vee telling Gold and Silver they could head home, as Trev led her upstairs "to see the rest of the place".
"Apparently I decided that if I was going to be under cover as a crook, I needed to have the correct image." He murmured into her frills as they soaked in the hot tub. "Wasn't trying to seduce you away from your parents at all, nope, not sweet little me."
"You sure? A rooftop that actually catches some direct light from the sky sure looks deliberately alluring to me." She massaged his shoulders under his frill.
"Pure luck, honest." He purred. "Mind you, it's all going to come in really handy when I start trying to persuade you to marry me."
"Think so?" she pulled back. "I was wondering if I should give you a run for your money or just pounce. So far, pouncing is winning."
"Hmm. Pouncing is good. But can we keep it up forever?" He stroked her muzzle gently and leaned back in to nibble. Her comm chimed.
She growled, and stretched a damp arm to reach it. "Xaero L'svages, no Mom, I'm not coming home for dinner, I left you a message. No Mom. Mom, I'm twenty-nine years old. See you tomorrow Mom. Goodnight." She splashed back into the s
pa. "Arg!"
"Something tells me I'm going to have an uphill battle with your family."
"Will you dump me if they get obnoxious?"
"No."
"Will you dump me if they get very obnoxious?"
"No."
"Will you dump me if they get extremely . . . "
He wrapped his hands around her muzzle. "Mine." And dived into her frills.
"Pouncing. Yes. Very Good," she murmured.
***
The delegation at her office door the next morning was the Wives Club.
"Xaero, we need to speak with you." Danca told her. Her mother nodded firmly.
"We understand, Xaero," Eltona said. "Every girl goes through a phase, natural or artificial, of being vulnerable to outside influences."
"I know Kessi and I have overprotected you." Xaero's Mother had tears in her eyes. "But this wild rebellion isn't necessary!"
"Mother, a quiet private relationship with a good looking young male is not 'wild'. The problems at work are simply an ordinary turf war. I'm a grown lizard, and it is time I had clients of my own."
"But Xaero! What if someone finds out you're taking hormones? You won't keep many clients, then, will you?" Danca sniffed.
Eltona appeared to be thinking. Probably about a certain royal lease with three hundred years yet to run. "Well, it's true that most Pseudos find someone special to live with."
"Eltona!" Danca snapped. "He's a publisher!"
"He's a business owner." Xaero said.
"He's corrupting my baby!"
"Mother, get a grip!" Xaero snapped. "I appreciate hearing all of your views, now I need to get some work done." She steered her mother out the door and walked her to the elevator. "I'll see you tonight, Mom." She walked away quickly before Xella could work up another emotional outburst. Danca and Eltona both gave her thoughtful looks as she passed them.
The first phone calls were coming in and she was kept busy the rest of the day.
