Every Last Mother's Child
Page 52
Chapter 5: In the Marshal’s Residence
After Maggie and Jill left, Lisa commented more to herself than to Georgia, “The bio community will be panicked big time. They always do when they hear closers are about. Page would you have Francine join me in the study?”
“Yes Lady Wilson,” The expert system responded and paged the woman who had been assigned as Lady Wilson’s secretary.
Lisa waited in the study for Francine to come to the study. Although Artificial Intelligences were a fact of life, they often did not replace human help around offices, and homes. They couldn’t change a baby’s diaper, and couldn’t run a confidential errand for the home owner. In addition to being expert phone handlers, and stenographers, and word processors, their very strengths could also be the greatest problem for their owners. Their memory cores could never be erased. They could be called into court to testify against their owners, about everything they had seen and heard over their sensor net. Because of this human secretaries were often used for matters that their human owners wanted to remain confidential and not to see the light of day. For this and other reasons the palace had a large contingent of secretaries, clerks, pages and other human help to assist the royals in their day to day activities that needed to remain confidential.
When the Wilsons had moved onto the palace grounds, Lisa, as Marshal Wilson’s wife, Lady Wilson was accorded a small staff of her own. It not only included Maggie as her major domo and chief of staff, it included tutors for the children, a lady in waiting for Lisa, and a personal secretary. Most of the staff had been built up over the weeks they had been in the palace. Lisa’s secretary had been very carefully picked. The Palace personnel office staff had painstaking gone through their staff records and found Francine. Francine was working in the palace office of the Queen’s Attorney. She was a secretary, and paralegal in Lord Mercer’s office. Nothing that leaked out of the Queen’s Attorney’s office had ever been traced back to her. When dining in the staff dining rooms, she refused to indulge in the idle gossip that the other support staff did, and would often be heard clearing her throat when one of her coworkers was telling something they shouldn’t. The kicker in the choice was a Francine’s back ground.
Francine was not an escaped clone or a refuge, she was an emancipated bioperson. She was working for the Galactic Council’s Interstellar Trade Committee as a legal aide. She had been on Trena to investigate a complaint against the Trena Commerce Commission. She had just finished a meeting with the commission’s rep and had just gotten back to the hotel, when the assistant delegation leader asked her to dinner. The older man had been flirting with her since they have left the council’s headquarters. So she had relented and went to dinner with him. All through dinner Julian had flirted with her. After dinner as they got very friendly in the back of cab she encouraged him to go farther. They saw a hotel on their way back to theirs and decided to satisfy their lust immediately. It was as she took off her clothes in the room they had taken that the nightmare had begun. She remembered being thrown on the bed and the last of her clothes being torn off. She tried to take Julian’s off but Julian hand had her firmly restrained. That was when Julian had slapped her. She sometimes enjoyed rough sex. But it had stopped being enjoyable when he took the bottle of wine they had bought and used it as a sex toy. The last she thing remembered, before waking in the palace clinic, was the incredible pain in her hands.
The advance protective team for King Ralph was securing the perimeter of a theatre where the king and queen were going to attend a play latter in the morning when they found where Francine had been dumped. Had the team not been setting a post in the alley between a hotel and the theatre Francine would have never been found alive. Francine was in a sorry state. Both of her hands had been broken, her ribs kicked in, and she was near death. The detailed called for EMS, but the head of the detail scooped her up and laid her in the back of the large vehicle they called the war wagon. The detail broke out their aid kits, as the team leader told one of his team to get them to the palace. The clinic there, was actually the closet trauma facility. As the team worked to keep the biowoman alive, the team leader didn’t even think that the biowoman was any type of security threat to the royal family. Biopeople were seldom involved in assassination attempts. Why he didn’t know. He knew of no plot against his principles, and to his knowledge the royal family had made the decision to attend the children’s play at diner the night before.
As they began to treat her wounds, they found out she was part of a Galactic Council delegation. The royal family insisted on caring for her in the palace infirmary. The head of the delegation did stop by the palace to check on his legal aide. Seeing how injured she was and with the royal physician saying she shouldn’t be moved, Trade Delegate Anthony made the decision to leave her in the palace physician’s care. He made arrangements for her stuff to be brought to the palace. Months later she had been surprised when her first disability payment arrived. It wasn’t much; but it would cover her living expenses.
As she recovered from her injuries the palace personnel office interviewed her. Finding that she was a paralegal with knowledge in interstellar law, they asked if the crown attorney could use her. They had just hired a new attorney in the crown attorney’s palace office who needed a paralegal. She worked as a secretary while she went to school to be certified as a paralegal in the Trena legal system. Years later she had heard that her assailant had been killed when he had tried to beat up another victim.
Francine had been on the palace staff for nearly fifty years. She was a fixture on the palace staff. Some of the staff was afraid of her. Even the Queen was a little hesitant around the biowoman. She had been known to clear her throat in the staff dining room when staff members were telling tales about the royals they shouldn’t be. She had made members of the staff of Crown Attorney her family. Never missing a birthday, or wedding gift. Although imposing she was well like in the crown offices. No one really knew what she did after hours. Her private life was just that private. They had no idea she was associated with the social clubs and organizations that helped bios acclimate to Trena. Lisa was not a complete stranger to her. Francine had met Lisa a couple times at associations meetings, and had been impressed with the younger woman. When the personnel office offered her the position of Lady’s Wilson’s secretary she didn’t hesitate. She had been assigned the next day much to the annoyance of the Queen’s Attorney who had come to depend on the woman.
When Lisa was introduced to Francine, they surprised everyone that they knew each other. When the palace chief of staff told Lisa that Francine was to be her secretary and aide, Francine thought Lisa was not going to let her become part of her staff. Lisa insisted that she was simply a housewife who didn’t need all this attention. She really didn’t want the extra attention and staff. She wanted to continue to be Lisa, a part time healer, and full time wife and mother. Francine, who had never married, and had few liaisons, surprisingly understood. The men and women in the Queen’s Attorney’s office had become her children, and family. Francine asked to be left alone with Lady Wilson. The security team simply withdrew and nodded at the others to do the same.
“Lady Wilson,” Francine had spoken softly, “Many of the biopeople on Trena admire you. You have become a legend among our people who have escaped to Trena.” she held up her hand to silence the younger woman, “I know Lady Wilson, you never intended to do that. But you have become legendary in the way you have helped escaped clones to safety before you married Lord Wilson. No one really knew who you were, but they always knew that if you could help, you would help. Always being one step ahead of the Closers who wanted you bad. I started hearing about you twenty years or so ago. There are quite a few clones on Trena who are here only because you managed to help them get out. They have let you have your peace and quiet life when they found out you were here. There has been a concerted effort to make sure your whereabouts have not been sent back to the company.”
“So what does t
his have to do with me needing a personal secretary,” Lisa had asked softly.
“Ma’am,” Francine replied, “you will need help in conducting the day to day business of being Lord Wilson’s spouse. It isn’t stuff that an AI couldn’t do, but at your rank ma’am, yes rank, you need someone who knows how to make things happen for your family, and spouse. I can do things for you that Maggie, and the rest staff can’t. Lady Wilson, you have been a personal secretary to important people and you know what some of their duties are, and what they can do for their principles.” Lisa nodded, she had once or twice had taken a job as a secretary for various persons. “This is the Queen’s decision ma’am. They interview three or four others before they chose me and the Queen insisted that I become your personal secretary. The Queen talked to me before I came over here, and she read me the riot act. She also said that you might be stubborn. She told me I wasn’t to mention our conversation period. I told her plain and simple that if you didn’t want a secretary that I would go back to the Queen’s Attorney’s office and no one would be the wiser.”
“The Queen picked you huh?” Lisa asked. The older clone nodded. “Well far be it from me to go against the Queen’s wishes.”
From that day forward Lisa and Francine had become an unbeatable team. Francine knew everything about everyone. When someone tried to use Lisa to influence Michael, Francine would hand her mistress a file on the individual. It often held information that was not in the AI and was known only to the Queen’s Attorney’s office. It was very privilege information. It could be devastating when Lisa asked if so and so company shareholder knew the real profit margin of the company. The word was getting out, that Lisa was not a trophy wife.
Now as Francine entered the study the older clone said, “I heard. I’m on it. Here’s what I know.”
Those three sentences and the information she gave her, was the standard Francine had established in their relationship. Francine reported everything that was known about the incident and what the Mounties were doing.
“I want you to get a message to the Associations.” The associations were a group of clubs and service organizations that supported the emigrant bioengineered community. They helped newly arrived clones get settled. They helped with legal problems, and attempted to help biopeople settle into their new lives on Trena. Both Lisa and Francine had supported their efforts, and Francine had on her off time worked at the one smaller of the organization’s offices helping with wills and other legal work for her fellow bios needing assistance. “They’ll be seeing some more problems because of this. Every time one of these groups show up here there’s a wave of murders, and suicides. They need to be warned. Not panicked, but warned. I also want to see Kellogg sometime tomorrow. See if Mercer is available I want to make sure that we are ready to assist any one the closers mess with.”
“Yes Ma’am” Francine said, she never wrote anything down. She had a picture perfect memory.
Francine was surprised. She didn’t think that Lady Wilson knew who Kellogg was. Kellogg was the leader of an association that was made up of ex closers and company security personnel. Although they were not that welcomed in the bioengineered community, the associations used them. Some bios thought that they were still connected with Ebio and would turn them over to the company. Francine knew better. Several times when Closers had been on Trena, Kellogg’s team had hunted them down and had eliminated the problem. When a group of bios were being harassed by intolerant people in the community, Kellogg and company had taken care of business. They weren’t exactly one of the Mounted Patrol’s favorite associations; but they didn’t go out of their way to cause them grief. Often the Mounties looked the other way when Kellogg’s team took care of some unpleasant business that the Mounties couldn’t.
“Uh Lady Wilson,” Francine said after a few minutes of quiet study, “Kellogg may be a security problem. Mac may not let him on the grounds, and certainly not within striking distance of you.”
“Make it happen, Francine,” Was all that Lisa replied.