by David Drake
The truth was—if Wood was anything like Tovera, and she certainly appeared to have been trained in the same school—she probably worried even that the Commissioner’s wife might smash her stemware into a spike of crystal and lunge for Lady Belisande’s throat. Once you start down the path of paranoia, there’s simply no line that you can’t cross.
Adele smiled—internally, because Posy would have misinterpreted the expression. She fought her own tendency to consider everyone as a potential enemy and every place as a potential ambush site. That was madness.
But Adele had the luxury of knowing that Tovera was being paranoid on her behalf, unasked. That didn’t seem fair, but the world wasn’t fair. And since madness was a word used to describe human beings, perhaps Tovera wasn’t at risk.
Posy gulped half her refilled glass, then lowered it and forced a smile. “Tilton fancies himself a ladies’ man. He isn’t interested so much in the sex, I think, as the degradation of his victims. He particularly fastens on the wives and daughters of the Councillors of Zenobia.”
“They don’t give in to him, do they?” Clothilde said with a look of revulsion. “Ugh! That bald little pervert!”
“I’m told that Councillor Pumphrey objected forcibly, not long after I left Zenobia,” Posy said. Her voice was frighteningly colorless. “I remember his daughter Chris quite well, though we weren’t close. She was a very proper girl, and I’m afraid I was too wild for her.”
“Did he use the secret police,” Adele said, her voice equally detached, “or members of his own security detail?”
Her personal data unit was in its thigh pocket—of course—but she would send the wrong signal if she brought it out now. She wanted the wands in her hands to keep her from reaching for her pistol, which would be even more undesirable.
Adele had to make do with the wine glass and conscious control. Her control had always been sufficient in the past.
“The police,” Posy said. “Some of them objected also, till the security detail executed two for treason. The rest were willing to carry off Chris Pumphrey. She hasn’t been seen since.”
“Oh, dear heavens,” Clothilde Brown said, the knuckles of her left hand in her mouth. “Oh dear heavens, where has Pavel brought me?”
“Are Tilton’s security personnel from the Fifth Bureau?” Adele asked, still sounding as though she were asking about the color scheme in the kitchen.
“No, Residential Services,” Posy said absently. Her gaze sharpened. “How do you happen to know about the Fifth Bureau, Adele?”
Taking a calculated risk, Adele said, “My servant, Tovera—”
She cocked her head slightly to indicate the woman standing behind her.
“—used to be associated with the organization. Before she retired and went into personal service.”
Tovera and Wood had obviously recognized one another—at least as types, but probably as individuals as well. There was no point in refusing to acknowledge what the other party already knew; and with luck, the admission would prove disarming.
“I see,” said Posy in a puzzled tone that proved she did not. No one retired from the Fifth Bureau, the intelligence service which reported directly to Guarantor Porra. “Perhaps one day we will discuss mutual friends, Adele. Without boring Clothilde—”
She gave the Commissioner’s wife a dazzling smile.
“—that is.”
“With all respect to your maid,” Adele said, glancing up at Wood, “I would think a security detail of . . . eighteen or twenty Residential Services personnel?”
“About that, yes,” Posy agreed.
“Eighteen,” said Wood, the syllables as short as successive clacks from a pair of wood blocks. “But two of them haven’t been sober for months on end. If they were issued live ammunition, they would shoot themselves.”
“Sixteen, then,” said Adele. “A large enough body to seriously endanger your safety, Posy, if Tilton is the sort of man you describe.”
“I could have gotten rid of him when I was on Pleasaunce,” Posy said, glancing at her empty wine glass. “I didn’t realize, though. Perhaps if someone had told me; my brother could have, I think. But nobody did. And now, well—”
Her mouth twisted in a mixture of anger and disgust.
“—I no longer have that kind of authority.”
Her smile became impish. She said, “I do, however, have a friend in Otto von Gleuck. Otto is a dear man and of very good family. There are five hundred spacers on his ships, and they love him like a father. Perhaps you understand that, Officer Mundy?”
“I might,” Adele said with her usual lack of expression. “But—and I don’t mean to raise an awkward question . . . but how long will Lieutenant Commander von Gleuck be stationed on Zenobia?”
“Yes,” said Posy. “Fleet appointments are of limited duration, and a destroyer doesn’t have the facilities for passengers that a heavy cruiser does.”
She glanced sidelong to see if Adele would react. Lady Belisande had left Zenobia five years ago as the mistress of Captain Karl Volcker, commander of the Barbarossa. The heavy cruiser was showing the flag in the Qaboosh Region during an interval of peace between Cinnabar and the Alliance.
The well-connected Volcker had brought Lady Belisande to a court ball following the cruiser’s return to Pleasaunce. There she caught the Guarantor’s eye, and very shortly thereafter Volcker had been promoted to command a battleship on distant assignment.
Of course I won’t react.
Posy smiled faintly at Adele’s bland silence and continued, “And that wouldn’t be a practical response anyway, since it was suggested at the time I left Pleasaunce that I might want to remain on Zenobia until I was informed otherwise. I suspect—”
She glanced up toward the servant behind her.
“—that I would be reminded of that suggestion if I seemed to be forgetting it.”
Wood didn’t react either. Of course.
“Perhaps Tilton will be recalled or, or something?” Clothilde said. Her hands were tight together on the stem of her glass. Adele suspected their hostess was considering the possible results of her having slapped the Resident when they met.
“Perhaps,” Posy said, with the unvoiced implication, that perhaps pigs would fly. “I only hope that he doesn’t provoke a rebellion first. Because I didn’t need Otto to warn me what the response to that would be.”
She gave Adele a tired grin and added, “I know Guillaume even better than Otto does, you see. He reacts badly to betrayal, which is how he would view the murder of his representative.”
Adele rose to her feet. “I’m afraid I need to return to my duties,” she said. “I hope I’ll be able to see you both again before we lift, though. The Princess Cecile has to remain on Zenobia for some time while her rigging is being replaced, Captain Leary informs me.”
Tovera whisked the empty glass out of Adele’s hand. She circled with it to the refreshments table, keeping at least one eye on Wood at all times; but she was smiling.
“Oh, surely there’s nothing for you to do while you’re on the ground?” Clothilde said, rising to squeeze Adele’s hands. Braga stood like an unattractive statue; it hadn’t occurred to him to take his mistress’ empty glass the way Wood and Tovera had done. “Can’t you stay?”
“Another time, then,” said Posy, coming forward also. “Meeting you has been an even greater pleasure than I expected, Adele. I hope we can talk often while you’re here.”
“Yes,” said Adele truthfully. “It has been pleasant.”
Clothilde’s maid had been watching from the covered courtyard. A light dawned in her dull eyes and she trotted toward the outside door.
Wood’s presence had made this a very different conversation than the one Adele had planned. Very likely her task, to elicit secrets which Posy had gained in pillow talk, was now impossible.
Mistress Sand would be interested to learn that Resident Tilton had created disaffection among the Zenobian elite, but that was of no
real importance at present. There was no gain for the Republic in destabilizing so distant an Alliance world in peacetime, though Adele knew there were Cinnabar agents who would have worked to raise a rebellion here on general principles.
To Adele, that sort of behavior was simply grit in the gears of civilization. And civilization was in bad enough shape without people actively trying to sabotage it.
✧ ✧ ✧
Daniel stood at the head of the Dorsal C antenna, which was extended to its full height of 120 feet. His excuse was that the location gave him the best view of Woetjans and her crew stripping the rigging from one antenna at a time and reeving fresh cables through the blocks. That was true, but the Sissie’s veteran riggers could have done the work blindfolded and blind drunk besides; they didn’t need their captain’s eye on them.
The other thing the location gave Daniel was privacy, or as close to privacy as anybody could have aboard a starship. Certainly everybody could see him perched above them. They could even approach him, but they had to want to do so enough to make a long climb. On the masthead, he had figurative as well as literal distance from the rest of the world.
Primarily Daniel was on top of the antenna because he liked to be on top of antennas: in harbor, as here; in sidereal space; and especially on a ship in the Matrix, where all space and time would have been visible if his eyes had been able to comprehend it.
The ground car driving up the quay stopped at the Sissie’s slip. Daniel didn’t think anything of it: the four Sissies on guard there would be polite, but they had weapons within easy reach if it turned out to be a visit from Resident Tilton’s thugs.
The vehicle was obviously local. It appeared to be a high-sided farm wagon with a canvas roof and pneumatic tires. A fifth wheel supported the wagon tongue, on which an engine putted and rattled. The whole installation showed a great deal of ingenuity, combined with a marked lack of polish.
The passenger got out of the box and walked forward to pay the driver. Daniel had considerable experience in watching people foreshortened by his high vantage point, but Commissioner Brown’s tall, stooped figure and jerky walk were easy to identify. He moved like a shore bird mincing through the shallows.
Without having to think about it, Daniel grasped the forward stay and began sliding down it as the quickest route to the hull. Woetjans saw him coming and bellowed, “Stand clear! Here comes Six!”
Daniel wore utilities as he ordinarily would aboard the Princess Cecile. Before he started up the antenna, however, he had donned the boots and gauntlets of his rigging suit. They sparked and screeched against the cable as gravity carried him down.
The cables were woven from filaments of beryllium monocrystal, the toughest flexible material available to shipbuilders. Even so, hair-fine fibers snapped as a result of wear and fatigue, leaving the rigging covered with an invisible fuzz of broken ends. Running a bare hand along a shroud would have the same effect as trying to pet a bandsaw.
Hard suits—rigging suits—were made to be used by personnel handling the cables in brutal haste and under the worst conditions. There were lighter gloves and footgear available that were supposed to be equally protective if you weren’t working in vacuum, but Daniel had never met a spacer who used them.
Hogg was lounging at the base of the antenna, turning his head to check each line of approach alternately. He had his hands in his pockets and looked as lethargic as a sheep digesting her supper.
He glanced upward, saw Daniel, and immediately slung the stocked impeller which until that moment had been concealed between the antenna and his baggy garments. So far as Hogg was concerned, the spacers guarding the end of the boarding bridge were simply decoys to absorb an attacker’s attention till the real hunter on top of the hull could put slugs through the problem.
The Commissioner looked up at the squeal of Daniel’s descent. Daniel hit the hull with a double bang! of his soles against the steel plating.
“Toomey,” he said, verbally keying his commo helmet to the Tech 3 who was the senior member of the guard detachment, “this is Six. Link Commissioner Brown with me if you will. Give him a helmet, over.”
“Roger, Six,” Toomey said. She was built like a fuel drum, but her voice was as light and cheery as a schoolgirl’s.
There was brief confusion on the quay. Daniel remained where he was so that all those involved could see him. In theory, that didn’t matter, but human beings aren’t theories. At last Brown settled a helmet borrowed from Hilmer, the junior guard, over his head.
“Commissioner, this is Leary,” Daniel said with determined cheeriness. “How can we help you, over?”
Visor magnification made Brown’s discomfort obvious, even a hundred yards away. “Ah, Captain Leary?” he said. “I was wondering if I could speak with you privately. I don’t want to take you away from your own duties, but . . .”
“Certainly,” said Daniel. “Meet me in the BDC. Ah—I’ll have Hilmer guide you, over. Break. Toomey, send Hilmer up to the BDC with Commissioner Brown, over. Break. Six to Cory, have the BDC vacated immediately. I’m going to confer with Commissioner Brown there, over.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Roger, out.”
“Yes sir, out.”
All that was simple courtesy. Daniel really had no duties on Zenobia except to invent make-work until Adele got the information she had been sent for or decided the task was impossible. The rerigging could be spun out for a month if necessary, so even planning the make-work was complete.
“What do you s’pose he’s got in mind?” Hogg asked quietly as he helped Daniel take off the pieces of his rigging suit in the rotunda. “Because he looked more upset even than when we were playing games right after we landed.”
Midshipman Cazelet and Chief Missileer Chazanoff bustled out of the Battle Direction Center. They were off-duty at present, but Cazelet was trying to learn the fine points of missile attacks and Chazanoff, like most experts whom Daniel had met, was delighted to have an audience to expound to.
They muttered, “Sir,” and bobbed their heads as they passed Daniel on the way to the bridge where Cory was on watch. It would have vacant consoles to practice on also.
“I’m not sure the Commissioner fully appreciated what was happening on the quay,” Daniel said, smiling. “It isn’t the sort of interaction that ordinarily takes place in the offices of auditors.”
The comment opened a train of thought. “I would guess he’s worried about something to do with the late Commissioner Brassey’s accounts,” Daniel said as Hogg eased off his right boot, the last bit of gear. “That’s what he was going to work on, he said when he left us. But how that would involve me is beyond my imagination.”
They reached the BDC well before Hilmer could chivy his charge up the stern companionway, so Daniel waited at the open hatch. Hogg glanced into the armored chamber and scratched himself.
“You’d best be elsewhere,” Daniel said. “Since the Commissioner wants privacy.”
“I figured,” Hogg agreed. “Well, I guess you’ll be safe alone with him, young master.”
He snorted and said, “You know, it looks like a bank vault, but Cory can watch and listen to any bloody thing that happens in there.”
“Yes,” said Daniel, “but I don’t think he will. And anyway, I’m just making Commissioner Brown comfortable. If I were worried about whether one of my officers could be trusted to keep information secure, he wouldn’t be my officer for very long.”
Hilmer, a rigger who’d lost two fingers from his left hand, came up from the companionway and waited. Long moments later, Brown stumbled out, winded by the fast climb. He was carrying a small case; now that he no longer needed a hand for the railing, he switched it from his left to his right.
“Let me help you with that, Commissioner,” Daniel said, lifting off the commo helmet which he returned to Hilmer. “The BDC will give us both privacy and good displays.”
“I’m embarrassed to be doing this, Leary,” the Commi
ssioner said. “After all, you have your own duties. But—”
He waited till the hatch had closed—it was hydraulic, since the armored valve was impractical for even someone of Woetjans’ unaided strength—and the dogs had clanged into their mortises, then continued, “—I don’t know who else to turn to. Since it involves naval stores, I thought of you.”
“Sit down here, Commissioner,” Daniel said. Five consoles identical to those on the bridge formed a star in the center of the BDC. Daniel rotated the seat of the nearest one sideways, then sat on an adjacent one which he turned so that he and Brown were facing one another.
He cleared his throat and went on, “Your predecessor was stealing RCN stores?”
How in heaven’s name would Brassey have managed that on Zenobia, where there wasn’t and couldn’t be an RCN presence? But it would explain Commissioner Brown’s discomfort.
“Oh, good gracious, no!” Brown said in surprise. “I’ve gone over Commissioner Brassey’s accounts, and so far as I can see they’re quite in order. Making allowances for sloppiness, that is, but I assure you that I’ve seen worse. He certainly wasn’t fiddling the secret accounts, which is where in the past I’ve most often found problems.”
Daniel blinked. He’d been leaning slightly forward; he felt himself straighten. “Ah,” he said. “Could you be mistaken, Commissioner?”
Brown’s smile was wry and surprisingly engaging. “About many things, Captain,” he said, “yes, I certainly could be. But not about accounts of this sort, filed by a man whom I may charitably say was not one of the great intellects of his age. You have every right to dismiss my opinions on most subjects, but I’ve spent nearly twenty years becoming an expert on matters of this sort.”
Daniel grinned. “Your pardon, Commissioner,” he said. “I spoke without thinking. But if there’s no problem with the accounts, then why are you here?”
“If I may give you some background . . . ,” Brown said. “When we took possession of Cinnabar House, we found the Commissioner’s private apartments were nearly full of empty wine bottles. My wife informs me that they had contained decent local vintages.”
