Change of Command

Chapter Nine

Hobart Conselline ran his hand over the wide gleaming surface of the desk—his desk now, as it had been Bunny Thornbuckle’s, and before that Kemtre Altmann’s—and felt a glow of satisfaction. His Delphine now had the suite Miranda had occupied, and to him had come every perquisite he had once envied, from the skilled silent staff to the deference of those who had been his peers, and were now his subordinates.

He had worried, when he saw Brun and Buttons both at the Thornbuckle tables, but neither of them had offered to speak. And however they had voted, the count had gone his way. Their own uncle supported him—for a specific reason, but that didn’t matter. He would have appointed new ministers for legal affairs and internal affairs anyway; he would have appointed new judges. There were certain legal actions in progress within his own sept which made that prudent. If Harlis benefitted, and assumed it was all for his own benefit, well—that was a cheap profit, and he had never scorned a cheap profit in his life.

He leaned back in the chair and gave himself up to reverie for a few minutes. He was relatively young, and with the aid of repeated rejuvenations he would remain young . . . and powerful. They had seen what happened with a succession of Speakers, generations back, and then what happened when they made leadership hereditary, with the Altmanns. Prosperity had followed prosperity, an upward trend with only minor adjustments. But no one had yet seen what he would show them: the stability and wealth that would come with one leader who would never fade into senility. Year after year, decade after decade, he would be there to serve and protect . . . to guide and lead. . . .

His desk chimed at him, and he sat up, scowling. That was the future, but now he had to deal with the problems his predecessors had left him.

“Milord, Colonel Bai-Darlin, head of the Special Security Unit, would like a meeting.”

“Send him in.” He would show them how hard a real leader worked. He would be tireless for the good of the realm, as he had always been tireless for the good of his Family, and his sept. And realistically speaking, given the importance of his sept in the economy of the realm, what was good for the Consellines could not help but be good for the rest—at least most of them.

Bai-Darlin came in with a crisp salute and heel-click that convinced Hobart the man was efficient. But was he smart? Was he tireless?

“Milord, I thought you might like to be brought up to date on the investigation into the death of Lord Thornbuckle—”

“It was those NewTex terrorists,” Hobart said. “I can’t imagine why you haven’t caught them yet.”

“Milord, the preliminary investigations have found no trace of anyone from any of the worlds on which they operate being on Castle Rock since the Rangers were brought to this system for trial.”

“Then the investigators are incompetent! What does it take, a bright red stripe painted on someone’s head? They threatened to kill the Speaker, and the Speaker was shot. What more do you want?”

Bai-Darlin looked at him in a way that made Hobart feel uncomfortable. “Evidence, for a start.”

“You have evidence; Lord Thornbuckle’s dead body. The damage done to Ser Mahoney, to the vehicle.”

“Yes, milord, but none of that points to the New Texas Godfearing Militia. We have no indication, on travel manifests, on hotel registers, that they were here.”

“If they weren’t here, they must have hired someone.”

“According to our best sources, they do not hire criminals to work for them, and what we know about the types of weapons used does not fit with them either. They like direct confrontation; they would be far more likely to walk up to an intended victim on the street.”

“Excuses,” Hobart said firmly. “Although, if it wasn’t the Militia, I can think of another disruptive element it might be.”

“Yes, milord? Anything you could suggest—”

“Ageists,” Hobart said. “Lord Thornbuckle was a Rejuvenant, and so was his wife, a multiple.” Bai-Darlin’s gaze shifted to Hobart’s ear. Hobart shook his head. “These are jewelry, Colonel. I support rejuvenation, of course; any sensible man does. And a man in my position must wear his colors, so to speak. I will rejuvenate when I need to, in another ten years or so; I’m quite a bit younger than Lord Thornbuckle was. In the meantime, these rings—” He touched his ear—“These rings reassure the older rejuvenants that I am serious when I support their interests.”

“I see, sir. And you think it possible that Ageists assassinated Lord Thornbuckle because he was rejuvenated? Does this mean that you think they will attack you?”

“I don’t think it was Ageists—I think it was the NewTex Militia, as I told you. But if I’m wrong about that, I’d look at the Ageists next.”

Bai-Darlin did not look convinced. “I was hoping, milord, that you might share some insights into possible elements among the Seated Families . . . perhaps Lord Thornbuckle had aroused a particular animosity there? He seemed a popular Speaker, but there’s always someone . . .”

Hobart waved his hand. “Minor resentments perhaps. Certainly there were those who felt he misused Familias resources in going after his daughter the way he did. A number of us thought so, and expressed ourselves at the time. But I’m not aware—and I wouldn’t be, necessarily, since I’ve little to do with the internal workings of Barraclough Sept—of anything serious enough to cause someone to kill him.”

“Very good, sir. Thank you, milord, for your time.”

“Catch those killers, Colonel, and I’ll see you get a medal.” Instead of the eager grin Hobart expected, Bai-Darlin gave him a dark, brooding look before turning away. Strange fellow. Perhaps not as efficient as he had seemed.

Several days later, Hobart found himself glaring at the same desk he had coveted so much. That was the natural result of having to deal with obstructive fools, he told himself. A man had a right to have Ministers he could work with. Why should any of Bunny Thornbuckle’s appointees expect to stay in office, if they were going to cause him trouble? They should have learned from his first dismissals and replacements, but they still obstructed him. They would have to go, root and branch; he was not going to deal with any more of this insubordination.

Hobart considered his options. Who should be replaced first? Defense had been making noises lately about rejuvenation in the enlisted ranks, something about aged NCOs going crazy or something. Their idiot medical branch had put a hold on all rejuvenations, and seemed to be determined to investigate thoroughly. He’d pointed out to Irion Solinari that it would be expensive and inefficient to hold a prolonged investigation into something like that, and that it would be better to cut their losses and simply discharge the affected personnel as medically unfit. But Solinari argued—Solinari did nothing but argue, Hobart thought, remembering that Solinari had also argued with Bunny, who had appointed him. Just a difficult personality, and not one suited to a responsible position like Minister of Defense.

If Solinari went—if he had his own choice in as Defense, then . . . he could also ease out the more difficult of the admirals. Perhaps their rejuvenations would fail? Those had all been done with the original Guernesi drugs, so if they failed it would take the burden of public opinion off the Patchcock connection. They didn’t actually have to fail, if only Fleet could be persuaded to take them off active duty out of concern about the rejuvenations. Right now the medical branch and senior officers were being completely unreasonable, and Solinari was backing them up—or stirring them up, he wasn’t sure which. Solinari definitely had to go.

He opened his private pad and began drafting a letter to Solinari, explaining his reasoning. He didn’t want to be harsh, but the man had to realize that he just was not qualified. And even if he had been, his negative attitude, his contentious nature, made him unfit. More in sorrow than anger, Hobart told himself, was the tone he wanted to take. Not that Solinari had any friends worth worrying about. A bunch of backbiting, acid-tongued nonentities in the minor families, that was all. They’d soon find out what they were dealing with.

Admiral Vida Serrano rarely concerned herself with civilian matters, unless they seemed likely to precipitate a war. The change from one head of state to another should have been—usually was—a matter of ceremony and speeches, which affected the Regular Space Service no more than the change from one Grand Admiral to another.

Certainly Lord Thornbuckle’s assassination had been shocking, but she expected that it wouldn’t make much difference in the long run. Someone else would be elected, a few Ministers might change, and the inertia of the very large organization would keep everything going very much as usual. What could be frustrating when she wanted to make a change reassured her when she wanted stability. Her business, as she saw it, was to make sure her command was ready to deal with any exterior threat, which might see the momentary confusion as an opportunity to cause trouble.

To that end, she had put herself on the list for updates on the rejuvenation problem, and had come to the same conclusion as the first blue-ribbon panel charged with investigating it. A bad batch of rejuvenation drugs, purchased because they were slightly less expensive, and almost certainly manufactured at the Patchcock plant she had seen. The solution was also clear: repeat rejuvenations with clean drugs for those who had not yet suffered significant damage, and supportive care for those who had, for whom another rejuvenation would mean prolongation of senile misery. She had cosigned the report, when it was forwarded upstairs, and had also cosigned a letter suggesting that the manufacturer bear the expense of the repeat rejuvenations and the supportive care.

And nothing had been done. The update list had disappeared; she’d asked Headquarters, and been told it was “discontinued pending investigation of security problems.” She’d heard rumors that one of the big independent research labs was itself under investigation for possible falsification of evidence and misuse of public funds. Headquarters had suddenly cut off funding for repeat rejuvenations, without explaining why. Surely they understood how important it was—Fleet needed those people back at work, not to mention the individuals’ own need to be saved from senility and death. Vida approved as many rejuvenations as she could out of her discretionary fund, but she didn’t have the money for all of them. She thought of contacting Marta Katerina Saenz, whose pharmaceuticals she trusted. But Headquarters had put a gag order on rejuvenation; she wasn’t even supposed to discuss it internally. Going outside would be grounds for court-martial, if she were found out.

She wished she knew where all this nonsense was coming from. Was it someone in Fleet? Someone in the government? The Grand Council meeting the day after the funeral had elected Hobart Merethal Conselline as the new head of government, and he had appointed some new people to various defense-related committees. But Irion Solinari was still Minister of Defense, and he’d always been solid. She toyed with the idea of contacting him directly, but admirals who got involved with Ministers went up like a rocket and down like the stick, in her experience. It was almost as bad for a career as marrying into a Seated Family.

Most of these new appointees were only names to Vida Serrano. The Consellines and Morrellines had been involved in the Patchcock mess—everyone knew that much—but she had searched the databases a long time to find Hobart Merethal Conselline, and then the only information she could get was a short official biography on the occasion of his taking his Seat in Council. Nothing in it indicated why the other Families would choose him, unless it were a general desire to repudiate Thornbuckle and all his friends.

She had reached this point in what had become an all-too-familiar reverie when her clerk called.

“Admiral—there’s a courier here from Headquarters with a hand-carry.”

Hand-carries were an outdated pain, in Vida’s opinion, but some of the mossybacks at Headquarters believed in them. Especially the Chief of Personnel. Maybe it was the information she’d requested on the progress of other sectors in returning their rejuvenated senior NCOs to active duty.

“Send ’em in,” she said.

To her surprise, Heris Serrano’s acquaintance, Commander Livadhi . . . Arash? Aram? . . . came in with the case under his arm. Not commander, she realized, as the obviously new star on his collar twinkled. Admiral minor.

“Congratulations,” she said. “I hadn’t heard about your promotion.” She hadn’t heard that a promotion board was even meeting. She should have heard. Another tiny alarm rang in her head.

“Admiral, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but thank you anyway.” He looked shamefaced, almost as if he wanted to dig a guilty toe in her carpet.

“Excuse me?” He might be an admiral minor, but she was an admiral major, and she made the words a challenge.

“I don’t know if you heard that we have a new Minister of Defense—”

“No! Solinari’s out?” A major alarm, now.

“Yes. Out and gone—nobody had a chance to talk to him; the word is he left Castle Rock and went home, and he’s not giving interviews to anyone.”

“I see.” What had they done to Solinari, who had never shrunk from interviews, who had spoken his mind in spite of everyone? What could send a Solinari back to—what was that world he’d come from?—and put a lock on his tongue? She felt cold, considering.

“The short of it is that the new Speaker didn’t like what Solinari told him about the rejuvenation problem, and he’s appointed someone who will do what he’s told without question. The new Speaker does not believe that the problem with NCO rejuvenations is entirely the fault of the pharmaceuticals—”

“Of course it is,” Vida said. “The data clearly show—”

“Data can be manipulated,” Livadhi said. “The Speaker seems convinced that the data were manipulated, perhaps by special interest groups influencing scientists in the research facilities.”

“He wants the data manipulated,” Vida said, anger rising in her like a storm.

“That’s not for me to say,” Livadhi said. He paused, and Vida stared at him, taking in the warning she’d just been given.

“And what else, then?”

“Given the possibility, yet to be investigated, that the failure of the NCO rejuvenations was not entirely due to problems with the drugs, but to some idiosyncratic response . . . right now, they’re talking about the level of inbreeding in Fleet families, I understand, though you didn’t hear that from me.”

“As if their families weren’t inbred!”

“We are not Registered Embryos . . . so they said.” He waited, while she seethed quietly, then went on. “Given that possibility, they say, then there is concern about the stability of rejuvenations of senior officer personnel as well. It has been decided that all rejuvenations of Fleet personnel must be investigated thoroughly, beginning with those of flag rank.”

“They can’t be serious!” Vida Serrano stiffened in her chair.

“Yes, sir, they are. They’ve extended the medical hold to all personnel—officers included, and specifically including flag officers—whose rejuvenations are more than ten years old. They’re to be relieved of active duty until medical evaluations are complete.”

“But—”

“Admiral, I know it’s unprecedented.” To his credit, Livadhi looked almost as unhappy as she felt. If he felt any triumph, he was concealing it well. “This whole mess is unprecedented. It is leave with pay—at least, full pay for those below commander, half-pay for those above.”

“Which is nearly every officer involved.” Vida scowled. “Besides, they know my rejuv is stable. I was one of the first—it’s been over twenty-five years—”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“And who do they think is going to take over, all of a sudden? The losers they didn’t want to waste rejuv on? Or even promote? No—don’t answer that. I didn’t say it; you didn’t hear it. Blast!” This was how Livadhi had been promoted, and she was sure that other commanders were even at this moment pinning on the stars they had not expected to receive for another half decade or so. She wondered briefly if Heris had become the newest Admiral Serrano.

Vida swung her chair away from her desk, staring through the bulkhead into decades of memory. All lay clear to her inward sight, vista after vista, crisp images, faces, names, relationships. They were wrong—they had to be wrong. Nothing blurred her mind. She swung back. “Fine, then. I’ll take myself off duty, hike down to Medical, they can take a look and put me back on.”

“No, sir. Please—would the admiral look at the orders?”

“Which you didn’t draft, I presume. All right.” She looked at them, read them carefully, every word of every old-fashioned paper sheet.

Worse than bad. Mandatory immediate release from active duty. Immediate replacement by officers specified—in her case, Admiral minor Livadhi. Immediate surrender of all communications devices, encryption/decryption devices, data access devices . . .

“I’m not—I’m sorry, Admiral, I think it’s unreasonable and ridiculous to make flag officers leave their quarters and their duty stations so fast—”

“Makes sense if someone really wants us gone, though,” Vida said. She was past the first flash of anger now, and her brain had moved into combat-speed computation. “Rush us out, make sure we can’t contact our friends still on active duty except by monitored channels, make sure we have no access to files—”

“I have a room in the Transient Officers’ Bay,” Livadhi said. “I see no reason to enforce this to the letter—”

Vida looked up and caught sympathy on his face. Heris had said he had his good points. “Don’t you? Then you’re more a fool than I ever thought, young man. When the wind changes, so must the sails. If you don’t enforce your orders, you won’t last long. I’ll be out of here by the deadline.”

“Yes, but—I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do—” That was almost plaintive. Vida gave him a wide Serrano grin, full teeth, and he paled, the freckles standing out.

“You’ll do your job, son, the same way I did mine—and learn it the same way too. Scary to get what you always wanted, isn’t it? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to clear my desk.” She punched for her clerk. “Sandy—come on in; we have a situation.”

Within the hour, she had started the process that would transfer command of Sector Seven to Admiral minor Livadhi. No big change-of-command ceremony, because there was no time for it if they were to make the deadline. She called in her staff, advised them of the orders, and had them start briefing Livadhi, who had just come from Sector Five, about the peculiarities of Sector Seven. While they did so, she began peeling out her personal files from the official ones stored under her codes. She would definitely take with her the files on rejuvenation, for instance—should she offer Livadhi copies? No. If he were found to have them, he might get in trouble. What about the scant information she’d collected on the new powers in the Grand Council? Maybe. Lists of family members on active duty, people from whom she might legitimately—well, almost legitimately—seek information . . . all the Admirals Serrano had been rejuved, so all would be affected. From Davor, now a third-year at the Academy, to Gossin—her nose wrinkled at the thought of trying to work with Gossin, who was one of the rare light-skinned Serranos (though that was only the most obvious of her problems)—the list included nineteen—no, seventeen, because Heris’s parents had just retired. Barin’s mother was still on active duty, but his father had retired to take over as the Serrano family’s agent.

Her com chimed. She punched it live. “Vida? It’s Gadar Livadhi. Have you heard this ridiculous order taking rejuved admirals off duty?”

“Just saw the orders, Gadar,” she said. “One of yours brought them to me, in fact. Nice shiny new star young Arash has.”

“Well . . . what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take myself off active duty. Were you one of the experimentals too?”

“Yes, and there’s not a thing wrong with my brain but the smoke coming off it from this nonsense.”

“Gadar—this is no time—”

“—To start trouble. I know. But at a time like this, with Thornbuckle gone, we need experienced leaders.”

“If we’ve done our job, our juniors can take over.” She knew she didn’t believe that, and Gadar’s snort told her he didn’t believe it either.

“You’re an optimist. By the way, what do you hear from Copper Mountain?”

“Nothing,” Vida said. “Should I?”

“Well . . . you know my brother Arkad’s in the judicial division . . .”

“Yes . . .”

“He’s been investigating the records of prisoners sent to Copper Mountain’s secure facilities—that Stack Islands thing—because that’s one of the places that Lepescu stashed your niece’s crew.”

Vida noted Livadhi’s turn of phrase. Run hot, run cold, that was Livadhi. “And . . .?”

“And he turned up something interesting. Lepescu’s juniors—the ones too far down to have been caught with their hands in the honey jar after he was killed—have been cycling through Stack Islands. Not as prisoners, but as guards. Not all the guards, of course, but some of them.”

“Oh . . . my.”

“If you wanted to recruit desperate and dangerous personnel—even those who serve their terms and aren’t discharged are going to have that mark against them—you could hardly do better than to start there.”

“And you think they’re up to something, of course. Any idea what?”

“Another mutiny—perhaps a breakaway—”

“In service to whom? What kind of financial backing do they have?”

“I haven’t been able to find out anything. I’ve always rather wondered if Lepescu wasn’t close to the Morrellines, given his involvement in Patchcock—”

“He made things worse—the whole thing rebounded—”

“Yes—but in the long run, it cemented Morrelline control. Got the Familias as a whole bad publicity—”

“You didn’t say anything about that at the time,” Vida said.

“No. I didn’t realize it at the time. I was all the way over in One, chatting up those Lone Star Confederation diplomats. I hate staff rotations.” Vida didn’t rise to that bait, and eventually Livadhi went on. “It’s only recently, after your—mmm—adventure there, that I began looking into it.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do now but go home like good little children,” Vida said. “I hope they realize what an opportunity this is for foreign interests. Not to say anything against your family member Gadar, but your new admiral minor almost turned up his toes when he realized he was about to be responsible for the sector most likely to be attacked by the NewTex Militia, with only thirty-six hours of OJT.”

“My heart bleeds,” Gadar said. “I hope these are only temporary ranks, because the instant they check us out medically, I’m going to be back in my office.”

“I hope it’s quick,” Vida said. “But if someone wanted to get rid of us—or some of us—all they’d have to do is delay the medical.”

“You Serranos are so cheerful!” he said.

“You Livadhis are so lively,” she said, and cut the connection.

Vida could not remember a time in her adult life when she had had nothing specific to do for days on end. She’d taken leave, of course, but she’d always had plans. A trip to take, a course, a family crisis that needed her time and talents. She had money enough—she hadn’t spent all her salary since she made lieutenant, and her investments had prospered. She could live quite well on half-pay. It was the idleness that bothered her, the sense of being cut off from her family.

Well . . . she’d go home, then, to the Serrano compound on Melander, that source of all—or at least many—of the Serrano family.

Making reservations on a civilian ship was annoying; she tried to laugh at herself for expecting people to jump when she said hop, but it wasn’t easy. She’d so often thought of civilians as disorganized, but when you didn’t have a staff . . . she grumbled at herself repeatedly, as she arranged to ship this and store that and decided what to carry on and what to stow in cargo.

She recognized other flag officers the first day on the ship; by mutual unspoken consent, they avoided each other. Though all wore uniforms at first—and of course they were entitled to do so, on leave—she and most of the others changed to civilian clothes early in the voyage.

Melander’s orbital station had grown since she’d last seen it, but was still smaller than the huge combined Fleet/civilian stations she was used to. She saw plenty of people in uniform, but they ignored her—ignored her, just because she wasn’t wearing hers, and they could not see the admiral inside the red civilian suit. She glowered at them anyway. Two of them, at least, were Serranos.

She caught a Northside shuttle, checked the arrival station weather, and pulled out a warmer jacket. Early spring on Melander would be colder than the regulated temperature on ship or station.

The Serrano family compound lay along the shore of a lake inaccurately named Serenity, since it seemed always ruffled by the breeze channeled up from the sea between the hills. A row of solid, respectable houses built of buff—and-brown stone or brick, each with its neat green lawn and floral border, rows of shade and fruit trees marking the edges of yards, neat pebbled walks from the road up to each house . . . it looked far less attractive than it had the last time she’d seen it. That had been . . . nearly thirty years ago, when the crabapple trees now in brilliant bloom above her head had been tiny sticks, her aunt’s idea. They did look pretty, but she still didn’t want to be here.

All the Fleet families who built compounds tended to the same organization . . . separate houses for the guardians with young children, those with older children, for the transient younger officers, for the senior officers on long leave, for those in retirement. Flag officers each had an apartment, which might be used for a special guest when its owner was not in residence. Vida had never seen hers, having qualified for it since her last visit, but she knew it would be there, furnished with the things she had sent home over the years.

It smelled of wax and wood and leather and the clean sharp scent of top-grade electronics. It was just as she’d imagined it, filled with souvenirs from all over the Familias, arranged attractively . . . and she hated it. Why had she bought that “Design in Blues” which was now, no doubt, worth four times what she paid for it? It reminded her of her first cruiser tour, and now she didn’t want to be reminded. She turned on the music, Prescott’s “Andante for Manamash Strings,” and spent the first half hour turning pictures to the wall. If she couldn’t be on a ship, a real ship, she wasn’t going to have them staring at her from the walls. Or the caricature of the young officer’s promotion dance. Or the view of Castle Rock from Rockhouse Major, with the old Mordant’s pods framing the continents.

Was it the rejuv going bad, or just frustration? Vida didn’t know, and almost didn’t care. The apartment was bigger than her quarters onstation, but it felt cramped, enclosed, in a way that ship compartments never did. She glared out the window at the lake. A walk, then, to work off this bad temper.

On the way downstairs, she saw Sabatino, the other Serrano flag officer, and her distant cousin. “I hate planets,” he said by way of greeting.

“So do I,” Vida said. They had never been close friends, but they were both Serrano admirals, and thus had common interests.

“I’m going up in the mountains for a week or so,” Sabatino said. “Leaving tomorrow.” She remembered that he had always liked wilderness camping.

“I’m going for a walk,” Vida said. “Dinner?”

“Might as well.” He waved and went on into his apartment.

Out of doors felt entirely too exposed. The wind, no proper ventilation current, whipped the lake surface into choppy little waves and tried to push Vida sideways. Clouds rushed by overhead, and behind the clouds was that opaque lid which groundsiders insisted was beautiful, hiding the stars.

She had liked the planet well enough growing up on it. She hadn’t minded the blues and grays and mauves and pinks of the sky then, or the many shades of cloud. Vida pushed herself to walk faster, down the pebbled walk, across the road, to the footpath by the lake. Far out, bright sails glinted in red and yellow against the water. One thing about planets, you could walk a long way without retracing your steps. She walked herself breathless heading east, well past the end of the Serrano estate. There had been a small cluster of shops down here at one time, where a public boat ramp gave access to the lake for those who didn’t have waterfront property.

Recovering her breath while waiting in a line of noisy children for a drink and a snack—she chose tea and a cinnamon pastry, not the sweet drinks and cream buns the children were buying—she recovered her sense of humor as well. Planets were not that bad, all things considered. She settled on a bench, protected from the wind by one of the shops, and looked at the hills behind the estates across the road. She had wandered there, as a child, splashing in the creeks and exploring little hidden valleys. She had run down here, hot and thirsty, to buy the same sweet drinks. Not bad at all, planets, if you were there by choice.

She would have to find something useful to do. With that resolve, she started back to the family compound, and by the time she arrived, she was quite ready for dinner with Sabatino. They chatted about music and art—her collection of modern prints, and his of music recordings. He invited her to come hear Malachy vu Suba’s new bassoon concerto in his apartment, and she spent a pleasanter evening than she’d expected, arguing about the merits of that controversial work. Vu Suba had chosen to write for the ancient instrument, not the modern one, which limited performance to those orchestras which possessed period instruments. Sabatino argued that the tonal qualities were different enough to make this worthwhile, but Vida contended that only a very few could hear the difference.

The next morning, however, he was gone and she still hadn’t decided what to do. She turned her pictures face-out again, rearranged a few ornaments, checked for a third time that everything had been put away neatly. Shrieks from outside brought her to the window of the second bedroom.

The smallest Serrano children played in the garden between the houses as she had done, screaming and laughing the way children always did. Vida looked down on their playscape with its ramps and towers and bridges, and found it hard to believe she had ever been that noisy. Now that she had noticed them, the noise seemed to pierce her head with little needles.

Maybe the archives would be quieter. She went downstairs, and down again, into the underground library that housed the oldest documents the Serrano family owned.

Rows of Serrano biographies . . . Vida reread Rogier Xavier Serrano, one of her favorites (he had every attribute of a hero, including having made love to and won the heart of a beautiful heroine as brave as himself), and Millicent Serrano, born blind but gifted with extraordinary spatial abilities. She’d always meant to read about her own great-uncle Alcandor, who had managed to get thrown out of the Fleet for smuggling a tricorn vermuge onto a ship as a prank . . . and had then been readmitted, because no one else could get it off. That story in the official biography wasn’t nearly as good as she remembered from his tales on the front porch of Rest House when he was a retired commander with a gimpy leg and a strange green spot on his arm. The official biography didn’t mention the vermuge’s lust for coffee, for instance, or the creature’s curious mating behavior.

Vida spent several days browsing the family biographies before she tired of that, and looked around for something else. Battle reports . . . she’d seen all she wanted of battle reports. Service records, leave records, slim volumes of verse by Serranos who thought themselves poets . . . she opened one of these and burst into laughter. Either Amory David Serrano wasn’t a very good poet, or the language had changed a lot in the past two hundred years. Mercedes Esperanza, on the other hand, had written erotic verses that should, Vida thought, have ignited the whole archive . . . but Mercedes had died young, of a typical poetic fever. What kind of space commander would she have made?

Stories, even: a few Serranos had written fiction, most of it clearly intended for children, and most of it—to Vida’s taste anyway—pretty bad. Carlo and the Starship was nothing more than a child’s tour of a passenger ship, with a biddable child asking obvious questions and a friendly puppy answering them. She passed by Carlo and the Power Plant, and Carlo Goes to the Mountains, glanced briefly at the illustrations for Helen Is a Good Girl (little Helen shaking hands; little Helen sitting up straight at table; little Helen offering a toy spaceship to another child with an improbably sweet smile—Serranos, even in childhood, didn’t hand over ships willingly), and almost missed Long Ago on Altiplano.

Altiplano. Her grandson’s fiancee’s homeworld. She pried it out of the tightly-squeezed group of skinny children’s books. Its pages had turned brown and brittle; the illustrations were not drawn in, but pasted on, ancient faded flatpics.

“Long ago, on Altiplano, a great Family ruled.”

So they had, the family the Serranos had been bound to.

“A beautiful world, with magnificent snow-capped mountains, and great golden plains of grass. To this world, the Garcia-Macdonalds brought their people, who prospered there and spread across the fertile land. And their loyal guards and protectors, the brave Serranos, watched the sky above them, and kept their ships safe from piracy.” That, too, she knew. The Serranos had been their space militia; someone else had been their ground militia.

“But treachery surrounded them. They were betrayed by those they trusted to guard them.” Vida felt a chill. They hadn’t been betrayed by Serranos . . .

“By their soldiers on the planet.” That was better. Not Serranos at all, someone else.

“And they were all killed, the mothers and fathers and all the little children, because of the wickedness of the rebels and traitors. And that is why when we say our prayers, we do not ask for blessing upon the people of Altiplano.”

What an odd book for a child! It was more like a diatribe, like a memoir. She looked on the other side of the gap in the row, but found only Carlo Visits the Observatory and Helen Starts School, followed by Three Little Serranos Visit the Seashore. Nothing else with the same faded brown binding.

Vida took her find over to the table, and paged back through it. Very, very odd. Hand-printed, of course, and the flatpics glued on with something that had bled through. They were all blurry and faded, but one appeared to show a house, and another a face. The rest might have been landscapes. The pasted-in pictures made the book fatter than its spine suggested—no wonder the whole row had been wedged tight.

Vida flipped every page, looking for any identifying mark. One of the flatpics fell off, and the paper folded behind it with it. She looked at it . . . thin, almost translucent, brown on the folds . . . it had been there for a very, very long time. Perhaps she should get the family librarian; she might damage it by unfolding it.

But she couldn’t resist peeking.