Change of Command

Chapter Ten

Back at Castle Rock, Cecelia was surprised to find that Miranda had left not just the Palace but the planet. She checked the net and found that Brun was the only family member onplanet. Brun had moved to Appledale, the Thornbuckle family estates on Castle Rock. Cecelia had always liked Appledale, with its pleasant view of rolling fields and orchards. She called and, as she’d expected, Brun invited her out to stay.

Brun met her at the front door, quickly directed the staff to take her luggage upstairs, and then—even on the way to the handsome downstairs morning room—frothed over with indignation about Hobart Conselline, who had gotten himself elected Speaker of the Table of Ministers.

“Hobart?” Cecela blinked. “He’s not that bad, is he? He was always polite to me. I never had that much to do with him, but—”

“Hobart is a raging bully,” Brun said grimly. She waved Cecelia to a comfortable chintz-covered chair and threw herself into another. “Just wait until you hear—” She took off at a conversational gallop, surprising Cecelia with her grasp of Family relationships. Had the girl been listening behind doors and actually paying attention when she seemed just a young fluffhead? It was always possible—this was, after all, the same Brun who had engineered her escape from the nursing home.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” Cecelia said at last. “Are you sure . . . I mean, he’s always been a bit pigheaded, but most of us are, from time to time.” A maid had brought in trays of pastries and sliced fruits, and pots of coffee and tea. Cecelia filled a little plate with apple slices and munched. They were just as crisp and flavorful as she remembered.

“He slapped down Great-Uncle Viktor in the meeting. Viktor! And Stefan didn’t say a word. He’s found excuses to get rid of most of the Ministers, replacing them with his own people—and now that he has the votes, it doesn’t really matter if a few of Dad’s are left.” Brun was ignoring the food so far, but Cecelia took one of the ginger curls as well.

“What about Harlis?”

“He’s bought Harlis, I suspect with the help of his new Minister of Judicial Affairs, Norm Radsin. You know how helpful or unhelpful the courts can be in estate cases—”

“Indeed I do.” The old anger washed over her.

“Well, it’s amazing how many rulings have changed in Harlis’s favor since Norm took over that ministry. Without Kevil Mahoney, or access to his private files—and nobody, not even George, knows the access codes to Kevil’s files—”

She did. Cecelia thought back to their last conversation, when they had discussed her own tangled legal problems in the wake of being declared incompetent. Kevil had trusted her with the voice codes for just this sort of situation.

“Has anyone tried to have Kevil declared incompetent?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. George certainly hasn’t. Why?”

Why not, she thought, if Kevil was still incapacitated and unable to access his own files? Had no one in his offices tried to get access?

“I mean,” Brun went on, “we could use the information, but we’re not going to press for that—not after what happened to you.”

“Is he conscious?”

“Yes, but he can’t seem to remember much, or concentrate. His doctors don’t advise rejuvenation because of the extent of the neurological damage, and the recent discoveries of what went wrong with Fleet rejuvenations.” Brun finally poured herself a cup of tea, and took a pastry.

“I hadn’t heard about that.”

“No, it came out after you left. Some of the senior NCOs, the chiefs, started going senile—I actually saw one like that, back on Copper Mountain, before I . . . before I left and all the rest happened. Memory loss, irrational thought processes. I mentioned it to Esmay, in fact, but then we had that fight. Anyway, there were more of them, a lot more, and when they did some research they found flaws in the process. They’ve put about half the flag officers on indefinite leave, because they were rejuved, just in case. None of them had shown symptoms yet, unless you count Lepescu.”

Cecelia frowned. “Flaws in the process, or in the drugs themselves? Remember what happened on Patchcock . . .”

“That’s what I thought of first, just a bad batch of drugs. I raised a formal Question in Council—the second meeting, that is, not the first—but Hobart claimed I was just trying to embarrass him, use it as an excuse for family rivalry, and one of his bootlickers got up and spouted a whole involved line about genetic susceptibility and the inbred genome of Fleet families.”

“What did Venezia Morrelline say?”

“She wasn’t there. And I can’t get hold of Heris or Vida Serrano, either. Both Serrano admirals were taken off active duty; Fleet personnel offices claim not to know where they are. Heris has a ship, but it’s out on patrol or something, inaccessible to civilians. Which doesn’t make sense, because I’ve been able to contact Esmay, and she’s on an SAR, way off at the remote end of Familias Space.”

“How is Esmay?” Cecelia asked, to give herself time to think about the rest of this.

“Pining for Barin, worried about his NewTex wives—apparently Fleet accounting has garnished Barin’s entire salary to help support them—and getting a little bored with the SAR, I gather. Also she’s found out that Fleet doesn’t think Landbrides should marry Fleet officers.”

“But she is a Landbride. What do they think of that?”

“Yes—it’s funny, really. She says they’ve got it all wrong, and she didn’t want to be one anyway. But it’s tied up the paperwork for her to marry Barin, even if he weren’t going broke trying to support all those NewTex women. Poor Esmay.” Brun gave a wry chuckle. “It’s her first time in love; I remember how I pined for Tommy Rakeseller, the first time I had it bad, and thought the universe was dreadfully unfair because his parents sent him off to camp. I know this is more serious, but it’s really hard on her.”

“And Barin?”

“Barin’s at the other end of our universe, escorting a Lone Star Confederation Ranger back here.”

“What?”

“Yes. They warned me—or rather, Waltraude did, that crazy professor who’s hanging around the NewTex women. It never occurred to anyone official that introducing me to a Ranger might upset me. Apparently, Hobart’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs—he fired Cabby DeLancre for daring to contradict him—decided to shut the wrong barn door long after the horse had returned, and froze all the assets of Lone Star Confederation citizens, and closed the border.”

“But Lone Star had nothing to do with it.”

“You know that, my father knew that, even I know that. But all Hobart had to hear was the word ‘Texas,’ and the fact that they were Ageists, as he calls it. The Lone Star Confederation has been a reasonable trading partner for centuries; they were understandably annoyed, and insisted on sending someone to educate us.”

Cecelia leaned back in her chair. “You know, Brun, I find it hard to believe that you, of all people, are being this politically minded.”

For an instant, the old grin flashed out. “Me, too. I keep thinking, ‘This is not me; this is my evil twin.’ But one thing I did learn, in that hell, is what happens if you don’t pay attention. So Mother’s gone back to Sirialis, to dig out all of Dad’s files that she can—some of them were never transferred here—and try to stave off Uncle Harlis’s grab for the family properties. And here I am.”

“Yes . . . I see.”

“And . . . you did find a good home for the twins?” That in a tone almost wistful, and certainly pleading.

“Yes,” Cecelia said firmly. “A very good home. They will be loved and cared for.”

“Good. I thought, after you left, that I should have suggested Raffaele, but then she’s been cleaning up my messes for far too long. I’m glad you found someone else.”

Cecelia’s brain tripped over that one and came up with a fresh topic. “You said a new Minister of Foreign Affairs—who would that be?”

“Minor family, major pain. Pedar Orregiemos. You probably never heard of him.”

“As a matter of fact, I have. He—” She shut down that line quickly and shifted to another. “He has event horses. I beat his entry in the Wherrin this year.”

“Good. I wish you’d managed to trample him at the same time. You should see him fawning on Hobart, and Hobart lapping it up. The man has no background in the diplomatic service, no experience in dealing with foreign entities. He thinks any political system which doesn’t embrace rejuvenation is corrupt and probably about to attack us. He’s already managed to insult the Crescent Worlds, and they’re ours. Worse than that, he thinks he’s the right person to comfort widows—he keeps hinting to me that he would make me a fine stepfather.” Brun mimed gagging.

Cecelia grabbed for yet another topic, anything but Pedar. She had never been in a conversation with quite so many landmines. “Who’s in Colonial Affairs, now?”

“Another Conselline lackey, Davor Vraimont,” Brun said. “It’s dawned on them—well, on everyone, I guess—that repeatable rejuvenation could cause the biggest population explosion ever, as well as locking up wealth in the very, very old. That’d mean a lot of ambitious, frustrated young people. So colonization has been speeding up for some time—I didn’t know that; Buttons told me he’d talked to Dad about it. But I found out that Conselline Sept has major investments in development companies, and their projections for the rate at which excess population can be absorbed by development make no sense—unless there’s a much higher failure rate than before. That bit of information I got from a clerk in Colonial who’d been fired for insubordination. Makes me suspicious.”

“Ummm. You remember that Ronnie is my nephew,” Cecelia said, carefully erecting bombproof partitions in her mind against a loose tongue.

“Yes, of course.”

“His parents are concerned about the situation on the world he’s moved to. I hear that some supplies in the contract weren’t actually delivered, that there’s the possibility of interference with communications. What if the Consellines are counting on a certain percentage of colonies to fail, because they get their profit from selling colony shares?”

“I could believe that. But how can we prove it?”

“I don’t know. We need Kevil,” Cecelia said. “I’d better go visit him.”

“It’s—pretty bad. You know he lost an arm, too.”

“No, I didn’t. When I saw him in the hospital, before I took off with the babies, he was just a shape in the bed. And I didn’t have much time.”

“They’re trying to grow a replacement, but so far it hasn’t worked—they’ve lost three buds. And George says his memory’s still damaged, and he can’t concentrate.”

“Is he still in the hospital?”

“No; they moved him to a rehab center, and then George took him home. Our wonderful new Speaker decided he was a security risk at the rehab center.”

“Well, then. I’ll go over tomorrow. Maybe I can be of some help.”

“You know,” Brun said more slowly, “Uncle Harlis runs the planetary development corporations for the Barraclough Sept.” She took a long swallow of tea.

“What colony are Ronnie and Raffa in?”

“Excet-24.”

“Rats. I was hoping it was one of ours—that way I could pump them. Excet Environmental Group is a Conselline corporation. I wonder why they chose that one, instead of family? Not that it matters.”

“I don’t know,” Cecelia said. “Possibly the shares cost less?”

“Could be. Anyway, I’d bet something’s going on in all these new colonies . . . I wish I had Kevil’s background files, because I rather suspect the data in the main computers has been fiddled as well.” Brun stretched. “And now that I’ve talked your ears off, both of them, how about a visit to the stable? We don’t have much here, as you probably remember, but there are a couple of niceish mares we can take a ride through the orchards on, if you’d like.”

Cecelia shook her head. “No, thank you, my dear. Everyone thinks of me as a thoroughly horse-besotted old woman, but one prerogative of old women is to surprise young ones occasionally. I shall go stroll in your gardens, if I may.”

“Well, then, I’m for the pool. See you at dinner.”

At the Mahoney house, a uniformed nurse met Cecelia at the door. “Ser Mahoney is in the study, madam, but he is . . . not really himself.”

Cecelia thought of asking who he was instead—she had a lingering distaste for medical euphemisms—but resisted the temptation. She followed the nurse down the familiar wide passage to the double doors that led into Kevil’s home office, steeling herself for what she would see. At the same time, she wondered where the security was. If Kevil was a security risk, shouldn’t there be more protection around him? She had seen no guards at all.

“Ser George Mahoney is at the university,” the nurse said, over his shoulder. “He won’t be back until this evening.”

Cecelia frowned. No security, one nurse all day . . . something wrong here.

In the study, Kevil lay awkwardly in one of the big leather chairs. His face looked strange, twisted; she realized that regen had not been able to repair all the physical damage, that part of his jaw was missing, and the skin over it rumpled oddly. In his eyes, Cecelia saw no recognition, just anxiety. Then, slowly, a spark . . . as if he were walking through a dark corridor with a candle, closer and closer.

“Cecelia . . .”

“Yes. ”

“You look . . . younger. Dye your hair?”

Cecelia’s heart sank. Of course she looked younger; she had rejuved several years before, to a nominal forty. He had known that. They had slept together after that. “Rejuv, Kevil,” she said briskly. It was hard to look at him, but she knew she must. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you were hurt,” she said.

“Me . . . too. I can’t . . . remember . . . all.”

Was the slurred voice from the injury, or from drugs? Cecelia glanced around, but saw no litter of pillboxes.

“I’ve been to visit Ronnie and Raffaele,” she said. To her delight, the spark in his eyes brightened.

“How are . . . they?”

“They’re fine, except that the developer’s done something foul with the colony they’re on.” She told him about it, gauging his attention span by his expression. For a few minutes at a time, he seemed the old Kevil—his eyes bright, his face intent. Then he would blink, and the expression slacken. She stopped, and waited, and when he seemed focussed again she went on.

“You’re . . . really . . . talking to me.” He smiled, a genuine smile this time.

“Yes, of course.”

“You . . . understand . . .”

“Not completely, Kevil. But I know you need something to chew on.”

“Yes. They keep asking me . . . questions . . . tests . . . can’t remember. . . .”

“I hated those,” Cecelia said, remembering her own convalescence, the idiocy of the questions in the standard tests.

“Name three vegetables, name five fruits . . .”

“Name the CEO of Excet Environmental Group,” Cecelia said, as if it were another on the list.

“Silvester Conselline,” Kevil said instantly, then looked blank. “What was that?”

“A reasonable question,” Cecelia said. “And one I wanted the answer to. Ronnie and Raffa are, as I said, practically marooned on Excet-24, and Brun says that’s an Excet Group colony planet. I want to know who’s responsible for shorting the colony of its startup supplies and staff.”

“Probably not Silvester,” Kevil said, sounding even more awake now. “He’s been spending most of his time trying to convince the universe he’s a great composer. But he does tend to sign anything anyone puts in front of him.”

A tap at the door. The nurse looked in, his expression exactly the one Cecelia least liked to see. “Ser Mahoney needs his rest, madam. Perhaps another time?”

“Go on—take a break,” Cecelia said to the nurse. “I’m experienced with this—I’ve been a convalescent myself.”

“But his lunch . . . his diet—”

“And I can cook. Go on now.”

Finally he left, protesting and warning and muttering. Cecelia watched through the scan pickup until she had seen him go all the way down the street and board a tram.

“Officious,” she said to Kevil, when she came back to him.

“You think . . . he’s up to something,” Kevil said.

“Nurses are always up to something,” Cecelia said. “But in addition to that, yes. Now.” She pulled the scrambler she carried out of her bag and turned it on. Kevil gave her a puzzled look. “Remnant of my times with Heris Serrano and those Fleet refugees she foisted on me as crew. Oblo whatever-his-name-was. Good advice, I realized after awhile. Always carry a means of tapping someone else’s data, and always protect your own conversations.”

Kevil grinned. “You always were smarter . . . than people thought.”

“Yes, and so were you. Kevil—what’s happened? Why only one nurse? Why haven’t you had a proper limb replacement?”

“No money.”

Cecelia stared at him, shocked. “But Kevil—you’ve always had money, pots of it.”

“No more. It . . . isn’t there.”

“But—what happened?”

“I don’t know. One day there, then—it wasn’t. George tried—couldn’t find out—”

“Someone fiddled the databases? But—people would notice—”

“Not unless it was their account. The people who normally handled my accounts would notice, unless they’d been transferred.”

“And that’s not hard at all . . .” Cecelia mused. “And there are new Ministers in the relevant Ministries, and a huge muddle all over . . .”

“Yes. I think . . . it happened . . . when Bunny died.”

If that were true, it would mean—no, could mean—that it was related. That the same person or persons planned the attack on Bunny’s life, and Kevil’s fortunes.

“I know . . . something . . . I know it’s because I know something . . . but Cece, I can’t remember what it is I’m supposed to know. I can’t remember. I can’t think—” A muscle in his face twitched; his hand shook.

“Kevil . . . relax. Please. Let me fix you lunch—yes, you come with me into the kitchen—and we’ll talk some more. I know I can help.”

It took a struggle to get Kevil up, and Cecelia fought down her fury when she saw his unbalanced, lurching gait. But in the kitchen, he seemed more comfortable in the chair, his good arm propped on the wide wooden table, than he had in the study.

“I’m assuming you don’t have a cook because of the money—”

“Yes.”

She fixed him fruit, bread, cheese. There were custards in the refrigerator, but she didn’t trust them—custards could conceal drugs. He ate, clumsily, with his left hand.

“Kevil, do you remember giving me your access codes?”

A blank look. “Access codes?”

“The second night. After we decided it wouldn’t work. You said, ‘If I’m ever in the state you were in, I want to know you’re on my side.’ And you gave them to me. You’ve forgotten, but I haven’t.”

“Cecelia—”

“When George gets home, we’ll get to work. Tonight. There’s no time to waste.”

“I can’t . . . help much.”

“You did that, years ago. We’ll take care of it.” Somehow. Cecelia scolded herself internally—she was turning into everyone’s helpful old aunt again. Well, if she was going to take her turn being civic-minded, helpful, and useful, she might as well make a thorough job of it. She’d had another brilliant idea.

Waltraude Meyerson, tenured professor of antique studies on loan to the Regular Space Service as a consultant on Texan history and culture, sat quietly in the corner of the room with her recorder on, watching the NewTex women argue about religion and education without getting involved. She hoped. This was the first conflict she’d seen among the women who had fled Our Texas, and she was fascinated.

It had been months, and only now was the rigid rank structure breaking down. The first wives of the Rangers had each run her own household without interference from the other first wives—Primas, they were all called. Prima Bowie, the one Waltraude felt she knew best, actually ranked second in the hierarchy; the Ranger Captain’s first wife outranked her. That was Prima Travis, but she was older and had less vitality than Prima Bowie. Usually she let Prima Bowie make decisions, but not today.

They were arguing about schools again. Under Familias law, the children—all of them—were supposed to be in school. Parents could choose from a wide variety of schools, or school their children at home, and the requirements were—to an academic like Waltraude—minimal. All children must become literate in at least two languages, study some very basic science and mathematics, and the Code of Citizens. But these women had steadfastly resisted sending the children to school from the beginning. No one had been able to figure out why, because the women would not explain what they considered self-explanatory. Now, in the argument, Waltraude began to grasp the problem.

“Boys and girls together! I think not!” Prima Travis was holding firm on that. “They’d become Abominations!”

“There are single-sex schools,” Prima Bowie said. “Most are religious—”

“Not our religion!” Prima Travis sniffed again. “They’re heathens, or worse.”

“But—”

“We should never have come,” Prima Travis said. “I—I was wrong to come. We should go back.” Behind her, Waltraude saw several of the junior Travis wives nodding, but one pinched her mouth up and looked stubborn. Waltraude counted—third back, that was Tertia.

“The men lied to us,” Prima Bowie said. “They killed mothers—”

“You said,” replied Prima Travis. “I never saw that picture you said you saw.”

“You heard Patience—Hazel,” Prima Bowie said. “She’s a good girl . . .”

“She is not a good girl; she is one of them. Prima Bowie, has your brains run out your ears, or what? She is one of them, an Abomination. She runs around wearing men’s pants, messing about with machines—”

“I’ll bet she has an implant,” sneered Secunda Travis. Prima Travis whirled and slapped her on the mouth.

“Don’t you be saying those bad words, girl!”

“I just—”

“And don’t you be arguin’ with me! You see what it comes to, Prima Bowie? We left our rightful place, and now we have this—this arguin’ and usin’ bad language.”

“We can’t go back,” Prima Bowie said. “They’d kill us—”

“And so they should,” Prima Travis said. “Our children to grow up no proper way—”

“So you think we should just go back, die, let our children be orphans?”

“No, but we got to find a right way to live. Not hived up like bees with nowhere to gather honey.” Having delivered this, Prima Travis led her family out of the common room, back to their own little hive. More stingers than honey, the way Waltraude saw it.

Waltraude shut off the recorder and waited until the remaining women were seated, back at their endless handwork.

“Prima—”

“Call me Ruth Ann,” Prima said. “I’m not a first wife anymore. Mitch is dead, and that boy won’t actually marry me—I see that now.”

“Ruth Ann, fine. Listen—where do you think you would be happy?”

“I won’t be.” The woman’s broad, rounded face contracted in a scowl. “Not in this kind of world.”

“There are many worlds in the Familias,” Waltraude said. “What sort of place, can you tell me? A city? A smaller town?”

“Hazel said there was, but how can we go there? We can’t just up and ask some spaceship to take us, even if I knew. If I can’t be home . . . I guess I’d like a quiet place. There’s always noise here, machine noise. I’d like it where it’s quiet. Open. Maybe where I could see the fields. I always missed that, after Mitch moved us to the city, not having the fields outside. The garden just wasn’t the same, big as it was. Someplace where people didn’t laugh at me for not being schooled, someplace where what I can do is worth something. But I doubt you got anyplace like that in your fancy confederation or whatever it is.”

Waltraude grinned. “Oh, but we do, Ruth Ann. What you need first of all is to be on a planet, not on a station in space. And then you need the kind of world where the basic skills you have are desperately needed. Your gardening, weaving, sewing, cooking . . . and tell me, do your boys know anything of tools?”

“The older ones do. Boys make most of the furniture in a house—they’re so rough on it, they have to learn to fix it and make it.”

“Your world had trees, didn’t it? Wood for manufacture?”

“Yes, of course.” Ruth Ann paused, brow wrinkled. “Are there worlds without trees?”

“Nearly without, yes. Ruth Ann . . . the Familias has hundreds of populated worlds, and is opening new ones to colonization all the time. And the colony worlds need pioneers. As you pointed out so succinctly today, most of us can’t boil water without a computer. You know how to build fires. You know how to make bread from wheat—and I’ll bet some of your older boys know how to make a mill.”

“Of course they do,” Ruth Ann said. Waltraude could almost feel the slow smile working its way out of her confused heart, and just as she expected, it finally smoothed out the ridged brow. “You really believe we could get to such a place? How? We have no money. . . .”

“I know someone who does,” Waltraude said. “And they owe you a lot. The only problem is making the connection. But that’s what scholars do.”

“Make connections?”

“Yes. It’s our job, though most people don’t think it is. They think of us in terms of collecting information—silly, anyone can do that. What we do is notice which bits make new connections.”

“You will help us? Why? You think we’re ignorant . . .”

“Of history, yes. Of life, no. And of course I’ll help you. Any decent person helps others; it’s one of the things people are for.”

“What . . . religion are you?”

“You wouldn’t recognize it, and it would only bother you.” Waltraude picked up her bag. “Prima—Ruth Ann, I’m going to be gone for several weeks; I’ve been asked to escort a diplomat from the Lone Star Confederation back to Castle Rock. But let me just show you—” She took out some hardcopy ads for colony worlds. “See this? You might like something—”

“But what would our protector say? He’d have to say it was all right—”

Waltraude thought of the scuttlebutt she’d heard about young Barin Serrano and his problems with the women. “I think he’d be delighted if you found a place you could be happy.”

“And living the right way,” the woman said, the scowl returning for a moment. “Happiness isn’t everything. Just because our men did wrong things doesn’t mean they was wrong about everything. I want my children to grow up to be good, Godfearin’ men and women.”

“I’m sure there’s a place, Ruth Ann,” Waltraude said. “When I get back, I’ll help.”

Rockhouse Major had everything that two young officers in love could want, Esmay knew . . . if she could only get there. It should have been simple to get from the R.S.S. Shrike, over in Sector Seven, to Sector Seven HQ, and from there to the Castle Rock system. She had finally heard from Barin; Castle Rock was the one place they could reasonably meet, since Gyrfalcon would be there several days. Castle Rock lay on her route to her new duty station, and was admirably provided with shipping and passenger lines. But one thing after another had delayed her. She imagined Barin, on Gyrfalcon, making an effortless smooth transit . . . only to wait around wondering if she was even going to show up. He might even leave before she arrived, if this miserable tub of a ship didn’t get a move on.

Barin saw Esmay just a moment before she saw him: saw her face with that harder edge, that warier expression. Then their eyes met, and she grinned.

“How long do you have?” she asked, as they settled at an empty table in the concourse.

“Four hours,” Barin said, angry all over again. “It was supposed to be forty-eight hours on station, minimum, but all of a sudden—”

“Same with us,” Esmay said. “I should have been here three days ago, but the blasted ship had a pressure-lock problem; we hung around for hours and hours at SecSev HQ, then they transferred us to old Bowfin, without time to send any messages, and then she couldn’t generate more than seventy-two percent of her normal power, and we just came limping in . . . I was afraid you’d have left already.”

“So was I. I left a message for you at the mail drop already, just in case.” Barin put his head to one side and grinned. “Surely, all this scramble can’t be just to keep us apart,” he said. “That’s an expensive abuse of Fleet resources.”

“Whatever it is, it’s a nuisance. Is your family still against us?”

“Yes. They think we should wait until the NewTex women are all taken care of. How am I supposed to do that? It could be years. What about you?”

Esmay handed over the message that had finally arrived, tied and stamped formally. “The Landholders are upset. Can you read Kurlik script? Basically it says that it is unacceptable for a Landbride to marry offworld at all, and particularly to marry a foreign military officer.”

“But we’re not foreign,” Barin said.

“I know that. You know that. But Altiplano—”

“I don’t want to take away anything you have,” Barin said. “You’ve explained about being Landbride—it’s a wonderful thing—”

“It’s a nuisance,” Esmay said. She straightened. “I never expected to be Landbride, and I thought I’d lost you . . . and . . . anyway, I accepted it in a time of crisis, but that’s past. My father realized very early that I might resign in favor of a legitimate heir. It’s not done often—” It had never been done except in cases of insanity or other permanent disability or extreme old age. She didn’t like to think of marriage as equivalent to insanity or permanent disability. “But there is a ritual procedure. The hard part is going to be getting leave to go there. I can appoint a stand-in, but that’s not the same thing as the next Landbride. My father says if I marry you, even though I’ve appointed someone, the Landmen’s Guild could challenge, and intervene in our family affairs. And that would be bad.”

“I can see that.” Barin shook his head. “And we still haven’t figured a way around the Fleet regulations; even if you do resign as Landbride, you can’t quit being a sector commander’s daughter. Does it seem to you that this is a lot harder than we thought it would be?”

“Yes. If it were this hard for everyone, nobody would get married.”

They stared gloomily at each other for several minutes. Then Esmay sat up. “Let’s not waste it. We have four hours—or rather, three hours and forty-two minutes.”

“I don’t suppose we could get married in three hours and forty-two minutes?” Barin said wistfully. “Maybe an hour to get married, and two hours to enjoy it?”

Esmay laughed. “It takes a lot longer; we couldn’t possibly. But we can do something cheerier than sit here eating bad food in a noisy place.”

“Right. But you’ll have to pay. I’m flat broke.” For some reason, this struck both of them as funny rather than annoying, and they thoroughly enjoyed their dinner.