Rules of Engagement

Chapter Twelve

Shrike came into the system like an avenging angel, a high-vee insertion through a lane cleared for that purpose, and then shifted insystem in a series of microjumps . . . reducing a normal eight-day down transit to a mere eleven hours. Three tugs went out to meet her, and dragged her toward the station at a relative velocity that seemed reckless. Barin, aboard Gyrfalcon, lurked in scan and watched along with everyone else.

“Ensign—” He glanced back to find his captain beckoning, and followed him to his office.

“We’ve been getting realtime downloads from Shrike for the past hour,” the captain said. “I want you to hand-carry this to the Grand Admiral’s office—it’s for his eyes only, and I want you to put it in his hands personally.”

“Sir.” Barin took the rack of four data cubes—a lot of data—and headed for the Grand Admiral’s temporary suite of offices. He’d been couriering one thing and another since they’d arrived, so the Admiral’s staff listened when he said, “—in his hands personally.”

“You’ll have to wait, though. The Admiral’s receiving a delegation from the Guernesi Republic.”

“Fine.” Barin found a spot out of the way of the traffic through the outer office, and let his mind wander to Shrike’s arrival . . . and her executive officer. Would he have a chance to see Esmay? Not likely; Shrike’s captain would certainly be the one coming to any briefings. Perhaps this new information would divert attention from his supposed expertise on Brun, which seemed more tawdry every time he thought of it. So she had wanted to bed him—so what? So she had been, in his mind, a difficult and headstrong individual . . . but whatever she had been, she didn’t deserve what had happened to her. Once again he saw the video clip of the surgery and felt his own throat close; he swallowed with an effort.

“Hello, Ensign Serrano—”

His eyes snapped to the left, where Lieutenant Esmay Suiza stood with a challenging look . . . and a lockbag of data, no doubt.

“Lieutenant!”

“Wool-gathering?” she asked, in almost the tone of the old Esmay, the Esmay of the Koskiusko.

“Sir, my mind had wandered—”

“Just another minute, he said,” the clerk at the desk interrupted. “If the lieutenant wouldn’t mind going in with Ensign Serrano—”

“Not at all,” said Esmay.

Barin tried not to stare, but—she looked so good. Nothing like Casea Ferradi; if she was priggish in some ways, she was at least clean.

The admiral’s door opened, and a harried-looking commander waved them both in. “Come on Serrano, Suiza—he’s waiting for both of you.”

From within someone said “No!” very loudly. Barin paused. “I won’t have her—I don’t want to see her.” The commander holding the door closed it again. “—all her fault!” leaked out just before it snicked shut.

Thornbuckle. Still angry, still unreasonable . . . Barin gave Esmay a sidelong glance; she was staring straight ahead, almost expressionless. He wanted to say something—but what?—but the door opened again, this time to Grand Admiral Savanche.

“Lieutenant, I believe you have a hand-to-hand for me?”

“Yes, sir.” Esmay’s voice expressed no more than her face as she handed him the databag.

“Very well. Dismissed.” He turned to Barin. “Come along in, Ensign.” Barin tried to catch Esmay’s eye, but she looked past him. He followed Savanche into the conference, his heart sinking rapidly past the deck toward the gravitational center of the universe.

“The tissue typing confirms that the unidentified bodies found at the site of the Elias Madero hijacking were those of five members of the ten from Lord Thornbuckle’s personal militia: Savoy Ardenil, Basil Verenci, Klara Pronoth, Seren Verenci, and Kaspar Pronoth. This very strongly suggests that Sera Meager’s ship was there at the time, and may have attempted to intervene.”

Which meant that they knew, at last, where Brun’s yacht had been when she was attacked. At last they could narrow the search to something other than all space everywhere. Shrike’s subsequent search for traces of the Elias Madero narrowed it further. Barin tried to fix his mind on the evidence and its logical consequences, but Esmay’s set face kept intruding. She had been wrong, yes—but Lord Thornbuckle’s outburst, his refusal to see her, was profoundly unjust. Brun’s situation was not Esmay’s fault.

“The Guernesi are working on data cubes recovered from the Elias Madero; they have already identified the organization—apparently it really is the New Texas Godfearing Militia, and they are attempting to find out which branch captured Sera Meager.” The briefing officer, a commander Barin did not know, paused for questions. One only came, from Lord Thornbuckle.

“How long . . . ?”

When the conference was dismissed, Barin fully intended to go looking for Esmay. He wanted her to know that he, at least, was no longer angry with her. But the ubiquitous Lieutenant Ferradi caught him first. By the time he’d finished running the errands she assigned, he was due back aboard Gyrfalcon for his watch.

Captain Solis met Esmay at the docking hatch for Shrike. “We need to talk,” he said. He looked more tired than angry. “So far no one aboard knows about this—and I would prefer to keep it as quiet as possible.”

“Sir.” She hadn’t done anything at all, but follow orders and take the data where she’d been told.

He sighed. “Near as I can tell—and I should be able to tell, or what am I doing with my rank?—your outburst back at Copper Mountain was just that, an outburst. You’ve done a good job for me; you’re an effective leader. You fit your history, is what I’m saying. But acts have consequences, including mistakes, however rare.”

Esmay thought about saying something, but decided there was no point.

“Lord Thornbuckle needs a villain,” Solis said. “And since he can’t get his hands on the real villains, he’s picked you. He refuses to have you involved in planning the rescue; he doesn’t even want you on the base. There’s a very limited amount that we can do, given his position and his state of mind. However, I consider your knowledge of Sera Meager—and the investigation of the Elias Madero hijacking site—to be important resources. I’ve gone on record as saying so, and had my tail chewed by Admiral Hornan.”

“Yes, sir,” Esmay said, since the long pause suggested the need for some comment.

“You’re going to have to stay out of everyone’s way—I won’t say I’m restricting you to Shrike, because that would be unfair, but until I can get you some kind of assignment that uses your talents, I strongly recommend that you consider spending most of your time there—and make sure you don’t run afoul of Lord Thornbuckle or Admiral Hornan. The latter won’t be easy—he’s taking his position as Sector Commandant very seriously, and he would like to lead the task force when it acts. Since the Serranos are in Thornbuckle’s bad graces, he may well get that assignment.”

“Yes, sir.” Why were the Serranos in trouble? That made no sense to Esmay, but clearly she should stay away from Barin until she got that figured out. The last thing she wanted was to get a Serrano in worse trouble.

“And if you do mingle, watch what you say—because someone else will be.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll do my best to keep you informed of the progress of the investigation and planning—now, get in there and keep my ship the way it should be.”

“Yes, sir.” Esmay saluted and went aboard, very little cheered by the knowledge that her captain no longer thought of her as a monster. Clearly, enough other people did.

In the next few days, Barin did his best to search the station, but he did not see Esmay in any of the places where off-duty officers congregated. Her name was never down for a machine or swim lane at the gym; he could find no logon records at the library; she had no assigned quarters. Could she still be living aboard Shrike? He called up the ship’s entry and found her listed as the XO—at least that was right—but no personal comcode number. He didn’t want to call the ship’s general number and have her paged; in the present climate, that might get them both in more trouble.

The next briefing began with a presentation by one of the Guernesi.

“Thanks to the data cubes recovered by Shrike, and skillfully enhanced by your technicians, we’re able to identify the raiders as members of a religious-military organization which controls some six Earth-type planets in this area—” He pointed to a chart on display. “You’ll notice that these are in the angle, as it were, between Guernesi and Familias space.

“Let me give you a little necessary background on the group that calls itself the New Texas Godfearing Milita, or the Nutex Militia, for short. Our historians have done extensive research on the fringe religions that formed colonies in the early days of expansion from Old Earth, because we’ve had unpleasant contact with many of them. This one claims to descend from founders in Texas—one of the United States, which was in North America, for those of you with an interest in Old Earth geography.”

“I don’t see the relevance,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “We can learn the history later—”

“I believe you will, sir. Their present beliefs are relevant to your daughter’s situation, and to any hope of intervention on her behalf. Their present beliefs grow out of their mythologized view of Texas history.” He took a breath and went on. “Now, this state had at one time been—very briefly—an independent nation. As with other nations swallowed up by larger political units, a portion of its population clung to that memory and caused trouble. In the late twentieth, their reckoning, one of many militias and terrorist religious groups active in the United States was something called the Republic of Texas. At that time, it was not affiliated with a particular religious position, and did not have as rigid a view of gender roles as some others. But it existed in the same soup, as it were, and the flavors melded.”

“Was it involved in terrorist acts at that time?” asked Admiral Serrano.

“We think originally not, except in collecting arms, evading taxes, and causing the local government as much administrative trouble as possible. However, in one recorded standoff with the authorities, its members did take hostages, and did announce an intent to form a separate government and bring down the existing one. It failed. But that failure led to an affiliation with the survivors of a failed religious fringe group. They explained the Republic of Texas failure as resulting from lack of faith, and explained their own as resulting from lack of military experience. That group bore the rather cumbersome name of the Republic of Godfearing Texans Against World Government. It quickly splintered, as such groups often do, into several, each of which had similar, but doctrinally distinct, beliefs. One of these called itself the New Texas Godfearing Militia. This particular branch believed that the decay of society which led to acceptance of tyranny was due to the influence of women, and that women had been allowed beyond the bounds set by God in Holy Scripture. Many other such groups existed at the time—universal education for women in North America was then fairly recent, and their entry into employment was blamed for male unemployment and discontent. Historians have found many texts advocating the return of women to ‘traditional’ roles, defined very narrowly.

“It is this branch of the original which made it to space, under a colonization contract which they promptly disavowed. They organized their own colonial government, based on a military unit found in the original state. Apparently, a mythology had arisen surrounding the Texas Rangers, so they denoted their elected officials ‘rangers,’ and appended the names of historical figures from the brief period of Texas nationality. That’s important, because we have learned to track splits in the original group by their choice of names for their rangers. For instance, there’s a branch that denominates their leaders Rangers McCullough, Davis, King, Austin, and Crockett. Another uses Crockett, Bowie, Houston, Travis, and Lamar. However, they all have in common a council of five rangers, headed by a captain. We’ve included a listing for each of the six known branches.

“Because this group formed by splintering, and considers individual liberty of utmost importance—individual liberty of males, that is—they are constantly breaking up and reforming alliances among themselves.”

“Do they exchange prisoners?” asked another admiral.

“Almost never. We’ve retrieved a few men from them, by hefty threats. But never women. There’s a double problem with their attitude towards women. They believe that allowing women in space, for instance, is a form of neglect—that men are bound by faith to protect women. So if they capture women, they consider that they are actually saving them from a worse fate.”

“But they mutilated and killed those women—”

“That’s the other problem. Their religious beliefs are, as with most such groups, extremely rigid on anything having to do with sex or reproduction. They believe women were created by God to serve men and bear children . . . and that they must be guided, if children, or forced, if adults, into the role divinely intended for them. They also believe that only male-female sexual activity is permissable; anything else is what they call abomination. So also is contraception and genetic engineering. So if they capture women who have contraceptive implants, evidence of genetic engineering, or who are, by virtue of their rank or behavior, ‘usurping the authority of men,’ they usually kill them.”

“Brun’s a Registered Embryo,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “She’s got the mark—what would they think of that?”

“Abomination, certainly. Interfering with God’s plan for humans . . . and I assume like most unmarried young women, she also had a contraceptive implant?”

“Of course,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “And beyond that, REs require a positive fertility induction. Brun wanted the implant mostly so she’d be like her friends, some of whom weren’t Registered Embryos.”

“It’s surprising they didn’t kill her,” the Guernesi went on. “They must have considered her political importance worth taking the chance that God would punish them for allowing her to live. That’s undoubtedly why they did such a thorough job with muting her, and proceeded immediately to induce fertility. In their own minds, they were reclaiming her for God’s purposes, and sending a message to you and the rest of the Familias—”

“Then they’re free-birthers—”

“Rabidly so; each adult male is entitled to as many wives as he can support, and free access to what they call ‘whores of Satan.’ All live-born children, however, are considered equally legitimate property of the acknowledged father—and if no father boasts of it, there are always people ready to adopt. If any of their own women rebel—and it does happen—they are muted and handed over to these breeding houses.”

“How do you know so much?” Thornbuckle asked.

“Well, we share a border with two of the five systems they control, and they’ve come after our people repeatedly. Their beliefs name us as one of the abominations. If anyone is interested, we can provide copies of what they consider to be divinely inspired prophecy and law. They also trade with us, in very limited ways—in spite of our being, in their view, perverts and abominations, they have need of our skills sometimes. In order to protect our people, we’ve had to find out more about them. In fact, I’m afraid we may be indirectly responsible for this incursion into Familias space.”

“What!”

“They had attacked one of our passenger ships, the third time in only a few months. It got away, but we felt they were becoming too bold. So, we smacked them, hard—went in and blew some of their fixed defense platforms, and told ’em God was punishing ’em for their errors. They know most of our people are what they call ‘spiritual’—though of course, not the same faith. Anyway, my guess is that they reacted to this by looking for some way to regain their prestige. Stayed away from us—and the Emerald States, on their other side, had whacked ’em before they bounced off us—so they went after you. I should warn you—they probably have agents somewhere in your commercial networks, because every time we’ve caught them trying to hijack a big cargo ship, it’s had illegal arms shipments on it.”

“There was nothing like that on the Elias Madero manifest . . .”

“No. There wouldn’t be. The way they operated in our space was they’d get something on a shipping agent, get the access to a hold—sometimes only one, sometimes several—then they’d have it stuffed with anything they could buy on the gray market.” He tipped his head. “Lot of it came from the Familias, you know. You folks have a thriving arms industry.”

“We’re not alone in that,” Lord Thornbuckle muttered.

“No. But of the stuff we’ve confiscated when we’ve caught them, around seventy-three percent comes from Familias sources, eleven percent from ours, and the rest from the Emerald Worlds.” He paused; no one said anything. “I’d recommend a very thorough look at the Boros Consortium shipping agents, especially the one upstream of where the attack occurred. They don’t usually wait long to grab after they’ve coerced someone into loading. Patience is not their strong point. You might also want to check your official military inventories; in both the Emerald Worlds and the Guerni Republic, they’ve attempted to gain converts within the military. Their emphasis on male supremacy and personal honor does find welcome in some cultures, and you’re a multicultural entity.”

A chill fell on the room; Barin recognized both fear and denial in the silence. As if they did not already have concerns about loyalty, after Lepescu and Garrivay. But before any of the military spoke, Thornbuckle did.

“So now you’ve narrowed it to—what—five planets? Six? But she could be anywhere.”

“In theory, yes. But here’s what else we’ve got . . .” A still shot of enhanced vid went up. “Thanks to Shrike’s extensive scavenging of the hijacking site, and the quick thinking of someone in the Elias Madero crew, we have video data of the hijackers themselves. “You can see that enhancement gives us the engraving on the leader’s insignia . . . here . . . you can just make out bowie. So we know that this raid was led by a Ranger Bowie, and we know from other sources that only two of the settlements, Our Texas and Texas True, now title one of their rangers ‘Bowie.’ Knowing that, we’ll need to get visual confirmation of which Bowie we’re dealing with—and that may take some time.”

“She doesn’t have time,” Thornbuckle said. “We have to find her . . .”

Barin saw the sidelong glances; he had heard the rumors, too. They had worse problems than a missing woman and threats against the government. Something would have to be done.

“We have field agents working on it,” Grand Admiral Savanche said. “Since the Guernesi told us to expect terrorist attacks from these people, we’ve put out specific warnings to law enforcement on all orbital stations, shipyards, and in the larger cities.”

Goonar Terakian had come into the Rusty Rocket for a quiet conversation with his cousin Basil Terakian-Junos, out of the hearing of their other relatives and shipmates. They had business no one else needed to hear. Midweek, mid-second shift, they might have been lucky enough to find the bar empty except for Sandor the bartender and possibly Genevieve. Genevieve, Sandor said, was off somewhere shopping. But the bar wasn’t empty. Propped against the bar was a young man whose shipsuit bore an unfamiliar patch, but his condition was all too familiar.

“You don’t have a clue what’s coming to you,” the young man said. He was very young, and very drunk. Terakian ignored him, and ordered for himself and Basil. Perhaps the young fool would go back to talking to himself.

But he didn’t. When Terakian moved to the far end of the bar with Basil, the young man followed.

“The blow is about to fall,” the young man said. He had an accent you could slice for baklava. “And yet you walk in darkness, unaware.”

“Go away,” Basil said.

“You will not give the orders then,” the young man said. “It will be too late for you, then.”

Terakian looked past him at Sandor, who rolled his eyes but said nothing. Drunks are drunks, an occupational hazard. But the Terakians were old customers, so he approached the young man. “Are you drinking or talking?” he asked.

“Gimme another,” the young man said. He swayed slightly but he wasn’t out yet, and Terakian figured he wouldn’t remember anything anyway.

“About the Vortenya contract,” he said to Basil, turning his back on the drunk. “What I heard from Gabe on the Serenity Gradient is that they’re planning—”

The drunk tapped his shoulder, and Terakian turned angrily. The drunk shook a finger in his face. “You don’t know what’s coming to you,” he said again.

“What are you talking about?” Terakian said, more than a little annoyed. “All I know that’s coming to me is a half share in the ship when my uncle dies.” He grinned at his cousin, who grinned back.

“Issa secret,” the young man said. “But you’ll know. You’ll all know.”

“Sounds like a threat,” Basil said. “Oooh . . . I’m so scared . . .”

“You better be,” the young man said. His bleary gaze focussed again. “All you . . . abominations.”

“Egglayer!” Terakian’s cousin said. He had a temper, and the scars to prove it.

But the young drunk didn’t rise to that insult. He smiled an ugly smile. “You’ll be sorry. When the stations blow, and the wrath of God smites—”

“Here now,” Sandor said. “No god-talk in this bar. If you want to fight over religion, do it somewhere else.”

The young man pushed himself back from the bar, took a few unlevel steps, then folded over and vomited copiously.

“I hate righteous drinkers,” Sandor said, reaching for the vacuum nozzle racked behind the bar. “They can’t hold their liquor.” He looked at Terakian and his cousin. “You ever seen him before?”

“No,” Terakian said. “But there’s been a few of those patches around the last day or so, over in D-dock.”

“Well, stick your head out and see if you spot any station security while I clean up. Don’t want any trouble with the law for having served to a minor or something.” Sandor yanked on the vacuum hose, and hauled it around the end of the bar toward the mess.

Terakian, who came through this station every two months, regular as clockwork, knew most of the station employees. He glanced down toward Friendly Mac’s Exchange & Financing, and saw Jilly Merovic on her beat. He waved; Jilly waved back, and crossed the corridor, moving at her usual quick walk.

“Jilly’s coming,” he told the bartender.

“Good.” Sandor had already sucked up most of the vomit, but the young man was sprawled unconscious. “Help me turn him over, will you?”

“Leave ’em face down, our ship medic says,” Basil said.

“Well, then, pick up his head so I can suck up the rest of the puddle.” Basil grimaced, but pulled the young man’s head up by the hair as Sandor passed the vacuum intake under his face.

“What’s going on?” Jilly asked from the doorway.

“New customer—he drank too much, threw up, and passed out on me.”

“Um. You get his ID?”

“It said he was twenty-seven.”

“All right, Sandor, I’m not accusing you of selling to minors. I just wanted to know if he had any medicals.”

“Nothing stamped.”

Jilly squatted beside the sprawled figure, then glanced up at Terakian and his cousin. “Either of you know him? Did he seem distressed?”

“No, we didn’t know him, and he seemed drunk,” Basil said. Terakian gave him a warning look; Basil was the kind to resent the interference of fate. They could always do their business later, if he didn’t cause enough trouble to get them noticed.

“He was making threats,” Terakian said. “Called us abominations, and said we’d get what was coming to us.”

Jilly had opened the man’s ID packet but she looked up at that. “Abominations? Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Yeah. And something about stations blowing up. Typical mean drunk, is what I thought. Probably his captain told him off, or his station molly took up with someone else.”

“Ever hear of a ship called the Mockingbird Hill?” Jilly asked.

Terakian shook his head. “No . . . what is it?”

“An unaffiliated trader. This is Spacer First Class Todd Grew.” She scanned the ship patch on the man’s arm, then looked at the readout on her handcomp. “Mockingbird Hill all right, and she’s berthed in D-dock. Paid up a thirty-day docking fee, and her cargo is listed as light manufactory.”

“Aren’t you going to call his ship for transport back?”

Jilly gave Basil a look that chilled Terakian to the bone, though he got only the edge of it. “No. Ser Grew deserves only the best medical treatment. You two keep watch on the door—if you see anyone looking for Mr. Grew, go cause trouble. Whatever you do, don’t let them in here.” Then, to the bartender. “I’ll need your comjack.”

“But you have your—”

“Now,” Jilly said, with sufficient force that the bartender stepped back. Terakian was glad to see another man react the way he felt. He nodded at Basil and they went to the door as Jilly had ordered. He couldn’t hear what she said . . . but a long life in Familias spaceways left him no doubt as to the identity of the men in unremarkable clothes who came through the bar’s back door and bundled Todd Grew into a gurney before he woke up. Even as they were taking him out the back, one of them approached Terakian.

“May I see your ID please?” It was not really a request. Terakian pulled out his folder; the man glanced at it, and without looking up said, “Officer Merovic says she knows you—has for years.”

“That’s right,” Terakian said. Cold sweat trickled down his back, and he hadn’t even done anything wrong. That he knew of. “Off the Terakian Blessing, Terakian and Sons, Limited.”

“And you?” the man said, looking at Basil.

“Basil Terakian-Junos. Off the Terakian Bounty.”

“Cousins,” the man said. “You’re the brawler, aren’t you?”

“I can fight,” Basil said.

“Basil—”

“It doesn’t bother me,” the man said. “Just wanted to be sure I had the right Terakian cousins. Now let me give you some advice.” Orders, he meant. “This never happened, right?”

“What?” asked Basil.

Terakian elbowed Basil. “We just came in here for a little family chat—”

“Right. And you saw Officer Merovic and bought her a drink.”

“Yessir. And nobody saw anything?”

“That’s it. I know how you people are with your families, but I’m telling you, this is not a story to tell, and there’s no profit to be made off it.”

Terakian doubted that—anything Fleet security cared about this much usually involved plenty of profit—but he was willing to concede that he couldn’t make anything off it.

“And how long should our family conference continue?” he asked.

“Another fifteen minutes should about do it,” the man said pleasantly.

Fifteen minutes. They still had time to deal with the Vortenya contract negotiations, if Jilly didn’t insist on sitting with them for her drink.

“Thanks to an alert security force on Zenebra, we now have both proof of planned terrorist attacks, and some more specific information about Sera Meager’s most probable location.”

“And that is?”

“An unaffiliated trader, Mockingbird Hill, bought used from Allsystems Salvage four years ago . . . showed up at Zenebra Main Station, and paid thirty days’ docking fee upfront. That in itself was a bit surprising, but the stationmaster just listed it in the log, and didn’t specifically alert Fleet; we hadn’t given out a list of warning signs, because we didn’t want to cause widespread panic. One of the crew, however, got drunk in a spacer bar, spewed his guts out, and had said something to the locals which alerted security. They called Fleet, and when we interrogated him, we found he was one of that cult, and the trader was stuffed with explosive, designed to blow any station they chose. They hadn’t intended to blow Zenebra, particularly, but they were sited there in case called on to act somewhere in that sector.”

“And Sera Meager?”

“According to one of the others, the Ranger Bowie on the vid from Elias Madero is from the branch known as Our Texas; this group was from Native Texas, who are apparently allied with them at present.”

“And the Guernesi have agents in place on . . . let’s see here. Home Texas, Texas True, and . . . what do you know? Our Texas.”

“Yes . . . and that agent should be able to confirm whether they still have a Ranger Bowie, and whether we’ve got the right man—and planet.”

Waltraude Meyerson, peering through the eyepiece of the low-power microscope at an exceedingly rare photograph which might—if she was lucky—finally answer the question of whether a certain Old Earth politician was male or female, ignored the comunit’s chime until it racked up into an angry buzz. She reached out blindly, and felt around on her desk until she found the button and pushed it.

“Yes!”

“It’s Dean Marondin . . . we have an urgent request for a specialty consult in your field.”

“Nothing in my field is urgent,” Waltraude said. “It’s all been dead for centuries.” Nonetheless she sat back and flicked off the microscope’s light.

“It’s a request from the highest authorities . . .”

“About ancient history? Is it another antiquities scam?”

“No . . . I’m not even sure why, but they want to know about Old Earth politics, North American . . . so of course I thought of you.”

Of course. She was the only North Americanist on the faculty, but chances were that some idiot bureaucrat wanted to know the exchange rate of QuebeÁois francs to Mexican pesos in a decade she knew nothing about . . .

“So what’s the question?”

“They want to talk to you.”

Interruptions, always interruptions. She had taken the term off, no classes, so she could finally put together the book she had been working on for the past eight years, and now she had to answer silly questions. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll give them fifteen minutes.”

“I think they need longer,” the dean said. “They’re on their way.”

Great. Waltraude stood up and stretched, working out the kinks that hours over the microscope had put in her back, and looked vaguely around her office. “They” implied more than one—they would want to sit down, and both chairs were piled with papers. Some people thought it was old-fashioned to have so much paper around, but she was—as she insisted—old-fashioned herself. That’s why she’d gone into antique studies in the first place. She had just picked up one stack, and was looking for a place to put it, when the knock came at her door. “Come in,” she said, and turned to find herself facing two men and two women who scared her into immobility. They looked as if they should all be in uniform, though they weren’t.

“I’m sorry if we startled you,” said one of the women. “But—do you know anything about Texas?”

Three hours later she was still talking, and they were still recording it and asking more questions. She was no longer scared, but still confused about why they’d come.

“But you really should ask Professor Lemon about that,” she said finally. “He’s the one who’s done the most work on North American gender relations in that period.”

“Professor Lemon died last week in a traffic accident,” the woman said. “You’re the next best.”

“Oh. Well—” Waltraude fixed the other woman with a gaze that usually got the truth from undergraduates. “When are you planning to tell me what’s going on?”

“When we get you to Sector VII Headquarters,” the woman said with a smile that was not at all reassuring. “You’re now our best expert on Texas history, and we want to keep you alive.”

“My sources—” Waltraude said, waving at the chaos of her office. “My book—”

“We’ll bring everything,” the woman promised. “And you’ll have access to Professor Lemon’s as well.”

Lemon had refused for years to share his copy of a Molly Ivins book Waltraude had never been able to track down through Library Services. He had even reneged on a promise to do so, in exchange for her data cube of thirty years of a rural county newspaper from Oklahoma. Access to Lemon’s material?

“When do we leave?” asked Waltraude.