Rules of Engagement

Chapter Eighteen

Marta found Esmay at work in a cubicle, paging through a report, looking thoughtful.

“I’ve just talked to Admiral Serrano,” Marta said. Esmay flushed a little, the reaction Marta had hoped for. “I told her I thought the reports of your hardheartedness and political ambitions were exaggerated . . . and why.” The flush deepened, but Esmay said nothing. “You will find that she creates no barrier to your relationship with Barin . . .”

“If I ever have one,” Esmay said. She looked up, tears standing in her eyes. “What if he won’t speak to me?”

“Well, then, you have to see that he does.”

“But Casea’s always around—”

Marta sat very straight. “You are not going to make that mistake again! Think, child! What do you know about that young woman? Does she have a good reputation?

“No . . .” Esmay’s voice trembled slightly.

“Do you really think Barin is the kind of man who prefers that kind of woman?”

“No . . .” Her voice failed completely.

“Then quit being a wet lump, and give him some help in getting free of her. Be someone he can prefer, with some reason.” Marta cocked her head. “Personally, I’d recommend a good haircut, to start with. And a really well-cut exercise suit.”

Esmay flushed again. “I—I couldn’t.”

“What—you can’t show what you’ve got, because she’s displaying herself like a fruit basket? What kind of nonsense is that? Come along—” Marta stood up, and watched Esmay rise slowly. “I know perfectly well you’re just moving things around in here trying to look busy. Your commander’s angry with you, nobody has any real work for you—so I’m demanding your services as an escort.”

“But you—”

“My dear, before you embarrass yourself again, I’m not just Raffaele’s aunt . . . I hold my own Seat in Council, though I usually let Ansel vote it for me, and if I wanted to grab any officer up to and including Admiral Serrano for an escort, no one, least of all Vida, would stand in my way. Bunny himself is putty in my hands when I’m in this mood. And you are, after all, the Landbride Suiza. Now come along and quit making difficulties.”

Marta was glad to see the salutary lift of spine which that produced, and thoroughly enjoyed her sweep through the corridors of the HQ complex, with Esmay Suiza a silent shadow at her side. She could almost see the shock, and imagined it trickling icewater-like down certain spines. The particular blonde spine she most wanted to discomfit didn’t appear—well, that would come later.

Esmay hung back as Marta led her toward the doors of the most fashionable salon in the city. She had heard of Afino’s—including from Brun, who had recommended it heartily.

“No one’s ever been able to do anything with my hair,” she said miserably, as she had more than once on the way downside. “It’s too fine, and thin, and it frizzes—”

“And probably all you do is wash it, brush it, and cut it off when it gets too long,” Marta said. “Listen—you are not your hair. You have choices. You want Barin, and you want to regain your professional reputation. This will help.”

It still seemed more than a little immoral. Her hair had always been her downfall, in the style sense, and she could think of nothing that would improve it but yanking it out and starting over from the genome. The serious noises the head of the salon made when he looked at her scalp made her want to sink through the floor.

“You have the fine hair,” he said. “Perhaps your parents also, or perhaps you have had a high fever when you were young?”

“Yes, I did,” Esmay said.

“That may be it. But it is very healthy; you have not been doing anything stupid, as some women do. And you are a Fleet officer—you want something practical, easy to keep, but looking more . . . more . . .”

“More like it’s intended to be something,” Marta put in. “Less like dryer fluff.”

“Ah. A more permanent solution would be the genetic one, but you said the matter was urgent.”

“Yes. Although in the long run, Esmay, he’s right—it’s expensive, but you can have your hair genetically reprogrammed.”

So—even a salon like this thought that replacing it from the roots out was the best approach. But she hadn’t actually thought it was possible.

“It would change your genetic ID slightly,” the man said. “You would have to report it to your commander, and they would have to approve, and then change your records. But it has been done. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with your hair as it is, once we determine the best way of cutting it.”

With scissors, Esmay thought but did not say.

Three hours later, she stared at her reflected image with astonishment. It was the same hair, but somehow it had consented to take a shape that suggested both competence and charm. Smooth there, a bit of curl here. Fluff was perhaps the wrong word . . . but she couldn’t think of another. She looked like herself, but . . . more so. And under the tutelage of the salon’s staff, she had learned to do it herself, from sopping wet to final combing.

After that, Marta dragged her off to the neighboring dress shop. “You need off-duty clothes. I’ve seen you in those exercise suits.”

“I sweat,” Esmay said, but with less strength in the protest.

“Yes, but you don’t have to sweat while eating dinner.” Marta prowled, sending Esmay into the changing room again and again until she was happy with the result—by which time Esmay was finally beginning to understand what the fuss was about. The blue and silver exercise suit was as comfortable as the ones she usually wore, but looked—she had to admit—stunning. And the others . . .

“The people you think were born looking good were born looking red and wrinkly just like everyone else,” Marta said. “Yes, there are faces more beautiful than others, bodies more easily draped than others. But at least half the people you admire aren’t, on form alone, beautiful. They make the effect they have. Now some people don’t care about effect, and don’t need effect, and nobody needs it all the time. At home, when I’m out in the garden, I look like any plump old woman in dirty garden clothes. I don’t care, and neither does anyone else. But when I’m being Marta Katerina Saenz, with a Chair in Council, I dress for effect. Right now you need all the effect you can manage: it will do no good, and much harm, for you to skulk around headquarters looking ashamed of yourself. It helps people think you’re guilty.”

Hair, clothes, even a session in a day spa, from which she emerged feeling utterly relaxed. Two days after they’d left, when her new clothes were stowed in her compartment, Marta led her back to the lieutenant commander in charge of Esmay’s section.

“Here she is—you can have her back for a while, but I may need her again. Thank you, Lieutenant Suiza; you’ve been most helpful.”

Lieutenant Commander Moslin looked from one to the other. “You’re . . . satisfied, Sera Saenz?”

“With Lieutenant Suiza? Of course. Best personal assistant I ever had. Excuse me; I mustn’t be late to meet Admiral Serrano.” With a wave, Marta departed, leaving Esmay under the lieutenant commander’s mistrustful gaze.

“Well . . . I thought she was Lord Thornbuckle’s friend, and here she’s sticking up for you . . .”

“I think,” Esmay said, following Marta’s briefing, “I remind her of a niece or something. But of course I did my best.”

“Yes. Well. I suppose you can get back to that report you were working on . . .”

Esmay could feel his gaze on her as she walked off. She knew he had sensed some difference, but couldn’t pinpoint it. She could . . . and was amazed that she had never bothered to learn such simple things before. She saw Casea Ferradi coming toward her, and assumed the expression Marta had recommended. Sure enough, Casea almost stumbled.

“Lieutenant Suiza—”

“Hello, Casea,” Esmay said, inwardly amazed and delighted.

“You’re—I thought you were on leave.”

“I’m back,” Esmay said. “But busy—see you later.” It could be fun. It could actually be fun. Buoyed up by that thought, she smiled serenely at Admiral Hornan around the next corner.

Barin came to attention. “Ensign Serrano reporting, sir.”

His grandmother looked up. “At ease, Ensign. Have a seat. We have family business to discuss.”

Family business did not put him at ease, but he sat and waited. His grandmother sighed.

“Marta Saenz tells me that you and Lieutenant Suiza had a row over Brun Meager.”

Barin almost let his jaw drop, but tightened it in time. “That’s . . . not exactly how it happened, sir.”

“Mmm. Well, however it happened, and whatever the current status of your feeling for Lieutenant Suiza may be, I wanted you to know that from my perspective, as your grandmother, I have no advice to give. About her, at least. About someone else you’ve been seen with, I have the advice you can probably guess. As an admiral, I would like to see Lieutenant Suiza perform at her best—she has a strikingly good best—and would like whatever circumstances might contribute to that end, to happen. So if you feel you can do her some good, go ahead.”

“She’s—not speaking to me.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps she thinks you’re not speaking to her. Especially since there are others who might have an interest in keeping you two apart.”

“Lieutenant Ferradi—” Barin said, through clenched teeth.

His grandmother looked at him as if he were a toddler; he knew that look. “Among others. Barin, you’re old enough to know how our family name attracts envy as well as admiration. Lieutenant Suiza’s rapid rise to fame and promotion has had a similar effect. It has come to my attention that there are people who feel it in their interests to have you and Lieutenant Suiza at cross purposes. If you did not care for her, it would be one thing, but since you do, it seems to me that it is a matter of family honor not to let them succeed. Subject, of course, to your own feelings.”

“Ah . . . yes, sir—Grandmother.”

She gave him a frank grin. “Sir Grandmother must be an unusual title, but I’ll take it. Seriously, Barin—do you love this woman?”

“I thought I did, but—”

“Well, think again. Think, but also feel. It is not for me to play Cupid; if you two are meant for each other, you shouldn’t need a Cupid. But take nothing for granted. Clear?”

“Yes . . . Grandmother.”

“Good. If there’s fallout, I’ll deal with it. I trust your judgement, Barin—just be sure you have enough data to base it on.” She paused, but he said nothing. What was there to say? With a crisp nod, she reverted from grandmother to admiral. “Now—how’s that investigation of Lieutenant Ferradi coming?”

“I don’t know,” Barin said. “Both my captain and my exec told me to keep my nose somewhere else, so I have.”

“Amazing,” his grandmother murmured, in a tone that made his ears heat up. “Well, we’re closing in on our active dates—it would be a help to me to know what’s going on. I’d like you to go mention that to Heris, and let her murmur it to your captain’s ear—or whatever it takes. Klaus still wants my job, and since he hasn’t commanded anything but a desk for the past nineteen years, I’m unwilling to let him make a hash of it. Your ostensible message to Heris is that we’re having a family celebration since the Fleet Birthday festivities will be very restrained this year. This is what you can—and should—tell anyone. But carry this—” she handed over a data strip. “For her hand only, and use the family handshake.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

“She’s a natural-born weasel,” Koutsoudas said, pointing out the graphic he had made of Lieutenant Ferradi’s illicit activities in the legal database. “If we hadn’t had that primed datawand, she might’ve got away with it, even with me on scan.”

“Well, what has she done?” asked Captain Escovar.

“She used Pell’s access codes into the first level, and then someone else’s—would you believe Admiral Hornan’s?”

“How’d she get those?”

“I have no idea, sir.” Koutsoudas was watching the vid screen now, on which Lieutenant Ferradi’s neat blonde head was bent studiously over a console. “Possibly from Pell . . . and while it’s none of my business, you should probably know there’s rumors that Pell’s been called in for an off-cycle physical.”

“So he has,” Escovar said.

“And three other master chiefs here as well . . . it’s making some of us nervous, tell you the truth.”

“In what way?”

“Beyond my area of expertise, sir.” Koutsoudas had the expression of a man not in the mood to trust anyone.

“Mm. Concerns have been expressed at higher levels than mine, as well.”

“Just as well, sir. Ah—there she goes.” Onscreen, Ferradi inserted her datawand into a port in the console. “Bet she inputs a file this time—look at her left hand. Yeah—there it is.” On Koutsoudas’ graphic, an orange line snaked along a tangle of other lines, and made its way into a blue box, where it flashed steadily. “Altering data, sir: that’s one hundred percent clear.”

“Do we know what the data were prior to alteration?”

“I don’t, no sir. But I do know there was a secure backup made last night, blind copy to a storage unit she’ll never find. And the trace on her wand will prove she altered something, and where in the file it is.”

“These are very serious charges, Commander Escovar,” Admiral Hornan said. “I’ve found Lieutenant Ferradi to be a most efficient officer . . .” His glance at Barin mixed suspicion and resentment in equal portions. Barin reminded himself that this man was his grandmother’s rival.

“The admiral is right—these are serious charges. That is why I brought them to you rather than calling Lieutenant Ferradi in myself. Under the circumstances—political as well as military—it seemed preferable to have you in on this from the beginning—”

“Not the beginning, if you’ve already done the investigation—”

“Only enough to be sure the original allegation was founded on fact, admiral. There’s more to do—”

“Well, let’s just hear her side of it—” Hornan touched his comunit. “Lieutenant Ferradi, would you come in, please?”

“Right away, Admiral.” The slightest pause, then, “Should I bring the latest information from that database search the admiral asked about?”

“Uh—not right now, Lieutenant.” A flush crept up Hornan’s neck. Barin dared a sidelong glance at Escovar and saw that he had not missed it. So . . . just how deep into this was Hornan?

In only a few moments, Casea Ferradi came into the admiral’s office, wide-eyed and smiling, a smile that widened into a quick grin meant to be complicit when she saw Barin, and sobered when no one smiled back.

“Admiral?”

“Casea—Lieutenant—these officers have made some serious charges against you. I want to know what you have to say.”

“Against me?” For just an instant, in profile, Barin saw a flicker that might have been panic, but her calm returned. “Why—what am I supposed to have done?” She looked at Barin. “Did I bother poor Ensign Serrano? I didn’t mean to . . .”

Hornan cleared his throat. “No . . . Lieutenant, I must ask: have you accessed any Fleet records which you are not cleared to access?”

“Of course not,” Ferradi said. “Not without specific orders to do so.”

“Which would give you authorization, yes. Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Ferradi said. Barin watched the pulse in her neck beat a little faster.

“Have you altered any data in any records whatsoever?”

“You mean like—watch records or something? No, sir.”

“Or in a database? Have you ever intruded into a database and altered records?”

“Not without specific orders to do so, no, Admiral.” But that telltale pulse was faster now.

“Then if I told you that you were alleged to have intruded into the records of the investigations surrounding the mutiny on Despite, and alleged to have changed certain files containing interview data on Lieutenant Esmay Suiza, you would deny it.”

“I would, Admiral.” Ferradi flushed suddenly. “I deny it absolutely, and moreover I would consider the source.” She rounded on Barin. “Ensign Serrano, Admiral, has a grudge against me . . . he thought his family position gave him a right to . . . to take liberties beyond his rank. I had to be quite firm with him and he knows I could have reported him for harrassment. He probably made up this nonsense just to get back at me—”

Barin felt the blood rushing to his head, but a stern look from Escovar kept him silent. Admiral Hornan gave a short nod in Barin’s direction, and cocked his head at Escovar.

“Well, Commander? I find the foolish behavior of a hot-blooded young man of a high-status family more likely than illegal acts by someone like Lieutenant Ferradi . . .”

“Admiral, with all due respect, that won’t do. Lieutenant Ferradi was pursuing Ensign Serrano, not the other way around. I knew it, and so did everyone else on the ship. You will find references to Lieutenant Ferradi’s behavior in her previous fitness reports; her present position in the last promotion cohort of her class reflects that behavior.”

“That’s not true!” Ferradi said. Her high color was patchy now, flushing and fading on those perfect cheekbones.

“And while her sexual proclivities would not, in themselves, be cause for disciplinary action as long as she did not interfere with anyone’s fitness for duty, her intrusion into secured databases, her altering of the data, and her lies about other officers—including Ensign Serrano—would be.”

“And you think you have proof of this?” Hornan asked. Barin watched Ferradi pale, as the change in his tone and expression got through to her. He could almost feel sympathy, because in that moment Hornan was changing sides, preparing to divest himself of an embarrassment.

“Yes. We have the records of such intrusion, from a datawand initialized for Lieutenant Ferradi, along with vid records of her using it that are contemporaneous with the intrusion and alteration.”

“I didn’t . . .” Ferradi breathed. But the admiral did not look at her now.

“How detailed are these records?”

“Extremely, Admiral. They include all the authorization codes she used to complete her intrusion, and to fake—I presume—the orders for the alterations.”

Now the admiral did look at Ferradi, and Barin hoped very much no such look would ever be turned on him. “I would have to see such proof,” he said slowly, with almost no expression. “But if you have it—”

“We do, Admiral.”

“Then Lieutenant Ferradi is, as you say, facing serious charges. Lieutenant, your datawand, if you please.”

Ferradi pulled it out slowly, and laid it on the admiral’s desk.

“And that report you were working on is—where, Lieutenant?”

“On my desk, Admiral. But the admiral knows who—”

“You will consider yourself confined to quarters, Lieutenant. You will speak to no one except the investigating officer, when such has been appointed.”

“But Admiral—it’s a plot—it’s—”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Barin shivered as she turned and passed him. He had disliked her; he had come to despise her; for what she had almost done to Esmay, he could have hated her. But he would have wished on no one the devastation he saw deep in those violet eyes.

When the door had closed, Escovar said, “Admiral—she used your access codes. I’m afraid there’s no way to keep that out of the records.”

“Well—she would, wouldn’t she, if she wanted to alter data? She’d have to have someone with enough authority.”

“Did you give her those codes?”

Hornan pulled himself up. “Commander, I may have been an idiot, but you are not the person who will handle the investigation of this matter. It goes to internal security, as you very well know. And I will answer their questions, to the best of my ability, but not yours.” He paused, then went on. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I now have to revise my opinion of Lieutenant Suiza?”

“No, Admiral, I’m not. What the admiral thinks of Lieutenant Suiza is the admiral’s business; she’s not my officer. But if the data are tainted—”

“Oh yes, oh yes.” Hornan waved a hand. “First things first. We have to inform internal security, and then Grand Admiral Savanche. He’s going to be so pleased about this! Just what he needs, something else to worry about—” He hit the comunit control so hard it double-buzzed. “Get me internal security—”

“Admiral Serrano’s going to have a clear run with the task force,” Escovar commented on the way back to Gyrfalcon.

“Why, sir?”

“Because Hornan’s not going to risk what you might say if he tries for it. Don’t play stupid, Ensign—you know as well as I do that he must have been involved at some level. For one thing Ferradi isn’t smart enough to get his codes without his help. And Pell couldn’t help her—he couldn’t remember his own codes, let alone the admiral’s. Now if that civilian—Lady Marta whatshername—can put a collar on Lord Thornbuckle, we might finally get this rescue attempt off the ground.”

“Sir.”

“It’s been a mess,” Escovar went on, lengthening his stride. “It wouldn’t have been easy anyway, but Thornbuckle’s been more hindrance than help, and Hornan has kept putting obstacles in the way—and I would never have suspected that nailing Ferradi would get rid of the other problems, too.”

Such as what to do about Esmay Suiza. Barin waited for his captain’s dismissal, then made his way to the first public com booth he could find, and looked up Esmay’s comcode. She had one now, he was glad to see.

Her voice answered, crisp and professional.

“Lieutenant—it’s Ensign Serrano. I—” How was he going to say this? “I’d like—I need—to talk to you.”

A long pause, during which he felt himself turning hot, then cold, then hot again.

“In the office, or—I mean—” Her voice had softened, and sounded almost as tentative as his.

“Anywhere. There’s something you need to know, and besides—” Besides, I love you madly was not something he could say over a public line.

“How about the base library. Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

“Fifteen; I’m just outside Gyrfalcon.”

He made it in ten, nonetheless, not realizing until he almost overran a pair of commanders strolling ahead of him just how fast he was going. Patience. Calmness. He paused in the library entrance, and didn’t see her coming in either direction. Ducked inside, and—there she was.

“Lieutenant . . .”

“Ensign.” But her eyes glowed; her whole being glowed. And there were people who had thought he might be attracted to Casea Ferradi!

“I’m so sorry—” he said, and found that his words had tangled with hers. The same words. Silently, he looked at her, and she looked back.

Waltraude Meyerson had been watching the young female officer’s lame attempt to pretend an interest in the online catalog. She was waiting for someone; it was not the first time Waltraude had seen a student hanging around waiting for another; she could not mistake it. Sure enough, a few minutes later a young male officer arrived. They spoke; they paused; they blushed and stammered. It was all very normal, but also very distracting when she was trying to correlate Professor Lemon’s data with her own for the impeccably organized report she would present in a few hours.

The librarian was, of course, nowhere to be seen; he never was at this time of day. That didn’t bother Waltraude ordinarily, since she didn’t need his help to navigate her own and Professor Lemon’s databases, but he was responsible for keeping order. Without his direction, and left to their own devices, these two would murmur sweet nothings for hours . . . she knew their type. Waltraude rose to her full height and cleared her throat. The two looked at her with the guilty expression typical of young love.

“This is a library, not a trysting place,” Waltraude said firmly. “Kindly go pursue your passion elsewhere.” Shock blanked their expressions for a moment, then they turned and left quickly. Better. Perhaps now she could find a way to convince these military people that the key to extracting people from a hostile society would come from better thinking, not more guns.

“I love you madly,” Barin said, the moment they got out the door.

“Me, too,” said Esmay, and blinked back tears. Then she giggled. “Wasn’t she awful?”

“Yes—oh, Esmay, let’s not ever ever fight again.”

“My cousin Luci says people in love can fight and get over it.”

“And her background is—?”

“More experience than I’ve got. She said I was an idiot.”

“Maybe,” Barin said, daring to close in, after a quick look up and down the corridor, and smell her hair. “But you’re my idiot.” He looked her up and down. “Dear idiot. Lieutenant, sir.” He felt like dancing down the corridor, or walking on his hands, or something equally ridiculous. “Oh, and by the way—Lieutenant Ferradi is confined to quarters and will be facing charges.”

“What!?”

“I can’t tell you all of it—I mean, I’d better not, at least not out here, but that’s why I had to avoid you after you got back—I was supposed to pretend to go along with her.”

“I think she lied about me,” Esmay said.

“She did more than that—she was trying to insert incriminating stuff in your old personnel and legal files. But we really shouldn’t discuss that right now.”

“Fine. Let’s discuss—”

“Us,” Barin said. “Maybe with something to eat?”

“So—now that your agent has confirmed that she’s there, and knows where she is—we get to the specifics.” The speaker, a commander with the shoulder flashes of headquarters staff, put up a chart. “It’s not unheard of for men to sneak over the back wall of the nursery compound for a quick poke at some woman they particularly want. He can grab her, bundle her into his groundcar, and be out of the city in twenty minutes.”

It sounded like a ridiculous plan to Marta, but she had given up trying to convince them that they had to cooperate with Brun, not treat her like lost luggage. She glanced across the room at Professor Meyerson, who had come with her usual stack of books, papers, and data cubes. Meyerson had footnotes and bibliography to back up her views—which were similar to Marta’s—but that hadn’t worked either.

“What if she resists?” asked a female commander across the room. “How will she know this man is our agent?”

“He can tell her,” the first commander said.

And she’s supposed to believe that, Marta thought, after almost two years of captivity? It might work, or Brun—being Brun—might clobber the fellow and take the car herself. And then where would they be? She would have no idea where to go, and they would have no idea what had happened.

“He tells us that for enough money he can get her passage offworld in a small atmospheric shuttle. He will take her out of the city, provide a disguise, and then send her to this other person. Our present plan is to insert an SAR—which can approach quite close in microjumps—to pick her up, with the rest of the task force standing by at a distance in case of trouble.”

Someone else asked the question Marta wanted to ask, about system defenses, and she listened to the answer with half her mind, the other half wondering what Brun was doing. Not sitting still waiting to be rescued, that much she was sure of.

Brun picked up the paring knife, and slid it into her sleeve. The matron was supposed to count the knives each day, but she didn’t. She liked to doze in her own room, after swigging from an earthenware jar, and a good half the time left the kitchen unlocked. Brun had checked that repeatedly, making sure that her theft had a reasonable chance of going unnoticed.

The knife’s pressure against her arm, under the bands she’d tied to hold it, gave her courage again. She had waited as long as she could; she dared not wait longer for rescue. Neither she nor her babies had to live in this place . . . but when she laid the blade to the moist soft neck of the sleeping redhead (she was sure which his father was), she knew she could not do it. She didn’t love the babies, not as mothers were reputed to do, the way the other mothers here seemed to love theirs, but she didn’t hate them, either. It was not their fault; they had not engendered themselves on her unwilling body.

She could not take them with her when she escaped, though. She was going to have to disguise herself as a man, somehow . . . and men did not carry babies around the streets, even if two squirming and all-too-vocal babies would not have slowed her down too much. If she left them behind, they would be squalling for their next meal in just an hour or so . . . yet she could not face killing them, just to give herself a longer start.

Another idea occurred to her. Though the nursery had no drugs that she knew—and she knew nothing about which, if any, of the herbs in the pantry might put the babies to sleep, there was a simple soporific available to anyone with access to fruit and water and a little time.

In late afternoon she walked as usual in the orchard, carrying one baby on her back and the other in front. Her feet had toughened; the gravel paths no longer hurt her. Beneath the long skirt, her legs had developed ropes of hard muscle from the exercises she’d sweated on. Without the babies, she would be able to move fast and far; she would be able to fight, if she was not taken off-guard. She did not intend to be off-guard again. If only she knew where . . . where to find Hazel and the little girls, where to find open country in which—she was sure—she could hide.

Out of sight of the house, she slid the knife into her hand, and then laid it in the crotch of an apple tree. She checked to be sure that the blade would not glint in the light and catch someone’s eye. She stuffed some of last year’s fallen leaves around it, and strolled on, coming back to the house with a spray of wildflowers in her hand.

Two days later, she pilfered a jug from the kitchen. She carried it into the orchard, concealed in the sling she now used to carry the babies. It was the wrong season for ripe fruit, but she had dried fruit, always available to the women, honey, and water.

The mix fermented in only a few days of warm sunshine. It smelled odd, but definitely alcoholic. She tasted it cautiously. It had a kick . . . enough, she hoped, to put the babies heavily to sleep.

As the task force planning crept onward, Marta kept a weather eye on Bunny. He had not softened his opposition to Esmay Suiza, even when it became obvious that much of the evidence against her had been lies and more lies. Why not? She had known him most of his life; he was neither stupid nor vicious. His reputation for staying calm in a crisis, and being fair to all parties, had made him the one person the Grand Council would trust after Kemtre’s abdication. So why was he, at this late date, trying to make sure Suiza didn’t go with the task force?

She was tempted to contact Miranda, conspicuously absent, but refrained. Never get between man and wife, her grandmother had taught her, and in her life she’d seen nothing but grief come of it when someone tried. So, five days before the task force was due to depart, she tackled him privately.

“Don’t start,” Bunny said, before she even opened her mouth. “You’re going to tell me Suiza isn’t that bad, that she’s earned her slot as exec on Shrike, that it’s not fair to pull her off—”

“No,” Marta said. “I’m going to ask you why you blame Suiza for Brun’s behavior.”

“She drove her into a frenzy—” Bunny began. Marta interrupted.

“Bunny—who chose Brun’s genome pattern?”

“We did, of course—”

“Including her personality profile?”

“Well . . . yes, but—”

“You told me before, you deliberately chose a risk-taking profile. You chose outgoing, quick-reacting, risk-taking, a girl who would always find the glass half-full, and think a roomful of manure meant a cute pony around the corner.”

“Yes . . .”

“And you got a charming, lovable scapegrace, full of mischief as a basket of kittens, and you enjoyed it for years, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“You spoiled her, Bunny.” He stared at her, his ears reddening. “You chose for her a personality profile, a physical type, and a level of intelligence which would predictably make her likely to get into certain kinds of trouble . . . and what did you do, in her young days, to provide the counterbalance she needed, of judgement and self-control?”

“We’d had other children, Marta. We were experienced parents—”

“Yes, for the bright conformists you designed first. And they turned out well—you had given them what they needed.” Marta calculated the pause, then went on. “Did you give Brun what she needed?”

“We gave her everything—” But his gaze wavered.

“Bunny, I know this sounds like condemnation, but it’s not. Brun is a very unusual young woman, and she would have needed a very unusual childhood to bring her to her present age able to handle her talents safely. It’s no wonder you and Miranda, enchanted just like everyone else with that explosion of joy, didn’t provide the kind of background that would do her good.” She paused again; Bunny almost nodded—she could see the softening of the muscles in his neck. “But it’s my opinion that your real objection to Esmay Suiza—perhaps unknown to you—is that she’s like Brun with a throttle, with controls. And her father, whatever he’s like, did a better job for his daughter than you did for yours.”

Bunny reddened again. “She’s not anything—”

“Oh yes, she is. Have you read the combat reports on her? I have. Intelligent, very. Charismatic—yes, especially in a crisis. Risk-taker—she came back to Xavier and saved the planet—and incidentally, Brun. Brun thought they had a lot in common; that’s why she was dogging Suiza like a little girl tagging a big sister.”

“I . . . can’t believe that.”

“I can’t believe you’re still not seeing your own part in this. That’s why you didn’t want Miranda out here, isn’t it? She’d admit it, and she’d argue with you.”

“I . . . I . . . can’t . . .”

“Bunny, it’s still not your fault. I think you made mistakes, but so does every parent—your father certainly did with you. But it’s also not Lieutenant Suiza’s fault. She didn’t drive Brun into a mindless frenzy that lasted thirty-odd days. She had a quarrel which would’ve been over with the next day if they’d had a chance to make up—and in your heart you know that. Channel your rage where it should go, to those thugs who took her, and quit trying to lay your guilt on Suiza.”

He was looking away from her; she waited until the muscle in his jaw quit twitching.

“We need everyone’s best, to get her out,” Marta said, more gently. “Lieutenant Suiza’s best is very good—and it could save Brun’s life.”

“All right.” He had not moved, but the tension had gone out of him. “As far as I’m concerned, she can go. But . . . but if she does anything to harm Brun’s chances—”

“I will personally take her hide off in strips,” Marta said. “Nice narrow ones, very slowly. With Miranda on the other side, and Vida Serrano in the middle. And you can have her kidneys on toast, for all I care.”

That got a laugh, though a choked one. “It’s so small a chance,” Bunny said, after a pause. Marta could hear the tears close to the surface. “So small . . .”

“You just increased it,” Marta said. “Now—shall I tell the admiral, or will you?”