Sporting Chance

Chapter Fourteen

“We’re almost there,” Brun said. Cecelia had come to prefer her hands to others; she had no professional skill, but a very human affection to convey. Amazing how different she was from the girl who had thrown up in the lounge of Cecelia’s yacht. It was hard to believe she had ever seemed a shrill-voiced selfish fluffhead. Was it the adventure she’d had on the island, or just normal maturation? She had helped dress Cecelia, this time in clothes Cecelia could feel—soft pants and shirt, a soft tunic, low soft boots. She had helped lift Cecelia into the hoverchair; the inflated supports held Cecelia’s head steady and gave her, she hoped, the look of someone disabled but alert. For now, the hoverchair was locked down . . . Cecelia felt a moment’s panic, but Brun’s hand stroking her hair calmed her. She hated herself for that panic; she could not get used to being helpless, blind, vulnerable. She wanted to be brave and calm. “It’s all right,” Brun was saying. “You are brave. It’s just—no one could be, every single minute.”

If this was what children could be like, she should have had children. Ronnie, whom she’d despised, and this girl, whom she had once dismissed as a fluffhead, had rescued her when adults her own age either didn’t care or couldn’t think what to do. She would have to revise her ideas about young people. Of course, when she herself was young she’d known young people had sense. But looking back at her own idiocies later, she’d forgotten the generosity, the courage . . .

Pressure pushed her back into the chair. They were close, then, to the landing site. A thud, a rumble that rattled her bones. Landing, rolling along a landing field. Her stomach argued; without sight, she felt nausea and swallowed it nervously.

The chair, unlocked, floated at Brun’s push through air that stank of fuels and hot metals and plastics, then into a smell of leather and dust. She heard the clicks that meant the chair was being locked down again. She heard the rustle of clothes, the thump of cases being loaded. A vehicle, filling with people and luggage. Then a jerk and swerve, and more movement she could not see.

A cool current of air blew the hair off her face. Soon it smelled of morning in the country, though a different country than she’d left. A pungent herb tickled her nose, teasing her with a vagrant memory. She should know that smell, and these others that crowded in: pines, dew-wet grass under the sun, plowed fields, horses, cattle, goats. Cecelia breathed it in. Only a few weeks ago, she’d been trapped in the sterile room without even the scent of flowers. Now . . . she could eat, and move a few muscles on her own, and live in a place that smelled good.

Finally it all came together, the sharp smell of the purple-flowered herb, the broader, roasting scent of tall yellow flowers edging the road, the squatty resinous pines of the dry hills and the lush grass of valleys. She knew which planet, of all the planets she’d visited, and she began to suspect the exact place.

She knew when the vehicle turned where she had come. Her body had felt that sequence of swerves and bounces too often to forget it. Into her mind sprang the picture she had had so long on the screen of her study . . . the stable yard, with its rows of stalls . . . the cats sprawled in the sun after a night chasing mice . . . the long house with its high-ceilinged rooms that were cool even in midsummer.

She felt the hot tears running down her face. “Do you know where you are now?” asked Brun. Her shoulder came up, emphatic yes. I’m home, she wanted to say. I’m where I should never have left. Home on Rotterdam, at the stable I left to Meredith. The vehicle they were in—the old farm van?—rolled to a bumpy stop. Had no one ever fixed that wet spot in the driveway? She knew within ten centimeters where they were, just far enough past the mud puddle that someone stepping out wouldn’t land in it, pulled to one side to let the hay trucks get to the gate.

A horse whickered, down the row, and another answered. Near feeding time, she thought. She heard a door open, heard the clatter of pails, and someone in boots scuffing out of the feed room. She smelled hay, and oats, and molasses, and horses, and leather . . .

But it was going to be worse, in a way. To be here, among horses and the people who cared for them, and be unable to move, to see, to talk, to ride. Pain and longing contended in her mind. Another horse whickered. She recognized that it was not the same as either of the others; at least she had not lost her ear for horse voices. Though what good it would do . . . she argued back at herself. At least it was going to be better than that sterile nursing home. And they thought she had a chance of recovery, at least partial recovery.

She felt the coolness when the hoverchair reached the shadow of the entrance. Up three steps and across the porch. The house smelled different. Someone here had cooked foods she didn’t particularly like, and the downstairs hall didn’t have the pleasant aroma of leather, but a more formal scent—something floral but artificial. But she recognized the soft rattle of the lift doors, and the machine-oil smell. She had had the lift installed after struggling up the spiral stairs one too many times on crutches . . . that broken ankle, the third one. She wouldn’t buy a hoverchair then; only old people used them. Brun pushed her hoverchair into the lift, and slid the doors closed.

The lift jerked, and whined, and they were on their way upstairs. She wished she could see the upstairs passage, with the arched windows on either end, and the shining wood floor—or was it still shining? She could hear Brun’s shoes on the floor, and it sounded polished.

“You’ll be in your own room,” Brun said. “It’s not the same, of course. The furnishings—do you want me to describe them?” She waited while Cecelia thought about that. She had such vivid memories of this room, every detail of fabric, every ornament on the shelf above the window. She wanted to sink back into that . . . and yet, the room sounded different, and smelled different. She’d have that discord between the visual memory and the auditory reality if she clung to the past.

Her shoulder jerked yes, and Brun squeezed it a moment. “I’ll bet you remember everything, and wish you could keep it that way. But here’s what it looks like to me. The walls are dark cream—” They’d aged, Cecelia thought. They needed a new coat of paint every few years to keep the precise tone Cecelia had chosen. “—there’s a medbed in place of yours; you’ll be on monitoring awhile longer. But the cover is one of those Rekkian handwoven blankets in green and gold and tan, with flecks of orange in the gold. The pattern’s more an irregular stripe than anything else. The bed has its head against the far wall; the window over the yard will be on your left as you lie in bed. Is that right?” Cecelia signalled yes again. “Good. We didn’t put anything on the windows. There’s a wooden chest, painted oxblood red, against the wall opposite the bed, and a tall bookcase/chest on the wall to the right, next to that window. A couple of reproduction Derrian side chairs we picked up in the city, and no rug in here at all.”

Cecelia wanted to ask about the pictures on the wall. She had taken her Piucci originals, the portraits of her top horses, but had left behind the old hunting scenes. But Brun said nothing about that. She heard other footsteps in the passage, and waited.

“Here are your clothes,” Dr. Czerda said. “Your new clothes, I should say. Your friends thought of trying to get your own, clothes you knew by feel and smell, but decided it was too risky. Brun gave us a shopping list, and you’re now equipped with the basics, in colors she remembers you wearing. Including riding attire.”

Riding attire? She couldn’t ride—might never ride again. For all she knew, she was bloated up to the size of Brun’s hot air balloon, and no horse could hold her up. She jerked her shoulder No and hoped it carried the exclamation point she intended.

“Yes,” Brun said. “You’ve got breeches and boots and helmet for the very good reason that you’re going to ride again. You are!” In that was the fierceness of the young, who thought wanting something enough made it happen. Cecelia had heard that tone in her own voice, when she’d insisted she would ride again, after this or that accident. Then she had believed it. Now . . . she wasn’t sure.

“You’re facing a time limit,” the doctor said. “One formal—the legal requirement to show competency before your estate is finally distributed—and one informal—before whoever did this to you finds you. So we aren’t going to waste any time: you will have a full schedule of rehab work, every day, no vacations.”

Cecelia thought about that, and her immediate wish to stretch out on that unseen medbed, and jerked her shoulder Yes with as much emphasis as the earlier No. She was tired, but better to be tired than forever lost in this helplessness.

“Except tonight,” the doctor said. “Most of your therapists are still in transit. We didn’t want to make it obvious where you were if someone is keeping track of them, so they’ve had to take roundabout routes. So tonight you can just rest.”

Until that moment, she hadn’t thought of pursuit—Brun had mentioned it, but reality itself seemed hardly real. Now, with the familiar smells and sounds around her, the thought of being recaptured, returned to a blank prison existence, terrified her. It was the wrong place; it was the obvious place. Anyone would know where she was. What fools!

Brun recognized her panic somehow. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “It’s not as obvious as you think.”

Why not? she wanted to say. Brun went on to explain. Rotterdam had horses, but no advanced medical facilities. It was far from the logical place for someone in her condition. Moreover, her lifelong investments in Rotterdam—not only money, but time and friendship—meant that few mouths would talk. And even if they did, Rotterdam lay far off the usual networks of transport and communication.

“They’ll figure out it was Dad’s yacht, eventually. They’ll think of Sirialis, and then Corhulm, where most of our pharmaceutical research is done. They may send a query about Rotterdam, but—I’m assured nothing will come of it. At least for months.”

Cecelia hoped Brun was right. She would much rather die than go back to that nonlife.

Her earlier experiences in recovering from more minor injuries helped only a little. It had been twenty years since her last broken bone—well, large broken bone—and longer than that since the near-fatal headlong crash in the Trials. She had forgotten how infuriating it was to struggle, panting, for what seemed like hours, in order to twitch something slightly—and then have the physical therapist’s bright, cheerful voice say, “Pretty good, hon, now do it again.” And again and again, until she was a quivering wreck. She had forgotten how much weakened muscles and ligaments hurt when forced to work again; she had forgotten how even the best therapists talked over patients’ heads, as if they weren’t really there. “There’s a spike on that adductus longius” and “Yeah, and isn’t that a twitch in the flexor radialis?” and “If she doesn’t get something going on these extensors we’re going to have to start splinting; the tone’s up on the flexors.” She hated that; she wanted them to remind her what they were talking about, and what it meant.

And she was tired. Bone-tired, sore, short of sleep—because she woke in a panic, night after night, afraid she was back in the nursing home. With so limited a communication system, she couldn’t tell them that, and they’d decided she would sleep better alone. She was too old for this; she didn’t have the resilience, the sheer energy, that she had had two decades before. She had not believed she was old—not the woman who could still ride to hounds—but now she believed it. If she had been able to talk, she would have said it; she would have argued, out of exhaustion and despair, that they were wasting their time. She couldn’t talk; she could only endure.

But twice a day, between sessions with physical therapists and occupational therapists and massage therapists and tests and all the rest, Brun took her out to the stable yard. That was her reward for a good morning, incentive for a good afternoon. She learned each horse’s voice, and the voices of the stablehands only a few days later. Brun poured handfuls of sweet feed into her passive hand, and she felt the soft velvet horse lips mumbling over her palm. Brun lifted her hands, and laid them against satiny necks and shoulders. The first time her fingers really moved, it was along a horse’s shoulder; her first strong grasp was of a horse’s mane.

And yet she hated the obviousness of it. She did not want her love of horses to be so utilitarian, so selfish. They deserved her love for themselves, not because it could help her therapy. She would have sulked, except how could she sulk when she couldn’t talk at all? How could she rage, when her movements were slow and awkward, and she couldn’t scream?

Cecelia free. Heris held that thought in mind as she laid out the roundabout safe course from their present location to the Guerni Republic. It had to be Brun’s plan; she told herself that the villains in this piece had no reason to abscond with Cecelia. Only her friends did; only Brun could have put together the resources to do it. She imagined Cecelia in Sirialis; it was easy to imagine her in rooms Heris had seen, around horses and people she knew. Obvious, of course, to the king and anyone else, but—she put it out of her mind. Brun had acted; the first part had gone well. She could do nothing herself until she’d delivered these clones and the prince (if he was one of them). Then, she promised herself, then she would find Cecelia.

Somewhat to Heris’s surprise, the rest of the trip to the Guerni Republic went peacefully, jump point after jump point, day after day after day. The three clones, each of whom insisted he was not the prince, were less trouble than Ronnie and George had been at first. They agreed to wear nametags to help the crew avoid the confusion of offering a meal to a clone who had already eaten. This helped, although it occurred to Heris that they might switch the nametags for a lark. Heris could not assess their intelligence, not with the possibility—no, likelihood—that they would not cooperate and perform at their best. Yet they seemed to have more common sense than she’d expected.

“There’s no use our pretending, with all three of us here,” A. said when she asked. “Our cover’s blown, totally, as far as you and the others aboard this ship are concerned. You know we’re clones of the prince; you know what that means legally. It wouldn’t matter if one of us were the prince; the damage has already been done.”

Heris didn’t like the sound of that. Cold tickles ran down her spine, as if a frozen cockroach were rousing there. “You mean we’re now a danger to the prince, or to the Crown?”

“No—we are.” That one wore Gerald B.’s tag. “After all, that cruiser captain knows; some of his crew either know or suspect. There’s no way to be sure the secret’s safe even if they silenced you. They’ll probably dump us.”

“Kill you?” asked Petris, putting down his fork.

“No, there are other ways. They can do plastic surgery to make us no longer doubles, and there’s some kind of way to mark our genomes more prominently.”

“Look through the microscope and the chromosomes spell CLONE,” said one of the others. He sounded perfectly calm about it; Heris wondered if that was part of their act.

“But what will you do?” Petris asked. “Have you had any . . .” He paused, struggling for a tactful way to say it.

“Job training?” asked the one with the C. tag. “No, we just laze around acting like silly-ass rich boys.” One of the others snorted, and Heris realized it was supposed to be a joke.

“Some,” said the one who had snorted. “Lots of courses in all sorts of things he’s supposed to know. Of course, we didn’t attend formal classes, or get degrees, but I’m sure they’ll cobble up some sort of resume for us.”

They seemed remarkably unconcerned, but they were, Heris reminded herself, twenty or more years younger than she. People that age had more confidence than their lack of experience warranted.

Except for Sirkin. Something was wrong, and Heris couldn’t quite figure it out. Of course, she would still be grieving for Amalie—that might be it. She had seen violent death up close for the first time in her life, and the victim was someone she loved. But Heris had seen other young people deal with their first serious losses. Usually, they came back to normal in fits and spurts, but with an upward trend. Sirkin had seemed to be recovering normally, but then took a downward turn. Heris didn’t expect her to be lively, happy, or full of the sparkle that had first convinced her the girl was a good prospect, but she did expect consistent good work at her job. And that’s where Sirkin had begun to fail.

Only little things so far—a missing log entry after a course change, a data cube left out on the counter rather than filed in its case. Heris had been tactful at first, murmuring reminders when she found the data cube, noticed the missing entry. Sirkin had looked appropriately remorseful and made quick corrections. But it went on. The other crew had noticed, and Heris arrived on the bridge one day to find Oblo giving Sirkin a serious scolding.

“I don’t care what your problem is, bright eyes, but if you don’t shape up, the captain’ll kick your tail off this ship the next port we come to. It’s not like you can’t do better—we know you can. And don’t tell me it’s grieving over Yrilan, because we could tell you were really falling for Brun.” Heris paused, just out of sight. Perhaps Oblo could do better at unkinking Sirkin than she had so far.

“But I tell you, I did log the jump coordinates. I entered them shift before last—” Sirkin sounded more defensive than apologetic.

“They’re not here. And Issi was on just after you—are you telling me he wiped your log entry?”

“No! I don’t know—I know I made that entry; I went over it twice because I know I’ve been making mistakes somehow . . . it was there, I swear—”

“Don’t bother; you don’t know how.” Oblo in that mood was dangerous; Heris could feel the hostility oozing out of him from here. “See here, girl: you have only two possibilities. Either you didn’t enter anything, or someone wiped it. I know damn well Issi wouldn’t wipe it, nor would I, nor would the captain. Who are you accusing? You think one of those clones sneaked in here?”

“I don’t know!” Sirkin’s voice trembled; Heris heard her take a deep breath that was almost a sob. “I don’t know what’s happening . . . I was so careful . . . and then it’s gone . . .”

“I’ve got to tell the captain; you know that. I can’t pretend not to notice something like that. It could kill us all later.”

“I know that,” Sirkin said. “I—I can’t explain it.” Heris shook her head, and went on in. Sirkin looked tired and unkempt—that was new. She had always been neatly groomed and bright-eyed. What could be wrong with the girl?

“Ms. Sirkin . . . I’ll see you in my office, please.” She did not miss the desperate look Sirkin threw at Oblo, who gave her no encouragement at all.

Sirkin’s explanation, if one could call it that, made little sense. She was trying to be careful; she didn’t understand how these mistakes happened; she was sure she’d logged the course changes and jump points, and had no idea how they had vanished from the log. Her hands trembled, and her eyes were bloodshot.

“Are you taking anything?” Heris asked. Drugs seemed likely, given the combination of physical appearance and absentmindedness. Sirkin hadn’t used before, that she knew of, but in the stress of Yrilan’s death perhaps the girl had started.

“No, ma’am. Not even the pills the doctor gave me after . . . after Amalie . . .” Her voice broke. “Things are just coming undone,” she said, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. “And . . . and that makes me sound like Amalie. She used to say things like that . . . I wonder if she felt like this, trying and trying and nothing seems to work . . .”

Heris had no intention of getting off into that blind alley. Amalie Yrilan’s excuses were no longer anyone’s problem. “Sirkin, we both know you’re capable of better. You were doing extremely well up until we left Rockhouse Major. You must have some idea what’s gone wrong. Is someone . . . bothering you?” She was sure she could trust her former crew not to harass a young civilian, but it was only fair to ask. Skoterin, the newest? She’d have expected one of the others to notice and straighten out the offender, or tell her. No, more likely one of the clones, assuming a royal right to any pretty face and body. She wouldn’t put it past them to bring drugs aboard, either.

“No, ma’am. Nobody’s bothered me. I know I . . . still miss Amalie, but I honestly don’t think it’s that. It’s just—I do something, or think I do something, and then later it’s not done. I don’t understand it. Maybe I’m going crazy.” She looked up with an expression Heris had seen too many times on youngsters who had somehow gotten out of their depth and hoped an elder had a magic solution. “Going crazy” had been a favorite hypothesis in one ship, because there were medicines for going crazy. Simple inattention and laziness had no cure.

“I don’t think you’re going crazy,” Heris said. She tried to sound both calm and firm. “But I do think you can pull yourself together—and you must. Tell you what. Let’s let another bridge officer sign off on your log entries for a few days. If those entries disappear, we’ll know it’s not your fault . . . and you’ll have a witness to having made them. How’s that?” It was an insult, but Sirkin took the suggestion as gratefully as if it had been praise. “Now—take the rest of this shift off—we’ve no jump points coming up—and put yourself to bed. You look exhausted.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Heris expected, Sirkin’s log entries didn’t disappear when someone else countersigned them. So . . . logically . . . Sirkin had never made the earlier entries. It wasn’t a computer glitch; it was the far more common human error. Sirkin seemed to be making fewer of them now, in all categories—another data point on the plot of carelessness. Her appearance improved; she looked almost normal, if not the bright-eyed girl she had been. Oblo and Issi reported that she seemed alert, careful, everything she should be.

Just to be sure, Heris asked about conflicts with the crew; as she’d expected, they all insisted they liked the girl. None of them reported conflict with anyone else. And a discreet surveillance indicated that she wasn’t sneaking off to one of the clones (or any of them to her) when she was off-duty.

Yet . . . what had made Sirkin suddenly careless? Even in the aftermath of Amalie’s death, she had done tedious jobs with her former precision. Why now? Heris worried, unsatisfied. She sensed something wrong and promised herself to pursue it once the clones had been delivered safely for medical attention.

One morning Cecelia lay in her bed and did her best to hate herself to death. She was too old to rage at simple unfairness, but the unfairness of her situation went beyond anything she could accept. When Brun came to dress her and take her to breakfast, she did not respond to the usual morning sallies. The smell of hot bread and sage honey roused no response. She wasn’t hungry, and she wouldn’t eat. After the necessary rituals of personal care, she waited for her first workout, numb and passive.

“We’ve got someone new,” Dr. Czerda said. Czerda had begun to sound increasingly apologetic; it grated on Cecelia. “A specialist who might help. We had to wait, because she’s so well-known—just the person they might be watching.”

“Hi,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m Carly, your new therapist.” Another new therapist. Cecelia needed that like she needed a fluorescent bathing suit. She was glad she couldn’t say what first came to mind: such a string of obscenity would alienate all of them. “You’re very angry,” Carly said, in a voice that offered neither blame nor apology. “Did you know you could show that without words?”

Cecelia did not bother to twitch her answer. It was a lucky guess, that was all, or the infuriating certainty that she was in a predicted stage. They couldn’t tell; they’d been nagging her because she didn’t have control of her facial muscles, so it couldn’t be the scowl she would like to have worn.

A warm hand lay on her arm; it radiated comfort. “Here,” Carly said. “Anger tenses certain muscle groups, and fear tenses different ones. You’re tense in all the anger groups. I don’t think the others saw that, because of the overall weakness. Does it make you even more angry that I know you’re angry?”

Cecelia thought about it, drawn into the intellectual puzzle despite herself. If it was an observation of her, of her real self, she didn’t mind. It was being put into a category that made her want to scream.

“You’re not as angry now,” Carly said. Her hand moved slowly along Cecelia’s arm. “Perhaps because I paid real attention to you, and not a theory?” Her voice, almost as warm as her hand, conveyed honest curiosity, real interest.

Cecelia could feel herself calming, the prickly rage receding.

“You’ve had good therapists, but they’re young,” Carly said. “And the enthusiasms of younglings can drive anyone mature to tears or screams. Besides, they’ve worked you too hard. I think you’re tired, more than they’ve believed. Would you like to sleep?”

Cecelia twitched yes, and then shrugged both shoulders.

“You would, but what’s the use? Or, you would but then this session is wasted?” Carly waited. Cecelia wondered how she was supposed to answer that with a yes or no, and in the silence—a peaceful, accepting silence—wondered if she could move anything else enough to communicate. She had clamped onto a horse’s mane, first with her right hand, and then with both. If the first alternative was one hand, the second could be both. She tried to visualize her hands moving, and felt the fabric under her fingers slide across her fingertips.

“Both hands,” Carly said, with approval. “That would be the second choice, I expect. Can you confirm with your shoulder?”

Yes.

“Then I would say this session is not a waste, even if you sleep the rest of it. You’re tense, and angry, and very tired. I’m going to make you comfortable.”

Carly’s warm hands, steady and firm, kneaded sore muscles and ligaments. Not the massages that Cecelia remembered, but something deeper and more serious. Soon she was drifting, not quite in contact with her aging body, but not in the sensory limbo of the drugs. She felt warm, contented, relaxed, and very sleepy.

When she woke, she felt completely adrift. Someone’s hands steadied her back; she was leaning against—over?—something.

“It’s all right,” Carly said. “You slept well, and now you’re resting on a large padded ball. If your arms feel funny, it’s because they’re hanging free, not at your sides.”

It felt worse than funny; it felt ridiculous. Yet it also felt good, and she was rested and comfortable.

“Can you wiggle your hands again?” Carly asked. Something about her voice, her mature, calm voice, maintained the relaxation. Cecelia tried. With her arms resting against the curve of the ball, almost dangling, she could move her fingers. She could feel them shift across the fabric one by one. “Excellent,” Carly said. “Some of the things they worried about aren’t so. You don’t have real spasticity in your fingers; the weakness and the tension in your arms have made it seem so. In this position, when you’re rested, you might even tap a keyboard.”

A keyboard. A keyboard meant letters, meant words, meant language, meant—she had been told this—a speech synthesizer. Real communication, not just twitches and jerks. She wanted to cry and laugh at once; she felt her shoulders seize, cramping. Carly rubbed the cramps out.

“Right now, the biochemical responses of your limbic system are working against you. Like anyone else, you’ll do best when you’re relaxed and happy. That’s my job.”

Why hadn’t the others thought of this? Cecelia felt the difference in Carly’s hands, as they responded to her muscles rather than trying to overpower them. Her arms twitched, trembled, then finally hung relaxed and heavy. Comfortable. It had been so long since she’d been really comfortable.

“It’s been known for a very long time,” Carly said. “But it’s tricky to do, and a lot of people don’t think it’s important. If a regen tank will work, if the rehab is expected to be short, they say why bother? I think it’s always worth it, for the patient’s comfort if nothing else. And in cases like this, it’s essential.”

Cecelia felt mildly alert, rested, ready to try again. That afternoon, the relentless work with weights seemed less impossible. She was sweating, gasping, sore—but it made sense again. Afterwards, Carly gave her another massage, easing the pains of the exercises, and she slept well that night, waking rested and eager to go on.

Day by day, Carly suggested modifications to the various therapists—a tactile guide that let her get a bit of food to her own mouth, a communication system that used every movement she could make to signal meaning. After that came a communication board, with tactile clues for its segments; Carly promised that work on that would give her the strength and precision to use a real keyboard later. Cecelia began to believe again that she could make it out of this mess, that she would not be a helpless blind victim forever. Now her anger rose from impatience, not despair; she wanted her life back, and she wanted it now.

The Guerni Republic traded widely with a dozen different political entities. On one side, the Compassionate Hand and the Familias Regnant beyond. On the other, Aethar’s World and its allies (a confederation so loose it refused the name). On yet another, some solo worlds so scattered that political union had so far been impractical. Like Italy’s central protrusion into the Mediterranean on old Earth (back when that body of water was known as Mare Nostrum), the Guerni Republic enjoyed a location both handy for trade and easy to defend.

Astrophysicists had argued the unlikelihood of six stars of the right type, with assorted habitable planets, arriving at such a configuration by chance, but the unanswerable counterargument was that everything—even the taste of chocolate—was inherently unlikely, difficult as it may be to imagine a universe without chocolate in it. The Guernesi preferred to believe their situation had been created for them by a beneficent deity, and shrugged off contrary theories as the envy of those God chose not to favor. In case that envy went further than bad-mannered carping, the Guernesi maintained an alert and quietly competent military, as the Compassionate Hand had found. As practical in its way as the Guerni Republic, the Benignity declared the Guernesi off-limits to Compassionate Hand activity—at least as long as delicate probes of the defenses showed them to be still alert and effective.

As a result of their location and the resulting trade, the Guernesi had developed efficient and relatively painless entrance protocols. But efficient, painless, and swift did not mean careless.

“While it’s no concern of ours, are you aware that your broadcast ID and your ship do not agree?” asked the bright-faced young woman in blue.

“I beg your pardon?”

“According to our database, the Better Luck was scrapped over in Jim-dandy eight years ago. I know the Familias records aren’t kept that long, but if you bought this ship as the Better Luck we could provide the data to sustain a claim of fraud.” For a price, of course. The Guernesi, polite and willing to help, did nothing for nothing.

“Uh . . . I don’t think that will be necessary.” Heris had trouble not looking at Oblo. He would be embarrassed.

“On the other hand, if you reprogrammed the beacon, your tech did an excellent job—even got the warble in the 92 band exactly right. We have people who would pay a bonus for that kind of work, if that individual is here and wants to immigrate—” Another thing about the Guernesi, they were always looking for a profit.

“Now, I notice you have major ship weapons aboard . . .” And how had they figured that out? With the weapons locked down, no scan should have detected them. “Since you’ve come in past Compassionate Hand space, I’m afraid we’ll have to visually inspect and seal them . . . I don’t want to insult you, but the Benignity tries our borders at intervals.”

“How—!” Oblo couldn’t contain himself. “Your scans are—are they for sale?”

The young woman dimpled at him. “Of course, sir. I can give your captain a list of suppliers certified by the government. We have no restrictions on the foreign purchase of military-grade materials.”

“Mr. Ginese will accompany you on your inspection of the weapons,” Heris said. “What about small arms?”

“May not be taken off the ship; the penalty is death, and destruction of the ship that brought you.” That was clear enough. “If you want to shoot yourselves aboard your own ship, that’s your business.” She spoke into a communicator hooked to her uniform collar; the language was unfamiliar. “I’m just asking our weapons inspection team to step aboard . . . if your Mr. Ginese will meet them at the access hatch?” Of course. Heris was already impressed. She had never been here—R.S.S. vessels visited only on ambassadorial duty—and the rumors she’d heard didn’t begin to match the reality.

“You do not have to state your business here,” the young woman went on, “but if you do, it would be my pleasure to advise you on the easiest way to accomplish your purposes.”

“Medical technology,” Heris said. “I understand that you have superb research and clinical facilities—”

“Yes—can you mention a specialty?”

“Neurology, specifically the treatment of neurochemically induced cognitive dysfunction.” That had been in the papers the king had given her.

“Ah, yes.” The inspector spoke into her collar mic again, and waited a moment. “According to the current listings, I’d recommend Music—”

“Music?” Heris knew she must have looked and sounded as confused as she felt. The younger woman smiled, but not in mockery.

“Sorry, Captain. It’s this translator. All the planets of Guerni’s fifth star are named for the artes liberales: music, mathematics, history, and so on. Music is the planet with the largest medical complex devoted to neurology. From here, it’s a very short jump, and about two weeks on insystem drive—we do ask, by the way, that you do not jump except at the designated jump points: we have a lot of traffic. By the time you arrive, Music Station will have a list of contacts for you. Do you wish to append any patient data at this time?”

“No,” said Heris, feeling slightly overwhelmed. “No, thank you.”

“Our pleasure. As soon as my team reports your weapons sealed, you’re free to go. By the way, while I’m sure you wouldn’t think of doing any such thing, I should warn you that unsealing your weapons will be a cause for retaliation, even should you manage to frustrate the automatic detonators on the seals which are designed to blow a ship of the size that usually carries these weapons. Good day!”

Heris had worried about getting three identical young men named Smith through the Customs Inspection at Music Station. She had imagined every possible complication, but when she brought up the problem, all three laughed.

“We’re used to this,” Gerald A. said. “If we don’t wear the same clothes, or stand together, or go through the same intake booth too close together, no one will notice. All the machines care about is whether our physical features match our formal ID. And of course they do, from blood type and retinal scan to DNA analysis.”

“We can do costuming,” Gerald B. said. “But it’s not really necessary here.” Heris wondered. She still didn’t trust their judgment; she still suspected that one of them actually was the prince, concealed by a shell-game with the nametags. But when they showed up at her office, without the nametags and in different outfits, she had to admit they no longer looked so identical. One wore a scruffy set of spacer coveralls he must have gotten from a crew member; he slouched against the wall looking sullen and grubby. Another displayed himself with the peacock air of a young man of fashion, and the third had the earnest, slightly harried look of a businessman late for a conference. They looked different enough, but how lax were the Guernesi?

Heris continued to worry until she was through Customs herself, with her royal letters to the physicians, and found the three Smiths grinning at her from the shuttle waiting lounge.