Winning Colors

Chapter Twenty

“I don’t like it, letting Raffa go off by herself like this,” Ronnie said. He slapped at a tickfly, and hit it, which left an itchy wet spot on his arm and a mess on his hand.

“She’ll be all right,” George said. “She’s inside, isn’t she? Not out here being eaten up by these . . . things.” He flapped the gray-green cloth hanging down from his hat and swung his arms in a sort of uncoordinated dance. He had draped himself in the recommended insect-proof veil for their trek along the shore, only to discover that tickflies could crawl up the arms . . . and once inside the veil, they couldn’t get back out. Even satiated with blood, they still whined around inside the veil with annoying persistence.

Ronnie looked seaward, where sullen waves lifted murky brown backs; they rolled sluggishly landward and slapped the crumbling shore with spiteful warm hands. Far out, a line of dirty white might mark the reefs he’d seen mentioned in the tourist brochure. Landward, the low boxy shapes of Twoville’s monotonous architecture cast uninteresting shadows as square as the buildings. He hadn’t seen the hotel, but in the transient workers’ hostel, the cramped room smelled of disinfectant and the ventilation fans squeaked monotonously.

“It’s not exactly . . . exotic,” he said. “Not even the planet itself.”

“No.” George kicked at a mound of crumbly stuff, and jumped back as a horde of many-legged, shiny-backed things ran out. He backed up a couple of steps. “Look at that—what d’you suppose . . .”

“Stingtails,” said a voice. They both looked up, to find a tall, lean individual with a slouch hat and long, white, perfectly pointed moustaches grinning at them in a way that emphasized their ignorance. “If I were you,” the man said, “I’d move farther away. Stingtails know the scent of their nest on the critter that kicked it—” George, who had been fascinated by the fast-moving swarm, backed up again and watched as the swarm continued to move toward him. When he shifted sideways, the front end followed his path, but the swarm kinked in the middle as some of the followers caught the scent and cut the corner.

“Dammit!” George backed away faster. “Now what?”

“Hop,” the man advised. “Big hops. When you’re twenty meters away, they’ll lose track.”

George hopped, looking ridiculous with his veil bouncing up and down; Ronnie jogged along, keeping wide of the swarm just in case, and the stranger strolled at ease, hands in his pockets. When they halted again, George breathless and disheveled, Ronnie took a longer look at the stranger.

Despite the old battered hat, with odd decorations stuck in its band (a tiny horseshoe? a fish-hook with feathers? a long, curling quill from some exotic bird? a blue rosette?), the man was otherwise tidily, even foppishly, dressed in crisp khaki slacks and shirt, the pleats pressed to a knife edge. A tiny pink flower in his buttonhole, a perfectly folded white handkerchief peeking from one pleated pocket. Stout low boots of fawn leather. And those moustaches . . . which matched bushy white eyebrows over bright blue eyes.

“You boys must have let Marshall at the station tell you what to buy,” he said. Ronnie would have been annoyed, but he was already hot, sweaty, and bug-bitten. “I can smell the Fly-B-Gone from here . . . but of course it doesn’t repel tickflies. Marshall got it by mistake three years ago, and none of us will buy it—he has to foist it off on tourists.” Another pause; Ronnie slapped at his neck, and missed that tickfly. “Not that we get many tourists,” the old man said. “Certainly not your sort.”

“And what is our sort?” asked George, whose grumpiness always found voice.

“Rich young idiots,” the man said. “More money than sense. I mean, we’d heard the Royals were disbanding, letting loose a plague of your sort, but I thought Patchcock was too far away and too boring to attract any. . . .” His friendly smile mitigated, but did not negate, the sting of that. “And that veil will only trap the tickflies inside,” he said to George. “Besides making you hotter.”

George tore off the veil and glared. “I know that. I was just about to take it off, when—”

“When you kicked a stingtail nest. And now you’re angry with me. I understand.” Ronnie had the odd feeling that he did. In fact, he liked the old fellow, and he hoped George wouldn’t say anything too rude.

“I’m Ronnie Carruthers,” he said, putting his hand out. “And this is George Mahoney.”

The old man looked at his hand, and Ronnie realized it was smeared with blood and tickfly juice. “Sorry,” he said, pulling it back to wipe on his slacks.

“No offense,” the man said. “I’m Hubert de Vries Michaelson. Retired neurosynthetic chemist. Let me tell you what I already know, before you tell me something else. Truth between gentlemen, y’know.”

“Ah . . . yes.” Ronnie slapped another tickfly, and swiped his damp hand surreptitiously on his shirt.

“I wouldn’t do that, by the way. Won’t come out in the wash.” Hubert grinned, showing a row of very white, very strong teeth. “Now—Ronald Vortigern Carruthers and George Starbuck Mahoney. Arrived yesterday, in company of a pretty young girl named Raffaele Forrester-Saenz. Right so far?”

“Yes, but—”

“You’d traveled together from the Guerni Republic, specifically from the planet Music. Kept to yourselves, but the girl let it be known that she and you, Mr. Carruthers, were traveling together in blatant disregard of her family’s wishes.” The old man peered at him, blue eyes suddenly frosty. “I hope that was a cover story.”

Ronnie felt his ears going hot. “Well, sir . . . not exactly. That is, we didn’t start to—it just happened that we—and anyway, it wasn’t like that—”

“I see.” The blue glare didn’t give a millimeter. “Going to marry the girl, are you?”

Ronnie’s spine straightened before he realized it. “Of course!” Then, more calmly, he tried to explain. “We didn’t start out together. George and I were on—we had something to do in the Guerni Republic.” That sounded weak; he rushed on to the part he could tell strangers. “When Raffa showed up alone—”

“You decided she needed an escort—protection?”

“More or less,” said Ronnie. He was not about to explain to this old fellow that the protection had gone the other way. The bright blue eyes blinked, then Hubert grinned.

“Well, well. Young blood. Still runs hot, I see. In that case, young man, you’ve made a serious mistake.”

“What?”

“Letting her go unchaperoned here, of all places.”

Ronnie looked around, but saw no particular menace. Besides, Raffa was safely inside.

“You should have registered with her,” Hubert said. “The people at the hotel think she’s alone.”

That had been the idea. Ronnie fumbled for an explanation and came up with partial truth. “The fact is, sir, that hotel—it’s the only one fit for her, but—but I couldn’t quite—”

“Ah. Funds low, eh? What is it, boy, gambling or chemicals? Give it up, boy. Girl like that is worth it.”

“It’s not that,” Ronnie said, feeling that his ears must be glowing now. “It’s . . . it’s family.” He didn’t want to drag Aunt Cecelia into this, and anyway it wouldn’t make sense to anyone outside.

“It’s his aunt,” George said. George never suffered from this sort of embarrassment. “His aunt’s suing his parents, and that’s why Raffa’s parents wanted her to drop him—because his aunt’s in the mood to put his parents in the poorhouse, and Ronnie along with them.”

“Never mind, George,” Ronnie said. “It’s not quite right, anyway—Aunt Cecelia isn’t vindictive, not really.”

“Cecelia . . .” Hubert said.

“Cecelia de Marktos,” George said. Helpful, that was George. Ronnie wanted to smack him. “Rides horses. Red hair.”

“Ah.” Hubert looked Ronnie up and down again. “That Cecelia?”

“You know her?”

“Never met her. Never heard of her. Now I know.” He shook his head. “You have a problem, boy. Your young lady may be in serious trouble.”

Now Ronnie felt cold. “What? Why do you think that?”

“Because Patchcock in general, and Twoville in particular, are not that friendly to strangers. Especially strangers with a mission.” He gave them that toothy grin again. “And no one is going to believe you sneaked off to Patchcock to enjoy the beautiful scenery together.”

“I’ve got to get back.” Ronnie turned, and took a long stride without looking. This time it was his boot that smashed into a stingtail mound.

“Look out!” Hubert and George yelled together; Ronnie jumped back from the angry writhing swarm of stingtails that poured out of the hole.

“Not so fast,” Hubert said, grabbing his arm. “Here—this way—walk through these—” He led Ronnie a few meters farther from the shore, onto matted rust-brown vegetation that crunched underfoot and released a sharp, garlicky scent. “Now settle down—getting yourself eaten up by stingtails isn’t going to help your young lady.”

“Eaten up?” George asked. He looked back at the mound, now covered with stingtails.

“Of course. Didn’t Marshall tell you? They swarm on you, and start stinging—somewhere between fifty and a hundred stings paralyzes the average human. Unfortunately, it doesn’t numb the rest of the stings . . . we lost quite a few settlers at first, people who thought stingtails were no worse than ordinary ants. Luckily, they can’t follow a scent across stinkfoil.”

“And you didn’t tell me!” George glared. “You had me hopping down the shore like an idiot—”

“It worked,” Hubert said. “Got your attention, too. Now. Enough flabbery-dabbery. Your young lady.”

“She was taking a tour today,” Ronnie said. “Her Aunt Marta, you see, sent her here—”

The old man’s expression so clearly said Pull the other one; it’s got bells on that he didn’t have to open his mouth.

“I know she was taking a tour. The operative question is, did she come back?” Ronnie felt a sinking inside; he could easily imagine his heart having turned to iron, slowly plunging through his guts to the center of the planet.

“We’re supposed to meet tonight,” he said. “At someplace called Black Andy’s, for dinner.”

The blue eyes rolled up. “Oh, dear. Black Andy’s is it? Not wise, not wise at all. Let me tell you what to do. You go back to your digs, get cleaned up. Go by her hotel and see if she’s back. If she is, stay with her—eat there—and you’ll hear from me tomorrow. If she’s not, give me a call—” He fished out an immaculate business card, and handed it over with a flourish. “And do be careful on the way back. No more stingtails.”

“Can’t we just walk on the . . . er . . . stinkfoil?” asked George.

“Not advisable; it’s a bit corrosive—if you’ll look at your bootsoles—” George lifted a foot and winced at the lines etched in the sole. “It would probably eat through before you reached town. If you’re careful along the shore, you shouldn’t have too much trouble. I can’t go with you—wouldn’t be advisable at all, you see.” Ronnie didn’t see, exactly, but he was ready to run the whole distance back to their lodgings, if only it would help Raffa.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “We’ll—we’ll be in touch.”

By the time they got back to their lodgings, they were both hot, sweaty, and reeking of stinkfoil. The one-armed man at the desk glared at them. “Tourists!” he said. “Didn’t have no more sense than to go dancing on stinkfoil—you’ll smell up the whole place.” He got up and shuffled around the desk. “Might as well throw the boots away; you’ll never get the smell out.”

“But—”

“We don’t like that stink in here—” Two large, beefy individuals had come out of the door to the right, and another from the door to the left. “We don’t really like your stink in here.”

A half hour later, Ronnie and George limped barefoot back to their room, where someone had been kind enough to ransack their luggage and sprinkle it with cloying perfume.

“I don’t think they’re friendly,” George said. Their assailants had done no real damage, beyond bundling them into a smelly blanket, wrapping it with sticky repair tape, and then manhandling them downstairs into a storage closet. It had been locked, once they worked their way out of the blanket and tape, but it was a flimsy lock.

“I wish I knew if Raffa’s back,” Ronnie said. The room’s comunit would be no help; he could see the severed cable from here.

“We’ll have to go find out,” George said. He pawed through the piles of clothes on the floor. “I hope they left us some shoes.”

They had left shoes, filled with something that looked and smelled like rancid cottage cheese. “Not friendly at all,” George went on, in a tone of voice that made Ronnie forget all about Raffa for a moment. He remembered that tone, and the smile that went with it.

“George—” he started.

“No,” George said. “These were my best pair of Millington-Cranz split-lizard, custom-dyed . . . how petty of them. Truly, truly petty.”

“George, you aren’t—”

“I have some sense,” George said. Ronnie doubted it, in that tone of voice. “Priorities, Ronnie. Great minds always keep their priorities straight. First things first, and all that.”

“Yes?” Ronnie hoped to encourage that trend, providing they could agree on the priorities.

“Raffa first; as a gentleman, I fully agree that her safety must come first.”

“Good. Then suppose we clean up, and—”

“Just how do you suggest we clean up?” George’s expression suggested that Ronnie had just lost his senses. “Are you planning to go down that hall, and into those showers, assuming that ordinary decency prevails and you will come back clean and all at peace with the world? While nothing happens to your belongings here?”

“Well . . .” Ronnie had thought, in the brief intervals available while struggling with three very strong men, with the blanket and tape, with the locked door, that a nice hot shower would be next on his list. Followed by clean clothes. Followed by Raffa. He realized now that George had a point—someone, if not the same men, might be lurking in the halls, or in the showers. The clothes on the floor weren’t clean anymore. “I guess I thought we could be ready—”

“No.” George shook out a cream silk shirt, sniffed it, and shuddered. “No, we’ll simply have to wear these things, producing an olfactory melange that should certainly confuse any stingtails we meet, and hope that Raffa doesn’t pretend she never saw us before.”

Glumly, Ronnie agreed. He found a green knit shirt slightly less fragrant than the rest, poured the odoriferous slimy goo out of his own brown shoes, and watched as George put the gritty stained towels to use wiping out his.

“I think,” George said, holding one up for inspection, “that it may be salvageable. Good shoes are tougher than they thought. Here—” He tossed the remaining dry towel to Ronnie.

On their way out, the desk clerk said, “Have fun, boys,” without looking up. George waited until he was outside to mutter.

“Schoolboys. That’s what it is, really. They didn’t steal anything; they didn’t take our money or papers. Taking revenge on good clothes just because we have them . . . like those ticks in the fourth-floor end dormitory—”

Ronnie was seized with an unnatural desire to be fair. “We did put cake batter in their things first, George.”

“Not in their good things. In their sports clothes. I have never in my life desecrated a pair of Millington-Cranz shoes, and I cannot imagine sinking so low.” He stalked on, in silence, through the hot dusk that ended a Patchcock day. Ronnie, aware of an unpleasant dampness between his toes, followed him gingerly.

The hotel’s doorman looked them up and down, sniffing ostentatiously. George stared straight ahead; Ronnie gave Raffa’s name and smiled. The doorman pointed to the public comunit in the upper lobby.

“What a hole,” George said, as they made their way around the open shaft.

“Yes . . . just a moment.” Ronnie called the desk, who transferred his call to Raffa’s room. It bleeped repeatedly, and just when he was sure she had been kidnapped by vicious thugs who would stake her out over a stingtail nest, the receiver clicked.

“Hello?”

“Raffa! It’s Ronnie!”

“Oh—I was in the shower.” His mind drifted into a fantasy of Raffa in the shower—of himself in the shower—of both of them—until recalled by her impatient “Ronnie!”

“Yes, sorry. We had a few problems, and I was wondering—could we come down?”

“Here?” She sounded almost as prim as her mother. “I mean—why? We weren’t going to be seen together—”

“It’s too late, Raffa.” He took a deep breath and told her about Hubert, and the men at the transient barracks, as fast as he could. “And we need to use a shower, and get some clean clothes. . . .”

“I suppose,” she said. “Or—wait—I’ll come up. If you’re that raggedy, they might not let you come down.”

He and George leaned their elbows on the railing of the open shaft, watching the waterfall and ignoring the disapproving glare of the doorman that periodically scorched their backs. Raffa was safe. That’s what mattered.

Raffa emerged from the lift looking clean, cool, and confident. She handed them each a plastic strip. “Here. You can’t go back there—not to stay, anyway—so I went ahead and got rooms for you here. I’d be delighted to have you in mine, but there’s not enough space. I’ve got things spread all over.”

“Angelic Raffaele,” George said. “Are you sure it’s Ronnie you want to marry?”

“Absolutely,” said Raffa. She gave Ronnie a look. “Don’t worry. I don’t mind about the smell.”

She led them to the lift, smiling brilliantly at the doorman, whose dour expression finally shifted. He shrugged, hands out, and gave the boys a friendly nod. “My mistake, sirs.”

“You’re on ten,” Raffa said. “Adjoining singles—I thought you might prefer that, in case—” In case of what, she didn’t say. It meant two showers, anyway. And, in this hotel, modern clothes-freshers. By the time Ronnie had showered, his clothes held no trace of the flowery perfume. His shoes still reeked faintly, but at least they were completely dry.

Dinner, in the hotel’s dining room, completed his cure, he thought. Raffa in the cherry-colored backless dress with the full sleeves, the waterfall cascading behind her . . . good food . . . he could live with that. He was not sure he could live with George, who was giving his own version of their day. Finally even Raffa had had enough.

“All right, George. I understand—you had a horrible day and found out nothing useful except that there’s a retired neurosynthetic chemist who wants to meet us. Let me tell you about mine.” She described a tour of a pharmaceutical plant, a vast production line where gleaming robots ground and mixed chemicals, where the resulting paste, forced into molds, popped out as pills, to be coated with colored liquid that dried hard and shiny. Thence through pill counters, into boxes, past inspectors . . . boring, Ronnie thought. It made his feet ache to think of it.

“But the funniest thing—when I said Aunt Marta was interested in investing here because someone had died in the Morreline family, he turned absolutely white.”

“Who?” Ronnie asked.

“My guide. And hustled me back to the corporate offices. You’d think I’d just insulted the CEO or something. I just made it up, really; someone’s always dying in big families.”

“Ottala!” George said. “It’s Ottala who died.” The shock hit Ronnie with the same unpleasant thump of reality as the bullies’ fists. That made sense of a lot of things.

The disadvantage of a good hotel is that there is no way for guests to sneak out unobserved. Someone is always on duty by the public exits. And Twoville offered no nightlife of the sort to attract three wealthy young tourists . . . not after that afternoon. Raffa had suggested a walk along the shore, but Ronnie explained about stingtails and tickflies. They ended up in Raffa’s suite by default; she had a sitting room.

“But if Ottala was killed here—if she was in one of the factories—”

“We’re not here to solve Ottala’s murder,” George said. He paced around the room, peering at everything, before settling into a chair. “Dear heavens, what an ugly lamp! We’re here to find out about the rejuvenation drugs—”

“Aren’t you forgetting Ottala’s Aunt Venezia?” Raffa asked. “She would want us to find out about Ottala’s murder.”

“Not if it included getting killed,” George said, then added hastily, “and even if it did, I personally don’t want to get killed finding out. I want to go back to civilization, which this isn’t, and let Patchcock stew in its own mess.” His shoes, unlike Ronnie’s, had peeled in the automated shoe cleaner. The only footwear in the hotel gift shop were sandals, iridescent lime-green straps over black soles.

“It can’t all be the same villains,” Raffa said. “The Morrelines making Ottala’s aunt do those hideous pots so that she won’t have time to interfere in the business is one thing. But they wouldn’t have killed Ottala. Whoever killed Ottala had another reason.”

“They hated her because she was rich,” George said gloomily, staring at his ruined shoes.

“It had to be more than that,” Raffa said. “We’re all rich, and no one’s killed us yet.”

“Not for want of trying,” George said. “Look at the past few years: we all got shot at on Sirialis. Someone shot Sarah, thinking she was Brun. Ronnie and I were kidnapped by the clones.”

“That wasn’t because we were rich,” Ronnie said. “It was because we knew something someone didn’t want us to know—they thought we were dangerous.”

“So you think Ottala knew something she wasn’t supposed to know? And if we can find out—” Raffa kicked off her shoes and curled her legs under her.

“What if she found out her family were making rejuvenation drugs illegally—would they kill her then?”

“What if she found out someone was adulterating the drugs—maybe not her family, maybe someone else?”

“But why?” Raffa bounced a little, on the couch. “What could anyone gain by adulterating rejuvenation drugs?”

Ronnie thought about it. “Well . . . if people don’t like the whole process—if they think it’s wrong—then they might do something to make it not work . . . or something.” He had no idea how that might be done.

“If I were an ordinary person,” George said, in the tone of one who knows he will never be ordinary, “I would resent rejuvenation. There are all these rich people, who are going to live forever, and then there’s me—the ordinary person making pills, say—who’s never going to get anywhere. It used to be that even rich people died, sometimes inconveniently, and fortunes shifted around—there were opportunities—but now—”

“Even rich people could resent it,” Ronnie said. “Take my father . . . he’s rejuved only once, but he will again, I’m sure. They want me to be grown up and responsible, but not enough to challenge him. I could be eighty or ninety myself before I have a chance to run a business. Even older.”

“And we’re always making snide remarks about free-birthers, but if people died off soon enough, there wouldn’t be any worry about overpopulation. Not even on ships.” George nodded, as if he’d said something profound, then his gaze sharpened. “Free-birthers!”

“What?”

“Logical group to oppose rejuvenation technology. Raffa, where’s the work force from? Originally?”

“They’re Finnvardians, mostly. Why?”

George sat up abruptly and reached for the comunit. “Let me check the database. I’ll bet you they’re free-birthers, and now they’re having to make rejuvenation drugs, and—” His voice dropped as he scanned the reference files. “Drat. We need a better database.”

“You need to mind your own business.” That was the leader of four men in hotel livery, who appeared in the doorway to Raffa’s bedroom. Another disadvantage of a good hotel is that anyone in the right uniform can go anywhere without being noticed. All were tall, pale-skinned, blue-eyed. “However, since you didn’t, I’m afraid you’re going to have an unfortunate accident.” He had a weapon; Ronnie stared at the black bore of it with the sick certainty that he was going to die. George had paused with his hand poised over the comunit keypad; Raffa simply sat there, looking like Raffa.

“It won’t work,” George said. “Someone will investigate.”

“A major industrial accident? Of course they will. But not your deaths individually. The failure of a field generator explains so much.”

Now Raffa moved, a convulsive twitch and a frantic glance at the p-suit hanging from its hook behind the door. The leader laughed, pure glee at her fear. Ronnie wanted to smash his face.

“Not a chance, rich girl. You and your gallant lovers will all die together, just like in a storytape.”

“You killed Ottala,” Raffa said. Calmly, Ronnie noticed, as if she were commenting on someone’s garden. You raise roses, don’t you? You killed Ottala, didn’t you?

“With great pleasure,” the leader said. “Would you like to know how?” His voice promised horrors; he longed to tell them.

“Not really,” Raffa said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a failure of the field generator.”

“I think you should know,” the leader said, with a nasty whine in his voice. Ronnie prayed to unnamed gods for a miracle. Raffa should not have to die hearing horrors.

“You’re not Finnvardian,” George said suddenly. Everyone’s attention shifted to him. He was looking at the comunit screen, and he read it aloud. “ ‘Finnvardians, dolicephalic, males generally between 1.8 and 2 meters in height, skin color index M1X1, eye color index blue/gray. Religious objections to contraception, plastic surgery for other than reconstruction after trauma’—but you’ve had plastic surgery, and you’re wearing contact lenses.” Now that George had said it, Ronnie could see that the leader’s eyes were a different blue, darker, intense.

“Nonsense,” the leader said. But two of his followers looked at him with obvious suspicion. “Not all of any human stock have blue eyes; they’re recessive.”

“The reference says, ‘Alone of human stocks, the severely inbred Finnvardians have eliminated dark eyes; the light blue or gray eye color has been stable for seventy generations, with the usual medical sequelae. Finnvardians therefore prefer to work and live underground, away from ultraviolet radiation that hastens blindness.’ Your eyes are dark,” George pointed out. “Your colored lenses make them dark blue, not Finnvardian blue. Furthermore, a Finnvardian should know that all Finnvardians have light blue eyes.”

“Is this true, Sikar?” asked one of the others. “You are one of us, aren’t you?” All three were looking at him now, light blue eyes narrowed, lips tight. The leader’s forehead gleamed in the light.

“Of course I’m one of you,” he said. “Who else can speak your obscure language—?” He stopped short, and flushed.

There was a short, uncomfortable silence. Ronnie wondered which deity he now owed for that miracle. If it was a miracle.

“Your language,” said the man to the leader’s right, thoughtfully. He glanced around the leader to one of the others. “Sounds good to me,” he said. The man on the left nodded, his hand slipping into a pocket of his uniform.

“No!” the leader said. “Take care of them first—then we’ll talk—”

“Talk is talk,” the man on his right said. And then he said something Ronnie couldn’t understand, Finnvardian apparently, and flung himself on the leader, who shot him. The shot didn’t make much noise, but the man yelled. Raffa rolled over the back of the couch, out of sight of the struggle. Another shot rang out. The struggling figures staggered across the room, screaming incomprehensible insults. Ronnie dodged the row, found Raffa behind the couch, and began to crawl cautiously toward the outer door. Maybe they would forget—

“Stop!” yelled someone. He stopped. Someone—perhaps that someone—had a weapon.

“No you don’t,” George said from the other side of the room; Ronnie looked up just in time to see the entire comunit, screen and all, hurtling toward the man with the gun, who shot it. A tremendous crash followed, spraying the whole room with broken glass and plastic. Water gushed from the ceiling, where something had hit a sprinkler control. Ronnie leapt up just in time to catch a blow to his head, but he was already in motion, and his head connected with someone’s stomach. That person grunted, and slid down; Ronnie stepped firmly where it would do the most good, ignoring the shriek of pain, and fended off another man’s assault with a bit of unarmed combat he’d learned in the Royals. George, he saw, was doing his best to bludgeon one of the attackers with the desk the comunit had been on.

Raffa took care of the last one, with the lamp off the end table. “I didn’t think a little more mess would matter,” she said. “And it was an ugly lamp.” And then she was in Ronnie’s arms, sobbing a little. He picked her up and carried her into the hall before she could cut her bare feet on the broken glass.

In the distance, he could hear alarms clanging and angry voices. George limped out into the hall, water dripping from his hair.

“He really isn’t a Finnvardian,” George said. “I have his lenses—look.” There on his palm were two contact lenses, bright blue.

“Is he dead?” asked Ronnie. “What about the weapon?”

“He’s dead,” said George. “One of the others stabbed him. I think it was a ceremonial Finnvardian gelding knife. His weapon’s right here—” He pulled it from his trousers pocket.

“Hold it right there!” From the end of the hall, two men in uniform pointed guns at them. “Drop that weapon! Get on the floor! Move!”

“But—but they did it,” George said.

“DROP THAT GUN! NOW!” George dropped the gun, shrugging at Ronnie. “GET ON THE FLOOR. FACEDOWN. NOW.”

“You don’t understand,” Ronnie said. “There are . . . spies or something in our room—in Raffa’s room. They attacked us. They did something to the field generator, and—”

“GET DOWN NOW!”

Raffa slipped out of his arms. “We might as well,” she said. “They aren’t going to listen until we do.”

In the event, they didn’t listen at all. Two dead men, in hotel uniforms, and two unconscious men in hotel uniforms . . . and the guests involved were rich young tourists from the inner worlds?

“How much did you offer them to have sex with you?” the policeman said, leaning over Ronnie.