Winning Colors

Chapter Twenty-one

“Cecelia—so glad to see you!” The tall dark woman in swirling reds and purples reminded Heris of someone—she couldn’t think who.

“Marta! It’s been years!” Cecelia turned to Heris. “Raffaele’s aunt . . . Marta Saenz. So—they called you, too?”

“Not exactly.” Marta made a face. “Raffa sent me a message saying she was going to Patchcock with Ronnie and George, to follow up a mission for Bunny. I landed on Bunny, because as far as I’m concerned he had no business risking Raffa on any harebrained missions—and frankly, my dear, he was already scared out of his wits, because of Ottala—you did know about Ottala?”

“Yes.”

“And so I said I’d come here, but I wanted help, and he said he’d get your Captain Serrano—whom I presume is you?” She turned to Heris.

“Yes,” said Heris, not quite sure how to address Raffa’s Aunt Marta. She was clearly someone of importance, if she could pressure Lord Thornbuckle to ask favors of her aunt admiral, but did she use a title?

“I just got off the commercial flight a few hours ago, and saw that your yacht was listed as incoming, so I waited—I haven’t tried to call yet. I thought I’d see what Captain Serrano advised.” Her glance at Heris combined deference and command.

“No harm in calling, I wouldn’t think,” Heris said carefully. Two aunts! Three, if you counted aunt admiral. She felt outnumbered and very much outgunned.

“I’ll do it,” Marta said. They followed her to a row of combooths, and waited while she made her call. Heris wondered again if she should have brought along some of her crew, and reminded herself again that she and Cecelia had booked the last two seats on the next down shuttle. When Marta opened the door of the booth, her face had a dangerous expression that erased all musings from Heris’s mind.

“You won’t believe this,” she began. “They’re under arrest.”

“What?”

“For murder and attempted sexual assault.”

“Ronnie? George? Raffa?”

“According to the hotel security chief, they tried to get four hotel employees to engage in—and I quote—‘unnatural and lascivious acts against their will.’ Then tried to beat them into submission, and then shot two of them. George, apparently, had the gun.”

“George is Kevil Mahoney’s son,” Cecelia said. “If he had shot someone, he wouldn’t be caught holding the weapon.”

“We’ll see about this,” Marta said grimly. “They’re not holding my niece—”

“Or my nephew—”

“Or George,” said Heris, purely for symmetry. If George had had an aunt, she would have said it.

The waiting lounge for the down shuttle was decorated with the ugliest ceramics Heris had ever seen. It filled slowly, though it didn’t seem to hold a full shuttle load. Perhaps they had small shuttles here, or perhaps there was a heavy cargo load. Cecelia and Marta paced back and forth; Heris sat and watched them. The time for scheduled departure came and went. People began to grumble. Grumbles mounted as time passed.

“We always have to wait if they’re coming,” she heard. “It’s got to be family—it’s always family.”

Heris kept an eye out along the corridor, and soon spotted the likeliest candidate, a short, bunchy, gray-haired woman swathed in layers of uneven soft colors. Behind her, a harried-looking man trundled a dolly loaded with boxes and soft luggage. Sure enough, when she entered the lounge, the signal light came on for boarding. Heris picked up her own duffel, and caught Cecelia’s eye.

But Cecelia and Marta were staring at the newcomer. They pounced before she could move past the others, in the lane cleared for her by flight attendants.

“Venezia!”

She turned, her wrinkled face lighting up. “Cecelia! Marta! How lovely to see you—I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Why did you—”

“Your idiot police—” Their voices had collided; they both stopped, and into the brief silence Heris spoke.

“Let’s get aboard first.” She grabbed Cecelia’s elbow and pushed. Cecelia snorted, but let herself be guided into the clear lane behind Venezia; Marta closed in behind Heris.

The shuttle was full only because Venezia had reserved an entire section. Cecelia and Marta followed her into it as by right, settling into the wide padded seats; Heris noticed that the attendants didn’t challenge them. She wished she could call the yacht and slip a couple of her crew into the seats she and Cecelia would have used, but she could not delay the shuttle now.

The shuttle had not cleared the station before Cecelia attacked again. “Venezia, my nephew is down there on your planet being accused of murder that he didn’t do—”

“And my niece,” Marta said. “Locked up in your filthy police station—”

“What do you know about this?” demanded Cecelia.

“Yes, what?” Marta glared.

Venezia shivered, as if she were a leaf dancing in stormwinds. “I—I don’t know anything. I just got here from Guerni. When I asked Raffa to come here and investigate, I had no idea—”

“You asked her!” Venezia flinched from that tone as if Marta had hit her.

“I just—it seemed—nobody would tell me anything about Ottala, and I thought maybe she’d done something foolish, like a girl might do, and Raffa being young, maybe she’d figure it out—”

“You sent her into danger—my niece—!”

“And my nephew,” Cecelia said, with no less heat.

“I didn’t know it was dangerous,” Venezia pleaded. “I thought—I thought Ottala had just run away. Perhaps fallen in love with an unsuitable young man, the way Raffaele did—”

“Ronnie,” said Cecelia stiffly, “is not unsuitable.”

“Raffa,” said Marta, “did not run away.”

“And I still want to know what happened to Ottala,” Venezia said. Silence fell; Marta and Cecelia looked at each other, then at Heris, then at Venezia. “You know, don’t you?” she asked.

“Not for sure,” Heris said. “But—what is known is that she infiltrated a workers’ organization, after having skinsculpting to match her appearance to the Finnvardian workers on Patchcock. Then she disappeared. If she were discovered—”

“Then she’s dead.” Venezia’s chin quivered.

“And the same people could have killed Raffa,” Marta said. “And the others.”

“Only now they’re in jail,” Cecelia said, “for crimes they certainly did not commit. And it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for you.”

The rest of the trip to the surface passed in very uncomfortable silence.

“I want to see my nephew,” Cecelia said.

“I want to see my niece,” Marta said.

“I want to see whoever’s in charge,” Venezia said. Heris said nothing. The three older women had charged off the shuttle like a commando team, every action coordinated for maximum efficiency. Venezia made the three necessary calls—to the police, the hotel, and the local corporate headquarters. Marta arranged ground transportation. Cecelia gathered everyone’s luggage and dealt with local customs. Heris wondered how they’d worked that out when they hadn’t said a word after that first confrontation. She was supposed to be the military expert, but she felt like a young ensign on a first live-fire maneuver.

The groundcar driver, after a look at Venezia’s ID, had driven as if they not only owned the road but had proprietary rights to a sizable volume of space above and on either side of it. The three older women stared at each other in grim silence; Heris, after looking out the window to see two battered trucks diving for the nearest ditch, looked at the back of the driver’s neck.

When they arrived in the scruffy little town, and pulled up at the police station, Venezia led the group inside. Now they were lined up in front of a long gray desk.

The uniformed officer behind the desk blinked. The mirage didn’t go away. Three angry women—three old angry women, the young-looking one wore a Rejuvenant ring—loomed over him like harpies on a cliff. Behind them was a younger but no less formidable woman, who had the unmistakable carriage of a military officer.

“And your name, ma’am?” the man said, trying to stick to ordinary rules.

“I am Lady Cecelia de Marktos, and my nephew is Ronald Vortigern Carruthers.” She leaned over as he reached for one of the pencils in a particularly gruesome pottery jar that leaned drunkenly to one side. As he began to write out the names laboriously in longhand, she growled, “Use your computer, idiot, and hurry up.”

“What’s the problem out here?” That was the captain, languid and unshaven after a night of interrogating the most infuriating prisoners he’d seen in years. “Let’s not have any rowdy behavior, ladies, please.” Then he blinked at Venezia. “Uh—sorry, Madame Glendower-Morreline—we weren’t expecting you.”

“You should have been,” Venezia said. “I sent a message from the orbital station, and the shuttle port.”

“It’s here somewhere, sir,” the first policeman said, waving his hand at a desk littered with scraps of paper. “The computer’s down again.”

The captain muttered a curse, in deference to ladies, and then scowled at them. “Your relatives murdered two hotel employees, and beat up two others. They discharged firearms in a public hostelry; they destroyed hotel property; they falsified records—”

“They did not!” Cecelia said.

“And they’re being held without bail, pending charges, which will be filed as soon as we have all the data.”

“I found madam’s message, sir,” the desk officer said.

“Forget that. She’s here now.” The captain wavered, aware of his disheveled appearance and the weight of wealth before him. “Look—as a special favor, I’ll let you speak to your relatives—one at a time, in the interview room, with an officer present. But that’s all.” A disgruntled silence fell. Finally Cecelia and Marta nodded.

“I didn’t do it, Aunt Cecelia. None of us did.” Ronnie looked exhausted, but not guilty. Cecelia had seen him guilty.

“I know, dear, but what did happen?”

“I told them—”

“Yes, but they haven’t let us see the transcripts yet. I need to know.”

Ronnie went over it again. “And I’m sure they weren’t really hotel employees—the uniforms didn’t really fit—but the important thing is the leader wasn’t Finnvardian, and George proved it, and the others jumped him.”

“Who has the contact lenses?”

“The police, I suppose. George had them, but they took them away from him.”

“They’ve got it all wrong, Aunt Marta.” Raffa’s hair hung in lank strings, and the cherry-colored dress had been torn somewhere along the line. “Ronnie and George didn’t do it.” She gave Marta her view of things. “And if you could possibly bring me some clothes—”

“I’m going to bring you a way out of here,” Marta said, “or rip this place up by its foundations.”

Raffa turned even paler. “I forgot! They said something about sabotaging the field generator, the one that holds back the sea—”

“I’ll tell them. Don’t worry, Raffa.”

But the captain shrugged off her mention of the field generator. “It’s a red herring,” he said. “No amateur could sabotage a field generator.” Marta glared at him, recognized invincible ignorance, and made a strategic withdrawal to the hotel.

Their descent on the hotel was almost as startling as their descent on the police station. The doorman . . . the hotel manager . . . the concierge . . . all bowed and scraped and fawned and disclaimed all intent to cause trouble for them or any member of their illustrious families. Only . . . there was this matter of shots being fired, and bodies on the floor. . . .

“Were they your employees?” Cecelia asked, when the gush of apologies and explanations ended.

“The dead men? Well, no. They were in our uniform, so at first we thought, of course, that they were, but they weren’t. Perhaps they wore the uniforms to provide some . . . er . . . excitement. The police said—”

“My niece,” Marta said with icy emphasis, “does not get sexual kicks from playing with men in hotel uniforms.”

“No—of course not, madam.” The manager attempted, unsuccessfully, to find an expression which made it clear that he had not thought any such thing.

“Nor does my nephew,” Cecelia said. “He is, after all, engaged to her niece.”

“Yes, madam. Of course, madam.”

“And since they weren’t your employees, isn’t it possible that they wore those uniforms to gain access to Raffa’s rooms without being detected—that they did in fact initiate the attack?”

“I suppose so, madam.” This with a dubious look, and an exchange of glances from manager to concierge and back. “But that is a matter for the police to decide. And there is still the damage to hotel property. Valuable communications equipment—lamp—sprinkler system—”

“Insurance,” said Cecelia and Marta together.

“Never mind that,” Venezia said. “We own the hotel.” She had been glaring at the masks on the walls and the vases holding floral displays, muttering something about “execrable decorations” since she arrived; Heris wondered why she cared so much about bad pottery, but perhaps she felt responsible for all the details of a family property. She fixed the manager with a steely eye. “It will not be a billing item.”

“No, madam.”

“Excuse me, ladies.” Heris looked around and saw an elderly man who held his hat in his hand. Bright blue eyes peered out from under bushy white eyebrows; his white moustache had been waxed to perfect points. He wore a fresh pink rosebud in the lapel of his gray suit, and his shiny black shoes were covered with white—spats, she finally remembered, was the right word for them. Cecelia, Marta, and Venezia were momentarily speechless.

“I understand the young people have had a spot of trouble. I tried to warn them yesterday—the young men, I mean.”

“You talked to Ronnie and George?” Cecelia asked.

“Yes—I’m Hubert de Vries Michaelson, by the way, and from his description you must be his Aunt Cecelia.”

“Yes—”

“I’m retired—formerly a neurosynthetic chemist here. Never quite made enough to retire offworld—”

“Can you recommend an attorney, Mr. Michaelson?” Cecelia asked.

“No . . . but I can help you, if you’ll let me. I believe I have evidence that may convince the police someone else is involved.”

“What concerns me most is this field generator Raffa mentioned,” Marta said. “Apparently one of the men said something about arranging a failure. The police wouldn’t listen—”

The hotel manager broke in. “They said what? About the field generator?”

“Raffa said one of the men claimed it would fail—that their deaths would be blamed on its failure.”

“It would destroy this entire structure,” the hotel manager said. “And most of Twoville within days or weeks, as the seawater infiltrated.” He looked frightened enough. “Should I evacuate now, or—?”

“Of course with one of them dead, and the others injured, maybe there’s no danger,” Cecelia said. Heris looked at her and wondered if she should get into this discussion. If they were talking about a Tiegman field generator, “danger” was too mild a word for the risk of collapse. Had the threat been serious, or just an attempt to panic the youngsters?

“I think someone had better interview the survivors—I presume they’re under medical care?” Marta looked around as if expecting them to be rolled out in their beds, for inspection.

“They’re at the clinic,” the hotel manager said.

But the survivors had disappeared from the local clinic, to the annoyance of the nursing staff. Their annoyance paled beside that of the aunts, who had walked from the hotel to the clinic at a pace that made Heris breathless.

“They what?” demanded the aunts, almost in concert.

“Have you notified the police?” Hubert asked. He had joined their parade, where he formed a decorative accent.

“No. They weren’t charged with anything—” That was the nursing supervisor, who had begun with a complaint about the missing patients, as if that were Venezia’s fault.

“They will be,” Cecelia and Marta said together. “Call the police now.” The nursing supervisor looked stubborn a moment, but then reached for the com.

“The field generator,” Heris said, bringing up the topic which had not left her mind. “If they’re loose, and well enough, they could still sabotage it. Who’s in charge of the Tiegman maintenance? Where’s the power supply?” She wished she had her Fleet uniform, her Fleet authority, and most of all her own expert people who would know how to recognize a problem if they saw it. The thought of someone playing games with a Tiegman field made her feel queasy. She knew a way to knock out a Tiegman field generator with only a few kilograms of explosive, placed accurately for the field configuration. Granted that the calculations were difficult for anything but a spherical field, they were still at the mercy of the saboteur’s incompetence. She wasn’t at all sure Cecelia and the other older women understood how bad it could be if the field blew.

“Ah—there I can help you out,” Hubert said. “I’ve played cards with the Chief Engineer out at the control station every week for years.” He beamed at Heris, and she wanted to smack him. He was no substitute for Petris or Oblo. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies,” Hubert said. “I think a word with the Chief Engineer is necessary at this point. Perhaps he can be persuaded to take precautions—at least be ready to divert all power to the field—”

“Go ahead,” said Venezia, dismissing him with a wave. “Take care of it. We’re going back to the police.” She marched out. Heris wondered if she ought to go with the dapper little man—how reliable could someone in spats be?—but Cecelia beckoned to her.

“I know it’s dangerous,” Cecelia murmured to Heris. “I saw your expression. But we can’t do anything about it, and if this field-whatever doesn’t kill us, Venezia can do something about the worse problem which made this threat possible.” That made sense, though Heris wasn’t happy to be left out of the action.

By the time they made it back to the police station, both the hotel manager and the clinic had reported. In addition, a perspiring manager from the local corporate headquarters, bearing a bunch of flowers for Venezia. They began a low-voiced conversation while the others approached the front desk. The captain, still bleary-eyed but now depilated and in a clean shirt, glowered at them. “You’re complicating a very simple case,” he said. “I understand family feeling, but even the best families have bad apples—”

Heris could have told him this was the wrong approach.

“It would be a simple case, if you would listen to your prisoners,” Marta said.

“When my niece Ottala disappeared,” Venezia put in, looking away from the manager, “you found nothing.”

“There was nothing to find; there was no evidence.” Heris doubted that he had ever looked for any; the rapidity with which the young people had run into trouble argued for a superfluity of evidence somewhere nearby.

“I asked that girl Raffa to come here, to find out what happened to Ottala. I thought a girl could find a girl better than some man. And she did find out what happened, and it nearly happened to her, and now you’re ignoring it.” Venezia, who had seemed the most insignificant of the older ladies, now had the intensity Heris associated with weapons-grade lasers. Quite unlike the incandescent flash that was Cecelia’s anger, Venezia’s steady rancor seemed ready to cut its way through any obstacle.

“Just because someone is not Finnvardian, and not really a hotel employee, does not make them a spy or a murderer. Wearing contact lenses is not a crime—”

Stupid captain, Heris thought. He should back down now, before she cleaves him along a flaw he doesn’t recognize.

“Ah, so you now agree that one of the men was not Finnvardian,” Marta said, taking over from Venezia. Heris had to admire the tactic, and the way in which they passed the turn without any prior planning. “Do you know what he was?” The captain looked down. “Well?”

“He appears to have been a citizen of the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand,” the captain said, with understandable reluctance.

“A Benignity agent? Here?”

“I have no evidence that he was an agent. Merely a citizen—”

“A registered alien?”

“Well . . . no. He had been working in the factory for about three years—”

“Illegally,” Heris murmured; heads turned to look at her and she smiled. “I would consider that a Benignity citizen in disguise, not registered as an alien, and working in a critical industry for three years, was almost certainly an agent.”

“Everyone thought he was Finnvardian,” the captain muttered.

“Apparently,” Heris said.

“But he was murdered,” the captain said.

“By Finnvardians who discovered that he wasn’t. Who thought, perhaps, he was leading them astray.”

“George Mahoney had a gun in his hand—”

“And did that man die of gunshot wounds?”

“Well . . . no. He was stabbed. But there’s no evidence that the other individuals under arrest could not have stabbed him.”

“And I might have sung grand opera while hanging upside down in zero G,” Heris said, to no one in particular. “But I didn’t, despite the lack of evidence exonerating me.”

“What about the ones who ran away from the clinic,” Cecelia said. “Doesn’t that convince you they’re guilty?”

“Of pretending to be hotel employees, yes. But that’s hardly a major crime.”

“And the field generator?” Marta brought that up; Heris had been about to ask.

“Hasn’t failed yet. Won’t fail. Can’t fail. It’s—” The lights dimmed, flared again, and went out. In the darkness, Heris heard curses and cries, and between them the utter silence that meant no ventilation fans were turning, no compressors working, nothing electrical functioning at all. After too long a wait, dim orange emergency lights came on, and the reflective arrows painted on the floor to indicate the way out glowed against the dimness.

“Possible,” Heris said.

“It’s not—it’s something else—” But the captain was clearly shaken. Sirens began to hoot outside. The company manager stammered apologies, shook himself loose from Venezia, and bolted for the door.

“Let’s go,” Heris said to Cecelia.

“I’m not leaving without Ronnie,” Cecelia said. “No matter what.”

“Sir, we’ve got to evacuate the lower levels—” That was someone from the back; Heris couldn’t see the face.

“Very well,” the captain said. “Go on now—we’ll be bringing them all outside, just be patient.” But Cecelia and Marta and Venezia—and Heris—stood their ground until the prisoners came up, until they were sure that Raffa and Ronnie and George were safely above ground.

Outside, in the hot afternoon, the streets were full of sullen frightened people, more and more of them pouring out the entrances to all the buildings. Heris noticed a lot of pale, light-eyed Finnvardians. The police, after a despairing look at the aunts, gave up any pretense of guarding their young prisoners, and began moderately effective crowd-control efforts. At least they kept people moving away from the shore, away from the police station and hotel. Ronnie and George leaned against the wall, and Raffa leaned against Ronnie; the aunts pursed their lips but said nothing.

“Are all the factories underground?” Heris asked Venezia.

“I suppose,” Venezia said. “I know some of them are. I never really—that is, my brothers were in charge, you see, after Papa died. They never wanted to talk to me about business. And of course if you do have underground facilities, Finnvardians are an efficient work force.”

“I hope that nice little man in the suit didn’t get hurt,” Cecelia said.

“I hope that nice little man in the suit wasn’t a mad bomber,” muttered Heris. The rosebud and spats had done nothing to reassure her. The main field hadn’t blown, or they’d all be dead, but something had gone very wrong. A misplaced charge could cause sudden loss of power, then field fluctuation and restabilization in another configuration. She could easily imagine Michaelson in the role of inept saboteur or not-quite-rescuer.

Suddenly the floor trembled. Heris eyed the nearby wall. “Out in the street,” she said. “Now!” They all scuttled into the middle of the street, as the shaking worsened and bits of plaster fell off the walls. Luckily, Heris thought, these were all one-story buildings. Then a bouncing lurch sent them all to their knees, and the trembling died away, a fading rumble in the distance.

“Field’s back on,” Heris said as she clambered up, dusting herself off.

“Why did it shake?” asked Cecelia, pale but determined to be calm.

“Reconfiguration,” Heris said. “My guess would be that the saboteur miscalculated the placement of the charge. With power, the field’s inertia would damp the fluctuations—that’s why the lights went out; the field bled power off the supply net—but it didn’t find enough power to regain its former geometry. So it collapsed toward a sphere. What that means to the structures, we won’t know until we look.”

“Is it—safe now?” asked Marta.

“If someone doesn’t tweak it again. We’re lucky. If it had blown completely, we wouldn’t be here to worry about it.”

“I don’t want to be here at all,” Raffa said shakily.

“We’ll go home soon,” Marta said.

“No. I don’t want to go home. I want to go with Ronnie.”

Marta’s brows went up, but whatever she might have said was interrupted by a blast from loudspeakers as electrical power returned.

“—Disperse! Go to your quarters! Danger is over; the Tiegman field has been restored. Shift Two, report to your supervisors in Level One. All Shift Two, report—”

“Let’s see about the hotel,” Cecelia said. “If it’s not full of water, maybe we can get something cool to drink.”

No one interfered as they made their way back to the hotel entrance. Heris noticed that the local manager trailed along behind, the now-disheveled bouquet still in hand. Venezia ignored him. The doorman, shaken but willing, opened the door. Inside, the lights were on, and the waterfall still plunged over the lip of the central well. The hotel manager scurried to meet them. “Ladies—gentlemen—I’m sorry but our facilities are not back to full operation yet—”

“I want to sit down,” Cecelia said firmly. “On something soft. In a cool, shady place. With something to drink—and I really don’t care what, as long as it’s cool and wet.”

“The same,” Marta said.

The hovering manager tried again to present his bouquet to Venezia, and she turned on him. “I will be in your office in one hour,” she said. “And I will then expect a complete disclosure of your role in this fiasco.”

Heris wondered which fiasco Venezia meant. From the look on the manager’s face, he might have had more than one to conceal. Venezia finished her first tall glass, called for another, and then spoke to them all.

“You don’t have to come with me—I expect it will be a long, tedious afternoon—”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Marta said. “If you’ll allow a rival into your files, that is—”

“Where I’m thinking of, that’s no problem. Cecelia, will you join us, or would you rather babysit the youngsters?” Heris blinked. She still had trouble connecting the dumpy little woman she had first seen with this regal personage who seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

“Let Heris go,” Cecelia said. “She can represent the government, if necessary. And it’ll be good experience for her.”

Great. Something Cecelia didn’t want to do, and thought Heris would learn from. Tedious, Venezia had said. Files. Heris groaned inwardly; she could see it now. She was going to spend a hot, miserable afternoon cooped up in an office going through boring files that she knew nothing about.

In the event, Heris found the afternoon far from tedious. When they arrived at the corporate offices, Venezia brushed past the little receiving line the manager had put together, and stormed through the reception area so fast that Heris got only a glimpse of elegant charcoal-gray carpet and oyster-gray leather upholstery, a serene vision marred only by the unfortunate puce pottery statuette displayed on a stand.

The serenity of the front office vanished behind the first glass partition, where kicked anthill better fit the level and pattern of activity. Actual filing cabinets stuffed with papers, which scurrying minions shifted from drawer to drawer, with frantic looks when they recognized intruders. Other workers hunched over deskcomps, fingers flickering as they did something . . . Heris could not tell what, at the speed with which Venezia led them along. Where was she going? How did she know where to go? Behind her, the manager bleated occasional cautions, apologies, pleas, but Venezia ignored him. Marta followed Venezia, and Heris followed Marta, and the manager crowded Heris but lacked the force to push past her.

Along a hall, up a flight of stairs, along another hall. Clearly, this was executive territory, still carpeted, with offices opening off the passage and a larger one at the end. That would be the manager’s office, Heris was sure; as they neared it, she could read the engraved nameplate.

The manager’s office, when they arrived, had been cleared for Venezia, fresh flowers in a hot turquoise and green pot in the middle of the desk. Venezia snorted, and went straight to his assistant’s office next door. There, piled in a heap on a side table, was everything that must have been on the manager’s desk, including a family portrait. Here Venezia paused, and here the hapless manager caught up.

“Please, madam . . . my office is the best we have; it will suit you, I’m sure.” He waved toward the door.

“Later,” Venezia said. She prowled the room, eyeing the side table of files, cubes, loose papers. The manager’s assistant broke out in a fine sheen, as if someone had sprayed him with oil. His gaze flickered back and forth between her and the screen of his deskcomp. He reached out a trembling hand.

“No!” Venezia said. She had not seemed to be watching the assistant, but her command stopped his hand in midair. “No—get up now, and go out.”

“Out—?”

Venezia glared at him; he ducked his head and hunched aside, almost stumbling out of his chair. She moved into his chair herself.

“I’m going to assume that the enabling codes specified in the Morreline Codex are still active,” Venezia said, without looking at the manager. Heris, watching him, saw a flush rise up his face, followed by pallor.

“Uh . . . yes, madam, but there are . . . other . . .”

“Give them to me.” Heris had heard admirals in battle with less command presence. Stuttering, protesting, the manager finally gave Venezia the codes.

“But it will all be so confusing, madam,” he said. “And I have prepared a precis—”

“Good,” Venezia said. “If I become confused, I can look at it.” She glanced at Marta. “You’re the biochemist—what do you want to look at?”

“You’re going to give me open access to your technical files?”

“I don’t have time to worry about it,” Venezia said. “It’s an emergency; you’re the only independent expert—tell you what, I’ll hire you, put you on retainer, and then you’ll have to give me a loyalty bond. What’s your consultant rate?”

“You always were smarter than you looked,” Marta said, and named a figure that Heris compared to a large fraction of her own yearly salary. “Contract accepted. I’ll need comp access.”

Venezia looked at the manager, who had faded to a depressing shade of gray. “In here, madam,” he said softly, and Marta followed him into his own office.

Venezia glanced at Heris. “How are you with personnel files, Captain Serrano?”

Heris wondered what she meant. How was she with personnel files doing what? Her face must have been as blank as her mind, because Venezia sighed heavily. “Export/import ratios?” That made more sense, but Venezia shook her head. “No. Just be ready to keep the interruptions away, if you would.” Heris felt silly, demoted from partner to door watch. She said nothing, looking around the room instead. An ordinary office room, large and cluttered. More actual paper than she’d seen in years, including bulky metal files to keep it in. Cube files as well, cube readers, wall display units, schedules with colored lines all over them.

Venezia, when she looked back at her, was hunched over the deskcomp, murmuring something Heris couldn’t follow. Heris could just see the flicker of rapidly changing screens, lines of text and blocks of numbers scrolling past much faster than she would have cared to read. Did this old woman really know what she was doing? Cecelia was sharp enough—at least about horses, and her own investments—but Venezia had not yet impressed Heris with her intelligence. She had seemed far more scatterbrained than Cecelia or Marta; she had kept muttering about pottery. What was she reading so fast?

“Aha,” Venezia said in the midst of this musing. “He’s sharpened the blade for his own throat this time!”

“What?” asked Heris.

Venezia glanced up at her. “It’s a mistake to assume that people with artistic hobbies can’t think,” she said. Heris blinked; this was exactly the sort of statement she would have expected from Venezia eight hours before. “Or won’t notice,” Venezia went on, stabbing at the controls. She had bright patches of color on her cheeks, and Heris realized she was in a considerable rage.

Was it better to say nothing, or show an interest? Heris had opted for saying nothing when Venezia spoke again. “My brothers,” she said. “Did you have brothers, my dear?”

“Only one, and he died,” Heris said. She had never really known him; she had been only five when he died, and he had been adult.

“Friends tell me they can be human,” Venezia said. “But I always doubted it. My brothers—well, most of it doesn’t matter now, except as background for not trusting them. But they’ve overreached themselves this time, and I’m not going to back down.” She pushed back her chair and went to the door of the other office. “Marta—anything critical?”

Heris craned her neck to look. Raffa’s aunt didn’t glance up from the deskcomp she was using, but she answered. “Only if you want your product to meet contract specs. This is very strange, Venezia. Some of the problem is just your biochemists trying for a cheap way around a difficult synthesis, but some of it is . . . could almost be . . . deliberate sabotage. I’m not sure how these changes will function biologically.”

“Product liability problems?”

“Unquestionably. You’ll have to track the shipments to see how bad it is. And retainer or not, there’s no way I can keep quiet about some of this.”

“I don’t want you to. We’re going to have to close this facility down anyway, at least for some time.”

“What will your brothers say? Can you convince them?”

The grin on Venezia’s face reminded Heris of her aunt admiral on the trail of a feckless ship’s captain. “I can do more than convince them, Marta. I can destroy them.” Her grin widened. “I have the shares.”

“I’m impressed,” Marta said. “Then why did you let them get into this mess?”

“I was busy elsewhere.” Venezia shifted from foot to foot. “I know that’s no excuse, really. It’s my money. My responsibility. I should have been keeping track of them, but Oscar . . . he’s so difficult. It was easier to stay away. You’re going to say I should have known.”

“No need,” Marta said, still not looking up. “You already know that. What can I do to help?”

“Be sure you bring along any evidence you’ll need; I’ll try to secure these files, but you can see how it is . . . these people will try to protect themselves.”

Heris thought of something she could do. “If it would help—” she began tentatively. Both the older women turned to look at her.

“Yes?”

“If they think I’m an official Fleet representative, perhaps that will make them think twice about destroying things. Or, if it would help, I’ve got a really good scan tech who could probably put military-grade encryptions on them. And someone who could watch the door while he does it.”

“Perfect,” Venezia said. “How long before you can get your people down here?”

“I don’t know the shuttle schedule,” Heris said. She refrained from telling Venezia that it was her presence on the other shuttle that had kept them aloft. “It shouldn’t take long for the little equipment he’ll need.”

“There will be a shuttle,” Venezia said. “I’ll order one.” Heris was only mildly surprised at the efficiency with which Venezia ordered a shuttle, arranged a secure comlink for Heris to the Sweet Delight, and arranged ground transportation for Heris’s personnel when they landed. Some officers didn’t look as formidable as they were; Venezia must be that sort. And Bunny, she remembered, had had that uncanny ability to change gears from foolish, horse-besotted idle rich, to the very effective Lord Thornbuckle. She wondered what it would feel like to do that. And was it something that came with money and power, or with age? Or all of the above? If age was part of it, the increasing number of Rejuvenants were going to affect society even more than she’d thought.

Marta and Venezia continued to unearth more problems, and discuss them—a discussion that went far beyond Heris’s comprehension—until Koutsoudas, Oblo, and Meharry showed up. Heris explained what Venezia wanted.

“No problem, Captain,” Oblo said. He looked around the offices. “Just how much trouble do we expect?”

“Not much, really. The damage is done; it’s just a matter of protecting the evidence. And they know I represent Fleet. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course.” Meharry grinned. She had brought some of the lethal weaponry Heris had bought on the first voyage, and the lightweight body armor under her shipsuit was obvious to the instructed eye. So was the military bearing of all three. Koutsoudas, busy at the computer terminal, had attached some of his pet boxes.

“I’ve secured the database,” he said, in far less time than even Heris expected. “It’ll snag and log any attempts to delete or alter anything, and lock the guilty terminal.”

“And I’ll just go around and put out a few scanners,” Oblo said. He waggled the duffel he carried.

“Good,” Heris said. The two older women looked pleased, and she let herself enjoy it. At least she didn’t feel like a useless idiot next to them . . . although she was beginning to suspect they might not need even this help.

“I’m thinking of dinner,” Venezia said, turning to lead the way back out of the building. “Did we ever have anything for lunch?”

All the way back to the hotel, Venezia and Marta discussed the culinary possibilities of the local cuisine, as if all they cared about was food.