Winning Colors

Chapter Five

Heris left Cecelia onplanet and went back up to the yacht where, she hoped, she could have ten consecutive minutes in which no one mentioned horses or anything connected with them. She found Sirkin making the same complaint to the rest of the crew about Brun. She herself had had to remind Brun firmly that she was a crewmember, not a rich girl on vacation, and order her back to the ship.

“All she talks about is horses. And she knows a lot of other things, but from the minute she unpacked Lady Cecelia’s saddle, everything else went out of her mind.”

“Everything?” Meharry asked.

Sirkin reddened. “Well . . . you know what I mean.”

Heris cleared her throat and they all straightened. “Any messages?” she asked.

“Yes, Captain.” Meharry could be formal when she chose. “All disclaimed urgency when we offered to transfer them down to your hotel, but you do have a stack.”

“I’ll get back to work then. I have no idea how long Lady Cecelia will stay—the Trials are over, but she’s meeting old friends. However, we should be prepared to depart in a day or so.” She glanced around. “Where is Brun?”

“Probably watching Trials cubes,” Sirkin said. “Again.” Everyone laughed, including Heris.

“How’s the installation coming?” She had finally decided to let Koutsoudas install his pet equipment on their own scans, with Oblo to ensure that nothing went wrong.

“It’s done, Captain.” Koutsoudas looked at Oblo, and Oblo looked back; Heris recognized the expression from years in the Fleet.

“And just what have you gentlemen been up to with it? Looking into the yachts of the rich and famous?”

“Something like that,” Oblo said, scratching his head. “But nothing too . . . damaging. They all seem to be down on the planet playing with horses.”

In her office, she found most of the messages to be routine queries, including some from travel agents who wondered when she would be free for bookings. She hadn’t thought of having any client but Lady Cecelia—but if Cecelia stayed here too long, she’d have to find another charter. And that meant hiring service staff as well . . . she felt her shoulders tensing. She hated the thought of dealing with service staff; she was a commander, not a . . . whatever you called it.

She had gone through the messages in order of time, the usual way, so the one headed “Serrano Family: request meeting” came last. It had arrived days ago, but she saw by the comments that whoever it was had refused several offers to forward the message. She stared at it, breathing carefully: in, out. Which of her many relatives could it be? And why? Only one way to find out; she posted a message to the station address and waited for the response. It came almost at once: request for meeting, and a suggested location, the dock outside the yacht’s access tube.

The dark compact form in uniform looked vaguely familiar. Heris paused, suddenly wary. Upright, as only the military youth were, and ensign’s insignia. Who? Then the young man turned and met her eyes; she felt that look as a blow to the gut. “Barin!”

“Captain Serrano.” His formality steadied her. Her own distant cousin, and he gave her her title.

“What is it?” she asked then. “Would you prefer to talk in my quarters?”

“If—if you don’t mind.” He waited for her answer in that contained, measured posture she knew so well. He would wait for a day if she chose to make him.

“Come along, then.” She led the way; her neck itched with his gaze on it. She felt vulnerable, as she had not for a long time. He could kill her easily, be gone before anyone knew . . . no, that was ridiculous. Why would he?

They passed no one, and neither of them spoke. When they reached her quarters, she preceded him through the door, and went around behind her desk. “Have a seat,” she offered, but he stood before her desk like any junior officer called before her. His eyes, after one quick flicker around the room, settled on her face. She waited, wondering if she must prompt him with a question, but he spoke before her patience ran out.

“I came to offer you formal apologies on behalf of the family,” he said, stopping there as if he had run into a wall.

“You?” Her mind raced. Formal apology? If they had wanted to apologize, if this were genuine, they’d have sent someone more senior. Not one of the admirals Serrano, of course, but someone her former rank or above.

Barin flushed at her tone. “Captain Serrano, I admit I—perhaps I overstated my authority.” That had the phrasing learned in the classroom.

“Go on,” she said. In her voice she heard authority and wariness mingled.

He did not answer at once, and she let her gaze sharpen. What had he done, gone AWOL? But his answer, when it came, seemed just possible. “My grandmother—your aunt, Admiral Vida Serrano—asked me to find you. With apologies: no one more senior could be spared, under the circumstances.”

“The circumstances being?” All her old instincts had come alert.

“The unsettled state of things in the Familias, that is. All leaves canceled, all active-duty personnel called in—”

“I know what all leaves canceled means,” Heris said, dryly. “But I also know they released all the Royal junior officers and dispersed the onplanet regiment on Rockhouse—”

“Things have . . . changed,” Barin said. “Glenis and I were the only ones old enough, that didn’t have other assignments. She went up-axis and I went down—they weren’t sure where and when we’d catch up with you, you see.”

“But the point is . . . apology? And for what?” As if she didn’t know; as if her heart didn’t burn with it.

“For not backing you when you were under investigation,” Barin said. In his young voice, it sounded innocent enough; she wondered if he understood what had happened, if his elders had explained it to him. “I was told to say that your aunt the Admiral Serrano was not informed until too late of the situation you were in, and would certainly have given you assistance had she known.”

Her aunt the admiral. It was just possible that she had not known, until after Heris’s resignation, if no one had thought to inform her. But she should have been told. She was then the most distant high-ranking family member, but not the only one. Other admirals Serrano had been closer, must have known about it. Why hadn’t one of them done something?

Barin went on then, as if he had been reading her thoughts. “I—I didn’t know any of this before, sir. Ma’am.”

That bobble made Heris grin before she thought. “I wouldn’t expect you would have,” she said.

“I mean, the admiral said there was some kind of trouble in the family, something she hadn’t anticipated. Not whatever it was with you, but—”

Heris felt her brows rising. “You mean you don’t know what happened to me? Whatever’s happened to the grapevine? It’s been long enough I’d expect it to be all over every prep school with a single Fleet brat in it.”

He flushed. “There’ve been rumors—”

“I would hope so. What’s a lifetime of experience for, if not to make rumors fly? Let me straighten out a few things for you, young man.” She paused, thinking how best to put it. Honesty first, and tact second, but without bitterness if she could manage it. “What happened was that I accomplished my assigned mission, but not in the way I’d been told to do it. My way saved lives, but it made an admiral look stupid—Lepescu, if you ever heard of him.”

“Uh . . . no, I haven’t.”

“Bloodthirsty bastard,” Heris said. “He liked wasting troops. I killed him—”

“What!” He looked as if the sky had just fallen; she almost laughed. Had she ever been that innocently certain that everyone followed the rules, that hierarchies never tumbled?

“Not then. Sorry; I got out of sequence. Let’s see. He was furious that I had not won the battle his way, and swore he’d get revenge. There was a Board of Inquiry, of course. Evidence had . . . disappeared.” She didn’t really want to tell him how; it was too complicated, and involved too many names he might know. “I was offered immunity for my crew if I would resign my commission,” she went on. “Otherwise, courts-martial for all. Considering Lepescu’s position—the Rules of Engagement—and the fact that no one from the family spoke for me, I decided to resign and save my crew.”

He stared at her; clearly he hadn’t heard this before. “But—but why didn’t—?”

“I don’t know why someone didn’t do something. Let me finish.” More bite got through than she intended; he flinched. It wasn’t his fault, she reminded herself, and tried to breathe slowly. “What I didn’t know was that after I resigned, after I was gone from his sector, Lepescu charged my crew. Most were convicted of serious breaches of regulation and were dispersed to various Fleet prisons. Some—” The old rage blanked her vision for a moment and she had to force another deep breath to continue. “Some he took to a private hunting reserve and hunted.”

“Hunted . . . you mean . . . like animals?”

“Precisely. With friends of his who liked the same thing.” She didn’t mention the prince; his death had earned her silence.

“How did you . . . how did you find out?” That had not been the first question he thought of; she answered what she thought it had been.

“I killed him when I found him, which was—luckily for me—in the process of that hunting trip, when his guilt was not in question. My crew—the survivors—were rehabilitated and given the choice of remaining in Fleet or taking a settlement and going civilian. Some of them are here, with me.”

“Couldn’t you have gone back?” He looked puzzled.

“Of course. But—” Heris wondered how much to explain to this young man—this mere child, as he seemed to her. Could he understand that it wasn’t merely pique? She’d already explained more than he was likely to absorb. He knew no world but Fleet; he could imagine no other choice than returning to it. “So,” she said, changing direction. “That’s what my side of the trouble was like. Now—what did the admiral want me to know?”

He looked confused a moment, then got back to it. “She didn’t explain much, really. She wanted you to know she hadn’t known about your trouble in time, and I think she blames some of the others in the family.” As well she might. “Uh . . . your parents among them . . .”

“It’s not my problem now,” Heris said crisply. She wasn’t about to discuss her parents with him.

“No . . . but she’d like to talk to you, the next time you’re anywhere near.”

Which was likely to be a long time from now. “Did she give you an itinerary?” Already her mind had moved beyond this to how she was going to ease this young relation off the ship and on his way.

“Yes—here.” He fished in his pocket and came up with a small datacube. “It’s compressed format—she sent an adapter in case you don’t have a reader with the right interface.”

“Thanks,” Heris said. She wasn’t going to tell him that she had a couple of experts who could strip the data out of virtually any storage device. Whatever her aunt the admiral was up to, she would keep her own secrets.

Someone tapped at the door. Barin looked around, and Heris called, “Come on in.”

Brun opened the door. “Captain, the new installations are ready for inspection.”

“Thank you; I’ll be along shortly.” Heris repressed a grin. Brun definitely had the right touch, timing and tone both impeccable. Brun nodded and withdrew.

“I’ll—I’ll be going,” Barin said, with a hint of nervousness.

“Yes—I’m sorry, but I do have some ship work under way. Tell you what—why not have dinner with me this evening? You can bring me up-to-date on your sibs and cousins.”

“Do you really—? Grandmother said not to waste your time. Just give you the message, and the cube, and get out of your way.”

Heris laughed. “She must think I’ve grown to be quite an ogre,” she said. That Admiral Serrano would know how ogres were grown. Perversely, Heris was now determined to be cordial to the youngster. “Are you scheduled out of here?”

“No—not yet.”

“Fine—then you can meet me at the Captains Guild for dinner. They use a screwball clock setting here—five shifts in the day and five hours in each shift, and it starts at what we’d call mainday or first shift. So make it third and one.”

“Yes, sir.” This time he didn’t change it to the civilian usage.

“I’ll guide you out.” He could find his own way on such a tiny ship, but she wouldn’t let even a relative wander around unescorted.

The cube contained substantially more than the admiral’s itinerary for the next year or so. Heris had suspected it would when she turned it over to Meharry.

“Video, audio, and an almighty big chunk of encrypted stuff. Does your family have its own code scheme?”

“More than one,” Heris said. “I suppose she wonders if I kept the key.”

“I should have known,” Meharry said sourly. “You great families—”

“As if you didn’t have something of the same sort,” Heris retorted. “What I’m really concerned about is any kind of ghost or vampire, or even an owl.” Anything that might compromise their own information systems.

Meharry shook her head. “No hooters at all, and nothing that my spook catchers notice. Want me to let Esteban have a look?”

“No.” That came out with more force than Heris intended, and she calmed herself. “No, I trust your judgment on this. Let’s see if my key works on the encrypted stuff.”

She didn’t bother to explain the key. As with the rendezvous protocols cooked up by young officers and elaborated over the years to an intricate but precise interpersonal code, family encryption keys were combinations of predictable and unpredictable private data. Events important to the family as a whole, to individuals within it, might form part of the key, along with informal rules for making changes. Heris didn’t so much have a key, as a procedure for finding the key, a procedure which functioned as part of the key.

Video came up. “She looks like you on a bad day,” Meharry blurted. Then, “Sorry, Captain.”

“It’s our classic bone structure,” Heris murmured. “Plus thirty or forty years—I forget how old she’d be by now. Anyway she’s taller.” Her aunt the admiral had silver hair now, even more striking against her dark face. She still had the Algestin accent, as she identified herself and suggested that Heris watch the rest in private.

“How’d she know I was here?” asked Meharry suspiciously. “Is this going to have a compulsion component in it?”

“I doubt that. Family matters, mostly. Stay, if you want; I’m not sensitive to dirty laundry at the moment.”

“No thanks. I don’t want more than one Serrano mad at me.” Meharry stalked out, very much like a cat twitching its tail after being sprinkled with water. Heris didn’t laugh.

Instead, she started the datastream again. Her aunt the admiral . . . someone she had dreamed about being, as a girl. Someone she had hoped to impress, as a young officer. Someone she had thought of as a mentor, and even a friend.

Someone who had not come to her rescue when she needed it desperately.

Now that dark face with the silver aureole wasted no time in apology. “Heris: I trust that you will hear me out, no matter how bitter you are. This is critical material, and it may be my only chance to brief you. I am still not sure who kept me from finding out about your trouble, and at the moment that’s no longer a priority item. The future of the Familias Regnant and the Regular Space Service is—”

A full hour later, Heris sat back and drew a long breath. In the same organized, concise way that had earned her an admiral’s stars two years ahead of anyone else in her cohort, her aunt had laid out what she knew of the factional disputes within the Regular Space Service, and where the present political stress might rupture the Fleet. She had been given her aunt’s best guess on which family members to trust, which senior officers to trust, where certain fragrant bones were buried . . . assuming that she could trust her aunt.

The memory of the last moments of the cube came back full force. Admirals apologized rarely; her aunt had once explained, at a family party when Heris was still a student and her own stars were years in the future, that that was because they planned ahead and had no need to. But the good ones could and did, her aunt had said, when they must. She had believed her aunt was a good admiral . . . her aunt, who had apologized for her own and the family’s betrayal.

“I love you, Heris,” her aunt had said at the last. “I hope you believe that, if nothing else. With the trouble coming . . . I want you to know that I consider you one of the best Serranos of your generation. And one of the best young officers we had, too.”

It would take a long time to digest everything in the cube. If it was true . . . but she felt that it was true. It felt right, and she’d always had good intuitions about that. And if true, then she thought she understood some things Livadhi had not told her.

The sooner they were off this station the better. Deep space was going to be a lot safer for everyone for a while.

The Captains Guild dining room on Zenebra Station had the usual quiet, respectable atmosphere, not quite as stultifying as the Senior Officers’ Club at a sector headquarters, but almost. Two tables away, a merchant captain in the uniform of a major line dined alone, without looking up; across the room, a quiet group of officers from another line chatted while waiting to be served.

Barin had recoiled from the menu’s prices at first. “I’m treating you,” Heris said. “Have something you like.”

“It’s all so . . . fancy.”

“Not really. Only a step up from any ordinary restaurant on dockside. You’ve been eating Academy chow too long. If you want to see fancy, you should see Lady Cecelia’s tables. I couldn’t believe it when I first went to work for her. She thinks every meal should be a work of art.”

He wavered, uncertain. Heris took a guess, from his eye movements, and ordered for him, waving away his objections. “Maybe it is just curiosity, but if you don’t like it you can always get yourself a basic cube of processed goo afterwards.”

“But Lassaferan snailfish?”

“You wanted it; I could tell. You might like it; I do.”

He relaxed, bit by bit, as he worked his way into the food with youthful appetite. Heris asked no questions, letting him tell her what he would about himself. Jerd and Gesta’s oldest son, normal Fleet childhood—which meant in and out of service creches. Academy prep school: he had graduated fifth in his class there. Academy: he had been second to a brilliant daughter of an admiral, who’d been killed in her first assignment when a glitch in a powerplant readout turned out to be a real problem in the powerplant, not the readout. Heris wondered about that, after her aunt’s report. Top Fleet officers are losing too many of their children—the best ones—in accidents in the first two years out of the Academy. Of course those were the dangerous years. Youngsters full of book knowledge, eager to prove themselves—they got into trouble. So had she. But someone had been there to get her out, and if her aunt was right, there were fewer rescues these days.

This boy, though—he was bright enough, and good enough. She liked the way he described his first tour, as ensign on a cruiser. He didn’t reveal anything he shouldn’t—even though she was a family member and former Fleet officer—and yet he didn’t appear to be holding back.

“Communications,” she mused, when he ran down. “You know, when I was commissioned, we didn’t have FTL communications except from planetary platforms. I was on Boarhound when they mounted the first shipboard ansible, and at first it was only one-way, from the planet to us. That was still pretty exciting. Then they worked out how to get enough power for transmission.”

“It’s still not unlimited,” he said, and flushed.

“No, I know that.” She didn’t tell him how. He didn’t know about Koutsoudas and didn’t need to. “But someday I expect they’ll figure out ways to give us realtime communication in all situations. Something in jumpspace would be a real help.” An understatement. A way to communicate in and out of jumpspace would radically change space warfare. “But that’s beside the point—you’re going back to see the admiral?”

“Yes, sir. Ma’am.”

Heris chuckled. “Either will do. Tell her from me that I don’t entirely understand, but I have heard what she’s saying. Can you do that?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Good. And tell her—tell her I love her.”

He flushed again, but nodded. Heris was almost glad to see that embarrassment; an honest young man would be embarrassed to repeat such a message, but he would do it. Coming from him directly, it would have the effect she wanted.

She looked at the chronometer on the wall. “Sorry to leave you, but I’ve work scheduled. If there’s anything I can do to assist, feel free to call on me.” He pushed back his chair, with a last glance at a dessert guaranteed to cause heart failure in anyone over twenty, but Heris waved him down. “No—finish that, don’t waste it. I’ll take care of everything on the way out. Give my regards to family.” Meaning everyone but the aunt admiral; he could interpret that how he liked. But, polite to the end, he stood until Heris had left the dining room. She hoped he would sit back down and finish that dessert. He had earned it.

The next day, Cecelia arrived without warning. “I had to take a standby seat on the shuttle,” she explained. “People are leaving in droves, of course.” Heris had noticed that; half the ships docked when they arrived had already left. “But I wanted to talk to you.”

“Here, or en route to your next destination?” Heris asked. “If you want to leave, I need to file with the Stationmaster.”

“Here for now. I might even go back down once more, to talk to Ari.” Cecelia paused, and gave Heris a sharp look. “What’s happened? Did you and Petris have a fight? You look upset about something.”

“It’s not Petris,” Heris said, annoyed to feel the heat rising in her face. “It’s my family . . . they sent someone to talk to me.”

“About time.” Cecelia kicked off her boots and wiggled her toes luxuriously. “Ahhh. I was standing in line for two hours. Standing in line is a lot worse than walking.”

“Agreed,” Heris said. She hoped Cecelia would stay on another topic, but that was too much to expect.

“Your family sent someone,” she said. “I hope whoever it was crawled on his or her belly and licked your toes.”

“Cecelia!” Despite herself, Heris couldn’t help laughing. “What a disgusting thought! No, it was a very nice young man, just out of the Academy, my aunt admiral’s grandson.”

“Apologetic,” Cecelia said.

“In a way. Not personally, but on behalf of. And she sent a datacube herself. It’s just—I’m still not sure I understand.”

“I know I don’t understand. Why didn’t she help you?”

“She says she didn’t know in time. She wants to talk to me about it, if it’s convenient.”

“And you?”

“I want to think it over,” Heris said.

“Heris, I want to ask you something.”

“Of course.” Heris seemed relaxed and alert at once, no tension in her face.

“Do I seem different since my rejuvenation? I don’t mean the obvious . . . something else.”

Heris took a sip of coffee before answering. “The obvious—your body, your hair color. I’m not sure about the rest. A young person is supposed to have more energy, so I presume that along with a younger body, a healthier body, you have more intrinsic energy. Is that right?”

“Yes, but that’s not exactly—”

“No . . . I’m feeling my way. You are different, in behavior as well as body, but I’m not sure which caused which. You were never . . . ah . . . passive.” Cecelia snorted at that attempt to be tactful. Heris grinned at her. “Look, even as an old lady, you were energetic, feisty, and stubborn. Now your body’s younger, and you’re even more energetic, feisty, and stubborn. High-tempered. But I didn’t know you when you were this age the first time around, so I can’t say if you’re changed.”

That was the crux of it, right there. Heris hadn’t been born when she had been forty. What she was right now wasn’t really forty—it was eighty-seven in a forty-year-old mask. “I’m not really forty, Heris,” she said, trying not to sound as frustrated and annoyed as she was. “I have all the experience of the next forty-seven years. All of it. What I need to know is whether the treatment changed me—the person I am—and sent me off on a new course.”

“Mmm. I would say that it had to. The course of a life without rejuvenation, for someone your age—you were preparing to detach, to relinquish your grip on life itself—”

“Not yet!” Cecelia said. “I was only eighty-four; I’d have had another twenty years—”

“But you’d given up competitive riding; you’d gradually reduced your social contacts. All signs that you accepted, however reluctantly, the evidence of age. You expected to enjoy your remaining years, but you weren’t pushing toward anything new.”

“True, I suppose.” She didn’t like to hear that analysis, but she could not deny the evidence.

“Now you’ve been put back, physically at least, to your most productive period. You have twenty to thirty years of vigorous activity before you begin the decline again—unless you renew the process. That has to change your course—you could not fail to act differently now than three years ago.”

“I had a visitor, that man—”

“Yes.” Heris’s voice chilled; clearly she didn’t like Pedar.

“He’s a multiple Rejuvenant. He thinks I should . . . identify myself with them.”

“Who?”

“Those who have rejuvenated with the new procedures; those who expect to renew their rejuvenations. They have adopted customs for identification, for interaction. Given the age of the procedure itself, most of those who have used it are my age or younger.”

“I thought it had been around for eighty years or so,” Heris said.

“It has. But remember that it competed at first with the old procedure, which had proven its safety.” Heris couldn’t remember, of course. She herself just remembered a discussion of the new procedure, then far more expensive than the standard. By the time she was thirty, it had gained some ground. But it was incompatible with the earlier procedure. No one who had the Stochaster could then have the Ramhoff-Inikin. Lorenza had been one of the first to test—illegally, at the time—the safety of repeated rejuvenation with the new procedure. Cecelia had been nearly fifty when the laws forbidding serial rejuvenation were changed. She explained this, aware of the gaps in her own knowledge. She had been so sure she wouldn’t choose rejuvenation that she had ignored most of the arguments about it.

“There’s always been age stratification,” Heris said slowly. “Particularly those who have attained prestige or power—the older they are, the more they hold. But if there’s a sizable group now which is . . . immortal . . .” Cecelia could tell from the pause that the word bothered her. “I see the potential for more rigid stratification, even alienation.”

“That’s what bothers me,” Cecelia said. “I’ve always been rich; I’ve always known that my life wasn’t anything like the average. I’ve enjoyed my wealth, but felt that it was fair because I was going to die someday and someone else would have everything I had owned. True, most of it would go to other rich people—my family—but I wasn’t trying to hang on to it. From what Pedar said, I’d suspect that others are. Lorenza certainly was. And I feel my own ambition stirring, along with the changes in my body. I won the All-Union championship before; I could do it again.”

“How many times?” Heris asked.

“I don’t know. I never tired of it when I could still do it; the feel of riding a great course is like nothing else. Mind and body together—stupid riders, no matter how athletic, don’t survive, and clumsy smart ones don’t either. Yet, in the field I care most about, the prizes are limited. I’ve won Wherrin, I’ve won Scatlin, I’ve won Patchcock—”

“Patchcock!” Heris stared at her. Cecelia had not wanted her train of thought interrupted, and glared back.

“Yes, Patchcock. It’s not the equestrian center Wherrin is; it’s uglier, for one thing. Not really an ag world. But they have a circuit of five or six major events, in the uplands, and—”

“Patchcock is politically unstable,” Heris said.

“That’s since my time,” Cecelia said, and shrugged. She had not been back since winning the Patchcock Circuit Trophy twice in a row and then losing to Roddy Carnover, after the fall that broke her leg in several places. That had been . . . had been over forty years before. She took a breath and went on.

“My point is, I’ve achieved all the goals that attract event riders in the Familias. I could compete in the Guerni Republic, I suppose, or even beyond, though the travel times get to be fierce. But why? Suppose I did win the All-Union title forty years in a row—and then rejuved again and won it forty times more. I can’t see that, even though I love riding and want to keep doing it.”

“And this Pedar—”

“My goals,” Cecelia said, “have always been limited. I did learn to manage my own investments, after my parents died, but only so that I had plenty of money to pursue my real interest—the horses. I didn’t really care about gaining power in those organizations, running them—there’s not time, you see. And horse people have always had more contact with other social strata . . . you can’t compete with horses unless you’re active in the stable as well. Not mucking out all the stalls, no—again, there’s no time—but you aren’t likely to be stupidly contemptuous of those who do. Horses are natural levelers, and not only when they dump you in the mud.”

“But equestrians have always been rich. . . .” Heris said.

“Yes, and no. The really good ones from poor families get corporate sponsorship, just as really good singers and dancers and actors get sponsorship. While those of us who do it think of riding as recreational, its position in the economy is actually entertainment . . . the recreation of the audience, not the participant. So there’s been access for the equestrian with less talent.” Cecelia frowned, remembering that she had told Heris about her own misuse of power and money against a talented junior. Best get that over with. . . . “Of course there are abuses. I did it myself, as you know. But in general, there are openings.”

“Don’t you think the other Rejuvenants will get as tired of chasing their prizes as you say you will become of chasing eventing titles?”

“I’m not sure—I’m afraid not. By the nature of the system, an equestrian’s goals are limited. But someone whose joy is gaining economic or political power . . . what will stop him?”

“I . . . see.”

“Lorenza, for instance. Where would she have stopped? Had her ambition any limits? And the more benign Rejuvenant, someone like Pedar—” Though, even to herself, she had trouble with that label. Pedar benign? Better than Ross, but still.

“If the ambition has no natural saturation, then the split between generations gets worse. I see your point. The logical answer is expansion, opening new opportunities. . . .”

“And the Familias Regnant has never been an expansive system,” Cecelia said.

“No, but we both know who is.” Heris looked worried enough now. “Just how long do you suppose the Benignity has had this process? And did they think of the implications back at the first?”

“It’s like training,” Cecelia said. Heris looked confused. “The inexperienced or incompetent trainer attempts to control everything through the horse. The good trainer controls herself.”

“That sounds like something Admiral Feiruss used to say,” Heris said. “You can’t control anyone else until you can control yourself—”

“Not only until, but only by means of,” Cecelia said, glad to have found common ground at last. “It is your control of your own body that allows you to give the signals needed, and notice if they’re understood. The bad rider flounders around, blaming the horse that ‘isn’t paying attention’ when he’s given so many signals that the horse is confused.”

“I’ve had instructors like that,” Heris said with a grin. “I remember one—always yelling at us to pay attention to him, then telling us to concentrate on something else, then yelling again—I couldn’t tell if it was more important to watch him or the demonstration.”

“What I’m afraid of, with this group Pedar talks of, is that they’ll try to control everything else before themselves.” Cecelia wasn’t going to let Heris wander off on side roads of memory. “I don’t want to be around people like that.”

It had been easy to say that, but in real life—in practical terms—she wondered what difference it might make. Cecelia clipped the blue—and-silver ring to her ear and grimaced into the mirror. It felt like the first time she had worn a competition number, all those decades ago: she was declaring herself part of something she didn’t understand. Although she had a much better idea of what competitive riders were like than she had of her fellow Rejuvenants. She didn’t know what kind of reception she would get—if anyone else would notice.

“Ah . . . Lady Cecelia.” The bank officer’s gaze had snagged briefly on the ring; she noticed that he had two, one in each ear. “And how may we assist you today?”

“I’m going to be traveling to agricultural research worlds, picking up equine samples for my breeding farm on Rotterdam,” Cecelia said. “I may be out of touch for extended periods, and I wanted to be sure that there were no problems with my line of credit.”

“I wouldn’t expect any,” the man said. “So far the political situation has had no effect on commerce; certainly our institution is stable—”

“I wasn’t doubting it. Only my travel advisors pointed out that some of the worlds I want to visit are served only by ansible, for anything beyond a system transfer.”

“Ah . . . do you have a list of these worlds?”

“Yes—” Cecelia handed it over. “Ordinarily, I could deal with an agency that specializes in equine genetics, but I’m looking for something I can’t really define. I’ll know it when I see it—”

“Yes . . .” He didn’t sound interested; he probably wasn’t. Then he looked up. “I think the best thing would be a batch dump to the local systems’ registered financial institutions. That way, they’d have your references when you arrived, and your line of credit would be established at both ends. Can you estimate your needs?”

Cecelia had that information as well, and he fed it into his desktop. “We’re leaving Zenebra shortly,” she said, as she waited. “Can you give me an estimate of clearance times?”

“Unless your yacht is faster than anything I ever heard of, your local approvals will all be waiting days before you arrive, milady. And—may I say it’s good to see you back in competition. I hope you find the right mount for next year’s trials.”

The assumptions took her breath away, but she merely nodded her thanks and returned to the ship. The ring in her ear felt huge, heavy with responsibilities she didn’t want.