The Serrano Connection (89 page)

Lemon had refused for years to share his copy of a Molly Ivins book Waltraude had never been able to track down through Library Services. He had even reneged on a promise to do so, in exchange for her data cube of thirty years of a rural county newspaper from Oklahoma. Access to Lemon's material?

"When do we leave?" asked Waltraude.

Sector VII HQ

"The admiral wants you," the jig said. Esmay looked up from her lists. What now? She hadn't done anything bad again, surely.

"On my way," she said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. Whatever it was would be made no better by a long face.

In Admiral Hornan's outer office, the clerk nodded at her soberly, and touched a button on the desk. "Go right in, Lieutenant Suiza."

So it was serious, and she still had no idea what was going on. They had chewed all the flavor out of her sins so far; what else was there to attack?

"Lieutenant Suiza reporting, sir." She met Admiral Hornan's eyes squarely.

"At ease, Lieutenant. I'm sorry to say I have sad news for you. We have received a request relayed by ansible from your father for you to take emergency leave . . . your great-grandmother has died."

Esmay felt her knees give a little. The old lady's blessing—had she known? Tears stung her eyes.

"Sit down, Lieutenant." She sat where she was bidden, her mind whirling. "Would you like tea? Coffee?"

"No . . . thank you, sir. It's—I'll be fine in a moment." She was already fine; a translucent shield protected her from the universe.

"Your father indicates that you and your great-grandmother were close—"

"Yes, sir."

"And says that your presence is urgently needed for both legal and family matters, if you can possibly be spared." The admiral's head tilted. "Under the circumstances, I think you can well be spared. Your presence here is hardly essential." He might as well have said it was grossly unwelcome; Esmay registered that but felt none of the pain she would have felt before. Great-grandmother dead? She had been a constant, even in self-exile, all Esmay's life, all her father's life.

"I—thank you, sir." Her hand crept up to touch the amulet through her uniform.

"I'm curious to know, if you would not mind telling me, what legalities might require a great-grandchild's presence at such a time."

Esmay dragged her mind back to the present conversation; she felt she was wading through glue. "I'm not entirely sure, sir," she began. "Unless I am my great-grandmother's nearest female relative in the female line . . . and I'd have thought it was my aunt Sanibel."

"I don't follow."

Esmay tried to remember birth years—surely it had to be Sanni, and not herself. But Sanni was younger than her father. "It's the land, sir. The estancia. Land passes in the female line."

"Land . . . how much land?"

How much land? Esmay waved her hands vaguely. "Sir, I'm sorry but I don't know. A lot."

"Ten hectares? A hundred?"

"Oh no—much more than that. The headquarters buildings occupy twenty hectares, and the polo fields are—" She tried to think without counting on her fingers. "Probably a hundred hectares there. Most of the small paddocks up by the house are fifty hectares . . ."

The admiral stared; Esmay did not understand the intensity of that stare. "A small paddock—just part of this land—is fifty hectares?"

"Yes . . . and the large pastures, for the cattle, are anywhere from one to three thousand hectares."

He shook his head. "All right. A lot of land. Lieutenant—does anyone in Fleet know you are that rich?"

"Rich?" She wasn't rich. She had never been rich. Her father, Papa Stefan, her great-grandmother . . . the family as a whole, but not her attenuated twig on the end of the branch.

"You don't consider thousands of hectares a sign of wealth?"

Esmay paused. "I never really thought of it, sir. It's not mine—I mean, it never was, and I'm reasonably sure it's not now. It's the family's."

"My retirement estate," the admiral said, "Is ten hectares."

Esmay could think of nothing to say but "Sorry," and she knew that was wrong.

"So might I conclude," the admiral went on, in a tone of voice that set Esmay's teeth on edge, "that if you were to . . . choose to pursue family responsibilities, rather than a career in Fleet, you would not be starving in the street somewhere?"

"Sir."

"Not that I'm advising you to do so; I merely find it . . . interesting . . . that the young officer who was capable of telling the Speaker's daughter she was a spoiled rich girl is herself . . . a rich . . . girl. A very rich girl. Perhaps—for all the reasons you elucidated for Sera Meager's benefit—rich girls are not suited to military careers."

It was as close to an instruction to resign as anyone could come, without saying the words. Esmay met his eyes, bleak misery in her heart. What chance did she have, if senior officers felt this way about her? She wanted to argue, to point out that she had proven her loyalty, her honor—not once, but again and again. But she knew it would do no good.

The admiral looked down at his desk. "Your leave and travel orders have been cut, Lieuteant Suiza. Be sure to take all the time you need."

"Thank you, sir." She would be polite, no matter what. Rudeness had gotten her nowhere, honesty had come to grief, and so she would be polite to the end.

"Dismissed," he said, without looking up.

The clerk looked up as she came out.

"Bad news, sir?"

"My . . . great-grandmother died. Head of our family." Her throat closed on more, but the clerk's sympathetic expression looked genuine.

"I'm sorry, sir. I have the leave and travel orders the admiral told me to prepare . . ." The clerk paused, but Esmay offered no explanation. "You've got a level two priority, and I took the liberty of putting your name on a berth for the fastest transit I could find."

"Thank you," Esmay said. "That's very kind—"

"You're quite welcome, sir; just sorry it's for a sad occasion. I notice your end-of-leave is given as indeterminate—I'm assuming you'll notify the nearest sector HQ when you know how long you'll need?"

"That's right," Esmay said. The familiar routine, the familiar phrases eased the numbing chill of the admiral's attitude.

"That would be Sector Nine, and I'll just add the recognition codes you'll need—and here you are, sir."

"Thank you again," Esmay said, managing a genuine smile for the clerk. He, at least, treated her as if she were a normal person worth respect.

Her transport would undock in six hours; she hurried back to her quarters to pack.

Marta Katerina Saenz, Chairholder in her own right, and voter of two other Chairs in the Family sept, had been expecting the summons for weeks before it came. Bunny's wild daughter had at last fallen into more trouble than youth and dash could get her out of, though the news media had been fairly vague about what it was, having had her listed first as "missing" and then as "presumed captured by pirates." She suspected it might be worse than that; pirates normally killed any captives or ransomed them quickly. Bunny, who had succeeded Kemtre as the chief executive of the Familias Grand Council, had actually done quite well in the various crises that had followed the king's abdication—the Morellines and the Consellines had not in fact pulled out; the Crescent Worlds hadn't caused trouble; the Benignity's attempt at invasion in the Xavier system had been quickly scotched. But rumor had it that his daughter's disappearance had sent him into a state close to unreason. Rumor was usually wrong in details, Marta had found, but right in essence.

She herself was the logical person to call in for advice and help. Family connections and cross-connections, for one thing, and—paradoxically—her reputation for avoiding the hurly-burly of political life. Her axes had all been ground long since, and stored in the closet for future need. Several of the Families had already contacted her, asking her to make discreet inquiries. Moreover, she had helped Bunny in the Patchcock affair, and she knew the redoubtable Admiral Serrano. In addition, whatever trouble Brun had gotten herself into involved this side of Familias space—that was clear from the number of increased Fleet patrols, and the way her own carriers were being stopped for inspection. So it was natural that someone would think of asking her to—what was the phrase?—"assist in the investigations."

She did not resent the call as much as she might have a decade or so earlier. That affair on Patchcock had been much more fun than she'd expected, and the aftermath—when she'd tackled Raffaele's difficult mother about the girl's marriage—even more so. Perhaps she'd had enough, for a while, of secluded mountain estates and laboratory research. Perhaps it was time for another fling.

Though by all accounts this would be no fling. When she boarded the R.S.S.
Gazehound
, which had been sent to fetch her, she was given a data cube which made that clear. Marta had met Brun more than once, in her wildest stages, and the vid of Brun helpless and mute was worse than shocking. She put it out of her mind, and concentrated instead on testing her powers with the crew of the R.S.S.
Gazehound
.

Captain Bonnirs had welcomed her aboard with the grave deference due her age and rank; Marta had managed not to chuckle aloud at that point, but it wasn't easy. He seemed so young, and his crew were mere children . . . but of course they weren't. Still, they responded to her as her many nieces and nephews had, treating her as an honorary grandmother. For the price of listening to the same old stories of love, betrayal, and reconciliation, she could acquire vast amounts of information the youngsters never knew they were giving.

Pivot-major Gleason, for instance, while apparently unaware of any conflict between his loyalty to the Regular Space Service and that to his family, was carrying undeclared packages from his brother to his sister-in-law's family: packages that, under the scrutiny now given such mail, would have been opened and inspected by postal authorities. He didn't see anything wrong with this; Marta hoped very much he was merely hauling stolen jewels or something equally innocuous and not explosives.

Ensign Currany, in the midst of asking advice on handling unwanted advances from a senior officer, revealed that she had a startling misconception of the nature of Registered Embryos which suggested a political orientation quite different from that she overtly claimed. Normally this wouldn't have mattered, but now Marta had to wonder just why Currany had joined Fleet—and when.

She discovered that an environmental tech had a hopeless crush on the senior navigator, who was happily married, and that the curious smell in the enlisted crew quarters emanated from an illicit pet citra, kept in a secret compartment in the bulkhead behind a bunk. It was brought out to show her, and she enchanted its owners by letting it run up her arm and curl its furry tail around her neck. She overheard part of a furious argument between two pivot-majors about Esmay Suiza—one, having served aboard
Despite
, insisted she was loyal and talented; the other, who had never met her, insisted she was a secret traitor who had wanted Brun to be captured and had probably told the pirates where to find her. She would like to have heard more of that, but the argument ended the moment they realized she was lurking in the corridor, and neither would talk more about it.

By the end of the twenty-one day voyage, she was remembering exactly why she normally lived in isolation: people told her things, they always had, and after just a few weeks of it, she felt stuffed with the innumerable details of their lives and feelings. Therapist had never been her favorite self-definition.

Marta prepared herself for her first meeting with Bunny; she knew, from the tension all around her, that whether she liked it or not, she was everyone's favorite candidate for therapist where Bunny was concerned. She swept into the room with her usual flair, hoping it would have its usual effect on him.

This time it did not. Lord Thornbuckle looked up at her with the expression of a man very near the edge of sanity. Desperate, exhausted . . . not the expression one wanted to see on the chief executive of the Familias Regnant, someone on whose judgement the security of the entire empire depended.

Marta moderated her instinctive verve, and instead walked quietly across the room to take the hand he held out to her.

"Bunny, I'm so sorry."

He stared at her silently.

"But I know Brun, and if she's alive, we can and will help her."

"You don't know"—he swallowed—"what they did to her. To my
daughter
—"

She did know, but clearly he needed to tell her. "Tell me," she said, and held his hand through the recitation of all the horrors he knew Brun had endured, and the ones that might have followed. She interrupted this latter list.

"You can't know that—you can't know, and until we know for certain, you must not waste your strength worrying about it."