What Distant Deeps (20 page)

“I am,” said Brown, stepping between Daniel and Hogg. Hester was clinging to Clothilde’s leg with her face buried against it. “To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?”

The man who had flown up in the Commission aircar got out of the vehicle again and approached slowly. He was tall and rather good-looking, wearing civilian clothing. The flounced jacket would have been fashionable in Xenos about five years ago.

“Pleasure?” Tilton said. As well as being a pushy little fellow generally, he appeared to resent Brown’s height. “We will see about that. It will be a pleasure if you know your place, Commissioner. I am Resident Louis Tilton.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Brown said, extending his arm to clasp Tilton’s. Instead the Resident stepped past him and stopped in front of Clothilde.

“Well, now,” said the Resident. “This is more interesting.”

Daniel shifted to stand beside the woman. That meant Hogg would have to handle both bodyguards—which he could do beyond question, but it greatly increased the likelihood of death or maiming for the pair.

“May I present my wife—” Brown said.

“Let’s see your profile,” Tilton said. He pinched Clothilde’s chin between two fingers and tried to turn her head.

Clothilde slapped him; her fingers made an impressive crack against Tilton’s cheek. “You are a bald little worm,” she said in a coldly distinct tone.

Daniel stepped between Tilton and the woman. “Mommie!” cried the little girl.

A score of Sissies was double-timing from the ship, carrying travel cases. Woetjans was in the lead with a suit carrier in her left hand and a length of high-pressure tubing held out in her right as if for balance.

Simultaneously the corvette’s dorsal turret rotated. The twin four-inch plasma cannon were probably pointed at the Alliance aircar, but Daniel could only hope that Sun had sense enough to disengage the firing circuit while he was playing his silly game. If the weapons accidentally fired in an atmosphere, their side-scatter would fry everybody on this portion of the quay.

Risk aside—and spacers weren’t especially concerned about risk—the squeal of the turret got the Resident’s attention. His face went white except for the mark of Clothilde’s fingers. He backed away until he was standing behind his two guards. Hogg put his folding knife away.

“Well, Commissioner Brown,” Tilton said. “We will see if you become more forthcoming when you’ve had a little time to reflect, no? Alternatively, you may find that import charges for private ventures by Cinnabar officials have risen prohibitively!”

He turned and stalked off, followed by his guards. One of them glanced back several times on his way to the aircar, but it wasn’t a very impressive demonstration of their training in personal protection.

Woetjans mounted the steps in two movements, balancing the case and the cudgel. It was like watching a fish mount rapids to spawn. An extremely ugly fish, but Daniel had felt as though he’d lost his left arm when the bosun took a burst of slugs through the chest. She’d made a good recovery, though.
 
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“Got anything you want us to do quick-quick, Six?” Woetjans said, bobbing the tip of her tubing in the direction of the disappearing Alliance personnel.

“Negative, Chief,” Daniel said, repeating his words of a few minutes before but in a very different tone. “But for a moment, I thought I might have some work for you if Hogg had any leftovers.”

“I wouldn’t’ve,” Hogg said firmly. “But I like to see that kind of spirit, my girl, and I’m proud to have your acquaintance.”

The Alliance aircar lifted and made an immediate low-altitude turn, heading back into Calvary. Hogg said in a regretful tone, “I kinda thought they might try to buzz us, you know?”

“Yeah,” agreed the bosun. She flipped her cudgel a dozen feet in the air and caught it neatly by the end as it came down. She grinned with satisfaction. “I kinda wondered that too.”

The Browns were talking with the fellow in Cinnabar clothing. Daniel walked over and joined them, now that he had leisure to. The child and all three adults looked at him.

“Commissioner Brown, my spacers have brought your baggage,” Daniel said brightly. “Would your driver here like to show us where to stow it?”

He didn’t see any point in discussing what had happened: it had worked out, which is all that mattered. Besides, he was rather afraid that he’d make a comment about the driver’s courage which—however true—would be neither necessary nor helpful.

“This is Assistant Commissioner Gibbs, Leary,” Brown said. “He’s a commander in the Navy, I’m surprised to learn.”

Not nearly as surprised as I am, thought Daniel. The RCN rank was higher in the governmental pay scale than an assistant commissioner on the civil side.

“I’ve been seconded from the RCN,” Gibbs said airily. He didn’t offer to clasp hands. “Very glad to meet you, Leary. You can have your people put the baggage anywhere they please. This car was meant to carry a squad in combat gear, so there shouldn’t be any difficulty with no more truck than that.”

Adele’s voice whispered metallically in Daniel’s right ear canal, “Gibbs became involved with an admiral’s daughter but turned out to have a wife already. He couldn’t divorce her because he couldn’t pay back the jointure which he appeared to have mortgaged fraudulently. Reading between the lines, he wasn’t cashiered because that would have brought the admiral’s name into the public’s attention, but he was given what is listed as a lateral transfer into the Representation Service and sent here.”

Daniel continued to smile, though a trifle more tightly. Hard lines on the wife, but he supposed she’d made her own bed when she chose to marry Gibbs.

“The Resident made a comment about Cinnabar private ventures here on Zenobia, Gibbs,” said Commissioner Brown. “Do you know what he was talking about? That wouldn’t be permitted under the regulations on an Alliance planet, would it?”

“I have no idea, Brown,” Gibbs said. “We should be getting you to Cinnabar House, such as it is, I suppose.”

“Well, I’ll want to go over all the late Commissioner Brassey’s accounts immediately,” Brown said. “Tonight, if you can get them together.”

Daniel smiled faintly. Brown was a decent fellow but completely at sea in his new duties. He was focusing on the thing he knew how to do: audit accounts. In fairness, that was probably as important as any of the other duties he would face as Commissioner on this benighted world.

“Did you serve with Captain Leary, Gibbs?” Clothilde said unexpectedly. She was holding Hester firmly by the hand; the girl wanted to follow what was probably her personal case: it was pink and covered with broadly smiling blue fish.

“No, mistress, I did not,” Gibbs said with a hint of hauteur. “I realize the distinction may be lost on laymen, but Master Leary is a civilian and I am an officer of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy.”

“As a matter of fact, Gibbs,” Daniel said, hearing his voice grow a little harder in response to the other man’s implied sneer, “I’m RCN also. I’m wearing these—”

He flicked the cuff of his plain blue jacket.

“—out of courtesy to our hosts, which I suppose is why you’re in that old—”

Goodness, he was angrier than he’d realized. The nerve of this little cheat, to try to patronize Daniel Leary!

“—outfit yourself.”

“Captain Six is a great hero!” piped the little girl. “He beat the bad people in M-M-Montserrat and all sorts of places! He’s killed ever so many bad people!”

Who’s been talking to the child? Daniel thought; and at once the answer: almost anybody aboard the Princess Cecile.

Only he wished she hadn’t put it in just that way, because Daniel suddenly flashed back to his missiles ripping open the guard ship Heimdall, spilling out her many hundreds of crew before they even knew they were in danger. And they hadn’t been bad people, just spacers like Daniel Leary and his Sissies; and now they were dead.

“Captain Leary?” Gibbs said, his face scrunching in anger. His expression blanked, then became one of horror. In a quiet voice he said, “Great heavens. Captain Daniel Leary? That Leary?”

Daniel cleared his throat. “I’m sure the stories you’ve heard are exaggerated,” he said. “Certainly the ones that have gotten back to me have been. But yes, I suppose I’m ‘that’ Leary.”

Gibbs moistened his lips with his tongue. He looked like an animal turning on its pursuit at the base of a high wall. He said, “What are you doing here, then, with a record like yours?”

“Well, with my lack of seniority in peacetime
 
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,” Daniel said, choosing to overlook the discourteous form of the question. Gibbs seemed stunned rather than deliberately insulting. “I consider myself lucky not to be on half pay. And of course in the RCN, it’s always ‘the needs of the service,’ not so? For both of us.”

Gibbs swallowed, then nodded. He turned to the Browns and said, “Your baggage is loaded, I see. I’ll drive you to Cinnabar House. We don’t have a staff here except for a pair of local menials.”

He turned and walked toward the aircar. Little Hester hopped along sideways with her mother so that she could wave to Daniel with her free hand the whole way.

Daniel smiled, but his mind was on other matters. What in the name of heavens is wrong with Gibbs?

CHAPTER 11

Calvary on Zenobia

A middle-aged servant wearing an outfit of slanted black-and-white stripes opened the door of Cinnabar House to Adele and Tovera. For more than a generation the garb had been standard for servants in Xenos households that couldn’t claim livery.

This woman was obviously local, however, and the tailored garment made her look more dowdy than she might have in the looser national costume. Behind her was a tile courtyard with a roof but no furniture.

“Lady Adele Mundy!” the woman bellowed, then turned and waddled toward the arched gateway at the back. “Come this way if you please, Your Ladyship!”

They followed; Tovera looked wary. Adele smiled faintly and said, “She was directed to announce us when we arrived. She appears to be a little fuzzy about the details, however.”

Clothilde Brown had risen from her seat in the garden to meet Adele. She gave the servant a despairing glance, but managed to sound cheerful—albeit brittle—as she chirped, “Lady Mundy, I’m so glad you could come. And may I present my friend—”

She turned to gesture to the other young woman rising from a chair in the garden.

“—Lady Posthuma Belisande?”

“Posy, please, Your Ladyship,” the Founder’s sister said, offering her hand and a bright smile. “Clothilde tells me that you too were aboard Captain Leary’s yacht when it landed during the Assembly. I had no idea until I called on Clothilde yesterday. Do please forgive me for my oversight.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Adele said, taking Posy’s hand briefly and releasing it. “We both had our duties on Stahl’s World, I’m sure, and we properly focused on them at the time.”

She had been concerned that Posy would remember her from their proximity on the Sissie’s bridge. Adele’s present outfit, a lavender pantsuit with a thin white stripe, seemed to have driven out all recollection of the RCN signals officer in utilities.

“Please, do sit down, both of you,” Clothilde Brown said, extending her hands to her guests and walking toward three chairs set at arm’s length apart, facing their common center. “Lady Mundy, what would you like to drink?”

“A white wine, I suppose,” Adele said. “A local vintage, if such a thing exists.”

“Braga,” Clothilde said to the male servant at the refreshments table. He looked even more uncomfortable in his uniform than his presumed spouse did. “Pour Lady Mundy a glass of Knight’s Reserve.”

Adele smiled, hoping her expression was pleasant. Social interactions were almost entirely a matter of acting for her, and she knew that she wasn’t very good at them. Fortunately, most people heard and saw what they expected, so they mentally corrected Adele’s missteps.

She probably wouldn’t have accepted the invitation had she not known—from an intercepted call—that Posy had asked Mistress Brown to arrange a meeting with Lady Mundy. It seemd the best way for Adele to meet her target; and a meeting was necessary, because in the two days the Princess Cecile had ridden in Calvary Harbor, it had become obvious that electronic means were not going to unveil any of Posy’s secrets.

The garden was a square fifty feet on a side. A service building, probably a kitchen, and a wall of open brickwork set it off from what may have been intended as a park. Now it was a tangle from which trees with coppery foliage emerged.

The enclosure wasn’t in a great deal better shape. The shrubs had been pruned within the past day or less, so that statues of cherubs with gardening tools were again visible among the lopped stems.

The “lawn” had been hacked off also. Short tufts of something grasslike were surrounded by circles of dirt which their foliage had shaded bare until the recent shearing.

The clearance work—calling it yardwork seemed akin to describing a heart attack as indisposition—might explain why Braga glowered so fiercely as he handed Adele a glass of faintly greenish wine. Unless the job market in Calvary was very tight, Mistress Brown would be looking for new servants shortly.

The wine tasted all right, despite the hue. The glass was etched with the monogram dS, marking it as a piece Clothilde de Sales Brown had brought with her to the marriage.

“Quite good,” Adele said to her hostess. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was close enough. Some of the Mundys and their affines had been experts in vintages and liquors, but Adele’s interests ran to colophons and Pre-Hiatus incunabula.

The maid standing behind Posy’s chair wore a white cap and pants suit with a broad black sash, a servant’s uniform in the Pleasaunce style. Adele wouldn’t have paid particular attention—it wasn’t surprising that Lady Belisande would have brought a maid when she returned home from civilization—were it not that the servant was looking at Tovera.

Adele’s lips squeezed into a tiny, cold smile. Posy’s servant was from the same mold as Tovera herself. That wasn’t surprising either, given who Posy had been. That left the question of whether the “maid” was a bodyguard or a minder to the Guarantor’s former favorite; or most likely both.