With the Lightnings (16 page)

An overweight man beyond middle age stepped onto the dais with the help of an aide. His uniform was relatively simple; there seemed to be an inverse relationship between rank and the degree of florid dress.

Having said that, this fellow wore a gold sash as well as gold piping on his blue trousers and tailcoat. His chest was a clinking mass of medals.

"That's Grand Admiral Sanaus," Adele's sole companion explained in a respectful whisper. "Chief of the navy."

Sanaus spoke to the bandleader, then offered his hand to a doll-like blonde woman who clearly believed less was more when dressing to gain attention. Adele sniffed, but she had to admit the girl—she was no more than twenty-five standard years old—was impressive. Real muscles rippled beneath the smooth skin of her thighs and shoulders, too.

The band hit a low chord and sustained it while the assembly quieted. "My officers and honored guests!" Admiral Sanaus said in the relative silence. "It's my pleasure to greet you in the name of the navy of the Commonwealth."

Sanaus wheezed between words and the puffiness around his eyes was a sign of ill-health Adele wouldn't have wanted to see on anyone she cared about. That was few enough people, of course.

"It's my even greater pleasure to ask for a few words from the lovely lady who's deigned to accompany me tonight," the admiral continued.

He bowed to the blonde. The room broke into good-natured cheers. "Ms. Mirella Casque, the scion of Casque Trading and the representative of that famous house here on Kostroma!"

"He's bragging," Adele's companion whispered. They were only twenty feet from the dais. "But he surely has reason to, doesn't he?"

"He does if he survives the night," Adele said.

"Even more if he doesn't!" the Kostroman replied. He was too young to know how to fake gallantry.

Casque Trading was one of the oldest and largest firms of its sort in the Alliance. This girl seemed young to represent the Casques on so important a trading system as Kostroma, but her being a daughter of the house explained the choice.

The girl bowed, then smiled as she ran her blue eyes across the assemblage. Adele felt their touch. The intelligence within that pretty package was just as real—and as hard—as the thigh muscles.

"I want to thank you and to thank your entire planet for the kindness and hospitality you continue to show me," she said. Her voice was clear and perfectly modulated; perhaps a trifle studied for the ingenue she looked like, but quite in keeping for the local head of an important trading company. "The settlement of Kostroma was a happy day for me and for Casque Trading, as well as for all you wonderful people."

She gripped Grand Admiral Sanaus's hand, bowed again—so deeply that Adele suspected the fabric of her top was glued—and hopped off the dais. She handed Admiral Sanaus down herself, ignoring the aide's attempt to get involved.

"She's really something, isn't she?" Adele's companion said. Conversation had picked up so he was able to speak in a normal voice without fearing the admiral would overhear. "And very wealthy, from what I hear."

"The Casques are old money," Adele said. Her words weren't the agreement the boy probably thought they were. "The founder of the family was a member of the original colony on Pleasaunce, and because the Casques are close to government circles they've grown wealthier as the Alliance has expanded."

"Remarkable," the Kostroman said, watching the woman who called herself Mirella Casque walk away on the arm of his superior.

Remarkable indeed. The woman had a Bryce accent: she was no more a Casque than Adele herself was. The family was a useful cover to explain the amounts of money "Mirella" was almost certainly spending to cultivate the leaders of the Kostroman navy.

Adele didn't know who the woman really was, but she had a good idea of who the woman worked for. Not the Fifth Bureau, though. More likely one of the aspects of Alliance military intelligence.

From what Adele had seen while she worked at the Academic Collections, spies of rival branches of the same nation didn't get along any better than professors at the same university were likely to.

Candace drove the aircar well and fast. The women weren't professionals; so long as the car was in Kostroma City they sat on the two seats in the vehicle's closed back where they couldn't be seen. Margrethe, Candace's "special friend," had a nipped-in waist between a remarkable bosom and lush hips; Bet, Daniel's date for the afternoon and evening, wasn't so much petite as egg-shaped. Her face, framed with lustrous black ringlets, was extraordinarily pretty.

"Benno"—Candace to Daniel—"tells us Cinnabar has the greatest navy there ever was, Lieutenant Leary," Margrethe said. She gave Daniel a smile that showed her dimples. "You certainly have lovely uniforms."

Bet giggled behind her hand and whispered something in her friend's ear. She winked at Daniel and giggled again.

Daniel was wearing his 2nd Class uniform as the best compromise between his needs and his means. Although Bet was already hooked, so to speak, Daniel was too good a craftsman to wear civilian clothes and miss the effect the uniform could have on the girl he was meeting. On the other hand, he wasn't going to risk his full-dress Whites at a rundown fishing lodge.

"We're fortunate to have allies like Kostroma," Daniel said cheerfully. Candace didn't look best pleased at the way both women were fawning over the exotic stranger. He'd been very well aware when Margrethe leaned forward to point out her parents' townhouse to Daniel—and flopped a breast on his shoulder in the process.

The car was over open sea by now. The water was shallow. Knobs rose from the sea floor, their crests fringed with coral and sponges in colored bands varied by depth. Fish swam among the fixed life-forms. They were as brilliant as daubs of light flung from diffraction gratings.

Daniel looked over the side, wishing that he'd brought an identification chart. The
Aglaia
's database wasn't complete on Kostroman sea life, but he was sure that Adele could have downloaded something suitable if he'd thought to ask her.

"What do you think of Kostroman girls, Lieutenant Leary?" Margrethe asked. "I'm afraid we must seem very provincial to someone who's travelled the way you have."

"Madame Margrethe," Daniel said; the girls resolutely refused either to call him "Daniel" or to give him their last names. It was a piece of coquetry that he didn't understand, not a concern for their security. "I can honestly say that no female company has impressed me as favorably as that by which I now am honored."

That wasn't true, of course, but it wasn't any greater a lie than failing to correct the impression that he was well-travelled. Besides, the girls were quite adequately pretty and Daniel shared with most men of his acquaintance the feeling that availability enhanced a woman's attractiveness. He knew there were other philosophies on the question, but he didn't hold them.

Bet giggled again.
That
could get old; but not in the length of time Daniel expected to know the lady.

Candace cleared his throat. "Why don't you switch places with Daniel now, Margrethe?" he said, his tone smoothing as the sentence continued. "That'll let Bet and our guest get to know each other better. And some wine wouldn't be amiss."

"Ooh, yes!" Bet said, perhaps the longest sentence Daniel had thus far heard from her lips. She turned and knelt on the seat to lean into the luggage space. "I brought the special white from Herrick's own vineyard!"

Bet wore a thin dress that shone either orange or golden depending on how the light struck it. The fabric was opaque but very clinging. From this angle, Daniel was willing to say that Bet's face wasn't her most attractive feature after all.

"Here, you come back and then I can take your seat, lieutenant," Margrethe said as she half-rose and smiled at him.

It was going to be close quarters to trade seats like this. Daniel could only hope that Candace wouldn't turn to watch the inevitable contact between the moving parties. Daniel doubted the Kostroman lieutenant would abandon him on a deserted island, but jealousy was an emotion Daniel had enough second-hand experience with to respect.

He rose; something in the sea thirty feet below caught his eye. "Say!" he said. "Circle here! Candace, can you circle here?"

"What?" said Candace. He banked the car slightly but he didn't throw it in the tight circle Daniel had wanted. It didn't matter; there was no longer anything to see.

"It was a sweep," Daniel said, giving the others a smile of glum embarrassment. "I'm pretty sure it was a sweep, I mean. It's a predator in your seas here."

The seascape they overflew had remained much the same for the past fifty kilometers. Reefs neared the surface and shelved away into valleys that were rarely more than a few hundred feet deep. In this clear water, bottom life even in those relative depths was visible as movement and shadow.

Daniel had noticed coral standing unusually high and vivid in an oval area which sprawled up the side of an approaching reef. Fish in their striped and flickering brilliance were relatively sparse against the lush background. The beaks of the reef fish hadn't browsed the sessile life of this patch to the same degree as they had neighboring regions.

Only because he was already focused on the unusual region did Daniel see the paired tentacles lash swiftly over the top of the coral and withdraw into the cave from which they'd so briefly extended. The coral shuddered: all the animalcules went limp in their self-secreted lime caverns, changing the look of the setting without any individual movement great enough to be visible from where Daniel watched.

Simultaneously all the fish in the water through which the tentacles passed rolled onto their backs and began to sink, stunned by the electrical charge the sweep had released into the water. A few fins wobbled randomly.

The coral animals would recover from the shock. Most of the fish would not have time to do so, because when the sweep was sure it was safe from retaliation the tentacles would project again from the pit in which the creature hid. This time they would pick over the reef, searching for the slight electrical charge that all life-forms generated.

The hooked teeth on the tentacles would draw the fish, quivering and still alive, back to the sweep's lair. Its beak would complete the job the electric shock had begun.

"Oh, it must be wonderful to know so many things, Lieutenant Leary," Margrethe said.

Daniel wondered if he could've gotten the same response by saying, "The sun is shining."

"My uncle is a great naturalist," he said aloud. "For a serving naval officer, that is."

On the other hand, Margrethe was trying to communicate something beyond her interest in Kostroman natural history. From the way Candace hunched over the steering yoke, Daniel wasn't the only one getting that message.

Margrethe too must have decided she was being overly obvious. She joined Daniel in an attempt to minimize contact as they squeezed in turn through the narrow center aisle between the front seats.

Bet patted the cushion beside her. She poured wine into a single glass, sipped it, and gave the glass to Daniel. Only then did she pass the bottle and another pair of glasses to the couple in front.

It was good wine. Daniel wondered if Herrick was her husband.

The sea had darkened to a uniform green. The water was deeper here, but there were also scores of islands rising above its smooth surface. None were large and some were little more than rocks. Vegetation waved above the tide line of even the smallest, however.

Bet closed her fingers over Daniel's to retrieve the glass. He squeezed them with his left hand and smiled at her. He felt a little sheepish about his lack of concern for the girl, but this was the first time he'd been off Kostroma Island.

"Has the lodge been in your family for long, Candace?" he said, letting his fingertips lie on Bet's arm as she poured wine from another bottle.

"For nearly a hundred years," Candace said. Margrethe was snuggling him as he drove and his tone was more relaxed. "We've always been a navy family. That means living on Kostroma most of the time. A great grand-uncle who loved to fish bought it to have a place nearby that wasn't on the big island. There's a path and steps down to the water that must go back to the Founding, though."

He turned and grinned through Margrethe's mist of reddish hair at Daniel. "It doesn't get used much anymore, but occasionally it comes in handy."

"I'll say it does," Daniel said. His enthusiasm was real, but not quite as real as he tried to project in his voice.

He let his hand trail down Bet's bare shoulder until she giggled again and pressed his fingers firmly around the stem of the refilled glass. Daniel traded sips, wondering if on another day Candace would loan him the aircar to run out to this wonderful region on his own.

Adele Mundy made a point of reaching the library at precisely the second hour of daylight, half an hour before the time she'd set for her Kostroman staff to arrive. She doubted whether any of the locals would appear today—any who did would be too hung over to work—but she wasn't surprised to hear the whine of saws and glue guns from inside as she approached the open door.

"Sun, are you blind?" Bosun's Mate Woetjans demanded as Adele entered. The petty officer didn't sound angry so much as marvelling at Sun's misalignment. "Bring the left end up! The marks set the
bottom
of the crosspieces, not the tops."

As if part of the same discussion, Woetjans turned and tipped her soft cap to Adele; she must have seen the librarian's reflection in a windowpane. Woetjans didn't miss much of what went on around her.

"Good morning, Ms. Mundy," she said. "Sometimes I think this lot hasn't any more sense than my daft old mother, but you needn't worry: the job'll be done and done right before we leave it."

"I wouldn't dream of doubting you, Woetjans," Adele said as she surveyed the work thus far.

The day before the sailors had switched to using sheets of structural plastic in place of wooden boards. Hogg had found a different supplier, Adele supposed.