With the Lightnings (17 page)

The plastic was stronger, thinner, and more stable than the wood shelving of the earlier portion of the work. Some might quarrel with the orange cast of the material, but Adele's priority remained getting the books up from the floor and spine out so that she could organize them. If she lived long enough she might let Master Carpenter Bozeman replace the plastic with high-quality cabinetwork . . . but then again, there wasn't any possibility that she
would
live long enough for Bozeman to complete that job.

"We oughta have the lights working by noon," Woetjans said, rubbing her hands together absently as she looked upward. Six sailors worked on scaffolding glued temporarily to shelf supports, hopping about twenty feet in the air with an apparent lack of concern as to what would happen if they missed their footing. "I've been talking to Hogg about ways to hide the conduits. D'you have any particular feelings about the way we rig that, mistress?"

"I honestly don't care if you leave the wires bare, so long as there's no safety hazard," Adele said. "The room is a space to contain information in a usable form, that's all. Aesthetics are someone else's province."

Woetjans glanced toward the doorway. Adele turned also, expecting Vanness or perhaps a stranger who was curious about the noise.

Markos's female aide stood there. Her smile was thin, meaningless; as empty as her eyes. "Might I have a few minutes of your time in the gardens, mistress?" she said.

"Yes, all right," Adele said. "Carry on, Woetjans."

She walked out behind the aide. The pale young woman reminded Adele a great deal of the roof perch from which she'd watched the procession the day before: nothing whatever for a hundred feet, then a stone pavement.

The aide led down the helical stairs. They might have been strangers to one another for all the palace staffers they met on the staircase could tell. At the bottom Adele caught up with her guide and said, "I notice you're a Kostroman yourself. Have you known your employer long?"

The aide stopped and looked at her. "I'm a messenger, mistress," she said. "I do what I'm told, and only what I'm told. If you have questions, you'll have to ask somebody else."

Adele nodded curt assent. She was angry and frustrated, but it would be wrong to take it out on the aide. To prod the woman verbally would be pointless cruelty—safe enough because the aide was a flunky and unable to respond, just as a big carnivore behind bars can be teased. The aide was as much a victim of Markos, and of life, as Adele herself was.

They went up the ramp from the palace entryway and out into the gardens beyond. Litter remaining from the night's celebrations lay on the paths or was thrust into the hedges' netted branches. A pair of red brocade breeches, probably a man's, perched on the head of a statue.

There weren't any strollers this early the morning after the festival. To Adele's surprise there was work going on, however.

A crew had broken up some brick planters and appeared to be digging a pond in their place. A truck backed toward the workers, its transmission whining. The foreman shouted directions to the driver while other workmen leaned on their tools and talked among themselves.

The area to the right of the central walk was laid out in hedged squares. The aide led Adele down one of the bricked side paths and finally bowed her into an enclosure. The aide remained behind at the single entrance.

Markos was waiting there, as she'd expected. He sat on a stone bench with his back to the dense hedge. Though the top floor of the palace overlooked the garden, no one watching from there could see even the top of his head.

Markos looked at her with cool appraisal. He nodded but didn't speak, apparently to emphasize his control of the situation.

A worm from the Pleasaunce slums does not control a Mundy of Chatsworth. . . .

"I saw a colleague of yours last night," Adele said in her normal voice. "Somebody should tell her to work on her Pleasaunce accent if she's going to pretend to be a Casque."

"No one of that name is a colleague of mine," Markos said. His anger showed in the way his own real origins rasped in his voice. "Let me assure you, mistress—the fact that persons may be sloppy in the way they prepare for a task shouldn't be taken to mean that they won't correct errors in a terminal fashion. Quite the contrary."

"What do you want?" Adele said.

Markos patted the bench beside him. She shook her head minusculely and crossed her arms in refusal.

"Sit down," he said. "I don't choose to raise my voice, mistress. And don't play games with me or third parties will regret it! That's a personal promise, not a professional one."

Adele seated herself beside him. A man like Markos would sooner lie than tell the truth, but she didn't think that particular threat had been a lie. She'd made him angry by refusing to be cowed.

"I want an electronic copy of the palace guard rosters for the next month," he said, calm again. "Names and addresses, and any other information on record about the persons on duty. I believe some of the guards are billeted in the palace proper while others are off-premises except while they're on duty. And of course I want their pay records as well."

"Where do you expect me to find that sort of thing?" Adele snapped.

"I really don't care, Ms. Mundy," Markos replied. "Fuck the chamberlain if you choose. But I suspect you'll turn it up quickly enough through a data search of the sort you're uniquely qualified to perform."

"All right," Adele said coldly. She stood up. "I'll see what I can find. Contact me in a week."

"You will come back here before you leave the palace grounds," Markos said, his tone heavy with the menace that was natural to him. "You will have the information complete. You will deliver the information to my secretary."

Adele looked toward the opening in the hedge. The aide was watching them sidelong; her thin mouth smiled very faintly.

Markos wouldn't have been sent to Kostroma without expert staff and equipment comparable to anything Adele could provide—but the experts and particularly the equipment might not be solely committed to the Fifth Bureau. The
Goetz von Berlichingen
needed a powerful data processor simply for navigation purposes, but Markos couldn't be certain that the uses he made of the computer wouldn't be analyzed by the likes of "Mirella Casque" or agents of other rival organizations.

An impecunious librarian whose only friend was a hostage within the Alliance was a much more trustworthy tool than Alliance naval officers protected by their own organization from the wrath even of a member of the Fifth Bureau. Besides, it was a game that would appeal to the sort of person Markos was.

"I'll see what I can do," Adele repeated. She stepped out of the enclosure.

The information should be easy to find, though it was an even question whether she'd find it in the Hajas database or that of the palace itself. She'd deliver it as soon as she could. Part of her wanted to keep Markos waiting, but that was childish, and it would mean that the business was hanging over Adele Mundy as well.

She strode down the bricked pathway, drawing glances from the workmen for the hard set of her face. She'd take care of this and wash her hands of the business. It didn't matter to her what Markos and other slugs in what they called Intelligence did with the information then.

"Here's the island, Leary," Candace said as he adjusted the aircar's fans, slowing the vehicle toward a mushy hover. "I suppose it ought to have a name by now, but we just call it the lodge."

Ten miles back Bet had permitted Daniel to put an arm about her waist; now he had to disentangle himself to look forward between the front seats. Bet leaned against him from behind, proving that she had rather more top than he would have guessed.

The island was only a few hundred meters long and rather narrow. It rose thirty sheer feet from the water, however, and was of some hard black rock rather than the coral limestone of other islets Daniel had seen dotting this stretch of sea.

A line of steps slanted up the cliff from the base where men had blasted a landing place in the stone. Wrist-thick staples were set in the rock for tying up boats. Foliage of the bright green typical to Kostroma covered the islet's top. Its growth was so lush that the lodge's structural plastic roof was hidden almost until the aircar hovered overhead. There'd once been a cleared area beside the building but feather-leafed plants now sprouted there waist high.

"I'll have to get a crew in here to clear things off," Candace said in irritation. "Maybe I can get the CO to detail me some ratings."

He lowered the aircar slowly, using the downdraft to flatten the vegetation so that it didn't get tangled in the fans. Swarms of small insects spun out of the greenery like jewels. Many of them lighted on the upper surfaces of the car and on its occupants.

Bet said, "Ooh!" in irritation as she brushed a sparkling bug off her forehead. They were species native to Kostroma, however, with no taste for human blood.

Candace shut off the motors. "A bit primitive, but I think we'll find everything here we need," he said as he unlatched the sidewall into a ramp. He laughed coarsely. "And after we've found what we need, I've had the servants pack us a bit of lunch. Eh, Leary?"

Bet giggled.

"First-rate plan, Candace!" Daniel said as he walked to the back of the aircar to open the storage compartment. He hoped he spoke with enough enthusiasm to cover the way he'd winced when he heard the giggle again.

The luggage was a picnic hamper and two inflatable mattresses. There was a basket of wine also, but Bet had brought that out with her by reaching over the seat.

Candace pushed open the lodge door which had been ajar. Drifted fronds on the floor had already started to decay to humus.

Small birds went into paroxysms of chirping terror inside. Daniel held the women back a moment to permit the panicked creatures to fly out. He didn't mind carrying the gear, though he'd noticed the Kostroman officer's presumption that it wasn't his own job.

Candace began opening the window shutters. One of them fell off in his hand. The main room had a fireplace and stone benches along the walls; a table and two chairs of extruded plastic provided the only other furnishings. There was a curtained opening at the end with sleeping quarters beyond. The bunks, an upper and lower, were narrow plastic berths on stone supports cantilevered out from the back wall.

"Do you have a well here?" Daniel asked.

"There's a cistern," Candace said. "Though . . ."

Though, thought Daniel to complete the unspoken idea, any cistern here would have been the grave for the legion of creatures which had managed to crawl into it in the years since the lodge was last used. Well, they had the wine.

Candace pursed his lips. Daniel suspected the Kostroman had forgotten just how much a fishing lodge this really was, though the reality was more than sufficient for Daniel himself.

"I'll tell you what, Leary," Candace said. "If you go down the steps to the landing, there's a path off to the left that leads to a cave. Since you're the naturalist . . . ?"

"I'll show him," Bet said unexpectedly. "I've been here, you know."

Her expression was perfectly innocent. Only a cynic would speculate that her comment—her admission—had something to do with watching Margrethe flirt with Daniel during the flight.

Daniel kept one of the mattresses; Bet had a bottle and a glass. He didn't need a guide once they'd forced their way through the feathery undergrowth to the steps at the cliff's edge. Land animals on Kostroma tended to be small, so the vegetation hadn't developed the spikes and knife-edged leaves that made the jungles of many planets hell for humans who had to pass through them.

The steps had been formed by drilling a line of vertical holes to the desired depth, then cracking the overburden away. The treads themselves hadn't been leveled, but passing feet had worn them smooth. Given that this islet must always have been remote from major traffic, Candace was right about the construction being very old.

Bet paused at the head of the stairway, turned her face up unexpectedly to kiss Daniel, and skipped down the steps giggling. The glasses winked in the sunlight.

Daniel followed at a more leisurely pace. In part that was the caution of a man who rigged antennae in sponge space, where a misstep could mean not only death but separation from the sidereal universe. In addition he was intrigued by thimble-sized cones of lichen growing out from the rock. They showed narrow bands of bright color, one laid over the other all the way from peak to base. He'd never seen anything like them before.

Bet stuck her head back around the curve of the cliff. "Are you coming, Daniel?" she called. She hadn't used his first name before. Daniel stepped more quickly.

The steps wound clockwise down the cliff face. Midway they crossed a counterclockwise path. It was a ramp and had been melted, not cut, into the rock. Above the intersection the second path had been blasted away when the staircase was created. What remained, weathered but not especially worn, was a left-hand branch to the steps below the junction.

The remnant of the older path was almost level; at no time had it continued down to sea level. Unless sea level had dropped ten feet since the path was made . . .

"See?" Bet called, standing on the other side of a giant version of the lichens Daniel had been noticing. The cones were more frequent here than nearer the top, but this one was almost a meter high. "It's just this way."

Then she added, "Ooh!" and batted at the insect that had hopped onto her thigh. It was only the size of a fingernail, but its black and blue stripes were in sharp contrast with the fire-hot fabric of her dress.

"Coming, love," Daniel said absently. "But we don't want to lose this, do we?"

He waggled the rolled mattress. There were quite a lot of similar insects here. They were flightless and appeared to browse the lichen.

"We could make do," Bet called with a giggle.

Daniel stepped over the giant cone. Bet vanished into the cliff face just ahead. A tunnel had been burned into the rock. The surface was vitrified like that of the ramp. Daniel walked inside and pulled down his goggles to get a better view of the interior.