Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Thirteen

Tej paced up and down Ivan Xav’s living room. Ivan Xav sat with a drink in his hands, occasionally putting it down in favor of holding his head, instead. Rish perched on the couch with her feet drawn up, listening to their tale; at first with gratifying disbelief, then with increasing and much less gratifying impatience, which was now edging into exasperation.

“I still can’t believe that one old man, who wasn’t even there, could cancel out my deal like that!” fumed Tej. “I thought this was supposed to be all fixed up in advance!”

“It was, it seems—but not by me,” said Ivan Xav, sounding morose. “That was my first mistake, going to someone who knows Mamere. We should have taken this to some judge who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, let alone since childhood. Total strangers wouldn’t have known what the hell was going on, and might have let us just slide on through.”

“So what do you have to do?” said Rish. “To provide these grounds they want.”

Ivan Xav shook his head. “Divorce turns out to be a lot of work. Way more than I thought.”

“There has to be something. Let’s go down your list again,” said Rish in an annoyingly reasonable tone, squaring her shoulders. “Mutation. Couldn’t one of you pretend to be a mutant? Well, not Tej, I suppose. But the captain here is just a natural conception—a body-birth, if you can believe it! Run him through an exhaustive enough gene scan, something would be bound to turn up that you could pretend to object to.”

“No!” said Ivan Xav, incensed. “Besides, it would go down on the court’s public record. Think what it would do to my reputation! Dear God, I’d never get laid on this planet again.”

Rish tilted her head in concession. “All right, so what about this adultery thing? Which I gather isn’t about being a grownup, something we could probably use around here, but about sleeping with someone when you’re married to someone else. Sounds easy enough. Pleasurable, even.”

“Who with, for pity’s sake?” said Tej. “The only other male I even know very well on this benighted world is Byerly.”

Ivan Xav set down his drink with a thunk that sloshed it over the edge of the glass. “You are not sleeping with Byerly.”

“Who else have I even met here? Well, there’s The Coz and The Gregor, I suppose, but be reasonable. Anyway, they’re both taken.” Tej added after a moment, “And Simon Illyan was very nice, too, but no. Just no. Just…no.”

“No,” said Ivan Xav. “So many kinds of no, I can’t even count the ways.”

“That’s what I just said.” Tej eyed him in speculation. “I don’t suppose you could sleep with Byerly…?”

“Only if I can watch,” murmured Rish.

“No!” said Ivan Xav. “Nobody is sleeping with Byerly, all right?”

Frostily, Rish cleared her throat.

Ivan Xav waved his arms. “You know what I mean. Neither Tej nor I are sleeping with Byerly. Separately or together.”

“A foursome, now there’s a thought,” purred Rish. “You know, I bet we could persuade By to—”

“Stop teasing poor Ivan Xav, Rish,” said Tej. He was getting an alarming flush. “If you can’t say something to the point, just give over.”

Rish looked at Ivan Xav. “Don’t you have any old girlfriends you could call on for a favor?”

“Sure, but they’re mostly married now. Even Dono, and Olivia would—never mind. Jealous husbands…spouses…I figured I was done dealing with that kind of excitement in my life. It’s just no fun anymore, y’know? Hasn’t been for a while.”

Both women stared at him in bemused silence; after a moment, he stirred uncomfortably and took another swallow of his wine.

Rish sat back. “What else was there? Oh yes, abuse.”

“I am not beating Tej.” Ivan Xav glowered at Rish. “You, I’m less and less sure about.”

Rish snickered. “You couldn’t lay a hand on me if you tried, natural-boy.”

Ivan Xav sighed, avoiding conceding the point. “Besides, it’d get me in so much trouble with so many people—after Mamere, Uncle Aral, and Aunt Cordelia—and Simon—there’d be Miles and Ekaterin and all the Koudelka girls lining up to deal with the remains—and their mother—and Gregor, and Desplains—God, there wouldn’t be enough left of me to carry to court in a bucket. Hell, a teacup.” Ivan Xav sat back in what, had he been of another gender, Tej would not have hesitated to describe as a flounce. A little too large and surly for the term, here.

Rish turned her head toward Tej. “That leaves it up to you.”

“But I don’t want to hit Ivan Xav! I want to kiss Ivan Xav.”

“Try it,” urged Rish. “Just for the experiment.” Her gold eyes glinted.

Reluctantly, at Rish’s gesture, Ivan Xav put down his drink and stood up. Tej bunched her hand, drew it back, and poked him in the solar plexus. Her fist made a little fump sound, bouncing off his heavy uniform jacket.

Ivan Xav just stared glumly at her. “What was that supposed to be…?”

“It’s really hard,” Tej protested. “When you don’t want to. Besides, it would hurt my hand.”

“Bloody Falco,” muttered Ivan Xav, sitting back down and retrieving his drink, which he drained.

Rish ran her hands through her hair in a ragged swipe. “Look. Think. You’re both making this too hard by trying to do the divorce thing first. It’s not necessary. Desertion, wasn’t that one of the grounds? Tej and I go off to Escobar, change our identities, disappear, you’re got your desertion right there. Tootle back to court on your own, get it done. You don’t have to drag us into it at all.”

“There are time limits about that sort of thing,” said Ivan Xav. “Three or four years, or was it seven? Or was that for declaring someone dead…?” He frowned in doubt.

“What does that mean?” asked Tej. “In Barrayaran.”

“It means that even though you were gone, I’d still be married to you. For several more years. I couldn’t, say, remarry in that time. Or even become betrothed, I suppose.”

“Oh,” said Tej. “That’s right, this place only lets people have one spouse at a time, doesn’t it? That wouldn’t be a good problem to dump on you, would it. You might meet someone you liked…” A strangely unheartening picture. Didn’t she want him to be happy?

Ivan Xav, on the other hand, sat up, brightening a trifle. “That actually could be more of a feature than a bug, come to think. My mother couldn’t very well lean on me to seriously court other women if I was already married, huh? Yeah, that docking slot would be all filled up.” His brow wrinkled. “Not sure what it would do to my hit rate, though…”

“In that case,” said Rish, rolling to her feet, “I hereby declare this a non-emergency, and would appreciate it if you two would clear my bedroom. Some of us want to sleep.”

Ivan Xav appeared to give this serious consideration. “Yeah, Miles goes all frantic and forward-momentum-y when he hits a snag in his plans, but I usually prefer to give it a bit of time. Maybe there’ll be a better idea come along, or the problem will change, or, if you wait long enough, even go away on its own, without having to do anything. If people don’t keep poking at it, that is.”

“Time would certainly do the trick, sure,” said Rish cordially. “I figure it would only take, oh, you’re a natural—maybe sixty more years? Unless you die sooner in a groundcar crash, that is.”

Ivan Xav said, in a faraway voice, “Yeah, that would be the line of least resistance, now, wouldn’t it…?”

Rish shook her head. “Go to bed. Screw what’s left of your brains out, deal with it again in the morning. Or some other time when I don’t have to listen to you two.” She departed to collect her bedding from the linen closet in the dressing room.

Ivan Xav stood up and took Tej’s hand, warm in his warmer one. “Best advice she’s offered all night. Let’s just…give it a rest. Maybe something else will come up.”

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor. Desplains kept him only normally occupied during his workdays, there being no real crises at Ops this week, and Ivan being quite unmoved by now by all the synthetic ones, although he did garner some enjoyment selecting snarky return memos. In the mornings, Tej continued her language studies, or games, as she seemed to insist on thinking of them, alternated with afternoon visits along with Rish to Ma Kosti. Even better, they brought back culinary homework. Ivan surreptitiously let his uniform belt out one notch.

Byerly continued to carry off Rish most evenings, a public service to which Ivan could muster no objection. The Creatures of the Night, as he began to think of them, returned at varied hours. He didn’t mind it if Rish came in quietly, although he was less fond of stumbling over Byerly at breakfast.

As Ivan was scarfing down his morning groats standing, prior to toddling off to Ops HQ, Byerly, en dishabille in shirtsleeves but slightly less bleary than usual, sipped his tea and remarked, “Interesting chit-chat last night about you and Tej. From Jon Vorkeres, of all people. Countess Vorbretten’s little brother, y’know.”

Ivan frowned, glad he’d left Tej sleeping. She didn’t need to hear anything poisonous. “What was he doing in one of your venues?”

“Hey, not all of my venues are a hazard to the morality of our Vor youth. Else I should have gently steered him out. Jon says that gossip among certain of the more fossilized high Vor dames in town is that your surprise marriage is a disaster for Lady Alys, for all that she feigns otherwise. That Tej’s haut genes and connections would render any progeny you two might pop utterly disqualified for the Imperial camp stool, should, God forbid, anything untoward happen to Gregor et al. And, presumably, you disqualified along with them, unless you could be persuaded to some second marital attempt, I suppose.”

Ivan choked on his groats. “Seriously?”

“Very seriously. Count René Vorbretten is keeping his jaw clamped shut on the discussion, naturally.” Byerly eyed him sidelong.

Ivan’s brows climbed as the full import of this slowly sank in. “Huh. That’s an advantage that hadn’t crossed my mind, but you’re right!” The corners of his mouth tugged up. “Me and my children, ducking right out of the Vorbarr Sultana political crossfire—oh, superb. Have to point that out to Mamere, next time I see her. It would cheer her up no end.”

Byerly took a delicate sip, and inquired, “What children?”

Ivan reddened. “Uh…”

Byerly patted his lips—curving in the most maddening way—with his napkin, but did not pursue the point.

It was only as he was entering Ops that it occurred to Ivan that Byerly had been watching his reaction for more reasons than just sly personal amusement. No, dammit, I have never wanted Gregor’s job! He almost turned around right there and then to go find By and a body of water to hold his head under till he stopped thinking like that.

Frigging ImpWeasel.

“I bought these bells for my ankles,” said Tej to Rish, holding them up and shaking them. They made a cheery chime—tuned to chords, not just randomly dissonant. “If we pushed the furniture back, there’d be room for a real dance practice. I could take Jet’s part. Keep the beat for you.”

Rish wheeled, sizing up Ivan Xav’s living room. “I suppose we could try. I have an hour or so till By comes to get me.”

They skinned into their knits and collaborated on shoving sofas and chairs around, clearing a nice, wide space on the carpet. An afternoon without Ma Kosti was an afternoon when boredom and brooding loomed, but Tej had thought ahead, this time. As they began their bends and stretches, Tej asked as-if-casually, “So. By, again. What do you and he do every night, anyway?”

Rish’s lips twitched. “Really, Tej, you had the same erotic arts tutors that I did. Use your imagination.”

“I mean besides that.” Tej tossed her head impatiently, then had to blow stray hair out of her mouth. “What does he talk about? I mean, when he’s not just camouflaging?”

“If his mouth is moving, he’s camouflaging,” said Rish. But added after a few torso-twists, “Usually.”

“Ah?” When this encouraging noise did not pry out further clarification, Tej tried, “Do you still like him?”

“Well…he hasn’t stopped being interesting, yet.”

Tej dared, “Do you love him?”

Rish snorted. “He’s not the warm and fuzzy sort, sweetling.”

“Neither are you.”

Rish’s ambiguous smile crept a tiny bit wider, before she hid her expression in some toe-touches. “I did meet his infamous cousin Dono, in passing. At a party where By had gone to gossip.”

“I thought he wasn’t on speaking terms with his family?”

“Apparently Count Dono Vorrutyer is an exception to the general trend—he laughed when By introduced me. Delighted, apparently, by a Vorrutyer being even more shocking than himself. Herself. Whatever.” A few overhead reaches. “Still, By hasn’t spoken to his father for eighteen years, his mother has been estranged from everyone for a decade and barely communicates, and By secretly helped ImpSec put his even more obnoxious cousin Richars in prison. With cause. No love lost there. On the whole, not a close-knit clan.”

“How sad.”

“Not…really.”

“Oh?” Tej raised her arms and her eyebrows, waggling both.

A long pause, while Rish stretched hamstrings. “In vino veritas, By calls it,” she said at last. “Like some primitive native fast-penta. Except By is almost never as drunk as he appears. If he’s slurring and staggering, he’s certainly spinning out lines to catch something. When he’s actually smashed, his diction gets very precise and distant, like…like a scientist reporting the results of an unsatisfactory experiment. It’s oddly disturbing.”

Tej sat on the floor with her legs out, put her hands behind her head, and bent to touch her elbows to her knees. And waited, not in vain.

Her voice and movements slowing, Rish went on, “We were watching some old vids of the Jewels’ performances that ImpSec came up with, and testing out some really dreadful Barrayaran inebriants. Which got us onto the subject of sisters, somehow, which got us onto the subject of his younger sister…It seems they were very close when they were teens—By fancied himself quite the brotherly protector. Till their father, as a result of some vile report he had from who-knows-where, accused By of molesting her. And went on believing it, despite the pair of them protesting to the rafters. By says he was more enraged at his father for swallowing the smear than he ever was at the anonymous clown who made it. Which was when he left school and came east to the capital. I’m not sure if you can disinherit your parents, but it seems that break was mutual.”

Rish stood on one foot, bent backward, and touched the sole of the other to the back of her head, then alternated. Tej merely essayed a few less ambitious back-bends, while she thought this through. She finally collapsed to the carpet and asked, “What in the world did you trade to him for that confession?”

“I’m not at all sure,” said Rish, in a tone that frankly echoed this wonder. “But he was enunciating very clearly, just before he passed out.”

Tej squinted. “Puts rather a different spin on his choice of careers, maybe?”

“I think, yeah. At first I thought he was in it for the money, and then for the mischief, and then I figured both of those were covers for this crazy Barrayaran patriotism all these Vor fellows go on and on about. Then I thought maybe it was for revenge, for nailing the guilty. Now I wonder if this furtive obsession for sorting truth from lies is actually in aid of clearing the innocent.”

“That seems like two sides of one coin, to me.”

“Yeah, but it’s like the man bets tails, every time.”

“Hm.”

“In which case…”

“Hm?”

“He won’t give it up. No matter how much he despises the work. Or his subjects. Or himself.”

“Do you think…this planet. Barrayar. Since this divorce thing snagged up, what would you think of staying here? For a while. Longer.” Tej forced herself not to hold her breath.

Rish shrugged. “It’s been a more interesting place to visit than I would’ve imagined, but I wouldn’t want to live here. I want”—she hesitated—“what I had.”

“You miss the Jewels.” It wasn’t a question.

Rish stretched like a starfish on her back, then closed her arms and legs in tight. “As I would miss my limbs, amputated. I keep reaching, but they’re not there.”

Tej buckled the bell straps around her ankles, rose, and stamped. The bells sang back in a ragged chorus. “I’ll take Jet’s part,” she offered again. Keeping, somehow, the quaver out of her voice.

Rish rolled to her bare blue feet, kicked once in air, and took up her position. “Do your best.” She eyed Tej more closely. “Don’t worry, sweetling. I won’t abandon you on this benighted world. We’ll get out together.”

That’s not quite what I meant, Rish…Tej bit her lip, nodded, extended her arms, and bent her legs, taking up the complex rhythm at the hub of the wheel, heel-and-toe. The music and motion flowed up through her body and out her spiraling fingertips, as she turned to track her spinning partner around the circle’s rim.

Ivan encountered By in the lobby of his building, entering just ahead of him. “Hey, wait up,” he called, and By paused. Ivan shifted his dinner bag from hand to hand and asked, “You going up to see Rish?”

“We’re heading out for the evening, yes.”

“Good-oh.”

They entered the up-tube together. Ivan pictured himself demanding of By, What are your intentions toward my sister-in-law? in the best paterfamilias style, and winced. Trouble was, By might answer. But as they exited to the hallway outside Ivan’s flat, his steps slowed nonetheless. By stopped with him, looking his inquiry.

“About Rish. You’re not making her, like, fall in love with you or anything, are you? Because you could be reassigned or something, and have to drop her. And I don’t want to be stuck in a flat full of weeping, angry women, with no male to take it out on but me.”

By tilted his head in appreciation of this concern. “No, I seem to be on the case, at least until they decamp for Escobar. Has your, ah, non-divorce affected the timetable on that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Have you asked?”

“Uh…no?”

“I see.”

By was dressed in casual garb, not evening wear; planning a night in, not a night out, apparently. Ivan went on in covert hope, “So, ah…any chance that you’ll invite her to move in with you? Save steps and all that. Or that she’ll decide to move in with you?”

By’s hooded eyes grew amused. “The topic has not come up.”

“But you could make it come up. Couldn’t you? S’true, I’d rather hug a snake, but there’s no accounting for tastes.”

“S-s-s-she is amazingly flexible,” By agreed. “I expect she could crush my skull with her thighs alone. Very talented thighs. I could be in danger of my life every time we go to bed. Just think of the obituary.”

Ivan heroically resisted the straight line, not to mention the spinning visions this comment engendered. “You could make her happy just by getting her off my couch.” Or off on my couch, I suppose. Except it was possible By already had. Dammit, I want my furniture back.

By snorted. “Happy? God, no, I couldn’t make her happy. Not in a thousand years.”

Ivan’s brows rose in surprise. “I don’t get it. She seems tolerably amused by you. I mean, you’ve made her laugh. I’ve heard her.”

By waved a dismissive hand. “She won’t be happy till she’s reunited with her odd sibs. The other Jewels. They’re more than just a troupe or a team, or even a family. I suspect something gengineered.”

Ivan’s nose wrinkled. “Are you suggesting they’re some sort of Cetagandan post-human group mind or, or something?”

“No, not that. Definitely not, by her account of some of their arguments. Something much more visceral. I suspect some sort of kinesthetic biofeedback in play. It’s not at all obvious when you see her in isolation. You have to see her with the others.”

“Uh, when did this happen?”

“I had ImpSec Galactic Affairs scrounge me some recordings of the Jewels’s performances. It’s…no, it’s not clear. But it becomes subtly apparent, if you watch them over enough, that the Jewels were sustaining each other, somehow. But Rish alone is…starving isn’t the word. I don’t know what is.” By had forgotten to be smarmy, as his eyes narrowed in memory and thought.

“So what’s the difference?”

By’s hand reached out and closed, as if trying to grasp something elusive. “Rish with the Jewels looks like a woman with a beating heart. Rish in exile looks like…a woman with a muscle in her chest that pumps blood.”

Ivan tried to unravel this. “Y’know…I haven’t the least idea what you’re on about, By.”

By rubbed his forehead and laughed shortly. “Yeah, neither do I. You should watch the vids sometime, though.”

“Is Tej in any of ’em?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

They walked on; Ivan coded open his door. A sound of bells and rhythmic thumping wafted out.

They entered to find Tej and Rish engaged in some sort of vigorous dance practice. Tej spared Ivan a flashing smile, as she turned and stomped. She seemed to dance with every part of her, from her toes to her face; the expressive movements of her arms reminded him, for a moment, of the quaddies. The cadences moved through her generous flesh as though her body danced with itself, joyously. Ivan’s lips parted.

Rish, spotting By, glinted a grin like a sickle moon hung in an evening sky, and switched from spinning along around a wide circle like some planetary epicycle, to a kind of precise hand-to-hand-to-foot-to-foot rotation, a blue spider turning cartwheels. Ivan blinked dizzily as the grin rolled upside down with each turn.

“Now…now that’s just showing off,” he muttered to By.

For just a second, By grinned back, though not at him.

Tej, who seemed to be performing the same function as the drummer in a band backing the lead singer, brought the bells and thumps to a graceful closure. The two women stretched and made obeisance to each other, for all the world like two martial arts players completing a satisfactory round. Ivan wasn’t sure who’d won.

Rish waved at By and dashed toward the lav. “A quick shower, and I’ll be right with you.”

Ivan put the dinner bags down on the table and watched as Tej, arrestingly warm and breathless, sat on the carpet and began to unbuckle the ankle bells. By folded his arms and leaned against the wall, till Tej and Ivan drafted him to help pull furniture back into place. Ivan sighed meaningfully at his couch, but he wasn’t sure if By got the message. The Creatures absconded without dropping any further hints of their intentions, anyway.

All right, Ivan supposed he was slow. He’d been told so often enough by his assorted relatives, colleagues, and so-called friends. But it wasn’t until tripping over the ankle bells on the way back from the lav in the night, and wrapping himself around a warm, squirmy, sleeping Tej, that the thought crossed his mind like a bright, evasive—unhelpful—shooting star.

So…how does a fellow ask his own wife to marry him…?

It took him a long time to fall asleep again, after that.

“Tej? Tej!” A hand shook her shoulder; Tej swam up out of slumber. A dim yellow pool of light from the bedside lamp pushed back the shadows. Ivan Xav was sitting on her side of the bed with his trousers on, his face in that scrunched expression it wore when he’d bitten into something he didn’t quite like.

Tej rubbed her eyes and sat up on one elbow. “What time ’zit?” She tried a sleepy smile on him, but it won only a return lip-twitch.

“A little after oh-three-hundred. I just got a rather strange call from a Customs & Security officer out at the Vorbarr Sultana Shuttleport. Says they’ve detained some fellow out there who claims to be a relative of yours. Or at any rate, he was asking for Madame Tejaswini Arqua Vorpatril, which is at least part-right.”

“What?” Tej sat bolt upright. “Who?”

“Supposedly, some Escobaran tourist named Dr. Dolbraco Dax. Held up because of irregularities, Customs said, although the fellow’s documentation seemed to be all in order. I’m not sure what that meant, except that this Dax fellow was insistent that if you would come identify him, you could straighten it all out.”

“That’s Amiri’s identity!” Tej cried, scrambling from her covers. “Oh, what’s he doing here? We have to go out there!”

Ivan Xav prudently ducked out of the way as she lunged for her clothes. “Well, either your brother, or some really clever bounty hunter. Morozov was pretty sure some of those would be showing up in due course. Although a bounty hunter would have to be downright crazy to try a snatch in the middle of shuttleport security.” Ivan Xav scratched his stubbled chin. “Or maybe just lazy. Not as far to drag you to the exit, after all.”

“Most of them actually are crazy, but…” Tej’s thoughts whirled, as she shoved her head through her turtleneck and clawed her hair free. “If it’s really Amiri, how did he find me? Here, put your shirt on.” She crawled back across the rumpled bed in search of her socks. “Did your ImpSec people contact him or something?”

“Shouldn’t think he’d have been detained, in that case.” Ivan Xav shook his head. “Though I could see…If Miles gossiped to Mark or Kareen about you and me, and he probably couldn’t resist doing so, Mark might have told this Lily Durona woman who runs his clinic. Who could have said something to your brother. I can’t guess how much information might have been dropped out or added with each link. Or how it was spun. Mark and I, um…don’t always get along.”

As Tej got him dressed and pulled him toward the door, Ivan Xav added, “I’m leaning toward bounty hunters, myself. I did alert my ImpSec outer perimeter, though I don’t much care to talk to those fellows if I don’t have to. But at least it’ll give the night shift something to do that doesn’t involve voyeurism. I expect they’ll like that.”

“Voyeurism?” Despite her hurry, Tej froze. “I hope that’s a joke.”

“Well, I hope so, too,” confessed Ivan Xav. “Grant you, I gave up asking them questions I didn’t want to hear the answers to some time back.”

Shaking her head, Tej abandoned this side issue and shoved him into the hallway.

For the first time ever, as his two-seater arrowed out through the wintry margins of the city, she thought that Ivan Xav was driving too slowly. She leaned forward anxiously into her seat straps as the civilian shuttleport at last rose into view. This was her first look at the place, as they’d come downside before via the military shuttleport, where arrangements had been very different. VBS Main looked very much like every other big galactic port she’d ever seen—under construction. Ivan Xav wove handily around worksite barricades. Fortunately, he seemed to know where he was going, and the place was thinly populated at this dark off-hour.

His military ID whisked them past the first layer of security like a magic wand, at which point they were met by a man in a customs uniform, a lieutenant in military undress greens with ImpSec Horus-eyes on his collar, and, hurrying up last, Byerly and Rish, out of breath. The customs man stepped back at the sight of Rish, his lips parting in astonishment, but he glanced at the unreactive ImpSec fellow, swallowed, and carried on.

“I’ve arranged a preliminary look through a monitor for you, Madame Vorpatril,” the customs man told her, and it was a sign of something that Ivan Xav didn’t correct the title. “As it seemed to be thought that there could be some safety and security issue.” Tej wasn’t sure if his irritated glance at the ImpSec officer suggested a conflict of jurisdictions or procedures, or just the accumulated frustrations of trying to get ImpSec to give a straight answer to any question.

The customs man guided them through a code-locked door labeled Authorized Personnel Only and threaded a maze of office corridors, mostly with doors shut for the night. Down two floors, through some utilitarian tunnels smelling of dry concrete and machine oil, up again, then to an unlabeled door in a broader corridor. Some kind of satellite security office, judging by the consoles; on duty was only a single clerk, who gave way to the customs officer and gestured to the vid. “Nothing of interest so far, sir.”

The plate showed four views of what appeared to be a midsized, private waiting room, brightly lit if a touch shabby, neither luxury lounge nor prison chamber. The ambiguous space was occupied by nine people and many jumbled piles of luggage. The figures were variously sitting up looking very bored, or lying across rearranged chairs and cases, uncomfortably dozing. Three men and six women. Tej’s heart seemed to stop beating altogether.

“Can you pick out this Dr. Dax?” asked the ImpSec lieutenant.

She gulped for breath, for rising joy, for hope unlooked-for. “I can pick out everybody.”

Rish was staring over the vid display with wide, devouring eyes. “The Baronne…?” she breathed.

“And Dada!” said Tej. “And Star and Pidge and Em and Pearl and…is that Grandmama?”

“What happened to her hair?” said Rish faintly.

Ivan Xav’s brows climbed; Byerly looked suddenly very blank.

Tej grabbed the customs man by the front of his uniform jacket. She really hadn’t meant to lift him off his feet; it just happened. “Take me to them! Take us to them right now!”