Torch of Freedom

Late 1919 and 1920 Post-Diaspora.

(4021 and 4022, Christian Era)

Beyond the Protectorates, starting at a distance of 210 light-years or so from Sol and extending for depths of from 40 to over 200 light-years, was the region known as "the Verge." The Verge was very irregularly shaped, depending entirely on where and how colony flights were sent out, and consisted of scores of independent star systems, many of them originally colonized by people trying to get away from the Shell Systems, which could be considered the equivalent of what were called "Third World nations" in pre-Diaspora times. Individually, very few of them of them had populations of more than one or two billion (there were exceptions), their economies were marginal, and they had no effective military power. Many of them had all they could do to resist piratical raids, and none of them had the power to resist the Office of Frontier Security and the League Gendarmerie when it came time for them to slip into protectorate status. There was a constant trickling outward from the inner edge of the Verge to the outer edge, fueled more than anything else by the desire of people along the inner edge to avoid the creeping expansion of the Protectorates. Indeed, some people living in the Verge were the descendants of ancestors who had relocated three or four or even five times in an effort to avoid involuntary incorporation into the Protectorates. Their hatred for the Office of Frontier Security—and, by extension, the rest of the League—was both bitter and intensive.

Chapter One

November, 1919 PD

"Welcome back."

Sector Governor Oravil Barregos, Governor of the Maya Sector in (theoretically) the Office of Frontier Security's name, stood and held out his hand with a smile as Vegar Spangen escorted the dark, trim man in the uniform of a Solarian League Navy rear admiral into his office.

"I expected you last week," the governor continued, still smiling. "Should I assume the fact that I didn't see you then but do see you now is good news?"

"I think you could safely do that," Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak agreed as he shook Barregos' hand with a smile of his own.

"Good."

Barregos glanced at Spangen. Vegar had been his personal security chief for decades and the governor trusted him implicitly. At the same time, he and Spangen both understood the principle of the "need to know," and Vegar interpreted that glance with the experience of all those decades.

"I expect you and the Admiral need to talk, Sir," the tall, red-haired bodyguard said calmly. "If you need me, I'll be out there annoying Julie. Just buzz when you're ready. And I've made sure all the recording devices are off."

"Thank you, Vegar." Barregos transferred his smile to Spangen.

"You're welcome, Sir." Spangen nodded to Rozsak. "Admiral," he said, and withdrew in the outer office where Julie Magilen, Barregos' private secretary, guarded the approaches like a deceptively demure looking dragon.

"A good man," Rozsak observed quietly as the door closed behind Spangen.

"Yes, yes he is. And yet another demonstration of the fact that it's better to have a few good men than hordes of not-so-good ones."

The two of them stood for a moment, looking at one another, thinking about how long they'd both been working on assembling the right "good men" (and women). Then the governor gave himself a little shake.

"So," he said more briskly. "You said something about having good news?"

"As a matter of fact," Rozsak agreed, "I think Ingemar's tragic demise helped open a couple of doors a little wider than they might have swung otherwise."

"Some good should come of any misfortune." Barregos' voice was almost pious, but he also smiled again, a thinner and colder smile this time, and Rozsak chuckled. There was something a bit sour about the sound to the governor's experienced ear, though, and he cocked an eyebrow. "Was there a problem?"

"Not a 'problem,' exactly." Rozsak shook his head. "It's just that I'm afraid Ingemar's brutal assassination wasn't quite as 'black' as I'd planned on its being."

"Meaning exactly what, Luiz?" Barregos' dark eyes hardened, and his deceptively round and gentle face suddenly looked remarkably ungentle. Not that Rozsak was particularly surprised by his reaction. In fact, he'd expected it . . . which was the main reason he'd waited to share his information until he could do it face to face.

"Oh, it went off perfectly," he said reassuringly, with a half-humorous flick of his free left hand. "Palane did a perfect job. That girl has battle steel nerves, and she buried her tracks—and ours—even better than I'd hoped. She steered the newsies perfectly, too, and as far as I can tell, every single one of them drew the right conclusion. Their stories all emphasize Mesa's—and especially Manpower's—motives for killing him after he so selflessly threw the League's support to those poor, homeless escaped slaves. The evidence could scarcely be more conclusive if I'd, ah, designed it myself. Unfortunately, I feel I can say with reasonable confidence that we've fooled neither Anton Zilwicki, Jeremy X, Victor Cachat, Ruth Winton, Queen Berry, nor Walter Imbesi."

He shrugged insouciantly, and Barregos glared at him.

"That's an impressive list," he said icily. "May I ask if there are any intelligence operatives in the galaxy who don't suspect what really happened?"

"I'm pretty sure there are at least two or three. Fortunately, all back on Old Earth."

The rear admiral returned Barregos' semi-glare levelly, and, gradually, the coldness oozed out of the governor's eyes. They remained rather hard, but Rozsak was one of the smallish number of people from whom Barregos didn't attempt to hide their hardness as a matter of course. Which was understandable enough, since Luiz Rozsak was probably the only person in the entire galaxy who knew exactly what Oravil Barregos had in mind for the future of the Maya Sector.

"So what you're saying is that the spooks on the ground know we had him killed, but that all of them have their own reasons for keeping their suspicions to themselves?"

"Pretty much." Rozsak nodded. "Every one of them does have his or her own motive for seeing to it that the official version stands up, after all. Among other things, none of them wants anyone in the Solarian League to think they had anything to do with the assassination of a sector lieutenant-governor! More to the point, though, this whole affair's offered us a meeting of the minds that, frankly, I never expected going in."

"So I gathered from your reports. And I have to say, I never would've expected Haven to play such a prominent role in your recent adventures."

As he spoke, Barregos twitched his head at the armchairs in the conversational nook to one side of an enormous floor-to-ceiling picture window. The view out over downtown Shuttlesport, the capital of both the Maya System and of the Maya Sector from the governor's hundred and fortieth-floor office was stupendous, but Rozsak had seen it before. And at the moment, he had rather too many things on his mind to pay it the attention it deserved as he followed the governor across to the window.

"Hell with Haven!" He snorted, settling into his regular seat and watching the governor do the same. "Nobody back in Nouveau Paris knew what was coming any more than we did! Oh, the Republic's signed off on it after the fact, but I suspect Pritchart and her bunch feel almost as much like they've been run over by a lorry as anyone on Manticore. Or Erewhon, for that matter." He shook his head ruefully. "Nobody's told me so officially, but I'll be very surprised if Cachat doesn't wind up running all of Haven's intelligence ops in and around Erewhon. After all, given his recent machinations, he's probably the only person who really knows where all the bodies are buried. I don't often feel like I've been caught in someone else's slipstream, Oravil, but he's got to be the best improvisational operator I've ever run into. I swear to you that he didn't have any more notion going in of where this was all going to come out than anyone else did. And like I say, unless I'm badly mistaken, no one in Nouveau Paris ever saw it coming, either." He snorted again. "As a matter of fact, I'm pretty damned sure not even Kevin Usher would've turned him loose on Erewhon if he'd suspected for a minute where Cachat was going to end up!"

"Do you think he's going to be a problem down the road?" Barregos asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and Rozsak shrugged.

"He's not really a lunatic, or even a loose laser head, for that matter. In fact, I'd say our friend Cachat has a good bit in common with a warmhearted rattlesnake, if the simile doesn't sound too bizarre even for me. Although, to be fair, Jiri's really the one who came up with it. It's apt, though. The man tries hard to hide it, but I think he's actually extraordinarily protective of the people and things he cares about, and his response to any threat is to remove it—promptly, thoroughly, and without worrying all that much about collateral damage. If you convince him you're going to be a threat to the Republic of Haven, for example, it'll almost certainly be the last thing you ever do. The only thing likely to get you killed quicker would be to convince him you're a threat to one of the people he cares about. Which, by the way, is a very good reason we should never, ever, in even the remotest back corner of our minds, think about eliminating Thandi Palane just to tie up the loose ends of Ingemar's assassination. I'll admit, I wouldn't want to do it anyway, but it didn't take me very long to realize that bad as Cachat's reaction might be, he wouldn't be anywhere close to the only enemy we'd make in the process. Trust me on this one, Oravil."

His voice was unusually sober, and Barregos nodded in acknowledgment. Warnings from Luiz Rozsak were best heeded, as several no longer breathing people the governor could think of right offhand might have testified. Assuming, of course, that they hadn't been no longer breathing.

"On the other hand," the rear admiral continued, "if you aren't a threat to someone or something he cares about, he's perfectly prepared to leave you alone. As far as I can tell he doesn't hold grudges, either—which may be because anyone he'd be likely to hold a grudge against is already dead, of course. And he recognizes that sometimes it's 'just business' even if interests he does care about are getting pinched a bit. He's willing to be reasonable. But it's always best to bear that image of a rattlesnake basking in the sun in mind, because if he does decide you need to be seen to, the last thing you'll ever hear will be a brief—very brief—rattling sound."

"And Zilwicki?"

"Anton Zilwicki is just as dangerous as Cachat, in his own way. The fact that he's got even better contacts with the Audubon Ballroom than we'd thought gives him a sort of unofficial, 'rogue' action arm all his own. It's got a lot less in the way of a formal support structure than Manty or Havenite intelligence, but at the same time, it's less likely to worry about the sorts of constraints star nations have to bear in mind. It's a lot more likely to leave its back trail littered with body parts, too, and it's got one hell of a long reach. He's smart, and he thinks about things, Oravil—hard. He understands just how dangerous a weapon patience is, and he's got a remarkable facility for pulling apparently random facts together to form critical conclusions.

"On the other hand, our initial appreciation of him was considerably more thorough than anything we knew about Cachat, so I can't really say he threw us any surprises. And the bottom line is that even with his links to the Ballroom and people like Jeremy X, I think he's less likely than Cachat to reach for a pulser as his first choice of problem-solving tools. I'm not saying Cachat's a homicidal maniac, you understand. Or that Zilwicki is some kind of choirboy, either, for that matter. Both of them are of the opinion that the best way to remove a threat is to remove it permanently, but at heart, I think, Zilwicki is more of an analyst and Cachat is more of a direct action specialist. They're both almost scarily competent in the field, and they're both among the best analysts I've ever seen, but they've got different . . . emphases, let's say."

"Which, now that they're more or less operating in alliance, makes the two of them more dangerous than the sum of their parts. Would that be an accurate summarization?" Barregos asked.

"Yes, and no." Rozsak leaned back in his chair, frowning thoughtfully. "They respect each other. In fact, I think they actually like each other, and each of them owes the other. More than that, they have a major commonality of interest in what's happening in Torch. But at heart, Zilwicki's still a Manty and Cachat's still a Havenite. I think it's possible—especially if the Star Kingdom's and the Republic's foreign relations keep dropping deeper and deeper into the crapper—that the two of them could find themselves on opposing sides again. And that, trust me, would be . . . messy."

"You said 'possible,' " Barregos observed. "Is that the same thing as 'likely'?"

"I don't know," Rozsak replied frankly, and he shrugged. "What they have is a personal relationship and, I think—although I'm not sure either of them would be willing to admit it—friendship. And it's complicated by the fact that Cachat's hopelessly in love with Palane and Zilwicki's daughter's become Palane's unofficial little sister. So I'm guessing that the most likely outcome if the coin ever drops between the Republic and the Star Kingdom again would be that the two of them would give each other fair warning and then retire to their corners and try very hard not to step on each other. The wildcard, of course, is the fact that Zilwicki's daughter is also the Queen of Torch. The man's a Gryphon Highlander, too. He's got all the ingrained Gryphon loyalty to the Manty Crown, but he's also got that personal, almost feudal loyalty to family and friends. It may well be he'd give his primary loyalty to Queen Berry, not Queen Elizabeth, if it came down to an outright choice. I doubt he'd ever do anything to harm Manticore's interests, and I think he's equally unlikely to stand by and allow something to damage those interests because of simple inaction on his part. But I also think he'd try to balance Manticore's and Torch's interests."

"Interesting."

It was Barregos' turn to lean back, and he clasped his hands in front of his chest, leaning his chin on his thumbs while he tapped the tip of his nose gently with both index fingers. It was one of his favorite thinking poses, and Rozsak waited patiently while the governor considered what he'd just said.

"The thing that occurs to me," Barregos said at length, eyes narrowing slightly as they refocused on Rozsak, "is that I don't think Elizabeth would've let Ruth Winston stay on as Torch's assistant chief of intelligence if she wasn't thinking in terms of establishing a sort of backdoor link to Haven. It's obvious she didn't exactly pick High Ridge as her prime minister, after all. I'm not foolish enough to think she's feeling particularly fond of the Republic of Haven—especially since that business at Yeltsin's Star—but she's smart, Luiz. Very smart. And she knows Saint-Just is dead, probably along with just about everyone else involved in that whole op. I don't say I think knowing that's suddenly made her fond of Havenites in general, but I do think that, deep inside, she'd really like to see Pritchart and Theisman succeed in restoring the Old Republic."

"That's my read, too," Rozsak agreed. "However much she may hate 'Peeps,' she's enough of a student of history to know the Republic wasn't always the biggest, hungriest hog in the neighborhood. And however little some parts of her personality might like admitting it, I think she recognizes that seeing the Old Republic come back would be a lot less strenuous—and dangerous—than going back to hog-killing time. Not that I'm prepared to even guesstimate how likely she thinks it is that they will succeed."

"I imagine we're both rather more optimistic in that respect than she is." Barregos' smile was wintry. "Probably has something to do with our not having been at war with the People's Republic of Haven for the last fifteen or twenty T-years."

"That's true enough, but I'm also inclined to think there's some genuine principle involved here—in Torch's case, I mean—too," Rozsak said. "The one thing Haven and Manticore have always agreed on is how much they both hate the genetic slave trade and Manpower, Incorporated. That's the only reason Cachat was able to put together his . . . energetic solution to the 'Verdant Vista Problem' in the first place. I think both Elizabeth and Pritchart have a genuine sense of having created something brand new in galactic history when they played midwife, whether they wanted to or not, to the liberation of Torch. And my impression from speaking to Prince Michael and Kevin Usher at the coronation is that both Elizabeth and Pritchart believe that even if relations break down completely again between the Republic and the Star Kingdom, Torch could provide a very useful conduit. Sometimes even people shooting at each other have to talk to each other, you know."

"Oh, yes, indeed I do." Barregos' smile turned tart, and he shook his head. "But getting back to Ingemar. You think his arrangement with Stein is going to stand up now that he's gone?"

"I think it's as likely now as I ever thought it was," Rozsak replied a bit obliquely, and Barregos snorted.

Luiz Rozsak had never had the liveliest faith in the reliability—or utility—of anyone in the Renaissance Association even before the assassination of Hieronymus Stein, its founder. And his faith in the integrity of Hieronymus' successors was, if anything, even less lively. A point upon which, to be honest, Barregos couldn't disagree with him.

There was no question in the governor's mind that Hieronymus had been considerably more idealistic than his daughter, Jessica, yet there'd been even less question, in Oravil Barregos opinion, that his last name should have been "Quixote" instead of Stein. All the same, as the founder and visible figurehead of the Renaissance Association, he'd enjoyed a unique degree of status, both in and out of the Solarian League, which could not be denied. It might have been the sort of status which was accorded to a lunatic who genuinely believed idealism could triumph over a thousand odd years of bureaucratic corruption, but it had been genuine.

He'd also been the next best thing to completely ineffectual, which was one reason the bureaucrats who truly ran the Solarian League hadn't had him killed decades before. He'd fretted, he'd fumed, he'd been highly visible and an insufferable gadfly, but he'd also been a convenient focus for discontent within the League precisely because he'd been so devoted to the concept of "process" and gradual reform. The bureaucracy had recognized that he was effectively harmless and actually useful because of the way he allowed that discontent to vent itself without ever accomplishing a thing.

Jessica, on the other hand, represented a distinct break with her father's philosophy. She'd allied herself with the Association's hard-liners—the ones who wanted fast, hard action on "The Six Pillars" of its fundamental principles for reform. Who were so frustrated and angry that they were no longer especially interested in restricting themselves to the legal processes which had failed them for so long. Some of them were ideologues, pure and simple. Some were passionate reformers, who'd been disappointed just a few too many times. And some were players, people who saw the Renaissance Association's status as the most prominent reform-oriented movement in the Solarian League as a potential crowbar, a way those who weren't part of the bureaucracy might just be able to hammer, chisel, and pry their way into a power base of their own.

Just as Barregos had never doubted Hieronymus' idealism was genuine, he'd never doubted Jessica's was little more than skin deep. She'd grown up in the shadows of her father's reputation, and she'd spent her entire life watching him accomplish absolutely nothing in the way of real and lasting change while his politics simultaneously excluded her from any possibility of joining the existing power structure. His prominence, the way the reformist dilettantes and a certain strain of newsies—what was still called "the chattering class"—fawned on him, kept her so close to the entrenched structure which ran the League that she could literally taste it, yet she would never be able to join it. After all, she was the daughter and heir of the senior lunatic and anarchist-in-chief, wasn't she? No one would be crazy enough to invite her into even the outermost reaches of the Solarian League's real ruling circle!

Which was why she'd been so receptive to Ingemar Cassetti's offer to have her father assassinated.

Barregos rather regretted the necessity of Hieronymus' death, but it was a mild regret. In fact, what bothered him most about it was that it didn't bother him any more than it did. That it was never going to cost him a single night's sleep. It shouldn't be that way, but Oravil Barregos had realized years ago that getting to where he wanted to be was going to cost some slivers of his soul along the way. He didn't like it, but it was a price he was willing to pay, although not, perhaps, solely for the reasons most of his opponents might have believed.

But with Hieronymus gone, Cassetti—who, Barregos had concluded after mature consideration, had been the most loathsome single individual he'd ever personally met, however useful he might have proved upon occasion—had engineered a direct understanding and alliance between himself, as Barregos' envoy, and Jessica Stein. Of course, Cassetti hadn't been aware that Barregos was aware of his plans to quietly assassinate his own superior. Nor, for that matter, had Cassetti bothered to inform Barregos in the first place that Hieronymus' death was going to be part of the bargaining process with Jessica. Then again, there'd been several things he'd somehow forgotten to mention to his superior about those negotiations. Like the fact that while the alliance the lieutenant governor had concluded with her might have been in Oravil Barregos' name, he'd intended from the beginning to be the one sitting in the sector governor's chair when Jessica's debt was called in. It was evident from what Rozsak had reported from Torch that Cassetti hadn't even guessed Barregos had seen it coming from the outset and made his own plans accordingly.

Ingemar always was more cunning than smart, Barregos reflected grimly. And he never did seem to realize other people might be just as capable as he was. For that matter, he was nowhere near as good a judge of people as he thought he was, or he would never have approached Luiz, of all people, about planting his dagger in my back!

"I know you've never had much faith in the Association's efficacy," the governor said aloud. "For that matter,I don't have a lot of faith in its ability to actually accomplish anything. But that's not really the reason we want its backing, now is it?"

"No," Rozsak agreed. "On the other hand, I don't think Jessica Stein is an honest politician."

"You mean you don't think she'll stay bought?"

"I mean the woman's a political whore," Rozsak said bluntly. "She'll stay bought, sort of, but she doesn't see any reason not to sell herself to as many buyers as possible, Oravil. I just don't think there's any way for us to even guess at this point how many masters she's actually going to have when the time comes for us to . . . call in our marker, let's say."

"Ah, but that's when all that evidence Ingemar was so careful to preserve comes in," Barregos said with a thin smile. "Having her on chip planning her own father's murder gives us a pretty good stick to go with our carrot. And, when you come down to it, we really don't need that much out of her. Just the Association's blessing for our PR campaign when events out here 'force our hand.' "

"All I've got to say on that head is that it's a good thing we don't need anything more out of her," Rozsak said tartly.

"I don't disagree, but the truth is, Luiz," Barregos smiled at the rear admiral again, this time with atypical warmth, "that no matter how well you play the black ops game, at heart, you don't really like it."

"I beg your pardon?"

Rozsak's offended look was almost perfect, Barregos noted, and he chuckled.

"I said you play it well, Luiz. In fact, I think you play it better than almost anyone else I've ever seen. But you and I both know the real reason you do. And"—the governor met Rozsak's eyes levelly, and his own were suddenly much less opaque than usual—"the reason you were so willing to sign on in the first place."

A moment or two of silence hovered in the office. Then Rozsak cleared his throat.

"Well, be that as it may," he said more briskly, "and whatever possible problematical advantages we may be able to squeeze out of Ms. Stein at some theoretical future date, I have to admit that entire funeral charade on Erewhon and the follow-up on Torch has landed us in a situation that's significantly better than I ever would have predicted ahead of time."

"So I've gathered. Your last report said something about a meeting with Imbesi and Al Carlucci?"

Barregos raised his eyebrows again, and Rozsak nodded.

"Actually, Imbesi's main immediate contribution was to make it very clear to Carlucci that our talks had his blessing—and that Fuentes, Havlicek, and Hall were on board, as well."

It was Barregos turn to nod. The government of the Republic of Erewhon wasn't quite like anyone else's. Probably because the entire system was directly descended from Old Earth's "organized crime" families. Officially, the Republic was currently governed by the triumvirate of Jack Fuentes, Alessandra Havlicek, and Thomas Hall, but there were always other people, with differing degrees of influence, involved in the governing process. Walter Imbesi was one of those "other people," the one who'd organized the neutralization of the Mesan intrusion into Erewhon's sphere of influence. His decision to cooperate with Victor Cachat—and, for that matter, Luiz Rozsak—had gotten Mesa evicted from what had been the system of Verdant Vista and was now the Torch System.

It had also finished off, for all intents and purposes, Erewhon's alliance with the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Which, Barregos knew perfectly well, had been possible only because of the way the High Ridge Government had systematically ignored, infuriated, and—in Imbesi's opinion—fundamentally betrayed Erewhon and Erewhon's interests.

Regardless of Imbesi's motivations, he'd once again restored his family to the uppermost niches of power in Erewhon. In fact, he'd become for all intents and purposes the triumvirate's fourth, not quite officially acknowledged member. And in the process, he had moved Erewhon from its previous pro-Manticore position into a pro-Haven position.

"Is Erewhon really going to sign on with Haven?" the governor asked.

"It's a done deal," Rozsak replied. "I don't know if the formal treaty's actually been signed yet, but if it hasn't, it will be soon. At which point Erewhon and Haven will become parties to a mutual defense treaty . . . and Nouveau Paris will suddenly become privy to quite a lot of Manty technology."

"Which will piss Manticore off no end," Barregos observed.

"Which will piss Manticore off no end," Rozsak acknowledged. "On the other hand, Manticore doesn't have anyone to blame but itself, and from Prince Michael's attitude at Queen Berry's coronation, he and his sister know it, whether anyone else in Manticore's prepared to admit it or not. That idiot High Ridge handed Erewhon to Haven on a platter. And"—the rear admiral's smile turned suddenly wolfish—"handed Erewhon over to us, at the same time."

"Then it's settled?" Barregos felt himself leaning forward and knew he was giving away far more eagerness and intensity than usual, but he didn't really care as he watched Rozsak's expression carefully.

"It's settled," Rozsak agreed. "The Carlucci Industrial Group is currently waiting to sit down with Donald, Brent, and Gail to discuss commercial agreements with the Maya Sector government."

Barregos settled back again. Donald Clarke was his senior economic adviser—effectively the Maya Sector's treasurer. Brent Stephens was his senior industrial planner, and Gail Brosnan was currently the Maya Sector's acting lieutenant governor. Given the peculiarities of Maya's relationship with the Office of Frontier Security, Barregos was confident Brosnan would eventually be confirmed by OFS HQ back on Old Earth. At the same time, he was even more confident she would be the "acting" lieutenant governor for a long, long time, first. After all, his superiors had stuck him with Cassetti in the first place because they hadn't wanted Barregos picking his own potential successor. The fact that he trusted Brosnan would automatically make certain people back in . . . less than happy to see her inheriting Cassetti's old position. Those same people were undoubtedly planning on delaying her confirmation as long as possible in hopes that Barregos might have a heart attack—or be hit by a micro meteorite or kidnaped by space-elves or something—before they actually had to let her assume office. At which point they could finally get rid of the entire Barregos administration . . . including Brosnan.

"Should I assume you've been invited to come along as an unofficial member of our trade delegation?" he asked.

"You should." Rozsak smiled again. "I've already had a few words with Chapman and Horton, too. Nothing too direct yet—I figured we'd better be sure we had the civilian side firmly nailed down before I started talking military shop. But from what Imbesi said, and even more from what Carlucci said after Imbesi was 'unexpectedly called away' from our meeting, the Navy's ready to sit down with me and start talking some hard numbers. Exactly what those numbers are going to be will depend on how much we've got to invest, of course."

He raised an interrogative eyebrow, and Barregos snorted.

"The numbers are going to be higher than anyone in Erewhon probably expects," he said frankly. "The limiting factor's going to be how well we can keep it under the radar horizon from Old Earth, and Donald and I have been working on conduits and pump-priming for a long time now. There's a hell of a lot of money here in Maya. In fact, there's a hell of a lot more of it than Agatá Wodoslawski or anyone else at Treasury back on Old Earth even guesses, which is probably the only reason they haven't insisted on jacking the 'administrative fees' schedule even higher. I think we'll be able to siphon off more than enough for our purposes."

"I don't know, Oravil," Rozsak said. "Our 'purposes' are going to get pretty damned big if and when the wheels finally come off."

"There's no 'if' about it," Barregos responded more grimly. "That's part of what this is all about, after all. But when I say we can siphon off more than enough, what I'm really saying is I can siphon off all that we dare actually spend. Too much hardware floating around too quickly, especially out this way, is likely to make some of my good friends at the ministry just a bit antsy, and we can't afford that. Better we come up a little tight on the military end when the shit finally hits the fan than that we tip off someone back on Old Earth by getting too ambitious too soon and see the balloon go up before we're ready."

"I hate balancing acts," Rozsak muttered, and Barregos laughed.

"Well, unless I miss my guess, we're getting into the endgame. I wonder if any of those idiots back in Old Chicago have been reading up on the Sepoy Mutiny?"

"I certainly hope not," Rozsak replied with a certain fervency.

"I doubt anyone has, really." Barregos shook his head. "If any of them were truly capable of learning from history, at least someone would have seen the writing on the wall by now."

"Personally, I want them to go right on being nearsighted as long as we can get away with," Rozsak told him.

"Me, too."

The governor sat thinking for a few more moments, then shrugged.

"Do we have a firm date for this meeting with Carlucci?"

"It's a week from here to Erewhon by dispatch boat. I told them I figured it would be at least ten days."

"Is three days going to be enough for you and your people?"

"My people are already two-thirds of the way into the loop on this one, Oravil. With the exception of that little snot Manson, most of them already know—or they've guessed, at least—exactly what's about to happen. I've already made arrangements to peel him off for a few days while the rest of us sit down and talk nuts and bolts and I think three days should be long enough for us to get most of the pieces lined up. Donald and Brent are going to have to be part of that, too, I suppose, but they'll be sitting in mostly as observers, to make sure they understand what it is we're trying to accomplish. It'll be time to get them involved in generating actual numbers after they're up to speed on the hardware side, and I'll have the transit time back to Erewhon to finish kicking things around with them. It'll do, I think."

"Good." Barregos stood. "In that case, I think you should probably head on off to your office and get started talking about those nuts and bolts."

Chapter Two

A sizable percentage of the Maya System's original colonists had come from the planet Kemal. Like most of their fellow immigrants, they'd been none too happy with the planet and society they were leaving behind, but they'd brought their planetary cuisine with them. Now, four hundred T-years later, Mayan pizza—courtesy of the kitchens of Kemal—was among the best in the known galaxy.

That point had particular relevancy at the moment, given the clutter of traditional delivery boxes and plates littered with bits and pieces of pizza crust scattered around the conference room.

Luiz Rozsak sat in his place at the head of the table, nursing a stein of beer, and looked at his assembled staff. Captain Edie Habib, his chief of staff, had her head bent over a computer display with Jeremy Frank, Governor Barregos' senior aide. Lieutenant Commander Jiri Watanapongse, Rozsak's staff intelligence officer, was involved in a quiet side discussion with Brigadier Philip Allfrey, the senior officer of the Solarian Gendarmerie for the Maya Sector, and Richard Wise, who headed Barregos' civilian intelligence operations. That conversation, the rear admiral thought with an inward grin, would have caused an enormous amount of acid reflux back in Old Chicago if Watanapongse and Allfrey's ultimate superiors had been privy to its content.

Brent Stephens and Donald Clarke sat to Rozsak's left and right, respectively. Stephens was on the large size, seven centimeters taller than Rozsak's own hundred and seventy-five centimeters, with blond hair and brown eyes. He was also a direct descendent of the first wave of Mayan colonists, whereas the black-haired, gray-eyed Clarke had been five years old when his parents arrived on Smoking Frog as senior managers for the local operations of the Broadhurst Group. Most places in the Verge, that would have made him a very poor fit for this particular little get together, since Broadhurst was one of the Solarian League's major transstellars, but this wasn't "most places." This was the Maya Sector, and the rules here were a bit different from those by which the Office of Frontier Security was accustomed to playing.

And they're about to get a lot moredifferent, the rear admiral thought coldly.

"Can I take my file copy of our notes home with me, Luiz?" Clarke asked now, and Rozsak raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm headed off-planet this afternoon," Barregos' senior economic adviser explained. "It's Dad's birthday, and I promised Mom I'd be there for it."

Rozsak grimaced in understanding. Michael Clarke was only ninety T-years old, which barely constituted middle age for a civilization with prolong, but he had developed a progressive neural disorder not even modern medicine seemed capable of arresting. He was slowly but steadily slipping away from his family, and he wasn't going to have very many more birthdays when he remembered who his son was.

"He's out on Eden, isn't he?" the rear admiral asked after a moment.

"Yeah." It was Donald's turn to grimace. "It's not like we can't afford it, but I don't think it's doing much good, either."

Rozsak nodded in sympathetic agreement. The Eden Habitat was a low-grav geriatric center in geosynchronous orbit around the planet of Smoking Frog. It offered the very best medical care—care as good as anyone could have gotten back on Old Earth herself—and the most luxurious, patient-friendly staff and quarters imaginable.

"If you take it with you, are you really going to get very much done, anyway?" he asked quietly.

"Of course—" Clarke began just a bit sharply, then cut himself off. He looked at Rozsak for a moment, then inhaled deeply.

"No, probably not," he admitted heavily.

"I'm not that worried about the security risk, Donald," Rozsak said, mostly honestly. "I know you've got good security, and God knows Eden's people are going to make damned sure no one invades their patients' privacy! But we're not on that tight a time frame. You can take a few hours to spend with your parents."

"You're sure?" Clarke looked at him, and Rozsak shrugged.

"Your part's either already done, or else it's mostly going to happen once we get to Erewhon. We're talking nuts and bolts here, not financial instruments or investment strategies. Go ahead. Don't worry about it. It's more important that you're as close to rested as you can get when we head out than that we squeeze every single moment of utility out of your time before we leave."

"I'll admit, I'd be happier leaving it under lock and key down here," Clarke confessed. "And you're right. Spending the time with them is important, too."

"Of course it is." Rozsak looked at his chrono. "And if you're going to go off and celebrate a birthday this afternoon, I think you should probably head on home and see if you can't catch a few hours of sleep, first."

"You're right."

Clarke rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, gave himself a shake, then pushed back his chair and stood, switching off his minicomp as he did.

"Of course I'm right. I'm a rear admiral these days, aren't I?" Rozsak grinned up at the standing financier. "Go ahead—go!"

"Aye, aye, Sir," Clarke said with a weary smile, nodded to Stephens, and left.

"You did good, Luiz," Stephens said quietly as his colleague departed. "It's always worse for him when his father's birthday rolls around."

"Yeah, sure. That's me. Philanthropist and general friend of mankind."

Rozsak waved it off, and Stephens let him.

"Well, if you don't want to talk about that, are you really confident that Carlucci's going to be able to come through on all this?"

"Yes," Rozsak said simply. Stephens arched one eyebrow ever so slightly, and Rozsak raised his voice. "Jiri, do you think you could tear yourself away from Philip and Richard for a few minutes?"

"Sure," Watanapongse said. He grinned at Allfrey and Wise. "All we're really doing at this point is making bets on the football championship while we wait for the rest of you people to call upon our incomparable services."

"I think that's one of the things I like best about both you spooks," Edie Habib put in, not even looking up from her conversation with Abernathy. "Your modesty. Your constant air of self effacement."

Watanapongse smiled at her, then crossed to Clarke's abandoned chair and sat back down, cocking his head inquiringly.

"Brent is a little concerned over Carlucci's ability to make good on our discussions, I think," Rozsak explained. "Care to reassure him?"

Watanapongse looked at Stephens thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged.

"The Carlucci Industrial Group has the capacity to build anything we need," he said. "It's all just a matter of willingness, figuring out how to pay for it, and time."

"And how to hide everything," Stephens pointed out.

"Well, yes, and that," Watanapongse acknowledged.

"Frankly, that's what worries me the most," Stephens said. "I think I've got a better appreciation than most for the degree of expansion CIG's going to have to pull off to make all of this come together. If anyone's looking, it's going to be hard to cover that up. Shipyards aren't exactly unobtrusive."

"No, they aren't. And neither are starships. But the idea is that we won't be 'covering up' at all. Edie came up with what's probably the best description for what we're doing from one of those old stories she likes to read, something called 'The Purloined Letter.' " Watanapongse smiled. "Everything we're doing is going to be sitting right there in plain sight . . . we're just going to convince everyone that it's something else entirely."

"Something else?" Stephens repeated very carefully.

"Sure."

"And exactly how is all of this going to work out?" the industrialist inquired. "I've been concentrating on financing schedules and priorities from our end so far. I'm just taking it on faith that you guys are going to be able to use all of this at the other end. I know you've promised to explain everything on the trip, but I can't quite convince myself to stop worrying about it until we get there."

"It's not too complicated, whatever it may look like at the moment," Rozsak told him. "Basically, it's sleight-of-hand. The Maya Sector is about to begin investing heavily in Erewhon, which—as the Governor will explain to anyone from back home who notices what we're up to—is not only practical but downright farsighted, given Erewhon's current estrangement from Manticore and the steadily worsening interstellar situation out here." He rolled his eyes piously. "Not only does it make sound economic sense for everybody here in the Sector, but it represents an opportunity to start wooing Erewhon—and its wormhole terminus—back into the loving arms of the League."

Stephens snorted caustically, and Watanapongse chuckled.

"Actually," Rozsak continued more seriously, "it really would make good economic sense, however you look at it. And Erewhon's in a logistical bind. After what happened on Torch, the Erewhonese have pretty much burned their bridges with Manticore. Well, actually, that's not really the best way to put it. I'm sure Manticore—or at least the Manties' queen—would be willing to welcome them back, but Imbesi and his friends dynamited the central span pretty damned thoroughly.

"Anyway, as I'm sure quite a few people back on Old Earth are well aware, Erewhon's never built its own ships-of-the-wall. For that matter, it's bought most of its cruisers from foreign suppliers, as well. Back before they joined the Manticoran Alliance, the Erewhonese bought most of those ships from Solarian builders; since signing up with Manticore, they've bought Manty-built. But that source is going to be closed, especially once they get around to signing that formal mutual defense pact with Haven. On the other hand, Haven's not really in a position to sell them lots and lots of modern wallers, and even if Haven were, the Havenites' general tech base isn't as good—yet, at least—as Manticore's. For that matter, it isn't as good as the sort of 'Manticore lite' tech Erewhon has available on its own.

"So it's going to make sense for Erewhon to begin expanding its own naval building capacity. They've built their own destroyers and other light units for a long time, so it's not as if they don't have the local expertise. They've just never felt able to justify investing in all the infrastructure that goes into building capital ships. Now, obviously, we'd prefer for them to buy Solarian for any wallers they might need." The rear admiral managed to sound as if he actually meant that, Stephens noticed. "Unfortunately," Rozsak continued, "we can't force them to do that, and I'm afraid they're not entirely happy about placing orders for such big-ticket items in Solarian yards. Some of them actually seem to cherish the dark suspicion that the League might hold up the delivery of their new ships in order to do a little judicious arm-twisting where the Erewhon terminus is concerned. Ridiculous, of course, but what can you expect out of a bunch of neobarbs?

"But if they're not going to buy Solarian, and they can't buy Manty or Havenite, then their only alternative is to finally bite the bullet and begin building up the yard capacity to build their own. Obviously, no single star system is going to be able to build a lot of wallers, and it's probably silly of them to invest so much capital in a capacity that's going to be so seriously underutilized. But if they're determined to go ahead and do it, then we might as well invest in the project and help them build it. They're going to be buying a lot of what they need from us, so it'll be a shot in the arm for the Sector's business community. It's going to show its investors a tidy profit, too, and, like I say, it's also likely to give us—'us' in this case being the League as a whole, of course, as far as Old Chicago knows anything about—a toe in the door later on."

"Okay." Stephens nodded. "So, as you say, it makes sense—or it's plausible, at least—for Erewhon to be expanding its naval building capacity. And I'm sure we can make our investment, or our official investment, at least, sound reasonable, too. But what happens when they start building ships for us?"

"There are actually three things to consider there," Watanapongse said calmly. "First, they aren't going to be building any capital ships for us. All of the wallers are going to be being built to standard Erewhonese designs for the ESN. Surely you don't think a loyal sector governor would even be contemplating acquiring unauthorized capital ships of his very own? I'm shocked—shocked—by the very possibility that you might entertain such a thought! Of course, if anyone actually runs the numbers, they're going to realize the Erewhonese are building more SDs than they could possibly pay for—or, for that matter, man!—but it wouldn't be the first time a third rate, neobarb Navy's eyes got bigger than its stomach. If anyone asks, they're planning on putting the excess units straight into mothballs as a mobilization reserve, to be manned only if their navy expands in the face of an emergency situation. Given Battle Fleet's mobilization plans, that should make sense to the geniuses back on Old Earth, for a while, at least. Hopefully, by the time we're actually sending crews out to take possession of our part of the building program, it's not going to matter all that much if someone notices. Don't forget, we're talking at least two or three T-years down the road, where wallers are concerned, even after the yard capacity is built. Probably more like four or five years, minimum, to the first deliveries.

"Secondly, we're going to bury a few 'official' light units of our own in the Erewhonese program." He shrugged. "Given how strapped for hulls Frontier Fleet always is, and given the worsening situation between Manticore and Haven, Governor Barregos obviously has legitimate security concerns. The Sector would make a pretty juicy prize, if any of the locals were gutsy enough—or crazy enough—to try and grab it. That's not likely to happen, of course, but it is likely that privateers and piracy are going to spill over onto our local interests. I mean, the Sector trades with Erewhon, Manticore, and Haven on a regular basis. Sooner or later, we're going to have to start thinking in terms of commerce protection."

Stephens looked a little dubious, and Rozsak shook his head.

"Trust me, Brent. When I get done writing my evaluation as Frontier Fleet's senior officer here in the Sector, everybody back on Old Earth's going to understand that we're critically short of the sort of light units—destroyers, maybe the occasional light cruiser—you need for commerce protection. Unfortunately, everyone's always short of light units like that. Most systems with the kind of economic clout we have are full members of the League, which means they can raise their own system-defense forces to provide that sort of protection. We can't; we're officially a protectorate. That means the only place we can get the escorts we need is from Frontier Fleet, but Frontier Fleet doesn't have them to spare. So, what I'll be doing, is using discretionary funds, plus additional 'special subscriptions' the Governor is going to screw out of the local merchants and manufacturers, to buy a few extra destroyers which will then become the property of Frontier Fleet. They'll be integrated into my own squadrons out here, they won't cost the Navy (or any of the other bureaucracies back home) a single centicredit, and when the situation out here finally calms down, Frontier Fleet will cheerfully transfer them somewhere else.

"Or that's what they think will happen, anyway."

Stephens could have shaved with Rozsak's smile.

"And they're also going to think that what we're building are only destroyers," Watanapongse added. "The 'light cruisers' are officially going to be Erewhonese units, not ours. We'll be 'borrowing' a few of them from Admiral McAvoy once the piracy situation starts getting out of hand out here. It'll be another example of how those silly neobarbs built more ships than they had the cash and manpower to keep operational, so in the interests of getting the League's hooks even more deeply into the Republic of Erewhon, we'll be providing naval assistance in the form of experienced officers to help the poor neobarbs find their way around. In the meantime, no one back home's going to realize that our new 'destroyers' are going to be the next best thing to the same size as our Morrigan-class light cruisers."

Stephens frowned, and the lieutenant commander laughed.

"Nobody back home seems to have noticed the . . . tonnage inflation that's been creeping into classes out here, Brent," he pointed out. "By this time, Manty and Havenite 'heavy cruisers' are damned near the size of small battlecruisers, and some of their light cruisers are closing in on the tonnage ranges for Solarian heavy cruisers. The same thing's been happening to their destroyers, too, for that matter. Well, obviously we have to be building ships that could face up to those outsized Manty and Havenite designs, don't we? Of course we do! Still, if no one back on Old Earth has noticed that sizes are creeping up amongst the local neobarb navies, I don't see any special reason why we have to tell them that ours are, do you?"

His smile looked remarkably like Rozsak's, Stephens thought.

"Edie and I are already working up the reports and correspondence," Rozsak said. "Officially, we're going to be describing our new units as 'modified Rampart-class destroyers,' for example. We just aren't going to get too specific about what the modifications consist of . . . or the fact that we're talking about destroyers fifty or sixty percent bigger than the original Rampart. I'm pretty sure the geniuses back at OpNav are going to assume that any modifications will result in decreased capabilities, given their view of Manty and Havenite technical capabilities. A view which Jiri's and my modest efforts have probably done just a bit to help shape. And since all of the official correspondence—governmental, as well as from the private builders and inspectors—from the Erewhon side is going to be understating tonnages by about, oh, forty or fifty percent, there's not going to be anything to tell Old Chicago differently. And the beauty of it is that we're not going to be falsifying any paperwork; we're going to be sending them file copies of the actual, official correspondence from Erewhon."

Stephens pursed his lips silently as he considered that. Rozsak was right about how it would help cover their own actions, but the industrialist wondered just exactly how the admiral had convinced Erewhon to run that kind of risk. Eventually, someone back on Old Earth was going to realize they'd been systematically deceived by the Erewhonese (and the League's own official intelligence apparatus here in the Sector, of course), and the consequences of that could be severe—for Erewhon, not just Maya.

On the other hand, if that sort of situation arose, it would mean all the rest of their plans had failed disastrously, so there probably wasn't a lot of point worrying about it. Although getting theErewhonese to look at it that way must've taken some doing . . .

"You said there were three things to consider," he said to Watanapongse after a moment, and the commander nodded.

"The third thing, maybe the most important one of all," he said, his expression much more somber, "is that four or five-T-year window between now and the delivery of our first wallers. Even after the SDs start coming out of the yards, it's going to take a while for any sort of volume production to build up. We'll hide as many of 'our' wallers as we can in the flow going to Erewhon, of course, but the odds are good that we're going to have to start shooting at somebody before we have a real wall of battle of our own."

Stephens felt a distinct stir of alarm, but Rozsak flashed him the lazy, white-toothed smile of a confident tiger.

"Even with a four or five-year delay to our own first waller, we're going to be ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the League, Brent. A long way ahead of the curve. Trust me, the 'not invented here' syndrome is going to kick in back home even after they begin to figure out just how screwed any SLN ship is going to be going up against its Havenite—or, even worse, Manty—equivalent. So, what we're really going to need to tide us over is something that can kick the shit out of anything Frontier Fleet's likely to be sending out towards us with unfriendly intentions. Right?"

"With the proviso that I think we need to do a little worrying about the Battle Fleet units that might be sent along behind that first wave," Stephens agreed a bit caustically.

"Well, of course." Rozsak chuckled. "And it just happens we've come up with something that should let us do that, at least as long as nobody back on Old Earth is paying any attention to all of those ridiculous rumors about how Manticore and Haven have been sticking multiple drives into their missiles. Nonsense, of course! I'm sure those reports are just as exaggerated as Commander Watanapongse's diligent staff has consistently reported they are! Still, it's occurred to us that if someone were building multidrive missiles, and if they happened to have themselves a couple of dozen freighters—freighters that might happen to have military-grade drives, and maybe even sidewalls—that could carry, oh, I don't know, three or four hundred missile pods at a time, then they could probably do a lot of damage to a fleet equipped only with single-drive missiles, don't you think?"

Stephens's eyes narrowed, and Rozsak chuckled again, more harshly.

"That's one of the things Edie and I have been kicking around when we started thinking about doctrine and ship designs. And it's the real reason we're going to be building that extra tonnage into our light combatants. Most of it's going into fire control, not extra weapons."

"And the beauty of it," Watanapongse said, "is that Carlucci already has a commercial design—they picked it up from some outfit in Silesia—for a freighter designed around plug-in cargo modules. It's one of those ideas that sounds really good on paper, but it hasn't worked out that well for the Sillies as a commercial proposition. It's actually less flexible, it turns out, than what you can do reconfiguring a standard cargo hold's interior. But that's not something that's going to be instantly evident looking at it from the outside, and the basic construction just happens to be something that's going to lend itself well to a 'merchantship' pod-carrier design. The Sector government is going to be buying quite a few of them—several dozen, at least—as part of our move to broaden our investment base in Erewhon. We've got a lot of short domestic cargo routes of our own, just like the Sillies, so if it works for them, it ought to work for us, right? And even if it turns out they aren't the most cost-efficient possible way to haul freight around, so what? It was still worth it just to get our toes further into the Erewhonese door."

"And," Rozsak said quietly, "if it just happens that our new ships' plug-in cargo modules just happen to have exactly the same dimensions as the missile pods the Erewhonese Navy is going to be building for its own new ships-of-the-wall, well"—this time his smile could have liquefied helium—"it's a big galaxy, and coincidences happen all the time."

Chapter Three

Catherine Montaigne looked down at the very large suitcase on the bed. The look was not an affectionate one.

"Do you realize, Anton, what an archaeological relic this is? We're coming close on two thousand years since the human race left our planet of origin—and we still have to pack our own bags."

Anton Zilwicki pursed his lips. "This is one of those damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't, and damned-if-I-try-to-keep-my-mouth-shut situations."

She frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

He pointed with a thick, stubby finger to the door which led to the personal services bay of the bedroom. "There is a household robot in there with a perfectly functional travel program. I haven't personally packed a bag myself in . . . oh, years. Can't remember how many, any longer."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, sure. You're a man. Three outfits to your name, leaving aside socks and underwear—identical socks and underwear—and the sartorial imagination of a pot roast. Meat, potatoes, carrots, what more do you need?"

"Like I said, damned any way I turn." He glanced at the door, as if seeking an escape route. "The last time I looked, our daughters Helen and Berry were both women. So is Princess Ruth. And not one of the three has personally packed a suitcase in years, either."

"Well, of course not. Helen's in the military, so willy-nilly she's been tainted by male attitudes. Berry grew up without a pot to piss in, and she still accumulates personal belongings as if she had the budget of a rat in the Terran warrens. And Ruth is just plain unnatural. The only member of the royal family in . . . oh, hell, ever, who wants to be a spy."

She straightened up and squared her shoulders. "I, on the other hand, retain normal female customs and views. So I know perfectly good and well that no fucking robot is going to pack my suitcase properly. Being fair to the critters, I'm still making up my mind what to put in the suitcase until it's closed."

"You're also one of the richest females in the Star Kingdom, Cathy. Hell, the Star Empire—for that matter, the whole damn galaxy, since the wealth of the Manticoran upper crust matches that of almost anybody in the Solarian League, damn their black and wicked aristocratic hearts. So why don't you have one of your servants pack your suitcase?"

Montaigne looked uncomfortable. "Doesn't seem right," she said. "Some things a person has to do for herself. Use the toilet, clean your teeth, pack your own suitcase. It'd be grotesque to have a servant do that sort of thing."

She stared at the suitcase for a few seconds, and then sighed. "Besides, packing my own suitcase lets me stall. I'm going to miss you, Anton. A lot."

"I'll miss you too, love."

"When will I see you again?" She turned her head to look at him. "Best estimate. You can spare me the lecture about the temporal uncertainties of intelligence work."

"Honestly, it is hard to know. But . . . I figure a number of months at a minimum, Cathy, and it could easily stretch to a year or longer."

"Yeah, that's about what I figured. Dammit, if I could . . ."

"Don't be silly. The Liberals' political situation on Manticore is far too critical for you to leave the Star Kingdom again once you get back home. As it is, you probably stretched it by staying here on Torch for so many weeks after Berry's coronation."

"I don't regret it, though. Not for one moment."

"Neither do I—and, for sure, Berry appreciated it. But while I figure you can afford one extended vacation"—he smiled as crookedly as she had earlier—"given that the occasion was the coronation of your daughter—you can't really do it again. Not until the political mess gets straightened out."

"It'd be better to say, 'political opportunity.' The repercussions of that quick trip you took back home a few weeks ago will have had time to percolate, by now."

Between the time Anton had returned to Erewhon from Smoking Frog with the critical information he'd found concerning Georgia Young and the time he'd had to help with the liberation of Torch, he'd been able—just barely—to return to Manticore and, with Cathy, confront Young and force her into exile. They'd also forced her to destroy the notorious North Hollow files that had played such a poisonous role in the politics of the Star Kingdom, before she fled.

"So they will," he said. "So they will."

When she was finally done packing the huge suitcase, Anton began to summon the household robot. But Cathy shook her head.

"Not a chance, buddy. I'm not about to risk my valuable possessions being hauled around by a mindless machine when I've got a personal weightlifter at my service." She gazed approvingly upon Anton's dwarf-king figure. He was a number of centimeters shorter than she was, and seemed to be at least a meter wider.

Cathy had once heard someone at a party remark that Anton's shoulders could double in a pinch as a parking lot for ground vehicles. Everyone present had disputed the statement, pointing out that it was absurd. But not before they'd spent several seconds studying the shoulders in question.

He picked up the suitcase by the handle on the end and lifted it onto his shoulder. The motion was as smooth and easy as if he'd been handling a broom instead of a valise that weighed well over fifty kilos.

Cathy slid her arm around his waist on the side opposite the suitcase. "Now let's be off—before our blessed daughter decides to launch yet another innovation in Torch royal custom. An eight-hour-long goodbye party for the royal mother, that'll leave me stuffed like a goose and wobbly with liquor."

On their way out the door, her expression became pensive. "I hadn't thought about it before now. According to Torch protocol, am I a dowager queen or something like that?"

"I doubt it, sweetheart. There's practically nothing yet in the way of royal protocol on Torch—and, given Berry, that's not likely to change much as long as she's still sitting on the throne."

"Oh, that's such a relief. The moment I spoke the word 'dowager,' I felt like I'd gained thirty kilos."

In the event, the "official royal leave-taking" was as informal as Cathy could have asked for. There were only a handful of people present in Berry's audience chamber to see her off. Berry herself, Princess Ruth, Web DuHavel, Jeremy X and Thandi Palane. Web and Jeremy were old friends, and while Ruth wasn't—prior to this trip to Torch, Cathy had only exchanged a few words with her at royal functions on Manticore—she felt quite familiar because of Cathy's long-standing ties to the Winton dynasty. Those ties had become politically strained over the years, but they were still personally relaxed.

Thandi Palane was the one true stranger to her in the group. Cathy had never met her prior to this trip. She knew a great deal about the Mfecane worlds which had produced Palane, because of their relationship to genetic slavery. Manpower used a lot of Mfecane genetic stock to produce their heavy labor lines. But she also knew perfectly well that she had no real knowledge of what it must have been like to grow up on Ndebele.

She'd gotten to know the big woman to a degree, in the course of her stay on Torch following Berry's coronation. She still couldn't consider her a "friend," though, in any real sense of the term. Palane had been friendly, to be sure, but there had remained a certain tight reserve in all her dealings with Catherine Montaigne.

That hadn't upset Cathy. First, because she recognized the phenomenon. She'd encountered it many times with genetic slaves recently escaped or freed from Manpower's clutches. No matter how well recommended Cathy was by other ex-slaves, and no matter what her political reputation was, there was simply no way that someone who'd recently come from the depths of genetic slavery was going to feel at ease in the presence of a wealthy noblewoman. And while Thandi Palane hadn't come from genetic slavery, being born and raised on Ndebele as what amounted to nothing more than a peon was close enough to produce the same reserve.

But none of that mattered, anyway. The other reason Cathy had a very favorable attitude toward Palane, however the woman acted toward her, was that she figured Thandi Palane was the single person in the universe most likely to keep Berry Zilwicki alive and reasonably intact in the years to come. The woman was the head of Torch's fledgling military, she was closely tied to Berry, and . . .

Utterly ferocious, when she needed to be.

Cathy looked around the room. Berry's "audience chamber" was actually just a hastily-remodeled office in the big building that Manpower had once used for its headquarters on Torch—"Verdant Vista," as it had then been known—and which the rebels had taken over and turned into a combination "royal palace" and government center.

"Where's Lars?" she asked.

Berry grinned. "He's taking his leave from his new girlfriend. Don't ask me which one. If he survives adolescence—and he's only got a few more months to go—he's got a surefire career ahead of him as a juggler."

Cathy chuckled, a bit ruefully. Once he got past puberty, Berry's younger brother Lars had turned into something of a Lothario. The secret of his attraction to young women remained mysterious to Cathy. Lars was a pleasant looking boy, but he wasn't really what you'd call "handsome." And while he certainly wasn't bashful, neither was he particularly aggressive in the way he approached and dealt with teenage girls. In fact, he was considered by most people, including Cathy herself, as "a very nice boy."

Yet, whatever the reason, he seemed to be a magnet for teenage girls—and more than a few women several years older than he was. Within a week after arriving on Torch with Cathy, he'd manage to acquire two girlfriends his own age and had even drawn the half-serious attentions of a woman who was at least thirty years old.

"Let's hope we manage to get out of here without a scandal," Cathy half-muttered.

Jeremy X grinned. Impishly, as he usually did. "Don't be silly. All the females involved are genetic ex-slaves. So are what pass for their parents—none, in the case of two of them—and every one of their friends. 'Scandal' is simply not an issue, here. What you should be worried about is whether Lars can get off the planet without getting various body parts removed."

He'd barely gotten out the last words before the lad in question manifested himself in the chamber. Nobody actually saw him come in.

"Hi, Mom. Dad. Berry. Everybody." He gave them all some quick nods. Then, looking a bit worried, said: "How soon are we leaving? I vote for right away. No offense, Sis—I mean, Your Majesty. I just don't see any point in dragging this out."

His stepmother gave him a stern look. "What is the problem, Lars?"

He fidgeted for a few seconds. "Well. Susanna. She's really pissed. She said she had half a mind to—" He fidgeted some more, glancing back at the entrance to the chamber. "It was kinda gross."

Cathy rolled her eyes. "Oh, wonderful."

Web DuHavel laughed softly. "The truth is, Cathy, I've never been one for drawn-out leavetakings myself."

"Me, neither," said Jeremy.

So, she hugged both of them quickly. Then, shook Thandi Palane's hand. Then, gave Ruth another quick hug, and then gave Berry a very long one.

"Take care, sweetheart," she whispered into her step-daughter's ear.

"You too, Mom."

At Cathy's insistence, Anton toted the monster of a suitcase all the way into the shuttle waiting to take her to her orbiting yacht.

There followed a very long hug, even longer than the one she'd given Berry, accompanied by the sort of intellectually meaningless but emotionally critical words by which a husband and wife—which they were, in reality if not in name—part company for what they both know is going to be a very long separation.

By the time Anton emerged from the shuttle, Susanna had arrived. She'd brought a bag of rocks with her.

Anton glanced back at Cathy's shuttle. Compared to any true starship, it was tiny, little bigger than a pre-space jumbo airliner, as most surface-to-orbit craft tended to be. It was a bit larger than many such, admittedly. It had to be to provide to the palatial—one might almost have said "sinfully luxurious"—accomodations one rightfully expected from a permanently assigned auxilliary of the yacht personally registered to one of the wealthiest women in the explored galaxy. Cathy had always referred to it as her "auxilliary bacchanalia pad," and Anton felt more than a bit wistful as he recalled some of the bacchanalia in question.

Despite its small size compared to a starship, however, it was still quite large (indeed, "huge" might not have been too emphatic an adjective) compared to any mere human. Even one so swelled and exalted by righteous adolescent fury as Susanna.

"His mother's stinking rich, you know, and that shuttle was built by the Hauptman Cartel's Palladium Yard," Anton said to the blonde teenager. She was quite attractive in a stocky and athletic way. "They build a lot of the Navy's assault shuttles and ground attack craft. Really knows how to armor a ship, does the Palladium Yard, and I doubt they spared any expense on her shuttle. As a matter of fact, I know they didn't, since I personally wrote up the design stats for it. The point being, I don't think those rocks are even going to dent the hull."

"Sure, I know that." Susanna dug into the bag. "It's the principle of the thing."

As Anton predicted, the hull wasn't so much as dented. Still, she managed to hit it twice. The girl had one hell of an arm.

Chapter Four

Thandi Palane closed the door of her suite in the palace behind her, and then moved over to stand next to the man sitting at a large table by the window overlooking the gardens below. He seemed to be studying the gardens intently, which was a bit peculiar. The gardens were practically brand new, with more in the way of bare soil than vegetation—and what vegetation did exist was obviously struggling to stay alive.

Most of the plants had been brought from Manticore by Catherine Montaigne. A gift, she said, from Manticore's Queen Elizabeth, plucked from her own extensive gardens.

Berry had appreciated the sentiment. Unfortunately, most of Torch's climate was tropical or sub-tropical, and the planet had its own lush and diverse biota, much of which was quite aggressive. Only the diligence of the palace's gardeners had managed to keep the imported plants alive in the weeks since Montaigne arrived. Now that she was gone, Thandi was pretty sure that Berry would quietly tell her gardeners to let the Manticoran plants die a natural death.

It was not a sight one would have thought would lend itself to the sort of rapt concentration the man at the table was bestowing upon it. But Victor Cachat's mind often moved in a realm of its own, Thandi had found. It was quite odd, the way such a square-faced and seemingly conventional man—which he was, in fact, in many respects—could see the universe from such unconventional angles.

"And what's so fascinating about those poor plants below?" she asked.

He'd had his chin resting on a hand, which he now drew away. "They don't belong here. The longer you study them, the more obvious it is."

"Can't say I disagree. And you find this of interest because . . . ?"

"Manpower doesn't belong here, either. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is."

She frowned, and began idly caressing his shoulder. "You're certainly not going to get an argument from me—anyone here—that the universe wouldn't be a far better place if we were rid of Manpower. But how is this some sort of revelation?"

He shook his head. "I didn't make myself clear. What I meant was that Manpower doesn't belong in the universe in the same way those plants don't belong in this garden. It just doesn't fit. There are too many things about that so-called 'corporation' that are out of place. It should be dying a natural death, like those plants below. Instead, it's thriving—growing more powerful even, judging from the evidence. Why? And how?"

This wasn't the first time that Thandi had found her lover's mind was leaping ahead of hers. Or, it might be better to say, scampering off into the underbrush like a rabbit, leaving her straight-forward predator's mind panting in pursuit.

"Ah . . . I'm trying to figure out a dignified way to say 'huh'? What the hell are you talking about?"

He smiled and placed a hand atop hers. "Sorry. I'm probably being a little opaque. What I'm saying is that there are too many ways—way too many ways—in which Manpower doesn't behave like the evil and soulless corporation it's supposed to be."

"The hell it doesn't! If there's a single shred of human decency in that foul—"

"I'm not arguing about the evil and soulless part, Thandi. It doesn't act like a corporation. Evil or not, soulless or not, Manpower is supposed to be a commercial enterprise. It's supposed to be driven by profit, and the profitability of slavery ought to be dying out—dying a natural death like those plants down there. Oh," he shrugged, "their 'pleasure slave' lines will always be profitable, given the way human nature's ugly side has a tendency to keep bobbing to the surface. And there'll always be specific instances—especially for transtellars who need work forces out in the Verge—where the laborer lines offer at least a marginal advantage over automated equipment. But the market should be shrinking, or at best holding steady, and that should mean Manpower ought to be losing steam. Its profit margin should be lower, and it should be producing less 'product,' and it's not."

"Maybe it's just too set in its ways to adjust," Thandi suggested after a moment.

"That sounds like an attractive hypothesis," he conceded, "but it doesn't fit any business model I've been able to put together. Not for a corporation which has been so obviously successful for so long. No one's ever had the chance to examine their books, of course, but they've got to be showing one hell of a profit margin to bankroll everything they get involved in—like their operation right here on 'Verdant Vista,' for example—and I just can't quite convince myself that slavery should be that profitable. Or still that profitable, I suppose I should say."

"Then maybe what they were doing here was them starting to diversity?"

"Ummm." He frowned for a moment, then shrugged again. "Could be, I suppose. It's just—"

The chiming doorbell interrupted him, and Thandi made a face before she raised her voice.

"Open," she commanded.

The door slid smoothly aside and Anton Zilwicki came into the room, followed by Princess Ruth. In a shocking display of topsy-turvy royal protocol, Queen Berry tagged along behind them.

"You can come out of hiding now, Victor," said Anton. "She's gone."

Berry came to the center of the room and planted her hands on slender hips. "Well, I think you were rude, I don't care what Daddy says. Mom's a really curious person and it drives her nuts not to have her curiosity satisfied. She never stopped asking about you, the whole time she was here. And you never came out to meet her even once."

"Curiosity may or may not have killed cats," replied Victor, "but it has certainly slaughtered lots of politicians. I was doing the lady a favor, Your Majesty, whether she wanted it or not and whether she appreciated it or not."

"Don't call me that!" she snapped. "I hate it when my friends use that stupid title in private—and you know it!"

Anton went over to sit in an armchair. "He just does it because for reasons I can't figure out—he's a twisty, gnarly, crooked sort of fellow—using flamboyantly royal titles in private scratches some kinky egalitarian itch he's got. But don't worry, girl. He doesn't mean it."

"Actually," Victor said mildly, "Berry's the one monarch in creation I don't mind calling 'Your Majesty.' But I'll admit I do it mostly just to be contrary."

He looked up at the young queen, whose expression was cross and who still had her hands on her hips. "Berry, the very last thing your mother needed was to leave herself open to the charge that she spent her time on Torch consorting with agents of an enemy power."

Berry sneered. Tried to, rather. Sneers were just not an expression that came naturally to her. "Oh, nonsense! As opposed to leaving herself open to the charge that she spent her time on Torch consorting with murderous terrorists like Jeremy?"

"Not the same thing at all," said Victor, shaking his head. "I don't doubt that her political enemies will level that charge against her, as soon as she gets home. It will get a rapt audience among those who already detest her, and produce a massive yawn on the part of everyone else. For pity's sake, girl, they've been accusing her of that for decades. No matter how murderous and maniacal people may think Jeremy X is, nobody thinks he's an enemy of the Star Kingdom. Whereas I most certainly am."

He gave a mildly apologetic glance at Anton and Ruth. "Meaning no personal offense to anyone here." He looked back up at Berry. "Consorting with Jeremy simply leaves her open to the accusation of having bad judgment. Consorting with me leaves her open to the accusation of treason. That's a huge difference, when it comes to politics."

Berry's expression was now mulish. Clearly enough, she was not persuaded by Victor's argument. But her father Anton was nodding his head. Quite vigorously, in fact.

"He's right, Berry. Of course, he's also now exposed as a piss-poor secret agent, because if he'd had any imagination or gumption at all he would have spent time visiting Cathy, while she was here. Lots and lots of time, to do what he could to make Manticore's politics even more poisonous than it is."

Victor gave him a level gaze and a cool smile. "I thought about it, as a matter of fact. But . . ."

He shrugged. "It's hard to know how that would all play out, in the end. There's a long, long history of secret agents being too clever for their own good. It could just as easily prove true, years from now, that Catherine Montaigne being in firm control of the Liberals—and with an unblemished reputation—would prove beneficial to Haven."

Anton said nothing. But he gave Victor a very cool smile of his own.

"And . . . fine," said Victor. "I also didn't do it because I'd have been uncomfortable doing so." His expression got as mulish as Berry's. "And that's all I'm going to say on the subject."

Thandi had to fight, for a moment, not to grin. There were times when Victor Cachat's large and angular pile of political and moral principles amused her. Given that they were attached to a man who could also be as ruthless and cold-blooded as any human being who ever lived.

God forbid Victor Cachat should just say openly that the Zilwicki family were people who'd become dear to him, Manticoran enemies or not, and he was no more capable of deliberately harming them than he would be of harming a child. It might be different if he thought the vital interests of Haven were at stake, true. But for the sake of a small and probably temporary tactical advantage? That was just not someplace he would go.

She wouldn't tease him about it, though. Not even later, when they were in private again. By now, she knew Victor well enough to know that he'd simply retreat into obfuscation. He'd advance complex and subtle reasoning to the effect that retaining the personal trust of the Zilwickis would actually work to Haven's benefit, in the long run, and that it would be foolish to sacrifice that for the sake of petty maneuvering.

And it might even be true. But it would still be an excuse. Even if Victor didn't think there'd be any long-range advantage for Haven, he'd behave the same way. And if that excuse failed of its purpose, think up a different one.

Judging from the Mona Lisa smile on Anton Zilwicki's face, Thandi was pretty sure he'd figured it out himself.

Anton now cleared his throat, noisily enough to break Queen Berry out of her hands-planted-on-hips disapproval. "That's not why we came here, however. Victor, there's something I need to raise with you."

He nodded at Princess Ruth, who was perched on the arm of a chair across the room. "We need to raise with you, I should say. Ruth's actually the one who broached the issue with me."

Ruth flashed Victor a nervous little smile and shifted her weight on the chair arm. As usual, Ruth was too fidgety when dealing with professional issues to be able to sit still. Thandi knew that Victor considered her a superb intelligence analyst—but he also thought she'd be a disaster as a field agent.

Cachat glanced at Berry, who'd moved over to the divan next to Anton's chair and taken a seat there. "And why is the queen here? Meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty—"

"I really, really hate it when he calls me that," Berry said to no one in particular, glaring at the wall opposite her.

"—but you don't normally express a deep interest in the arcane complexities of intelligence work."

Berry transferred the glare from the wall onto Cachat. "Because if they're right—and I'm not convinced!—then there's a lot more involved that the silly antics of spies."

"All right," said Victor. He looked back at Anton. "So what's on your mind?"

"Victor, there's something wrong with Manpower."

"He doesn't mean wrong, like in 'they've got really bad morals,' " interjected Ruth. "He means—"

"I know what he means," said Victor. Now he looked at Berry. "And I hate to tell you this, Your—ah, Berry—but your father's right. There really is something rotten in the state of Denmark."

Berry and Thandi both frowned. "Where's Denmark?" demanded Thandi.

"I know where it is," said Berry, "but I don't get it. Of course there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. It's that nasty cheese they make."

Chapter Five

January, 1920 PD

"So," Zachariah McBryde asked, watching the head of foam rise on the stein he was filling with the precision of the scientist he was, "what do you think about the crap at Verdant Vista?"

"Are you sure you want to ask me that question?" his brother Jack inquired.

Both brothers were red-haired and blue-eyed, but of the two, Jack had the greater number of freckles and the more infectious smile. Zachariah, six T-years younger and three centimeters shorter than his brother, had always been the straight man when they were younger. Both of them had lively senses of humor, and Zachariah had probably been even more inventive than Jack when it came to devising elaborate practical jokes, but Jack had always been the extrovert of the pair.

"I'm generally fairly confident that the question I ask is the one I meant to ask," Zachariah observed. He finished filling the beer stein, handed it across to Jack, and began filling a second one.

"Well," Jack gave him a beady-eyed look. "I am a high muckety-muck in security, you know. I'd have to look very askance at anyone inquiring about classified information. Can't be too careful, you know."

Zachariah snorted, although when he came down to it, there was more than an edge of truth in Jack's observation.

It was odd, the way things worked out, Zachariah reflected, carefully topping off his own stein and settling back on the other side of the table in his comfortably furnished kitchen. When they'd been kids, he never would have believed Jack would be the one to go into the Mesan Alignment's security services. The McBryde genome was an alpha line, and it had been deep inside "the onion" for the last four or five generations. From the time they'd been upperclassman in high school, they'd both known far more of the truth about their homeworld than the vast majority of their classmates, and it had been a foregone conclusion that they'd be going into the . . . family business one way or another. But Jack the joker, the raconteur of hilarious stories, the guy with the irresistible grin and the devastating ability to attract women, had been the absolute antithesis of anything which would have come to Zachariah's mind if someone mentioned the words "security" or "spy" to him.

Which might explain why Jack had been so successful at his craft, he supposed.

"I think you can safely assume, Sheriff, that this particular horse thief already knows about the classified information in question," he said out loud. "If you really need to, you can check with my boss about that, of course."

"Well, under the circumstances, partner," Jack allowed with the drawl he'd carefully cultivated as a kid after their parents had introduced them to their father's passion for antique, pre-diaspora "Westerns," "I reckon I can let it pass this time."

"Why, thank you." Zachariah shoved a plate loaded with a thick ham and Swiss sandwich (with onion; they were the only ones present, so it was socially acceptable, even by their mother's rules), a substantial serving of potato salad, and an eleven centimeter-long pickle across the table to him. They grinned at each other, but then Zachariah's expression sobered.

"Really, Jack," he said in a much more serious tone, "I'm curious. I know you see a lot more on the operational side than I do, but even what I'm hearing through the tech-weenie channels is a bit on the scary side."

Jack regarded his brother thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up his sandwich, took a bite, and chewed reflectively.

Zachariah probably had heard quite a bit from his fellow "tech-weenies," and it probably had been more than a little garbled. Under a strict interpretation of the Alignment's "need-to-know" policy, Jack really shouldn't be spilling any operational details to which he might be privy to someone who didn't have to have those details to do his own job. On the other hand, Zachariah was not only his brother, but one of Anastasia Chernevsky's key research directors. In some ways (though certainly not all), his clearance was even higher than Jack's.

Both of them, Jack knew without false modesty, were definitely on the bright side, even for Mesan alpha lines, but Zachariah's talent as a synthesizer had come as something of a surprise. That could still happen, of course, even for someone whose genetic structure and talents had been as carefully designed as the McBryde genome's. However much the Long-Range Planning Board might dislike admitting it, the complex of abilities, skills, and talents tied up in the general concept of "intelligence" remained the least amenable to its manipulation. Oh, they could guarantee high general IQs, and Jack couldn't remember the last representative of one of the Alignment's alpha lines who wouldn't have tested well up into the ninety-ninth-plus percentile of the human race. But the LRPB's efforts to preprogram an individual's actual skill set was problematical at best. In fact, he was always a little amused by the LRPB's insistence that it was just about to break through that last, lingering barrier to its ability to fully uplift the species.

Personally, Jack was more than a little relieved by the fact that the Board still couldn't design the human brain's software reliably and completely to order. It wasn't an opinion he was likely to discuss with his colleagues, but despite his complete devotion to the Detweiler vision and the Alignment's ultimate objectives, he didn't really like the thought of micromanaging human intelligence and mental abilities. He was entirely in favor of pushing the frontiers in both areas, but he figured there would always be room for serendipitous combinations of abilities. Besides, if he was going to be honest, he didn't really like the thought of his theoretical children or grandchildren becoming predesigned chips in the Alignment's grand machine.

In that regard, he thought, he had a great deal in common with Leonard Detweiler and the rest of the Alignment's original founders. Leonard had always insisted that the ultimate function of genetically improving humanity was to permit individuals to truly achieve their maximum potential. Whatever temporary compromises he might have been willing to make in the name of tactics, his ultimate, unwavering objective had been to produce a species of individuals, ready and able to exercise freedom of choice in their own lives. All he'd wanted to do was to give them the very best tools he could. He certainly wouldn't have favored designing free citizens, fully realized members of the society for which he'd striven, the way Manpower designed genetic slaves. The idea was to expand horizons, not limit them, after all.

There were moments when Jack suspected the Long-Range Planning Board had lost sight of that. Hardly surprising, if it had, he supposed. The Board was responsible not simply for overseeing the careful, continually ongoing development of the genomes under its care, but also for providing the Alignment with the tactical abilities its strategies and operations required. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that it should continually strive for a greater degree of . . . quality control.

And at least both the LRPB and the General Strategy Board recognized the need to make the best possible use out of any positive advantages the law of unintended consequences might throw up. Which explained why Zachariah's unique, almost instinctual ability to combine totally separate research concepts into unanticipated nuggets of development had been so carefully nourished once it was recognized. Which, in turn, explained how he had wound up as one of Chernevsky's right hands in the Alignment's naval R&D branch.

Jack finished chewing, swallowed, and took a sip of his beer, then quirked an eyebrow at his brother.

"What do you mean 'on the scary side,' Zack?"

"Oh, I'm not talking about any hardware surprises, if that's what you're thinking," Zachariah assured him. "As far as I know, the Manties didn't trot out a single new gadget this time around. Which, much as I hate to admit it"—he smiled a bit sourly—"actually came as a pleasant surprise, for a change." He shook his head. "No, what bothers me is the fact that Manticore and Haven are cooperating on anything. The fact that they managed to get the League on board with them, too, doesn't make me any happier, of course. But if anybody on the other side figures out the truth about the Verdant Vista wormhole . . .

He let his voice trail off, then shrugged, and Jack nodded.

"Well," he said, "I wouldn't worry too much about the Manties and the Peeps being in cahoots." He chuckled sourly. "As nearly as I can tell from the material I've seen, it was more or less a freelance operation by a couple of out-of-control operatives improvising as they went along."

Zachariah, Jack noted, looked just a bit skeptical at that, but he really didn't have anything like a need to know about Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki.

"You're just going to have to trust me on that part, Zack," he said affectionately. "And I'll admit, I could be wrong. I don't think I am, though. And given the . . . intensity with which the operatives in question have been discussed over in my shop, I don't think I'm alone in having drawn that conclusion, either."

He took another bite of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed.

"At any rate, it's pretty obvious no one back home in Manticore or Nouveau Paris saw any of it coming, and I think what they're really doing is trying to make the best of the situation now that they've both been dragged kicking and screaming into it. Which, I'll admit, is probably easier for them because of how much both of them hate Manpower's guts. It's not going to have any huge impact on their actions or their thinking when we get them to start shooting at each other again, though."

Zachariah frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.

"I hope you're right about that. Especially if they've got the League involved!"

"That, I think, was also improvisational," Jack said. "Cassetti just happened to be on the ground when the whole thing got thrown together, and he saw it as a way to really hammer home Maya's relationship with Erewhon. I don't think he gave a good goddamn about the independence of a planet full of ex-slaves, at any rate! He was just playing the cards he found in his hand. And it didn't work out any too well for him personally, either."

Zachariah snorted in agreement, and Jack grinned. He didn't know anywhere near as much as he wished he did about what was going on inside the Maya Sector. It wasn't really his area of expertise, and it certainly wasn't his area of responsibility, but he had his own version of Zachariah's ability to put together seemingly unrelated facts, and he'd come to the conclusion that whatever was happening in Maya, it was considerably more than anyone on Old Earth suspected.

"Personally, I think it's no better than a fifty-fifty chance Rozsak would actually have fired on Commodore Navarre," he went on. "Oversteegen might well have—he's a Manty, after all—but I'm inclined to think Rozsak, at least, was bluffing. I don't blame Navarre for not calling him on it, you understand, but I wouldn't be surprised if Barregos heaved a huge sigh of relief when we backed down. And now that Cassetti's dead, he's got the perfect opening to repudiate any treaty arrangement with this new Kingdom of Torch because of its obviously ongoing association with the Ballroom."

"Can you tell me if there's anything to the stories about Manpower having pulled the trigger on Cassetti?" Zachariah asked.

"No," Jack replied. "First, I couldn't tell you if I knew anything one way or the other—not about operational details like that." He gave his brother a brief, level look, then shrugged. "On the other hand, this time around, I don't have any of those details. I suppose it's possible one of those Manpower jerks who doesn't have a clue about what's really going on could have wanted him hit. But it's equally likely that it was Barregos. God knows Cassetti had to've become more than a bit of an embarrassment, after the way he all but detonated the bomb that killed Stein himself and then dragged Barregos into that entire mess in Verdant Vista. I'm pretty sure that at this particular moment Barregos views him as far more valuable as one more martyred Frontier Security commissioner than he'd be as an ongoing oxygen-sink."

"I understand, and if I pushed too far, I apologize," Zachariah said.

"Nothing to apologize for," Jack reassured him . . . more or less truthfully.

"Would I be intruding into those 'operational details' if I asked if you've got any feel for whether or not the other side's likely to figure out the truth about the wormhole?"

"That's another of those things I just don't know about," Jack replied. "I don't know if there was actually any information there in the system to be captured and compromised. For that matter, I don't have any clue whether or not the Manpower idiots on the spot were ever informed that the terminus had already been surveyed at all.I sure as hell wouldn't have told them, that's for sure! And even if I knew that, I don't think anyone knows whether or not they managed to scrub their databanks before they got shot in the head. What I am pretty sure of, though, is that anything any of them knew is probably in the hands of someone we'd rather didn't have it by now, assuming anybody thought to ask them about it." He grimaced. "Given how creative its ex-property on the planet was, I'm pretty damn sure that any of Manpower's people answered any questions they were asked. Not that it would have done them any good in the end."

It was Zachariah's turn to grimace. Neither brother was going to shed any tears for the "Manpower's people" in question. Although they didn't talk about it much, Zachariah knew Jack found Manpower just as distasteful as he did himself. Both of them knew how incredibly useful Manpower, Incorporated, had been to the Alignment over the centuries, but designed to be used or not, genetic slaves were still people, of a sort, at least. And Zachariah also knew that unlike some of Jack's colleagues on the operational side, his brother didn't particularly blame the Anti-Slavery League, genetic slaves in general, or even the Audubon Ballroom in particular, for the savagery of their operations against Manpower. The Ballroom was a factor Jack had to take into consideration, especially given its persistent (if generally unsuccessful) efforts to build an effective intelligence net right here on Mesa. He wasn't about to take the Ballroom threat lightly, nor was any sympathy he felt going to prevent him from hammering the Ballroom just as hard as he could any time the opportunity presented itself. Yet even though one difference between Manpower and the Alignment was supposed to be that the Alignment didn't denigrate or underestimate its future opponents, Zachariah also knew, quite a few of Jack's colleagues did exactly that where the Ballroom was concerned. Probably, little though either McBryde brother liked to admit it, because those colleagues of his bought into the notion of the slaves' fundamental inferiority even to normals, far less to the Alignment's enhanced genomes.

"When it comes right down to it, Zack," Jack pointed out after a moment, "you're actually probably in a better position than me to estimate whether or not the Ballroom—or anyone else, for that matter—picked up a hint about the wormhole. I know your department was involved in at least some of the original research for the initial survey, and I also know we're still working on trying to figure out the hyper mechanics involved in the damned thing. In fact, I'd assumed you were still in the loop on that end of things."

A rising inflection and an arched eyebrow turned the last sentence into a question, and Zachariah nodded briefly.

"I'm still in the loop, generally speaking, but it's not like the astrophysics are still a central concern of our shop. We settled most of the military implications decades ago. I'm sure someone else's still working on the theory behind it full time, but we've pretty much mined out the military concerns."

"I don't doubt it, what I meant was that I'm pretty sure you'll hear sooner than I would if anybody comes sniffing around from the Verdant Vista side."

"I hadn't thought about it from that perspective," Zachariah admitted thoughtfully, "but you've probably got a point. I'd be happier if I didn't expect the Ballroom to be asking the Manties for technical assistance where the terminus is concerned, though." He grimaced. "Let's face it, Manticore's got more and better hands-on experience with wormholes in general than anybody else in the galaxy! If anyone's likely to be able to figure out what's going on from the Verdant Vista end, it's got to be them."

"Granted. Granted." It was Jack's turn to grimace. "I don't know what we can do about it, though. I'm pretty sure some rather more highly placed heads are considering that right now, you understand, but it's sort of one of those rock-and-the-hard-place things. On the one hand, we don't want anybody like the Manties poking around. On the other hand, we really don't want to be drawing anyone's attention any more strongly to that wormhole terminus—or suggesting it may be more important than other people think it is—than we can help."

"I know."

Zachariah puffed out his cheeks for a moment, then reached for his beer stein again.

"So," he said in a deliberately brighter tone when he lowered the stein again, "anything new between you and that hot little number of yours?"

"I have absolutely no idea what you could possibly be talking about," Jack said virtuously. " 'Hot little number'?" He shook his head. "I cannot believe you could have been guilty of using such a phrase! I'm shocked, Zack! I think I may have to discuss this with Mom and Dad!"

"Before you get all carried away," Zachariah said dryly, "I might point out to you that it was Dad who initially used the phrase to me."

"That's even more shocking." Jack pressed one hand briefly to his heart. "On the other hand, much as I may deplore the crudity of the image it evokes, I have to admit that if you're asking about the young lady I think you're asking about, the term has a certain applicability. Not that I intend to cater to your prurient interests by discussing my amatory achievements with such a low brow lout as yourself."

He smiled brightly.

"No offense intended, you understand."

Chapter Six

Herlander Simões landed on the air car platform outside his comfortable townhouse apartment. One of the perks of his position as a Gamma Center project leader was a really nice place to live barely three kilometers from the Center itself. Green Pines was a much sought-after address here on Mesa, and the townhouse didn't come cheap. Which undoubtedly explained why most of Green Pines' inhabitants were upper mid-level and higher executives in one or another of Mesa's many business entities. A lot of the others were fairly important bureaucrats attached to the General Board which officially governed the Mesa System, despite the fact that Green Pines was a lengthy commute, even for a counter-gravity civilization, from the system capital of Mendel. Of course, Simões had realized long ago that having the long commute's inconvenience to bitch about to one's fellow government drones actually only made the address even more prestigious.

Simões had very little in common with people like that. In fact, he often felt a bit awkward if he found himself forced to make small talk with any of his neighbors, since he certainly couldn't tell them anything about what he did for a living. Still, the presence of all of those business executives and bureaucrats was useful when it came to explaining Green Pines' security arrangements. And the fact that those security arrangements were in place was very reassuring to people like Simões' superiors. They could hide the really important citizens of Green Pines in the underbrush of all those drones and still be confident they were protected.

Of course, he reflected as he climbed out of the air car and triggered the remote command for it to take itself off to the communal parking garage, their real protection was no one knew who they were.

He chuckled at the thought, then gave himself a shake and opened his briefcase. He extracted the gaily wrapped package, closed the briefcase again, tucked the package under his left arm, and headed for the lift bank.

"I'm home!" Simões called out five minutes later as he stepped into the apartment's foyer.

There was no answer, and Simões frowned. Today was Francesca's birthday, and they were supposed to be taking her out to one of her favorite restaurants. It was Tuesday, which meant it had been her mother's turn to pick her up from school, and he knew Francesca had been eagerly anticipating the evening. Which, given his daughter's personality, meant she should have been waiting right inside the door with all the patience of an Old Earthn shark who'd just scented blood. True, he'd gotten home a good hour earlier than expected, but still . . .

"Harriet! Frankie!

Still no answer, and his frown deepened.

He set the package carefully on an end table in the foyer and moved deeper into the spacious, two hundred fifty-square meter apartment, heading for the kitchen. Herlander was a mathematician and theoretical astrophysicist, and his wife Harriet—their friends often referred to them as H&H—was also a mathematician, although she was assigned to weapons research. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Harriet had a habit of leaving written notes stuck to the refrigerator rather than using her personal minicomp to mail them to him. It was one of what he considered her charming foibles, and he supposed he couldn't really blame her. Given how much time she spent with electronically formatted data, there was something appealing about relying on old-fashioned handwriting and paper.

But there was no note on the refrigerator this evening, and he felt a prickle of something that hadn't yet quite had time to turn into worry. It was headed that way, though, and he slid onto one of the tall chairs at the kitchen dining bar while he looked around at the emptiness.

If anything had happened, she would've let you know, idiot, he told himself firmly. It's not like she didn't know exactly where you were!

He drew a deep breath, made himself sit back in the chair, and admitted to himself what was really worrying him.

Like a great many—indeed, the vast majority—of the alpha line pairings the Long-Range Planning Board arranged, Herlander and Harriet had been steered together because of the way their genomes complemented one another. Despite that, they'd had no children of their own yet. At fifty-seven, Herlander was still a very young man for a third-generation prolong recipient—especially one whose carefully improved body would probably have been good for at least a couple of centuries even without the artificial therapies. Harriet was a few T-years older than he was, but not enough to matter, and the two of them had been far too deeply buried in their careers to comfortably free up the amount of time required to properly rear children. They'd planned on having several biologicals of their own—all star line couples were encouraged to do that, in addition to the cloned pairings the Board produced—but they'd also planned on waiting several more years, at a minimum.

Although the LRPB obviously expected good things out of their children, no one had pushed them to accelerate their schedule. Valuable as their offspring would probably prove, especially with the LRBP's inevitable subtle improvements, it had been made pretty clear to them that the work both of them were engaged upon was of greater immediate value.

Which was why they'd been quite surprised when they were called in by Martina Fabre, one of the Board's senior members. Neither one of them had ever even met Fabre, and there'd been no explanation for the summons, so they'd felt more than a little trepidation when they reported for the appointment.

But Fabre had quickly made it clear they weren't in any sort of trouble. In fact, the silver-haired geneticist (who had to be at least a hundred and ten, standard, Simões had realized) had seemed gently but genuinely amused by their apparent apprehension.

"No, no!" she'd said with a chuckle. "I didn't call you in to ask where your first child is. Obviously, we do expect the two of you to procreate—that is why we paired you up, after all! But there's still time for you to make your contribution to the genome."

Simões had felt himself relaxing, but she'd shaken her head and wagged an index finger at him.

"Don't get too comfortable, Herlander," she'd warned him. "We may not be expecting you to procreate just yet, but that doesn't mean we don't have a little something we do want out of you."

"Yes, Ma'am," he'd replied, much more meekly than he usually spoke to people. Somehow, Fabre had made him feel like he was back in kindergarten.

"Actually," she'd let her chair come upright and leaned forward, folding her arms on her desk, her manner suddenly rather more serious, "we really do have a problem we think you two can help us with."

"A . . . problem, Doctor?" Harriet had asked when Fabre paused for a handful of seconds. She hadn't quite been able to keep a trace of lingering apprehension out of her voices, and Fabre had obviously noticed it.

"Yes." The geneticist had grimaced, then sighed. "As I say, neither of you were even remotely involved in creating it, but I'm hoping you may be able to help us out with solving it."

Harriet's expression had been puzzled, and Fabre had waved one hand in a reassuring gesture.

"I'm sure both of you are aware that the Board pursues a multi-pronged strategy. In addition to the standard pairings such as we arranged in your case, we also work with more . . . tightly directed lines, shall we say. In cases such as your own, we encourage variation, explore the possibilities for enhancement of randomly occurring traits and developments which might not occur to us when we model potential outcomes. In other cases, we know precisely what it is we're trying to accomplish, and we tend to do more in vitro fertilization and cloning on those lines."

She'd paused until both Simões had nodded in understanding. What Herlander had realized, although he wasn't certain Harriet had, was that quite a bit of that "directed" development had been carried out under cover of Manpower, Incorporated's slave breeding programs, which made the perfect cover for almost anything the LRPB might have been interested in exploring.

"For the past few decades, we seem to have been hitting a wall in one of our in vitro alpha lines," Fabre had continued. "We've identified the potential for what amounts to an intuitive mathematical genius, and we've been attempting to bring that potential into full realization. I realize both of you are extraordinarily gifted mathematicians in your own rights. For that matter, both of you test well up into the genius range in that area. The reason I mention this is that we believe the potential for this particular genome represents an intuitive mathematical ability which would be at least an order of magnitude greater than your own. Obviously, that kind of capability would be of enormous advantage to us if only because of its consequences for the sort of work I know you two are already engaged upon. Long-term, of course, the ability to inject it into the genetic pool as a reliably replicatable trait would be of even greater value to the maturation of the species as a whole."

Herlander had glanced at Harriet for a moment and seen the mirror of his own intensely interested expression on her face. Then they'd both looked back at Fabre.

"The problem in this case," the geneticist had continued, "is that all of our efforts to date have been . . . less than fully successful, shall we say. I'll go ahead and admit that we still don't have anything like the degree of understanding we wish we had where designed levels of intelligence are concerned, despite the degree of hubris some of my own colleagues seem to feel upon occasion. Still, we feel like we're on the right track in this instance. Unfortunately, our results to date fall into three categories.

"The most frequent result is a child of about average intelligence for one of our alpha lines, which is to say substantially brighter than the vast majority of normals or even the bulk of our other star lines. That's hardly a bad result, but it's obviously not the one we're looking for, because while the child may have an interest in mathematics, there's no sign of the capability we're actually trying to enhance. Or, if it's there at all, it's at best only partially realized."

"Less often, but more often than we'd like, the result is a child who's actually below the median line for our alpha lines. Many of them would be quite suitable for a gamma line, or for that matter for the general Mesan population, but they're not remotely of the caliber were looking for."

"And finally," her expression had turned somber, "we get a relatively small number of results where all early testing suggests the trait we're trying to bring out is present. It's in there, waiting. But there's an instability factor, as well."

"Instability?" It had been Herlander's turn to ask the question when Fabre paused this time, and the geneticist had nodded heavily.

"We lose them," she'd said simply. The Simões must have looked perplexed, because she'd grimaced again . . . less happily than before.

"They do fine for the first three or four T-years," she'd said. "But then, somewhere in the fifth year, we start to lose them to something like an extreme version of the condition which used to be called autism."

This time it had been obvious neither of the younger people sitting on the other side of her desk had a clue what she was talking about, because she'd smiled with a certain bitterness.

"I'm not surprised you didn't recognize the term, since it's been a while since we've had to worry about it, but autism was a condition which affected the ability to interact socially. It was eliminated from the Beowulf population long before we left for Mesa, and we really don't have a great deal in even the professional literature about it, anymore, far less in our more general information bases. For that matter, we're not at all sure what we're looking at here is what would have been defined as autism back in the dark ages. For one thing, according to the literature we do have—which is extremely limited, since most of it's over eight hundred years old—autism usually began to manifest by the time a child was three, and this is occurring substantially later. Onset also seems to be much more sudden and abrupt than anything we've been able to find in the literature. But autism was marked by impaired social interaction and communication and by restricted and repetitive behavior, and that's definitely what we're seeing here.

"In this case, however, we think there are some significant differences, as well—that we're not talking about the same condition, but rather one which has certain gross parallels. It seems from the literature that, like many conditions, autism manifested in several different ways and in different degrees of severity. By comparison with what our reasearch has turned up about autism, what we're observing in these children would appear to fall at the extremely severe end of the spectrum. One point of similarity with extreme autism is that, unlike its milder form and other learning disorders, new communication skills don't simply stop developing; they're lost. These children regress. They lose communication skills they already had, they lose the ability to focus on their environment or interact with it, and they retreat into a sort of shutdown condition. In the more extreme cases, they become almost totally uncommunicative and nonresponsive within a couple of T-years."

She'd paused again, then shrugged.

"We think we're making progress, but to be honest, there's an element on the Board which thinks we should simply go ahead and abandon the project completely. Those of us who disagree with that position have been looking for a potential means of breaking the existing paradigm. We've come to the conclusion—or, at least, some of us have—that what's really needed here is a two-pronged approach. We've very carefully analyzed the genetic structure of all of the children in the entire line and, as I say, we think we've made substantial progress in correcting the genes themselves, the blueprint for the hardware, if you will. But we're also of the opinion that we're probably dealing with environmental elements that affect the operating software, as well. Which is what brings you to my office today.

"All our evaluations confirm that the two of you are a well-adjusted, balanced couple. Your basic personalities complement one another well, and you're clearly well-suited to one another and to creating a stable home environment. Both of you also have the sort of affinity for mathematics we're trying to produce in this line, if not on the level we're looking for. Both of you have very successfully applied that ability in your daily work, and both of you have demonstrated high levels of empathy. What we'd like to do—what we intend to do—is to place one of our clones with you to be raised by you. Our hope is that by placing this child with someone who has the same abilities, who can provide the guidance—and the understanding—someone intended to be a prodigy requires, we'll be able to . . . ease it through whatever critical process is going off the rails when we lose them. As I say, we've made significant improvements at the genetic level; now we need to provide the most beneficial, supportive, and nurturing environment we can, as well."

And that was how Francesca had entered the Simões' life. She didn't look a thing like either of her parents, although that was scarcely unheard of on Mesa. Herlander had sandy hair, hazel eyes, and what he thought of as reasonably attractive features, but he wasn't especially handsome, by any means. One thing the Mesan Alignment had very carefully eschewed was the sort of "cookie cutter" physical similarity which was so much a part of the Scrags descended from the genetic "super soldiers" of Old Earth's Final War. Physical attractiveness was part of almost any alpha or beta line, but physical diversity was also emphasized as part of a very conscious effort to avoid producing a readily identifiable appearance, and Harriet had black hair and sapphire blue eyes. She was also (in Herlander's obviously unbiased opinion) a lot more attractive than he was.

They were very much of a height, right at one hundred and eighty centimeters, despite the dissimilarity in their coloring, but it was obvious Francesca would always be small and petite. Herlander doubted that she was ever going to be much over a hundred and fifty-five centimeters, and she had brown hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion quite different from either of her parents.

All of which only made her an even more fascinating creature, as far as Simões was concerned. He understood that fathers were genetically hardwired to dote on girl children, of course. That was the way the species was designed, and the LRPB hadn't seen any reason to change that particular trait. Despite that, however, he was firmly convinced that any unbiased observer would have been forced to admit that his daughter was the smartest, most charming, and most beautiful little girl who had ever existed. It was self-evident. And, as he'd pointed out to Harriet on more than one occasion, the fact that they'd made no direct genetic contribution to her existence obviously meant he was a disinterested and unbiased observer.

Somehow, Harriet had not been impressed by his logic.

He knew both of them had approached the prospect of parenthood, especially under the circumstances, with more than a little trepidation. He'd expected it to be hard to risk letting himself care for the girl, knowing as much as they'd been told about the problems the Board had encountered with this particular genome. He'd discovered, however, that he'd failed to reckon with the sheer beauty of a child—his child, however she'd become that—and the complete and total trust she'd extended to her parents. The first time she'd had one of the childhood fevers not even a Mesan star line was totally immune to, and she'd stopped her fretful crying and melted absolutely limply in his arms when he'd piecked her up, nestled down against him, and dropped into sleep at last, he'd become her slave, and he knew it.

They'd both been aware of the fact that they were supposed to be providing the love and nurture to help ease Francesca through the development process, as Fabre had put it. They'd been prepared to do just that; what they hadn't been prepared for was how inevitable Francesca herself had made it all. Her fourth and fifth years had been particularly tense and trying for them as she entered what Fabre had warned them was the greatest danger period, based on previous experience. But Francesca had breezed past the critical threshold, and they'd felt themselves relaxing steadily for the last couple of years.

And yet . . . and yet as Herlander Simões sat in his kitchen, wondering where his wife and daughter were, he discovered that he hadn't relaxed completely, after all.

He was just reaching for his com when it sounded with Harriet's attention signal. He flicked his finger to accept the call, and Harriet's voice sounded in his ear.

"Herlander?"

There was something about her tone, he thought. Something . . . strained.

"Yes. I just got home a few minutes ago. Where are you guys?"

"We're at the clinic, dear," Harriet said.

"The clinic?" Simões repeated quickly. "Why? What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure anything is wrong," she replied, but multiple mental alarms were going off in his brain now. She sounded like someone who was afraid that if she admitted some dire possibility it would come to pass.

"Then why are you at the clinic?" he asked quietly.

"They screened me just after I picked her up at school and asked me to bring her down. Apparently . . . apparently they picked up a couple of small anomalies in her last evaluation."

Simões' heart seemed to stop beating.

"What sort of anomalies?" he demanded.

"Nothing enormously off profile. Dr. Fabre's looked at the results herself, and she assures me that so far, at least, we're still within parameters. We're just . . . drifting a little bit to one side. So they wanted me to bring her in for a more complete battery of evaluations. I didn't expect you to be home this early, and I didn't want to worry you at work, but when I realized we were going to be late, I decided to screen you. I didn't realize you were already at home until you answered."

"I won't be for long," he told her. "If you're going to be there for a while, the least I can do is hop in the car and come join you. And Frankie."

"I'd like that," she told him softly.

"Well, I'll be there in a few minutes," he said, equally softly. "Bye, honey."

Chapter Seven

"I don't mean to sound skeptical," said Jeremy X, sounding skeptical. "But are you sure you're not all just suffering from a case of EIS?" He pronounced the acronym phonetically.

Princess Ruth looked puzzled. "What's 'Ice'?"

"EIS. Stands for Excessive Intelligence Syndrome," said Anton Zilwicki. "Also known in the Office of Naval Intelligence as Hall of Mirrors Fever."

"In State Sec, we called it Spyrot," said Victor Cachat. "The term's carried over into the FIS, too."

Ruth shifted the puzzled look to Jeremy. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It's a reasonable question, Princess," said Anton. "I've spent quite a few hours pondering the possibility myself."

"So have I," said Cachat. "In fact, it's the first thing I thought of, when I started re-examining what I knew—or thought I knew—about Manpower. It wouldn't be the first time that spies outsmarted themselves by seeing more than was actually there." He glanced at Zilwicki. " 'Hall of Mirrors Fever,' eh? I hadn't heard that before, but it's certainly an apt way of putting it."

"In our line of work, Ruth," said Anton, "we usually can't see things directly. What we're really doing is looking for reflections. Have you ever been in a hall of mirrors at an amusement park?"

Ruth nodded.

"Then you'll know what I mean when I say it's easy to get snared in a cascade of images that are really just reflections of themselves. Once a single false conclusion or assumption gets itself planted in a logic train, it goes right on generating more and more false images."

"Fine, but . . ." Ruth shook head. The gesture expressed more in the way of confusion than disagreement. "I don't see that as any kind of significant factor in this case. I mean, we're dealing with internal correspondence between people within Mesa Pharmaceuticals itself. That seems pretty straightforward to me." A bit plaintively: "Not a mirror in sight."

"No?" said Cachat, smiling thinly. "How do we know the person on the other end of this correspondence, back on Mesa"—he glanced down at the reader in his hand, then did a quick scan back through the report—"Dana Wedermeyer, her name was—"

"Could be a 'he,' actually," interrupted Anton. "Dana's one of those unisex names that ought to be banned on pain of death, seeing as how they create nothing but grief for hardworking spies."

Cachat and kept going. "How do we know that she or he was working for Mesa Pharmaceuticals?"

"Oh, come on, Victor," protested Ruth. "I can assure you that I double-checked and cross-checked all of that. There's no question at all that the correspondence we dug out of the files came from Pharmaceuticals' headquarters on Mesa."

"I don't doubt it," said Victor. "But you're misunderstand my point. How do we know that the person sending these from Pharmaceuticals' headquarters was actually working for Pharmaceuticals?"

Ruth looked cross-eyed. A bit cross, too. "Who the hell else would be sitting there but a Pharmaceuticals employee? Or high-level manager, rather, since there's no way a low-level flunky was sending back instructions like those."

Anton sighed. "You're still missing his point, Ruth—which is one I should have thought of myself, right away."

He looked around for someplace to sit. They'd been having this discussion in Jeremy's office in the government complex, which was quite possibly the smallest office used by a planetary-level "Minister of War" anywhere in the inhabited galaxy. There were only two chairs in the office, placed right in front of Jeremy's desk. Ruth was in one, Victor in the other. Jeremy himself was perched on a corner of his desk.

The desk, at least, was big. It seemed to fill half the room. Jeremy leaned over and cleared away the small mound of papers covering another corner of his desk with a quick and agile motion. Barely more than a flick of the wrist. "Here, Anton," he said, smiling. "Have a seat."

"Thanks." Zilwicki perched himself on the desk corner, with one foot still on the floor, half-supporting his weight. "What he's getting at, Ruth, is that while it's certainly true that this Dana Wedermeyer person was employed by Mesa Pharmaceuticals, how do we know who he was really working for? It's possible that he—or she, damn these stupid names and what's wrong with proper names like Ruth and Cathy and Anton and Victor?—had been suborned and was really working for Manpower ."

He pointed to the electronic memo pad in the princess's hand. "That would explain everything in that correspondence."

Ruth looked down at the pad. Frowning, as if she was seeing it for the first time and wasn't entirely sure what it was. "That seems a lot more unlikely to me than any other explanation. I mean, presumably Pharmaceuticals maintains some sort of supervision over its employees, even at management levels."

Victor Cachat sat a bit straighter in his chair, using a hand on one of the armchairs to prop himself up enough to look over at the display of Ruth's pad. "Oh, I don't think it's all that likely myself, Your Highness."

She turned her head to glare at him. "What? Are you going to start on me now, too, with the fancy titles?"

Anton had to suppress a smile. Just a few months ago, Ruth's attitude toward Victor Cachat had been one of hostility, kept in check by the needs of the moment but still sharp and—he was sure the princess would have insisted at the time—quite unforgiving. Now . . .

Once in a while, she'd remember that Cachat was not only a Havenite enemy in the abstract but was specifically the enemy agent who'd stood aside—no, worse, manipulated the situation—when her entire security contingent had been gunned down by Masadan fanatics. At such times, she'd become cold and uncommunicative toward him for two or three days at a time.

But, most of the time, the "needs of the moment" had undergone the proverbial sea change. Cachat had been present on Torch almost without interruption since the planet had been taken from Manpower, Inc. And, willy-nilly, since she was the assistant director of intelligence for the new star nation—Anton himself was the temporary director, until a permanent replacement could be found—she'd been working very closely with the Havenite ever since. Of course, Victor never divulged anything that might in any way compromise the Republic of Haven. But, that aside, he'd been extremely helpful to the young woman. In his own way—quite different way—he'd probably been as much of a tutor for her as Anton himself.

Well . . . not exactly. The problem was that Cachat's areas of expertise were things that Ruth could grasp intellectually but probably couldn't carry out herself, in the field. Not well, certainly.

Unlike Ruth and Anton, Cachat was not a tech weenie. He was adept enough with computers, but he had none of Zilwicki or the Manticoran princess's wizardry with them. And while he was an excellent analyst, he was no better than Anton himself. Probably not as good, actually, push came to shove—although they were both operating on a rarified height that precious few other spies in the galaxy could reach to begin with.

Victor's greater age and much greater experience meant that he was still a better intelligence analyst than Ruth, but Anton didn't think that superiority would last more than a few years. The princess really did have a knack for the often peculiar and sometimes downright bizarre world of the aptly-named Hall of Mirrors.

But Cachat's real forte was field work. There, Anton thought he was in a league of his own. There might be a handful of secret agents in the galaxy as good as Victor was in that area, but that would be it—a literal handful. And none of them would be any better.

Anton Zilwicki himself was not one of that theoretical handful, and he knew it. To be sure, he was very good. In terms of fieldcraft, as most people understood the term, he was probably even as good as Victor. Very close, at least.

But he simply didn't have Cachat's mindset. The Havenite agent was a man so certain in his convictions and loyalties, and so certain of himself, that he could behave in a crisis like no one Anton had ever encountered. He would react faster than anyone and be more ruthless than anyone, if he thought ruthlessness was what was needed. Most of all, he had an uncanny ability to jury-rig his plans as he went along, seeing opportunity unfold whenever those plans went awry where most spies would see nothing but unfolding disaster.

There was great courage there, also, but Anton had that as well. So did many people. Courage was not really that rare a virtue in the human race—as Victor himself, with his egalitarian attitudes, was quite fond of pointing out. But for Cachat, that level of courage seemed to come effortlessly. Anton was sure the man didn't even think about it.

Those qualities made him a very dangerous man, at all times, and a scary man on some occasions. With his now-extensive experience working with Victor, Anton had come to be certain that Cachat was not a sociopath—although he could certainly do a superb imitation of one. And he'd also come to realize, more slowly, that lurking beneath Victor's seemingly icy surface was a man who was . . .

Well, not warm-hearted, certainly. Perhaps "big-hearted" was the right term. But whatever you called it, this was a man who had a fierce loyalty to his friends as well as his beliefs. How Cachat would react if he ever found himself forced to choose between a close friend and his own political convictions, was difficult to calculate. In the end, Anton was pretty sure that Victor would choose his convictions. But that wouldn't come without a great struggle—and the Havenite would demand complete and full proof that the choice was really inescapable.

Princess Ruth probably hadn't parsed Victor Cachat as thoroughly and patiently as Anton Zilwicki had done. There were very few people in the galaxy with Anton's systematic rigorousness. Ruth was definitely not one of them. But she was extremely intelligent and intuitively perceptive about people—surprisingly so, for someone who'd been raised in the rather cloistered atmosphere of the royal court. In her own way, she'd come to accept the same things about Victor that Anton had.

Anton had once remarked to Ruth, half-jokingly, that being Cachat's friend and collaborator was quite a bit like being an intimate colleague of a very smart and warm-blooded cobra. The princess had immediately shaken her head. "Not a cobra. Cobras are pretty dinky when you get right down to it—I mean, hell, a glorified rodent like a mongoose can handle one—and they rely almost entirely on venom. Even at his Ming the Merciless worst, Victor is never venomous."

She'd shaken her head again. "A dragon, Anton. They can take human form, you know, according to legend. Just think of a dragon with a pronounced Havenite accent and a hoard he guards jealousy made of people and principles instead of money."

Anton had conceded the point—and now, watching Ruth's half-irritated and half-affectionate exchange with a Havenite agent she'd once detested, he saw again how right she'd been.

It's not that easy, all things considered, to hold a grudge against a dragon. Not for somehow like the princess, at any rate, with her horror of appearing silly. You might as well hold a grudge against the tides.

"Just trying to stay in practice," Victor said mildly, "in the unlikely event I should be presented at the Manticoran court in Landing. Wouldn't want to fumble with royal protocol, even if it is all a bunch of annoying nonsense, because it would undermine my secret agent suavety."

"There's no such word as 'suavety,' " replied Ruth. "In fact, that's got to be the stupidest and least suave word I've ever heard."

Victor smiled seraphically. "To get back to the point, Ruth, I don't happen to think it's likely myself that this Dana Wedermeyer person"—he pointed to the pad—"is anything other than what she or he seems to be. Which is to say, a very highly placed Mesa Pharmaceuticals manager giving orders to a subordinate. Or, rather, ignoring a subordinate's complaints."

"But . . ." Ruth looked back down at the pad, frowning. "Victor, you've read the correspondence yourself. Pharmaceuticals' own field people out here were complaining about the inefficiency of their own methods, and this Wedermeyer just blew it off. It's like she—or he, or whatever—never even looked at their analyses of her own corporation's labor policies."

For a moment, the frown darkened into something very harsh. "The murderous and inhuman labor policies, I should say, since they amounted to consciously working people to death. But the point for the moment is that even their own employees were pointing out that it would be more efficient to start shifting over to increased automation and mechanical cultivation and harvesting."

"Yes, I know. On the other hand, despite their complaints, Pharmaceuticals was showing a profit."

"But only because Manpower was giving them a discount rate on their slaves—and pretty damned steep discount, too!" Ruth argued. "That's one of the points their own managers were making—that they couldn't count on that discount rate lasting forever." She grimaced. "If it went out from under them, if they had to start paying the full 'list price' for their slaves, then the inefficiencies their people here on Torch were pointing out would have really come home to bite them! In fact, there was this one—"

She paged through the documentson her pad for a moment, then found the one she wanted and waved it in triumph.

"Yeah, this one! From what's-his-name," she glanced at the display, "Menninger. Remember? He was talking about Pharmaceuticals' overall exposure. They were already leasing their entire operational site here on Manpower, but they were counting on Manpower's giving them preferred slave prices, as well, and let's face it, Manpower transtellars don't have a whole lot of fraternal feeling for each other. Manpower's eaten quite a few of its Mesan competitors along the way, and this guy was worried they were setting Pharmaceuticals up for their next sandwich by putting them deep enough in Manpower's pocket they'd have to accept an unfriendly takeover or go bust!"

Jeremy X cleared his throat. "Let's not forget how closely most Mesan corporations collude with each other, as well, though. Sure, they've demonstrated a huge share of shark DNA over the years, but they do work together, as well. Especially when they're engaged in something the rest of the human race isn't all that likely to want to invest in. Openly, at least. And you can add to that the fact that we're certain that many of them are actually owned, in whole or in part, by Manpower. Like Jessyk."

Anton pursed his lips, considering the point. "You're suggesting, in other words, that Manpower was deliberately accepting a loss in order to boost the profits of Mesa Pharmaceuticals—in which they possibly have a major ownership share, even if they don't control it outright."

"Yes."

"Which was part of my point about wondering if this Wedermeyer might be working for someone besides—or, in addition to, maybe—Pharmaceuticals," Victor said. "If Manpower does have a hidden stake in Pharmaceuticals, then they may have been in a position to go on offering their 'discount rate' forever. As long as they were charging enough to cover their bare production costs, at least. I mean, there's nothing in the correspondence from this end that's concerned with humanitarian considerations. They're simply saying they could squeeze their profit margins upward, in the long run, if they started switching over. Even by their own analysis, it would have taken quite a while to amortize the equipment investment, especially assuming their outlay for slaves stayed where it was. They were more concerned about the long-range consequences of losing that rate—of having Manpower yank it out from under them, or threaten to, at least, at a time when it would give Manpower the greatest leverage with them. But there's nothing in the correspondence from the Mesa end to explain why the locals' analysis was being 'blown off,' to use your own charming term Ruth. Suppose Wedermeyer was quietly representing Manpower's interests? Wanted Pharmaceuticals deeper into Manpower's pocket . . . or simply knew there'd already been a quiet little off-the-books marriage between them? In that case, he or she could very well have been in a position to know they were worrying over nothing. That their 'discount rate' was grandfathered in and wasn't going to be going away anytime soon."

Ruth had her lips pursed also. "But what would be the point, Jeremy? Oh, I'll grant the possibility of Wedermeyer being working for Manpower. I doubt her own supervisors would have missed it if she was doing it against their interests, though. I mean, Pharmaceuticals has been around for two or three T-centuries, too, so it damned well knows how the game is played. Somebody besides her had to be seeing at least some of these memos, given the extended period over which they were written. The fact that she didn't even bother to come up with an argument—not even a specious one—for her position suggests she was pretty damned confident that she wasn't worried about getting hammered by one of her own bosses. That only makes sense if Manpower does own Mesa Pharmaceuticals, and what possible motive could they have had for hiding that connection, really?

"It's not like their position with Jessyk, where the legal fiction that Jessyk's a separate concern helps give them at least a little cover when they're moving slaves or other covert cargoes. There wouldn't be any point in maintaining that sort of separation from Pharmaceuticals, and there was certainly no legal reason they'd have had to hide that connection. And there are a lot of reasons why they shouldn't have bother. If thw two of them were already connected, they were at least doubling their admninistrative costs by maintaining two separate, divorced operations here on Torch. Not to mention everywhere else the two of them are doing business together. Why do that? Even assuming they are in bed together, and that Manpower is covering its production costs back home, despite the discounted rate, we're still looking at Peter robbing his own pockets to pay his flunky Paul. They were discounting their slaves to Pharmaceuticals by over twenty-five percent. Leaving aside all the other economic inefficiencies built into the relationship, that's a hell of a hit to the profit margin they could've made selling them somewhere else instead of dumping them here to subsidize Pharmaceuticals' inefficient—by their own field managers' estimate—operation!"

Victor nodded. "I agree, and that's exactly why I don't think there's any logical explanation except . . ."

"Except what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But we've already agreed that there's something rotten about Manpower that goes beyond their greed and brutality." He pointed to Ruth's reader. "So, for the moment, we can just add this dead fish to the smelly pile."