“Not really,” Rafe said. “If Sera Vatta didn’t tell you, then she had a reason. It’s not my place to share information she may not want you to know.”
“You’re saying she knows.”
“Yes,” Rafe said.
“Interesting. We’ll go back up now. I suppose you won’t be offended if I mention that the way your”—he touched his own abdomen—“moved when you came down the ladder, I know it’s not real.”
“Sera Vatta knows that, too,” Rafe said. “But she agreed that my use of a disguised outline was necessary both before I left Cascadia and on arrival at Slotter Key.”
“She didn’t tell us she trusted you.”
“She would have had to tell you why.”
“There’s something about you…”
“Yes. And if you ask my associate, and he is in the mood to cooperate, he will tell you that indeed, there is something about me.”
“Vatta’s had enough trouble,” the man said. “Part of my job is seeing we don’t have more.”
“Good,” Rafe said. “But I’m still not going to tell you all of my—or Sera Vatta’s—secrets. She advised me to put a plug in it until I got to her aunt Grace.” He pulled his shirttails out and began unfastening his shirt. “I will, however, take off this very uncomfortable appliance, since you’ve seen through it.” With the shirt off, the paunch section came loose easily; Rafe pulled the two back sections free, then skinned out of the harness that had held them in place. He put the shirt back on, oversized as it now was, once more hiding the blades in their sheaths. Then he pulled the cheek shapers from his mouth and stuffed them in his trouser pocket.
The man’s eyes widened as the transformation completed. “You’re—”
“Ser Hilarion Bancroft. Says so on my ID. So says my DNA, at the moment.”
“But really—”
“Reality: you don’t want me to cause you or the ship or Vatta trouble. Reality: I don’t want to cause you or the ship or any part of Vatta trouble. I hope to do Vatta a very good service, in fact, but for that I need to be on Slotter Key talking to a different Sera Vatta, whom I’ve yet to meet, but who knows about me in several personas.”
“You don’t want me to tell the captain?”
“I don’t want you to tell anyone on this ship who is a blabber, and I’m hoping that you’re not. I presume the captain had her suspicions or she wouldn’t have had you keep me in sight. And I rather doubt, after all that’s happened in the past few years, that any Vatta captain is a blabber, but I had to mention that. Would you rather I told the captain? Even though Stella told me not to?”
Silence. The engineer looked at him, and Rafe knew he’d arranged his own face into a mildly interested expression.
“Ginny’s solid,” the engineer said finally. “I’m her youngest brother, Pero. I take after my mother’s side; she’s a Pierce. Daran’s her other brother, five years older than me. Best we all know, I’m thinking. How’s your headache?”
“Pounding. I’d really like a mug of tea myself.”
“Go on up, then.”
Rafe gathered up his accessories, pulled open the skin covering the paunch pad, pushed the harness into it, then pressed it closed. Then he tossed the pads up through the hatch to the deck above, went up the ladder much more easily than he’d come down, and picked up the pads and his jacket off the floor while the engineer followed him up and latched the hatch back down. Rafe paused partway to put the pads in the shallow storage locker above the door to his and Teague’s compartment, then went on into the galley and pulled down two mugs, selected a strong black tea for himself, and put his mug in the slot. “You?” he asked Pero.
“I’ll do it.” When Rafe had removed his own mug, now full of steaming tea, Pero made his own selection and pushed his mug into the slot. “If you need any meds for that headache, it’s the left-hand drawer there. All the usual.”
Rafe opened the drawer. Several brands of medications for headache, rhinoviruses, stomachaches, sinus congestion: he chose one he recognized, popped the blister on the card, and drank two orange-and-green tablets with his tea. “I think I’ll go lie down in our compartment,” he said. “If that’s all right with you.”
“Fine. I’ll give the captain the word that you have something to tell her when you’re feeling better.”
Captain Ginny Vatta did not have to be told Rafe’s identity when she saw him in his normal shape, with his face no longer distorted by his disguise. “You!” she said, in almost the same tone as the engineer. “You’re the one who got Stella and Toby off Allray—”
“She could possibly have done that herself, but as she’d taken refuge in my place of business, without knowing it was mine, it seemed wise to come along. There were other complications.”
“And you’re the one Ky—Admiral Vatta—got involved with.”
“Yes.”
“You know she’s—”
“Somewhere on Slotter Key and no one’s found her yet. Yes. That’s part of my mission.”
“Part?”
“Part.” Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Captain, you undoubtedly know many things about me. All you really need to know is that Stella—your CEO—and Ky know me and trust me. In spite of everything.”
“I heard Ky ripped you a new one at a reception after the war.”
“She did. And we made up afterward, which you also know, I’m sure.”
“But nothing came of it.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Rafe said. Those times they’d planned to meet and something had come up. The plan Ky’s trip to Slotter Key had interrupted. “We’re both busy people with a great deal of responsibility; we haven’t been able to get together nearly as much as we would both prefer.”
“Well, then. When we arrive in Slotter Key space, you’ll need to be back in disguise?”
“Ideally, yes. And conveyed to wherever Grace Lane Vatta is.”
“Far be it from me to interfere with anything Gracie has in mind,” the captain said. “Or with Ky’s love life, if she’s still alive to have one. The rules remain the same, though: don’t try anything on this ship without telling me first and asking my permission. Got that?”
“Got it,” Rafe said. Mental fingers tangled behind his back.
“Good,” she said, and stood up. “Now about your associate…”
“Teague,” Rafe said. “He’s an associate of someone I’ve known for years.”
“He’s getting a transform, isn’t he?”
How had she figured that out? He didn’t answer, and she just nodded.
“We’ve had some done, after the big killing,” she said. “Aunt Grace set it up. Trying to save more of the family, make them less obvious. Six months to a year, most of ours, and dead-tired the first quarter year. That’s what I noticed. Young, a little clumsy, and he’s been sleeping hard since he came aboard. You’re tired, too.” No actual question.
Rafe shrugged. “I’ve had a temporary DNA squirt to match my persona’s ID, but it’s mostly that Stella and I stayed up late talking. I’ve done the temps before; they don’t bother me.”
“Ah. Well, then. Anything you need to know about Slotter Key you haven’t already looked up? We have a complete atlas, up to date as of our departure, in the ship’s system, if you want access.”
“I’d like that,” Rafe said. He had not been able to find much on Slotter Key from Nexus, and hadn’t had time in Cascadia. “All we had in our files was outdated political organization and current market analysis.” His headache had vanished.
He spent the next several hours poring over the atlas. Date of first terraforming, continental masses and arrangement—it was old-style terraforming, and some inconvenient continents had been simply blown up in places to create islands instead. Mass extinction, introduction of extra-planet materials to affect chemical ratios, seeding with very basic biologicals to start with, later introductions hundreds, even thousands of years apart. Slotter Key had been someone’s very long-term project, though none of the data suggested whose.