When Ord was still a child—when the authorities had moved to arrest Alice—she wasn’t found in the spacious penthouse. She was waiting for her captors inside a tiny, nearly anonymous bedroom deep in the mansion’s bones. It was the same room where she had lived as the Chamber-lain baby, and wrapped up in thick nostalgia, she had bided her time by watching scenes from those ancient days.
The room’s furnishings were exactly as Alice had left them, complete to the small, old-style universal window. The only structural change was the transparent wall set between the room and the adjacent hallway. This was where the daily tours ended. Guests would pause and stare, and their Nuyen guides would finally, mercifully grow quiet, allowing each person the freedom to consider the red-haired monster who had taken refuge here, and how very much she meant to their lives.
Ord passed gently through the wall, influencing nothing.
The window showed the present: Alice alone inside her prison cell, dressed in a plain white prison smock, nothing substantial changed for millennia. Ord watched as she paced from toilet to door, every step made slowly and carefully, three steps required to cross her universe… and she turned with a dancer’s unconscious grace, retracing her steps so precisely that Ord could see where the hyperrock floor had slumped in four places, worn down by the naked balls of her feet.
The cell and this old bedroom were the same size.
Ord wasn’t the first guest to note the irony.
With a corporeal hand, he touched the warm electric image of the face. Did she sense that he was here? Did Alice retain those kinds of powers? It would be lovely if she could simply come up and visit him for a moment, like she had done once before. Things would come easily and quickly. But if it were possible, the prisoner never gave him a sign.
With every other hand, Ord searched the room. This was where Alice would leave him instructions. It would be like her. A motile scrap of flesh; a whisper of refined dark matter. Either could have slinked about for thousands of years, evading detection, waiting for his touch to unfold itself, then explaining exactly why she had selected him, or damned him, into becoming her successor.
But there were no keys, or clues. Or anything else worthwhile.
The one possible exception was set on one of the crystal shelves above the narrow bed. Like any Chamberlain, Alice had been a rabid collector; odd gems and favorite holos were mixed together with fossils of every age and origin. One fossil showed a human handprint set in yellow mudstone. In a glance, Ord knew its age and its curious origin: It was a female Chamberlain’s hand, and the stone beneath was ten million years old. Alice had created it. On some alien world—a single taste gave Ord twenty candidates—his newly grown sister had pressed her right hand into a streambed. Then she had buried her mark, and several million years later, she had dug it up again. Cooked to stone, and in a rugged fashion, lovely.
Ord reached for the handprint, almost by reflex.
Then, he hesitated.
The trap was almost perfectly disguised, its elegant trigger married to the young rock, waiting patiently for his hand. A camouflaged relay connected it to a single globule of molten, magnetized antiiron set deep underground. The weapon was far too small to hurt Ord, even at close range, and he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been searching for it. The globule was inside a null-chamber set beneath that very bored woman, and it had probably always been there, her pacing back and forth above it, oblivious to any danger.
Ord’s first analysis taught him about the trigger and the relay.
And the next ten analyses showed him nothing new.
There was a temptation to put his hand in hers. For a slippery, seductive moment, Ord wondered if that was why he had come here. Not to ask advice, but to instead do one more good thing for a needy Chamberlain.
He slowly, slowly withdrew his corporeal hand.
Then he pulled it through his hair, his scalp more than a little damp, the perspiration tasting of oceans and fear.
6
Ravleen is nothing hut polite. We appreciate the quality in anyone, but particularly in her. And that even though we’re certain that she’s only pretending to have manners.
So that our polite friend could better understand herself, we took her into the wilderness.
We own several hundred sunless Earth-class worlds between Sol and its nearer neighbors. They’re investments for the day when our solar system is full. One of the worlds was terraformed in preparation for Ravleen. At our insistence, she examined it in detail, then very politely asked permission to play.
For the next three hours, Ravleen used her new talents—first in small doses, then in larger, more expert fusillades. And afterward, with scrupulous care, she thanked each of us for the opportunity to learn.
“When he does come,” she said, more than once, “I’ll do the same to him.”
We manacled each of her hands afterward, then brought her home again. And to help recoup our expenses, we sold portions of that world’s exposed core… its metals and rare earths… at a very considerable profit…
Xo would never admit it, but he felt a genuine pity for Ravleen.
When the Sanchexes were disbanded, Ravleen was still the Baby, still living at home and largely unmodified. Ordinary life wouldn’t have been a wrenching change for her. Not like it was for her older, more talented siblings. Yet to be ordinary wasn’t an option. Ord had just vanished, taking Alice’s talents with him. The good Families were panicking. Even before the Sanchexes could officially surrender, a delegation of high-ranking Nuyens was dispatched, sweeping into the pyramid as if they owned it, pushing past hundreds of embittered souls. Xo wasn’t there, and for good reasons, no visual record was made. But the moment had acquired a legendary status inside his Family. From the stories told, he could imagine his brothers and sisters moving en masse. He could taste the vivid, bilious tensions swirling around them. And the tensions only grew when they reached the young woman’s quarters, entering after a cursory knock, and with a single booming voice, announcing, “We have come to ask for your help.”
Ravleen was a beautiful woman. Black hair and arching black eyes gave her a feral quality, and in those days she would amplify her looks with infections of benign, radiant bacteria. The Nuyens’ eternal curse was to feel lust for the Sanchexes, and fear, and despite the rank and power of her guests, Ravleen knew how to toy with those emotions. She sat on her bed, wearing only a sablecat robe, and using a single finger, she opened the robe, calmly fondling her left breast as she smiled, coldly amused, pointing out to them:
ЭYou don’t sound as if you’re asking.”
The Nuyens laughed. They sounded like men and women in perfect control, their little worries buried deep.
“Let me guess,” Ravleen continued. “This is about Ord, isn’t it? You think I can help you just because I grew up with him. Right?”
Sober faces nodded.
Every voice said, “Naturally.”
She stood suddenly, letting her robe slip and tumble to the floor. Brothers and sisters stared at her legs, at the strong full curve of her ass, and at that famous smile, winsome and predatory in the same bewitching moment.
“I’ve heard Xo’s helping you.” Telling it, she admitted to knowing at least one minor secret. “You’re grooming that turd. Feeding him advanced talents. Intellects. Propagandas. And he’ll be invulnerable to attack—”