The baby’s first cry expressed her own rage and fear exactly.
She could not do it. She would die.
She could not die; she had to live . . . for Hazel. To keep Hazel from this horror, she would live.
Chapter Eleven
Lord Thornbuckle, Speaker of the Table of Ministers and the Grand Council of the Familias Regnant, successor to the abdicated king, had spent the morning working on the new Regular Space Service budget proposal with his friend—now the Grand Council’s legal advisor—Kevil Starbridge Mahoney. All morning a succession of ministers and accountants had bombarded them with inconvenient facts that cluttered what should have been—Lord Thornbuckle thought—a fairly simple matter of financing replacements for the ships lost at Xavier. They had decided to lunch privately, in the small green dining room with its view of the circular pond in which long-finned fish swam lazily, in the hope that the peaceful spring garden would restore their equanimity. A spicy soup and slices of lemon—and-garlic roasted chicken had helped, and now they toyed with salad of mixed spring greens, putting off the inevitable return to columns of numbers.
“Heard from Brun lately?” Kevil asked, after reporting on his son George, now in law school.
“Not for several weeks,” Thornbuckle said. “I expect she’s in jumpspace somewhere; she wanted to visit Cecelia’s stud before coming home for the hunt opening day.”
“You don’t worry?”
“Of course I worry. But what can I do about it? If she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll put someone on her tail—the problem is that as soon as I do, the newsflash shooters will know where to look, and the real sharks follow the bait.”
Kevil nodded. They had both been targets of political and private violence, as well as intrusive newsflash stories. “You could always use Fleet resources,” he suggested, not for the first time.
“I could—except that after Copper Mountain I’m not at all sure it’s safe to do so. First she’s nearly killed right on the base—they still haven’t figured out who was shooting at her—and then the heroic Lieutenant Suiza takes it upon herself to question Brun’s morality.”
Kevil held his silence but one eyebrow went up. Thornbuckle glared at him.
“I know—you think she’s—”
“I didn’t say a word,” Kevil said. “But there are two sides or more to any quarrel.”
“It was unprofessional—”
“Yes. No doubt about that. But if Brun were not your daughter, I think you would find it more understandable.”
Thornbuckle sighed. “Perhaps. She can be . . . provocative. But still—”
“But still you’re annoyed because Lieutenant Suiza wasn’t more tactful. I sympathize. In the meantime—”
The knock on the door interrupted him; he turned to look. Normally, no one disturbed a private meal here, and that knock had a tempo that alerted them both.
Poisson, the most senior of the private secretaries attached to Lord Thornbuckle’s official position, followed on that knock without waiting. Unusual—and more unusual was his face, pale and set as if carved from stone.
“What is it?” asked Thornbuckle. His gaze fixed on the package Poisson carried, the yellow and green stripes familiar from the largest of the commercial express-mail companies, Hymail.
“Milord—milord—” Poisson was never at a loss for words; even when Kemtre abdicated, he had been suavely capable from the first moments. But now, the package he held out quivered from the tremor in his hands.
Thornbuckle felt an all-too-familiar chill as the food he had just eaten turned to a cold lump in his belly. In the months of his Speakership, he had faced crisis after crisis, but none of them had arrived in a Hymail Express package. Still, if Poisson was reacting like this, it must be serious. He reached out for the package, but had to almost pry it from Poisson’s grip.
“You opened it,” he said.
“With the others that came in, yes, milord. I had no idea—”
Thornbuckle reached into the package and pulled out a sheaf of flatpics; a data cube rolled out when he shook the package upside down. He glanced at the first of the flatpics and time stopped.
In a distant way, he was aware of the way the other flatpics slid out of his grasp, and fell slowly—so slowly—turning and wavering in the air on their way from his hand to the floor. He was aware of Poisson with his hand still extended, of Kevil across the table, of the beat of his own pulse, that had stumbled and then begun to race.
But all he could see, really see, was Brun’s face staring into his with an expression of such terror and misery that he could not draw breath.
“Bunny . . . ?” That was Kevil.
Thornbuckle shook his head, clamping his jaw shut on the cry he wanted to give. He closed his eyes, trying to replace the pictured face with one of Brun happy, laughing, but—in his mind’s eye, her haunted frightened gaze met his.
He didn’t have to look at the rest. He knew what had happened, without going on.
He had to look. He had to know, and then act. Without a word, he passed the first flatpic to Kevil, and leaned over to pick up the rest. They had landed in a scattered heap, and before his hands—steady, he noted with surprise—could gather them together a half-dozen images had seared his eyes: Brun naked, bound to a bunk, a raw wound on her leg where her contraceptive implant had been. Brun in her custom protective suit, with a gag in her mouth, being held by gloved hands. Brun’s face again, unconscious and slack, with some kind of instrument in her mouth. Brun . . . he put the stack down, and looked across at Kevil.
“My God, Bunny!” Kevil’s face was as white as his own must be.
“Get us a cube reader,” Thornbuckle said to Poisson, surprised that he could speak at all past the rapidly enlarging lump in his throat.
“Yes, milord. I’m—”
“Just do it,” Thornbuckle said, cutting off whatever Poisson had been planning to say. “And get this cleared away.” The very smell of the food on the table nauseated him. As Poisson left, he retrieved the flatpic Kevil had, and turned the whole stack carefully upside down. Two of the serving staff came and cleared the table, eyeing them worriedly but saying nothing. They had just gone out when Poisson returned with a cube reader and screen.
“Here it is, milord.”
“Stay.” Poisson paused on his way back out.
“Are you sure?” Kevil asked.
“The damage is done,” Thornbuckle said. “We’ll need at least one of the secretaries to handle communications. But first, we need to see what we’re up against.” He did not offer Kevil the other flatpics.
The image on the cube reader’s screen wavered, as if it were a copy of a badly recorded original, but it was clear enough to see Brun, and the heavily accented voice on the audio—a man’s voice—was just understandable. Thornbuckle tried to fix his mind on the words, but time and again he lost track of the man’s speech, falling into his daughter’s anguish.
When it was done, no one spoke. Thornbuckle struggled with tears; he could hear the other men breathing harshly as well. Finally—he could not have said how long after—he looked up to meet their gaze. For the first time in his experience, Kevil had nothing to say; he shook his head mutely. Poisson was the first to speak.
“Milord—will want to contact the Admiralty.”
“Yes.” A rough croak, all he could make. Brun, Brun . . . that golden loveliness, that quick intelligence, that laughter . . . reduced to the shambling, mute misery of that recording. It could not be . . . yet, though recordings could be faked, he knew in his heart that this one had not been. “The Admiralty, by all means. We must find her. I’ll go—get transport.” He knew as he said it how impossible that could be. In Familias space alone, there were hundreds of worlds, thousands perhaps—he had never actually counted—where someone might be lost forever. Poisson bowed and went out. He had not told the man to be discreet—but Poisson had been born discreet.