“Cousins,” the man said. “You’re the brawler, aren’t you?”
“I can fight,” Basil said.
“Basil—”
“It doesn’t bother me,” the man said. “Just wanted to be sure I had the right Terakian cousins. Now let me give you some advice.” Orders, he meant. “This never happened, right?”
“What?” asked Basil.
Terakian elbowed Basil. “We just came in here for a little family chat—”
“Right. And you saw Officer Merovic and bought her a drink.”
“Yessir. And nobody saw anything?”
“That’s it. I know how you people are with your families, but I’m telling you, this is not a story to tell, and there’s no profit to be made off it.”
Terakian doubted that—anything Fleet security cared about this much usually involved plenty of profit—but he was willing to concede that he couldn’t make anything off it.
“And how long should our family conference continue?” he asked.
“Another fifteen minutes should about do it,” the man said pleasantly.
Fifteen minutes. They still had time to deal with the Vortenya contract negotiations, if Jilly didn’t insist on sitting with them for her drink.
“Thanks to an alert security force on Zenebra, we now have both proof of planned terrorist attacks, and some more specific information about Sera Meager’s most probable location.”
“And that is?”
“An unaffiliated trader, Mockingbird Hill, bought used from Allsystems Salvage four years ago . . . showed up at Zenebra Main Station, and paid thirty days’ docking fee upfront. That in itself was a bit surprising, but the stationmaster just listed it in the log, and didn’t specifically alert Fleet; we hadn’t given out a list of warning signs, because we didn’t want to cause widespread panic. One of the crew, however, got drunk in a spacer bar, spewed his guts out, and had said something to the locals which alerted security. They called Fleet, and when we interrogated him, we found he was one of that cult, and the trader was stuffed with explosive, designed to blow any station they chose. They hadn’t intended to blow Zenebra, particularly, but they were sited there in case called on to act somewhere in that sector.”
“And Sera Meager?”
“According to one of the others, the Ranger Bowie on the vid from Elias Madero is from the branch known as Our Texas; this group was from Native Texas, who are apparently allied with them at present.”
“And the Guernesi have agents in place on . . . let’s see here. Home Texas, Texas True, and . . . what do you know? Our Texas.”
“Yes . . . and that agent should be able to confirm whether they still have a Ranger Bowie, and whether we’ve got the right man—and planet.”
Waltraude Meyerson, peering through the eyepiece of the low-power microscope at an exceedingly rare photograph which might—if she was lucky—finally answer the question of whether a certain Old Earth politician was male or female, ignored the comunit’s chime until it racked up into an angry buzz. She reached out blindly, and felt around on her desk until she found the button and pushed it.
“Yes!”
“It’s Dean Marondin . . . we have an urgent request for a specialty consult in your field.”
“Nothing in my field is urgent,” Waltraude said. “It’s all been dead for centuries.” Nonetheless she sat back and flicked off the microscope’s light.
“It’s a request from the highest authorities . . .”
“About ancient history? Is it another antiquities scam?”
“No . . . I’m not even sure why, but they want to know about Old Earth politics, North American . . . so of course I thought of you.”
Of course. She was the only North Americanist on the faculty, but chances were that some idiot bureaucrat wanted to know the exchange rate of QuebeÁois francs to Mexican pesos in a decade she knew nothing about . . .
“So what’s the question?”
“They want to talk to you.”
Interruptions, always interruptions. She had taken the term off, no classes, so she could finally put together the book she had been working on for the past eight years, and now she had to answer silly questions. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll give them fifteen minutes.”
“I think they need longer,” the dean said. “They’re on their way.”
Great. Waltraude stood up and stretched, working out the kinks that hours over the microscope had put in her back, and looked vaguely around her office. “They” implied more than one—they would want to sit down, and both chairs were piled with papers. Some people thought it was old-fashioned to have so much paper around, but she was—as she insisted—old-fashioned herself. That’s why she’d gone into antique studies in the first place. She had just picked up one stack, and was looking for a place to put it, when the knock came at her door. “Come in,” she said, and turned to find herself facing two men and two women who scared her into immobility. They looked as if they should all be in uniform, though they weren’t.
“I’m sorry if we startled you,” said one of the women. “But—do you know anything about Texas?”
Three hours later she was still talking, and they were still recording it and asking more questions. She was no longer scared, but still confused about why they’d come.
“But you really should ask Professor Lemon about that,” she said finally. “He’s the one who’s done the most work on North American gender relations in that period.”
“Professor Lemon died last week in a traffic accident,” the woman said. “You’re the next best.”
“Oh. Well—” Waltraude fixed the other woman with a gaze that usually got the truth from undergraduates. “When are you planning to tell me what’s going on?”
“When we get you to Sector VII Headquarters,” the woman said with a smile that was not at all reassuring. “You’re now our best expert on Texas history, and we want to keep you alive.”
“My sources—” Waltraude said, waving at the chaos of her office. “My book—”
“We’ll bring everything,” the woman promised. “And you’ll have access to Professor Lemon’s as well.”
Lemon had refused for years to share his copy of a Molly Ivins book Waltraude had never been able to track down through Library Services. He had even reneged on a promise to do so, in exchange for her data cube of thirty years of a rural county newspaper from Oklahoma. Access to Lemon’s material?
“When do we leave?” asked Waltraude.
Chapter Thirteen
“The admiral wants you,” the jig said. Esmay looked up from her lists. What now? She hadn’t done anything bad again, surely.
“On my way,” she said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. Whatever it was would be made no better by a long face.
In Admiral Hornan’s outer office, the clerk nodded at her soberly, and touched a button on the desk. “Go right in, Lieutenant Suiza.”
So it was serious, and she still had no idea what was going on. They had chewed all the flavor out of her sins so far; what else was there to attack?
“Lieutenant Suiza reporting, sir.” She met Admiral Hornan’s eyes squarely.
“At ease, Lieutenant. I’m sorry to say I have sad news for you. We have received a request relayed by ansible from your father for you to take emergency leave . . . your great-grandmother has died.”
Esmay felt her knees give a little. The old lady’s blessing—had she known? Tears stung her eyes.
“Sit down, Lieutenant.” She sat where she was bidden, her mind whirling. “Would you like tea? Coffee?”
“No . . . thank you, sir. It’s—I’ll be fine in a moment.” She was already fine; a translucent shield protected her from the universe.
“Your father indicates that you and your great-grandmother were close—”