“I just came to tell you I’m not going,” one of the young men said. “I don’t want to spend more time on this yacht, especially since it’s not even carpeted.” He looked at the bare deck and bulkheads with contempt.
“But your father planned—” Heris began. The other young man interrupted.
“If my father insists, let my double do it.”
“Sir, it’s extremely important—” Heris began, but the first one interrupted this time.
“Besides, I’m perfectly healthy; there’s nothing wrong with me. My own physician checked me out after we arrived at Rockhouse.” His voice was petulant; Heris wondered if it was really higher, more childish, than it had been. His blue eyes were guileless as a child’s; his expression mildly annoyed. Nothing quite fit.
“Your father told us to take you,” Heris said. She softened her voice, speaking as she would to a younger child. This time the prince didn’t interrupt. “He really wanted you to go—he said you would—”
“But I don’t want to,” the second young man said. In exactly the same voice.
“But he’ll be mad at me,” Heris said, in almost the same tone, with the same quaver. She’d seen that work once, with a hysterical Senior Minister. It didn’t work this time.
“So?” They both glanced around, boredom and contempt plain on their features. Heris wanted to smack their heads together.
“We shouldn’t discuss this here,” she said. “Come along to the bridge—you never saw it before, did you?—and we can settle things there.”
“It won’t make any difference,” said one of them languidly. “I’m not going.”
Heris refrained from comment, simply gave them the regulation smile that so often got her way. They shrugged and followed her into the ship, scuffing their boot heels on the deck and commenting on the yacht’s ugliness in this state. At least they didn’t comment on any odd smells—perhaps the last of the cockroach odor had adhered to the powdery scavengers in the air circulation. She stopped by her office, to show the prince and his double the official authorization from the king himself.
“I didn’t doubt you,” the prince said. She hoped this was the prince. “I quite understand that you are who you are, and my father told you to come get me. But I’m not going.” Oh yes you are, you little tick, thought Heris. Aloud, she said nothing then, leading the way to the bridge.
“Pretty,” the prince said, as if she’d given him a toy he didn’t want, and he felt it necessary to be polite. He was looking at Sirkin, she realized after a moment, not the bridge layout at all. Ginese gave him a look and Heris began to hope the other one was the prince. She’d forgotten the prince’s temporary attraction to Raffaele; perhaps he liked dark-haired girls best, and considered Sirkin an adequate substitute.
“If you had more girls like this,” the double said—or was it the prince?—“I might reconsider. But it simply won’t do.”
“Perhaps you should take a look around,” Heris said. “Your suite is a little bare now, but we’ve funds to provide some . . . amenities . . . from the Station sources. Let Mr. Ginese show you around—” She gave Ginese another look; he nodded. The prince and his double shrugged.
“It’s terribly dull on Station this time—might as well.” And they followed Ginese meekly. Heris allowed herself a brief grin.
“Lambs to the slaughter,” she said softly. Meharry grinned, but Sirkin looked shocked.
“What are you going to do?” asked Petris.
“I wish you hadn’t asked,” Heris said. “If we take him by force, that blows the double’s cover—and the king said it was important to have the double to cover for him.”
“If we don’t take him by force, he won’t come,” Petris said. He had a plug in his ear, listening to the conversation with Ginese somewhere else in the ship. “He’s blathering on about the social calendar on the liner where they will have plenty of girls, he says.”
“I knew this was a stupid idea,” Heris said. “His father should have known he wouldn’t want to come. Unless that was the plan. The possibilities for a double cross on this mission are endless.” She drummed her fingers on her console. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to do it, though. The only way to help Lady Cecelia is to lead the trouble away from her . . . and if we’re believed to have kidnapped the prince, everyone in the Familias will be after us.”
“How can we be sure we’ve snatched the right one?”
“Standard ID scan. We’ve got the data from his father.”
“It won’t work,” said one of the princes, when she put it to them.
“Of course it will,” Heris said. “You can’t fool a full-ID scan with plastic surgery.”
“Fine. Go ahead.” He smirked. So did the other prince. Heris wanted to hit both of them, but thought better of it. If she did, she’d be sure to hit the real prince—and that wouldn’t do.
The ID scans of both young men took only a few minutes, but the results made no sense. “Both of them are the prince,” said Heris. She heard the disbelief in her voice. “Or neither, if they’re identical twins—clones—”
“Clone doubles are illegal,” Petris said. “Not that that would stop the Crown.”
Heris felt like pulling her hair. “It’s . . . ridiculous. Why didn’t the king tell us—”
“If he knew.”
“He must have known. This is just like the slowness—he, of all people, cannot not know.” Heris glared at the scan results. “How am I supposed to know which is which? Dammit—it’s like something out of an entertainment cube, a joke or something. And it’s not funny.”
“So—what do we do?”
“We take them both,” Heris said. “And we keep them separate—we’ll have to use the original guest suites—and surely there’ll be something in the real prince’s memories of the affair on Sirialis that will make it clear who is which.”
“Umm. And the . . . er . . . reaction?”
Heris found herself grinning in spite of everything. “Well, you know what they say—when you haven’t any other place to step, it doesn’t matter which foot lands in the shit first.”
Chapter Thirteen
Naverrn Station expected ships to arrive and depart on their own power—a fortunate circumstance. With Kulkul and Petris on the boards, the Better Luck powerup went smoothly, the displays rising through orange and yellow to the steady green of full insystem power. The FTL drive next—it was only slightly risky to powerup the jump units while docked. Using them was another matter; Heris had no intention of risking another near-planet jump.
“Weapons?” Heris asked. Arkady Ginese flashed her a wicked grin.
“Code Two,” he said. “We’ll go three once we’re outside the near-scans.” Bringing their weapons to full readiness might set off the Station’s own defensive armament. Too many bloody results had taught Stationmasters to take no chances with ships in dock.
“Nav?”
“Ready, ma’am,” Sirkin said. Her voice was steady; she had plotted an unusual course around to the Guerni Republic. They both hoped it would confuse any chance encounter, and avoid any confrontation with ships of the Compassionate Hand.
“Naverrn Station, the Better Luck requests permission to undock—” Still formal.
“On the count, Better Luck . . .” On the count, the cables and umbilicals detached, some coiling back to the Station and others to the ship. Tiny attitude controls nudged the ship back, away from the rotating Station. With the power on, the ship’s own artificial gravity created their internal field; they felt none of the change in acceleration so visible in the external monitors as Heris brought in the main drives and began the long curve out toward the safe jump radius. Naverrn shrank visibly, the terminator creeping along its blue—and-white ball as they swung toward the nightside. An hour passed, then another and another.