I excused myself and went to the washroom, running water over my hands and splashing some on my face. While I was in there, I tried to contact the AIsource again, and again received no reply. The blue room remained inaccessible to me.
Fuck You, I told them, feeling a schoolgirl pleasure in the ability to curse out a despised teacher without that teacher ever knowing what I had said. The fact that I’d said worse to them, many times, when they were capable of hearing me, didn’t matter. That one belonged to me.
Somehow, without knowing why, I had the sense it made me richer, far richer, than Arturo Mendez.
Mendez was relieved when I devoted the rest of my questions to the timeline of the last twenty-four hours. The give-and-take became a mere matter of accounting, bereft of emotional baggage. We went over the same ground several times, searching for holes in the outline, but within twenty minutes I had the basics, Paakth-Doy testifying to their essential accuracy.
At the time the carriage was prepped, the staff had consisted of Mendez, Colette Wilson, and Loyal Jeck.
Paakth-Doy arrived less than two hours before departure, a temporary replacement for a fourth steward taking a few days off to attend his sister’s wedding. She’d worked for distant Bettelhine cousins (nobody involved in Inner Family business, but still minor royalty by local standards), and the temporary promotion to the Royal Carriage had still required a month-long background check poring over every aspect of her entire life since birth. In the end, her spotless record and the testimonials of the lesser Bettelhines she’d served had gotten her the belowdecks assignment.
“She has done a fine job,” Mendez allowed, “especially since the crisis began, but she still has much to learn about Inner Family protocol.”
“I appreciate the praise,” Paakth-Doy said.
I had the impression that it was unreserved approval coming from him, and gentle irony coming from her. Damned if I wasn’t starting to like her.
Jason and Jelaine, their father, Hans, and the Khaajiir had arrived under heavy security, transferring from their private skimmer to a shielded walkway under a security shield that hid not only the identity of the Bettelhines embarking on this journey but also the presence of their venerable guest. The Khaajiir had remained invisible to public view throughout this operation, as he’d presumably been throughout his visit to Xana.
“Was that typical?”
Mendez said, “It is not unheard of. It depends on how public the Bettelhines wish to make any particular appearance. Sometimes they arrive with fanfare, with an honor guard of holo operators and neurec slingers capturing every moment for mass consumption. But this had been described as a ‘Classified Visit.’ Security was tight.”
“How secret can it be? When the Royal Carriage goes up and down, it can’t take a genius to figure out the odds of a Bettelhine, or somebody very close to the Inner Family, being aboard.”
“Yes,” Mendez said. “But who? Some minor relative hovering around the periphery of power, or Mr. Bettelhine himself? Besides, the Khaajiir was the one being kept secret. We were warned not to mention him, not even to Layabout security.”
Hans had intended to ride up with them but had been called away, at the last minute, to deal with some minor management crisis at one of the company’s many research divisions.
No, Mendez did not know what the problem had been; and no, he didn’t consider it his business. “Members of the Inner Family have to deal with crises all the time. Some crises necessitate abrupt changes in travel plans. It’s just something that has to be dealt with.”
The siblings and their distinguished guest enjoyed an unremarkable ascent, asking little of the crew except for a couple of modest meals. Brother and sister had retired to separate suites and slept much of the way up. The Khaajiir had slept a little, too, but had emerged from his suite long before they did, to sit by himself in the lounge, enjoying the spectacle outside the window as the surface receded and the upper atmosphere gave way to space. Mendez had asked him if he needed anything, an offer that led to a few minutes of polite conversation.
I asked Mendez what they’d talked about.
“The view,” he said.
Was that really all? The view?
“The rich and the important are often at a loss for a basis of identification with those of my station. Few of my conversations with those I serve transcend banalities.”
“That must be annoying.”
“The alternative would be to talk about what they talk about with one another, and I daresay I’ve heard enough of that to know that I want no part of it.” He hesitated. “If you truly need to know, he regaled me with some trivia regarding my family name. Evidently it has homonyms in one of the lesser Tchi dialects. I suppose he was trying to be friendly. I feigned interest and then retreated belowdecks.”
The one surprise on the way came courtesy of a call from Philip Bettelhine, who informed Mendez that the carriage would be picking up several additional guests during its stay at Layabout: among them himself, his assistant Vernon Wethers, and Mr. and Mrs. Pearlman.
This was the latest in a series of surprises for Mendez, as he’d initially gathered the trip down to be the venue for an important and classified meeting between Hans Bettelhine, Jason, Jelaine, the Khaajiir, and my own party. He did not know the planned subject matter of that meeting, nor what it had to do with Dejah Shapiro, though she was also scheduled for pickup. He did know that when he informed Jason and Jelaine about Philip’s party-crashing, they seemed irritated, and led him to believe that the important business, whatever it was, would have to wait until the party could reconnect with Hans on the surface.
No, this was not unusual, either. “Inner Family Bettelhines all operate their inner fiefdoms. Sometimes there’s pushing and shoving.”
The oddest attendees, Mr. and Mr. Pearlman, had been flown up to Layabout by Vernon Wethers, in one of the Bettelhine Family transports, while the carriage was still in transit. Mendez did not know why. He had been told that they were being honored for exceptional efficiency in beating deadlines at the facility they ran. They would not have been the first low-level functionaries rewarded with the opportunity to hobnob with Inner Family members, either aboard the Royal Carriage or at one of the Family’s many estates. Usually, these occasions were provided more warning, but not always. Given Wethers’s involvement, the whim appeared to have been Philip Bettelhine’s. Either way, the Pearlmans boarded the carriage almost immediately upon its arrival at Layabout, oohing and aahing over all the luxury that was now, temporarily, theirs to enjoy.
Monday Brown, who had also taken a Family transport from the surface, boarded next, specifying that he was there to meet Ms. Shapiro in his employer’s stead. He was, as I’d already learned, the last to arrive before word of the attempt on my life prompted the temporary evacuation of the Shuttle as a security measure. No, Jason and Jelaine had not expected him. No, Mendez did not know whether they’d been as annoyed by news of his arrival as they had seemed to be when learning about Philip’s party, as he had not been present for that conversation.
Word came of my arrival and several minutes later of the attempt on my life. Jason and Jelaine had expressed great relief that I was all right before everybody but Mendez boarded the evacuation capsule, launched themselves offstation, and waited for Mr. Pescziuwicz to sound the all-clear. Mendez left the carriage too but remained aboard Layabout, making himself available in case Security needed him. The next update he received was when Mr. Pescziuwicz alerted him to join Station Security in escorting the Porrinyards and me to our suite.
Mendez had just completed the grand tour when the evacuation capsule returned. Worried about my reaction to seeing another Bocaian in this context, Jason and Jelaine had asked the others to stay behind while they introduced me to the Khaajiir. Once that was over and done with, and I joined the Porrinyards in our suite, everybody else settled in.