She gave a little shrug, and he nodded.
"Understood. But we're going to tell the galaxy it was the Erewhon Navy that did the real fighting. Our ships were limited to the flotilla everyone knows about, watching the planet against any missiles that might have come your way. And we don't plan on advertising how heavy our losses were, either." It was his turn to shrug, with a flicker of pain in his eyes. "We can't keep the rest of the galaxy from knowing we lost some people out here, but all our official reports are going to indicate that the people we lost were acting as cadre to help fill out the Erewhonese crews. The only people who could tell anyone different on stuck on your island, and no newsie—or League flunky—is going to get to them there, now are they?"
"No, they're not," Berry agreed with a certain flat steeliness. Then she drew a breah tna nodded.
"Okay, then. If you're sure." When she looked around the flag bridge this time, she seemed a little less bewildered. "I still can't figure out most of what's happening here. But I know Thandi's happy about getting this ship—it's a heavy cruiser, right?—and the rest of them."
She smiled. "Well . . . 'happy' isn't quite the right term. 'Ecstatic' might be better. Or 'beside herself with joy.' Or 'delirious.' "
Rozsak smiled also. "I'm hardly surprised. She'll have a fleet that goes almost overnight from having a frigate as its flagship to—yes, it's a heavy cruiser, Your Majesty."
"Please, Luiz. Call me Berry."
She returned from the Spartacus in a pensive mood. Visiting that ship had driven something home to her in a way that the inconvenience of living in what amounted to a bunker had not. Life—even with prolong—was simply too damn short to dilly-dally around the fundamentals.
So, when she returned to the palace, her first words were to Saburo.
"You're promoted, starting immediately. Now please leave Hugh and me alone, for a bit."
Saburo nodded, and left the room.
Hugh's face had no expression at all. As the months had gone by, Berry had learned that he was very good at that. It was one of the things she planned to change.
"Have I displeased you, Your Majesty?"
"Not hardly. I just can't deal with this any longer. I want your resignation. Now."
Hugh didn't hesitate for more than perhaps a second. "As you wish, Your Majesty. I resign as your chief of security."
"Don't call me that. My name is Berry and you damn well don't have any excuse any longer not to use it."
He bowed, slightly, and then extended his elbow. "All right, Berry. In that case, may I escort you to J. Quesenberry's?"
The smile that came to her face then was the same gleaming smile that had captivated Hugh Arai since the first time he'd seen it. But it was as if a star had become a supernova.
"Ice cream would be nice. Later. Right now, I'd be much happier if you'd take me to bed."
Chapter Sixty-Two
December 1921
"So you've finished your analysis?" Albrecht Detweiler asked after his son had settled—still a bit cautiously—into the indicated chair.
"Such as it is, and what there is of it," Collin Detweiler replied, easing his left arm. "There are still a lot of holes, you understand, Father." He shrugged. "There's no way we're ever going to close all of them."
"Nobody with a working brain would expect otherwise," Collin's brother, Benjamin, put in. "I've been pointing that out to you for—What? Two or three weeks, now?"
"Something like that," Collin acknowledged with a smile that mingled humor, resignation, and lingering discomfort.
"And did your brother also point out to you—as, now that I think about it, I believe your father has—that you could have delegated more of this? You damned near died Collin, and regen"—Albrecht looked pointedly at his son's still distinctly undersized left arm—"takes time. And it also, in case you hadn't noticed, is just a teeny-tiny bit hard on the system."
"Touché, Father. Touché!" Collin replied after a moment. "And, yes, Ben did make both of those points to me, as well. It's just . . . well . . ."
Albrecht regarded his son with fond exasperation. All of his "sons" were overachievers, and none of them really ever wanted to take time off. He practically had to stand over them with a stick to make them, in fact. That attitude seemed to be hardwired into the Detweiler genotype, and it was a good thing, in a lot of ways. But as he'd just pointed out to Collin (with massive understatement), the regeneration therapies placed enormous demands upon the body. Even with the quality of medical care a Detweiler could expect and the natural resiliency of an alpha-line's enhanced constitution, simply regrowing an entire arm would have been a massive drain on Collin's energy. When that "minor" requirement was added to all of the other physical repairs Collin had required, some of his physicians had been genuinely concerned about how hard he'd been pushing himself.
Albrecht had seriously considered ordering him to hand the investigation over to someone else, but he'd decided against it in the end. Partly that was because he knew how important it was to Collin on a personal level, for a lot of reasons. Partly it was because even operating in pain and a chronic state of fatigue, Collin—with Benjamin's assistance—was still better at this sort of thing than almost anyone else Albrecht could have thought of. And partly—even mostly, if he was going to be honest—it was because the chaos and confusion left in the wake of the massive destruction hadn't left anyone else he could both have handed the task over to and trusted completely.
"All right," he said out loud now, half-smiling and half-glowering at Collin. "You couldn't hand it over to someone else because you're too OCD to stand letting someone else do it. We all understand that. I think it's a family trait." He heard Benjamin snort, and his smile broadened. Then it faded just a bit. "And we all understand this hit pretty damned close to home for you, Collin, in a lot of ways. I won't pretend I really like how hard you've been driving yourself, but—"
He shrugged, and Collin nodded in understanding.
"Well, that said," his father went on, "I take it you've decided Jack McBryde really was a traitor?"
"Yes," Colin sighed. "I have to admit, part of me resisted that conclusion. But I'm afraid it's almost certain that he was."
"Only 'almost'?" Benjamin asked with a sort of gentle skepticism. Collin looked at him, and Benjamin arched one eyebrow.
"Only almost," Collin repeated with a rather firmer emphasis. "Given the complete loss of so many of our records and the fragmentary—and contradictory, sometimes—nature of what survived, almost any conclusion we could possibly reach is going to be tentative, and especially where motivations are concerned. But I take your point, Ben, and I won't pretend it was an easy conclusion for me to accept."
"But you do accept it now?" his father asked quietly.
"Yes." Collin rubbed his face briefly with his good hand. "Despite the scattered records we found that would seem to indicate Jack was making a desperate, last-minute effort to thwart some kind of conspiracy, there's simply not any way to account for those recordings Irvine made at the diner except to assume he was guilty. Certainly not once we confirmed that the waiter he was meeting with was Anton Zilwicki. And then there's this."
He drew a personal memo pad from his pocket, laid it on the corner of his father's desk so he could manipulate it one-handed, and keyed the power button.
"I'm afraid the visual quality isn't what we'd like, given the limits of the original recording," he half-apologized. "The only reason we've got this much is because the owners of the Buenaventura Tower didn't want seccy squatters moving in. But it's enough for our purposes."