“What’s this little skinny thing out here?” he asked.
“Us.” Heris grinned at his shocked expression. “I know—you thought we were closer to the interior because Xavier is a short jump from Byerly and Neugarten and Shiva. But they’re all strung out along one jump route, with an even smaller twig for Neverfall.” She pointed. “There’s Rockhouse. And there’s Rotterdam—” Rotterdam, on its own slender twig, three jump points from Xavier because of the need to go around the saddle-shaped Compassionate Hand intrusion.
As the General Secretary stared at the color-coded visual, Heris added the icons that were Koutsoudas’s best guess for the locations of Fleet and Compassionate Hand warships. The Compassionate Hand maintained major bases in the saddle between the lobes where Xavier and Rotterdam lay. Logical—so did the R.S.S. When this survey had been taken, they had had two battle groups at Partis, and one at Vashnagul.
Heris explained what that meant, trying to keep it simple. “The Compassionate Hand intends its battle groups to be more than just space fighters. Each battle group deploys units capable of invading and occupying fixed positions such as space stations and satellite defense systems. On a sparsely settled planet without good defenses, such teams could even take control of the entire world. More commonly, they would ‘scorch’ the population from space—blow the population centers, perhaps with tactical nukes. Then they’d land their own construction teams and equipment.”
“They’d just—kill everyone, for no reason?”
“From their point of view, there’s a reason. They don’t care about people they don’t need, and if they’ve chosen Xavier for a forward base, they won’t want to waste time converting your population.”
“And they might choose us because—”
“Because of the jump point access Xavier provides. Although the direct route in is straightforward, there are more alternatives from here than from Rotterdam. It’s still tricky—look—” Heris pointed out the difficulties the Compassionate Hand would face. “The point of coming through here is surprise, so if they lose surprise here they’ve expended effort for no gain. That means they’ll try to interrupt communications as soon as—even before—they attack. Do you have daily ansible traffic?”
“No . . . in fact, the charges are high enough that we usually store and batch it. Once a week at most.”
“So no one outside would notice if you didn’t send a batch for a week or so.”
“That’s right—oh. I see. Then I suppose they could fabricate a message—”
“If they needed to. My point being, Xavier is most valuable in the early stages of a war, then its value drops until they can get their defenses up, when it becomes valuable again simply because it denies those jump points to Fleet.”
“And our strategy?”
“Tell Fleet what we think, and keep telling them until they listen—and don’t let ourselves be surprised by an invasion force we weren’t expecting.” And hope that the enemy had not already intercepted their messages. But Heris kept that grim thought to herself.
Chapter Ten
Raffa wandered around the street market, but caught no sight of the king, or clone, or whoever that had been. She couldn’t see far anyway, past the colorful awnings and dwarf flowering trees, the little clusters of booths strung with banners. Finally, when her stomach informed her it was lunchtime, she followed her nose to a booth where a deft-fingered man wrapped spirals of meat and bread dough on sticks, and grilled them. Next to that booth, another sold fruit punches; Raffa picked something called omberri, which she had never had before.
She chose a bench under one of the nonflowering trees—she had noticed the bees humming among flowers—and worked her way down the meat and bread spirals. Her omberri punch had tartness enough to be refreshing on this warm day, without puckering her mouth. When she was through, she sat a few minutes with her legs stretched, watching the crowds of noontime shoppers. She had seen several booths she’d like to visit—shell jewelry, ribbon weaving worked into striking belts and vests—along with displays of native crafts that didn’t interest her. Even some pottery as ghastly as that made by Ottala Morreline’s crazy aunt.
Now that she’d lost track of the king, and had no idea where Ronnie and George were, she might as well spend the afternoon shopping. With that cheering thought, she worked her way through the booths, back to the one with the shell jewelry.
Then she saw the young man with the familiar way of carrying his head. It couldn’t be. Raffa ducked among the people, working her way closer. From behind, he still looked familiar. She edged her way around a booth to get a side view, and caught sight of his profile just an instant before he turned and looked her way. It was. Raffa opened her mouth to call out, just as he focussed on her and paled. He spun on his heel and darted away.
Raffa, startled, didn’t move until someone touched her arm and pointed out that she was blocking the whole aisle. “Sorry,” she said, still feeling blank. It had to be the prince. It had to be Gerel, who was supposed to be dead, and he was afraid to see her.
In one flash she saw the whole pattern of deceit. Gerel wasn’t dead; the man she had seen was the king, and he had come here to meet Gerel. King and prince . . . the phrase “government in exile” came to mind from her history studies. Lord Thornbuckle and Kevil Mahoney only thought they’d defeated the king—he was planning an insurrection.
Which meant that Ronnie and George, if they were still alive, were in mortal danger. Her skin tingled; she felt as preternaturally alert as she had that first night on the island. Did they know? Or were they about to walk into a conspiracy?
She set off slowly in the direction Gerel had fled. She didn’t expect to find him—she didn’t even want to find him—but she wanted to see what that part of the city was like.
Behind the street market, the streets resumed their normal, sedate appearance. Raffa noted that she was now on Bedrich, just crossing Cole. This was a residential area, five-story apartments lining both sides of the street, each with its own distinct facade. She saw a woman with three identical children in blue smocks . . . tried not to let herself think “clone.” They were children—and when they grinned up at her with identical sticky smiles, she couldn’t help grinning back. A yellow and white cat leapt off a window ledge in front of her, paraded to the curb with its tail in the air, and then sat to lick its paws.
This would get her nowhere but farther from the hotel. Gerel had been scared; he wouldn’t come back to see if she was in the neighborhood. Raffa slowed at the next street and glanced at the sign. Hari . . . and her tourist handcomp told her she would find nothing scenic if she kept going the same way. Just sore legs on the way back. She glanced around, and finally shrugged to herself. She might as well go back to the hotel, see if any messages had come in from the Institute about the pharmaceutical samples she’d turned in.
“These were not manufactured here. They were manufactured in modern equipment, using a process similar to, but not identical to, the one we developed. I can show you—here—” Raffa stared at the squiggly lines, and wished she had paid more attention to chemistry. “They’ve used an alternate synthetic route which we don’t like because it produces more waste. In addition, the isotope fractions suggest that the raw materials came from a source we don’t use. Although we do have one old sample that parallels it—from a mine in your territory. Do you know the Patchcock system?”