The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 31


Brotherhood on Corcyra

The Kiesche’s whole crew stood near the pool in front of the Manor, waiting for Daniel to do something. He hadn’t made any announcement, but obviously somebody had.

He looked at Vesey. She nodded. The set of the lieutenant’s jaw showed that she was uncomfortable, but her voice didn’t tremble as she said, “Sir, it seemed to me that this is what we came here to do and that the crew ought to have a chance to watch if they wanted to.”

She drew a deep breath and swallowed. She said, “And before you ask, I talked to Captain Samona—”

Arnaud had made the former exile leader second in command of the Pantellarian naval forces on Corcyra.

“—and he offered to send ten spacers under Commander Angelotti to the Kiesche, so that I could relieve Lieutenant Cory and the anchor watch to join us.”

Daniel thought for a moment, then grinned and said, “Very good, Vesey.”

His only hesitation had been his surprise that Vesey, of all people, would make such a decision on her own. It was good that she did—but surprising.

Sweeping the gathering crowd with his eyes, he said, “If this is the way you Kiesches want to spend your time, you’re welcome to do so, though I’ll say that I usually found more interesting things to do on liberty. Before I became a staid and proper commanding officer, that is.”

He cleared his throat and said, “And you know, I might decide to get a little improper myself once I’ve taken care of this little problem.”

He grinned at the laughter. “I don’t expect this to be very exciting, though.”

“Well, we’re ready for it if you’re wrong,” said Barnes. He and Sun had drawn stocked impellers from the arms locker, while Dasi had a sub-machine gun. Woetjans held a cutting bar instead of her usual length of pipe.

What in heavens name has Vesey told them? Daniel trusted those four spacers with the weapons they carried, which he wouldn’t have said about everyone even in this picked crew. He couldn’t imagine how their hardware would be useful in the present situation, though.

“People want to help, Daniel,” said Adele quietly from his right side. “They don’t like to feel that they’re useless, even when they obviously are. None of us like that.”

She smiled. Daniel was used to Adele showing nothing in her expression. He had never seen her looking so sad, though.

Hogg squatted on the lip of the pool, working with the controller. The lure dangled in the water, collecting nerve frequencies which the controller sorted and analyzed.

The shallow end of the pool had originally been four feet deep. Several inches of detritus, mostly organic, covered it. Woetjans had used a whipstaff to probe down ten feet before she found hard bottom at the deep end, but the muck over the plasticized base was at least four feet thick. You could no more stand on it than you could stand on the water itself, but things certainly lived in its darkness.

Daniel stripped his tunic off, then cinched his belt tighter to make it more difficult for things to wriggle down inside. He had bloused the cuffs of his trousers under the tops of his spacers’ boots, which themselves were tough though flexible. They could be worn within a rigging suit as well as by themselves. While the boots didn’t make swimming easier, neither did Daniel expect them to be a great hindrance.

Hogg looked up and said, “You know, master, I’ve never been the hand at one of these that you are. How about you take the controller and I get in the water? It’s hot and I wouldn’t mind the dip anyhow.”

“We’ll do it my way, Hogg,” Daniel said. He didn’t try to argue: there was nothing to argue about. One or the other of them was going to take his chances with the sponge, and Daniel Leary would make that decision. Had made that decision.

The water in the pool circulated clockwise, driven by slow strokes of the sponge’s tentacles, but the surface remained a mirror to the eye. Daniel could see the bottom here in the shallow end, though the water itself was dark and the muck was smooth except where something—a twig or in one case what looked very much like a surgical pin of stainless steel—stuck out of it.

A worm-shaped animal the length of Daniel’s thumb writhed into view, then vanished again beneath dead fronds from the plants in pots on the Manor’s porch roof. The creature had scores of tiny legs and a pair of mandibles half the length of its stubby body.

Hogg rose, holding the controller in one hand and the lure in the other. The filament that connected them was a ghost in the sunlight. It coiled itself on a reel in the controller when the lure came out of the water.

“Suit yourself,” Hogg said with bad grace. “If it was me doing it, though, I’d lob in a grenade first.”

“That would divide the sponge into bits,” Daniel said, “without killing them. It would make the pool into the equivalent of a bath in acid for any animal life, unless the lure works. If the lure does work, then the grenade wasn’t necessary. And it will work.”

“I said what I said,” Hogg muttered, but he wasn’t really arguing.

Daniel couldn’t imagine why the trick with the lure wouldn’t work. Even if things went wrong, the Kiesches would get him out before he was devoured and the Medicomp in the ship would take care of the stings. It’s going to work fine!

As soon as Daniel and his crew had arrived, loafers on the plaza had begun drifting over to see what was going on. Now more civilians joined the spectators, some of them people who had been crossing the plaza but also guests from the hotel portion of the Manor and staff members from government offices on the ground floor.

Daniel hadn’t paid much attention to the audience. Logically he had nothing—well, almost nothing—to worry about, but millions of years of instinct told his nervous system otherwise. Then Adele called, “Good morning, Captain Monfiore,” and Daniel looked away from the surface of the pool.

“Giorgi!” he said. “Say, you must have made good time.”

Hogg placed the lure against Daniel’s chest and covered it with a length of cargo tape. The tape could be removed easily with alcohol, though it would leave a red patch that itched like a case of hives. That was inconsequential against what might happen if the lure didn’t stay in touch with his bare skin, masking Daniel’ own electronic signature.

“When we get an offer like yours,” the young Ischian said, “we make the best time we can. And I’m here as a representative of the planet, not just the Monfiores. Though other clans will be sending their own negotiators shortly, you can count on that.”

Monfiore shook his head with an expression of amazement. “Daniel,” he said, “you’ve saved Ischia. There’ll be a statue to you in every clan capital on the planet, I swear it. And any help I can give you myself, well, just let me know.”

“You and Ischia generally have already helped a great deal,” Daniel said. “And believe me, you’re going to earn whatever haulage fees you work out with Commissioner Arnaud. But you’ll have to forgive me for the moment, because I have to clean up a little job right now.”

Hogg had finished cross-taping the lure. He stepped away, looking at the read-out on the controller. His face was stony.

“What are you…?” Monfiore said, looking down into the pool between himself and Daniel. He blurted, “By all heaven, Leary! Is that a firepot? I’ve never seen one that big! And what’s it doing here anyway?”

“That’s what I’m going to learn,” Daniel said. “I think that a spacer named Captain Pearl brought it from Ischia, and I hope to learn that he brought something else with it.”

Cleveland and Graves, the only civilians who knew what Daniel was about, waited patiently. It was a credit to their philosophy that they showed no signs of impatience. Though surely they must feel impatience?

“Wait!” Monfiore said. “Daniel, you’re not thinking of getting in there, are you? Those pants won’t be any protection if the firepot grabs you, and one that size, well, I wouldn’t doubt if its tentacles could reach the whole length of this pond. You don’t know what the stings feel like, but trust me, it’s worse than you can possibly imagine.”


“I’ll be all right, Giorgi,” Daniel said. “The sponge, the firepot, will think I’m one of its cleaner lice, that’s all. The trousers are for other things that might take a nip out of me. I’ll risk losing a finger, but there’s parts I won’t risk.”

Daniel was impatient, however well the Transformationists were handling the delay. He sat on the lip of the pool and looked up at Hogg. “Ready, Hogg?” he said.

“I’m ready,” Hogg said. “And you’re as pigheaded as any man born. Except that pigs is really pretty smart, and you bloody well aren’t!”

“Daniel, please,” Monfiore said. “I was stung by a firepot when I was clamming, no bigger than my little finger so I didn’t see it when I reached down to clear the scoop. I was in bed for a month!”

He started to come around the pool, but he had fifteen feet to go and one of the Kiesches would stop him if necessary. They didn’t know what Six was doing, but they knew that no civilian was going to keep him from doing it while his spacers were alive.

Daniel slid into the pool. Trickles dribbled down into his boots before the water really penetrated the fabric of his trousers. It was much colder than he expected. He wondered what the rate of flow of the spring feeding the pool was.

His feet squished onto the bottom, lifting the muck. The current was too slight for Daniel to notice a direction in the way the cloud spread. He didn’t move for a moment, waiting to see how the sponge would react.

There was no reaction. Despite Monfiore’s warning, Daniel doubted whether the creature’s tentacles could reach him here; the handbook on Ischian natural history which Adele had found said that the tentacles rarely were longer than the firepot’s body. The specimen here was probably larger—and much older—than the creatures got on their world of origin where they faced predators; but even so.

Daniel moved forward by slow steps. He’d be in over his head shortly, but he preferred to walk for as long as he could, hoping to make less disturbance that way.

The water on his bare torso was startling at first, but as expected Daniel didn’t notice it after the first few moments. That was one of the reasons why he hadn’t gone straight into the deep end where the sponge was attached, though that would have been the least disturbing way of getting there.

Entering at the deep end would also mean that his first contact with the sponge would be full-body. That seemed an even better reason to move up slowly.

Weed rooted in the bottom trailed across Daniel’s skin. The leaves were fan-shaped but so thin that he hadn’t noticed them when he looked into the water from above. They were being browsed by inch-long creatures—worms? larvae?—wearing cases glued together from bits of debris. They must be why the weed hadn’t completely choked the pool, since the sponge wasn’t a browser.

“Hey!” cried an onlooker. “Hey, get that feller outa there! There’s a thing in the end that’ll eat him alive and I don’t mean maybe!”

“Shut up, ye bloody fool!” Woetjans said. “Six knows what he’s doing!”

I wonder if the weed and the insects are native to Corcyra? It was a less disturbing subject to consider than wondering whether tentacles were going to grip his waist and snatch him into excruciating pain. The Medicomp won’t help if I die of anaphylactic shock before they get me to the ship.

Daniel’s next step put his chin into the water. He bobbed up and stroked forward easily with both arms. The trousers were a drag and he wasn’t kicking his booted feet, but his arms would support him well enough for the few yards he had to go.

Something trailed across Daniel’s bare belly. It had been a tentacle, six feet long at least. The natural history database had been wrong, or at least it wasn’t correct for Ischian firepots transplanted to Corcyra.

The tentacle had brushed him instead of grabbing, and the stingers which covered the sponge’s arms as well as all other portions of its exterior skin had not come out. The tentacle had simply been moving the water to bring food toward the creatures maw.

Daniel took a deep breath. Another tentacle danced over his skin, trailing from his right shoulder to his left. It felt like the caress of an insect’s wing.

He ducked under water. The sponge was a mass of pink and brown as big around as a wash tub. The dark water muted its colors, but that filter blurred everything else to make the sponge stand out sharply.

The creature was attached to the end of the pool. Daniel extended his right hand to feel the wall. The body of the sponge felt like a half-full wine sack against the inside of his arm. His fingertips touched a hard, slick surface, the pool’s plasticized end wall. The long side nearest the Manor was natural stone through which ground water percolated.

Daniel pushed hard at the sponge, his mind disconnected from knowledge of the thousands of fiery cilia he was trying to squeeze out of his way. He touched a latch, but that took the last of his breath. He surfaced with a splash and a loud gasp, his eyes shut.

“Six! You all right!” Woetjans bellowed. Other Kiesches were shouting a mélange of similar things.

“It’s fine!” Daniel said and almost splashed under again. “I’m fine, I think I’ve found it.”

He took three deep breaths in sequence. He didn’t try to answer questions as he trod water. With his lungs full, he ducked under again.

Daniel knew where to go this time and thrust down with both hands. The sponge’s body resisted like a roll of rubber matting, flexible but too massive to be easily moved.

Cleaner lice the size of his thumbnail crawled onto his arm. His skin prickled as they nipped off hairs—dead protein.

Daniel gripped the latch lever and tried to pivot it downward. The tentacles touched him, trying to shove him away the way they would have done a floating log. The sponge was a communal entity which had no central nervous system, let alone a brain. Nevertheless, the species’ responses had allowed it to survive since the appearance of multi-celled life on Ischia.

If the tentacles rip the lure off my chest— Daniel thought.

Adrenalin—he wasn’t in a panic, but his glands operated on the orders of his lizard brain’s hundreds of millions of years of reflexes—flooded his system. His hands twisted convulsively, snapping the corrosion that had bound the latch.

The access plate of what was intended for a filter compartment swung sideways, taking with it the sponge which was attached to the perforated panel. The creature’s body was so large that Daniel couldn’t open the compartment fully, but he was able to reach in with his right hand and grasp the drawstring bag his fingers found there.

Daniel shoved himself back, popping to the surface well away from the wall of the deep end. He backstroked, kicking furiously this time.

The sponge lashed the water wildly, much as it would have done if a storm tore loose the rock which held it to a shoreline. If a tentacle grabs me now, it’ll try to use me as an anchor and I might very well drown.

Daniel laughed at the thought. The spectators probably thought he was laughing in joy at having survived, but the truth was a little stranger than that. He wouldn’t try to explain it to anyone, though.

Hands gripped Daniel’s upper arms and half-jerked, half-dragged him onto the plaza on his back. Cory had his left and—heavens, Adele!—had his right.

Daniel looked up at her. “You’re stronger than I thought,” he said through wheezes.

“Hysterical strength, I suppose,” Adele said, stepping backward.

Daniel lurched into a sitting position, then rotated to bring his left hand down on the plaza to help him stand. The Kiesches were cheering. Actually, most of the spectators were cheering, even the majority who didn’t have any idea what was going on.

Daniel turned to the Transformationists—who were cheering also. Their faith didn’t prevent them from defending themselves or from feeling enthusiasm about wholly non-religious matters, apparently.

“Master Cleveland,” Daniel said. “You might see what’s in here. I rather hope it’s what you were looking for.”

He held out the bag. The fabric was an extruded synthetic but the drawstrings appeared to be purple silk, tied off in a bow.

Cleveland undid the bow, then carefully teased the mouth of the bag open. Instead of pouring the contents into the palm of his hand, he reached in with two fingers and brought out a jewel.

It was a perfect ovoid about the size of a hen’s egg. Though the clear stone was smooth, not faceted, it blazed in the sunlight. Around it was a network of hair-fine metal with a purple cast.

“I’m not an expert, Cleveland,” Daniel said, “but I would guess that you have a diamond. And I wouldn’t be greatly surprised to learn that the filigree is your Unbihexium, Brother Graves, because it certainly doesn’t look like any metal that I’m familiar with.”

There were more cheers. Daniel cheered too.

***

“I’ll report on the library’s installation when it’s complete,” Brother Graves said as he and Cleveland accompanied Adele down Central Street’s final slope to the harbor. “Is the best way to reach you through your townhouse in Xenos, or should I send the information in care of the Navy?”

Adele didn’t answer immediately, because the roar of the ship landing overwhelmed speech. The vessel’s computer tried to hold it in a hover, but its poorly synchronized thrusters started a wobble. It dropped the last ten feet into the water as the best alternative available to the machine intelligence.


Adele’s tiny smile was perhaps colder than usual. The computer was correct, of course, but the crew which had just been badly jounced was probably cursing it rather than their own poor maintenance for causing the controlled crash. Saving stupid, lazy people often required hard measures. In Adele’s experience, they never thanked you for it.

Brotherhood Harbor was much busier now than it had been when Adele saw it first from orbit. She would never have a real spacer’s eye for a ship, but she knew that the vessel was a moderate-sized freighter, an ordinary tramp though larger than most of the ships which called here while fighting was going on.

Daniel—or even Evans—could probably have told her where the ship had been built. Study would accomplish many things, but real skill required a knack as well, a degree of focused interest which Adele would never have for starships.

As the echoes of the splash receded, Adele said, “To Chatsworth Minor, I suppose. But there isn’t really any need to report. I’m pleased that you’ve taken on the task, since it needn’t have been any concern of yours. And that you’ve given refuge to Master Lipschitz as well.”

“Master Lipschitz doesn’t appear to be any kind of burden, milady,” Cleveland said, smiling. “As thin as he is, he won’t be straining the commissary to feed him.”

That’s the first time I’ve heard him joke, Adele thought. Perhaps he’s been taking lessons from Tovera.

More seriously, Cleveland had been calmer and more centered since they had landed on Corcyra and he’d come back into contact with fellow Transformationists. That meant mostly contact with Graves, of course, who was looking better also. Adele wasn’t sure that a philosophy—or religion, whatever term one wished—that punished people who weren’t in the company of other people was a very beneficial one.

Daniel was waiting with Hogg in the Plaza where Central met Harborside. There was no longer a platoon of soldiers stationed there, but traders had laid out their wares on blankets—the same sort of food and tawdry whimsies that bumboats hawked to the anchored vessels.

With peace had come buskers. A man was juggling, and a couple—the boy was young and the girl was very young—was singing a dialogue between Lord Randall and his mother. The girl wasn’t very convincing in the part of an old woman, but her voice was clear and pleasant.

Adele stepped ahead of the Transformationist; they slowed deliberately to let her reach Daniel alone. Tovera had been following the three of them. The fact that she didn’t sprint ahead to put herself between her mistress and the two men showed either that she was mellowing or that she trusted Hogg to prevent Cleveland and Graves from attacking Adele successfully.

That Tovera trusted Hogg seemed more likely.

“Daniel,” Adele said, “I regret that I’m late. I wasn’t noticing the time or I would have informed you that it was taking longer than I’d thought to remove the last case of books from the rubble.”

“We weren’t going to leave without you,” Daniel said, smiling. “With an ordinary spacer I might have sent out a squad under a bosun’s mate to check the bars and jail, but I didn’t think that would be of very much use in finding you.”

He gestured the Transformationist forward. “Brothers,” he called. “I’m glad to see you again before we lift. Or have you decided to return to Cinnabar with us? You at least, Master Cleveland?”

The juggler was using four cubes whose faces flashed changing imagery as they spun. His hat lay on the ground in front of him with a few coins in it, but a young boy was also working the spectators, offering to sell similar cubes.

“Thank you, Captain,” Cleveland said. “I’m to go back to Pearl Valley as Brother Graves’ aide. Sister Rennie will be replacing him in the office here. She has the skills and her, well, other skills, don’t appear to be needed to defend the Community at present.”

“Will Colonel Rennie be bringing a companion?” Adele said. A few years ago she wouldn’t have spoken, and until she joined Daniel and the family of spacers around him, she wouldn’t even have understood the reason she was asking the question.

“The workload in Brotherhood should drop back to its previous—pre-invasion—level,” Graves said, calmly but with a slight frown. “We need an agent here, but there’s no need for a second person to be removed from the Community. Someone will replace Rennie in a few months.”

Adele shrugged. It was none of her business, and she had never seen any point in arguing in support of the obvious.

Daniel looked at her sharply, then said to the Transformationist, “You feel that separation from your community is a hardship. What Lady Mundy and I have noticed is that both of you seem much better off with the other’s companionship than you were while you were separated from all your fellows. Speaking as an RCN officer, if the operation were under my command, I would assign at least two personnel to every detached location.”

He grinned and added, “Just as I would to a listening post. Eh, Hogg?”

“It’d help if the folks assigned wasn’t rubes who couldn’t find their asses with both hands,” Hogg said. “But yeah, one guy alone is worse ’n useless.”

Graves and Cleveland didn’t understand the background to the discussion, but they understood there was one—and that they were listening to experts. Adele would have let the Transformationists make their own decision. Their own stupid decision. Daniel was treating them as ignorant, not stupid; which was kinder and probably more accurate.

Adele smiled faintly. I will never become Daniel. But that doesn’t matter, so long as I have Daniel around.

Cleveland looked at Graves. “I’ll stay with Rennie for, for a time,” he said. “You can do a better job of explaining to the Community why we think the policy should change.”

“No,” the older man said. “The rest of the troops from Hablinger will arrive this afternoon on their way back to Pearl Valley. I’ll speak with Brother Heimholz. I think he’ll agree to stay with Sister Rennie until they both can be replaced.”

Graves gave Daniel a sort of smile. “I’ll borrow your analogy, Captain,” he said. “Rennie and Heimholz will understand it even better than I do.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” Adele said, using his first name to make clear to the others that she was speaking as a friend rather than as a colleague. “The Transformationists have dug out the library, the books, from the basement of the Gulkander Palace.”

“Not just Rikard and me, Captain,” Graves said, smiling again. “The first half of our Hablinger contingent arrived yesterday on their way back, and I asked them to help excavate as a small return for what you and Lady Mundy have done for us and for the planet.”

Adele didn’t remember having seen the agent smile when the Kiesche had first arrived on Corcyra. Time spent in the company of Cleveland had improved his mood even more than she thought at the time she remarked on it.

“Considering that the Palace was hit by a pair of missiles…,” Adele said. She had been horrified when she first saw the ruins of the building. “It’s a miracle that the library wasn’t crushed by stone blocks. Cory aimed well, the pillars and arches supporting the ground floor had been well constructed, and the collection’s librarian had placed the books carefully where they were as protected as they could be under the conditions. Which brings up another matter.”

She turned to Graves and made a slight bow. To Daniel she continued, “The librarian is a man named Lipschitz. He went to live with a cousin after Colonel Mursiello moved into the Palace. Brother Graves agreed to allow Master Lipschitz to accompany the books to Pearl Valley, where I think they’ll be safer than anywhere else on Corcyra until matters stabilize a little more.”

“We have plenty of room in the Kiesche’s hold…,” Daniel said, his tone making the words a question. “If you’d like to bring them with you, I can have Woetjans take a party to wherever you’ve got them now and pack them aboard safely. It won’t take an hour.”

Adele realized that though the Kiesche’s thrusters were cold, her pumps were running. Their vibration made the water around the ship’s outriggers and hull tremble into tiny pointed waves.

They’ve waited liftoff for me, Adele realized. She should have sent a message, but she had been so involved with the process of disinterring the books that it hadn’t crossed her mind. At the back of her mind, she had assumed that if Daniel needed her, he would call her. Instead, he and the rest of the crew had waited quietly rather than disturbing whatever she was doing.

“I’ve been discourteous,” Adele said without an explicit context. “My mother would be upset to learn that. She felt that courtesy was the most basic rule which set human beings above the beasts.”

“I doubt that your mother and I would have gotten along well,” Daniel said. “More to the point, I suspect your mother would have been useless to the RCN, whereas you are valuable beyond anything I could compare you with. Now, shall we bring the library back with us? And Master Lipschitz won’t be a problem either, so long as he doesn’t expect the Kiesche to have luxurious staterooms.”


“No,” said Adele. “I think the Gulkander Library is part of Corcyra’s cultural heritage, though it may be some while—generations, centuries even—before the planet understands that. Our friends here—”

She nodded to the Transformationists; they smiled briefly in response. They had remained expressionless while Daniel and Adele discussed the situation.

“—will keep the collection together while the process goes on. While Corcyra becomes civilized.”

She decided to smile as though the final comment had been a joke. It wasn’t.

“Master Lipschitz won’t leave the books,” Cleveland said. “He was sneaking into the palace basement at night to make sure that they weren’t being injured, even though he knew that if Mursiello’s thugs caught him they were likely to shoot him right there. I got to talking with him a bit while we were we were moving rubble.”

He gestured to the dusty work shirt and coveralls he was wearing. The right side-pocket of Graves’ similar outfit was ripped half open where something heavy had snagged the fabric and continued on in whatever direction it had been going in the first place.

“I suggested that we do it by hand,” Graves said with a rueful glance down at his own garments. “I was afraid that if we used heavy equipment, we might finish what the missiles had started. That was the right decision, but by the time we were done I was wishing that our other fifty soldiers had come back from Hablinger with the first company.”

“Master Lipschitz is really very welcome,” Cleveland said. “The Community has a number of members who will be as pleased to see the books as you were yourself.”

He grinned engagingly and added, “Well, almost as pleased.”

Daniel shrugged and said, “Who knows? Perhaps Lipschitz will wind up becoming a Transformationist himself.”

“I very much doubt that,” Adele said, hoping her voice didn’t display the horror that she felt at the suggestion. “I believe that Master Lipschitz regards spirituality much the way as I do—as something other people talk about.”

“You might find peace with us yourself, Lady Mundy,” Graves said quietly. He smiled, but she could see that the expression was an attempt to lighten the sadness of his tone.

“No doubt I’ll find peace one day, Brother Graves,” she said, nodding crisply. “Thank you for the offer.”

I’ll find peace, I’m sure. From an impeller slug or perhaps when a missile blasts the ship I’m in to vapor. But Graves meant well, they all meant well, and she kept those thoughts to herself.

“Well, if you gentlemen are satisfied,” Daniel said, nodding to Cleveland and Graves, “and you’ve finished your business, Adele…?”

“I have,” Adele said, nodding.

“Then we’ll take our leave,” Daniel said, straightening. He offered his hand, first to Graves. “I hope things continue to go well for your community. If you happen to be on Cinnabar when I am, I’d be glad to show you Bantry. I find it as peaceful as you say Pearl Valley is. I’m sure I didn’t see Pearl Valley under the best circumstances, of course.”

Adele straightened also. She wasn’t precisely looking forward to Cinnabar, but she would be as glad as not to be off Corcyra. The only people on the planet who cared about the things that were important to her were some of the Transformationists, but she had more in common with farmers and hard-rock miners than she did with a band of cultists.

“Ah, if you please, Captain?” Cleveland said, reaching into his right cargo pocket. “There’s one more thing I’d like you to take care of.”

He brought out the blue bag and started to open it. Before Cleveland could bring out the huge diamond, Daniel squeezed the mouth of the bag closed.

“I’ll take it on faith that the contents of the bag are what they were when we found it,” Daniel said. “I’d just as soon not tell everybody on the harborfront what we’ve got here.”

Tovera giggled. Hogg grunted and gave his version of the same thought: “Let somebody try.”

“I prefer a quiet life,” Daniel said, grinning at Cleveland and Graves. “I realize that not everyone shares my preferences.”

“With respect, Captain Leary,” Graves said, “I’d be surprised to learn that you won the Cinnabar Star by living a quiet life. It’s the highest decoration that the navy awards, is it not?”

“It’s not nearly as pretty as the sash and medal that make me a Companion of Novy Sverdlovsk, though,” Daniel said. “But if you prefer, let me correct myself by saying that I’m never more content than when I’m standing at the masthead of a ship in the Matrix, except perhaps when I’m fishing on Bantry.”

Everything Daniel said was the truth, Adele realized, but it was also a way to blur the real truth into the background. Daniel was brave without thinking about it; he was skilled in his profession beyond most other naval officers; and he was a gentleman who would no more brag about such things—or let others brag for him—than he would cheat at cards.

You might have gotten along better with my mother than you think, Daniel. Daniel was charming to women; though women had to be younger and prettier and far less intelligent than Evadne Rolfe Mundy before the charm would have any practical object.

Miranda Dorst was a welcome exception to Daniel’s string of stupid bimbos; but then, Miranda was an exceptional person in many respects. Which mother was not, unfortunately. Perhaps if she had been, her head and father’s might not have decorated Speaker’s Rock after Corder Leary broke their poorly managed conspiracy.

“I assumed you would dispose of this,” Daniel said, hefting the bag in the palm of his left hand. “I’d be happy—and I’m sure your mother would be happy, Cleveland—to accept my share of the proceeds after you’ve arranged for the sale.”

“You’re in a better place to deal with an item like this, Captain,” Graves said. “There are members of the community who have expertise in jewelry, but this is a unique item. While we trust our off-planet agents, it seemed that a principal should oversee the sale. Rather than one of us—”

Cleveland grinned and interjected, “Or even two of us.”

“Yes,” said Graves, grinning also. “Rather than members having to leave the community for the purpose, we thought you could handle the matter and remit our share to a community account on Pleasaunce or Xenos. You made the discovery and took the risk, after all.”

“Umm…,” said Daniel. “I dare say my sister could deal with this. Heaven help anybody who tried to cheat her. But if you don’t mind, I think I’d rather put the matter in the hands of Mistress Sand. If you have a starship to command, I’m your man. Business, though, I’d rather not be responsible for, even if I have confidence in my agent.”

Cleveland chuckled. “I trust mother, certainly,” he said. His expression became wistful. He added, “It would almost be worthwhile going back with you after all, just to put that—”

He gestured.

“—in mother’s hand and watch her face as she opened it. I’ve disappointed her many times, but she never gave up on me.”

Adele was uncomfortable thinking of Mistress Sand as a person, a mother, instead of being the efficient spymaster for whom Officer Mundy worked. “If I may ask?” she said, changing the subject. Her tone had no question in it. “Do you still intend to buy arms with the proceeds?”

“Thanks to your initial cargo…,” said Graves. He seemed a little surprised by the question, though he didn’t hesitate to answer. “We’re really quite well armed already. We did consider a battery of anti-ship missiles and perhaps even armored vehicles, though. After clarification by the experts in our community, we decided that all such equipment would do would be to make us targets for any future group which wanted to launch a coup.”

“We’d have made ourselves worth robbing,” Cleveland said. “A surprise attack on us would be the first act of the plotters.”

Daniel was nodding agreement. Adele saw the logic, but it hadn’t been intuitively obvious to her.

Someone could attack me to get the pistol I carry, she thought. Then, Or to get my belt purse or my jacket or my data unit. They’re welcome to try.

“We’ll build more dormitories,” Graves said. “There will be more people arriving on Corcyra with the change in circumstances. Most of them will be coming to get rich—”

He smiled.

“—the way I did, for example. But some will visit Pearl Valley, and some of those will stay. As I also did.”

“And the rest of the proceeds can go into the community’s bank deposits off-planet,” Cleveland said. “Which could be used to purchase missile batteries, if necessary, though of course we hope that will not be the case.”

“Lady Mundy?” Graves said, looking at her. “If I may ask a question in turn…?”

She nodded.

“How will you be compensated? You’re not a partner in the enterprise, but your personal involvement was crucial at several points over the past months.”


Daniel looked at her. Adele shook her head minusculely; she didn’t need help handling the question.

“I’m not very interested in money,” she said, “but in point of fact I’ve got quite a lot of it. Probably more in terms of ready cash than my father could have put his hands on at the height of his political power.”

That was an understatement. Lucius Mundy had mortgaged everything he had or could claim a future interest in. In a manner of speaking, the biggest losers from the collapse of the Three Circles Conspiracy were the moneylenders—although relatively few of them had their heads displayed on Speaker’s Rock.

“I’m wealthy,” Adele continued, “because I have been a warrant officer on RCN ships which won large sums in prize money, and because my shares have been administered with great skill.”

She coughed. “And it’s my understanding,” she said, “that Captain Leary intends to divide his share of the treasure, the jewel—”

She gestured with her right index finger.

“—among the crew as though it were a prize. A very lucrative prize.”

“Lady Mundy is correct,” Daniel said. His voice was mild and cheery, apparently unaffected by what could have been read as Graves’ suggestion that he would have cheated his crew. “But as she also implied, no one signed aboard the Kiesche because of the money they expected from the voyage.”

A ship lighted its thrusters two by two near the top—south—end of Brotherhood Harbor. The noise wasn’t too loud to talk over, but it didn’t encourage an extension of the present conversation.

I might be interested if I were listening to it through a surveillance microphone. Adele smiled at her own thought.

“One thing before we all go off to our duties, Captain,” Graves said. “You know that there’s a new harbor at Hablinger to replace the previous one. You helped design it, in fact.”

“Given that Hablinger Pool was now thirty feet in the air and baking in the sun,” Daniel said, “there wasn’t much choice about creating a new harbor. And I didn’t do much about the design except convince the Independence Council to commit more resources than they might otherwise have done. If Commissioner Arnaud can move his whole force in a single lift, there’ll be fewer problems en route and on Pantellaria.”

He shrugged and turned his hands palms-up. “It was just common sense that benefitted everyone.”

“Indeed,” said Graves. His tone was barely neutral, certainly not one of agreement. “Be that as it may, they—the Council, we—have named the new installation Leary Harbor.”

Hogg turned his head and spat toward the water. The gobbet didn’t quite clear the edge of the quay.

“Wonderful!” he said. “Daniel Leary of Bantry is honored for his services to bloody farmers.”

“Actually, I am honored,” Daniel said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the thrusters—all six together now. “And Hogg, you might recall that many of the Bantry tenants are farmers. You and your ancestors among them.”

“Well, we were bloody bad farmers,” Hogg said. “Which is why we had to get so good at poaching.”

He grinned broadly. “And I guess there’s poachers in the Delta here too,” he added, “so I take back anything I said about Leary Harbor.”

Daniel waved to the Transformationists rather than shaking hands again, then turned on his heel and started down the walkway. Woetjans and a team waited to roll it up as soon as Hogg and Tovera were clear.

Daniel stretched as he and Adele walked up the ramp together. “I’m looking forward to some real fishing,” he said. “Instead of groping about in a waste pond, however pretty the toy that I found there.”

“I’ve never understood the attraction of fishing,” Adele said. “I’m glad that you do, though. It seems to relax you.”

They stepped over the coaming and into the main hold. Daniel looked at Adele and said, “I hope your other employer will be pleased with the way things worked out here.”

Adele stopped and looked at him. There were several spacers close by, but that didn’t matter.

He thinks my other employer is Mistress Sand rather than Corder Leary.

“She will be very pleased,” Adele said. “The outcome which you engineered, a neutral government on Pantellaria, improves relations between the Republic and the Alliance instead of sparking a full-scale war between us.”

That was almost a lie, but it wasn’t a lie; and it will make my friend happier than he would be if I explained the whole truth.

As she resumed walking she thought, Even my mother would approve.

Cory started the hatch rising as Woetjans trotted up it behind the riggers who carried the walkway. The thrusters remained cold. Pasternak was waiting for everyone to board.

Daniel ducked under the bridge hatch, a reflex action from naval vessels whose internal piercings were tighter than those of civilian vessels where hull strength wasn’t as much of a requirement. He would take a jumpseat, allowing Cory to lift the Kiesche to orbit from the command console.

Adele made her way to the back of the console, left open for her. That was merely a courtesy, since she had no present need of the better display. She appreciated courtesy, here and in all circumstances.

She wondered how Deirdre would react when she learned Adele’s price for saving the family name: transfer of the Bantry estate to Daniel Leary for his life and the life of the heirs of his blood. Expensive lawyers had assured Adele that not even Corder Leary could break the estate’s entail, but this extended life estate would have the same effect so long as any descendent of Daniel lived.

Adele seated herself at the console. Discussions on the command channel were preparing the Kiesche for liftoff. On whim she brought up an image of Bantry, looking from the seafront toward the hamlet and, to the left, the sprawling Manor.

Miranda already liked Bantry. It would be a good place for a wedding, and an even better one to raise the sort of children that Squire Daniel Leary would want. Adele was sure that the Manor would always have a guest room for Lady Mundy, if she chose to visit.

The Kiesche’s thrusters thumped to life. Using a two-way link—Daniel wasn’t really involved in the ship’s business at the moment, after all—Adele said, “Daniel? Do you think you could teach me to fish? With practice, I might come to appreciate it.”