Moonsteed (7 page)

“Okay, then.”

Verity went back to her quarters. She had a meeting in an hour’s time, and she still had her normal daily horse exercising duty to do. It was her turn to work the alpha horse today.

In her quarters, she headed straight for the shower. It wasn’t until she had the hot water running over her that she remembered the conversation in the centrifuge. She quickly skimmed through the ANT’s log of yesterday’s events. There it was:
Spy, identity pending, apprehend or terminate. Nature of warrant: pending
.

Whoever had filed the record must have filled it in wrong. She’d have to report that to the Commodore. Verity tried to send a request to him, but the ANT couldn’t locate him. He must be in the centrifuge, or outside the base beyond the ANT’s main beacon’s reach. He’d be going to the meeting, so perhaps if she went to his office she could catch him before that.

She hurriedly finished rinsing and turned the shower off. After she got dressed, she headed to the Commodore’s office. There was no answer when she banged on the door. Footsteps hurried in the corridor, but when Verity went to see if that was him, it wasn’t. Lloyd smiled as he passed, equipment and a suitcase under his arms. “Hi, Verity.”

“Have you seen Commodore Smith?”

Lloyd raised his eyebrows. “Not today.”

Another thought occurred to Verity. “Did you finish getting information out of that head?”

“Oh, yes. Disposed of it, now. Didn’t suffer.”

“Did you find out anything about the information he’d stolen?”

“Yes, it’ll be going in my report to the relevant authorities. Don’t worry about it, you acted in accordance with the warrant.”

“I’m not worrying about it. I wonder more about the nature of the information he tried to steal.”

“Oh, well I obviously can’t divulge that to you, because the information is to do with something that’s exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.”

“I know, but there seems to be an error in the ANT’s log. It should say which exemption clause it satisfies, but it’s just coming up with
pending
.”

“Oh. Well, that’s an error. I’ll see if I can get ’round to fixing that later. It’s exempt under the unpublished original research clause.”

“Was there anything...” Verity stared at him. “Was there anything to do with me in the spy’s mind? If there was, I’m entitled to know what it was under the act.”

Lloyd stared, looking her up and down. Could he see what she thought? Inquisitors were the only people able to mind interface directly to other people. Ordinary, untrained people could detect the broadcasts people gave off when they felt strong emotions, and it was people who were particularly sensitive to these who were recommended for training as inquisitors. Perhaps Lloyd could sense Verity’s fears and hopes that she thought she kept well enough screened off from other people. He took a step closer to her. “No, there was nothing about you.” He continued in a low voice, “Something’s troubling you. Why do you think you’d be involved in the information?”

“Because John Aaron attacked me, and he’s still missing. I think it might have something to do with the spy.”

Lloyd narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to one side. “I’ve always known there was something about you... Something you’re proud of, but at the same time, you fear others learning of it.”

Verity stood, eyes locked with his, and neither spoke for a moment.

Lloyd said, “I have to leave for the orbital in two days, and I have a lot of things to sort out, but I can spare a few moments to speak to you, if you feel you have something you’d like to get off your mind.”

In the Inquisitor’s lab, Verity was relieved to see the bench where the head had stood had been cleared away. She took a seat by Lloyd’s desk while he made some tea.

“Can I speak in confidence?” she said as he placed down a mug for her.

“Certainly.” Lloyd gestured outward with his hands, palms up. “Keeping the Meritocracy’s secrets is my business. Anything you say to me won’t leave this room.”

Verity paused, composing what she was going to say. “Private Aaron tried to kill me because he was an extremist belonging to some sort of cult.”

Lloyd took a sip of tea and nodded.

“He knew something else about me, something that to him made me blasphemous to his beliefs by the very act of my birth. Do you know about Pilgrennon’s experiments?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“Pilgrennon’s research is respected these days, but when he did it over a century ago it was illegal. In the earlier days of the Meritocracy, genetic modification of humans was only allowed to eliminate genetic disease. It was only twenty years ago there was a second referendum on it, that the Electorate voted to lift the ban, and allow genetic modification on humans, provided all genetic material used came from humans.”

“Of course.”

“That referendum was passed a year before I was born.”

Lloyd raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”

Verity inhaled deeply. “The company that created me was licensed to continue work with the genetics Pilgrennon had created. I’m made from Caleb’s sperm combined with an ova containing various different genes.” She paused. “Did you know any of this already?”

“No.”

“I thought you might have been able to...tell what I was thinking.”

Raising his eyebrows and smiling slightly, Lloyd interlocked his fingers on the desk before him. “I can invade people’s conscious thoughts.” He lowered his chin, glancing up at her. “But if I tried it on you, you’d know it.”

Verity considered this. It made sense. “The things John Aaron said to me sounded like he’d found out.”

A crease became visible on Lloyd’s forehead, beneath the shunts and interface apparatus. “If that’s a published experiment, there will be information on the ANTs. Any data that might identify you would be protected, but it would be possible for someone intent on digging deep to use the data to narrow down their search and potentially pinpoint you.”

“But I think there’s more to it than that. I’ve just got this feeling about it. What if the spy was involved with that as well? What if there are several of them, and they’ve got a camp set up on Callisto, somewhere out of range of the ANT, and that’s where Private Aaron has gone?”

Lloyd let off a snort that petered out to a snigger. “I mean no insult, Verity, but surely you can’t fail to appreciate the irony. If you were engineered using Caleb’s gametes, you’re genetically Jananin Blake’s grandchild, and for a descendant of someone who is widely credited as being history’s greatest rational thinker to say there’s a problem because she has an intuitive
feeling
...well!”

“I don’t mean like that! I mean a feeling like when you do a calculation and the result’s the wrong magnitude, or when there’s an equation with the constant missing!”

Lloyd shook his head, still chuckling. “I’m sure it’s nothing. There wasn’t anything to indicate anything of that nature in the spy’s mind.” His face became serious, his head-shaking more emphatic.

“There’s
something
. There has to be something I’ve missed.”

Lloyd downed the rest of his tea. “Ah, well.
Ignotum per ignotius
. My apologies, Verity, but I really must get on with my packing now. I’m sorry this is troubling you. I hope it all starts to make sense soon, and that talking to me has helped consolidate some things for you.” He pushed back his chair.

“Thanks,” said Verity, getting to her feet.
Not really
. Or maybe it had. There was something missing from this puzzle, and now she’d had an idea about where she might start looking for it.

Next morning, after supervising Vladimir and the stallion in the centrifuge, Verity watched him un-shoe the horse and lock the stable.

“Pick a horse.” She spread her arms, palms up.

Vladimir stared at her. “What? What for?”

“I’m going to teach you to ride.”

Vladimir’s eyes widened and his brows went up.

“For that stallion to get the exercise he needs, he has to be ridden in the centrifuge, and for that to happen, you need to learn to ride, and he needs to learn to be ridden. If you both try to learn at once, you’ll only teach each other mistakes, so pick a horse, any horse other than the stallion or the big mare.”

Vladimir turned full circle, examining the horses. “Are there any that are...nice?”

“They’re all nice. They’re animals. Animals don’t do pettiness and jealousy, and grudges and nastiness.”

“All right, that one.” Vladimir singled out a horse with its head over the stall door, watching him.

“Put her outdoor tack and shoes on. When you’ve finished, I’ll inspect how you’ve done it.”

As Vladimir approached the horse cautiously and reached to its face to tune his interface, Verity went to the alpha mare. If she would be teaching him to ride, the lead horse’s presence would reinforce that. She touched the horse’s implant to sync herself and opened the stable door. Verity liked this horse, liked how she anticipated instructions and thought ahead, and how when she was on this horse, other riders and their horses fell into order as if by nature.

After she’d tacked up, she went to inspect Vladimir’s effort. The shoes and the basic tack were correct, but the stirrups and some of the fastenings on the armor were wrong.

“There’s no bit on this bridle,” Vladimir said.

“It’s not good for them to have saliva running out of their mouths in the sort of temperatures outside. We use thought-prompts and a bridle with no bit to control them.” After correcting the faults, Verity said. “I’m going to tell you something, but you’re not allowed to say anything about it.”

Vladimir tilted his head fancifully. “Isn’t that in violation of the Freedom of Information Act?”

“No. Shut up and listen. I’m going to teach you to ride and, while we’re out, we’re going to take some measurements, so we have to take the bore kit. We’re also going to take the climbing gear because I want to do something else. When I killed that spy the other day, I cut off his head and took it back to the Inquisitor as fast as I could, because he needed to find out what the spy knew. I left the rest of the spy’s body behind, and it fell down a crater at the edge of the scarp, so it won’t have been recovered. Now I’m wondering if there was something the Inquisitor missed, and because he’s disposed of the head I can’t ask for him to look again, so I’m going to try to see if there are any other clues on the spy’s body.”

“How could the Inquisitor have missed it? They’re trained to extract information from people’s minds that they’re trying to conceal.”

“He could have missed it if it was something completely different to the data the spy had stolen. He wouldn’t have known to look for it.”

Vladimir frowned. “If this data’s exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and you go looking for it and you find it, doesn’t that mean you’re committing a crime and you’re essentially a spy?”

“I’m a member of staff here. It’s not if there is any and I tell the Commodore I found it.”

“Why don’t you tell the Commodore now, then? Before you go looking for it?”

“Because it might be nothing. It’s not based on anything concrete.” In truth, Verity had felt an odd suspicion toward Commodore Smith ever since she’d admitted her concerns to him and he’d dismissed the idea that John Aaron might have been in league with the spy or someone else in the base.

Vladimir’s voice took on a sardonic tone. “You just don’t want to lose face.”

“No.” Verity looked him fiercely in the eyes, as she might have done if she was trying to intimidate an animal. “And you wouldn’t, if you were in the same position. If you have a hypothesis for a scientific idea, do you go and tell your superiors before you’ve done any preliminary tests?”

Vladimir paused to think about this.

“There, see? Now put these on.” Verity opened the store cupboard and kicked some spare armor she’d gathered that morning in his direction. She collected the climbing gear and half of the rods from the boring kit and began to load them into the bags behind her horse’s saddle.

“This is too small,” said Vladimir.

When Verity glanced back to him, he was struggling to fasten the chest piece. “It’s not too small. It’s you that’s too fat. It’s supposed to be adjustable, anyway.”

“Yes, well, I think I’m beyond the remit of its adjustability.”

“Oh, come here!” Verity exhaled forcefully and rolled her eyes. “Put your arms up.” She adjusted the straps at the sides of the armor and snapped the buckles at the front shut. “There you are. You’re not
that
fat. Now put the rest of it on, and put this kit in your bag.”

The sun had just cleared the horizon as they led the horses out. Jupiter, above the equatorial horizon as it always appeared from the latitude of the base, was waning close to its last quarter against an indigo sky. Verity looked up the side of the building, squinting in the glare. Morning sun glittered on the rime coating the concrete walls. Another near semicircle, stark and grayish, hung just above Jupiter--probably Ganymede. The horses blew clouds of steam.

Verity jumped up, grabbing the front and back of the saddle, straightened her arms and swung her knee over. She got her feet into the stirrups, wriggling her knees into position, so her legs against the contours of the saddle pressed her firmly down into the seat. Vladimir put his foot on one of the building’s buttresses to aid his mounting, and landed heavily on his horse.

When he was settled as best as he apparently could manage, Verity pointed to her saddle. “Make sure your knees are pressed in below the front edge of the saddle. The way it’s shaped is designed to make it hard for you to be thrown upward when you’re sitting properly.”

Vladimir squirmed, pushing his knees down and in so his heels went out awkwardly against the stirrups. “Is that right?”

Verity rolled her eyes. “I suppose it’ll have to do. We’re going to go about a hundred yards and then stop to take a sample. Think you can manage that?”

Behind his visor, Vladimir’s face contorted. “I can try.”

“Okay, then. Look, don’t worry about the reins and the stirrups at the moment. Just stay focused and use thought-prompts properly. The horse knows to follow me, and it’ll be able to sense what you want it to do from the interface.”