The Sea Without a Shore (5 page)

CHAPTER 4

Xenos on Cinnabar

The doorman bowed Adele into the lobby, where a cadaverous man in black—probably the club secretary rather than a lower functionary—waited behind a lectern. “I’m to meet Mistress Cleveland for lunch,” Adele said, using the name she had been given. “My name is Mundy.”

The secretary checked the display built into his lectern, then raised his eyes and smiled falsely. “Why yes, Mistress Mundy,” he said, tapping a call button. A boy—if he was older than sixteen, he was badly undernourished—came out of an alcove behind the secretary, buttoning his coat. “Daniel will take you back. The Gray Room, Daniel.”

Adele avoided blinking, though the boy’s name had been a surprise. “Daniel” wasn’t an uncommon name, of course; but that was looking at the matter logically.

The Oriel Club was old, but it wasn’t one that members would mention when they wanted to impress other people. It had been founded by residents of Oriel County to have a place to eat and sleep when they had business in the capital. The kitchen was said to be very good on mutton dishes; which made sense, as sheep were the first thing one thought of in the rare instances when someone mentioned Oriel County.

The boy swaggered ahead of her, past a reading room with leather-covered chairs, then through the grill room to the left-hand of the pair of private rooms in back. The three diners in the grill room were decently but not stylishly dressed. They glanced up from their meals—mutton curry in all cases—but Adele was no more interesting to look at than they were.

“The Gray Room!” the boy said, pulling the door open without announcing them to the occupant of the room. He was what you would expect from junior staff in a club whose secretary had to check his files to determine whether a guest was expected.

Bernis Sand sat across the table, facing the door. A decanter of amber liquid—whiskey, unless she had changed her habits since Adele last saw her—and two glasses were already on the table.

“Thank you, Daniel,” said Mistress Sand. “We’re not to be disturbed unless we call you.”

The boy closed the door. Sand smiled grimly and said, “Lock it, if you would, Mundy. Despite my clear direction, it’s quite possible that someone will bustle in with a carafe of water or a tablecloth.”

Adele snicked the lock and sat down. “I suppose shooting the first few intruders would be overreaction,” she said.

“This was my first husband’s club,” said Mistress Sand. She didn’t react to the joke. “I kept the membership after his death. There are times I like to be thought of as Mistress Cleveland, who owns land in Oriel County. Mistress Cleveland and her guests don’t attract attention.”

Sand was below middle height and solid; it would be accurate though uncharitable to describe her build as cylindrical. Her complexion had been ruddy when she introduced herself to Adele five years before. Now her skin had a gray undertone, and her cheeks sagged.

“I appreciate that,” said Adele, “though I wanted to talk with you in a private capacity. My friend Captain Leary plans to visit Corcyra, and I expect to accompany him.”

Sand had begun to pour whiskey into Adele’s glass unasked. The decanter ticked the rim of the glass hard, but neither broke. She set the decanter down, stared across the table at Adele, and drained the last ounce from her own glass.

“I don’t know how you heard about this, Mundy,” she said in a rasping voice. “But I’m glad you did. I usually don’t know how you learn things, of course.”

Not for the first time, Adele realized that people often gave her too much credit. Surely it wasn’t unusual for a husband worried about his wife’s problems to contact her associates in hope of finding a solution?

Aloud Adele said, “Explain the situation from your viewpoint, if you would.”

The way Mistress Sand answered that deliberately neutral request would tell more than the facts of the situation, for which Adele had many objective sources.

“My son Rikard returned from Corcyra two weeks ago,” Sand said, showing that she was here a mother, rather than a Cinnabar patriot or an intelligence director. “I hadn’t heard from him or of him for almost three years. I … well, it was reasonable to assume that he was dead.”

She had already refilled her glass; she drank half of the contents. Adele’s fingers were busy with her control wands, but she had no desire to try the splash of whiskey in her own glass anyway.

Given the resources Mistress Sand controlled, Rikard’s total disappearance did indeed imply that the boy was dead. The deaths of Adele’s own family were to her a series of events sealed in a block of crystal. She had no feelings about them: just generalized despair and anger.

Adele recognized that other people had different reactions; and perhaps mothers generally differed. Certainly she felt no empathy with any other aspect of motherhood.

“Rikard explained that he was now a follower of a religion formed on Corcyra, the Transformationists,” Sand said. “You can call it a cult if you like.”

She grimaced. Nothing Adele had observed of Mistress Sand suggested that the older woman had any religious belief. It must have been painful to learn that her son had embraced religion, and particularly that he’d joined some foreign cult.

“I don’t have an opinion on religious matters,” Adele said. It was a mild rebuke to anyone who knew her as well as Mistress Sand did. “In any case, the boy has returned unharmed?”

Given the way human beings behaved, Adele suspected that Rikard may have become a Transformationist for no other reason than that it would horrify his mother. Well, that was better than him becoming a traitor to Cinnabar, which might as easily have happened.

“Sorry, Mundy,” Sand muttered, taking another drink. “Yes, quite unharmed. Elements on Corcyra have declared the planet independent from its homeworld, Pantellaria, and the Pantellarians have sent a force to regain control. I suppose you know about all that?”

“I have the basics,” Adele said. “I’ll be learning more; and if you have data that I might not find elsewhere—”

That was extremely unlikely, but it was polite as well as potentially a means of saving time.

“—I’d appreciate seeing it.”

“Yes, of course,” said Mistress Sand. “I’ll have everything sent to you as soon as I leave.”

She reached for the decanter. “The Transformationists aren’t pacifistic,” she said. “They’re mostly foreigners like Rikard—though he says there’re both Corcyrans and Pantellarians in the, well, faith. They’re supporting the independence movement, but they’re concerned that whoever wins may decide the Transformationists would make a good scapegoat. They’re arming so that they don’t look like an easy target.”

“Transformationism sounds like an admirably pragmatic faith,” Adele said. “Whatever its philosophical tenets.”

“Which is some consolation to a mother,” Sand said with a brief smile. “Though not a great one.”

She set her glass down and said, “Rikard has located what he insists is a treasure buried by the first settlers of Corcyra. I didn’t go into the details, but he’s not a stupid young man, and he has some experience with subsurface mapping. He held a position with an engineering firm here in Xenos.”

Sand grimaced again.

Adele raised her own glass for the first time and sipped what was indeed whiskey. She didn’t doubt that it was a good variety, though that was a taste she had never cultivated. She said deliberately, “I wouldn’t thank a friend who told me that I was drinking too much.”

Mistress Sand’s hand paused halfway to the decanter. She blinked as though she had just awakened to find herself on the Pentacrest, stark naked and singing “The Banner High,” the Alliance anthem. She pushed the decanter to the side of the table and said, “Mundy, I have occasionally been concerned that I would be told that you had shot yourself. I don’t believe that anyone will ever suggest that you’re drinking too much.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Adele, setting her glass down again.

“Look,” said Mistress Sand, sitting straighter than she had since Adele entered the room. “I wouldn’t have ordered you—well, with you, I mean asked—to get involved, but your involvement is the best news I’ve had since my son came home.”

She smiled wryly and added, “Since he explained
why
he’d come home, that is. I can give you as much official support as you want—and for Captain Leary, as well. If he’d care to take the
Princess Cecile
to the Ribbon Stars under RCN auspices, I can arrange that.”

“I will pass on your offer to Captain Leary,” Adele said. She felt no need to inform Mistress Sand of what Daniel was thinking. “Does the Republic have a position on the Corcyra situation?”

“Neither we nor the Alliance cares what happens to Corcyra,” Sand said. “Oh, there are functionaries on both sides, some of them wearing uniforms, who feel very strongly one way or another. But the position of the Senate and of Guarantor Porra as best we can determine—
I
can determine—is that all the parties involved on Corcyra can go to Hell in their own way, and the more quickly the better.”

Sand sighed, touched her glass, and pushed it firmly aside as she had the decanter. “Despite that,” she said, “there’s a very real possibility that we’ll shortly be at war over some silly business involving Corcyra, even though nobody wants it. No sane person wants that.”

Adele pursed her lips, looking for the correct phrasing. People in general did not use words as precisely as she did, and she needed to be understood this time.

“If I go to Corcyra as a private citizen,” she said, meeting the older woman’s eyes, “as I expect at the moment I will do, I cannot guarantee that the actions I take will be to the benefit of the Republic.”

Mistress Sand laughed. “Mundy,” she said, “I can’t guarantee that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, but I would bet on it with almost as much certainty as I would bet that whatever you do will be in Cinnabar’s best interests.”

She paused. She was fully herself again: Bernis Sand, whose mind controlled an intelligence apparatus which was more valuable to the safety of the Republic than any battleship in the RCN.

“I can justify all the help my organization provides you, Mundy,” she said forcefully. “But in my own mind, I am very clear that you are going to Corcyra as a favor to a colleague.”

Adele rose. “I’ll get back to preparations, then,” she said. “Captain Leary and I will need to talk to your son, probably this afternoon.”

“Yes, of course,” Sand said, rising also. “I’ll tell him to expect your call.”

And I’m not doing this for a colleague,
Adele thought as she opened the door to the grill room.
I’m doing it for a friend.

Bergen and Associates Shipyard, Cinnabar

Mon had an office on the top of what was now the Administration Building—it had been Hangar One when Daniel first visited the yard as a boy—but Daniel had asked to amble along the waterside with his manager while they talked. As expected, Mon was delighted to give his co-owner—Daniel had given Mon a ten percent share out of the fifty percent Daniel had inherited—a tour to show how well the yard was doing.

The “Associates” of the yard’s name was Uncle Stacey’s financial backer—Corder Leary, who had married Stacey’s sister and sired Deirdre and Daniel on her. Corder had little or nothing to do with his wife while Daniel was growing up, but he had made financial provision for his brother-in-law on Stacey’s retirement from the RCN at the rank of commander.

Deirdre handled all business between the yard and its silent partner. Daniel preferred not to deal with his father, and to the degree that Mon cared—Daniel wasn’t sure that Mon even knew the full ownership arrangements—he was probably pleased as well.

“We’re replacing all her thrusters,” Mon said, gesturing to the
Ezwal
, a small freighter in dry dock. “Three or four might still pass, but the new owner plans to trade in the Nugget Cluster, where his own crew’ll have to handle the refits. He wants to put the first major overhaul as far into the future as he can.”

Daniel nodded approvingly at the work. Six of the
Ezwal
’s eight thrusters were on a flatcar beside the dock, and the crane was winching up a seventh to join them.

Several of the dockworkers were missing limbs. Mon had continued Stacey Bergen’s practice of hiring former RCN spacers, particularly those who were no longer fit for interstellar service. As with Daniel’s decision to appoint Mon as manager, it was an act of kindness which had proven to be extremely good business.

“It’s always a pleasure to see how well things are going,” Daniel said. He beamed at the bustle. The Bergen yard had gotten more than its share of Navy work during the war because employing injured veterans had protected it against the loss of workers to man the fleet. Things didn’t seem to have slowed down since the Treaty of Amiens, though. “But I came here primarily to pick your brains about a ship. I’d like to hire—or buy; perhaps purchase would be a better idea—a well-found freighter of a thousand tons or so. You know, a tramp that a crew of six could work but with cabin space for twenty.”

Mon looked at Daniel and rubbed his cheek. His black hair was receding, but he had begun wearing fluffy side-whiskers which merged with a magnificent moustache. Mon was much plumper than he had been as a lieutenant, but he looked truly happy—which had never been the case when he wore an RCN uniform.

“Well, I tell you, sir,” he said. “I’ve got three ships myself that’d fit, though only two of them’re on Cinnabar right this moment. I own them, I mean—bought them out of my share of the yard’s profits and fixed them up. You can have any of them for a florin—buy or rent, I don’t care. It’ll be a pleasure to turn her over to you.”

Daniel frowned. A nearby tramp tested its intake pump by running up to high flow and exhausting the reaction mass back into the pool; the roar gave him time to think.

“I appreciate the offer, Mon,” Daniel said as the flow whirred down to a trickle, “but that’s scarcely necessary. I realize that the price of shipping has gone up considerably since the treaty, but—well, from the yard alone, my income is very substantial thanks to your good management. Which ships are on Cinnabar now?”