The Serrano Connection (96 page)

In the hearing of half the kitchen staff and Berthold, who had wandered into the kitchen before the meal as usual. Silence fell, until one helper dropped her knife.

"I'm a Fleet officer," Esmay said. "You know I told everyone I would have to appoint a trustee, and an heir."

"Yes," Luci said. "I know that. But you hadn't spent even a week on Altiplano yet. You could change your mind, especially if things aren't going well in your Fleet."

Berthold snorted. Esmay could have done without that; Berthold's humor was uncomfortable at best.

"You see what she's like," he said, around a couple of olives he'd filched.

"I'm ready for lunch," Esmay said. "And those had better not be the export-quality olives . . ." Her warning glance took in the cooks and Berthold. He wagged a finger at her.

"You sound exactly like Grandmother. She could squeeze oil out of the very smell of olive."

"Lunch," Esmay said, leading the way. "A morning spent with lawyers and accountants, then Luci, has starved my brain."

Darien Prime Station

Pradish Lorany turned the pamphlet over and over in his hands. He wasn't sure about this. Yes, it was totally unfair that Mirlin had taken the children and moved away—that Sophia Antera had been promoted over his head—that over half the seats on the station citizens' council were held by women. He loathed the very thought of artificial births and manipulation of the human genome—if that wasn't interfering with God's plan, he couldn't think of anything that was. But while he agreed in principle that society was corrupt and degraded, and that it all began with the failure to understand the roles God had ordained for men and women, he could not quite convince himself that therefore it naturally followed that blowing up people was a Godly act. Especially since Mirlin and the children would die, too. He wanted respect from women, and leadership by men, and an end to tampering with human reproduction, but . . . was this the way to do it?

He thought not. He made up his mind. He would continue to support the Gender Defense League; he would continue to argue with his former wife that she was misunderstanding his reasons for disciplining the children by traditional methods . . . but he would not attend the next meeting with the representative of the Godfearing Militia who had attempted to recruit him to help place explosive charges.

In a spasm of disgust, he threw the pamphlet toward the orifice of the station's recycling system, but he turned away before it slid into the chute . . . and did not see it miss, to land right in front of the please ensure trash enters hopper sign.

Nor did he see the prune-faced old woman who glared at his retreating back as she stooped to pick up the crumpled pages and put them in carefully—but who stopped, her attention arrested by the glaring grammatical error in the first sentence. Sera Alicia Spielmann, as ardent a grammarian as she was a supporter of public neatness, took the pamphlet home to use as a bad example in her next complaint to the local school trustees . . . but when she read it, she called her friend whose grandson was a member of station security, instead.

She did not connect the "lazy litter-bum" or her own actions with the discovery, two days later, of the corpse of one Pradish Lorany who had been brutally attacked in his own apartment. Others made that connection.

Altiplano, Estancia Suiza

After lunch, Luci followed Esmay into the Landbride's quarters with obvious intent. Esmay, who'd been hoping for a time alone to think things over, decided she would have more peace if she let Luci talk herself out. "So what is it now?" she asked, half laughing. "Do you have five other schemes for the estancia, or are you planning to take over the government?"

Luci, it seemed, loved a boy—young man, actually—in a neighboring household. "Your father is set against it—I don't know why," she said. "It's a good family—"

"Who is it?" asked Esmay, who had a suspicion. At the name, she nodded. "I know why, but I think he's wrong."

"Is this another of those things you can't tell me about?" Luci asked with a pettish note in her voice. "Because if it is, I think it's mean to let me know you know . . ."

"Come all the way in, and sit down," Esmay said, shutting the door carefully. No one would disturb them now. She gestured to one of the comfortable chintz-covered chairs, and sat in another one herself. "I'll tell you, but it's not a pleasant tale. You know I was miserable the last time I was here, and I suppose no one told you why . . ."

"No one knew," Luci said. "Except that you had some kind of fight with your father."

"Yes. Well . . . there are too many secrets going around, and now that I'm Landbride, I'm going to do things differently. Back before you were born, when I was a small child, and my mother had died, I ran away."

"You!"

"Yes. I wanted to find my father, who was off at war. I didn't understand about war . . . it had been safe, here. Anyway, I ended up in a very dangerous—" Her throat closed, and she cleared it. "A village right in the middle of the war. Soldiers came."

"Oh—Esmay—"

"I was . . . assaulted. Raped. Then one of my father's troops found me—but I was very sick . . ."

"Esmay, I never heard of this—"

"No, you wouldn't have. They hushed it up. Because the soldier that did it was in my father's brigade."

"No—!" Luci's face was white to the lips.

"Yes. He was killed—old Seb Coron killed him, in fact. But they told me it was all a bad dream—that I'd caught my mother's fever, which I may have, and anything else was a fever dream. All those nightmares I had—they made me think I was crazy."

"And you found out, finally—?"

"Seb Coron told me, because he thought I knew already—that Fleet's psych exams would have found it and cured me." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "So . . . I confronted Father, and when I identified the face in the regimental rolls, he admitted it. That it had happened, that I remembered correctly."

From white, Luci went rage-red. "That's—hideous! Lying to you like that! I would've—"

"And the thing is," Esmay went on, remotely cheered by Luci's response. "The thing is, the person who did it was of that family. The man you love is his nephew, his older brother's son—"

Luci's face whitened again. "Arlen? You can't mean Arlen. But he was killed in action—they have a shrine to him in the front hall."

"I know. He
was
killed in action—by Seb Coron for assaulting a child—me."

"Oh . . . my." Luci sat back. "And his father was commanding something—so your father didn't tell him—? Or did he?"

"I don't know if his family knows anything at all, but even if they do it was all kept quiet. He got his medals; he got his shrine in the front hall." She could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"And your father doesn't want anything to do with their family . . . I understand . . ."

"No . . . they stayed friends, or at least close professionally. I think my father considered it an aberration, nothing to do with his family. I danced with his younger brother when I was fourteen, and he said nothing. He'd have been delighted if I'd married Carl. But he's worried now, because he knows I know, and he isn't sure what I'll do."

"I'll—I'll break it off, Esmay." Luci's eyes glittered with unshed tears.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Esmay leaned forward. "If you love him, there's no reason to break it off on my account."

"You wouldn't mind?"

"I . . . don't know how I'd react, if he looks much like Arlen did. But that shouldn't matter, to you or the family, if he's suitable otherwise. Is he a good man?"

"I think so," Luci said, "but girls in love are supposed to be bad judges of character." That with a hint of mischief.

"Seriously . . ."

"Seriously . . . he makes my knees weak, my heart pound, and I've seen him at work—he wants to be a doctor, and he helps out in the estancia clinic. He's gentle."

"Well, then," Esmay said, "for what good it will do, I'm on your side."

"What good it will do? Don't be silly—you're the Landbride. If you approve a match, no one's going to argue with you."

That had not occurred to her, having never contemplated a match herself. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I am!" Luci grinned. "Didn't you realize? What happened when you—" She sobered suddenly. "Oh. Did it—what happened—make you not want to marry?"

"It may have," Esmay said, ever more uncomfortable with where this was heading, onto turf that Luci clearly knew well. "I didn't think of it at the time—I just wanted off-planet. Away from it all."

"But surely you've met someone, sometime, who made your knees weak?"

Before she could say anything, she felt the telltale heat rushing to her face. Luci nodded.

"You did . . . and you don't want anyone to know . . . Is it something . . . outworldly?"

"Outworldly?" Barin was an outworlder, but she wasn't sure that's what Luci had meant.

Now it was Luci blushing. "You know—those things people do that—we don't do here. Or at least, not officially."

Esmay laughed, surprising both of them. "No, it's nothing like that. I've met people like that, of course—they don't think anything of it, and they're quite ordinary."

Luci had turned brick red by now. "I always wondered," she muttered. "How . . ."

"We had that in the Academy prep school," Esmay said, grinning as she remembered her own paralyzing embarrassment. "It was part of the classes on health maintenance and I nearly crawled under the desk."

"Don't tell me; you can show me the data cube," Luci said, looking away. Then she looked back. "But I do want to know about him—whoever it was—is?"

"Was," Esmay said firmly, though pain stabbed her. "Another Fleet officer. Good family."

"Did he not love you?" Luci asked. She went on without waiting for an answer. "That happened to me—the second time I fell in love, he didn't care a fig about me. Told me so quite frankly. I thought I'd die . . . I used to ride out in the woods and cry."

"No, he—he liked me." Esmay swallowed and went on. "I think—I think he liked me a lot, actually, and I—"

"Well, what happened, then," Luci said.

"We . . . quarrelled."

Luci rolled her eyes. "Quarrel! What's a quarrel? Surely you didn't let one quarrel end it!"

"He's . . . angry," Esmay said.

Luci looked puzzled. "Is he violent when he's angry? You still love him—that's obvious. So why—?"

"It's—mixed up with Fleet business," Esmay said. "That's why I can't explain—"

"You can't stop now," Luci said. "And I'll bet most of it's about you and him anyway, and nothing to do with any universe-shattering secrets. You trust me with your horses and your money; you ought to trust me to keep a few stupid secrets about Fleet."

The logic made no sense, but Esmay was past caring; she'd held it in as long as she could; she had to talk to somebody. As simply as she could—which turned out to be not very simply at all—she explained about Barin, about her transfer to command track, and her arrival at Copper Mountain. And Brun. When she first mentioned Brun, Luci stopped her.

"So—
that
's the rat in the grain bin."

"She's not a rat . . . she's a talented, bright, attractive—"

"Rat. She went after your man, didn't she? I can see it from here. Used to getting what she wants, probably started falling in love at twelve—"

Esmay had to smile at Luci's tone. "It's not that simple, though. I mean, that's what I thought—that's what other people said, with all the time she spent with Barin—"

"And why weren't you spending time with him?"

"I was taking double courses, that's why. They both had more time off—everyone had more time off than I had. And then she talked to me . . . she said she wanted to be friends, but she was always telling me how to dress, how to do my hair—"

Luci pursed her lips. "You could use some advice there—"

"It's
my
hair!" Esmay heard her own voice rise, and brought it down with an effort. "Sorry. She wanted to talk about Altiplano, and about our customs, and it sounded so . . . so condescending, and one day she was talking about Barin, and I just . . . blew up."

"Told her to keep her sticky fingers off your man, did you?"

"Well . . . not exactly. I told her—" She didn't want to repeat those angry phrases, which echoed in her head sounding far worse than they had at the time. "I called her names, Luci, and told her she had no morals worth mentioning, and should go away and quit corrupting people."

"Oof. I can see I don't ever want you mad at me."

"And then I had to leave for the field exercise in Escape and Evasion—no, I'll tell you about that later—and when I came back she'd left Copper Mountain, and my commander was furious with me for what I'd said to her. She was under surveillance, being the Speaker's daughter, so they had it all recorded, and somehow the news vids had got hold of it. Barin—I thought he'd slept with her, and then he was mad at me for thinking he would. And as if that weren't bad enough, she was later captured by pirates, and they tortured her and took her away—and everyone's blaming me."