Death's Bright Day: Chapter Seven

DaSaenz Estate on Jardin

    DaSaenz flew the aircar well. That was a relief to Daniel, though it hadn’t crossed his mind before they took off.

    He’d ridden with some very bad drivers without worrying particularly about it. An aircar ride, even with Hogg driving, didn’t make the top ten most dangerous experiences of Daniel’s normal life. Miranda was sitting beside him this time, however.

    “Would you like the top up?” daSaenz called over his shoulder.

    Daniel looked at Miranda. “No, I like the breeze,” she said.

    After a moment she added, “This is a wonderful way to see the country. I’ve, well, I’ve never ridden in an aircar before.”

    Daniel squeezed her hand. He hadn’t realized that, though it shouldn’t have surprised him. Miranda and her mother had lived in Xenos where trams made personal transport unnecessary and flight was banned save for emergency vehicles. Daniel didn’t own or drive an aircar, so he and Miranda had always taken the monorail when they visited Bantry.

    They were swinging around the hill above Cuvier. DaSaenz stayed about three hundred feet up and kept his speed down to fifty miles an hour, though the car was obviously capable of going much faster — especially with the top up to smooth the airflow.

    “That house on the peak is where you live?” Daniel said, leaning closer to the driver. They got only occasional glimpses of the building’s buttresses through the tops of the native trees. The foliage grew from a base of filaments which rose in a slender cone over a hundred feet above the ground. The road at the bottom of the valley was the only other human construction now that they had left Cuvier behind.

    “Yes, we just call it the manor,” daSaenz said. “It’s Starscape Manor in town, I’m told. There’s an elevator down from the house, but we’ll enter at the bottom and go up to mother when you’ve seen the caves.”

    Ahead was a twenty-foot high rock face too sheer for vegetation to take root. In front of it was a graveled parking area onto which daSaenz sent the car in a descending arc. A sturdy kiosk was built against the cliff. Nearby a metal door was built into the rockface.

    “That’s the entrance to the caves?” Miranda said. “It looks like the door of a bank vault.”

    “Supposedly my ancestor Captain daSaenz had the door made from the colony ship’s sheathing,” daSaenz said. He flared the aircar neatly, hovered an instant, and settled the last six inches to the ground in front of the entrance. “The caves are dangerous to people without an experienced guide.”

    He shut off the fans and turned in his seat. “I suppose there was a certain amount of pride of ownership too, of course,” he said. “And initially I don’t believe the colonists realized that the glowworms were confined to this cave system. At least in seven hundred years, no other occurrence has been found.”

    Close up, what Daniel had thought of as a kiosk looked more like a pillbox. The walls were of closely fitted stone; the windows were small and now covered with armored glass which appeared to have replaced the original bars, as the slits in the masonry had been widened slightly. The door on one side was of the same heavy metal as that of the cave entrance.

    DaSaenz was coming around to Miranda’s side of the car before Daniel could get there. She hopped out on her own and smiled at their host. Miranda still practiced with school hockey teams to keep fit — which she certainly was.

    The kiosk’s door opened. A middle-aged man got out and bowed. His uniform was the same shade of red as the aircar, and it was piped with gold.

    “Good evening, sir,” he said. The guard didn’t have a gun, but the baton hanging from his belt was a meter long. “How may I help you, sir?”

    “Open the cave for me and my guests, then close it after we’ve gone in,” daSaenz said. “We’ll leave through the manor. Oh — and we’ll need one of the lanterns.”

    The guard trotted obediently back into the kiosk. The cave door — it was four inches thick — began to open with the high-pitched whine of a hydraulic pump.

    A moment later the guard returned with a flat six-inch lens of yellow crystal. It had a loop handle on top, but there was also a strap which daSaenz hung around his neck. The power supply must be part of the backing plate.

    “I’ll lead,” daSaenz said to Daniel. He completely ignored the guard who was waiting for further orders. “Keep with me. That shouldn’t be difficult since I’ll have the light.”

    Daniel and Miranda could have walked abreast through the cave entrance, but he took the lead so that he was between her and their guide. The worst you could really say about daSaenz was that he was brusque, as aristocrats by birth often are.

    Daniel smiled faintly. As I have been in my time, particularly if I’ve been drinking. I still don’t like daSaenz.

    The entrance started as a tunnel, clearly artificial. It was high enough that Daniel could walk upright but daSaenz ducked slightly. He probably would have cleared the ceiling also, but his caution was an instinctive response.

    “According to legend there was just a narrow fissure here,” daSaenz said. “A boy, one of my distant ancestors, crawled in. When he came back with stories about the lights — the glowworms, of course — his father blasted the rock wide enough that he could get in himself. The present entrance was built within that first generation.”

    The outer door closed and blocked the final leakage of sunshine, daSaenz switched on the lantern he carried. Its deep yellow light flooded the tunnel ahead — they had almost reached the end — and spilled out into a much larger chamber beyond.

    DaSaenz stepped aside so that the others could join him. “Why is the light this color?” Miranda asked.

    “It doesn’t harm your night vision,” daSaenz said. “And it doesn’t seem to affect the glowworms either — ultraviolet is fatal to them. But I’ll turn this out in a moment after you’ve had a chance to view the cave itself.”

    The chamber was a hollow spire rather than a dome, reaching higher than the lantern could illuminate even when daSaenz pointed it straight up. The base was a near oval measuring seventy feet by a hundred at an eyeball estimate.

    Lowering the lantern again, daSaenz tapped an object with the toe of his boot. “Notice this?” he said. “It was a plastic food container. And that –”

    He tapped a wrinkled rectangle about eight inches square.

    “– was a piece of paper, a wrapper I think. Though there may have been writing on the upper side, which of course can’t be viewed now.”

    Daniel squatted and tapped the second item with his fingernail. It was a sheet of metal, just as he had thought from its gleam in the lantern light.

    “Look at the bottom,” daSaenz said.

    Daniel raised the piece between his thumb and forefinger and turned it over. The underside was paper. The top had been plated with metal.

    “There are other bits of human trash here,” daSaenz said, gesturing toward the cave floor. “These are enough to show you what happens. Now I’ll show you how it happens.”

    He switched out the light. Daniel grabbed daSaenz’ arm by reflex; his other fist was cocked for a memory-guided punch to their guide’s belly.

    Before Daniel swung, his eyes noticed irregular pastel blotches all around. The larger blurs contained scatterings of bright points.

    “It’s what Daddy described,” Miranda said quietly. “Like being in the Matrix, surrounded by stars.”

    It’s nothing like the Matrix! Daniel thought, but Miranda’s hand touched his hip. He quickly released daSaenz and edged toward Miranda.

    “Sorry,” he said to their guide, embarrassed at his reaction. “I was startled.”

    The glowworms ranged in size from the pad of his thumb to a few that were the size of his palm. There had been no sign of them before daSaenz turned out the lantern. A number clustered close by on the floor, including a pale blue patch under Daniel’s right boot. In fact —

    He jerked his foot back. The blotch came with it.

    “It’s on my foot!” Daniel said, hoping he didn’t sound as panicked as he felt. He bent to release the closures and kick the boot away. Could he hop back to the entrance without stepping on another with his bare skin?

 

---

 

    “Glowworms are quite harmless on your clothing,” daSaenz said. The scorn Daniel heard in his tone was probably not just imagination. “Here, I’ll see if I can coax it on to the lantern. Hold still.”

    DaSaenz bent at Daniel’s feet; Daniel felt the lantern case pressing against the toe of his boot. The glow had stopped where it was; in fact Daniel had never seen it move, just realized that there was a blob of light on his foot. By effort of will he kept from kicking out violently.

    “Are they amoebas?” Miranda said, holding Daniel’s hand firmly. She was changing the subject, bless her heart.

    She’s afraid I’m going to turn her childhood dream into something unpleasant, Daniel realized. Aloud he said, “They’re true multi-celled animals, dear. They eat sulfur from the limestone and give off light.”

    “There!” said daSaenz, rising. The smear of light had transferred onto the back of the lantern; it seemed to have contracted into a brighter version of itself at half its previous inch diameter. “It seems to me that if you know that, Leary, you should also have learned that the glowworms are harmless.”

    “I accept that they’re harmless,” Daniel said, keeping his tone pleasant for Miranda’s sake. “I was just surprised to find something crawling on me when I hadn’t seen it until you turned the light out.”

    “They etch the rock with mild acid,” daSaenz said. “I suppose a glowworm could burn your bare skin slightly, though I don’t recall hearing of that happening.”

    DaSaenz waggled the lantern, visible for the glow, then let it hang back against his chest. “Daylight kills them, turns them to fine dust. I’ll leave the lantern in the sun when we return.”

    The glowworms didn’t illuminate the chamber, but Daniel saw daSaenz’ silhouette turn toward Miranda as he said, “Your husband isn’t quite correct, mistress. There’s no sulfur in limestone, but there are inclusions of iron pyrites, fool’s gold, in this bed. The glowworms ingest the pyrites, separate the sulfur from the iron in the crystals, and excrete the iron on objects which contain no sulfur themselves. I’ve forestalled –”

    He gestured again with the lantern.

    “– this one from plating the toe of Leary’s boots, since he was concerned about it.”

    Daniel said nothing. He knew very little chemistry.

    “They give off light when they crack the sulfur out of the fool’s gold,” daSaenz said. “One of my great-uncles had read geology. He told my father that he thought more of the cave is a result of the glowworms eating away the stone than just rainwater like most caves. From photographs the chamber has continued to grow in the past 700 years, despite the manor being built on top and blocking further drainage.”

    “Don’t you worry that the house is going to fall in?” Daniel said. He immediately felt like a fool.

    “No, I don’t, Leary,” daSaenz said. “But if you’re concerned about your safety, you’re welcome to return to the entrance and wait for us.”

    “Sorry,” Daniel muttered. He was making a fool of himself in front of Miranda. This young pup is making a fool of me!

    He gave himself up to the moment. The worms, so called, must be only a few cell layers thick. Daniel had seen no sign of the creatures in the lantern light, even though he must have been standing on the one which then crawled on his boot.

    Because their glow was faint even in absolute darkness, Daniel couldn’t judge how near they were. Some of them seemed infinitely far away, though he’d seen the cave walls in the lantern and knew that the farthest were within a hundred feet of where he stood.

    “They’re beautiful,” Miranda said. “They’re wonderful. Thank you, Daniel, for bringing me here. And thank you, Master daSaenz.”

    “This is the least that my family can do for such important people,” daSaenz said. “A famous Cinnabar captain, and the daughter of Midshipman Dorst. Who was well-known here on Jardin even if not so famous on his own world.”

    “My father is known here?” Miranda said, her grip on Daniel’s wrist tightening. “Known for what, please?”

    “I’m sure my mother can give you all the details when you speak with her,” daSaenz said. “Midshipman Dorst visited in my grandfather’s time, of course, so I have only scraps of knowledge.”

    He coughed and said, “This was a little thing, as I said. This is the ante-room where the public is allowed. Now I’ll show you a portion of the caves that very few even of my family have seen.”

    DaSaenz switched on the lantern. Daniel turned his head and found that he could still see ghosts of the glowworms on the back wall and floor of the chamber behind him, opposite the broad cone of light. The yellow hue had spared his night vision.

    “Unless perhaps you’re afraid, Leary?” daSaenz said.

    “No,” said Daniel. Though he kept his voice calm, he was clenching his right fist behind his back. “But Miranda may not –”

    “I’d like to go on, Daniel,” she said. “If that’s all right with you?”

    “Lead on, daSaenz,” Daniel said, his voice raspy. “Anywhere you go, I’ll keep up. We will.”

    DaSaenz walked toward the end of the chamber opposite the entrance tunnel, his lantern spreading a broad fan of yellow on the floor ahead. Even knowing they were there, Daniel saw no sign of the glowworms. What had looked like a shadowed fold in the rock became a narrow passage about five feet high when they approached it.

    DaSaenz turned sideways and pulled the lantern out on its strap to move it from his chest. He slipped into the passage, sending flickers of lantern light back to those in the chamber.

    Daniel thought quickly. “I’ll lead,” he said, following their guide before Miranda could. He half-knelt to give his waist more room in the triangular passage. It was awkward and uncomfortable and extremely embarrassing, but he did it.

    Five feet into the crack, Daniel came out into a tunnel with squared walls and a six-foot ceiling. A metal door was inset in the sidewall.

    DaSaenz waited beside it until Miranda sidled into the tunnel with less difficulty than Daniel had had. “This is the elevator to the manor,” daSaenz said, tapping the panel. “We’ll be going up in a moment. But if you’re still willing and able, Leary? It’s going to be quite narrow at the beginning.”

    “I’ll manage,” said Daniel. His voice was gruff. Even if I’ve got to strip and rub my skin off on the rock.

    The rock had been carved out only in front of the elevator. The crack leading to the next chamber must have been left unimproved to deter visitors. It continued out the far end of the elevator landing. DaSaenz squirmed into it.

    “Go ahead,” Daniel said, gesturing Miranda on. If he got stuck, he would back out and decide what to do next. He didn’t want to force her to back out also, and he didn’t want anybody, even Miranda, to be staring at him as he made up his mind about what to do next.

    He’d beat it, one way or another. He wouldn’t have been so successful had he not kept clear in his mind the number of ways things could go wrong with a plan, though.

    “Are there other openings in the anteroom, Master daSaenz?” Miranda said. Her voice was muffled by her own body.

    Daniel got down on all fours and squeezed himself into the passage. His upper shoulder blade — the right one — brushed repeatedly against the rock. The fabric was supposed to be tough, though he didn’t care if this jaunt converted his outfit to wiping rags.

    “Eighteen,” said their guide. Daniel could barely hear him. “Most of them are just cracks, but you can crawl a distance into four of them.”

    Daniel was in complete darkness. He assumed daSaenz had kept the lantern on, but none of the light leaked back past the two bodies ahead of Daniel and the kinks in the passage. At least it didn’t seem to be narrowing.

    DaSaenz said something. Miranda paused and Daniel’s left hand touched her foot.

    “Daniel,” she said. Her head must be turned, though Daniel couldn’t see even the foot he was touching. “It’s going to get tight in a moment, but it’s just a short place. Will you be all right?”

    “Keep moving,” Daniel said. How in hell was he supposed to know if he’d be all right until he reached the pinch? He certainly wasn’t better for talking about it in a tunnel tighter than a grave!

    Miranda moved on. Daniel waited a moment, lying on his side and trying to control his breath. The air wasn’t bad, though it had an odd mustiness. There couldn’t be much circulation down here.

 

---

 

    “Daniel, I’m through,” Miranda called. “It opens up when you get through.”

    “I’m coming,” said Daniel. He was already sorry for feeling so angry a moment before. He hadn’t said the things he’d been thinking, but Miranda knew him well enough to have heard them in his tone.

    She knows me well enough that it won’t have surprised her either. Well, if she’d wanted a saint, she’d been looking in the wrong direction. He was still embarrassed.

    The triangular passage narrowed side to side, and the peak lowered also. Daniel thrust at the rock with his toes, squirming forward almost as though he were swimming.

    It was definitely getting tighter. He pulled his left arm back along his body and twisted slightly to make his body as slim as he could. He didn’t think about it, just kept thrusting ahead. There was a way out, maybe not for him, but he’d keep going forward until he got there or died. Going forward…

    Fingers touched his outstretched wrist. Daniel squirmed a little further and he could get his left arm free also. He opened his eyes — he didn’t remember closing them — and the lantern made the wide chamber a yellow ambiance. DaSaenz and Miranda were waiting, she with a concerned expression. With another wriggling push Daniel was out.

    He got to his feet. Miranda hugged him, probably from affection. It was a good thing regardless, because otherwise Daniel would have toppled backward.

    “I’m all right,” he wheezed, and in a moment he was.

    “How did you find this place, Master daSaenz?” Miranda said, holding Daniel firmly. The ceiling was flat and much lower than that of the conical antechamber, but the floor had at least three large lobes. Its total area was considerable.

    “I’ve been studying the caves all my life,” their guide said. “I’ve had robotic mappers for the past fifteen years. I’ve explored every passage I’ve found and mapped them to the end, then built up a three-dimensional image.”

    DaSaenz made a broad gesture. “There are forty caves opening off this chamber,” he said, “and I know them all. I’ve seen things that no one has seen for hundreds of years, and I know the caves as no one else ever has.”

    “That’s very impressive,” Daniel said. He was breathing normally again.

    “It’s my life!” said daSaenz. “These caves are the daSaenz heritage. No one but a daSaenz really has a right to be here! Ah, though you, you’re my mother’s guests. That’s why I’m about to show you the greatest wonder of all.”

    “What would that be, Master daSaenz?” Miranda asked quietly. Her fingers were massaging the point of Daniel’s right shoulder.

    “I found a room which is alive with glowworms,” daSaenz said. “When I was last there a year ago, more of the rock was covered by them than was clear. You noticed that the tunnel we came through to get here didn’t have any glowworms in it?”

    Miranda nodded; Daniel grunted. He probably wouldn’t have noticed anything even if he’d kept his eyes open. He hadn’t been panicked, but squeezing through the passage had been an extremely unpleasant experience.

    “Because that stratum had no pyrites in it,” daSaenz said, nodding enthusiastically. “And there are very few in the present chamber, see?”

    He turned off the lantern. Daniel felt Miranda’s body shift as she turned to scan the whole chamber. He saw a pink blur on the floor in the middle distance. There seemed to be prickles and sparkles of light all around them, though they were too faint for him to be sure that he wasn’t seeing ghost images within his retinas.

    “But if you have the courage to come with me,” daSaenz said, “I’ll show you a hollow which must have been a huge pyrites crystal before the glowworms began to devour it. Huge.”

    “We’ll follow,” Daniel said. “Go on, then.”

    Miranda squeezed his hand again and stepped slightly away. DaSaenz turned on the lantern and led the way into a left branching…though when they were well within it, Daniel saw that what he’d thought was a solid wall to the right seemed rather to be a massive pillar standing in a single large bay rather than a divider between two. He couldn’t be sure in the side-scatter from the lantern.

    Their guide led them into a series of passages, some wider than others, but none really narrow. The ceiling remained high enough to clear their heads, though from caution Daniel put his left hand on his forehead. A scraped knuckle could be ignored, but a whack on the scalp was apt to be bloody and distracting.

    There were multiple branchings, but daSaenz never hesitated. He really did know the caves.

    “We’re coming to the wonder,” daSaenz called back over his shoulder. He got down on all fours and led into a branching to the left which was only about three feet high. Miranda hesitated; Daniel sent her in ahead of him, but he followed on her heels.

    “Here,” said daSaenz. He stopped and shifted in the passage. It gleamed when brushed by lantern-light: the rock was metal plated.

    DaSaenz shifted again and slipped waist deep into the rock: there was a hole in the floor of the passage. The remainder of his body and finally his head disappeared also. The lantern from below lit not only the opening but also the rope ladder hanging down into it.

    “Come, if you will,” daSaenz called. “I’ll turn out the lantern when you’re here.”

    “Wait,” said Daniel. He turned onto his left side to edge by Miranda as she shrank herself against the opposite wall.

    The ladder hung from a wooden bar. Daniel felt the ends and found they were held securely by U-bolts hammered into the rock. The fasteners and the rock were both glass-smooth with iron deposited by the glowworms, but the bar hadn’t been touched: wood must contain some sulfur, though not enough to tempt the creatures when pyrites was available.

    There were glowworms — a violet one and a red one, both more vivid and filled with bright sparks than those Daniel had seen farther back in the caves. He ignored them as he tested with his bare hands both the bolts and their grip on the crossbar. He had to be sure that the structure was solid before he trusted Miranda’s life and his own to it.

    Daniel couldn’t feel the creatures, though the vivid glow beneath his thumbs proved he was touching them. He shifted his grip onto the bar and let himself down into the opening. He kicked his feet until one boot found a rung; he settled his weight onto it, then walked himself down the rest of the way on the ladder. The rungs were wooden battens; the rope stringers seemed to be woven from some slick synthetic fiber.

    DaSaenz kept the lantern aimed at Daniel’s shoulders on the way down. The floor of the lower chamber was about ten feet below that of the passage from which they had dropped.

    Daniel gripped the ladder to hold it steady. “I’m clear!” he called up to Miranda. She descended with the supple quickness he had noticed in all her movements.

    DaSaenz swept his light around the chamber. It was an irregular polygon almost thirty feet across at its widest point. There were patches of bare rock in the floor, but the walls had a metallic luster deeper than the shimmer of deposited iron nearer the anteroom of the cave.

    “I suggest you keep very quiet after I turn the light off,” daSaenz said. “I’m going to move against the wall behind me, but you’ll get the best view if you move to the other end of the chamber.”

    Daniel nodded and walked away from their guide. Miranda was half a step ahead of him.

    “Are you ready?” said daSaenz.

    “Yes/yes.” Daniel’s voice was curt, Miranda’s musical.

    The lantern went off.

    The darkness was alive. The glowworms were not only brighter than those Daniel had seen before, they were larger — some of these were two hands across — and the concentration of bright points in the glow was greater. All the colors of the rainbow mingled, and the violet ones hinted that their light extended deeper into the spectrum than human eyes could follow.

    “Oh, Daniel,” Miranda said. “Oh, Daniel. Oh, this is so wonderful.”

    As daSaenz had said, glowworms covered more than half the surface of the chamber. They did not quite touch one another except in a humped mass along the edge near where Daniel and Miranda stood. There the glowworms had concentrated like an oil slick on the surface of a harbor.

 

---

 

    Daniel bent to the mass without speaking. He touched it, finding metal which was too thick to bend under the pressure of his hand.

    He felt lower to get to the edge from which he could lift a piece and feel the bottom. He expected to find bits of rock which had spalled off the wall when supporting pyrites had been eaten away.

    Daniel lifted a glove.

    He stood holding it. “DaSaenz, turn your light on!” he said. “I’ve found something!”

    DaSaenz didn’t reply. A moment later Daniel heard the click of battens knocking together. He ran back to where they had left their guide but as he feared, he was too late.

    “Daniel?” said Miranda.

    “The bastard’s pulled the ladder up behind him!” Daniel said.

 

---

 

Cuvier Harbor, Jardin

    Adele was lost in her work, pretty much as always. Some of the material in the files which Major Grozhinski had provided duplicated or at least supplemented Mistress Sand’s files, but Cinnabar could only guess at what the 5th Bureau was doing in the Tarbell Stars — let alone what they intended.

    The plural in speaking of the 5th Bureau was necessary here. Storn had laid out in detail the cluster assets both of his diocese and that of his rival Krychek. Storn’s activities had been limited to observation and to increasing his ability to observe — particularly on the worlds overseen by Krychek’s diocese.

    The First Diocese had been encouraging separatist movements on the more important worlds of his sector. That hadn’t been quite as useful as Krychek might have hoped when rebellion against the Tarbell Government had broken out on Ithaca.

    There was a great deal of hostility to President for Life Menandros throughout the sector, but the planetary leaders didn’t care for one another much either. The rebels formed a Council of the Upholders of the Freedom of the Tarbell Stars, but it was a talking shop which spent its time in ill-natured squabbles. The Council could not have successfully maintained a rebellion even against a foolish coxcomb like Menandros if Krychek had not provided personnel for administrative positions among the Upholders.

    Does Krychek think they won’t be noticed if they’re not officially in command? Adele wondered. Another possibility was the one which concerned General Storn: that Krychek had Guarantor Porra’s support, so that he didn’t have to be concerned about Pleasaunce learning of his plot.

    Under other circumstances Adele would have been sharing her task with Cory and Cazelet, not so much to reduce her workload as to bring them up to speed about the situation. This was the first night of the landfall, however, and both her deputies — their position unofficial but beyond any question — were sampling the entertainments of Cuvier City.

    Both men would be working beside Adele if she had asked, and their companions, Hale and Vesey respectively, would have been uncomplaining if disappointed. They all felt they owed Adele more than she thought they did, and they trusted her judgment implicitly.

    Her lips quirked. Adele was demonstrating her good judgment by not calling them away from their fun. She didn’t believe she had ever been young in the sense that people seemed to mean it, but she had observed humanity closely enough that she understood the concept.

    The watch officer was Chief Engineer Pasternak. He was competent for any question involving the Power Room or the propulsion system. Astrogation was a closed book to him, and Adele would probably be as useful as Pasternak if the Princess Cecile had to leave the planet.

    There would be plenty of time for Cory and Cazelet to study the Tarbell Stars on the twenty-day voyage from Jardin. And if there wasn’t, then Adele herself would be enough as she had always been enough in the past.

    I have flaws. I don’t have the flaw of false modesty.

    She was looking at the military and particularly naval strength of the Upholders, since that was probably the most significant factor. It would certainly be the first concern of her colleagues.

    For the most part the Upholder fleet was the collection of scraps and antiques which Adele had learned to expect in hinterlands like the Tarbell Stars, but there were exceptions. The three destroyers were of recent Alliance construction, and the officers and crew of one of them were ex-Fleet. That didn’t prove Krychek’s connivance as there was a considerable number of Fleet and RCN spacers freed by the Treaty of Amiens. Some of them preferred naval duties to those of the merchant service.

    There was also a modern heavy cruiser. That —

    Adele’s holographic screen blurred. She came awake to her present surroundings, blinking in surprised anger. Tovera, standing beside the signals console, had just slid her hand through the display.

    “Yes?” Adele said. She was still angry at having been dragged out of her studies, but she knew Tovera wouldn’t have interrupted her without a good reason.

    “Hogg wants to talk to you,” Tovera said with her usual lack of expression. She stepped aside, though Hogg didn’t move closer.

    Is Hogg afraid of me? Adele thought. Or is he simply deferring to Tovera’s ownership interest?

    “Ma’am,” Hogg said. His arms were at his sides, and he was standing as straight as Adele had ever seen him. “The master’s not back and he hasn’t called in neither. I know, you’re not his mother and I don’t worry about him normal like, but I been talking in some of the bars.”

    “Go on,” Adele said. She had no idea of what time it was. She called up a real-time image on top of her screen and viewed Cuvier Harbor at dusk, much later than she had expected it to be.

    “You see the thing is, the cave wasn’t open to strangers till seven years back when the current lady took over when her husband died,” Hogg said. “It was daSaenz family and maybe friends after a big dinner or the like. Not something a junior officer from a supply ship gets invited to. Dorst was lying about being there, and that means I don’t know what’s going on. And the master’s not back.”

    Adele began searching. She used the control wands through her personal data unit to access her console and through that the thirty-odd databases in Cuvier City which she had coupled during the time the Princess Cecile had been here.

    Hogg said something. From the corner of Adele’s eye she saw Tovera move him back so that he wouldn’t again try to interrupt. When Adele was searching, she ignored the people around her. If they thought that she should give them a running account of the process, they were going to be disappointed.

    Adele grimaced. She wasn’t sure there was a definitive answer, but she had what was probably good enough for current requirements.

    “I can’t at present prove that the caves were not open to the public thirty years ago when Midshipman Dorst landed here in the Orangeleaf…” Adele said to Hogg and Tovera. Pasternak was in his office in the Power Room; only she and the servants were on the bridge. “But there are ample references to them being opened one day a week when Carlotta daSaenz became head of the family seven years ago. At her father’s death, by the way; her husband wasn’t a daSaenz, she was.”

    As she spoke, she shifted the material from Major Grozhinski into a separate cache, then threw the mechanical switch under her saddle to cut it off completely. It could not be accessed on line; even Adele herself would have to snap the switch before she could get to the data.

    “What’s that mean?” Hogg said. He seemed bewildered as well as being angry.

    “It could be nothing,” Adele said, getting to her feet. She paused; she had been sitting in the same position for long enough that her circulation took a moment to respond to movement. “Dorst may have gotten a special dispensation, just as Daniel did. But we’ll visit the caves and ask. Hogg, can you line up transportation?”

    “I’ve got a truck up on the street,” he said. “Six wheels, a lot like we used for hauling at Bantry. Do you want something fancy?”

    “That will be fine,” Adele said. Hogg wasn’t a good driver, but a familiar vehicle was a safe enough choice under the circumstances. She strode off the bridge, heading for the Down companionway. “Oh, and Hogg? Bring a long gun. I’m not expecting trouble, but it’s as well to be prepared.”

    “There’s an impeller in the back already,” Hogg said. “And I’ve got a pistol.”

    Tovera laughed. The sound echoed in the armored companionway like the chittering of bats.

    “If it’s pistol range,” Tovera said, “leave it in your pocket. That’s for me and the mistress.”