Heris Serrano

by Elizabeth Moon

  "We'll think of something," Andres said that first night. "We would prefer not to kill you; we're not experienced at this sort of thing and we might botch disposing of your bodies. That way you'd cause us even more trouble. Maybe we can get hold of some drugs to alter your memories or something. In the meantime—" In the meantime meant uncomfortable positions, tethered back to back.

  The next morning, Borhes raided their pockets. "Sorry," he said. "But we don't have enough money to feed you and us, and I presume you're hungry."

  "We are expected back at the Institute," George said.

  "Thanks for reminding us," Andres said, grinning. "I think you need to send a message saying you went somewhere and won't be back for a few decads, at least. Let's see . . . what might two wealthy young men do on this planet besides hang around here? Bor, pick up a travel cube, why don't you?"

  With the threat of imminent death, Ronnie found he was quite willing to contact the hotel and explain that they had decided on a tour—no, hold their luggage, they were going horse-packing and would have to buy the survival gear they needed closer to the trailhead. George grimaced when Ronnie got through. "I don't know why you wouldn't go for that cruise," he said. "If anyone asks, Andres, they'll know it wasn't us. Ronnie and me riding horses in the mountains?"

  "The cruise ship has constant contact with the shore; it would be easy enough to transfer a query. We inquired, and this tour company offers a real wilderness experience. No comsets at all." Andres smiled. "No one from the Familias is going to try—if they call the hotel, they'll be told you're out of the city, touring. It costs too much, and takes too long, to have a realtime conversation."

  * * *

  Over the next few days, George kept after the clones whenever he was awake, pointing out repeatedly that they had no plan, that they couldn't hold prisoners in an apartment forever, that someone would eventually find out.

  "We could kill you," Andres said finally, in a temper. "At least we wouldn't have to listen to you, even in prison."

  "You don't want to kill us," George said. "You know that; you've said that. What you want is decent anonymity, right?"

  "Of course."

  "Then get plastic surgery." The clones looked at each other, then back at George.

  "We like being clones; we're used to it."

  "Fine. I'm not asking you to change that . . . but get enough change so that you don't look like Gerel to any casual tourist from the Familias who might happen into a taverna and see you. You can kill us, of course, and you may be right that my father wouldn't be able to find you or extradite you, but if Familias visitors start dying off, the Guernesi are going to notice."

  "And you already told us they have a very efficient law-enforcement system," Ronnie added.

  The clones looked at each other again. "We're used to looking like this," Borhes said.

  "You're also used to being mistaken for Gerel," George said. "But you don't like it. Just a little change—enough that the Familias crown prince isn't the first person that pops into mind when you're seen. Then you could be a normal clone pair here, and no one would ever know."

  "Except you two," Andres said.

  "And my Aunt Cecelia, and Captain Serrano," Ronnie said. "They haven't spread it around—why do you think we would?"

  Andres laughed unpleasantly. "Ronnie—I know you too well. Remember the Royals?"

  Ronnie felt himself flushing. "I was a silly young ass then."

  "And you are suddenly a wise old graybeard?"

  "No. But if I couldn't be discreet, I'd never have gotten my aunt out of that nursing home."

  "She didn't tell us that." Were they interested, or just pretending? It didn't matter; Ronnie was more than willing to keep talking if it gave him a chance to live longer.

  He spun the tale out, emphasizing everyone's role: George spreading the rumors about a "drop-in" party at the facility that had created the confusion, Brun with her hot air balloon modified with unobtrusive steering apparatus, and the scramble to get his aunt into it. He hadn't told even George all the details, his mingled terror and disgust as he unhooked Cecelia from her medical monitors and dressed her.

  "And what did you do then?" asked Andres when he had gotten as far, in the story, as leaving the parking lot at the facility.

  "Went home, got out my parasail, and joined our crowd for a party at the beach." The police had found him there sometime after midnight, with witnesses to say he'd been there since late afternoon. And the facility staff had checked him out as he left there, alone. "They knew she hadn't walked off by herself, and they suspected that she'd been—abducted was the word they used—during the Festival, when so many balloons were around. But they couldn't prove anything against me. I kept expecting the attendant who had set up the tape loop to accuse me, but he disappeared. They claimed they had no tape records of any of the patients for that day—that something had happened to them—and Mother threatened to sue them for negligence. I was afraid if she did they'd search harder and find them. Perhaps the attendant ran off with them when he realized Cecelia was gone and his job was forfeit."

  "And you didn't confide in anyone?"

  "No. It was too dangerous. George knew or suspected that I had something to do with it, but all he'd been told beforehand was to spread those rumors. I knew Brun was going to take Cecelia out in the balloon, but not where—I could guess it was to her family's private shuttle, but from there—I didn't know."

  "You would claim this proves your ability to keep secrets?"

  "Well . . . yes. Doesn't it?"

  "Not really. You just told us, presumably because you're scared. What if someone scared you about us?"

  Ronnie sagged, and glanced at George hoping he had a bright idea. But George had gone to sleep, to snore in the irregular, creative way that made sleeping in the same room with him so impossible.

  Chapter Seven

  "Raffaele . . ." Her mother's expression hovered between anxiety and annoyance. Raffa blinked. Her mind had drifted again, and the direction it had drifted did no one any good, and would infuriate her mother if she knew.

  "Yes?" she asked, trying for a more mature boredom.

  "You're thinking about that boy," her mother said. It was entirely unfair that mothers could, breaking all physical laws, practice telepathy.

  "He's not a boy," Raffa said, in a counterattack she knew was useless.

  "You agreed—" her mother began. Raffa pushed away the untouched breakfast which had no doubt given her mother the evidence needed, and stared out the long windows at the formal garden with its glittering statuary. The Lady of Willful Mien gazing scornfully past The Sorrowful Suitor. Boy with Serpent (she had hidden childish treasures in the serpent's coils) in the midst of the herbs with snake in their names—a silly conceit, Raffa thought now. The group Musicians in the shade of the one informal tree (since no one could prune a weeping cassawood into a formal shape) and the line of bronze Dancers frolicking down the sunlit stone path toward the unheard music. She pulled her mind back from the memory that led straight from a child fondling the dancers' bronze skirts, to the feel of Ronnie's hand on her arm.

  "I agreed to break the engagement. I agreed not to marry him secretly. I did not agree never to think of him again. It would have been a ridiculous agreement."

  "Well." Her mother looked pointedly at the congealed remains of an omelet, and then at Raffa. "It will do no good to starve yourself."

  "Hardly," Raffa said. She lifted her arms, demonstrating the snug fit of the velvet tunic that had been loose several weeks before.

  "Still." Parents never quit, Raffa thought. She wondered if she would have the energy for that when she was a parent herself. Assuming she became one. She supposed she would. Eventually. If Ronnie came back, and his parents quit quarreling with her parents, and so on. In the meantime, she was supposed to look busy and happy. Busy she could manage. She stood up, while her mother still groped for the next opening, and forced a smile.

  "I've got to get to t
he board meeting. Remember that Aunt Marta asked me to keep an eye on her subsidiaries for her?"

  "You don't have to go in every day, Raffaele—"

  "But I'm learning," Raffa said. That was true. She had known vaguely what sorts of holdings her family had, had understood that whenever certain products changed hands, money flowed into the family coffers, but she had paid far more attention to what she spent her allowance on, than where it came from. "It's actually kind of interesting."

  "I should hope so." Delphina Kore had managed her own inherited corporations for years; of course she thought it was interesting. "I just meant—you have plenty of time to learn."

  "You used to say, 'when I was your age, I was running DeLinster Elements singlehanded—' " Raffa reminded her.

  "Yes, but that was before—when everyone knew rejuv was a one-time thing. Now you have plenty of time—as much as you want."

  And parents would live forever, the most effective glass ceiling of all. She would have rejuv herself, when the time came, but she didn't look forward to a long, long lifetime of being the good daughter.

  "We might get tired of running things," her mother said, surprising her. Had she been that obvious? Her mother chuckled. "You'll have your turn, and it won't be as far ahead as you fear."

  She didn't argue. She rarely argued. She thought about it, calmly and thoroughly, as she did most things.

  Brun had wanted to be an adventurer. At least that's what she'd said. Raffa wondered. All those years as a practical joker, a fluffhead party girl . . . had she really changed? Raffa remembered the island adventure well enough. She had been scared; she had killed someone; she had nearly died. She had done well enough, when you looked at the evidence—no panic, effective action—but she wouldn't have chosen that way to maturity, if what she had now was maturity. She had always been the quiet one of the bunch, the one who got the drunks to bed, the injured to the clinic, the doors relocked, and the evidence hidden. She had imagined herself moving happily into an ordinary adult life—ordinary rich adult life, she reminded herself. She liked privilege and comfort; she had no overwhelming desire to test herself.

  Now . . . Raffa looked at the serious face in the mirror and wondered why she was bothering. Brun, yes—not only her wildness, but her family's flair, if that's what you wanted to call it. Her own family had had no flair, not for generations. Steady hard work, her parents had always told her, made its own luck. Do it right and you won't have to do it over. Think ahead and you won't need good luck.

  But Ronnie. Logic had nothing to do with that. She had argued with herself, but her mind had argued back: he was eligible on all counts except that right now his parents and her parents were on opposite sides, politically and economically. Otherwise—they were both R.E., they were both rich, they had grown up together. AND she loved him.

  Word had spread that she and Ronnie were no longer an item. She suspected her mother, but it was not something they could discuss, not now. With the Royal Aerospace Service on something like permanent leave, there were more rich young men lounging around, lining the walls at social events, than she had ever known. Cas Burkburnet, who danced superbly and whose parents had something to do with the management of Arkwright Mining. Vo Pellin, a great lumbering bear who could hardly dance at all, but made everyone laugh. Anhera Vaslin and his brothers, all darkly handsome and eager to find wives to take back home. She knew better than that; Chokny Sulet had been a reluctant annexation to the Familias, and the women who went home with its young men were never seen offplanet again.

  She had all the dancing, dining, and partying that she could absorb. If she had been a storycube heroine, it would have defined social success. And like a storycube heroine, she felt stifled by it all. She scolded herself for being selfish and silly, for remembering the feel of Ronnie's head in her lap—his cold, muddy, unconscious head in her lap—when she was dancing with Cas. She had expected to hear about Ronnie from George Mahoney, who gossiped freely about everyone, no matter which side of a political divide you or they were on, but George had disappeared from social functions at the same time as Ronnie. No one seemed to know where they were, and Raffa couldn't ask pointed questions without brows being raised and word getting back to her mother.

  She was delighted, therefore, to get a call from George's father Kevil, who asked her to meet with him and Lord Thornbuckle. She had not been in the Council complex since the king's resignation. But she had grown up hearing about Kevil and Bunny, contemporaries of her parents, long before she had realized that they were important people. Now, as they settled her in a comfortable leather chair and offered her something to drink, she felt an odd combination of maturity and childishness. She was being admitted to adult councils in a way that made her feel even younger than she was.

  "Ronnie and George went on a mission for us," Lord Thornbuckle said, after she had accepted coffee and refused thinly sliced nutbread. Raffa clenched her hand on the saucer and set it down before it shook and rattled the cup. Ronnie and George? They had sent those two out together?

  "We thought they'd help each other," Kevil Mahoney said. Raffa held her tongue. No use arguing with a lawyer of that class. "It may have been a mistake," he admitted, after a short silence.

  "We thought of asking another of their friends—someone from the Royal Aerospace Service—but things are rather . . . delicate at the moment."

  "Delicate?"

  The two men looked at each other. Raffa felt like screaming, but didn't. What good would it do?

  "They've disappeared," Lord Thornbuckle said. "And we don't know whom we can trust, in the old administration. We don't know if the reason they've disappeared has something to do with their mission, with something else entirely, or with communications failures. There've been problems recently, as I'm sure you're aware."

  Everyone was. The interruption of commercial transfers, even for so brief a period, had panicked the public.

  "At the moment, we're dealing with a crisis—more than one, in fact, though you don't need to know all of them. We can't go. We need the information we sent them to get, and we need to know what happened to them. If we send more young men, especially those who've been in the military, it will be noticed in the wrong way."

  "You want me to go." Neither of them met her eyes at first. Raffa felt her temper rising. This was ridiculous; they didn't live back on Old Earth, in prehistoric times. "You want me to find Ronnie or George, and you think whoever's up to mischief will believe I'm chasing after Ronnie because of romance."

  "That was the idea," said Lord Thornbuckle.

  "It's ridiculous," Raffa said. She let herself glare at him. "It's out of a storycube or something. Lovesick girl goes haring after handsome young man in need of rescue. What do you want me to do, wear a silver bodysuit and carry some impressive-looking weapon?" Even as she said it, she realized she would look stunning in a silver bodysuit, and she imagined herself carrying one of the rifles from the island. No. It was still ridiculous.

  "People do," Kevil Mahoney said, peering at his fingertips as if they had microprint on them. "People do do ridiculous illogical things. Even for love."

  Raffa felt herself going red. "Not me," she said. "I'm the sensible one." It sounded priggish, said like that in this quiet room. She opened her mouth to tell Lord Thornbuckle about the times she'd saved Brun from official retribution, and shut it again. That was the past, and didn't matter. "Where?" she asked, surprising herself.

  "The Guerni Republic," Lord Thornbuckle said. "Some planet called Music."

  "It would be," Raffa said. She felt trapped, on the one hand, and on the other there was a suspiciously happy flutter in her chest. Trapped? No . . . out from under Mother at last, and with a good cause. She was not going out there to be silly with Ronnie, of course not, but . . . "I'll go," she said, as ungraciously as possible, but also quickly. Before she thought about it. Because, underneath it all, she wanted to go. She wanted a chance to get away from her mother, away from everyone, and think. And sh
e wanted to see Ronnie alone, very far away, and make up her own mind.

  Traveling alone on a major liner was not an adventure, she told herself firmly. It was nothing like Brun's mad dash across space, working in the depths of livestock freighters and what all. She didn't want that, anyway. She ate exquisitely prepared meals in the first-class dining room, worked out in the first-class gymnasium, flirted appropriately with the younger stewards, and pushed away the occasional desire to measure herself against Brun.

  She pored over the tourist information on the Guerni Republic. Her Aunt Marta's holdings included small interests in several Guernesi corporations, inherited through marriage a couple of generations back. Raffa was surprised to find that one of them had its corporate headquarters on Music—handy, but odd. She'd thought it manufactured something used in agriculture—and Lord Thornbuckle had said that planet specialized in medicine. But the headquarters were on the tourist cube as "an example of post-modern business architecture, vaguely reminiscent of the Jal-Oplin style favored in the Cartlandt System two millennia ago." The visual showed an elaborate fountain surrounded by vast staircases that seemed to exist just to create interesting shadows.