Worlds

by Eric Flint

  Then, noticing the intensity lurking in the man's dark brown eyes, she began to wonder. Her eyes moved to Zilwicki's companion. Robert Tye, wasn't it?

  Tye solved the mystery for her. The little man's head was turned, examining Isaac. Suddenly, Tye's round face broke into a very cheery smile. Because of his pronounced epicanthic fold, the expression almost turned Tye's eyes into pure slits.

  "With your permission, Lady Catherine, I will assume the lotus. I believe your—ah, butler—would find that more relaxing."

  Tye didn't wait for Cathy's response. An instant later, folding himself down with astonishing ease and grace, Tye was sitting cross-legged on the lush carpeting. His legs were tightly coiled, each heel resting on the upper thigh of the opposite leg. His hands were placed on his knees, the fingers widespread.

  Isaac seemed to straighten a bit. And his hands were now clasped behind his back instead of in front of his groin.

  "Do you know this man, Isaac?" she blurted out.

  Isaac's headshake was so slight it was not much more than a tremor. "No, ma'am. But I know of him. He is quite famous among martial artists."

  Cathy stared at Tye. "Coup de vitesse?"

  Tye's cheerful smile returned. "Please, Lady Catherine! Do I look like a barbarian?"

  Zilwicki interrupted. "Master Tye is here at my request, Lady Catherine." His tight mouth twitched in one corner. "It might be better to say, at his insistence."

  Cathy was struck by the man's voice. His accent, partly—Zilwicki still bore the imprint of his obvious Gryphon highlander upbringing. But, mostly, it was that Zilwicki's voice was so deep it was almost a rumble.

  Her natural impulsiveness broke through the moment's tension.

  "Have you ever considered a singing career, Captain? I'm sure you would make a marvelous Boris Gudonov."

  Again, Zilwicki's mouth made that little twitch. But his eyes seemed to darken still further.

  "My wife used to say that to me," he murmured. "But I think she was mostly just tired of coming to church choirs, dressed in suitably conservative clothing. She'd have rather swept into the opera house in one of the glamorous gowns I bought for her. Which, sad to say, almost never got worn."

  For all the affectionate humor in the remark, Cathy did not miss the sorrow lurking behind it. That, and the name, finally registered.

  "Helen Zilwicki?"

  The captain nodded.

  "My condolences, Captain."

  "It's been many years, Lady Catherine," was Zilwicki's reply. His deep-set eyes seemed almost black, now. Perhaps that was simply a shading, due to the relatively dim lighting in the study. His mass of black hair—cut short, in the military style, but very thick—added to the impression, of course. But Cathy did not doubt for a moment that, despite the disclaimer, the man before her had never stopped grieving his loss.

  "I'm surprised you made the connection so quickly," he added. "Zilwicki is a common name on Gryphon." The captain paused; then: "And I wouldn't have expected someone on your end of the political spectrum to remember such things."

  Cathy shook her head. The gesture was not so much one of irritation as simple impatience. "Oh, please! Captain, I warn you right now that I detest being pigeonholed."

  "So I deduced, studying your file. But I'm still surprised." Zilwicki spread his hands in a little economical gesture. "My apologies."

  She stared at him. "You studied my file? Whatever for?" Her jaws tightened. "And let me say, Captain, that I also detest being spied upon!"

  Zilwicki took a deep breath. "I had no choice, Lady Catherine. Because of the situation, I am forced to operate completely outside of the command chain, and I need your help."

  "My help? With regard to what situation?"

  "Before I explain, Lady Catherine, I must tell you that I was not exaggerating when I said I was operating completely outside the command chain. In fact—"

  He took another deep breath. "When this is all over, however it ends, I expect to face a court-martial. I won't be surprised if the charges include treason as well insubordination and gross dereliction of duty."

  His eyes seemed like ebony balls. But it was fury rather than sorrow which filled his voice. "Ambassador Hendricks and Admiral Young were quite explicit in their instructions to me. And I propose to shove those instructions as far up their ass—pardon my language—as possible. With or without lubricant, I don't much care."

  Cathy hated her own laughter. She had heard it, on recordings, and it sounded just as much like a horse's bray as she'd always suspected. But she couldn't suppress the impulse. She wasn't good at controlling her impulses, and laughter came easily to her.

  "Oh, splendid!" she cried. Then, choking: "No lubricant, Captain—not for those two! In fact—" Choke; wheeze. "Let's see if we can't splinter those instructions good and proper beforehand. Leave the bastards bloody."

  Captain Zilwicki's mouth began to twitch again. But the twitch turned into an actual smile, and, for the first time, the humor which filled his voice seemed to creep into his eyes.

  He was quite an attractive man, Cathy decided, once you got past that forbidding exterior. "And just how can I help you in this magnificent project, Captain? Whatever it is."

  Helen

  Helen was so engrossed in her work that she completely forgot to gauge its duration. For the first time, escape was actually a tangible reality instead of an abstract possibility. It was only when the digging shard set loose a small pile of sand—a pocket of dust, rather, encysted within the crumbled stones and fill—that she remembered.

  Helen was immediately swept by panic. She began hastily backing out of the small tunnel into her cell. As soon as she emerged, she scrambled over—still on her hands and knees—to her makeshift "hourglass."

  Empty.

  Now the panic was almost overwhelming. Helen had made the timing device out of an old container she had found in a corner of the cell. A paint can, she thought, although the thing was so ancient that it was hard to tell. Fortunately, the can had been made of some kind of synthetic substance. Metal would have long since corroded away.

  Helen had punched a small hole in the bottom with a sharp stone. Then, as soon as her captors provided her with the next meal, she began experimenting by filling the can with the dry and powdery dust which covered the cell's "floor." After three meal cycles, she had been satisfied that the can would run empty long before her captors returned with another meal. But she had always been careful to emerge from the tunnel and cover her traces while there was still dust in the container.

  Empty. But for how long? For all she knew, Helen's captors were about to enter the cell.

  For a moment, she almost pressed her ear against the door to see if she could hear them. But there was no point to that. The impulse was pure panic, nothing else. Helen forced herself to remember her training.

  Breathing first. Master Tye always says that. Breathing first.

  She took a slow, deep breath, letting the air fill her mind with calmness at the same time as it filled her lungs with oxygen. Another. Then another.

  Under control. Now moving quickly but surely, Helen began to cover her tracks. First, she fitted the panel over the tunnel entrance. Then, as always, she piled debris against it, making sure that the various pieces were in the same arrangement.

  After that, she began mixing the fresh fill with the old dirt and dust covering the floor. That was slow work, because Helen had to be careful to stay as clean as possible. Her captors provided her with enough water to wash her hands and face, but nothing more. Of course, after days spent in the cell—which was really nothing more than a grotto in the ruins—she was dirtier than she'd ever been in her life. But she couldn't make it too obvious that the grime covering her was more than could be expected from the surroundings.

  Finally, she put on the rest of her clothing. Whenever she went into the tunnel, Helen wore nothing but underwear. She had no way to wash her outer garments. If she'd worn them while she was digging, her clothes would
have become utterly filthy. Even her captors, who seemed as indifferent toward her as they would to a lab rat, would have noticed soon enough.

  She finished just in time. She heard voices on the other side of the door. By the time her captors started the process of unbolting the door, Helen had assumed the position they demanded of her when they brought food and fresh water. Squatting in a corner, staring at the wall. Docile and obedient.

  She heard the door open, and her captors coming into the cell. Two of them—a woman and a man, judging from the sound of the footsteps.

  The woman made a comment in that unknown language. Helen didn't understand the words, but she grasped the emotional content. Contemptuous and derisive humor; alloyed, she thought, with more than a trace of lasciviousness. True, Helen wasn't certain about that last. She had just reached the stage in her life when her body began to take a new shape, and Solarian mores were very similar to Manticoran ones when it came to sexual disrespect. But she thought she could recognize a leer when she heard one.

  The man responded with his own laughing remark, and Helen had no doubt at all about his. She couldn't see his face, but the words alone practically drooled.

  She heard the sounds of the food and water being placed on the floor next to the pallet which served her as a bed. Again, the man said something and laughed, and the woman joined him. Listening, Helen thought she had never heard such a coarse and foul sound in her life.

  But that was the end of it. They did not come over to her, nor did they do one of their occasional and very cursory inspections of the cell.

  Swine. Helen willed herself into a pose of utter subservience. A mouse huddling in the presence of cats. She concentrated on her breathing.

  They left. Helen waited until she heard the chain being put into place before she moved a muscle. Then, scurrying like a mouse, she began to refill the hourglass.

  Running water.

  Cathy

  After Zilwicki finished, Cathy felt as confused as she'd ever been in her life. Nothing of what he'd said made any sense.

  "But surely the police—"

  Zilwicki shook his head firmly. "No, Lady Catherine. On that subject Ambassador Hendricks and Admiral Young are perfectly correct. My daughter wasn't kidnapped by common criminals. This was a political act, of some kind. The Solarian police simply aren't equipped to deal with that, and I don't want to get the Solarian League's intelligence services anywhere near it." His square, blocky face tightened. "I trust those people not much more than I do the Peeps."

  Cathy rose from her chair and moved over to the window. The act was not done from any desire to admire the view, but simply because she always found it necessary to be on her feet when she was trying to puzzle out a problem. It was one of her characteristic traits, which her friends were fond of teasing her about. Lady Prancer, they sometimes called her. Cathy thought the nickname was a bit grotesque, but she admitted the logic of it. Her nervous way of moving constantly, combined with her braying laugh and her tall and gangly figure, often reminded her of a skittish filly.

  Once she was at the window, of course, she found it impossible not to admire the view. She was certainly paying enough for it, after all. Her apartment was located near the very top of one of the Solarian capital's most expensive apartment complexes. Cathy was looking down on the city from well over a mile above street level. Insofar as the term "street level" could be applied to Chicago, that is. Whatever other changes had come over the city in the millennia of its existence, Chicago still retained its fondness for underground passages and covered walkways. Which was logical, since the climate—and the wind—had not changed.

  Cathy stared down at the teeming metropolis. It was like looking into a gigantic canyon. On the surface streets far below, and on the multitude of conduits which connected the various buildings on every level, she could see the crowds scurrying like ants. Most of them seemed in a great hurry. Which, in fact, they were. It was lunch hour, for the millions who worked in Chicago's center. And that, too, had not changed over the centuries. Lunch hour was never long enough.

  She shook her head abruptly and turned back to face her visitors. The quick and jerky motions, though she had no way of realizing it, reminded the captain of a gawky young horse. Once again, silently, someone bestowed the old nickname on her.

  "All right, I can understand that. I guess. But why are you so certain that the ambassador and the admiral are wrong in their approach?" She held up her hand and fluttered the long and slender fingers. "Yes, yes, Captain! I know they're both assholes, but that doesn't mean they're incompetent."

  She flashed her visitor a jittery grin. "You'll have to pardon my language. I know I curse too much. Can't help it. Comes from being forced through snooty private schools when I was a youngster. Maybe that's why I'm such a rebellious creature." She pranced back to her chair and flung herself into it. "That's what my parents' psychologists said, anyway. Personally, I think they're full of shit."

  Anton

  Watching and listening to her, Anton was struck by how closely Lady Catherine's speech resembled her movements. Quick and explosive, with scant respect for grammatical elbow room. Her wide mouth and expressive blue eyes added to the effect, as did the great mane of curly blond hair. The only part of the woman's face which seemed subdued was her snub nose, as if it were the deaf mute in a lively village. And despite the title, and the Tor fortune which lay behind it, Lady Catherine's face was that of a villager, not a countess. She even had some sunburned skin peeling off of her nose. With her extremely fair complexion, of course, that was not surprising. But most Manticoran noblewomen would have been too mortified by the prospect to have taken the risk of getting a sunburn in the first place. Lady Catherine, Anton suspected, suffered that small indignity with great frequency and a complete lack of concern.

  Oddly enough, the naval officer found the ensemble thoroughly charming. He had come here reluctantly, driven by nothing more than sheer and pressing need, and with the full expectation that he would dislike the countess. Like all Gryphon highlanders, Anton Zilwicki detested the aristocracy in general—and the left wing members of it with a particular passion. No one in the Manticoran aristocracy was further to the left than Lady Catherine Montaigne. Even hardcore Progressives like Lady Descroix considered her "utopian and irresponsible." Countess New Kiev, the ultra-doctrinaire leader of the Liberal party, had once denounced her on the floor of the House of Lords as a "dangerous demagogue."

  Perhaps, he mused whimsically, that was because his own personality was attracted to opposites, when it came to women. His dead wife had not resembled Lady Catherine in the least, physically. Helen had been short, dark-complected, and on the buxom side. True, there was a closer ideological correlation. Helen, somewhat unusually for a naval officer, had generally followed the Progressives—but only up to a point, and always on the very right edge. And when it came to naval affairs, she was as pure a Centrist as you could ask for. She had certainly never been accused—as Lady Catherine had, innumerable times—of consorting with dangerous and violent radicals. But, like Lady Catherine, Helen had exuded rambunctious energy. And, though she had rarely lapsed into profanity, Helen had had the same way of expressing her opinions directly and forcefully.

  Quite unlike Anton himself, who always tried—and almost always succeeded—in maintaining a tight and focused control over his thoughts and actions. Old Stone Face was the nickname his wife had bestowed upon him. Even his daughter, who was the one person to whom Anton unbent, teased him about it. Daddy Dour, she sometimes called him. Or just Popsicle.

  On the rare occasions when he thought much on the subject, Anton ascribed his personality to the stark upbringing of the Gryphon highlands. The Navy's psychologists, in their periodic evaluations, had an infinitely more complex way of explaining the matter. Anton could never follow their reasoning, partly because it was always presented in that fearsome jargon so beloved by psychologists, but mostly—

  Because I think they're full of shit.<
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  But he didn't speak the words. He simply gave Lady Catherine a friendly smile. "I don't mind, ma'am. Curse all you want."

  He planted his hands on his knees. His hands, like his face and body, were square and blunt. "But I'm telling you, the ambassador and the admiral—and Admiral Young's whole little flock of armchair intelligence advisers—"

  He couldn't resist: "—are full of shit."

  All traces of humor vanished. "My daughter was not kidnapped by the Peeps. Or, if she was, it's some kind of black operation being done completely outside the Havenite command chain. By amateurs, to boot."

  Lady Catherine frowned. "How can you be so certain of that? The demands they are making upon you, in exchange for keeping your daughter unharmed—"