by neetha Napew
Coromell seemed surprised. “We do have to maintain good relations. Why not?”
“That unscrup makes me think he’d sell his mother for ten shares of Progressive Galactic.”
“He probably would. But come anyway. These dos are very dull without company.”
“There’s something about him that makes me very nervous. He said ‘ambrosia.’ Did you see him stare at me when I reacted? He couldn’t have failed to notice it.”
“He used the word in an acceptable context, Lunzie. You’re just sensitive to it. Not surprising after all you’ve been through. lenois is too indolent to be involved in anything as energetic as business.” Coromell drew her arm through his and led her toward the next ambassador.
“She lied,” Quinada muttered to her employer as she bowed to present a lighter dress tunic. “I checked with the main office. According to our reports from Alpha Centauri covering those dates, no disabled vessel was towed in. However, numerous beings of civilian garb were observed disembarking from a military cruiser, the Ban Sidhe. One matches her description. That places her on Alpha at the correct time, and with a false covering story.”
“Inconclusive,” lenois said lightly, watching Lunzie and Coromell chatting with the Weftian ambassador and another merchant lord. “I could not make a sale with so weak a provenance. I need more.”
“There is more. The man in the restaurant to whom the dead spy reported had a female companion, whose description also matches our admiral’s lady in blue.”
“Ah. Then there is no doubt.” lenois continued to smile at anyone who glanced his way, though his eyes remained coldly half-lidded. “Our friends’ plans may have to be ... altered.” He pressed his lips together. “Kill her. But not here. There is no need to provoke an interplanetary incident over so simple a matter as the death of a spy. But see to it that she troubles us no further.”
“As your will dictates.” Quinada withdrew.
A live band in one comer struck up dance music. Lunzie listened longingly to the lively beat while Coromell exchanged endless stories with another officer and the representative from a colony which had just attained protected status. Coromell turned to ask her a question and found that her attention was focused on the dance floor. He caught her eye and made a formal bow.
“May I have the honour?” he asked and, excusing himself to his friends, swept her out among the swirling couples. He was an excellent dancer. Lunzie found it easy to follow his lead and let her body move to the beat of the music.
“Forgive me for boring you,” Coromell apologised, as they sidestepped between two couples. “These parties are stamped out of a mould. It’s a boon when I find any friends attending with whom I can chat.”
“Oh, you’re not boring me,” Lunzie assured him. “I hope I wasn’t looking bored. That would be unforgivable.”
“It won’t be too much longer before we may leave,” Coromell promised. “I’m weary myself. The tradition is for the hosts giving the party to toast the guests with many compliments, and for the guests to return the honours. It should happen any time now.”
The dance music ended, and the elderly Ryxi made his way to the front of the room with a beaker in one wingclaw. He raised the beaker to the assembled. At his signal, Lunzie and the others hastened to the refreshment table. Coromell poured them both glasses of French wine.
When everyone was ready, the ambassador began to speak in his mellow tenor cheep. “To our honored guests! Long life! To our fellow members of the Federated Sentient Planets! Long life! To my old friend the Speaker for the Weft!”
Coromell sighed and leaned toward Lunzie. “This is going to take a long time. Your patience and forbearance are appreciated.”
Lunzie stifled a giggle and raised her glass to the Ryxi.
“I can’t wear the same dress to two diplomatic functions in a row,” Lunzie explained to Coromell over lunch the next day. “I’m going shopping for a second gown.”
When she had arrived on Tau Ceti, Lunzie had marked down in her mind the new shopping center that adjoined the spaceport. Originally the site had been a field used for large-vehicle repair and construction of housing modules, half hidden by a hill of mounded dirt suitable for sliding down by the local children.
The hill was still there, landscaped and clipped to the most stringent gardening standard. Behind it lay a beautifully constructed arcade of dark red brick and the local soft gray stone. In spite of the conservative appearance, the high atrium rang with the laughter of children, five generations descended from the ones Fiona had once played with. Lunzie overheard animated conversations echoing through the corridors as she strolled.
Most of the stores were devoted to oxygen-breathers, though at the ground level there were specialty shops with airlock hatches instead of doors to serve customers whose atmosphere differed from the norm. Lunzie window-shopped along one level and wound her way up the ramp to the next, mentally measuring dresses and outfits for herself. The variety for sale was impressive, perhaps too impressively large. She doubted whether there were three stores here which would have anything to suit her. Some of the fashions were very extreme. She stood back to peruse the show windows.
In the lexan panes, she caught a glimpse of something very large moving toward her from the left. Lunzie looked up. A party of heavyworld humans was stumping down the walkway, angling to get past her. She recognized the sombre male at the head of the group as the representative from Diplo, whom Coromell had pointed out to her at the Ryxi party. They took up so much of the ramp walking two abreast that Lunzie scooted into Finzer’s Fashions until they passed.
“How may I assist you. Citizen?” A human male two-thirds of Lunzie’s height with elegantly frilled ears approached her, bowing and smiling. “I am Finzer, the proprietor of this fine outlet.”
Lunzie glanced out into the atrium. The party was gone, all except for one female who had stopped to look into one shop window across the corridor. And she wasn’t one of the DipIo cortege. It was the Parchandri’s bodyguard, Quinada. The heavyworld female turned, and her dark eyes met Lunzie’s with a stupid, heavy gaze. Lunzie smiled at her, hoping a polite response was in order. Quinada stared back expressionlessly for a moment before walking away. Puzzled, Lunzie glanced back at the shopkeeper, who was still waiting by her side.
“I’m looking for evening wear,” she told Finzer. “Do you have something classic in a size ten?”
Finzer produced a classic dress in dusty rose pink with a bodice that hugged Lunzie’s rib cage and a full evening skirt that swirled around her feet.
Two evenings later, she held the folds of the dress bunched up on her lap as she and Coromell rode toward the Parchandri’s residence.
“I’m not imagining it, Coromell,” Lunzie said firmly. “Quinada’s been everywhere that I’ve gone these past two days. Every time I turned around, she was there. She’s following me.”
“Coincidence,” Coromell said blithely. “The area in which the Tau Ceti diplomatic set circulate is surprisingly small. You and Quinada had similar errands this week, that’s all.”
“That’s not all. She stares at me, with a look I can only describe as hungry. I don’t trust that perverse unscrup she works for any further than I could toss him. Didn’t you see how his eyes glittered when I said I’d been spacewrecked? He’s got nasty tastes in amusement.”
“You’re making too much of coincidence,” Coromell offered gently. “Certainly you’re safe from perversion here in Tau Ceti. Kidnapping is a serious breach of diplomatic immunity, one a man of lenois’s status and family position would hardly risk. As for that aide of his, you told me yourself that you have a deep-seated fear of heavyworlders.”
“I do not have a persecution complex,” Lunzie said in dead earnest. “Putting aside my deep-seated fear, once I got to thinking that Quinada might be following me, I tried to lose her. Tell me why she was in four different provisions stores without buying a thing! Or three different beauty salons! Not only that, she was waiting
outside the FSP complex when I finished my Discipline lessons.”
Coromell was thoughtful. “You’re convinced, aren’t you?”
“I am. And I think it probably has to do with ambrosia, even if you won’t enlighten me on that score.” Coromell smiled slightly at the reference but said nothing, which further annoyed her in her circumstances. Ambrosia must be a classified matter at the highest level, and she was only the envelope which had delivered the letter, not entitled to know more. Stubbornly, she continued. “I don’t think lenois’s reference was as casual as you do, despite his unassailable diplomatic status. In any event, I find his aide’s surveillance sinister.”
“On a personal level, there’s not much I can do to discourage that, Lunzie. However,” and he cocked his head at her, a sly gleam in his eyes, “enlist in Fleet Intelligence and you have the service to protect you.”
Lunzie cast a long searching look at his handsome face to dispel the unworthy thought that popped into her head. “To what ends would you go. Admiral Coromell, to get me into Fleet Intelligence?”
“I do want you in FI - you’d be a great asset, and frankly it would be wonderful having you around - but not at any cost. I can’t compromise Fleet regulations, not that you’d want me to, and I can’t give you any special consideration, not that you’d accept it anyway. The most important thing of all, Lunzie, is that you’re willing to join. Even if I could press you into service, that’s not the kind of recruit we want. I do know that you’d be ten times better as an operative than someone like Quinada ... if you do decide to volunteer.”
Lunzie hesitated, then nodded. “All right. I’m in.”
Coromell smiled and squeezed her arm. “Good. I’ll see to your credentials tomorrow morning. There will be a follow-up interview, but I have most of the details of your life on disk already. I hope you won’t regret it. I don’t think you will.”
“I’m feeling more secure already,” Lunzie said, sincerely.
“Good timing. We’ve arrived.” The Parchandri mansion lay on the outskirts of the main Tau Ceti settlement. lenois and a group of Parchandri were waiting on the steps to greet their guests in the deepening twilight. Pots to either side of the wide doors swirled heavily scented and coloured smoke into the air. Two servants met each vehicle as it pulled up. One opened the door as the other ascertained who was inside and announced the names to the hosts. Lunzie caught a passing glimpse of burning dark eyes in pasty-white faces and gulped. The unexpected appearance of representatives of the same race as the assassins in the Alpha Centauri restaurant was unsettling to say the least. The burning eyes, however, held no flicker of recognition. But then, why should they? She was getting overly sensitive to too many coincidences.
lenois greeted them warmly, introducing Coromell to members of his family. Each was dressed in garb of such understated elegance Lunzie found herself trying to estimate the value of their clothes. If her guess was correct, each Parchandri was wearing more than the value of the clothes on the entire party of diplomats. As the evening weather was fine, drinks were circulated under the portico by liveried servants.
“Admiral Coromell! And Lunzzie, how very niccce to sssee you again,” said the Seti Ambassador, wending his way ponderously up the front stairs from the welcoming committee. “Admiral, I had hoped to sssee you a few days ago, but I missssed my opportunity.”
Knowing a hint for privacy when she heard one, Lunzie excused herself. “I’ll just find the ladies’ lounge,” she told Coromell, placing her drink on the tray of a passing servant.
Asking directions from one of the Parchandri ladies, Lunzie made her way into the building. lenois had given her no more than a disinterested “Good evening,” which reassured her. Maybe her assumption was only part of her heightened awareness since that disastrous evening with Aelock. She was pleased to have escaped his attention. Rumours she had heard since the Ryxi party confirmed her feelings about his proclivities and the reality was worse than she had imagined. Discounting half of what she’d heard, he was still far too sophisticated in his perversities.
Lunzie found herself in the Great Hall, a high-ceilinged chamber in an old-fashioned, elegant style. The ladies’ lounge for humanoids was at the end of a pink marble corridor just to the right of the double winding staircase with gold-plated pillars which spiralled to the three upper floors. Several other corridors, all darkened, led away from the Hall on this level.
“How beautiful! They certainly do know how to live,” Lunzie murmured. Her voice rang in the big, empty room. The lights were low, but there was enough illumination at the far end of the corridor for her to see another woman emerging from a swinging door. “Ah. There it is.”
Lunzie readjusted her makeup in the mirror once more, straightened the skirt of her dress, and then sat down with a thump on the couch provided under the corner-mounted sconces which illuminated the room. No one else was making use of the facilities, so she was quite alone. There was only so much time she could waste in the ladies’ room. It was a shame she didn’t know any of the other diplomats present. She hoped that Coromell had nearly finished his negotiations with the Seti.
Well, she couldn’t stay hidden in the lounge for the entire evening. She would have to circulate. Sighing, she pushed open the lounge door to return to the party. There, on the other side, was Quinada, massively blocking the hallway. Startled, Lunzie stood aside to let her by, intending to squeeze out and return to Coromell. The heavyworlder female filled the doorway and came on. Lunzie backed a few paces and stepped to the left, angling to pass as soon as the door was clear. Quinada wrapped a burly hand around her upper arm and steered her, protesting, back into the lounge.
“Here you are,” she said, bearing the lightweight woman back into a corner of the room. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?” Lunzie asked in polite surprise. She braced herself and looked for a way around the heavyworlder’s massive frame. “Why?”
Quinada’s heavy brow ridges lowered sullenly over her eyes. “My employer wants you disposed of. I must follow his orders. I don’t really want to, but I serve him.”
Lunzie trembled. So her intuitions hadn’t erred. lenois suspected her. But to order her death on the strength of a recognized word? The heavyworlder pressed her back against the wall and eyed her smugly. Quinada could crush her to death by just bearing down.
Mastering her fear, Lunzie gazed into the other’s eyes. “You don’t want to kill me?” she asked simply, hoping she didn’t sound as if she was begging. That could arouse the sadistic side of the big female’s nature. Quinada was the type who would enjoy hurting her. And Lunzie needed just a little more time to muster Discipline. She had already made a tactical mistake, allowing herself to be put at a significant physical disadvantage. Quinada and her master must have been hoping for the opportunity. Quinada had seen her emerging from the FSP complex. Could they possibly know that she was an Adept?
“No, I don’t want to kill you,” Quinada cooed in a lighter voice, charged with implications which alarmed Lunzie considerably more. “Not if I don’t have to. If you weren’t my enemy, I wouldn’t have to kill you at all.”
“I’m not your enemy,” Lunzie said soothingly.
“No? You smiled at me.”
“I was trying to be friendly,” Lunzie replied, disliking the intent and appraising fashion in which Quinada was staring at her.
“I wasn’t sure. In this city all the diplomats smile, in deference to the lightweights. Their smiles are phony.”
“Well, I’m not a diplomat. When I smile, it’s genuine. I’m not paid to practice diplomacy.” Lunzie rapidly assessed her chances of talking her way out of this tight spot. If she used Discipline but didn’t kill the heavyworlder, her secret would be out. The next attempt on her life wouldn’t be face to face. But if she used Discipline to kill, her ability would be revealed when Medical examination would show that a small female’s hands had delivered the death blows. And then she’d have an Adept tribunal to face.<
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“Good,” Quinada said, narrowing her eyes to glinting lights under her thick brow ridges, and leaning closer. Lunzie could feel the heat of the big female’s skin almost against her own. “That pleases me. I want you to be friendly with me. My employer doesn’t like you but if we are friends, I can’t treat you like an enemy, can I? That’s such a pretty gown.” Quinada stroked the fabric covering Lunzie’s shoulder with the back of one thick finger. “I saw you when you bought it. It suits you so well, brings out your colouring. You attract me. We don’t have to stay at this dull party. Come away with me now. Perhaps we can share warmth.”
Lunzie was frightened, but now she had a tremendous urge to laugh. The heavyworlder was offering to trade Lunzie’s life for her favours! This scene would have been uproariously funny if it hadn’t been in deadly earnest. If she managed to live through it, she could look back on it and laugh.
“Come with me, we’ll be friends, and I’ll forget my instructions,” Quinada offered, purring. Her stare had turned proprietary. Lunzie tried not to squirm with disgust.
Masking her revulsion at Quinada’s touch, Lunzie thought that even with the heavyworlder’s promised protection, she was likely to wind up dead. lenois was the sort of man whose orders were followed. How could Quinada fake her death? She had to get away, to warn Coromell. She found herself measuring her words carefully, injecting them with sufficient promise to seem compliant.
“Not now. The Admiral will be waiting for me. I’ll give him the slip and meet you later.” Lunzie forced herself to give Quinada’s arm a soft caress, though her hand felt slimy as she completed the gesture. “It’s important to keep up appearances. You know that.”
“A secret meeting,” Quinada smiled, her lips twisting to one side. “Very well. It adds excitement. When?”
“When the toasting is over,” Lunzie promised. “They’ll miss me if I’m not there to salute your master. But then I can meet you wherever you say.”