"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. Ienois 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 colored 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.
Ienois 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. Ienois 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. Rumors 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, Ienois 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.
"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 coloring. 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 favors! 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. Ienois 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."
"That's true," Quinada agreed, backing away from her. "That is the custom. And your disappearance would be
marked."
Lunzie nodded encouragingly and stepped toward the door. Before she had taken a second one, Quinada seized her bare arm and slapped her smartly across the cheek. Lunzie's head snapped back on her neck, and she stared wide-eyed at the heavyworlder, who gripped her with steely fingertips, and then let go. Lunzie staggered back and leaned against the wall to steady herself.
"Where do we meet? You haven't said that. If you are lying, I will kill you." Quinada's voice was caressing and chilled Lunzie to the bone.
"But we meet here," she said as if that had been a foregone conclusion. "It's the safest place. As soon as the toasting is done, I'll come back here and wait for you. That conceited Admiral will think I wish to make myself pretty for him. See you then, Quinada, but I've been gone a long time. I must get back." With a dazzling smile, Lunzie ducked under her arm and out the door.
Whether Quinada would have followed or not became academic, for a group of five chattering humans were coming down the corridor towards the ladies' room, providing a safeguard.
When Lunzie found Coromell and his ambassador, the Seti was expressing his gratitude to Coromell. He bowed to Lunzie as he turned away. Lunzie managed an appropriate response even as she pulled the admiral to one side behind the smoking incense pots.
"I must talk to you," she hissed, casting around to see if Quinada had followed her. To her relief, the heavyworld woman was nowhere in sight.
"Where have you been?" he asked, then clucked his tongue in concern. "What happened? You've bruised your arm. And there's another mark on your cheek."
"Darling Quinada, the Parchandri's aide," Lunzie whispered, letting the revulsion she felt color her words with bitter sarcasm, "followed me to the ladies' lounge and jumped me there." She took some satisfaction in the shock on Coromell's face which he quickly controlled. "She's under his orders to kill me! She didn't only because I tentatively accepted an exchange for my life I have no intention of granting. I'm Fleet now, Coromell. Protect me. Get me out of here! Now!"
PART FOUR
Chapter Eleven
She went into hiding in a Fleet-owned safe house while Coromell arranged for a shuttle to take her off-planet. Except for the Discipline Master and Admiral Coromell Senior, there was no one to regret her abrupt departure—except perhaps Quinada. But Lunzie did want the Adept to realize that she had been unavoidably called away. That was Discipline courtesy. Her studies in the special course had progressed to a point where she didn't need direct instruction although she had hoped to obtain permission to teach what she had learned. As it was, the powerful new techniques would take her years to perfect.
The next day a shuttle made a rendezvous in space with the Exploration and Evaluation Corps ARCT-10, a multi-generation, multi-environmental vessel that carried numerous exploration scouts and shuttlecraft. Lunzie was transferred aboard. Her files were edited so that her enlistment in Fleet Intelligence had been excised and a false employment record with the Tau Ceti medical center inserted. She was an ordinary doctor, joining the complement of the ARCT-10 to explore and document new planets for colonization.
"There are thousands of beings aboard," Coromell had assured her. "You'll just be one of several hundred human specialists who sign on for three-year stints with the EEC. No one will have any reason to look twice at you. Once you're settled in, you can be another remote sensor on that vessel for me. Keep an ear open."
"You mean, I'm not entirely safe on board?"
"Far safer than on Tau Ceti," he replied encouragingly. "Blend in but don't call attention to yourself. You should be fine. You've got me slightly paranoid for your sake now." He ran restless fingers through his hair and gave her an exasperated look. "Think safe and you'll be safe! Just be cautious."
"I'm totally reassured!"
Once her shuttle matched velocity with the ARCT-10, it circled around the back of the long stern to the docking bay. The ship was built with a series of cylinders arranged in a ring with arcs joining each segment. Along the dorsal edge of the ship, Lunzie could see a partially shaded quartz dome which probably contained the hydroponics section. The drives, below and astern of the docking bay, could easily have swallowed the tiny shuttle up without a burp. The five exhaust cones arranged in a ring, rimed with a film of ice crystals, were almost a hundred feet across. The ARCT-10 was reputed to be 250 years old. It had an air of majestic dignity, instead of creaking old age. It was the oldest of the original EEC generation ships still in space.
There was a Thek waiting in the docking bay as the shuttle doors cracked open. The meter-high specimen waited while Lunzie greeted the deck officer, then neatly blocked her path when she started to leave the deck without acknowledging it.
"I beg your pardon," she said, stopping short, and waited for the translator slung around the Thek's peak to slow her words down enough for it to understand.
"Ttttooooooooooooorrrrrr," it drawled.
Tor. "Your name?" she asked. Talking with a Thek was like playing the child's party game of Twenty Questions, but there was no guarantee she would get twenty answers. Theks did not like to use unnecessary verbiage when a syllable or two would do.
"Yyyyyeeeeessssss." Good, that was short and easy. This must be a relatively young Thek. There was more. Lunzie braced herself to comprehend Tor's voice.
"Llllllluuunnnnnnnn . . . zzzzzzzzzziiiiiieeeeeee . . . sssssaaaaaaaflffieeeee . . . hhhhhhhheeeeeeerrrrrrreeeeee."
Well, bless Coromell. She'd no idea he had Thek confederates aboard the ARCT-10. If he'd only thought to mention it, she'd have been more reassured.
"Thank you, Tor," she said. Although come to think on it, she wondered how much help a Thek could provide, flattering though such an ofier was from such a source. Even the Thek who had pointed out her escape capsule to Illin Romsey hadn't been able to tow her in on its own. A thought struck her. Theks had no real defining characteristics, but this one was the same size as that Thek. "By any chance, were you the one—no, that's too long—Tor . . . rescued me . . . Descartes?"
A short rumble, sounding like an abbreviated version of his previous "yes," issued from the depths of the silicoid cone. Now this is one for the books, Lunzie thought, much heartened. Then Tor moved aside as an officer entered the landing bay with a hand out for Lunzie and it settled down into anonymous immobility.
"Doctor, welcome aboard," the tall man said. He had the attenuated fingers, limbs and long face that marked him as one of the ship-born, a human who had spent his whole life in space. The lighter gravity frequently allowed humans to grow taller on slenderer, wider-spaced bones than the planet-born. They also proved immune to the calcium attrition that planet-born space travellers experienced on long journeys. As she shook his hand, Lunzie had an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. Except for eyes that were green^ not brown, the young man fit perfectly the genotype of the banned colony-clones that she'd investigated as a member of the investigative panel on Astris seventy years ago as a medical student. "I'm Lieutenant Sanborn. We had your records just two hours ago. It'll be good to have someone with your trauma specialty on board. Spacebound paranoia is one of the worst things we have to deal with. Walking wounded, you know. You have general training as well?"
"I can sew up wounds and deliver babies, if that's what you mean," Lunzie said drily.
Sanborn threw back his head and laughed. He seemed to be a likeable young man. She felt bad about teasing him. "I shouldn't have asked for a two-byte resume. Sorry. Let me show you to the visitors' quarters. You're in luck. There's an individual sleeping cubicle available in the visitor's section." He held out a hand for her bags and hoisted them over his shoulder. "This way, please, Lunzie."
Her compartment was tiny and spare, but just big enough to be comfortable. Lunzie put her things away in the drop-down ceiling locker before she followed Sanborn to the common room to get acquainted with her shipmates. The common room doubled as a light-use recreation center.
"The last third of each shift is reserved for conversation only so we don't have t
o worry about a game of grav-ball bouncing over our heads," Sanborn explained as he introduced Lunzie around. The common rooms in the humanoid oxygen-breathers' section were set with free-form furniture that managed to comfortably accommodate the smallest Weft or the largest heavyworlder.
"Welcome aboard," said the man in blue coveralls who was lounging with his seat tipped backwards against the wall. He had a smooth, dark brown skin and large, mild eyes.
A sallow-faced young man dressed in a pale green lab tunic sat nearby with his elbows braced on the back of his chair and glanced up at her expression-lessly. "I'm Coe. Join us. Do you play chess?" the dark man asked.
"Later perhaps, eh?" Sanborn intervened before she could answer. "I've got to get Lunzie to Orientation."
"Any time," Coe replied, waving.
His companion swept another look and met Lunzie's eyes, and said something to Coe. Lunzie thought she heard her name and the word "ambrosia."
Panic gripped her insides. Oh, no! she thought. Have I left one bad situation for a worse one? I'm trapped aboard this vessel with someone who knows about ambrosia!
"Who's that young man with Coe?" she asked Sanborn, forcing her voice to stay calm.
"Oh, that's Chacal. He's a communications tech. Not much of a conversationalist for a com-tech. Coe is the only one who can stand him. Keeps to himself when he's not on duty."
That would be appropriate if he was an agent for the Parchandri, or the planet pirates. Lunzie wondered to which, if either, Chacal might be attached. She wished she could speak to Coromell, but he was out of reach. Lunzie was on her own, for good or ill. What was the meaning of "ambrosia," anyway? Or was she simply exhibiting symptoms of spacebound paranoia, as Sanborn put it?
The ARCT-10 was so huge that it was easy to forget that she was travelling through space instead of living on a planet. It was designed to be entirely self-sufficient, not needing to make contact with a planet for years. Sanborn took Lunzie to the Administration offices by way of the life support dome where fresh vegetables, fruit, and grain were grown for carbohydrates to feed the synthesizers and to supplement the otherwise boring synth diet as well as refreshing the oxygen in the atmosphere. Lunzie admired the section, which was twice as big as the hydroponics plant aboard the Destiny Calls, though by no means stocked with the same exotic varieties.
The Death of Sleep Page 23