Not what you'd call an auspicious start to this "study and observation" mission. Not at all.
Danielle Lambert sighed and pushed up and away from the table where they were sitting. "I'm going on deck. Don't leave without me."
Kenner rose to follow.
"Stay," she said, showing him the flat of her hand. It sounded wrong. But then, she was feeling wrong.
Postpartum blues was what it was, of course. The professional in her knew that, and it rankled her that she had to make allowances.
She'd made few enough allowances for poor little Hope, swaddled in a half barrel with some batting and watched over in turn by whatever steward could be stolen from other duties.
She'd never wanted the baby; she mustn't take it out on the poor thing. She climbed the stairs determinedly, ignoring the instinctive urge to check the child, a demand that pulled on her as if she were still tied physically to the new life in her stateroom.
On deck, the night was cooler. Merovingen rose like an impressionist painting of a skyline, teetering up through the mist with lights ablaze and flickering cra-zily into the sopping air. A stilt city leaning this way and that, the humidity blunting all its ugliness, it was a fairyland city and looking at it took her breath away.
But then the pilot came out of the wheelhouse and down the stairs. When he reached her, he slid an arm around her loose, stretched waist.
She jerked away. "Don't do that."
"Whatever you say. How's it going down there?" His words came through a beard he'd been growing for the whole trip. From anyone else, the inanity would have been something she could take at face value.
From this man, it was a command for a report. "Kenner's got everything under wraps, me included, he thinks. Morale's reestablished, now that the baby's no longer an issue. Magruder's people are late by my reckoning, but I don't suppose it's more than Merovingian inefficiency."
"He'll come himself. He'll have to shake loose of whatever's pressing."
"You're so sure? I thought you said he didn't know you were coming—that nobody's supposed to know you're here ..." She turned and looked up, into the eyes of revolution, shadowed by a visored cap and bracketed by the black beard climbing his cheeks.
"I'm sure. He doesn't know about me, but he knows you're on this boat. . . . He'll come," Karl Fon told her with the surety that had moved them all so far, so fast.
"You overestimate my allure," she said stiffly as he touched her again, this time on the shoulder, letting his arm slide companionably across her back.
It was just tune-up, she knew. Though security concerns had kept him in the wheelhouse throughout her labor, Karl wanted to make sure she remembered that he cared. Things were getting very complicated. "I wish you'd just treat me like anybody else," she said through clenched teeth.
"You aren't like anybody else, even Chance Magruder knows that."
"What is it you're going to say to him?" If Karl could be unprofessional, so could she.
"That I want to know why he thinks that the best way to handle things here is to give the locals this much help—setting up a machine shop and bringing down mechanics . . . let alone you, a personal obstetrician, courtesy of Nev Hettek, for this Cassiopeia the Prophetess. I want to make sure he hasn't been co-opted by the governor's daughter. Helping the canalers weather the crisis might not be in Nev Hettek's best interest."
"You're going to tell him that?" Dani blurted, her eyes squeezing shut. When Magruder and Fon went at it, she didn't want to be in the middle.
"No, I'm telling you that. I'm going to ask him to explain himself, that's all."
"And I'm supposed to do what, when he asks me what I know?"
"Use your judgment. Give me independent reports. On balance, things are going so well here, either we're inordinately lucky or we're not hearing the whole truth."
"You always said luck makes you nervous," she reminded him. "Maybe it's just the way Chance says it is."
"Maybe." Karl Fon tipped back the bill of'his cap in an unconscious gesture and stared at the wall of tiers with their sparkling lights.
"I think the baby should go back with the boat," she said at last, having found.a way to voice it, if tentatively.
"I don't," he said. His hand dropped from her shoulder and slapped her bottom. "Too unusual. Women have babies all the time and the world doesn't stop. Its presence will make you less threatening to the female heirafchs."
"Don't you care about Hope? Things are pretty unstable here. . . ."
But of course, he didn't. She shouldn't have said that. She'd regretted it the moment she had said it.
Karl turned and looked at her and said very precisely, "Dani, are you trying to tell me something?"
"No," she said. "Lord, no, just that it's a Nev Hettek citizen and I've got a job to do that I could do better without some brat to worry about. ..." She couldn't have him thinking that the baby was his.
The architect of Nev Hettek's revolution blew out a noisy breath. "Good to get that settled. Maybe Chance thinks it's his, the way he insisted on you, despite or because of the pregnancy. I never know with him."
"None of us do. That's what makes him so good at this sort of thing," she managed. Sound as if you don't care. Sound as if it's none of their business. Don't let him think he can demand answers to personal questions. Don't give him an inch. And don't let him see how hurt you are.
But her emotions got the better of her, and she had all she could do not to shout: Can't any of you count? Chance last left Nev Hettek on—
Karl Fon interrupted soothingly, "My apologies, Dani. I shouldn't have pressed you on it. But I need you prepared in case Magruder does impute some intimate connection. I can count, you see. Could have been his, if certain assumptions of mine are true, given how late you were."
"You're no doctor, Karl. Just drop it, if you won't do as I ask and take Hope home."
"Where would I put her? In the Residence? A child should be with its mother."
"You sanctimonious bastard." She punched him, harder than was playful, in a belly which once was leaner than these last few years had allowed. "We're all getting fat and complacent, you know that?"
"Perhaps you are, and I am, but I assure you that Chance isn't. I wasn't kidding when I said I want independent reports couriered home—bimonthly, if you can manage it; oftener, whenever you see fit."
"I still think that a biosolution is the best response, if we want to help these canalers at all. An herbicide ..."
"That's why you've got Jacobs. Do it covertly, without Chance's knowledge, if you think it's appropriate and his reasoning doesn't ring true."
"He wants to set up a machine shop, fix engines, build metal cages for propellers, charge exorbitantly, give credit with interest, forgive the debt. Then he's got a karmic hold on whomsoever. It seems straightforward enough to me, in a Merovingian way."
"I don't know about karma. I know about revolutions, and we want these people to think of us as a resource, not think of us as moneylenders or karmic bankers."
"It's a different culture," Dani reminded him. "One that can wrap around you like this water-weed they're fighting. Evidently young Chamoun found that out."
"Don't let him know everything you're doing, just—"
"Don't let who know what?" came a voice from behind them.
From right behind them.
Dani jumped and spun around, thinking, If he's asking that, he hasn't been there long enough to have heard anything damaging. Not for an instant did she doubt whose voice it was: the husky tone, the humor edged with urgency; she'd heard that voice too many times in her ear.
Chance Magruder was dressed to kill in velvet and brocade and lace, as befitted Nev Hettek's Trade and Tariffs officer and Ambassador to Merovingen. His eyes weren't smiling as he held out his arms to enfold her in a brotherly hug, then did the same with Karl Fon.
"You're late," Fon said. "Any trouble?" Fon ignored the fact that no one had warned them that Magruder had come aboard, as he ignored Ma
gruder's question.
"The usual spread," Magruder shrugged. "Nothing special. Although I never got the dispatch that said you were coming yourself, so I'll ask you the same question: anything wrong . . . Protector?"
"Cut the crap, Chance, or I'll start calling you 'Ambassador.' Nothing's wrong besides the fact that there was too much paper on my desk and if I left I could delegate somebody else to see to it. Haven't been out of the city for far too long. And I'm still a devout Paranoid, so I didn't send a dispatch. Just taking a riverboat ride, posing as a pilot. I can still steer one of these, or we wouldn't be here."
"I never doubted it. Good to see you. How long are you staying?"
"Just long enough to load some cargo and make things look unremarkable. Don't bother with the details. Everyone knows what they need to know. Just spend a few minutes with me while Dani gets her people together."
"Dani," Chance said, turning his attention to her, "you look . . . wonderful. I thought you were—"
"I was," she said. "I'll leave you two alone. Karl, it won't take us long to gather our things, unless you want it to. . . ?"
"No, don't dawdle," said Fon. "This won't take long either."
She left them. Let Karl tell Magruder about Hope, if he chose. This whole business of going into an operation with a new baby was something that made her exceedingly uncomfortable. If she were only a little stronger, she'd have insisted on leaving Hope behind. She probably could have made it stick. But she wasn't that strong. She loved the baby, no matter how she felt about his father, or how little she needed a baby to worry about, coming into a new venue where an old lover was running the show.
SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION (REPRISED)
C.J. Cherryh
"I dunno," Mira said to Jones, scaling fish, the silver bits flying like so many coins away from the knife. "Rif said it was like this, the old metal's val'able, an' they chop th' old engine up an' make it into two new 'uns, that's why it's even trade."
"Yey," Jones said sullenly, sitting on the halfdeck rim, her skip and Mira and Del's tied together, down by Fishmarket: it was old Mira and her man Del Suleiman's deck, at the moment—Tommy, the kid they'd adopted, was off across the bridge making the restaurant deliveries; and picking up orders: not so bad for the old couple nowadays, with strong help, Del's back was better, and Mira's legs likewise. They had Tommy now, who'd been potboy at Moghi's once; but once they'd wanted her for a daughter, and, fact be known, now they'd given up pushing that idea, if there was any kin she had on the Water (there was none she knew about), they were closer to it than anybody else.
And, damn, she hated that worried look on Mira's face, and knew Del was worried, the way he threw in from the other end, where he was shucking clams, "Som'thin' o' work in it, though."
Meaning karmic balance. Debt. Meaning him and old Mira tied to Rif's lot in their next life. They were like a lot of canalers, taking a little religion from here, a little from there: no canaler liked to be in debt, that was a fact; and with the Revenantist priests saying as how when you owed, you got tied to this world if you got reborn—even if you were pure Adventist, you had to worry a bit, especially if you were old.
Whether Mira and her man knew in this case it was not only dangerously close to charity, it was charity from Janes—that, she wasn't sure, and she wasn't sure about keeping her mouth shut on it. A lot of people didn't know what Rif was, them that knew wasn't saying, of which she was one, and she didn't know why-She was just scared, maybe, because she couldn't shake the karma or whatever it was that kept Rif's doings coming back on her, like the weed you kept trying to shake off your pole and it just wrapped every time you pushed it.
"They say you got one o' them engines," Mira said. "Hell," Jones said, leaning on her knees, to keep her voice down, "don't tell that, Mira. One thing, it ain't mine. I borrowed 'er. Moghi, hear?"
That was enough. You didn't talk about Moghi's business. The word she'd said was enough to send her to Harbor-bottom, except if it shut Mira up: one thing, Mira and Del did gossip—except if you scared them good. And if they had a notion, they spoke it out. "I tell you," Jones said, "my mama had this engine of mine, her mama had it, she's good solid iron and I ain't havin' it chopped. Damn new things, you know damn well that College seal's faked. . . . That's trouble, you know it's trouble. It ain't like getting caught with a couple barrels o' brandy—that's your engine you're talkin' about, they can Confiscate it right along with your boat. And ye don't even know it's goin't' work. ..."
"They're saying that new mek down t' harbor ..."
"Yey, yey, they c'n fix 'er, but I seen inside one, damn skimpy works, I say. Ye got yerself out in some damn storm out t' th' Rim an' th' wind comin' a norther, an' you got t' run an' run—how's it take a real heat-up? Huh? You don't know. I don't know. I know m' own. She's cranky, but I know 'er ways an' I know she'll run long as you got fuel, an' I ain't turnin' my engine in an' trustin' what some stranger give me. ..."
"Man of yours could buy outright," Del said. "Ye wouldn't have t' trade. Custom 'er in."
"Hell. What d' ye think I am, Del? I don't take his money."
"Ney, ney, not t' take on. She's just a problem, Altair. We're gettin' older, that old engine of ours ain't much, we got to think o' Tommy—"
Tommy going down to that damn Jane school, to learn more than mechanicking, that was what it added up to, and she knew that too, or guessed, and sometimes she waked up at night with the willies.
"I'd say what I'd do, then, if I was you two, I'd just wait a bit, see how things go, let a few fools go run them things hard this winter, see if they hold up—see if the College don't come down on it— I ain't bein' th' one t' find it out. Mama'd skin me."
They'd known Mama. Mira nodded, right sure on that one. And they'd respected Mama: most had, Retribution Jones tending to be real definite in her opinions and real quick to defend them, yey, no question that shot got through to them.
"Wait-see could be best," Del said.
But there were people taking the damn Jane engines, like Deiters had, like Willis, whose engine had been broke down so often he couldn't keep it fixed—took it even trade, he said; so Willis' old tub was running fast as her skip could, Willis was competition, Lord! And now there was talk the Nev Hettek embassy had got some cage-affair past the College censors, and there was this shop all set to open up, down by Foundry, space rented—
Wasn't sure it was supposed to be known yet, but the word was out, and local meks had their noses real out of joint about foreign competition. . . .
Word was out it was clean with the priests and all, which meant Tatiana'd cleared the way—most folk knew she was in bed with Nev Hettek; or at least the gossip was out about that about as strong as it was about this metal cage that was supposed to keep your prop clear of weed. . . .
Where the hell was a canaler going to afford that? she'd asked Mondragon.
Candle stub off some hightowner's table was worth a supper on canalside; and an iron nail to use for a cotter pin in your engine was worth thirty stubs like that, that you lit for emergencies and sometimes when you were out of oil and needed heat for tea: that was the way you reckoned real money in Merovingen, and here come the Nev Hettekkers bringing cages to keep the tangle-lilies off.
Hell of a lot of candle stubs that would be. Rumor was out you could do 'er on credit.
Borrow from strangers, that meant. That was real scary for a Revenantist. You could die before you got paid off and then you and all your kids could end up reincarnated in some heathen Nev Hettek factoryman's house, that was what—if you believed in that kind of thing, and a lot did, and a lot more like Del and Mira weren't real sure as they got older.
She didn't believe in it. Not really. Mama'd say: Ain't no second chance, Altair. Mama'd say: Ain't no karma but what you pile up in this life. She could walk in, like Del said, and pay cash. She could keep running and not snarl up in the lilies, then.
With this damn thing on the back of her boat that most couldn't afford and worth eno
ugh money to tempt anybody to larceny—and her running safe and hell and away faster than other skip-freighters who didn't want the karma of a debt they knew they couldn't pay-Hell, she could walk off, leave her skip tied, know there wasn't anybody on the Water was going to lay a finger to anything she owned, and wasn't anybody in the Trade, however much a sherk they might be otherwise, was going to stand by and let any lander mess with her boat either. They'd have a thief's guts on a hook.
But all of a sudden here were the new engines, here were the damn cages coming—all of a sudden here was canalers that had and canalers as couldn't afford, and that was bad business, bad business.
She didn't like that thought.
She had to talk to Mondragon, she thought. Had to talk real serious to him, make him see what she was seeing.
Lay it out for him about the Janes.
Mondragon would think of something. Mondragon was real good at some things—and maybe (she had never in her life thought she'd think anything good about Anastasi Kalugin) he could explain just enough to Anastasi to let Anastasi fix things quiet-like. Anastasi was smart. Crooked, Lord knew, but he was real smart, and he sure as hell lived here same as anybody: Mondragon could judge what he'd do.
Yey.
SECOND OPINION (REPRISED)
Janet Morris
The Merovingian operation was as precise as clockwork, so far as Kenner could see. The warehouse district was perfect for his application; the quarters and work space on Foundry Isle were just what he'd have been looking for if he were calling his own shots.
Kenner couldn't wait to get into gear. When Magruder himself took a hand in settling them in, the newcomer was feeling better about things than he had since he'd realized his reporting chain went through a woman—a pregnant woman, then a mother.
Kenner had kept telling himself that Danielle Lambert's reputation couldn't be discounted simply because she had the biological need to reproduce. But you didn't think about pregnant women and mothers the way you thought about operations commanders, and that dichotomy had made his own performance spotty, if not poor.
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