CHAPTER 5
Xenos on Cinnabar
Adele had paused in her transcriptions to sip from her glass of beer. Beer from the Mundy estate—bitters, actually, brewed with germander rather than hops—had been the table beverage at the townhouse while Adele was growing up.
She had never considered the choice as child: what was, was; as with most children, in most situations. As an adult, she supposed the beer was to show voters that Lucius Mundy was a Man of the People, despite his rank in society.
The doorman ushered a visitor into the hallway on the ground floor. Adele heard only the murmur of voices through the open door of the library where she was working. She took another sip of beer.
Her mouth was very dry. Forgetting to eat wasn’t a real problem, but she shouldn’t let herself go so long without drinking, especially with a glass at her hand.
Tovera stood at the stairhead. “It’s Miranda Dorst,” she said quietly. “She came to see you.”
“Send her up,” said Adele. What she was doing wasn’t important.
Her lips hinted at a frozen smile. No human activity is important. Everyone dies, everything dies; the Cosmos dies.
If you are part of a family, however, you have family obligations. Adele had spent her first thirty-one years alone, though until she was sixteen she had lived in Xenos with her parents and sister. When she met Daniel, she had joined a family: she had become a Sissie, a member of the crew of the corvette Princess Cecile, and through that fellowship a part of the vastly extended RCN family.
Adele much preferred her current situation; and no one had ever accused the Mundys of avoiding their obligations.
Besides, Adele liked Miranda. She was intelligent and was grounded in the real world: Miranda and her mother had lived in straitened circumstances since the death of her father, an RCN captain. Furthermore, Miranda was extremely tough, though there was nothing in her appearance to suggest that.
Adele’s mouth quirked again, perhaps with a hint of regret. Toughness wasn’t the first attribute strangers thought of on meeting Adele Mundy, either.
Miranda came up the three flights of stairs ahead of Tovera. It was an unusual display of Tovera’s favor that she did not interpose herself between her mistress and an approaching visitor.
“Good afternoon, Miranda,” Adele said. “Put those chip files on the floor—”
Or she could hold them in her lap as Daniel had. It was all one to Adele.
“—and sit down.”
Miranda entered, looking about with her usual bright interest. She wore a pants-suit of brown tweed under a short cape which was either tan or gold, depending on the angle of the light. She wore her perfectly tailored garments with grace, as she had done all things of which Adele was aware.
Adele knew that Miranda and her mother Madeline continued to make their own clothing. She had never asked whether that was whim or a philosophy on the Dorsts’ part. It certainly wasn’t a matter of necessity any more. Daniel was a notably open-handed man, and he wasn’t stinting his fiancée and her mother.
“Thank you for receiving me, Adele,” Miranda said. She placed the files on the floor and sat without touching the chair with her hands. “I realize that you’re always busy.”
Adele shrugged. “I’m transcribing log books,” she said. “I will often find useful information in primary sources which isn’t carried over into compilations. I need to skim the contents as I copy the logs, however, so that I have an idea of what is in each one. In a crisis, the real index is in my mind.”
She smiled faintly. She saw no reason to pretend to Miranda that she wasn’t good at her job.
Then she said, “What do you want from me?”
Miranda looked blank for a moment, then clapped her hands in delight. She began to laugh.
Adele’s lips stiffened. I was too abrupt. Well, people who knew her didn’t visit for small talk.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Miranda gasped through her gust of laughter. “Please, please—”
The laughter got the better of her again. She stood and unexpectedly took Adele’s hands. Her firm grip was a reminder of Miranda’s comment that she played field hockey at school.
Miranda straightened and released Adele’s hand. “I apologize,” she said. “I realize that was very impolite, but I’ve…”
She backed into her chair again without taking her eyes from Adele’s. “Adele,” she said, “that’s the first time I’ve laughed in, well, since Master Sand came to Bantry in a flurry. I’ve been trying to pretend everything was all right so that Daniel wouldn’t worry about me and I’d make it worse.”
She swallowed, then gave Adele a transfiguring smile. “And then I came here,” Miranda said, “and you were you, and I didn’t have to pretend any more. About anything. It was such a relief.”
Adele supposed she’d just been complimented. Others might not feel it was a compliment, but—she smiled as broadly as she ever did—that was rather the point of the statement, wasn’t it?
“I can generally be expected to be me,” Adele said. “But since that wasn’t what you came expecting to learn, my question still stands.”
“Is there anything I can do that will help Daniel with whatever he’s preparing to do?” Miranda said primly. “I’m not asking where he’s going or what he’s doing or, or—”
She was losing her careful calm. She paused, swallowed, and resumed, “Or anything I shouldn’t know about. And I came to you, because you’ll tell me the truth.”
“Yes,” said Adele as she considered the situation. “You have to remember that most of Daniel’s previous experience with women—”
All his previous experience, so far as Adele had seen.
“—has been with the type who struggle every day in deciding which color earrings to wear. He knows that you’re different, but when he’s busy he probably operating by rote rather than thinking.”
Miranda smiled toward her clasped hands, then looked up at Adele. “At parties I’ve met some of Daniel’s previous acquaintances,” she said. Her voice was soft with good humor. “They’re lovely, very lovely. Which explains how their genetic material survives in the human species.”
“I’ve had similar thoughts,” Adele said. Miranda was a remarkably level-headed person. “As for your question, I don’t know anything you can do for Daniel. Beyond what you’re doubtless doing already, of course. However—”
There had been a hint of disappointment in Miranda’s expression. It vanished at the qualifying, “However—”
“—since you’re here, there’s something you can do for me. I’d like to analyze a situation I’m involved in front of an intelligent neutral party. I don’t care about your opinion.”
“All right,” said Miranda. Her expression was alert; but then, it usually was. “If it’s all right for you to speak to me. Security, I mean.”
“In my experience,” Adele said, “‘security’ is a word people use to conceal information. I’m a librarian. I was trained to make information available to others.”
She felt her lips quirk toward a smile. “If my superior decides she cannot accept the way I handle information,” Adele said, “she can discharge me. Or call me out, I suppose. I’ve seen no indication to date that she feels any concern about my behavior.”
Miranda smiled very broadly, but she did not speak.
“I expect to visit the Ribbon Stars in the near future…,” Adele said. She had emptied her glass. She reached for the pitcher, then thought of her guest and said, “Would you like some beer? Or, well, anything—I’m sure the pantry is well stocked.”
The Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury rented the use of the second floor of Chatsworth Minor for meetings in a private setting. They stored various entertainment paraphernalia—like wine and liquor—in the cellar against need. While Captain Leary was on Cinnabar, he had the use of the Treasury’s space, which he thought he was renting from Adele directly.
“Beer would be fine,” Miranda said, “if there’s—oh!”
Tovera stepped through the open doorway and handed Miranda a tall glass like Adele’s.
Adele poured. “Ah…,” she said.
Adele had no reason to be embarrassed—her visitor was unexpected and would take what she was offered. Still. “I should warn you that this is bitter beer from Owsley County. From Chatsworth Major, in fact, though the estate is no longer in the Mundy family.”
“Thank you,” Miranda said. She sipped, then drank deeply. She didn’t say how delightful the taste was, or how she had always liked bitter, or any one of a dozen other brightly false statements that Adele expected. She just drank.
“Don’t blame Daniel too much, Miranda,” Adele said, speaking what she had just thought. “You’re easy to underestimate.”
She refilled her own glass and said, “The oldest human settlement in the Ribbon Stars is Pantellaria, a First Tier colony. After the Hiatus—”
The thousand-year break in interstellar travel which resulted from the war fought with diverted asteroids by Earth against her original colonies. The wonder was not that the war had ended human star travel but rather that it hadn’t ended the human species.
“—Pantellaria planted colonies of her own in the cluster. One of them, Corcyra, was found to have rich veins of copper.”
Miranda nodded, but she didn’t speak. She was carrying Adele’s statement that her opinion wasn’t desired to the point of not saying anything.
I’ve overreacted again, Adele thought. I’m not a monster that people have to be afraid of!
And as Adele thought that, she realized that it wasn’t true; that she had killed scores, probably hundreds of people, mostly with head shots. She was a monster by the standards of most people.
“Pantellaria was forcibly annexed to the Alliance eighteen years ago,” Adele said. “That set off the most recent period of war between ourselves and the Alliance, the one which just ended with the Treaty of Amiens. Pantellaria regained its independence with the treaty, but there were quite a few citizens, including most of those who had become leaders during Alliance rule, who weren’t happy with the independent government.”
Adele let her eyes travel around the room. She almost never looked at the library’s familiar disorder, though she spent at least half her waking hours in the room. Because Miranda Dorst faced her expectantly, Adele noted that the grain of the book cases matched that of the moldings of the walls; the wood for both came from Chatsworth Major, and the work had probably been done by the same woodwrights when the townhouse was first built.
The glass fronts were dusty. Everything in the room was dusty. The cleaning staff had been directed not to touch Adele’s books and files, but something had to be done.
“Would you like me to clean while you’re gone?” Miranda said.
She’s reading my mind! But of course she wasn’t doing anything of the sort. Miranda was following Adele’s eyes and probably reading her expression, then coming to the logical conclusion from the evidence.
“I don’t mean ‘straighten up,’ which would be horrible,” Miranda said, “but to remove dust with a very small vacuum. A static broom would be worse than straightening, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Adele. “Careful cleaning would be helpful.”
She remembered the cleaner—he had been male; after the fact Adele realized that he probably never listened to anything a female employer said—who had carefully interfiled chips from two separate files to bring them into order by date. It hadn’t occurred to him that Adele was moving chips from one pile to the other after she had processed them.
“Adele, is something wrong?” Miranda said.
What must my face have looked like? Adele thought. She said, “Not now, thank you. I was talking about Pantellaria. A number of Pantellarians on the losing side politically fled to Corcyra, taking as much movable wealth as they could. There was unrest on Corcyra anyway—the colonists thought far more of the planetary income was going to the homeworld than was justified.”
“Were they correct?” Miranda said. The discussion of cleaning seemed to have put them back on the more equal basis that Adele preferred. So long as the younger woman didn’t decide that her own opinion should matter to Adele.
“Taxation—levies generally—were high while Corcyra was part of the Alliance,” Adele said. “The newly independent Pantellarian government wasn’t showing any sign of reducing them. On the other hand—”
She shrugged.
“—Corcyra might well have gained a reduction by measures short of war. And I don’t know of a historical example of a colony or client state which didn’t think it paid more than a fair proportion of its wealth in taxes or tribute.”
Miranda nodded agreement but didn’t speak aloud.
“With the exiles supporting independence, Corcyra revolted from Pantellaria last year,” Adele said. As she had hoped, the situation on Corcyra was coming into clearer relief in her mind, just as the library had to her eyes. “And three months ago a Pantellarian expeditionary force landed to recover the planet.”
“I’ve always understood that it’s difficult to transport an army from one planet to another,” Miranda said. She sat upright and her hands were crossed in her lap, like an obedient student. “How many soldiers did Pantellaria send?”
Adele nodded crisply, a stern teacher acknowledging a student’s intelligent question. She said, “The expeditionary force is of two thousand troops with light armor. They’re accompanied by a naval force of six destroyers, whose crews could provide another thousand personnel if used as ground troops. And an uncertain number of Corcyrans are supporting the Pantellarians as a sort of militia.”
Adele paused to smile thinly, then realized it would be a good time to take a drink. She half filled her glass—all that remained in the pitcher. Before she could put down the empty pitcher, Tovera took it and replaced it with a full one.
Two house servants hovered nervously down the hall, holding trays with more beer and glassware. When Adele glanced toward them, they snatched their eyes away.
“The more difficult question is the strength of the defenders,” she said. “All settlement is along the River Cephisis. The mining region, the Southern Highlands, appears to be entirely hostile to Pantellarian control, though that doesn’t mean all miners are ready to pick up a weapon and march down the river to attack the expeditionary force, which landed near the mouth. Still, there are about 30,000 miners. Based on similar historical situations—”
Adele smiled grimly. If more politicians knew anything about history, there would be fewer wars. And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
“—most of the miners would shoot at the expeditionary force if it attacked the Highlands. They’re not trained, though, and they don’t have a real leader.”
She cleared her throat, then remembered to drink. “The Pantellarians landed at Harbinger in the Delta,” she said. “The planetary capital was at Brotherhood at the base of the Highlands, the port of the mining region.”
“But the exiles?” Miranda said, leaning forward slightly.
Adele nodded again. A very clever student. “Yes,” she said. “The exiles include some former military officers, and they’ve brought with them enough professionals to provide a training cadre for the Corcyrans whom they’ve hired. They have money. One of the two factions calls itself the Corcyran Navy and defected with a Pantellarian destroyer. The exile factions make up only a few hundred troops each, but such evidence as I have suggests that those are likely to be the equal of a similar number of Pantellarian regulars.”
“Are Pantellarian regulars any good?” Miranda asked.
“I’m sure some of them must be,” Adele said. “I have no record of any, however.”
Miranda’s smile indicated that she understood not only what Adele had said, but also what she meant. Daniel has a real prize here.
“The largest body of trained troops on the rebel side,” Adele said, “is the former Alliance garrison—about a battalion, five or six hundred men. It wasn’t repatriated when Pantellaria became independent, because most of them were recruited on Corcyra. There’s no data about their quality as troops, but they’re trained and equipped. When Corcyra rebelled, they took the name the Corcyran Army. Records from other sources on Corcyra—”
Everything that Adele had gleaned from Mistress Sand’s files.
“—continue to refer to them as the Garrison. They were the instrument of Alliance control until independence, and they’re not well liked by anyone else on Corcyra. They’re nonetheless the strongest single element of the forces opposing the Pantellarians.”
Adele considered whether or not to explain what she would be doing. Why not? she decided. What had held her back was what she considered decent reticence; others seemed to think she was secretive. I don’t hide my personal life; I just don’t see a need to broadcast it to the world.
“My particular interest is in a religious group, the Transformationists,” Adele said. “There are about five hundred of them settled in the valley of a tributary of the Cephisis, fifty miles south of Brotherhood. This is deep into the mining region, but their community is devoted to harmony and mutual support. They don’t appear to have a philosophy or ritual beyond that. I’m not one to come to for explanation of spiritual enlightenment.”
“Do they have soldiers?” said Miranda, filling her glass again.
There’s enough dust here to make anybody thirsty, Adele thought. She’d let things go too long because she didn’t care.
“The Transformationists have a hundred personnel in the siege lines around Harbinger,” Adele said, “but they appear to rotate their troops back and forth from the Pearl Valley frequently. I would judge they must have 300 people capable serving, though they may not be able to arm more than half that number.”
She paused and considered. “The Transformationist troops don’t show gender distinctions,” she said. “The Garrison and the local volunteers—the miners, basically—have almost no women.”
Miranda frowned. Though she hadn’t asked, Adele explained, “That sort of prejudice is common on less advanced worlds and among the less educated classes of advanced ones. The classes which provide most miners and professional soldiers, that is.”
Adele smiled faintly. “Tovera and I have not infrequently found it an advantage,” she said. “But of course, I never expected to like reality.”
“Yes,” said Miranda. “I understand that.”
Her expression softened and she added, “Though reality for me has improved a great deal since I met Daniel.”
Adele nodded. She decided not to say that this would change very quickly if Daniel should die violently, which was a probable result of the way he lived his life.
And then she smiled: Miranda knows that. Her brother had been vaporized in a space battle which could as easily have claimed Daniel instead—or Daniel also. Miranda was focused on her present life, which was very good.
As is mine, but somehow I can’t accept that.
“Yes,” Adele said aloud. “I should learn from you.”
She cleared her throat and said, “I will be involved with the Transformationists. Helping them, I suppose, because my principal has business in Pearl Valley and they’ll expect him to sing for his supper, so to speak. There’s nothing more of importance which I can think to tell you, though I should know more this afternoon, after I speak with a man who just arrived from Corcyra. If anything changes, I will tell you.”
Miranda rose to her feet in a single, smooth motion. “Thank you, Adele,” she said. “I feel better now.”
Adele grimaced. “I can’t imagine why,” she said. “I don’t even know what help I’ll be providing to the cultists—”
She hadn’t meant to use the word, but it was adequately descriptive for the present purpose.
“—since they probably don’t know themselves. People rarely do, I’ve found, though they believe they do.”
Adele realized that she was describing the siuation as though she would be assisting Daniel to help Rikard Cleveland. A simple way to carry out her own mission for Deirdre would be to arrange that Arnaud captured Corcyra without Cinnabar assistance.
Would that be treason? And to whom?
Adele smiled sadly. For the first time she understood the way her parents had made the decisions which had led to their heads being displayed on Speaker’s Rock.
“Adele?” Miranda said. “If Daniel were fishing with no communicator along, how would you contact him in an emergency?”
Adele pursed her lips. It wasn’t a question she had expected, but she didn’t really care what information people wanted from her. It was her job to provide information; period.
“Fishing on the Bantry estate?” she clarified. Miranda nodded agreement.
“I would use satellite imagery to track his boat,” Adele said. “If I were at Bantry myself, I would borrow an aircar to reach him. Tovera can drive; well enough.”
“I learned to drive an aircar,” Miranda said. “But I’d have to call you to access the satellites. If the situation arose again, that is.”
“Yes,” Adele said. “Of course.”
Tovera led the girl downstairs again to the front door. Adele went back to her log books.
I hope Daniel knows what he has there, Adele thought. I certainly do.
***
Daniel had never thought about the appearance of the Sands’ townhouse: it wasn’t the sort of question that interested him. If someone had asked him what he expected Cleveland House would look like, he would have guessed it was something like Chatsworth Minor or The Almoner, the Leary townhouse in Xenos.
“This is…,” he murmured to Adele as they waited for a servant to take them to Rikard Cleveland. “Unexpected.”
“Yes,” said Adele. From her curt tone, her opinion was as negative as Daniel’s own.
“It looks like a bloody whorehouse,” Hogg said, voicing much the same thought though without the disapproval. “A bloody fancy whorehouse.”
The Sand residence stood in a row of houses much like Chatsworth Minor in age though of relatively modest construction. Two had been knocked together to create Cleveland House, as it now was called. The new common facade lighted the three-story entrance hall with a large, east-facing circular window.
Adele glanced up at the window and said, “That’s called an oriel window. Master Cleveland had a sense of humor.”
She looked around at the twisted pillars of colored marble and panels with gold designs inlaid on panels of polished red stone. The frieze just below the coffered ceiling was made of iridescent tiles in primary colors and gold.
“A pity,” Adele added in a voice dry enough to suck moisture from desert air, “that he didn’t have a sense of taste as well.”
“Master Rikard will see you now in the main hall, sir and lady,” said the servant who had gone into the interior of the house. The doorman remained with them in the hall. “Will your servants…?”
“They’ll wait here,” Daniel decided. The stone benches built against the front wall didn’t look particularly comfortable, but Hogg was used to sitting in a hunting blind during winter storms. Daniel understood very little of Tovera, but he was confident that personal comfort wasn’t one of her priorities either.
“A glass of cider wouldn’t come amiss,” said Hogg. He was deliberately prodding the pansy servants of this knocking shop.
Which meant he hadn’t taken a good look at these servants: fit young men who spoke with cultured accents. They weren’t the sort of staff you would expect in a house like this, but they were the sort that people like Mistress Sand had around them. Hogg’s rural upbringing had played him false.
Before Daniel decided how to respond, Tovera said in a tone of amused disdain, “Take a look at them, Hogg.”
Hogg did. He then spread his hands on top of his thighs, palms down. “Sorry, buddy,” he said to the nearer servant, the doorman.
“I’m sure there’s cider in the cellar, Captain Leary?” said the other man.
“I guess I’ve drunk enough this morning already,” Hogg said, “and I haven’t had a drop.” He looked at Daniel and said, “Sorry, master. Won’t happen again.”
The guide bowed Daniel and Adele into a large hall. He was smiling. Daniel paused, looked at the man more closely, and said, “If your name is Hutton, I was in the Academy with your brother.”
“That would be my cousin Julius, Captain Leary,” the servant said. “When he’s next in Xenos, I’ll tell him I’ve met you. He’ll be envious.”
A slender man stood in front of a vast green fireplace. He walked forward to meet them, extending his right hand. If the entrance hall had been gaudy, this room was that in spades. It too was a full three stories high.
The whole ceiling was a skylight of stained glass. The pilasters which supported it were topped by gargoyles rather than capitals, and the fluted shafts had been gilded. Paintings of men in armor and women in gauzy dresses marched around the walls’ upper range, while mural tiles of a hunting scene set in a forest covered the band at floor level.
The floor level was mirrored. Daniel found the effect disconcerting because it multiplied every movement.
“Captain Leary,” said the young man, shaking Daniel’s hand. He bowed to Adele and said, “Lady Mundy. I’m Rikard Cleveland, and I’m honored to speak with you.”
Cleveland nodded toward the huge fireplace. “I’m told,” he said, “that you could roast a whole ox on that hearth.”
If this whelp thinks he’s going to impress a Leary with that… Aloud Daniel said, “On Bantry we were more given to fish fries. But each to his own taste, of course.”
“I understand perfectly,” Cleveland said. “This hearth, and the way he rebuilt mother’s family home generally, sum up an aspect of my father’s character. I aped his flamboyance, his self-importance, and his need to be seen to be important by other people. Whatever you’ve heard about my behavior before I left for Corcyra is quite true, or at any rate the truth is just as bad.”
“I see…,” Daniel said. His opinion of Cleveland’s character had just risen—and also his opinion of Cleveland’s intelligence. If he’s chosen this absurd room to demonstrate his present self-awareness, then there may be more to the Corcyra business than I’ve assumed.
“I was spared father’s taste for malachite and gilt,” Cleveland added, smiling broadly. He nodded again toward the fireplace of dark green stone with black markings. “Which is a small blessing, I realize, in comparison with the rest.”
Daniel laughed. “Not so very small, I think,” he said. He gestured the nearest of the room’s several square tables; they were of a size for cards.
“Are the chairs around those tables comfortable?” he asked. “If they are, I’ll pick one that doesn’t require me to look at the fireplace.”
Cleveland smiled again and waved them to the table. When his visitors took placed on opposite sides, he settled into the chair between them with his back to the door.
“I felt alone my whole life,” Cleveland said. “My father had no use for me. I mean literally: I was of no use in advancing his ambitions, so he ignored my existence. Mother tried. I think she would have tried harder if I hadn’t determinedly driven her away because I wanted to be a great man like my father. And because I was such a nasty little prick, I didn’t have any friends—which I didn’t realize, because I was surrounded by spongers.”
Adele had taken out her data unit. Cleveland glanced at her, but he didn’t comment or show concern. He probably knew something of Adele, but even so her behavior often disconcerted people who expected her to pay obvious attention to them while they were speaking.
“Now, I’m not offering this as an excuse for my behavior,” Cleveland said. “Which of course it isn’t. But I want you both to understand why the fellowship I found within the Transformationist community had such a powerful effect on me. I won’t be surprised if you continue to think of me as daft, but do accept that I’m quite sincere in my daftness.”
Daniel glanced at Adele. Her control wands moved in subtle fashions, adjusting the information which danced above her personal data unit like dustmotes in colored sunlight. The holograms coalesced only at the angle of the user’s eyes.
She was letting Daniel take the lead in the discussion, though if Cleveland thought Adele wasn’t listening to him, he was badly mistaken. It was quite possible that she was reading the conversation as a text crawl on her display, of course. Daniel knew his friend preferred to observe reality through an interface.
“Master Cleveland…,” Daniel said, leaning forward. “I don’t have any problem with what other people believe, so long as they don’t expect their beliefs to affect my behavior. I gather you believe there’s a treasure on Corcyra. My colleague and I have come here to learn why you believe that.”
“The Upper Cephisis River Valley is a mining region,” said Cleveland. He didn’t appear to be put out by Daniel pressing him. “At the time Pantellaria and its colonies joined the Alliance—”
He paused and smiled. Daniel smiled back.
“—the Transformationist Assembly, which is legally a corporation, refiled its land claim under Alliance law. This was simply a precaution.”
And a very wise one, Daniel thought. The Transformationists might be religious loonies, but they were neither stupid nor politically naive.
“Among the information deposited along with the claim was a certified assay of Pearl Valley showing that neither copper nor any other ore is present in significant amounts. This isn’t required for a claim, of course, but I presume it was done to turn away Alliance bureaucrats who might assume that we—that the Assembly of the day—was sitting on vast mineral wealth.”
“That sort of thing has been known to happen,” Daniel said. And not only when the new overlords came from Pleasaunce. Greedy administrators were a reality of imperial rule, and the Republic of Cinnabar was a surely an empire as the Alliance was.
“I looked at the file,” Cleveland said. “As well as the assays, it contained a microwave scan of the subsurface rocks. While I was still on Cinnabar, I’d been employed by an engineering firm owned by a friend of my mother.”
He smiled ruefully. “Not employed very long, of course,” he said, “but I picked up some rudiments. There was an object thirty feet down in the rock, small—no larger than a man’s head—but of a very irregular shape. The scan proceeded down the full length of the valley, which allowed the computer to create three-dimensional models. The software couldn’t model this, however.”
Adele didn’t look up, but her wands had paused. Knowing her habits, Daniel suspected she had a realtime image of Cleveland’s face inset on her holographic display, just as she did while talking with others on the bridge of a starship.
“All right,” said Daniel. “You’ve found an anomaly in the ground. Why do you believe it’s a treasure?”
Cleveland nodded, smiling again. He’d gained his first point.
“Do you know anything about the settlement of Corcyra?” he asked.
“I know a little,” Daniel said. And by now Adele probably knew quite a lot, but he didn’t say that aloud. “It was settled from Pantellaria about five hundred years ago, initially as a farming colony. The copper deposits were discovered shortly thereafter. Corcyra became a major mining center—as it remains today.”
“That’s the official story,” Cleveland said, nodding.
“It’s the true story,” Daniel said, frowning. “The records of the discovery, the minutes of the Council of Pantellaria approving the colony, the names of all thirty-seven hundred colonists in the initial migration—they all exist. I’ve seen them, and I believe my colleague can show them to you right now if you’re in doubt.”
“I could,” said Adele without looking up. “But I suspect Master Cleveland is referring to the legend that there was a Pre-Hiatus settlement on Corcyra before the Pantellarians arrived.”
“Yes, Lady Mundy,” Cleveland said, turning his eyes toward Adele for the first time. “Though not Pre-Hiatus—I don’t know of any evidence supporting that belief. But I believe I’ve found evidence that Corcyra was settled from Bay about 800 years ago, long before Pantellaria discovered the planet and sent its colony.”
Adele’s wands danced like the surface of a pond in a rainstorm. She said, “Bay settled Ischia in the Ribbon Stars eight hundred years ago. That was only colony ship which Bay sent out. Before end of the century, Bay had collapsed into civil war from which its civilization never recovered. The factions were using fusion bombs, and they stopped fighting simply because the infrastructure could no longer support weapons more advanced than spear throwers.”
“The colony ship from Bay, the Coalsack 5747, was under Captain Pearl,” Cleveland said. “That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Adele said. “The only further data I have on the venture is that there were some thirteen thousand settlers.”
“Cleveland,” said Daniel. He hoped he kept the sudden concern out of his voice. “Did you get this idea of a treasure because of the captain’s name is the same as that of the valley your church is set up in?”
If the boy had done something so silly, the whole business was absurd—and he was probably too deluded to listen to reason. Much as Daniel would like to help the Sands—
“No, Captain Leary,” Cleveland said with a smile of calm amusement. He was, after all, Daniel’s senior by a year or two. “The coincidence of names caused me to look into Ischian history, however. There was a surprising amount of information available on Corcyra since the planets are neighbors and Ischia was a major trading partner of Corcyra and of Pantellaria as well.”
“You have the advantage of me there,” Daniel said. He felt embarrassed even though he hadn’t actually said anything insulting about Cleveland’s intelligence or common sense. “I know nothing of the other stars in the Ribbon Cluster, save Pantellaria.”
“Captain Pearl landed on Ischia as planned and disembarked the colonists,” Cleveland said. “He and the crew were to be colonists also, in the normal fashion of colony ships. Ordinarily the ship, the Coalsack 5747, would have been cannibalized for the colony’s use, but there were two factions within the colonists. Not long after landing on Ischia, Captain Pearl lifted off again with most of the crew and about a thousand of the original colonists. The Coalsack 5747 was never heard of again.”
“Bloody hell,” said Daniel. He shook his head, feeling a little queasy at the implications of what Cleveland had said. “I’m not surprised the ship disappeared. It may not have made it into orbit after liftoff. Colony ships are huge, and they’re not built for repeated liftoffs and landings.”
“Was the division among the colonists due to the religious arguments which led to the civil war that broke out on Bay a generation later?” Adele said. For politeness’ sake, she looked at Cleveland this time as she spoke.
“I don’t know, Lady Mundy,” Cleveland said. “My source here is an Ischian history which I suspect was intended as a school text. What it says is that Captain Pearl and his confederates stole a great treasure.”
“Could that not have been the ship itself?” Adele said. “The cargo had largely been landed when Pearl lifted off again, but the loss of the ship must have been a great handicap to the new colony.”
“The Coalsack may have been the treasure, certainly,” Cleveland agreed. “Nothing else appearing, I might assume that it was. But there’s the buried anomaly in the Pearl Valley.”
“The fact that the ship lifted from Ischia doesn’t prove that it landed on Corcyra,” Daniel said, but his tone was mild. He was becoming intrigued, more or less despite himself. “As I say, it may well have broken up on Ischia.”
“Not in sight of the ground,” Cleveland said. “I’m sure from the tone of the history that it would have been recorded as the just retribution of Providence on the traitors.”
Daniel nodded in understanding. Adele raised her eyes again and said, “I would like to see this history, if I may.”
“The original is waiting at the door with Gillfin,” Cleveland said. He was gaining assurance as the interview went on. “Your reputation preceded you, Lady Mundy. I made a copy, but you may be able to learn things from the original which have escaped me.”
It struck Daniel that the boy must have inherited his mother’s intelligence as well as her strong jaw and broad forehead. His willowy height, however, owed nothing to Mistress Sand’s short, blocky frame.
“What decided me to return to Cinnabar and attempt to mount an expedition,” Cleveland said, “was the port computer at the capital, Brotherhood. It’s the main starport, where the river broadens and forms a pool at the base of the foothills.”
“Yes,” said Daniel, nodding cautiously.
“The computer comes from a starship,” Cleveland said. “I know, that’s common: a computer which can calculate navigation in the Matrix has more capacity than any use in normal space requires.”
“Yes,” said Daniel. “No matter how old it is.”
“This computer—it’s in the Manor, Brotherhood’s government building,” Cleveland went on. “This computer was manufactured on Bay. And nothing so sophisticated has been manufactured on Bay for the past seven hundred years.”
Adele’s wands were in quivering motion. “I’ll want to see the computer,” she said to her display. “Will that be possible?”
“I don’t think it would be difficult if you were in Brotherhood,” Cleveland said. “It certainly wasn’t for me.”
He cleared his throat and added, sounding diffident again, “May I ask a question, please? Does your question mean that you’re thinking of investing in the expedition?”
“You’ve convinced me to provide the ship and crew for the expedition at my own expense,” Daniel said. He assumed that was what Adele intended, but it didn’t matter. She had made him lead, so she would back him whatever her personal opinion. “I’ll talk to Mistress Sand. I expect that she can outfit the vessel from her own resources, so there’s no need of outside investors. We’ll need a cargo, you see, and she’s well-placed to provide it.”
He smiled at Cleveland and rose to his feet. “You’ve found the, well—the treasure, we’ll call it for now. For that you’ll keep a third. Your mother will get a third. And I will get the remaining third. Can we shake on a partnership on those terms?”
He offered his hand.
Cleveland stood, looking stunned. “Captain Leary,” he said. “This is very fair, more than fair. But I’ve already discussed arrangements with Captain Sorley of the freighter Madison Merchant. He has been willing to carry me if I indemnified him against loss in a war zone. That’s why I asked mother for financial help.”
“I don’t know Captain Sorley…,” Daniel said, his mind racing through possibilities. “Have you signed a contract yet?”
“Based on his record,” Adele said still seated and scrolling through data, “Captain Sorley has never kept a contract in his life. Of course I have only a few of his aliases. It could be that under other names he’s more honest.”
“What?” said Cleveland. He slowly extended his arm, though he continued to stare at Adele.
Daniel grasped his hand and shook it firmly. “There, partner,” he said. “I’ll keep you informed of developments. I don’t think it will be long before we can lift from here and get to work.”
Adele rose to her feet and slipped her data unit into its pocket.
“Yes,” she said. “And Master Cleveland? I strongly advise you not to discuss the matter further with Captain Sorley. He is a liar, and a thief, and very probably a murderer. You would soil yourself by spitting in his face. Do I make myself clear?”
“Ah…,” Cleveland said. “Lady Mundy, we Transformationists attempt to find good in every human being.”
Adele stepped briskly toward the door. “I told you that Sorley was probably a murderer,” she said over her shoulder. “That benefit of the doubt was all the good I could find regarding the man.”
Daniel, still smiling, nodded to Cleveland. He followed Adele out.