The personal data unit was a featureless rectangle, four inches by ten inches, and half an inch thick. Its display was holographic, cued to the focus of the user’s eyes. Though the unit had a virtual keyboard or could respond to voice commands, Adele preferred the speed and flexibility of the slim wands. She held them at the balance between the thumb and first two fingers of either hand. An expert in their use—and Adele was that if ever there was one—could access information almost as fast as her brain could frame the questions.
Delos Vaughn of Strymon, age twenty-nine Earth years; sole offspring of Leland Vaughn, former President of Strymon. Strymon presidency, a lifetime elective office with candidacy and franchise limited to members of the Shipowning class. Shipowning class: a group of originally thirty-seven, but now expanded to over a hundred, families; actually owning a starship is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criterion for membership in the Shipowning class. . . .
Adele’s little unit had a considerable storage capacity, but its real value on a developed world was to give her access to other databases. Here on Cinnabar she was linked—through the monorail control circuit—to the central records computer in the Navy Office, which she used as her base unit.
It had occurred to Adele as she set up the connection on her first day back on Cinnabar that she probably could’ve gotten authorization to use the system if she’d gone through some of the channels available to her. She’d decided it was simpler to circumvent the electronic barriers to what she was doing than it would’ve been to plow through bureaucratic inertia. Besides, it amused Adele to break rules when she’d spent all her previous life obeying them.
In the past month Adele had gained Daniel Leary for a friend and the whole Republic of Cinnabar Navy for home and family. Between them they gave her a remarkable feeling of security.
She grinned as she shifted back to another aspect of the problem she’d set herself. Delos Vaughn, arrived on Cinnabar aboard the RCS Tashkent as a guest of the Republic. . . .
A car stopped in front of her with a clatter and squeal. She ignored it as she had the arrival of a party of laborers on the platform, shuffling heavy boots and talking about a ball game.
“Hey, Chief?” a laborer called.
Primary residence on Holroyd Square, Xenos, with secondary residences—
A different voice bellowed, “Lady, ain’t this one yours?”
Adele’s mind rose shatteringly from depths of pure knowledge where she preferred to live; it reformed in the present. An empty car stood in front of her. The lighted banner over the open door read ity enter. Fifty yards down the rail, slowing as it approached the platform, was the Manine Village car that would haul home the laborers, crammed in as tightly as books in dead storage.
“Thank you,” she called, stowing her data unit in its pocket with the ease of long habit and a precise mind. She stepped aboard the car just before the door closed; touched the destination plate over the Pentacrest—the map’s clear cover was smeared almost illegible by the fingers of previous users, so Adele had to peer in doubt before she made her choice; and then sat back on one of the pair of facing benches as the car rocked into motion.
She was alone in a car in which twelve could sit and thirty ride in some degree of comfort. She might have taken out her data unit again, but she decided to experience the trip instead. She wasn’t going to enjoy the ride, but there were things she could usefully learn about Xenos after her fifteen years of exile.
Besides, she was punishing herself for not noticing the car’s arrival. She could’ve spent all afternoon there on the platform, lost in personal researches when she had business for others to accomplish. Adele had never been one to shirk her responsibilities, but the very degree of focus that made her effective sometimes got in the way of carrying out social obligations.
Not that this meeting was social except in the general sense of being part of Adele’s involvement in human society.