Vonnie left Tas Bavol’s care to Captain Lafleur. She knew this was a risk; if Lafleur really was tied in with the conspiracy it would give him and Tas a chance to escape together. But it would also be a chance for him to prove his loyalty to the Service anew. Since Tas Bavol had been stripped of his power and was no longer of great value to the conspiracy, the risk would be a minimal one. Helena would be sending an investigative team to Newforest as standard operating procedure, so Captain Lafleur couldn’t do much damage even if he did defect.
Vonnie and Pias stayed on New forest another week while the ship Pias had come in was rescued from the forest and restored to its original condition. Pias called Beti back on DesPlaines to tell her the good news that she was no longer an exile. He rebuilt ties to his family and friends, though many of his acquaintances felt so guilty about what they’d done to him that the relation ships could never be fully restored. Pias also spent time reestablishing himself as heir to the planet and dismantling the evil bureaucracy that his brother had built in the name of efficiency. The jails were emptied of their political prisoners and Tas’s accomplices took their place. As heir to the planet, Pias formally requested that SOTE establish a temporary administrative regime until a final decision could be made on his future role.
Vonnie stayed in a hotel room in Garridan, keeping away from Pias as much as possible. The less they were seen together, the better it would be for their cover identities as SOTE agents. Vonnie became an ordinary tourist, visiting shops and places of interest and buying little presents for Jules, Maurice, and other people she cared about.
Finally, with the ship repaired, Pias’s departure could be delayed no longer. The farewell to his family – and particularly to his father – was tearful and sad, but this time Pias could promise he’d return frequently to visit and keep in touch with what was happening on his native world – and he’d also keep close contact with SOTE to be sure Newforest had the kind of government it deserved. He also promised to bring Yvette and little Kari back for a visit at the earliest opportunity, to allow grandfather and granddaughter a chance to see one another.
With Vonnie aboard, Pias lifted his ship off Newforest and set a course back to DesPlaines. Once they were safely in subspace, he and Yvonne had their first real chance for a conversation without having to censor everything they said for security purposes. “Just how did you manage to be in the right place at the right time?” Pias wondered.
His sister-in-law smiled. “Thinking over what you said back on DesPlaines, I realized you were probably right – I’d stick out horribly as an outsider in Newforest society. So I decided to go there and be an official outsider – I booked passage on commercial spaceliners and arrived as a tourist. It gave me more freedom than you had. I was able to smuggle some weapons and explosives in my luggage, and I wasn’t given a citizen’s card so I never got hassled. Apparently they wanted to be careful about playing games like that on outsiders who might go home and talk about it to the wrong people. As a plain old tourist from DesPlaines I could walk around undisturbed and do things a citizen would never be allowed to do.
“I got here, I think, about three days after you did. Garridan’s such a small town that it wasn’t hard for me to find you and keep an eye on you. After a while I noticed the police watching you, too. It was very subtle; with that citizen’s card to keep track of your movements they didn’t need heavy surveillance. 1 barely noticed it myself, so I’m not surprised you didn’t see it. I saw you steal that guard’s uniform and go into the computer complex. A couple of minutes later a whole platoon of guards went in after you, so I decided it was time for me to step in. I threw a few grenades to distract the guards at the gate long enough for me to get inside and I tried to keep the chaos going to help you if you needed it – which you did.”
Pias smiled. “I can’t exactly say I’m glad you ignored my advice, but I am pleased with the results. I’m just glad I’m not Jules. Eve is headstrong enough for me to deal with; I’ll let him try to argue you down in the future.”
—
A pleasant surprise awaited them as their ship landed at Felicité’s private spacefield. Yvette had caught a fast ship in from Earth and was there to provide them with a hero’s welcome. Pias spotted her the instant he left the airlock, and he raced down the boarding ramp and across the field to take her in his arms. They’d been apart the last few weeks, with Yvette on an assignment so dangerous there’d been a good chance she’d never return. Even though he’d heard from Vonnie that the mission was successful, this was the first opportunity he’d had to let out the tensions he’d felt. Now he grabbed Yvette, kissed her, and held her so tightly that if she were any less strong a woman she’d have snapped in two.
“I was so worried about you,” he told her when he finally stopped kissing her long enough to speak. “It was hell to have you so far away and in so much danger, and not be able to do anything to help you. I hope we never have to go through that again.”
“I do, too,” Yvette said, and there were tears of happiness in her eyes. “And Helena told me a little bit of what you were up to on Newforest. I’m so happy for you, to be back in with your family again; I know how much it would hurt if my family turned against me. I love you, Pias, and I’m glad your family can show their love again.
Pias nodded. “It’s no fun having a traitor for a brother, and some of the rest of them are rather forgettable – but yes, I’m glad I’ve got them, too.”
He and Yvette finally separated from their embrace and noticed, as though for the first time, that Vonnie was standing patiently beside them with a small smile on her face. Yvette returned the smile and reached out to take her sister-in-law’s hand. “Hello, Vonnie,” she said. “I’m sorry Jules isn’t here for you. He had to go back to Nereid to pick up the Comet; can’t just leave it sitting around some strange spaceport when we might need it at any moment. He promised to come straight back after he picked it up.”
Vonnie squeezed Yvette’s hand reassuringly and said, “That’s smooth. As long as I know he survived I’m not worried.”
Yvette hesitated, then decided to let Jules tell her about the severity of his injury. While there was no doubt at all that Jules would recover, he would never again have quite the same agility or lightning responses that had made him one of the handful of people ever to get a perfect score on the Service’s Thousand Point Test. His mind was undiminished and his body would still put normal men to shame – but his days as SOTE’s top agent were definitely numbered.
The trio drove back to Felicité and Pias quickly made a call to the Roumenier manor where his sister was staying, telling her she’d be receiving an imperial commendation for her bravery in bringing the Newforest problem to official attention. Her greatest delight was that Pias’s name had been restored and he was officially a member of her family again. “I never wanted to lose you, Pias,” she said. “You were everything a big brother should be, and I’m glad to have you back again.”
When Pias told her she was free to go home whenever she wanted, however, she hesitated. Puzzled, Pias pressed her and finally got the admission that she’d been seeing a lot of Vonnie’s brother, Jacques Roumenier, and was quite taken with him. They’d been doing a lot of sightseeing around DesPlaines, and Beti wasn’t sure she wanted to go home just yet. Pias admitted she couldn’t be compelled to go back to Newforest, and wished her happy hunting. He was smiling broadly as he blew her a kiss goodbye and broke the vidiphone connection.
Just before dinnertime a subcom call came in from Helena von Wilmenhorst to let them know how the situation stood at Headquarters. Since Vonnie’s last report from Newforest, a systematic investigation of SOTE’s files had been conducted and the reports from Captain Lafleur were found. Somehow, in a way no one could understand, those reports had all been misclassified and misfiled so that the information they contained had never reached the proper people. This gave the false impression that everything had been smooth on Newforest when in fact the situation was quite different.