The clerk led him and Hogg past the guard of a ground floor room. Wilsing, seeing that she was ready to follow him, took Adele in the other direction and up three flights of stairs. Tovera followed silently.
Adele heard voices and the sound of office machines in the rooms they passed, but the suite at the top of a corner tower was silent. A male secretary met Adele at the door. He bowed her in and remained outside with Wilsing and Tovera as he closed the door.
The room was covered in overlaid rugs, a meter wide and three meters long, which must have come with the palace. The desk was crackle-finished metal with a smooth enameled top—straight RCN issue. It was large, but only because three identical modules had been dovetailed together.
The man behind the desk was typing into a keypad while watching a holographic display. Simultaneously he spoke into a pickup with active sound cancelling: Adele saw his lips move, but she couldn’t hear anything but the hum of the display as she walked toward the desk. The man nodded her to a puffy cushioned chair, part of the original furnishings, while continuing to speak silently.
Adele brought out her handheld and searched the map database to learn who’d owned the property before the RCN moved in. In part she was interested in the answer, not that it was likely to mean anything to her; but it was also true that she didn’t care to twiddle her thumbs while somebody else carried on with his own business. Carnolets was the military governor here, that was obvious; but she was Mundy of Chatsworth.
Captain Carnolets was a tall, broad-shouldered man who’d stayed in shape despite being in his late sixties or older. He wore a 1st Class dress uniform with a considerable number of medal ribbons on both breasts. Adele wasn’t expert in such things, but the varying size of the ribbons suggested to her that many of them were from foreign governments rather than the Republic itself.
This palace was still listed as the property of Duchess Ayesha Ramos, a member of the Governor’s Inner Council. Presumably the Duchess had given the wrong advice recently, or perhaps Governor Sakama had simply needed a scapegoat to take the blame for something when an RCN squadron arrived.
Adele glanced hard-faced about the room, taking in the statues in alcoves and the geometrical parquet of the ceiling. While it lasted, life had been pleasant for Duchess Ramos. Lucius Mundy might well have said the same thing.
“All right, Mundy,” Carnolets said, switching off his display to look across the desk at her unveiled. His expression probably seemed intimidating to many of those he interviewed. “Your report made interesting reading.”
Adele shrugged. After you’ve faced 15-cm plasma cannon, a scowling human holds few terrors. “Gathering the information was interesting also,” she said. “Now that I’ve had time to digest the experience, that is. While it was going on I didn’t feel much of anything.”
Carnolets frowned, then broke into a smile and slapped the desk ringingly. “Bernis Sand said you don’t look like much but not to be fooled,” he said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know Mistress Sand as well as you appear to, Captain,” Adele said, “but I’d be willing to take her word on most things.”
Carnolets nodded. “Aye,” he said, “and so would anybody who matters in the Senate. That’s why the Republic’s as healthy as it is, a lot of folks say. I say it.”
Adele nodded without speaking, waiting for the captain to come to the point. There was a point, she felt certain, or he wouldn’t be representing Mistress Sand.
Carnolets drummed on his desk with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. “All right, Mundy, I’ve got your report, but it’s not the same as being there. Give me—give us—your assessment of the Alliance threat remaining on Gehenna. Nobody’s looking to take your job if you’re wrong.”
Adele gave Carnolets a smile similar to that she’d bestowed on Lieutenant Wilsing in the car. “With respect, Captain,” she said, “my job is signals officer of the Princess Cecile. If Mistress Sand chooses to relieve me of any tasks I perform for her as a citizen of the Republic, she’s welcome to do so.”