* * *
The tram rattled off the main line onto a spur; trees with long, dangling branches framed the entrance to the route. Daniel would know what they were, Adele mused. She found the thought so comforting that she brought her data unit out of its thigh pocket and switched it on.
“Mistress?” said Lieutenant Wilsing, raising an eyebrow.
“I wondered what the trees were,” Adele said. She slid her control wands from their pocket in the case. For a trained user, the wands gave much greater speed and precision than any other interface. “I decided it’d be a good test to look them up for myself, since Lieutenant Leary isn’t here to identify them for me.”
“Here in the entrance corridor, you mean?” Wilsing said. “They’re Maranham cypresses, brought back by Captain St. Regis when he opened Maranham three hundred and fifty years ago. This is quite a famous grove, as a matter of fact.”
“Thank you,” said Adele, dryly. Well, that was another way of getting the information. . . .
They entered a broad commons encircled by a ring of neat brick houses set well back from the tramway. It was late evening; the sky remained bright but the ground was in deep shadow.
“The fourth house . . . ,” Wilsing said. “There.”
The tram moaned to a halt; on this lightly used byway there was no need for sidings. Wilsing removed the special key he’d thrust into the control panel, sending the car directly to the destination he’d programmed instead of halting for additional passengers that the central transportation computer had determined it could carry efficiently.
“The service has aircars, of course,” Wilsing said as he snapped the key onto his belt pouch, then bowed Adele off the car ahead of him. “But Mistress Sand prefers that we remain as unobtrusive as possible.”
Adele smiled faintly. She agreed with the policy, but she rather suspected that Wilsing and the others of his type whom Mistress Sand used as flunkies would rather cut a wide, flashy swath through Cinnabar society. The need for quiet competence was at least one of the reasons that Sand came to people like Warrant Officer Adele Mundy when she needed real work done. . . .
Wilsing paused on the brick pavement as the tramcar purred away, gesturing toward the open space within the monorail track. Pieces of naval paraphernalia were displayed there. Near at hand was a plasma cannon, its muzzle raggedly eroded. Farther around the circle was the lump of a High Drive motor, and in the center rose a starship’s antenna.
Wilsing pointed to the antenna. “Commander Stacey Bergen conned the Excellence to Alexandreios from the truck of that mast,” he explained. “I’ve heard that described as the most amazing feat of astrogation since Cinnabar returned to the stars.”
“Lieutenant Leary believes his Uncle Stacey was a uniquely skilled astrogator,” Adele said as she surveyed the small park. It was really an outdoor museum, the sort of exhibit that retired RCN officers would create for their own sort. The fact they’d given Commander Bergen pride of place would mean a great deal to Daniel . . . which was almost certainly why Wilsing mentioned it. Perhaps the young man had virtues beyond those of good breeding after all. “I don’t know of anybody better qualified to judge than Daniel.”
Wilsing led Adele up the path to one of the houses nestled back among the trees. Bands of light marked the edges of the crazy-pavement ahead of them, advancing as they did; a porch light shone over the door in dim sufficiency.
The servant who opened the door was too senior to wear livery. He bowed low and said, “Lieutenant Wilsing, I believe you know the way to the red drawing room. The Captain left a decanter and glass on the table for you. Mistress Mundy, you’re awaited in the library. Will you please follow me?”
The servant—the only person visible apart from Wilsing, who absented himself into a side chamber with a nod—led the way through a pair of rooms whose furnishings were as simple as they were exotic. All the furniture was hand-crafted from strikingly-patterned wood, though the pieces in the first room were as different from those of the second as either was from anything native to Cinnabar.