“Keep an eye on things if you please, Hogg,” Daniel said in a low voice. He gave the ladder a practice tug. Then, with a quick glance around, he started up. He’d have swung wildly if Hogg hadn’t belayed the bottom of the ladder, but the silk-and-bamboo construction was certainly strong enough.
The trap door wasn’t meant for anybody quite so bulky as Daniel Leary wearing his dress uniform under a cloak. He squirmed, angling his torso into the enclosed balcony. Light entered through lattices, softening everything into a world apart from the street outside. Perfume clung to the wood, and more giggles sounded from the dim interior of the house proper.
Daniel and every other member of the Sissie’s crew carried an emergency communicator while on liberty. The plate now buzzed. For a moment Daniel fought the urge to ignore it, but they’d only call him in a real emergency.
“Are you coming, Mr. Officer?” breathed a voice from just out of sight inside the house.
Daniel sighed and slid the flat communicator from his sash. “Six here,” he said. “Go ahead.”
* * *
Adele sat at her console, her data unit on her lap. Her wands twitched across information she’d collected through the Princess Cecile’s antennas and had processed with a navigational computer which in minutes or less could calculate courses across the universes of the Matrix. She smiled as she worked, as happy as she was capable of being. Certainly she was content, which was all she’d ever asked from life.
“General quarters!” ordered Woetjans, the watch officer. “There’s an aircar approaching, a big one! Over!”
Adele switched her display to an optical pickup on the corvette’s hull. If she could just find the vehicle identification code, she could search for the owner through the mass of data she’d collected. . . .
Crewmen ran down the corridors to their action stations. “Bessing!” somebody shouted on B Deck, his voice echoing up the companionway. “Get the arms locker open! Where’s Bessing?”
Bessing, a rigger who was striking for an armorer’s rating under Sun—now on liberty—was already sprinting down the corridor to the locker adjacent to the Battle Center. The electronic key was in his hand.
“Everybody return to duty!” Woetjans said. “It’s the Countess and there’s nobody with her. Bridge out.”
Adele didn’t understand why the Klimovna was returning alone, but it was no cause for concern; least of all to Adele Mundy. She went back to her own affairs, downloading the files involving the Cluster Naval Self-Defense Force. Nobody’d asked her for the information, but at some future date Daniel or Mistress Sand—or someone at present unknown—might ask about the Cluster’s navy. Because Adele was who she was, she gathered the information now.
Also there was the matter of the Goldenfels. The Alliance freighter was sealed against Adele’s devices, so she was methodically searching all the Cluster files involved with the vessel. The bureaucrats’ records, official and otherwise, would provide a good start on the data she wanted.
“Good afternoon, Countess,” Tovera said in a loud voice.
Adele jumped internally, suddenly aware that someone—that the Klimovna—stood beside the signals console. Adele compressed her display, though it was only a blur of light from any angle but that to her own eyes, and looked up.
The Countess smiled down at her. “You appear to concentrate, Mistress Mundy,” she said.
“Yes,” said Adele. “It’s the only way I know to accomplish anything.”
The Countess sat sideways on the couch of the gunnery console, continuing to smile. Adele noticed that she hadn’t responded to Tovera’s greeting. Granted, Tovera had been warning Adele of the foreigner’s presence, but she still deserved a response.
“You work very hard,” the Klimovna said, ignoring what Adele had meant for a blunt warning that she was busy. “You’ve only been off this tiny boat one time since we’ve landed, have you?”
Adele’s eyes narrowed. The short answer would’ve been, “Yes,” though the fact hadn’t occurred to Adele until the other woman mentioned it.
Still, Adele’s duties to Mistress Sand required at least the passive cooperation of the Princess Cecile’s new owners. Aloud she said, “Countess, some of the most beautiful and historic buildings in the human universe are libraries, and I’ve been privileged to work in the best of them. While I’m working, though, I’m aware of nothing but data and the means by which I access it.”