Adele, examining Tegeli’s starship landing records, pursed her lips. Although technically Daniel wasn’t lying . . . and under the circumstances a flat lie would probably have been a better choice than telling the Commander that the Princess Cecile had fled San Juan after her crew fought a street battle with Alliance spacers, eventually drawing in large numbers of the local military.
Not that it had been the Sissies’ fault, of course, but that was the sort of detail that local officials might find less than reassuring.
Mendez sniffed. “Politics!” he said. “We don’t go in for that sort of nonsense on Tegeli. People mind their own affairs.”
Such as they are, Adele thought as she reviewed the records she’d just copied from the planetary database. Tegeli had logged only thirty-eight landings in the past quarter; Todos Santos saw that many in a day or two. Fishing and marine products were the planet’s main exports; imports were a limited quantity of luxury goods, supporting the Sailing Directions’ description of Tegeli as having a highly-stratified society.
Stratified but languid, which is another way of putting Commander Mendez’ comment about people minding their own affairs. The planet had almost no volcanic activity. There was no moon, and because Tegeli was 108 million miles from its sun the solar tides were mild. The human inhabitants appeared to live in a pattern that mimicked the placid nature of their environment.
“Now, I see that you’re not the owner of this vessel,” said Mendez, consulting the uppermost of the sheaf of flimsies in his gloved right hand. He wore a skin-tight vacuum suit whose patches made Adele’s lips wrinkle sourly just to look at, though she supposed the holes weren’t life-threatening. A split in the fabric would just mean minor hemorrhaging, a few more spider veins in the Commander’s skin. Prolonged weightlessness—because the picket boat didn’t carry sufficient reaction mass to keep a weigh on—had done more serious damage to his body. “The owner is Count Klimov?”
“We are the owners, Georgi and I,” said Valentina, standing with her husband at the front of their annex. “Is there a problem?”
The Klimovs hadn’t mastered weightlessness, but they were able to hold themselves vertical in one place instead of drifting about the way Adele would’ve done if she hadn’t been strapped in. She was, of course, strapped in.
“Not at all,” said Mendez, turning to face the Klimovs. “Not at all! But I note that you haven’t listed guest-friendships with anyone on Tegeli. Is that the case?”
“No,” the Count said. “I regret to admit that we’d never heard of your planet until just before we took off from Todos Santos. Our arrival here was whim.”
The truth was a little more complex than that, though Count Klimov might not understand clearly the reason Daniel had shaped their course to this backwater. Tegeli was an unlikely landfall for any vessel but one deliberately setting out for it. While the Princess Cecile wasn’t short of food, air, or reaction mass, she couldn’t afford to spend an indefinite additional period in space without replenishing those stores. Tegeli could supply their needs without a likelihood of the Goldenfels arriving before the corvette had finished loading.
“Well, a fortunate whim for us, then,” said Mendez. “Particularly for the Pansuelas of Lusa City.”
He consulted a second sheet of the flimsies he held. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Since they were the next on the rota, they were alerted as soon as your vessel announced its arrival. They’ll be very pleased.”
Mendez glanced around the bridge, then focused his attention on Daniel. “I wonder, Count Klimov,” he said. “Are any of your ship’s company of the landowning class as well?”
Instead of waiting for the Count to speak, Adele said from her console, “Lieutenant Leary, our captain, is the son of Speaker Leary. I myself am a Mundy of Chatsworth.”
She waited for Mendez to turn before giving him a cold smile. “I’m the Mundy of Chatsworth, as a matter of fact. If it matters to you, we’re members of what’re called the Best Families of the Republic of Cinnabar.”
Daniel looked surprised at Adele’s forwardness; she hadn’t had a way to warn him before she spoke. According to the information she was pulling together, there wasn’t a private inn anywhere on the planet that was better than a hog wallow.