Once her face appeared on the cabin’s wallscreen, though, she studied it minutely for signs of aging. To her relief, she could find none. The rejuvenation therapies were still working.
Then she wondered if that might not be counted against her, back on Earth. They might think I’m filled with nanomachines, like Doug. That would prejudice them against me, maybe.
She shrugged to herself and shut down the display. Faced with a choice between flatlander prejudices and physical youth, she opted for youth. With a yawn she looked toward her bed. Time for some beauty sleep, Edith said to herself, wishing that Doug were here with her.
HUMPHRIES MANSION
The house was huge, Fuchs realized, and divided into two sections. On one side of the hallway that extended from the entrance there seemed to be a warren of offices and laboratories. Fuchs and his crew glanced into a few of them; they were unoccupied, quiet, dark. Offices for his staff, Fuchs guessed, empty at this time of night.
Impatiently he waved his three aides back to the hallway.
“Sanja,” he directed, pointing down the hall, “you find that woman. She must know where Humphries is. “We’ll look through the other side of the house.”
Humphries was upstairs, in the master bedroom suite, sitting at his computer desk. The war is going well, he said to himself as he studied the latest figures on battle casualties. In another couple of months we’ll have booted Astro out of the Belt altogether.
Yet when he turned to his intelligence department’s latest assessment, his face contorted into a frown. Astro’s building more ships, gearing up for a counterattack. That damned greasemonkey doesn’t know when she’s beaten.
He heard a muffled clatter from downstairs. One of the servants must have dropped something. Leaning back in his yielding desk chair he realized that he had ordered a snack more than half an hour ago. Where the hell was it?
With a shake of his head he returned to his musings about the war. They claim Pancho’s disappeared. More likely she’s down at that Nairobi base trying to get their support. And I’ve got a board of directors meeting coming up. They’ll yell bloody murder about the p-and-l figures. This war’s bleeding us. But once we win it, they’ll all shut up. They’ll have to.
His thoughts returned to Pancho. The little guttersnipe. If she’s building a new fleet of warships here at Selene it makes sense to attack the factories where they’re being built. But that would bring Stavenger into the war on her side. I don’t want Selene coming in against—
“The water turned off.”
Annoyed, Humphries turned to see Victoria Ferrer standing in the doorway to his office, wrapped in a white full-length robe, its sash cinched around her waist. Her hair was glistening wet.
“What?” he snapped.
“The water turned off,” she repeated, “right in the middle of my shower.”
At that moment the report hovering above his desk abruptly disappeared, replaced by the intense face of his chief security guard.
“Sir, we have intruders on the premises.”
“Inside the house?”
“Yessir. Downstairs. I suggest you go to top security mode immediately.”
“Damned right! And you get them! Call everyone you’ve got. Get them!”
Down in his basement office, the security chief clicked off his phone, thinking furiously. Only twelve guards on night duty, he knew. Still, he glanced at the screen showing the duty roster. They’ve already knocked out four of them. He told the phone to call up every guard on the payroll—another two dozen of them—and get them to the mansion immediately.
Humphries has his suite sealed off, so they can’t get to him unless they can cut through three centimeters of reinforced cermet, he thought. Even with laser pistols that will take some time. The boss is safe enough. He called for a view of the master suite and saw that Ferrer was in there with Humphries. He grinned to himself. Hell, he might even enjoy this, as long as she’s sealed into the bedroom with him.
Then he turned his attention to the screen showing three of the four intruders making their way up the main staircase to the upper floor.