Momentarily he was taken aback, then recognized the idiom she had in mind. “I was born in the southern end of Africa, my lady.”
“A stark and beautiful land, from what I have seen.”
“I was small when I left it.” If you had the synnoiotic potential, you must develop it from early childhood, or it was gone. His mind flew back to the sacrifices his parents had made—his mother giving up her career; his father, pastor in the Cosmological Christian Church, seeing him bit by bit losing God— to be with him in the Brain Garden on St. Helena, give him some family life while he grew into strangeness. But parents had always surrendered themselves and their children to something larger. History knew of apprentices to shamans, the prophet Samuel, Dalai Lamas, lesser monks of many faiths, yes, boys made eunuchs because only so could they advance in the service of the Emperor … “I do go back now and then.” It was indeed beautiful, that preserve where lions walked and grass swayed golden beneath the wind.
He must not let her pursue this subject. Lilisaire stood pensive. How much did she know or guess at? It was actually a relief when she said: “Maychance we should consider your business, that later we can take our ease. I think I would enjoy showing you about my abode.”
“I’d be fascinated,” he replied, which was no He, although he realized he would see nothing she didn’t want him to see.
“You and your … lesser comrades?” (What intimation had she of his real status, not a simple captain among detectives but a pragmatic of determiner rank?) “have investigated Caraine and Aiant, as well as others of the old blood.” (How quickly she had learned that!) “Now it is my turn, nay?” Her glance might have seemed candid, “Well, short and plain, I know naught of any plot to wreck the Habitat. True, you would not await that I admit it. Thus let me lay thereto that any such would be futile, stupid. Niolente herself could not in the end stay the all-devouring Federation.”
Despite her resistances, intrigues, fomented rebellion, terminal armed defiance, no. Venator wanted to say that the collapse of the sovereign Selenarchy, the establishment of the Republic, its accession to the World Federation and the rules of the Covenant were not merely the result of political and economic pressures. Ultimately, it was moral force. When Rinndalir left with Guthrie and Fireball began disbanding, the heart went out of too many Lunarians. Niolente’s had beaten rather lonely.
But: “We were not going to pick over dry bones, were we, my lady?” he advanced.
Lilisaire’s smile could turn unfairly seductive. “You are an intelligent man, Captain. I could come to a liking fopyou.”
“I certainly don’t accuse or suspect you of wrongdoing,” he said in haste. “I’m only, m-m, puzzled, and hope you can give me some illumination.”
“Ask on.” She gestured. “Shall we be seated?”
That meant more on low-^Luna than on Earth. He settled onto the divan before the table. She joined him. He was far too conscious of her nearness. A pheromonal perfume? No, surely nothing so crude, and so limited in its force.
“Taste,” she urged. He nibbled a canape of quail’s egg and caviar. Her daintiness put him to shame.
He cleared his throat. “My service has found clues to some activity in deep space,” he said. “Probably it’s based in the asteroids, but we aren’t certain.”
He lied. He knew of no such thing, unless you counted that bitter resistance to Federation governance which died with Lilisaire’s ancestress Niolente. The service had monitored this woman as closely as it was able because it knew she was equally opposed to most of what the Federation stood for, and she was dangerous. It learned that she had been ransacking every record and database available to her, and some of her queries had come near the matter of Proserpina. If she reached it, that could prove deadly. And now she had recalled lan Kenmuir from yonder.
“It’s not necessarily illicit,” Venator continued, “but it is undeclared, apparently secret. If it’s going to be consequential, the government naturally wants information about it.”