The plate showed four views of what appeared to be a midsized, private waiting room, brightly lit if a touch shabby, neither luxury lounge nor prison chamber. The ambiguous space was occupied by nine people and many jumbled piles of luggage. The figures were variously sitting up looking very bored, or lying across rearranged chairs and cases, uncomfortably dozing. Three men and six women. Tej’s heart seemed to stop beating altogether.
“Can you pick out this Dr. Dax?” asked the ImpSec lieutenant.
She gulped for breath, for rising joy, for hope unlooked-for. “I can pick out everybody.”
Rish was staring over the vid display with wide, devouring eyes. “The Baronne…?” she breathed.
“And Dada!” said Tej. “And Star and Pidge and Em and Pearl and…is that Grandmama?”
“What happened to her hair?” said Rish faintly.
Ivan Xav’s brows climbed; Byerly looked suddenly very blank.
Tej grabbed the customs man by the front of his uniform jacket. She really hadn’t meant to lift him off his feet; it just happened. “Take me to them! Take us to them right now!”
Chapter Fourteen
Two armed shuttleport security guards stood alert outside the entrance to the waiting room, Ivan noted at once. The Arqua clan had been sequestered well apart from the usual transients, but, delicately, not yet in criminal detention. That area lay conveniently nearby, though, through those unmarked double doors at the corridor’s end, if he was recalling the labyrinthine layout of this place correctly. Ivan decided not to mention this to the frantic Tej. Or to the jittering Rish. Judging from By’s narrowed glances around, he was making similar estimates.
The guards made way as the Customs amp; Immigration officer, a senior shift supervisor named Mahon, coded open the waiting-room door. Tej and Rish nearly fell over him, and each other, blasting through.
“My parents, I thought they were dead…” Tej squeaked as she elbowed the man out of her path.
A jerk of By’s chin invited Ivan to note the vid recorder the customs officer clutched in his hand. Mahon regained his balance and murmured to Ivan, “All those names Madame Vorpatril was rattling off…you do realize, none of them match the documentation these people were traveling under.” A thin smile turned his mouth, as of an earnest official contemplating well-honed instincts rewarded.
“Is that going to be a problem?” said Ivan.
“Definitely. I just don’t know what kind, yet. Or whose.” He and the wary ImpSec lieutenant, Zumboti, exchanged calculating stares.
Ivan twitched, and corrected, “Lady Vorpatril,” for the first time. Just in case. Zumboti took the precaution of unholstering his stunner and easing off the safety, though he held his hand discreetly down at his side, before shouldering in ahead of Ivan. A beat, and his glance back gave permission for Ivan to enter.
The chamber was transmuting from sleepy, grouchy boredom to shrieking chaos as various Arquas looked up one after another and saw Tej and Rish. Ivan had just time to confirm that no one was drawing a weapon as Tej flew directly to a stout, gray-haired, mahogany-faced man who barely made it to his feet before catching her in an astonished bear-hug. Ivan had moment to watch, unobserved, as his eyes squeezed shut, lids glistening with moisture, mouth opening in a huff of an exhalation under Tej’s impact; it seemed wrong, somehow, to look uninvited upon a man’s face so deeply disarmed, so naked with emotion.
Ivan tore his glance away to see Rish somersault through the air and fetch up kneeling neatly at the feet of the very tall woman with short, dark hair held in a jeweled headband, and crouch to touch the sandaled toes. The woman hastily bent and raised her up into an embrace as well. Her face was vastly more reserved than that of her spouse, but her expression was unnervingly intense for all its restraint.
All hopes delivered…
The pairs parted to share another hug four-about, and then the mob closed in. Ivan’s eyes flicked madly, trying to identify them all-if they would only stand still for a minute, or better yet, line up, he might have a fighting chance.
Two young women were taller than Tej, although not as tall as their mother-Ivan mentally dubbed them Fit and Fitter, before memory of the scans he’d been shown kicked in. Fit was Pidge, the middle sister, sporting red-brown skin, red-brown hair, and cinnamon eyes, dressed in something blue-green and flowing. Her taller, older, and impossibly even fitter sister Star shared the spicy skin, with sleek ebony hair drawn back in a tight knot, complemented by her utilitarian black pantsuit; her startling ice-green eyes recalled those of her mother the Baronne.
The assorted Jewels were, thank God, color-coded, and much easier to sort out. Ivan barely blinked at Emerald’s green and glittering skin and sunlight-on-leaves colored hair, or the slim woman with pointed ears and white skin laced with silver, her snow-white hair clipped in a similar short pelt-Pearl, obviously. Their pantsuits would probably be travel-rumpled if they dared.
The two young male figures were less instantly recognizable, although Ivan managed to arrive at them by process of elimination. They lacked the Arqua height of their elder sisters, being barely as tall as Byerly. The one had crisp black hair and dark olive skin-he likely could pass for an Escobaran. The second, more thickset fellow had mahogany skin like the Baron’s, but weirdly patchy; flecks of onyx-black and silver peeked through here and there. His ears, alone among the Jewels, were round-another change from that old group portrait of Morozov’s. Both men were dressed in Escobaran-style street clothes, short-sleeved hemmed shirts worn un-tucked over trousers. Onyx, presumably, and-
“Amiri!” cried Tej, flinging herself on him in turn. “You look so different! Jet!”
The olive-skinned man embraced her, his eyes closing briefly as if in prayer. “You’re alive. You’re both alive, but oh-” His eyes snapped open again in anger shot with joy, crackling with both. “We’ve been waiting for months! Never heard a word, until-we didn’t know if you were alive or dead!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tej laugh-cried back, “we ran out of money, we ran out of luck, we ran out of, of nearly everything…”
Rish held out one of the other man’s muscular arms, and reached to touch the outer curve of an ear. “You’re so big! And your beautiful skin-what’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing permanent,” he assured her, folding her in a fresh hug. “Just a treatment to blend in on Escobar, wearing off. The extra fifteen kilos is mostly muscle, but I needed some fat to change the shape of my face. The Duronas supplied.”
Tej danced in a circle, arms outspread as if to take in everyone. “Oh, how did you find me, how did you get away, why are you all here
…? And you brought Grandmama, too?”
Standing a little aside from the whole show, watching with cool approval, was the tallest woman of all, taller than Ivan. She wore loose silky trousers, shirt, and a light, knee-length coat in an indeterminate planetary style. She was very straight-backed, yet thin and faintly frail. Age-softened skin clad bones of timeless elegance. Her bright silver hair was cut in short wisps around her perfectly-shaped head.
Tej bowed before her, hands held palm-to-palm in a respect only enhanced by the pleasure overflowing from her face. A pale hand as delicate as an ice sculpture moved to rest palm-down among her wild curls in a gesture of benediction. “Indeed,” the woman murmured.
The customs officer, with another chary look around at all the wildly gesticulating and madly babbling Arquas, edged closer to Ivan. Better the Vor lord that you knew than the Jacksonians that you didn’t? He said, not quite out of the corner of his mouth, “Are these really relatives of yours, Captain Lord Vorpatril?”