“Toby, it’s Stella Vatta. Are you all right?”
“Cousin Stella!” He turned from the com and she heard him speak to his parents. “It’s Cousin Stella! She didn’t forget!”
Didn’t forget? What was she supposed to have remembered? Then she did. The invitation to Toby’s graduation and after-party. It was on her calendar back on Cascadia—office and house both—but she hadn’t put it in her implant, and events had driven it from her mind.
“I’m glad the party’s still going on,” she said. “Congratulations, Toby.”
“Can I have that job now?”
The job she’d promised him when he finished his basic schooling, a lab of his own to tinker in. “Toby, right now I can’t. I’m on Slotter Key, and there’s a situation. Let me talk to your parents, either of them.”
“Oh. Sure.”
The next voice was Toby’s father. “Cousin Stella.”
“Cousin Ted. I’m sorry not to have called earlier, but we’ve had an emergency here on Slotter Key, and I’m raising the security level of all Vatta facilities.”
“Not another bomb—”
“No.” Not yet. She hoped not ever. “But you remember I was coming here to firm up some company legal stuff—”
“Yes.”
“My cousin Ky, as you know, is a major shareholder. She was to meet me here and formally agree to the rearrangements in person as required by Slotter Key law. Unfortunately, the shuttle she was on went down somewhere in the ocean. We must suspect sabotage until we know better, and I will not be able to leave here until we know whether she survived the crash.”
“Do we still—do you really think we still have enemies?”
“Yes,” Stella said. “And you need to take care, individually and in your department. From now on, all new hires must be tested for genetic linkage to Osman Vatta. And if your world permits, run the existing employees’ gene scans as well. If not, when I can, I’ll start dealing with the legality of that—”
“It’s not a problem here. Our laws take into account the frequent use of short-lived DNA reboots. Everyone, or everyone of a certain age, or—?”
“Anyone young enough to be Osman’s get,” Stella said. “To be safe, anyone under fifty.”
“I’ll see to that locally,” he said. “Do you want to talk to Toby again? He’s pretty excited. He tied for first in his class. Guess who with.”
“Zori,” Stella said. “Except perhaps in a tech class.” Zori, Toby’s girlfriend, was every bit as smart, but hadn’t had the same early education.
“Yes. He tutored her in that one and she tutored him in law.”
“Are they still so close, then?”
“Indeed. Sera Louarri seems resigned to it now, though we parents all think they should wait longer. Not that young love can’t succeed, but they’re still so young.”
Stella, remembering herself at that age, agreed. “Is Rascal still alive?”
“That dog! I know how important he is to Toby, but how did you stand him in an apartment? We have space and he’s still a menace.” A pause, then, “And still bringing in an income, so I shouldn’t complain.”
Stella laughed, surprising herself. “He’s a handful, true. Listen, I’m not going to tell Toby that Ky’s missing,” she said. “But I would like to talk to him.”
Toby came back on the line with Zori beside him, as she could hear. She heard about their academic triumphs, about Zori’s decision to go on to university, and Toby’s wish to go straight back to the lab. “We can do both,” he said, his voice dropping a tone. “We can live near the university—a lab can be anywhere, can’t it?”
“Just about,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until I get back to Cascadia, Toby. It shouldn’t be too long; you can work in the local Vatta lab until then, but I can’t set up a new one until the legal complications here are worked out.”
“That’s all right,” Toby said. “It’s just—I have some new ideas. Dad says not to talk about them, even on a secure line.”
“Good,” said Stella. “I’m sorry, Toby, but I must go—I have appointments waiting. When I get back to Cascadia we’ll talk again about a lab for you. Be well.”
“Be well, Cousin Stella.”
Despite the gravity of the shuttle crash, Stella realized she was smiling as she closed that link. It was almost impossible to be gloomy around Toby and Zori. Who to call next? Ser Brogan, certainly, though that could wait until she got to the house, since it was late on Cascadia Station and he was probably in bed. Grace, though she would be busy; certainly they needed to talk. She didn’t need the combooth for that. Rafe. Her breath came short. She had to call Rafael Dunbarger, current CEO of InterStellar Communications. Once he heard that Ky was in danger, he would do something—something that might be disastrous.
She should ask Grace first. No, she should most definitely not ask Aunt Grace. She didn’t have time for that; she had to contact Rafe, convince him not to intervene, before he heard about this via one of his clandestine communications networks and intervened on his own. She placed the call, after checking the time in his zone on Nexus II. Text, not voice: she did not want to talk to him; she had no answers for the questions he would ask. She tapped out the message, stark and plain. Before she was done, a knock on the combooth door distracted her. A screen came up, her mother on the typepad, fingers busy.
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? COME OUT NOW. I NEED YOU.
She ended the call quickly and unsealed the booth.
Her mother stood nearby, talking to a tall, dark, distinguished-looking man with graying hair. Helen turned to her.
“This is Ser Targanyan, head of our Legal Department. He’s briefing me on the legal and tax problems we’ll face if Ky—or her body—can’t be found.”
The last thing Stella wanted to think about. But she recognized the need. “In a secure office,” she said. Targanyan nodded and led them to Legal, and his office within it.
“We’re shielded here,” he said. “I’m very sorry, Sera Vatta, Madam Chair, to bring this up when a search cannot even have been mounted, but we’ve already filed the preliminary papers for Sera Stella Vatta to become the CEO of Vatta Enterprises, Ltd., and whichever division is subordinate to have a subordinate executive. Here is the schematic Madam Chair and I had worked up—it will have to be approved, Sera Stella, when you take over.” A holo appeared between them. With a flick of his finger, he rotated it so that Stella could read the labels.
“It looks like a reasonable organization,” Stella said.
“Thank you, Sera. The difficulty is not in this so much—you can change it, of course, as you think best—but in the fact that we have this as part of the filing. And we set the date for a court appearance, based on your and your cousin Admiral Vatta’s presence here over the next several days. If she is not quickly found and transported here, I’ll have to change the court date, and we may need to re-file. That will delay things across your fiscal year boundary, with tax consequences. It might be better to let the court know now that we won’t make the hearing because of the accident.”
“We’ll need to talk to the Rector,” Stella said. As he started to speak, she shook her head. “I know, she’s not holding Ky’s proxy, and she hasn’t the shares to overturn any decisions my mother and I make, but she should be in the loop. This is a political and military matter now: Ky was coming down on a Spaceforce shuttle. Releasing information about the crash should at least have her permission.” And the sooner Grace knew that Rafe knew, the better, painful as that interview might be.