“I . . . knew . . . you . . . would . . . come . . .” Cecelia said. Her hand squeezed Heris’s. “Brun . . . knew . . . you . . . had . . . to . . . leave . . .”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out right away,” Heris said. “Your family blamed me—and I didn’t even know about the bequest.”
“No. It’s . . . all . . . right . . .”
The lift whirred, and out came two women, a hoverchair, and another stack of boxes. Two men came in from outside and began carrying the growing pile out to the driveway. Heris heard a truck motor grinding up from the stable, and winced at the thought of Cecelia at the mercy of Driw’s driving. The lift came down again, this time with what looked like a hospital bed folded up. A woman in a big apron appeared at their side with trays.
“Milady—time for your snack.” Heris watched as Cecelia managed to find the food on her plate and get it into her mouth without incident.
“Milady, I’m sorry, but . . . are those artificial eyes?”
“No . . . not . . . exactly. Ask . . . medical.” Cecelia went on eating; Heris was suddenly ravenous and found herself engulfing one thick sandwich after another. Where, and how, had Cecelia found another great cook?
“I should see about the shuttle schedule,” Heris said finally, around a last bite of fresh bread stuffed with something delicious. She was sure it had celery and herbs and cheese in it, but what else?
“Don’t worry about that,” said the cheerful woman she had first met on the stairs. “I called Annie, and she’ll make sure we’ve got one. She thinks we should wait until the opposition lawyers have left.”
Shadows chased the sun across the driveway, and up the front of the house, leaving the windows clear to a distant blaze of sunset behind trees. Heris stood up to stretch, and walked outside. Fine brushes of cloud high overhead; the sound of buckets and boots and water faucets from the stable yard. A shaggy dog stood up to look at her, then shook itself and wandered away, tail wagging gently. So peaceful here—she wanted to stretch out and sleep the night away.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said someone behind her, and she shifted aside. The folded bed was coming down the front steps, a mattress balanced atop and almost hiding the men carrying it.
The caravan started for the shuttleport well after dark. Heris, breathing in the fresh damp air, found herself wishing she could stay longer. She rode with Cecelia, two of her medical team, and a lawyer, in a real car; Driw drove the truck with supplies and equipment; another car carried the rest of the medical team. And the cook.
The lawyer had kept Cecelia busy all evening. They could not risk alienating the magistrates with her disappearance; calls and letters had been necessary. Now he was taking notes on her orders for the next few months—who could vote which stock in which company, what to do if Berenice and Gustav tried to interfere further in the recovery of her competent status.
Heris marveled at Cecelia’s energy. She looked . . . old, sick, exhausted. But she pushed herself, kept going, stayed alert. Heris dozed, half ashamed of that, but knowing she had a long watch ahead when she must be alert.
Chapter Nineteen
Although it was nighttime, the shuttleport looked dark and almost deserted. Heris wondered what had gone wrong. Then someone came out of the dimly lit terminal and leaned into the driver’s side of their car. “Ah—it’s you. Just go on out to the runway . . . follow the yellow lights.”
In this way, the caravan trundled down a long runway to a dark shape bulked at the end of it. Heris felt she’d fallen into some surrealistic action-adventure. She had never, even in dreams, imagined herself sneaking along a darkened runway toward a clandestine shuttle. And she had a burning curiosity about what Cecelia could possibly have done to generate this level of loyalty on the planet.
She had no time to ask while the truckload of gear was put aboard the shuttle’s cargo bay, while she and the medical team carefully eased Cecelia and her attachments into the shuttle’s shabby passenger compartment. They were not the only passengers, either. After Cecelia and her party were aboard, half a dozen others climbed up and settled themselves at the back of the passenger space. Perfectly ordinary, the sort of people you’d expect to find taking a shuttle flight up from the surface of any planet . . . except, Heris noticed, they all had remarkably similar bulges in their clothes.
At the Station, Heris noticed that one of the chartered passenger ships had gone, and the corridors were almost deserted. Everyone—including the shuttle’s other passengers—helped unload the shuttle and move its cargo to the yacht. There Heris found Annie—offduty, as she explained—and Oblo lounging in the loading area.
“I thought I told you to stay aboard,” Heris said to Oblo. He gave her his innocent look, and she winced inwardly. What had he been up to?
“I am aboard,” he said. “Legally—there’s the line.” He stretched. “I was chatting with Annie here on the Station com, and we discovered some mutual interests, so when she got offshift, she came over . . .”
“Right. Fine. Now let’s get our owner aboard, and her gear installed.” Oblo looked hurt, another of his certified expressions, and vanished up the access tube. Annie gave Heris a cheerful grin, intended to disarm.
“Thought you wouldn’t mind if I came around and made sure your lady’s ship was secure. Just in case those lawyers snooped, although since all our exterior videos seem to be on the blink right now . . .”
Heris found herself smiling in spite of her annoyance. “Amazing how equipment around here seems to behave,” she said. “For instance, the shuttle tonight—”
“Had a block in the hydraulic line to the steering of the nosewheel,” Annie said promptly. “They couldn’t seem to get it to roll into the usual parking slot, and decided it was safer to keep it on the straight runway.”
“And yet they felt it was safe enough to fly . . . ?”
Annie shrugged. “It got you here, didn’t it? And if any nosy person was looking for unusual activity, all they saw was a dark field.” Heris nodded, not bothering to mention that any decent surveillance gear would pierce the darkness like a needle into wax . . . but Annie must know that.
“It was most convenient,” Heris said instead. Annie chuckled.
“We hoped so.” Then her expression sobered. “By the way, that tech you had running errands for the ship—Skoterin, isn’t it?” Heris nodded. “One of those lawyers stopped her and talked to her a few minutes. I’d given her warning they might be coming through, but I guess she was curious or something—”
“I’ll talk to her,” Heris said. “They’d been briefed, of course; I’m sure she said something appropriate, but I’ll check.”
“Do that,” Annie said. Then, looking past Heris, her eyes lit up. “Milady—it’s good to see you again. And you do look so much better.”
To Heris, Cecelia looked pale and exhausted . . . but Annie would have seen her the first time she came through, she realized. She must have looked much worse then. Now Cecelia struggled and achieved a smile.
“Thank . . . you . . . Annie . . .”
Behind Cecelia came the trail of people pushing dollies loaded with equipment, luggage, odds and ends. Heris left Cecelia with her medical people and Annie, and went on into the ship to get the crew ready for departure. To Oblo, who had been hovering in the access tube as if afraid he’d miss something, she gave the task of directing traffic.