“Come on, Edmund, it’s Sheida,” she said bitterly, stroking the lizard as it downed the last of the mouse. “Remember? Sister of some redhead named Daneh? Sister you were dating first?”
Edmund smiled without looking at her and summoned a glass of wine for himself. “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t me who disappeared for twenty-five years,” she replied, taking another sip and twisting a strand of hair around her finger.
“No, it wasn’t. I still don’t know why you dropped in.”
“We… the Council… I have a problem,” she said.
“And you came to an old recreationist, a, what was the phrase, ‘a man so stuck in the past his Latin name has saurus in it,’ for help?” he asked.
“Yes, Edmund, I’ve come to you.” She stopped for a moment indecisively then went on. “I came to you for a few reasons. One of them is that you’re so steeped in the past that you understand it, and the… problem I’ve uncovered hasn’t been faced for nearly two thousand years. I also came to you because you’re a good strategist, as good a one as I know. Last but not least, I came to you because… you’re my friend. You’re family. I trust you.”
“Thank you,” he said, looking into the fire. “I had begun… I’ve been wondering lately if anyone even remembered I existed.”
“We all remember,” Sheida said. “You’re quite hard to forget. Also hard to live with, but that is another matter.
“I have to ask for your word that you won’t mention any of this to anyone. It’s… I’m not sure that what I think is going on is reality. I might just be going paranoid in my old age…”
“There’s nothing wrong with paranoia,” Edmund said with a shrug. “It’s when you can’t separate reality from fantasy that’s the problem.”
“Well, I wish this were fantasy,” she sighed. “Do you know Paul Bowman?”
“I know of him,” Edmund said, shifting to look at her. “I don’t think we’ve ever met if that’s what you mean.”
“I think Paul is planning a… well, the only correct term appears to be ‘coup.’ ”
Rachel had met Donna Forsceen through Marguerite and cordially detested her. The girl thought about nothing but the newest fashion and looked like a young boy from all the sculpting. So she only exchanged a few words and then moved on to the buffet. She looked at it and groaned. There were two types of food available, the usual heavily spiced and extremely hot food that was all the rage, and an array of chocolate confections. She didn’t like the current trend towards “how hot can we make it,” and simply grazing off the chocolate would probably put ten pounds on her, all in the wrong places. As soon as she was eighteen she was going to be sculpted down to a toothpick, whatever her mother thought, and have it locked in.
“Rachel! Rachel Ghorbani! What do you think?”
The voice was high and squeaky and emanated from a unicorn about the size of a large pony. Rachel picked up a strip of protein flavored somewhat like pork, immediately flashing back to one time when her father made her eat opossum, and regarded the creature with puzzlement. The unicorn was a brilliant white, of course, she’d rarely seen much imagination in the unicorn look, had golden hooves and horn and bright blue eyes.
“Very, uhmmm…” she paused. “Barb, is that you?”
“Yes! Do you like it?”
Barb Branson hadn’t been the brightest brick in the load before she started off on Change after Change. Normally there was no real threat to personality or intelligence integration in Changes. But in Barb’s case, “normally” didn’t seem to be working out; Rachel was sure Barb was getting dumber with each Change.
“Very nice, Barb,” Rachel replied. “Very… very unicornish.”
“That’s because I’m a unicorn, silly!” the girl trilled, spinning in place. “I love it! Ooo, there’s Donna! She’ll go spar!”
“I’m sure she will,” Rachel replied, heaving a sigh as Barb trotted off. “I swear, even when I can Change I’m not going to get that addlepated.”
Finally she loaded a float-plate with some grilled protein, the same one that tasted, she swore, exactly like opossum, and looked around to see if anyone had arrived who was worth talking with. The elf was still surrounded by a huge group of people, all hanging onto his every sibilant word, and there was a wall of mostly male bodies around the dragon, who in human form was on the far side of gorgeous even if her body was a bit on the busty side as well.
Rachel got as close to the elf as she could, without being rude, hoping he would notice her and maybe call her forward. When that didn’t work she stood at the back of the group and tried to listen to the questioning at the center. Unfortunately, the conversations on the periphery blotted it out and she couldn’t even Cast to the center because of the privacy shields so many of the people had up; the technique effectively created a pool of privacy around the centerpiece so that only those in the first circle or so could hear what he was saying.
“Rachel, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Herzer whispered in her ear.
She stifled a sigh and looked around. Then up. Then up some more. She had seen some large humans and humanoids before but the person Herzer was with was very physically imposing. He was about two and half meters tall and broad in proportion. Herzer was not small, but next to this person he seemed slight. The stranger had dark skin, black really and not melanine black but some other additive that made it look black as midnight. When she finally stepped backwards for a good look she noticed some slight elven enhancements and wondered at them. Because of the Net ban on full elven upgrade, elven enhancements were generally frowned upon, especially by the elves. Adding an elven look was… impolite. The thought came that she knew who she was looking at just as Herzer introduced them.
“Rachel this is…”
“You’d be Dionys McCanoc, wouldn’t you?” she asked with a nod. “Protein strip?”
“Indeed.” His voice was mellifluous and she suspected that if you didn’t keep your wits about you you’d drown in it. But Rachel for some strange reason found herself mildly repulsed instead. It was just too much. The size, the sardonic elvish and not-elvish face, the voice set to charm the skin off a mink. When he took her hand he kissed it and drew his thumb across the inside as he withdrew, sending a shiver through her body but leaving her emotionally even more determined to resist the charm onslaught.
“And you are the beauteous daughter of Edmund Talbot and the fair Daneh Ghorbani. I know your mother of old.” He had moved forward to take her hand, crowding her personal space again and making her have to crane her neck to look up. But she refused to back up again. He could damn well hit her shields first.
There was a slight emphasis, somewhat embarrassing, on the “know.” Or it would be embarrassing if Rachel hadn’t heard her mother’s comments about McCanoc. Daneh had gotten out of the reenactor movement, but it didn’t mean she didn’t keep up with some of the politics. And Daneh had much the same opinion of McCanoc that Edmund did. Rachel was sure that if she was here she’d have an even lower one. On the other hand, Rachel was pretty sure mother had never met McCanoc, so that was one flat lie she’d caught him in.