Méarana had never seen Donovan so conflicted before. “I understand. If you’re caught…”
“If you are caught. I can’t present the warrant. My chit identifies me as Donovan, remember? That’s why I’m worried. If you present it and it doesn’t pass muster, then you’re for the women’s prison. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Vagosana! It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
The harper suddenly understood. “Donna…Who was the warrant for?”
Without a word, Dame Teffna turned the screen of the face so that Méarana could see it. She leaned closer.
The warrant was “to secure the person of Donovan buigh of Jehovah and deliver him to the custody of Greystroke Hound or his Pup.”
Méarana turned to look into Donovan’s eyes. For once, they were steady. For once, all of Donovan was looking back. “This is…”
“I promised Zorba I would take care of you,” Teffna muttered. “I had to catch up and drop to Boldly Go with you. I had to visit the prison with you. I had to be close enough in case the bad ones came looking for fresh blood for their cloning tanks. Rama-rama!” She struck the desk. “What if one these tarka devis harm you? What I tell then Uncle Zorba, hey?”
Méarana reached out but Donna flinched, so she touched the screen gently instead. “This was your ‘get out of jail free card.’ In case your were exposed…”
“I would find some way of telling you where to find it and you’d throw some serious Kennel weight around and spring me.”
“So if you alter it to spring Teodorq…”
“Greystroke wouldn’t like writing a second one. He stretched a point to write this one. The Kennel doesn’t give them out as party favors.”
The harper shook her head. “You can’t take the chance. We can pick up clues to the medallion elsewhere.”
“Of course. But where? We could wander Lafrontera for years before we stumble on them. Besides,” and he entered a command even as he was speaking, for the Fudir’s skills at forgery did not require the Silky Voice’s silence, “Nagarajan deserves to be rescued for his own sake.”
Méarana cocked her head. “He does? Why?”
“He staged a panty raid on an entire planet on a drunken bet. A man like that belongs on a hopeless quest.”
They sat in a drab outdoor café whose striped canvas awning fended off the blistering midday sun. Lazy fans stirred the tepid air. The white strap-chairs and tables, the “spressaba,” and other tattered and faded equipment seemed to have come from their packing crates already sun-worn and in need of repair. Dame Teffna wore a white borke; Méarana, a more dignified cut. She had programmed the anycloth to a trim powder-blue coverall with tabbed pockets and epaulets. It was not a uniform, certainly not a Pup’s uniform, but it suggested that it might almost be one. She wore no insignia or patches. That would have been pushing matters too far. The Kennel would, in the Fudir’s words, “throw the book at her” if she crossed the line from “special representative” to “impersonating a Hound.”
“But,” said Dame Teffna, “the Boldlys may not be too clear on what a ‘special representative of the Kennel’ can do. So act as if it means more than it does. Act like the true quill. Show confidence, but try not to lie more than is necessary. The Kennel really does want to learn where Bridget ban was going when she…Where she was going. So it’s not a lie to say that the Kennel wants Nagarajan as a material witness.”
“Donna,” said Méarana, “I know how to act like my mother.”
The Fudir wagged his head. “I wish it were me going in. If they detect the forgery…”
“All the more reason why you can’t. Donna, I appreciate the risk you’ve taken for me.”
Dame Teffna lifted her coffee and the tasse vanished behind her face-veil. “What risk?” she said as she put it down. “You’re the one they’ll seize if my handiwork fails. That’s the hard part, you know. It’s not hard to risk yourself. It’s risking others that gnaws at you.” She toyed a moment with the empty tasse. “What time is your appointment?”
Méarana glanced at the Salon of Justice across the street. A heavy, three-storey building, it consisted of a central cupola and two wings. One wing housed the prosecuting magistrates, the other wing housed the police and their laboratories.
“It wouldn’t do to be late.”
“I know that.”
“Does Judge Trayza know why you made the appointment?”
“I told her dark it was Kennel business and let it go at that.”
“Good. Good. That helps create an air of importance. ‘Need to know,’ and all that.”
“I’m no fool.” With a brisk, snapping motion she opened a tunic pocket and pulled out a timepiece of the Die Bold style. “It’s time for me to go.”
“Is that set to metric time?” Die Bold and the other Old Planets famously preserved their ancient dodeka time scales in the face of not uncommon confusions with other League worlds.
“All three,” she said. “Doo-dah time, Taran Green Time, and it picks local time off the planetary tock.” She meant the satellite system that transmitted the standard times around Boldly Go. “Stop fretting. I’ll be fine.”
Judge Trayza Dorrajenfer was a tall, graceful woman, elegantly dressed in a flowing dark-blue robe and a gold filigreed circlet binding her hair. Her office was an airy room on the first floor of the north wing, adjacent to her courtyard. Everything was done in plaster or plastic or metal, except the desk and chair, which were wood imported from Kwinnfer in the forested northeast. In the corner stood a rack of spools that Méarana took to be law books. A small fountain emitted a fine spray that kept the room cooler than it otherwise would have been.
The judge came from behind her desk and took Méarana’s proffered hand between both of hers. “Welcome to my chambers, Méarana Harper,” she said, guiding her to a pair of shapeless bags which, to the harper’s surprise, turned out to be chairs. When she sank into the one indicated, it conformed itself to her contours.
“My, these are comfortable, your worship.” “Please. Call me Trayza. You’ve never seen smarticle chairs?” “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen them. I’m surprised to find them here—”
“There may not be another set on all of Boldly Go. These are imported from Valency, where they are all the fashion. The smarticles are micron-sized particles, I am told, that use the same sort of techne as any cloth. That is an any cloth outfit you are wearing, isn’t it?”
Méarana had the judge pegged now. She had been born to money, and while she had the graciousness of her class, she also had more than her share of its conceits. In her first few sentences, she had alluded to her wealth in that indirect manner the wealthy had—There may not be another set on all of Boldly Go—and put Méarana in her place. Bolt-for-bolt, any-cloth was expensive, but a full, dedicated wardrobe was the mark of class.
“Why, yes,” she told the judge, fingering a sleeve. “Where I go, it can be important to travel light. On my estate on Dangchao…”
“Dangchao belongs to Die Bold, does it not?” the judge asked. “I’ve always wondered if there were some ancient connection between your world and ours.”
Méarana doubted that, but she would not secure Nagarajan by debating demographics with the judge. “I really don’t know much about the migration era. There is a science-wallah drifting about the Periphery collecting facts that may answer that question. I think he may have stopped on Charming Moon to swab cheek samples.”