“At least,” Kevil said, stretching in turn, “it’ll be a change from this stupid bickering about rejuvenation. Those poor bastards in the mines and factories on Patchcock have more substantial concerns.”
Bunny nodded, but his thoughts kept running to Brun. Finally he thought of the one thing he might be able to do; in the morning he would place a call to Heris Serrano.
“I must thank you again, for whatever you said to my daughter,” Lord Thornbuckle said. He didn’t look much like Bunny in his dark formal suit, in the paneled office. He didn’t intend to. “She was, I’m sure, about to do something rash. What she told me afterwards was that she’d planned to run away and join the Regular Space Service anonymously—but I expect it was worse than that.”
“No—or at least, that’s what she told me.” Heris Serrano had been aboard the yacht, supervising the last of its refitting. Her office aboard looked nothing like his; on the wall behind her were only a military-grade chronometer and the framed certificates of her rating. She had a new uniform, not the loud purple Lady Cecelia had once used, but the same competent expression, the same intelligent dark eyes. She paused a moment, but he said nothing. “She outgrew herself in a hurry, on the island.”
“I know. And she seems to have inherited ancestral temptations to adventure. You know how she got to Rockhouse Major from Rotterdam?” Heris nodded. “Even the unpleasantness she got into didn’t dissuade her. And now she wants to use some of her inheritance to finance a small expedition—a small ship, rather, on which she intends to wander around looking for excitement. Responsibly, she assures me. Nothing wild of the sort she did in her youth.” Lord Thornbuckle snorted. “Youth. The girl’s barely old enough to consider a Seat in Council, and you’d think she was fifty.”
“She did come through safely, sir,” Heris ventured. He could tell she was being tactful, wondering if he would understand how important that was. Some people, following every rule of prudence, could hardly travel to the corner and back without breaking an ankle. Brun’s luck had to be more than luck, perhaps that unconscious intuitive grasp of situation and character which was more valuable than all the education in the world. But not only the military recognized and used that quality.
“Yes, I know, and I know it means she’s inherited—no doubt from the same ancestors—the ability to survive adventure. But I’m not sure I can survive her acquisition of the necessary experience. Not without knowing there’s someone with more expertise and more . . . er . . . maturity to help her out of the tight spots she’s so determined to get into. Even Thornbuckles have limits to their luck; get Cece to tell you about my great-uncle Virgil.”
Heris focussed on the comment that might refer to her. “You were thinking that I might know someone with the right skills to accompany her?”
“I thought you might be that person. Not that alone—” He waved off the protest she opened her mouth to make. “I know, you’ll be traveling with Cece. But she said she wanted to do more than make the various horse events, and I wondered if you’d let Brun come along. As an employee, or passenger, or whatever you like. I would of course pay her passage. . . .”
“No, sir,” Heris said quickly. “Don’t pay her passage; if she’s set on adventuring, she might as well earn her own way. She’s already proved she could. I assume she has an allowance; let her use that, if she wants.”
“Right. Fine. Then you’ll take her?”
“I . . . don’t know.” She had liked Brun well enough, he knew, but clearly she was thinking about the difficulties inherent in mixing a girl like Brun into a crew already facing difficult adjustments. She wouldn’t want trouble; she had had enough already. “I’m not sure I’m the right person,” she said finally.
Lord Thornbuckle leaned over and touched his desk; he gestured to the row of red lights that came on, and waited for her look of recognition. “Heris, let me tell you something that must remain a secret. A young woman Brun knows—knew—a schoolmate, went off on an adventure, joined a workers’ organization over on Patchcock, and got herself killed when she was discovered. Brun doesn’t know; we’ve managed to suppress it. But the girl’s family is furious with me. They want me to send the R.S.S. to Patchcock again—”
Heris stared. “That’s—not wise, sir.” She could easily imagine the carnage; it had been bad enough the first time.
“No, I understand that. I’ve seen the classified briefings now. The thing is, Brun’s the ideal hostage to use against me. Either side might try it. She’s too old to send home—she wouldn’t stay, and I can’t tell her about Ottala. . . . I know she won’t be safe, really safe, anywhere, but you might be able to keep her safer than anyone else.”
Heris nodded. “All right. I’m willing to have her aboard, if she’s willing to come. I’m not about to shanghai her.”
“Oh, she’s willing. Apparently she made some friends in your crew, didn’t she?”
Heris looked puzzled, then her face cleared. “Sirkin, I suppose. At least they went around together for a while, but that was our plan, a way that Brun could pass information about Lady Cecelia to me indirectly. I wouldn’t have called it a friendship—Sirkin’s lover had just died—but it’s something. All right . . . I suppose Brun could have considered it friendship,” she said. “I’ll list her as unskilled crew, and let them teach her some things, if that’s acceptable.”
“Good.” Lord Thornbuckle smiled at her. “On top of everything else, I’ll be glad to have her out of pocket while the political situation is so uncertain.”
“I don’t see why you can’t understand,” Kemtre said, trying not to breathe heavily. “They’re your sons as much as mine.”
“They’re no one’s sons,” his wife said. Although she seemed to lean on the end of the table, elbows on either side of a tray of fancifully carved fruits, that was illusion, a matter of expensive communications equipment synchronizing her image from past breakfasts with her voice from very far away. “Certainly not mine, and not yours either, if you only knew it. They’re clones, constructs, human only in genome. You were never a father to them; I was never a mother.”
He pressed his fingers to his temples, a gesture that had been effective in Council meetings. It had not worked with her for years, and it did not work now, not least because she did not have the visual display on her console turned on . . . he kept hoping to see the telltale red light turn green. He wanted to meet her eyes—her real eyes, not those of the construct, and convince her with his sincerity. “They’re all we’ve got,” he said. “They could be our sons, if you’d only—”
“They’re grown,” she said. “They’re not little boys. They’re bad copies of Gerel . . . was he the only one you cared about?”
Of course not, he wanted to say. He had said it before, just as they had had this argument before in the weeks since his resignation. At first face-to-face, then down the length of that long dining table, then by the various communications devices required by the increasingly great physical distances between them as she removed herself from his demands.
“Please,” he said.
“No.” The faint hollow noise of a live connection ended; the construct sat immobile, waiting for his finger to extinguish its imitation of life. He put his thumb down and cursed. She wanted him to give it up, deal with the loss of his sons, get on with whatever life was left him. He couldn’t do that, not until he had at least tried to get the clones to cooperate. They were the only sons he had now; he couldn’t just give them up.