The groundcar driver, after a look at Venezia's ID, had driven as if they not only owned the road but had proprietary rights to a sizable volume of space above and on either side of it. The three older women stared at each other in grim silence; Heris, after looking out the window to see two battered trucks diving for the nearest ditch, looked at the back of the driver's neck.
When they arrived in the scruffy little town, and pulled up at the police station, Venezia led the group inside. Now they were lined up in front of a long gray desk.
The uniformed officer behind the desk blinked. The mirage didn't go away. Three angry women—three
old
angry women, the young-looking one wore a Rejuvenant ring—loomed over him like harpies on a cliff. Behind them was a younger but no less formidable woman, who had the unmistakable carriage of a military officer.
"And your name, ma'am?" the man said, trying to stick to ordinary rules.
"I am Lady Cecelia de Marktos, and my nephew is Ronald Vortigern Carruthers." She leaned over as he reached for one of the pencils in a particularly gruesome pottery jar that leaned drunkenly to one side. As he began to write out the names laboriously in longhand, she growled, "Use your computer, idiot, and hurry up."
"What's the problem out here?" That was the captain, languid and unshaven after a night of interrogating the most infuriating prisoners he'd seen in years. "Let's not have any rowdy behavior, ladies, please." Then he blinked at Venezia. "Uh—sorry, Madame Glendower-Morreline—we weren't expecting you."
"You should have been," Venezia said. "I sent a message from the orbital station, and the shuttle port."
"It's here somewhere, sir," the first policeman said, waving his hand at a desk littered with scraps of paper. "The computer's down again."
The captain muttered a curse, in deference to ladies, and then scowled at them. "Your relatives murdered two hotel employees, and beat up two others. They discharged firearms in a public hostelry; they destroyed hotel property; they falsified records—"
"They did not!" Cecelia said.
"And they're being held without bail, pending charges, which will be filed as soon as we have all the data."
"I found madam's message, sir," the desk officer said.
"Forget that. She's here now." The captain wavered, aware of his disheveled appearance and the weight of wealth before him. "Look—as a special favor, I'll let you speak to your relatives—one at a time, in the interview room, with an officer present. But that's all." A disgruntled silence fell. Finally Cecelia and Marta nodded.
* * *
"I didn't do it, Aunt Cecelia. None of us did." Ronnie looked exhausted, but not guilty. Cecelia had seen him guilty.
"I know, dear, but what did happen?"
"I told them—"
"Yes, but they haven't let us see the transcripts yet. I need to know."
Ronnie went over it again. "And I'm sure they weren't really hotel employees—the uniforms didn't really fit—but the important thing is the leader wasn't Finnvardian, and George proved it, and the others jumped him."
"Who has the contact lenses?"
"The police, I suppose. George had them, but they took them away from him."
"They've got it all wrong, Aunt Marta." Raffa's hair hung in lank strings, and the cherry-colored dress had been torn somewhere along the line. "Ronnie and George didn't do it." She gave Marta her view of things. "And if you could possibly bring me some clothes—"
"I'm going to bring you a way out of here," Marta said, "or rip this place up by its foundations."
Raffa turned even paler. "I forgot! They said something about sabotaging the field generator, the one that holds back the sea—"
"I'll tell them. Don't worry, Raffa."
But the captain shrugged off her mention of the field generator. "It's a red herring," he said. "No amateur could sabotage a field generator." Marta glared at him, recognized invincible ignorance, and made a strategic withdrawal to the hotel.
Their descent on the hotel was almost as startling as their descent on the police station. The doorman . . . the hotel manager . . . the concierge . . . all bowed and scraped and fawned and disclaimed all intent to cause trouble for them or any member of their illustrious families. Only . . . there was this matter of shots being fired, and bodies on the floor. . . .
"Were they your employees?" Cecelia asked, when the gush of apologies and explanations ended.
"The dead men? Well, no. They were in our uniform, so at first we thought, of course, that they were, but they weren't. Perhaps they wore the uniforms to provide some . . . er . . . excitement. The police said—"
"My niece," Marta said with icy emphasis, "does not get sexual kicks from playing with men in hotel uniforms."
"No—of course not, madam." The manager attempted, unsuccessfully, to find an expression which made it clear that he had not thought any such thing.
"Nor does my nephew," Cecelia said. "He is, after all, engaged to her niece."
"Yes, madam. Of course, madam."
"And since they weren't your employees, isn't it possible that they wore those uniforms to gain access to Raffa's rooms without being detected—that they did in fact initiate the attack?"
"I suppose so, madam." This with a dubious look, and an exchange of glances from manager to concierge and back. "But that is a matter for the police to decide. And there is still the damage to hotel property. Valuable communications equipment—lamp—sprinkler system—"
"Insurance," said Cecelia and Marta together.
"Never mind that," Venezia said. "
We
own the hotel." She had been glaring at the masks on the walls and the vases holding floral displays, muttering something about "execrable decorations" since she arrived; Heris wondered why she cared so much about bad pottery, but perhaps she felt responsible for all the details of a family property. She fixed the manager with a steely eye. "It will not be a billing item."
"No, madam."
"Excuse me, ladies." Heris looked around and saw an elderly man who held his hat in his hand. Bright blue eyes peered out from under bushy white eyebrows; his white moustache had been waxed to perfect points. He wore a fresh pink rosebud in the lapel of his gray suit, and his shiny black shoes were covered with white—spats, she finally remembered, was the right word for them. Cecelia, Marta, and Venezia were momentarily speechless.
"I understand the young people have had a spot of trouble. I tried to warn them yesterday—the young men, I mean."
"You talked to Ronnie and George?" Cecelia asked.
"Yes—I'm Hubert de Vries Michaelson, by the way, and from his description you must be his Aunt Cecelia."
"Yes—"
"I'm retired—formerly a neurosynthetic chemist here. Never quite made enough to retire offworld—"
"Can you recommend an attorney, Mr. Michaelson?" Cecelia asked.
"No . . . but I can help you, if you'll let me. I believe I have evidence that may convince the police someone else is involved."
"What concerns me most is this field generator Raffa mentioned," Marta said. "Apparently one of the men said something about arranging a failure. The police wouldn't listen—"
The hotel manager broke in. "They said
what
? About the field generator?"
"Raffa said one of the men claimed it would fail—that their deaths would be blamed on its failure."
"It would destroy this entire structure," the hotel manager said. "And most of Twoville within days or weeks, as the seawater infiltrated." He looked frightened enough. "Should I evacuate now, or—?"
"Of course with one of them dead, and the others injured, maybe there's no danger," Cecelia said. Heris looked at her and wondered if she should get into this discussion. If they were talking about a Tiegman field generator, "danger" was too mild a word for the risk of collapse. Had the threat been serious, or just an attempt to panic the youngsters?
"I think someone had better interview the survivors—I presume they're under medical care?" Marta looked around as if expecting them to be rolled out in their beds, for inspection.
"They're at the clinic," the hotel manager said.
But the survivors had disappeared from the local clinic, to the annoyance of the nursing staff. Their annoyance paled beside that of the aunts, who had walked from the hotel to the clinic at a pace that made Heris breathless.
"They
what
?" demanded the aunts, almost in concert.
"Have you notified the police?" Hubert asked. He had joined their parade, where he formed a decorative accent.
"No. They weren't charged with anything—" That was the nursing supervisor, who had begun with a complaint about the missing patients, as if that were Venezia's fault.
"They will be," Cecelia and Marta said together. "Call the police
now
." The nursing supervisor looked stubborn a moment, but then reached for the com.
"The field generator," Heris said, bringing up the topic which had not left her mind. "If they're loose, and well enough, they could still sabotage it. Who's in charge of the Tiegman maintenance? Where's the power supply?" She wished she had her Fleet uniform, her Fleet authority, and most of all her own expert people who would know how to recognize a problem if they saw it. The thought of someone playing games with a Tiegman field made her feel queasy. She knew a way to knock out a Tiegman field generator with only a few kilograms of explosive, placed accurately for the field configuration. Granted that the calculations were difficult for anything but a spherical field, they were still at the mercy of the saboteur's incompetence. She wasn't at all sure Cecelia and the other older women understood how bad it could be if the field blew.
"Ah—there I can help you out," Hubert said. "I've played cards with the Chief Engineer out at the control station every week for years." He beamed at Heris, and she wanted to smack him. He was no substitute for Petris or Oblo. "If you'll excuse me, ladies," Hubert said. "I think a word with the Chief Engineer is necessary at this point. Perhaps he can be persuaded to take precautions—at least be ready to divert all power to the field—"
"Go ahead," said Venezia, dismissing him with a wave. "Take care of it. We're going back to the police." She marched out. Heris wondered if she ought to go with the dapper little man—how reliable could someone in spats be?—but Cecelia beckoned to her.
"I know it's dangerous," Cecelia murmured to Heris. "I saw your expression. But we can't do anything about it, and if this field-whatever doesn't kill us, Venezia can do something about the worse problem which made this threat possible." That made sense, though Heris wasn't happy to be left out of the action.
By the time they made it back to the police station, both the hotel manager and the clinic had reported. In addition, a perspiring manager from the local corporate headquarters, bearing a bunch of flowers for Venezia. They began a low-voiced conversation while the others approached the front desk. The captain, still bleary-eyed but now depilated and in a clean shirt, glowered at them. "You're complicating a very simple case," he said. "I understand family feeling, but even the best families have bad apples—"
Heris could have told him this was the wrong approach.
"It
would
be a simple case, if you would listen to your prisoners," Marta said.
"When my niece Ottala disappeared," Venezia put in, looking away from the manager, "you found nothing."
"There was nothing to find; there was no evidence." Heris doubted that he had ever looked for any; the rapidity with which the young people had run into trouble argued for a superfluity of evidence somewhere nearby.
"I asked that girl Raffa to come here, to find out what happened to Ottala. I thought a girl could find a girl better than some man. And she did find out what happened, and it nearly happened to her, and now you're ignoring it." Venezia, who had seemed the most insignificant of the older ladies, now had the intensity Heris associated with weapons-grade lasers. Quite unlike the incandescent flash that was Cecelia's anger, Venezia's steady rancor seemed ready to cut its way through any obstacle.
"Just because someone is not Finnvardian, and not really a hotel employee, does not make them a spy or a murderer. Wearing contact lenses is not a crime—"
Stupid captain, Heris thought. He should back down now, before she cleaves him along a flaw he doesn't recognize.
"Ah, so you
now
agree that one of the men was not Finnvardian," Marta said, taking over from Venezia. Heris had to admire the tactic, and the way in which they passed the turn without any prior planning. "Do you know what he was?" The captain looked down. "Well?"
"He appears to have been a citizen of the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand," the captain said, with understandable reluctance.
"A Benignity agent? Here?"
"I have no evidence that he was an
agent
. Merely a citizen—"