"So while they watch you, and her, it's just routine. They expect you."
"I still can't walk out with her—"
"You won't have to. All you have to do is get her unhooked from the bed, and outside. Like this—" Brun flipped open her notecomp and showed him the plan. She had it all down, all the medical background, sketches of wires and tubes and things he didn't want to look at. What to do in which order, what he would have to take with him. Suggestions for making sure the bothersome attendants didn't interrupt—he thought of another way himself, and realized he was being drawn in. It still looked ridiculous, but Ronnie didn't argue. He didn't have anything better to offer. He didn't have anything at all. And the longer they left Aunt Cecelia trapped in her helplessness, the worse for her . . . he could hardly believe anyone could stay sane month after month.
"When, then?"
"Festival of the Air, of course." He felt himself flushing. He'd been so miserable he'd forgotten that annual celebration was almost upon them. "Plenty of confusion in the air—for some reason the wilder sorts are thinking of dropping in on the starchier resorts and sanctuaries in the area. Can't think why." She grinned. "And no, it's not traceable to me. Now—let's get busy. You'll have to practice getting a flight suit on me when I'm lying limp."
Oblo had managed to load the yacht with a surprising number of amenities. Toiletries, leisure clothes, entertainment cubes, and a cube reader. Music disks and players. Despite the bare bulkheads and naked decks, the lack of furniture, ample bedding, and bright-colored pillows made comfortable nooks for lounging and sleeping. Heris asked about the pillows—she could not imagine Oblo sneaking through the docks with big puffy orange and puce and turquoise pillows under his arms—and he gave her his best innocent glare.
"Bare decks get cold, Captain. You know that." Then a sheepish grin. "And besides, these pillows . . . they were sort of . . . lying about somewhere . . ."
"Somewhere?" She could feel her eyebrows rising.
Now he stared at the overhead. "To tell you the truth—" which meant it would be his fiction. "They belonged to someone Meharry and I kind of blame for that girl Amalie's death." Possibilities ran through Heris's mind, and she settled on the obvious.
"That therapist?"
He grinned as if he was glad she'd figured it out. "Yeah. Had this big room with lots of pillows in it. Needed cleaning, they did. Cleaners picked them up, delivered them. We sort of . . . liberated them on the way back." As a specimen of Oblo's vengeance, this was mild. Heris decided to let it go.
"You know it was wrong," she said.
"So was getting Amalie killed and Sirkin hurt," he said, with no remorse. "Captain, it was the
least
we could do." About what she'd expected; she managed not to laugh until he was out of her office.
So far the voyage was going well. Skoterin had not protested when she realized they were not, in fact, ferrying the yacht a short distance. She had been glad of a longer job, she said, and she trusted the captain. Heris found that amazing, but then so were the others trusting her. She got along well with the others, though she was younger by some years than anyone but Sirkin. Heris wondered if that would turn into anything. She couldn't remember what Skoterin's preferences had been—if she'd ever known. Not that it mattered, really. As long as they both did their work. Sirkin she saw on the bridge; she was happily absorbing all Oblo and Guar could teach her about the new navigational equipment. Haidar reported that Skoterin was as efficient as he remembered. All she had to worry about was the mission itself.
"I wish there were a way to be sure the Crown offer was faked," Heris grumbled. "Then we wouldn't have to bother with this ridiculous rendezvous. What if the prince doesn't show up?" She had never enjoyed covert ops, and didn't now. Petris ignored that, and kept rubbing her shoulders. Oblo had the bridge, with Arkady Ginese to second him; nothing would get by those two. She and Petris had retired to her cabin, where they turned up the thermostat and lowered the lights so that they could enjoy the rest of the shift out of uniform. Surely this time nothing could interrupt them, not in FTL space.
"What kind of job do you think we can get as cover if we need it?" he asked. His hands slid lower; she wondered if he really meant to continue a serious conversation or if this was just another form of teasing. She was almost afraid to try the response she was eager to make; the obstacles to their pleasure had gone far beyond a joke. What would happen
this
time if they started something? She felt she would die of frustration if they didn't.
"Soft side of legal, I expect." Heris did not meet his eyes, and leaned back against him. Maybe he would take the hint and continue without talking about it. Petris shifted her in his arms, and she quit thinking about future problems. Present pleasure was enough for now. Apparently he thought so too; he quit asking silly questions. And nothing interrupted them, though she didn't think of that for some time.
But afterwards, they came back to it. A small tramp cargo ship couldn't simply idle along from place to place; it had to have cargo, and destinations. Otherwise, as they knew well, the authorities would have questions, backed up with force.
"It would be simpler if we had two ships," Heris said finally. She rolled over and stretched. "We could transfer cargo from one to the other, as if—
what is that
?" Her convulsive lurch upset Petris, who had been curled over watching her stretch; they collided, and then Heris was out of the bed, clutching the sheet, and pointing at the bulkhead above him.
"What?" Petris glared first at her, then at the bulkhead. Then his gaze sharpened. "I—don't have any idea." He edged away from the bulkhead, and got off the bed.
"It's alive," Heris said. She was aware that her voice had squeaked, and still hadn't returned to normal. The thing was just lighter than the bulkhead, a dull creamy white, as long as her hand. It had long antennae; she could just see them wiggling.
"And there's more than one of them," Petris said. He pointed. Out of the crack between bulkhead and bunk, two more of the things crept.
Heris had wrapped the sheet tightly around herself; now she leaned closer. "Six legs . . . antennae . . . you know what it looks like? It looks like an albino—" Something skittered down her leg, from under the sheet, and tickled her toes as it ran over them. "COCKROACH!" She was out of the sheet before she knew it, and across the room. Shuddering, she looked back. Petris, on one foot, looked around like someone who had forgotten what the other leg was for. Neither of them had anything handy for whapping a cockroach, because ships didn't have cockroaches. Ships were routinely cleaned out before and after each trip; everyone feared vermin.
"Albino cockroaches?" Petris said, still on one leg like some kind of exotic bird. "Do they . . . I mean, what do they eat?"
Heris headed for the shower. "I don't know, but they're filthy. It's disgusting. On my ship!" She strode into the shower and bounced back out. "They're in there, too!"
"They like warmth, I recall," Petris said. He was back on two feet, but looked anxious. "We turned up the heat in here—"
"And what if they're all over the ship?" Heris asked. She had a nightmare vision of a full-bore inspection arriving to find her and her first officer and lover stark naked amid swarming albino cockroaches. Could she claim they'd eaten her uniform? And would they?
"They probably are," Petris said gloomily. He shook out his shirt before putting it on. "And they probably breed. Where could they have come from? None of us had been out of Station quarantine."
"
That
's why the redecorators didn't want us on the ship," Heris said. She remembered the frightened look on the woman's face. It made sense if she was afraid of being caught with illegal biologicals. "They put them here."
"But why?"
"I . . . don't know. But we had best find out. Perhaps they're used in some stage of the process."
"It can't be legal." Petris shook out his shoes, one by one, before putting them on. "It's against all the regulations I ever heard of to have biologicals on a Station or a ship. Except for the registered ones, like you told me Lady Cecelia had."
"I wonder." Heris checked her own clothes carefully before getting back into them. "At least we now have a cargo."
"These? They're not cargo—they're a reason to quarantine us." He sounded horrified at the thought. Heris felt the same way but struggled to think past her revulsion.
"Yes, but . . . let's assume the decorators keep them, and put them here. That means they're valuable to the decorators. That might mean they're valuable to another firm doing the same work somewhere else."
He looked dubious. "I don't see how. First we'd have to catch them, confine them somewhere, take care of them. We don't even know what they're
for.
"
"Can you catch one?" Heris asked, pointing to the cluster that still clung to the bulkhead over the bunk.
"Me?" He looked at her. She looked back, pointedly. "Oh, all right. If they're poisonous or something, though, you had better figure out how to save my life, or I'll haunt you."
"I should figure out first what to keep it in . . . let me think—something in the galley should hold it. And we'll turn the temperature down, in case they're more active in warmth. If I remember, most insects are."
Once clothed, she found the pale cockroaches just as disgusting, but less frightening. If they attacked, they'd hit her clothes and not her skin. She shuddered, remembering the touch of those legs. With the thermostat down, she had an excuse for shivering.
"I suppose you want me to stay here while you fetch a cage?" Petris didn't sound happy about that.
"I can stay," Heris said. "Get a food container with a tight lid—except we'll have to ventilate it somehow—I wonder what size holes these things can crawl through."
He came back with a canister whose top had a dozen perforations; Heris wondered why, then it occurred to her it looked like a giant salt shaker. Perhaps that was how Cecelia's cook had covered pastry with powdered sugar.
"We had similar things back home," Petris said, as he smacked the open end of the canister down over the nearest cockroach and carefully slid a flat piece of metal under it to trap it. "Farmers hate 'em too—those ate crops, clothing, pillows, rugs—"
"Rugs?" Heris stared at him. "Like—the carpet that used to be here?"
"We didn't have real carpet; we had rugs woven of plant fiber and animal hair. Some handwoven, and some factory-produced. But yes, they ate holes in rugs. And upholstery. Old-fashioned books, too, especially the bindings. My uncle said it was the glue. And they'd make a mess of data cubes left lying around, even though they couldn't eat them. They'd leave their . . . mess . . . on them, which glopped up the cube readers. Why?"
"Because . . . that may be why the decorators have them. I hadn't really thought about it but . . . the stuff the decorators take out of a ship—all the wall coverings and carpet and upholstery—has to go somewhere. They'd pay to have it processed in the Station recycler, and then they'd have to pay to replace that with new material. Imported or fabricated, either one. Let me run the figures . . ."
This was something she could work out, once she thought of it. And the specifications were in the contract she'd brought along. She called them up. "Look—here's an estimate of square meters, times minimum thickness of carpet, of wall covering, of upholstery. Which comes to—" She looked at the volume result. "—And they're required to give chemical composition—organics—so in case anything's volatile, what kind of outgassing the ship's environmentals will have to handle. Interesting."
"What?"
"If they're honest, given the density and composition, the volume of material they'd have to have processed onstation or transport would cost them—" She called in the financial subroutines. "Too much. Plus replacement. I'll figure that both ways, local processing and importation. No, three ways—from planetary sources and importation from more distant sources." The result exceeded the bid on Cecelia's job.
"Can't be," Petris said. "You've made a mistake somewhere."
"I might have," Heris said. "But if I didn't, and if these disgusting insects were put here for a reason—and if they eat rugs and pillows and upholstery—"
"They eat them," Petris said, with distaste. "They certainly don't manufacture their replacements. It might be cheaper to have them gobble up the client's old stuff, but unless they can be cooked into delicious banquet meals, I don't see how that helps." Then his face changed expression. "Unless, of course, they're cooked into something else—the new furnishings."
"That's sick," Heris said. "Besides, how could you get them all back out?"
"It would explain why they risk breaking the vermin laws, if it did work."
"And it gives us something to sell," Heris said. "Both the information and the . . . er . . . samples."
"It certainly establishes us as outlaws," Petris said. "Selling vermin—carrying them loose on a spaceship?"