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  Daniel had probably gone onto the hull through the forward airlock, which Adele could see when the bridge hatch was open—as it was now. She’d been so focused on her work that she hadn’t noticed the considerable noise and commotion which must have occurred when Daniel had fitted a layman into a vacuum suit. Well, they had been none of her present business, and her business could be expected to absorb her completely.

  Quirking a grin, Adele set a signal to flash across her display when the inner airlock next cycled open. Otherwise she was likely to miss Daniel’s return as completely as she had his exit.

  Then she went back to work on her data. Of course.

  Daniel leaned back at the waist to look upward, a complicated task while wearing a rigging suit. The rigid panels, including protective sleeves over each joint, made the hard suits much safer for the personnel who actually worked on the hull. The edge of a slipping tool or the frayed end of a whipping cable would bounce off instead of tearing a long, probably fatal, gash.

  The suits weren’t even clumsy once people got used to them. The riggers who wore them throughout their daily watches executed acrobatics, regularly swinging through the rigging and even leaping from antenna to antenna.

  RCN regulations required riggers to wear safety lines and always to grip a fixed element of the ship with one hand. On no vessel Daniel knew of did riggers wear safety lines, and most bosuns—including Woetjans—felt that the ship’s needs took precedence to what the regs said about crew safety. Despite that, there were very few accidents involving veteran riggers.

  Daniel wasn’t quite as nimble as a rigger, but he wore his hard suit with ease and a lack of concern. At the moment, his concern was wholly directed at the civilian he’d brought out with him.

  Commissioner Brown wasn’t the clumsiest person Daniel had ever seen on the hull—that would probably be Adele, despite her having what was by now a great deal of experience—but walking in magnetic shoes took some practice. The Commissioner hadn’t learned the trick yet.

  Daniel pointed upward with his left arm. “The lights you see,” he said, checking through his side lens to make sure that the communication rod was firmly against Brown’s helmet, “aren’t stars, Commissioner. They’re universes, every one as real as our own.”

  Brown wore an air suit: light compared to a rigging suit, flexible, and not nearly so bulky. It was safer for a layman because it was less awkward to move around in, and it was much more comfortable: the interior of a hard suit bruised and scraped an unfamiliar wearer. Air suits were regulation for ship-side crewmen when they went out on the hull, though veterans like those aboard the Sissie had often found rigging suits for their own use.

  “I—” Brown said, but he turned his head as he spoke and took his helmet away from the rod. Daniel waited, expecting Brown to realize his mistake and lean back into contact.

  He did. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said. “I’m not used to having to hold my head in the same position in order to speak. Well, to be heard, that is.”

  The suits aboard starships were not fitted with any means of communication in the electrooptical band. In sidereal space, radios or modulated lasers would have been harmless; but such a device if used by accident in the Matrix would throw the ship unguessed—and possibly unrecoverable—distances off course.

  Spacers didn’t add to the risks they faced. They knew—the survivors knew—better than anyone else just how good their chances of being killed already were.

  Riggers talked with hand signals when they needed to talk at all; the personnel of an experienced rigging watch knew their own duties and expected their fellows to do the same. Daniel and Adele, for their own individual reasons, needed privacy to discuss ideas more complex than “Help Jones clear the frozen block on the A3 topsail lift.”

  Until recently they had touched helmets to hold conversations. Daniel had improved the technique by having mechanics at Bantry fabricate eighteen-inch-long brass tubes which allowed people to speak in vacuum with fewer contortions.

  “As I was saying,” Brown resumed. “I can’t see what you see, but I think I understand what you see, Captain. I—”

  He turned carefully, gripping the rod to keep it in contact with his helmet. “Numbers mean more to me than they are, you see,” he said with a wistful grin. “More than they are to other people, that is. Here I see a—”

  He gestured with the fingers of his gloved left hand spread.

  “—pattern of light, rather like the streets in a business district on a rainy night. Only less intense. Whereas from the way you’ve described the Matrix to me, I think you see religious significance. Do you not?”

  Daniel blinked. That wasn’t what he’d expected from the Commissioner. And it was very close to being correct, which he also hadn’t expected.

  He guffawed. If they’d been inside and he weren’t wearing a rigging suit, he’d have clapped Brown on the shoulder in startled camaraderie.

  “I don’t know that I’d call it religious, Commissioner,” he said, “but I won’t object if you do. Do you see the string of green, well, blurs there, off the port bow?”

  He pointed with his full arm, shifting his feet slightly so that Brown could watch without adjusting the communication rod again. “That’s the direction we’re going,” he said. “Though ‘direction’ isn’t really correct. Our brains are used to seeing in three dimensions, so that’s how they translate the images they receive through our eyes.”

  They stood in the far bow at the base of the Dorsal antenna in the A ring. The mainsail wasn’t set but the topsail and topgallant were cocked a few degrees to port.

  The sails of metalized fabric, tough but only microns thick, gleamed with their own light. They blocked the Casimir radiation which was the only constant in the Matrix where otherwise time, distance, and all other factors varied among the bubble universes.

  Radiation pressure served to shift starships among universes, using the variations between adjacent bubbles. Ships circumvented the limitations of the sidereal universe simply by travelling outside it. A computer with the right software could calculate a course. A trained astrogator using the same software could calculate a shorter course than a machine alone could do.

  Someone who had developed an instinct for the Matrix could tell at a glance what the energy states of other universes were in respect to that of the bubble of the ship herself. Such an astrogator could do subtle wonders in company with a crew which translated those calculations into the set of the sails. Cinnabar had never raised a more gifted astrogator than Commander Stacey Bergen and he—Daniel’s Uncle Stacey—had worked hard to bring his nephew up to his own high standard.

  Daniel tried to pass his uncle’s knowledge on to the officers under his command. Now on the masthead high above him and Commissioner Brown, Lieutenant Cory stood with an ambitious technician named Loomis and took the line of descent a generation further. Uncle Stacey would be proud of me.

  “I cannot see the order, Captain,” Brown said. “But I can see that there is order, and it’s obvious to me that you see it. I’m fortunate to be making this voyage under your care.”

  “I realize that star travel isn’t ever comfortable,” Daniel said, meaning comfortable for a civilian. “But the crew and I will continue to do whatever we can to minimize the discomfort. We should be on Stahl’s World in ten days—”

  Which is a bloody good run, if I do say so myself.

  “—and after a layover for you and your family to catch your breaths, it’ll be only three days more to Zenobia.”

  “It’s not the discomfort of the voyage that concerns me, Captain,” Brown said, turning toward Daniel. He held his end of the communications rod against his lower face shield, hiding his mouth, but his eyes looked sad. “It’s what awaits me when I get there. I know numbers, perhaps as well as you know . . .”

  He made a circular gesture with his right hand. Daniel winced mentally, but it was perfectly safe. Two safety lines were clipped to the hasp on the Comm
issioner’s waist belt, attaching him to the stanchion just outside the forward airlock and to Daniel’s belt as well.

  “Know the path through those universes. But I don’t know much about people, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t believe . . . ,” Daniel said, trying to word this so it wouldn’t be taken as an insult. “That the duties of a Commissioner in a quiet area like the Qaboosh Region will prove too arduous, sir.”

  “It’s not the distressed spacers that I’m primarily worried about, I’m afraid,” Brown said. Then he said, “Are you married, Captain?”

  “Ah . . . ,” said Daniel. “Ah, no I’m not, though I’ve, ah, reached an understanding with a fine woman. A very fine woman.”

  “Ah,” said Brown with a nod that might have meant anything. “No doubt it will work out well for you, Captain. You’re obviously a forceful young man. Whereas I am an accountant.”

  He barked a laugh that nobody could have mistaken for humor.

  “Better,” he said, “I should be an accountant. Instead I have become the Cinnabar Commissioner to Zenobia, in order to please my wife. As I said, I don’t know very much about people.”

  Daniel saw the semaphore station ahead of the airlock clack its six arms upward, then begin to chop out a message. It was hydromechanical rather than electrical, the only way to communicate between the bridge and the outside of the hull while the ship was in the Matrix.

  “We’d best go aboard, Commissioner,” Daniel said. “The Sissie will be shaking out her mainsails in a moment, and I don’t want you to have to dodge a cable.”

  He took Brown by the arm and began shuffling with him toward the airlock. What he’d just said was true.

  But what he really meant was that he didn’t want to go any further with the present conversation. Daniel Leary was not a person who had any business giving relationship advice.

  CHAPTER 6

  Above Stahl’s World

  Adele had researched Stahl’s World extensively during the voyage from Cinnabar. Nothing she had read had mentioned that the planet looked pink from orbit because—she had just checked—of microorganisms in the extensive oceans. Near the poles the water tended toward magenta; around the equator, its frothy lightness reminded her of cotton candy.

  In a manner of speaking, the apparent color of the planet from space didn’t matter in the least. Nonetheless Adele was irritated that the first thing that she noticed on arrival above Stahl’s World was unexpected. I need to do better!

  Cazelet’s interactions with Raphael Control ran as a text sidebar along the right side of her display. The midshipman was handling the ordinary chores of a Signals Officer while Adele—and Cory, at the astrogation console—were gathering data to be sorted at greater leisure.

  The harvest was largely automatic—devouring the logs of all the ships in harbor along with the open files of public bodies and private institutions concerned with trade and shipping—but human oversight refined the work. When files were sealed or encrypted, Cory opened them if he could and otherwise flagged them to Adele’s attention. Thanks to software from Mistress Sand’s organization and the processing power of an astrogation computer, there was very little in a backwater like the Qaboosh Region which was really unavailable.

  “Adele?” said Daniel over a two-way link. “I recognize the destroyer in the civilian basin below as a 40-series Alliance vessel, but I’m not familiar with the heavy cruiser except that it seems to be a Pantellarian design. Brief me, please, over.”

  “Yes,” said Adele. Instead of sorting through data on her console, she simply highlighted the link she’d already placed on the command display. She didn’t object to the question, because she felt it was her fault that Daniel had to ask it.

  Information gathering wasn’t difficult: machines did most of it more efficiently and in greater volume than human beings could. The trick—and craft helped, but it really was an art form at the higher levels—was information retrieval. In sufficient mass, unsorted data was as difficult to penetrate as encrypted data.

  Adele had put over thirty items onto Daniel’s sidebar, ranging from the names and biographies of the dignitaries still present—this was the final day of the Qaboosh Assembly; it was midafternoon in Raphael, the Assembly site and the Cinnabar regional headquarters—to the local weather and the indicia of every ship in the harbor below. That had obviously been too much, so Daniel had called in an expert to sort it for him.

  Adele grinned minusculely. That was a typically good decision on his part.

  The cruiser was the Piri Reis, flagship of Palmyra’s naval forces, the Horde. It had been built only five years earlier on Pantellaria which, though an Alliance ally, did considerable business with neutral worlds which lacked the capacity to build larger warships themselves.

  Adele had heard Daniel and his fellow officers sneer at Pantellarian design and workmanship, but they sneered at any vessel that wasn’t RCN—and often enough at RCN ships other than whichever one they served on. All Adele could say was that Piri Reis had clean lines and longer antennas and spars than was usual for a heavy cruiser. Her defensive battery of 15-cm plasma cannon was arranged in three triple turrets—two dorsal, one ventral—instead of the four twin turrets of most heavy cruisers.

  Adele was sure that Daniel would say that the design was a bad one and that the Piri Reis was more susceptible to damage either from accident or enemy action. That said, the cruiser presumably had a higher rate of fire than an RCN—or Fleet—vessel of the same displacement.

  Speaking but directing the console to convert her words to a text crawl at the bottom of Daniel’s display so as not to disturb him until he was ready for the information, Adele added, “The ship is carrying the Autocrator Irene to and from the Assembly. There are six Palmyrene cutters escorting the cruiser; I’m—”

  Adele’s wands sorted, then clicked pale green halos about the Horde vessels. They appeared to be a standard type for the region, as—she counted—seventeen other ships in the civil basin were similar enough to be confused with them.

  The highlight color was a good contrast with the water, but the result made a startlingly ugly combination; she switched to blue, wondering if she would have bothered to do so five years ago. The universe in all its aspects had seemed very ugly then.

  “—marking them now.”

  The Alliance destroyer Z 46—which Daniel had correctly identified, of course—was at the other end of the civil basin from the Palmyrene cruiser. Though Cinnabar and the Alliance were in a state of peace, it was unexpected to find a warship of one party making a courtesy call at a regional headquarters of the other.

  Adele couldn’t reach the core databases of a Fleet warship without time and a great deal of luck, but the log was a relatively simple proposition and gave her the reason: the Z 46 was serving as transportation for Founder Hergo Belisande of Zenobia. The Founder was accompanied by his sister, Lady Posy Belisande.

  Adele smiled wryly. It would be all right to say that this gave her an opportunity to meet her target on neutral ground if she wished to do so but imposed no requirement if she did not. Sand had been clear that the primary purpose of the mission was to give a trusted agent, Lady Adele Mundy, an opportunity to relax in a quiet region while the needs of the Republic didn’t require her special skills elsewhere.

  Adele’s expertise was in databases and information flow. Posy Belisande wouldn’t have brought electronic information bearing on Porra’s inner circles here to Stahl’s World, so Sand wouldn’t think her agent was shirking if she spent the entire time out of Posy’s sight.

  Adele would have been shirking. And though she and Sand both considered this mission to be make-work for a burned-out agent, it was a mission and Adele would carry it out to the best of her ability.

  Adele’s smile faded. It would no doubt do her good to interact socially with strangers. It was the sort of thing that human beings did regularly. She needed the practice, because she generally thought of herself as a species not
dissimilar to humanity but certainly not the same.

  The exchange between Raphael Control and Midshipman, Acting Signals Officer, Cazelet had been on hold for several minutes. When the ground controller came back, Adele’s sidebar read “Princess Cecile, I have instructions for your captain from Admiral Mainwaring, over.”

  Without having to think about it, Adele locked out Cazelet and took over the duties. She said, “Go ahead, Control, over.”

  Cazelet could certainly have handled this, but he shouldn’t have to. Admirals could be whimsical; indeed, admirals could be peevish swine. If somebody had to deal with such a person, it wouldn’t be a midshipman to whom Adele had delegated what she had thought was a simple task.

  “Princess Cecile, this is Commander Milch, ADC to Admiral Mainwaring,” said the voice from the other end of the microwave transmission. “The Admiral requests that Captain Leary join him at the reception being given this afternoon by the Autocrator Irene. I’m leaving the reception now and will pick him up in an aircar at Slip 4 of the Naval Basin. You are to land ASAP, I repeat, as soon as possible. Captain Leary is to wear Dress Whites with all his medals.”

  Milch paused to chuckle. Adele had his face and file—a record of pedestrian competence, with neither exceptional luck nor the interest of powerful figures to push him upward—before her. He might well end his career in a post like this one, aide to the admiral commanding a squadron of ageing ships in a backwater.

  “That’ll give the locals something to see, won’t it?” Milch said. “Raphael Control out.”

  “One moment, Control!” Adele snapped. “If you please. The Princess Cecile is a yacht under private registry and not authorized to use the Naval Basin, over.”

  “The Princess Cecile is authorized to land wherever on Stahl’s World that Admiral Mainwaring says it will,” Milch snapped. “And the Admiral said he’d be buggered if Captain Leary was going to set down in the middle of a bunch of wogs. Out, and I mean it.”