Heris Serrano (123 page)

It came, she discovered, from an open door, not a courtyard. Inside, tables crowded around a low stage. By then the music was over—or interrupted, because she saw the horn player, trumpet tucked under his arm, leaning over to talk to another musician with an instrument she recognized, a violin, on his lap. Two more string players were stretching as they chatted.

"Dama?" When she smiled and nodded, the waiter led her to a table halfway between stage and wall.

She set her elbows on the table and peered at the napkin which, besides suggesting in four languages that the appropriate tip was twenty percent, gave the name of the players. If her Guernesi was sufficient, they were the "Blithe Grasshoppers." Tati Velikos on the "tromp" which had to be trumpet. Sorel Velikos, Kaskar Basconi, Ouranda Basconi, Luriesa Sola. She amused herself during their break by trying to figure out who was who.

The musicians readied themselves again, and Raffa blinked at them. If Tati was the trumpeter, then Sorel must be a twin brother: he looked identical, tall, lean, and dark-haired. And the two Basconis—she assumed the other pair of twins, the women, were the Basconis. They were dark too, though not quite as tall and decidedly bosomy. She had thought Kaskar was a male name . . . Kaskar Aldozina had been one of the historical figures in Guernesi history, and she remembered that the pronoun reference had been male.

She glanced around, suddenly uncomfortable for no reason she could define, and it hit her. At least half those watching came in pairs, triplets, quads—all identical. Another Velikos (she was sure) reached over to hand the musicians some music. Most of the identicals were pairs—twins?—but a few tables away four identical blonde women chatted with three identical blond men—and when Raffa took a second look, she realized that the men and women were, but for differences in hairstyle, dress, and cleavage, identical with each other. Seven faces alike; she shivered. These must be clones. She had heard of them, but never seen them. They were illegal in the Familias space, she knew that much.

The string players began, a sprightly lilting melody Raffa did not know. She looked at them more closely. Were they all clones? They didn't look as much alike as the seven blondes, but there was a family resemblance, even in the fifth player. Raffa tried to tell herself that it was just a matter of different customs; there was nothing
wrong
with clones, and she wasn't in danger or anything. And she liked the music . . . it flirted from violin to cello, tripped into the bass, and then the trumpet plucked it away and flung it out across the room, past all the talk and clink of dishes.

When the music ended, knotted into a tight pattern of chords that left no opening for more variation, Raffa found herself wondering where clone designers found their patterns. That man she had been so sure was the ex-king, for instance . . . could that have been a clone, perhaps? Surely a neighboring government wouldn't make clones of its neighbors' political leaders . . . or would it? Speculation bothered her; she didn't want to wonder about that or anything else.

She had an appointment at the corporate headquarters of Atot Viel the next day. In real life, the arrangement of fountain and stairways made sense; the structure was built into a slope, and the stairs offered open air communication from level to level. Raffa noted that without pausing, and followed the markers set alight by the button that had come with her appointment notice.

The young woman who met her at the reception area seemed to find Raffa's presence entirely understandable. She said, "We'll take you on the usual tour, and then you tell me what else you'd like to see. Your aunt's never visited us herself, but we understood that was for health reasons—"

Raffa, unprepared for that opening, said the first conventional thing that came into her head. "I'm so sorry; I wouldn't know."

"Of course, you can't tell us. We've established no need to know. But if it
is
health, you might want to investigate the medical facilities. Recently one of your prominent citizens benefited from the expertise of the Neurosciences Institute; I'm sure they'd give you references."

"Lady Cecelia," said Raffa, automatically.

"Oh, you know her? Good. We really do welcome stockholder participation, you see, and if your aunt could travel, we would very much enjoy the benefit of her expertise."

Raffa wondered. Aunt Marta's expertise, as far as she had known, consisted of an instinctive grasp of what to sell and what to buy. She never involved herself with management, preferring to live in relaxed comfort, pursuing her hobbies. As for health, she always seemed hale enough to go for month-long camping trips in the mountains behind her main residence. An early experience of Aunt Marta and Lady Cecelia's had convinced Raffa that old ladies were anything but dull and passive, a hope she clung to when surrounded by the senior set at Castle Rock.

Now she followed the young woman along gleaming corridors, wishing she had the foggiest notions what questions to ask. By the time she'd had the usual tour, and collected an armful of glossy brochures, she was ready to quit for the day.

"But you'll come again, I hope," her guide said. "Your aunt's is one of the few licensed facilities using our process." Raffa still wasn't sure what process, but she knew she would have to find out. It would keep her mind off Ronnie.

She had not seen the man who resembled the king for days; she had not forgotten him, but he was no longer part of her anticipation. But the next morning, he appeared again, striding along the carpeted corridor toward the lobby with the firm stride of someone who knows where he's going. Raffa put down the storycube she had just picked up, and watched him. He paused by the concierge's desk, then headed for the doors. Inexplicably, Raffa felt drawn to follow.

"Later," she said to the clerk, and darted through the gift-shop door. The man had already disappeared through the front doors; Raffa stretched her legs and followed. There he was, outside, chatting with the doorman, waiting for a car, no doubt. One of the sleek electric cabs pulled up, and he got in. Raffa waited until it began to move, then went out to the street. The cab moved smoothly away.

"You can't keep us here forever," George said. "Eventually someone will come looking, and you'll have accomplished just what you want to avoid. People who are likely to know you by sight on your trail."

The clone on guard looked at him, an unfriendly stare. "It won't help you."

"But why are you angry with us?" George persisted.

"Remember the commissioning banquet?" the clone asked. George flushed.

"Surely you don't hold that against me—I thought you were him—the prince, I mean."

"I know who you mean," the clone said. "Why does that matter? You were willing to do that—"

"Everyone gets drunk at the commissioning banquet," George said, glancing at Ronnie for support. Ronnie lay back on the bed, eyes shut, but George was sure he wasn't asleep. He couldn't possibly sleep so much. "And after—and the pranks are all traditional—"

"Are you going to try to convince me you drew my name—excuse me,
his
name—from a hat?" The clone made a display of cleaning his fingernails with the stiletto. Overdramatic, George thought; the bathroom had modern facilities. Then he thought about lying; how could the clone know the name he had really drawn?

"No . . ." he said at last, choosing honesty for no reason he could name. "I drew someone else's, but—I thought I had a grudge."

"Have you ever been glued into your underwear?" The tone was light, but the menace of that blade needed no threatening voice.

"As a matter of fact, yes," George said. "At camp one summer, when I was twelve. Ronnie and I both."

"They were trying to toughen us up, they said," Ronnie said, without opening his eyes. "They'd found out that I liked the wrong kind of music—that I even
played
music." He opened his eyes, and a slow grin spread across his face. "They glued us back to back; we must've looked really silly. Took video cubes, the whole thing. The counselors finally trashed the cubes, after they'd watched them and snickered for a day or so. George and I spent the time in the infirmary, growing new skin."

"Oh." The clone seemed taken aback. "I—we weren't active then."

"That's why I diluted the mix," George said. "You weren't nearly as stuck as I was."

"What did you do to them?" the clone asked, seeming to be truly interested.

"Nothing . . . really." Ronnie had closed his eyes again. George admired the tone he achieved and waited. Let Ronnie tell it. "There was another boy, not even an R.E., but smarter than all of us put together. He could bypass the read-only safety locks on entertainment cubes."

"You trashed their cubes?"

"Not just that. We replaced their music with . . . other things." Ronnie heaved a satisfied sigh. "Remember, George, how mad that cousin of mine was, Stavi Bellinveau?"

"Yes. And Buttons, too—it was before his stuffy stage," he said to the clone. "He wasn't at all stuffy at fourteen."

"I blame myself," Ronnie said, putting a hand over his heart. "I think it was having to spend the next three weeks listening to an endless loop of all the
Pomp and Circumstance
marches. I should have put at least one waltz on that cube."

The clone glared. "If you're trying to make it clear that you and George share a life I never knew except secondhand, you've succeeded. It doesn't make me like you better."

"No . . . I can see that. But it's not our fault you're what you are. If we'd known, we might have made things easier for you, or harder . . . depends. We were all kids, with kids' idiocies. Rich kids . . . we could be idiots longer than some. It wasn't until my aunt's new yacht captain straightened me out that I began to grow up."

"Heris Serrano," the clone said.

"Yes. You met her—you understand."

Lady Cecelia had debated for several days where to go first after Zenebra. Heris left her to it. She had spent enough time thinking about horses. Now, as the yacht worked its way out of the crowded traffic patterns of Zenebra's system, she concentrated on the crew's training. Koutsoudas worried her, especially in light of her aunt's message. No one but Livadhi knew what he could really accomplish with two bent pins and a discarded chip. An undetectable hyperlight tightbeam comlink, for instance. Cecelia's concern that she could not see clearly where Fleet personnel were concerned warred in her mind with her aunt's trust in her judgment. She would like to believe her aunt, but if she did that, she might as well believe her aunt on everything. Her mind shied away from the implications like a green horse from a spooky fence . . . and that image brought her back to Cecelia.

Inspection. It was more than time for an inspection. Heris checked the set of her uniform before she headed down the passage to crew quarters. As she would have anticipated, the ex-military crew kept their quarters tidy, almost bare of personal identity. The programmable displays that other crew left showing tropical reefs, mountain valleys, or other scenery had been blanked.

Heris continued into the working areas of the ship. The new inspection stickers—real ones, not fakes—made bright patches on the gleaming bulkheads. She checked every readout, every telltale, the routine soothing her mind. Even the memories of violence on the ship—here Iklind had died, from hydrogen sulfide poisoning, and down this passage his distant relative Skoterin had nearly killed Brig Sirkin and Lady Cecelia. Redecoration had removed any trace of corrosive gases, of blood. The memory of faces and bodies that floated along with her were no different from those that haunted any captain's days.

In the 'ponics sections, she found Brun replanting trays, a dirty job that always fell to the lowest-level mole.

"What are you growing this round?" she asked.

Brun grinned. "Halobeets," she said. "I hadn't realized how much sulfur uptake ship 'ponics need."

"There's a ship rhyme about it," Heris said. "Eat it, excrete it, then halobeet it. And it's always confused me that we call the sulfur-sucking beets halobeets . . . you'd think they sopped up the halocarbons, but they don't. How are you getting along with Lady Cecelia's gardener?" Lady Cecelia's gardener produced the ship's fresh vegetables. Ship's crew produced only the vegetation needed to normalize the atmosphere. Brun wrinkled her muddy nose.

"I think he worries that I'll steal his methods for Dad's staff. You know I'm supposed to check the oxygen/carbon dioxide levels on his compartments, but he hovers over me as if I were after industrial secrets."

"Are you telling me you're never tempted to sneak a tomato?" Heris asked.

"Well . . . perhaps." Brun's wide grin was hardly contrite.

Heris left Brun to the tedious work, and continued her inspection. She was not surprised to find Arkady Ginese on his own tour of inspection, checking the weapons controls interlocks. The yacht had once had spacious storage bays, far larger than it needed for the transportation of a single passenger. Now those bays were stuffed with weaponry and its supporting control and guidance systems, with the jamming and other countermeasures that Heris hoped would serve as well as shields if someone were shooting back. They had not had the volume to mount both effective weapons and strong shields; Heris hoped she'd made the right choice.