Heris Serrano (131 page)

None of your business
was what Raffa wanted to say to the question, but practicality as well as manners prevented her. Old ladies like this didn't quit bothering you just because you were rude; they had dealt with more rudeness already than the average youth could think up. Raffa tried to think if anything would help, and glanced past Ottala's aunt to the person behind her. He was pushing a barrow, and on the barrow were . . . pottery pieces of incredible ugliness. Half-melted graceless shapes in colors that made her stomach turn. Recognition and counterattack came together.

"Those pots," she began. Ottala's aunt turned one of the colors on them, an ugly puce.

"You wouldn't understand," she began. "They aren't just pots, they're . . ."

"I understood that you yourself were quite an artist in pottery," Raffa said, with emphasis. "You gave some to Ottala; she had them at school. I noticed, when I was in the market the other day, how much the local wares resembled them. Perhaps—"

"Great artists derive inspiration from many sources," Ottala's aunt muttered. Her dark little eyes peered up at Raffa.

"And lesser artists plagiarize," Raffa said, with no softening. "Sometimes those who aren't artists simply—"

Ottala's aunt held up her hand, and Raffa stopped. "All right. I—I couldn't make enough pots on my own—my family kept asking for more, and more, and more. Finally I got someone to make a few for me—and then a few more—"

"But why such ugly ones?" Raffa said, shocking herself. Ottala's aunt shook her head, as if she hadn't heard right, and then smiled sadly.

"I kept hoping they'd quit asking—you know, if I made them uglier and uglier." After a pause, she went on. "I really can't explain how everyone in the family has such bad taste—it seems the worse the product, the more they want."

"Why didn't you just tell them you were tired of making pots?"

"My dear, you aren't old enough to understand." The old lady leaned forward, confiding. "Someday, when you're grown, and you're enjoying things, your relatives will start complaining. 'You never finish anything you start,' they'll say. 'You pick up one hobby after another—you're just wasting time and money with all these enthusiasms.' 'You should stick to one thing and learn to do it really well.' " Ottala's aunt sniffed. "It doesn't matter what it is. I expect that Ronald's aunt, Cecelia de Marktos, heard the same thing about her horses."

"That's true," Ronnie put in. "It's one reason Aunt Cecelia's so angry with my parents; they kept telling her that her riding was just a hobby, and not worth all the time she put into it."

"You see?" Ottala's aunt looked triumphant. "I think my family wanted to make sure I stuck to pottery, and that's why they kept asking for more. And to be honest, my dear, I did want to quit. They were right."

"Still . . ." began Raffa, who wanted to get the conversation back to the covert negotiation she had started. "About these pots . . . and Ronnie . . ."

"Oh, all right," Ottala's aunt huffed. "I won't tell on you, if you don't tell on me. But I still think young girls have no business running around in foreign lands with
four young men
. One was quite enough for me, in my young days." As the tram came in, and Raffa moved to board it with the others, Ottala's aunt called, "And don't think I don't recognize young George Mahoney there, with his ears the color of ripe plums. . . ."

The rest of the trip to the Institute passed without incident.

"We have more troubles than getting the clones to safety," Raffa said, when they met again. Ronnie and George, fresh from showers, in clean clothes, had their usual glossy surface. "Some of the rejuvenation drugs have been adulterated, and none of the samples we brought—yours or mine—were manufactured here."

"None?"

"None. They did an isotopic analysis, and in their database—which they admit isn't all-inclusive—there's a match with Patchcock." Ronnie and George looked at each other, startled, over her head. "What?"

"Nothing," they both said in the tone of voice that means Something.

"Tell me." Raffa was not about to take any more nonsense.

"Ottala Morreline disappeared on Patchcock. I don't know any more; I'm not supposed to know that much, but I always could read upside down and backwards." George smirked. Raffa could have smacked him, but she wouldn't let herself be distracted.

"Is that why Lord Thornbuckle sent Brun off with Captain Serrano?"

"Maybe. Probably. Just in case someone's out to get the daughters of wealthy families."

"And they sent me
here
." Raffa was seriously annoyed with Lord Thornbuckle and her own parents, but on mutually exclusive grounds. She didn't like being thought incompetent enough to need to be sent away, and she didn't like being thought negligible enough to be sent from Castle Rock to the Guerni Republic alone. If anyone had wanted to harm her, she'd have been unprotected.

Ronnie seemed to have read her thoughts. "You're trustworthy, Raffa—you wouldn't get into trouble. Brun would poke her nose into every stinging nettle she could find. Ottala was the same. . . ."

"She was not," Raffa said. "Ottala was a mean-minded snitch. Brun got into mischief for the fun of it; Ottala poked into things to get other people in trouble."

"I'll never understand the way women pick at each other," George said in his most sanctimonious tone.

"You would if you'd been in school with Ottala," Raffa said. "She nearly got Brun expelled. Besides, I've heard you talk about your schoolmates."

"It's different. None of us were the sweet flower of young womanhood—OUCH!" George recoiled and glared at her. "You hit me."

"And will again if you don't behave," said Raffa. She winked at Ronnie. "Be odious to someone else for a change."

"It's odd about Patchcock," Ronnie said. "It keeps showing up in all this—Captain Serrano told me about the Patchcock Incursion, and Ottala disappeared—"

"That can't be connected," George said. "Those riots were years ago—we were infants or something."

"And now this, about the drugs. It ought to make sense some way, and it doesn't." Ronnie frowned. "It would be great if we could wrap the whole thing up for them. Go to Patchcock, find out what happened to Ottala, find out if the Morrelines are adulterating the drugs on purpose, or just chasing profits. They might not even understand what could go wrong."

"I don't think we can," Raffa said. "We need to take this evidence back to Lord Thornbuckle first, and—"

"He needs it, I agree. But we can't add anything to it. None of us are chemists; we don't understand this stuff." He patted the hardcopy. "If we sent it—by several routes, to be sure it got through—that should be enough."

"Certainly Ottala's friends are more likely to figure out where she's hiding than someone who doesn't even know her," George said. "Not that we're friends, exactly—even I thought she was an awful prig sometimes."

"Besides, we have a flair for it," Ronnie said. "Look at what we accomplished here. It could have been a very sticky situation indeed, even dangerous, but we all came out of it with what we needed to know and no damage done."

Raffa had her doubts about that. Those two unhappy young clones would have more trouble than they thought adjusting to life as independents. Their new faces—whatever they were—would not change their natures. A fragment of poetry her Aunt Marta quoted swam into her mind. "No thing, neither cunning fox nor roaring lion, can change the nature born in its blood," she said.

George looked startled, but Ronnie grinned at her. "Exactly. You and I—and George of course—are good at this sort of thing. Besides, think what will happen if we go back home. We'll all be wrapped away in protective familial swaddlings. Whereas, if we solve the whole rejuvenation problem for them—well, the drug part anyway—they'll have to recognize that we really are adults, and let us make our own decisions."

"I don't know, Ronnie," George said. "Raffa's not enthusiastic about this, and if it's dangerous . . . she shouldn't go, perhaps. She can explain to Lord Thornbuckle what we're up to, in case we need backup or something." In his tone, Raffa heard
She's not Brun
. And he thought Ottala was priggish; did he think the same of her?

"Don't be ridiculous," she heard herself saying. "If you'll remember, I did quite well on the island. Just because I can be prudent doesn't mean I'm timid."

The com chimed; Raffa, who was nearest, answered it. "Dama—a Venezia Glendower-Morreline se Vahtigos wishes to speak with you."

"Oh—of course." Raffa held up her hand for silence, then said, "It's Ottala's Aunt Venezia again." Ronnie and George nodded, and settled back into their chairs with the clear intention of letting Raffa deal with it.

"Raffaele—" That was Venezia. "My dear, it just occurred to me—there's something you could do to help me."

"Yes?" Raffa was not about to commit herself.

"It's Ottala. You were her friend in school, I know." Raffa tried to stop that train of thought.

"Not a close friend, really."

"Well, I remember your name." In auntian logic, that seemed to be enough. "I'm worried about her," Venezia went on. "She missed her brother's
seegrin
, and her parents keep telling me not to worry, that she's a wild girl still under the influence of schoolmates such as yourself, my dear, and that blonde girl—Bubbles or whatever her name was. Do you know where she is?"

"No," said Raffa, leaning heavily on her minimal knowledge of sophistry. She didn't know where Ottala was, even though George had seen something which reported that Ottala had gone missing on Patchcock. Perhaps George had misread it, or the report was wrong, or she wasn't still there.

"I
thought
she told me she was going to visit Patchcock, such a silly idea because there's nothing to see, but her parents insist that I misunderstood, that I must have had my head in the kiln. Of course they don't know that I don't do that anymore, and I couldn't explain—" She paused. Raffa could think of nothing to say; she had to clench her teeth to keep her jaw from dropping open. "I wanted to go look for her," Venezia went on, "but they made it quite clear that I was not welcome to do so. Silly, really, because I own enough stock in the company that I should be able to do what I want. I had to help Oscar and Bertie out a while back, and they repaid me in shares. Not that I care, you understand, but . . . anyway, whatever they say, I think that's where she went and she should have come back by now. I thought that you—that perhaps you, having gone off with a young man, might know if that's what happened to Ottala. Because if it is what happened, then I could tell the family and they'd quit worrying."

Raffa found her attention caught by details that bobbed past in the torrent of words . . . that connected with other details from the earlier conversation. Suddenly the somewhat scatty aunt who created—or faked creating—the ugliest pottery
objets d'art
she had ever seen began to look like someone else—like the investor, perhaps even the major stockholder, who was being kept away from the business while nefarious activities went on. What if Ottala had suspected as much?

"If I could just come up and talk to you," Venezia said. "A bright young girl like you . . . and with a young man like Ronald Carruthers, you couldn't come to any harm."

"Harm?" Raffa managed to say past the whirling in her brain.

"Could I? We could have tea, or—" The thought of tea with Venezia made for a quick decision.

"Not tea," Raffa said firmly. "Why don't you just come up and we'll chat."

"Wonderful," said Venezia, and before Raffa could mention that she had other visitors as well, the connection blanked. Quickly, in breathless phrases, she told the other two what she had heard.

"And so, if
she
wants us to go to Patchcock, it gives us the perfect excuse."

"To be thrown out by her family," Ronnie said glumly. "I suppose she's going to tag along, too, just for decency's sake."

He was interrupted by a tap on the door. Venezia, looking more auntlike than ever, floated in on ripples of sheer lavender that seemed to drape her from head to heel. Scarves competed for space on her shoulders, and strips of lace fluttered in her wake.

"Ah, my dear Raffaele. So like your dear Aunt Marta. She used to wear just that color—"

"You know Aunt Marta?" Raffaele asked, only slightly startled.

"Long ago," Venezia said. "She was more serious—she even took a doctorate in synthetic chemistry, did you know that?" Raffa hadn't; while she digested this surprising fact about her favorite aunt, Venezia looked around. "Ronald—George—where are the other two?" Ronnie's attempt at a smile froze into position. Raffa leapt in.

"Other two—oh, the young men at the tram stop? Just some boys Ronnie and George met in a bar one night."

"Locals?" asked Venezia, but without waiting for an answer she launched into her plan. "I'm glad they're not here, dear, because I would not wish to discuss family business in front of strangers. I know I can trust all of you." She favored them all with a bright little smile that made Raffa's teeth ache. "Have you explained about Ottala?"