Trickster

here.'

Ben pulled up a chair and sat facing Lucia over the back. Lucia finished slicing bread, then dealt the round pieces out on the counter like cards and began piling generous portions of sandwich fixings on them. She felt comfortable with Ben in the galley, as if one of her brothers were stopping in for a visit.

'You and Harenn are pretty good friends,' Ben observed. 'How did you two ever hook up, anyway? I never heard.'

Lucia picked up a bowl of sauce and a plastic spreader. 'You know that I'm a licensed private investigator, right?' When Ben nodded, she went on. 'Harenn hired me to look for Bedj-ka because I'm also a pilot and could more easily check out other planets. I wasn't able to find him, obviously, but Harenn and I got along really well. We'd both been jilted by our husbands, so we already had something in common.'

'You used to be married?' Ben said. 'I didn't know that.'

'I was very young and it didn't last long,' Lucia said. 'One day Jax up and ran off. No reason, no explanation, nothing. Just divorce papers served from a distance. Later I found out Jax had been sleeping with some bimbina even before he and I got engaged.' She thwacked an onion in half. 'Men are pigs.'

'Oink.'

Lucia laughed. 'Sorry. Sometimes I forget that you're a… I mean… oh, dear.'

'Right.'

'Anyway,' Lucia hurried on, 'Harenn and I became friends. Good thing, too-the PI business was getting a little thin even before the Despair came along. These days my one-woman agency exists only on paper. My contract with the Children is the only thing keeping me from having to move back in with my family. I love them, but they're a big and noisy bunch.'

Ben nodded and Lucia thought she saw a hint of… envy?… in his eyes. Maybe she was wrong. What could she possibly have that Ben might envy?

'So,' Lucia said, briskly slathering sauce over selected slices, 'how did you and Father Kendi get together, anyway? If it's not too private to ask, I mean.'

'It's not.' Ben rested his chin on the back of the chair. 'But it's a long story. Short version is that we met because Kendi was my mom's student. We were both teenagers.'

'Love at first sight?' Lucia said.

Ben snorted. 'Not quite. It took me forever to figure out how I felt about him. Even after I did, things weren't easy between us. We were on-again, off-again for years. Mom smacked me upside the head a few times about that, but I didn't really admit to myself how much Kendi meant-means-to me until the Despair hit. Sometimes I think you have to lose something, or almost lose it, to understand how precious it is.' He paused, then said abruptly, 'Do you ever worry about the Children of Irfan becoming extinct? I know Kendi does.'

Lucia's thoughts instantly rushed back to her prayers. 'I sometimes worry. But never for long.'

'Why not?'

'Irfan would never allow her Children to die out,' Lucia said firmly.

At that moment Father Kendi poked his head into the galley. 'Lucia, you don't have to do this every time we have a briefing, you know.'

Lucia blinked. 'Do you want me not to? Isn't the food any good?'

'It's great, Lucia,' Father Kendi said. His presence seemed to fill the entire galley. 'But it's a lot of extra work for you. I mean, newest crew does the cooking for regular meals, but this goes above and beyond.'

'She says she likes doing it,' Ben put in, 'if you can believe that.'

'I do like it,' Lucia said. 'Besides,' she added, greatly daring, 'you're all too thin. Eat!'

Ben and Father Kendi laughed and Lucia calmly went back to her pile of sandwiches.

Gretchen and Harenn, chatting amiably, arrived in the galley a moment later and sat down at the round table just off the cooking area. Ben and Father Kendi joined them. Harenn poured herself some coffee. Lucia set the finished sandwiches on a large platter, brought them to the table, and took a seat next to Harenn. Everyone reached for generous portions and pronounced them excellent. Lucia nodded at the praise, then shot a sidelong glance at Harenn. It still seemed strange to see her without her veil in public. Lucia had, of course, been in Harenn's home any number of times and had seen her unveil there, but never anywhere else. It was a welcome sight, though, and Lucia was glad beyond measure that Bedj-ka's return had allowed it to happen.

'And how's Bedj-ka?' Lucia asked.

Harenn sipped cream-laden coffee with a faintly distracted smile. 'He seems happy, as am I. Bedj-ka thinks it exciting to live on a slipship, and I find that it refreshes my own enthusiasm to watch him see things for the first time. He insists on assisting me with the engines and maintenance, and it is touching the way he tries so hard to help.'

'Maybe he'll be an engineer like his mother,' Lucia said.

'Perhaps.' Her smile grew wistful. 'He is certainly intelligent enough. He can already run four basic diagnostic programs and-'

'You sound just like my mother when she boasts about my brothers and sisters and me,' Lucia interrupted with a chuckle. 'Next you'll be whipping holos out of your pocket to show around.'

Harenn's brown cheeks darkened. 'I have already made several. Would you like to see them?'

Before Lucia could reply, Father Kendi set his data pad on the table and called for order. Lucia instantly gave him her full attention.

'Todd told us where the Collection is housed,' he began, 'so let's start there.' Father Kendi tapped the pad and a hologram of the station sprang into being above the tabletop. 'We got lucky. We're docked here-' one part of the station glowed green '-and the Collection is housed here.' Another part of the station glowed red. 'It's only one section over, so it's not hard to get to from our dock. The first thing we need is a basic recon. Todd gave me some information, but there was a lot he didn't know.' More taps, and the view of the station zoomed in tighter, becoming a cutaway of a section of corridor.

'According to Todd, the Collection is almost completely isolated from the rest of the station,' Father Kendi continued. 'It's on a block that sticks out from the main structure, and the only way to get to it from the station itself is by this corridor. There are several automated checkpoints along the way, when a computer checks your face, your prints, and your identification holo.'

'No retina checks?' Gretchen asked.

'Too easy to fake these days,' Ben said. 'An amateur can get your retina scan from a distance with nothing but a halfway decent camera. Same goes for infra-red heat patterns.'

'The Collection,' Father Kendi continued, 'also has a set of escape pods and two private air locks, but I don't think they'll do us much good-it's damned hard to sneak into an airlock.' He paused and took a sip of coffee. 'One of the first things we need to learn is what the daily routines are. Ben, I want you and Lucia to set up surveillance on the corridor to do just that. Gretchen, you and Harenn need to find out all you can about the routines of Edsard Roon and the three department heads when they aren't at the Collection. Look at where they live, when they usually arrive at work, any habits they have. We need to figure out how to get our hands on their keys, and any detail, no matter how tiny, might be a help. Lucia, if we lift prints from objects the department heads touch, you can make an artificial thumb that would fool a computer scanner, right?'

'Yes, Father,' Lucia said. 'The best prints will come from something smooth, like a glass or cup, but I can work with harsher stuff.'

Father Kendi nodded. 'Good. Ben, what about copying the keys?'

'I've been working on that, and I think I can do it.' Ben held up a small silver box the size of a pack of playing cards. 'I've been modifying one of the copycats. If I pull this off, all you'll have to do is connect the data port of the key to the data port on this. It'll copy the algorithms and I can make a duplicate key from them.'

'How long will the download take?' Father Kendi asked.

'Not long. I'm guessing less than thirty seconds. The trick, like you said, will be getting the keys away from the department heads and then returning each one without anyone noticing.'

'That's what I'll be working on,' Father Kendi said grimly. 'Once we have all the information we can glean, I'll get a plan together. Any questions?'

There were none. As the group rose from the table, Lucia swallowed a final bite of spicy sandwich and Ben put a light hand on her shoulder.

'Let's go play with some toys,' he said.