Maynard stopped and looked at the battered old sphere with a mixture of trepidation and admiration. It was so small, so
“Which one is it?” he asked the serjeant in a hushed tone.
“Vostok 6, it carried Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in 1963. She was the first woman in space.”
Ione Saldana was waiting for him in the large circular audience chamber at the end of the nave. She sat behind a crescent-shaped wooden desk positioned in the centre; thick planes of light streamed in through the giant sheets of glass set between the pillars, turning the air into a platinum haze.
The white polyp floor was etched with a giant crowned phoenix emblem in scarlet and blue. It took an eternity for him to cover the distance from the door to the desk; the sound of his boot heels clicking against the polished surface echoed drily in the huge empty space.
Intended to intimidate, he thought. You know how alone you are when you confront her.
He snapped a perfect salute when he reached the desk. She was a head of state, after all; the Admiral’s protocol office had been most insistent about that, and how he should treat her.
Ione was wearing a simple sea-green summer dress with long sleeves. The intense lighting made her short gold-blonde hair glimmer softly.
She was just as lovely as all the AV recordings he’d studied.
“Do take a seat, Captain Khanna,” she said, smiling. “You look most uncomfortable standing up like that.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” There were two high-backed chairs on his side of the desk; he sat in one, still keeping his pose rigid.
“I understand you’ve come all the way from the First Fleet headquarters at Avon just to see me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In a voidhawk?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Owing to the somewhat unusual nature of this worldlet, we don’t have a diplomatic corps, nor a civil service,” she said airily. A delicate hand waved around at the audience chamber. “The habitat personality handles all the administrative functions quite effectively. But the Lords of Ruin employ a legal firm on Avon to represent Tranquillity’s interests in the Confederation Assembly chamber. If there’s a matter of urgency arising, you only have to consult them. I have met the senior partners, and I have a lot of confidence in them.”
“Yes, ma’am—”
“Maynard, please. Stop calling me ma’am. This is a private meeting, and you’re making me sound like a day-club governess for junior aristocrats.”
“Yes, Ione.”
She smiled brightly. The effect was devastating. Her eyes were an enchanting shade of blue, he noticed.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now what have you come to talk about?”
“Dr Alkad Mzu.”
“Ah.”
“Are you familiar with the name?”
“The name and most of the circumstances.”
“Admiral Aleksandrovich felt this was not a matter to take to your legal representatives on Avon. It is his opinion that the fewer people who are aware of the situation, the better.”
Her smile turned speculative. “Fewer people? Maynard, there are eight different Intelligence agencies who have set up shop in Tranquillity; and all of them run surveillance operations on poor Dr Mzu. There are times when their pursuit becomes dangerously close to a slapstick routine. Even the Kulu ESA have posted a team here. I imagine that must be a real thorn in my cousin Alastair’s regal pride.”
“I think what the Admiral meant was: fewer people outside high government office.”
“Yes, of course, the people
The irony in her tone made Maynard Khanna give an inward flinch. “In view of the fact that Dr Mzu is now contacting a number of starship captains, and the Omutan sanctions are about to expire, the Admiral would be extremely grateful if we could be told of your policy regarding Dr Mzu,” he said formally.
“Are you recording this for the Admiral?”
“Yes, a full sensevise.”
Ione stared straight into his eyes, speaking in a clear precise diction. “My father promised Admiral Aleksandrovich’s predecessor that Dr Alkad Mzu would never be allowed to leave Tranquillity, and I repeat that promise to the Admiral. She will not be permitted to leave, nor will I countenance any attempt to sell or hand over the information she presumably holds to anybody, including the Confederation Navy. Upon her death, she will be cremated in order to destroy her neural nanonics. And I hope to God that sees the end of the threat.”
“Thank you,” Maynard Khanna said.
Ione relaxed a little. “I hadn’t even been gestated when she arrived here twenty-six years ago, so tell me, I’m curious. Has Fleet Intelligence discovered yet how she survived Garissa’s destruction?”
“No. She can’t have been on the planet. The Confederation Navy was in charge of the evacuation, and we have no record of carrying her on any of our ships. Nor was she listed as being in any of the asteroid settlements. The only logical conclusion is that she was outsystem on some kind of clandestine military mission when Omuta bombed Garissa.”
“Deploying the Alchemist?”
“Who knows? The device certainly wasn’t used; so either it didn’t work or they were intercepted. The general staff favours the interception scenario.”
“And if she survived, so did the Alchemist,” Ione concluded.
“If it was ever built.”
She raised an eyebrow. “After all this time, I thought that was taken for granted.”
“The thinking goes that after all this time, we should have heard something other than rumours. If it does exist, why haven’t the Garissan survivors tried to use it against Omuta?”
“When it comes to Doomsday machines, rumours are all I want to hear.”
“Yes.”
“You know, I’ve watched her sometimes while she’s been working over in the Laymil project’s physics centre. She’s a good physicist, her colleagues respect her. But she’s nothing exceptional, not mentally.”
“One idea in a lifetime is all it takes.”
“You’re right. Clever of her to come here, really. The one place where her security is guaranteed, and at the same time the one mini-nation which everybody knows is no military threat to other Confederation members.”
“So may I say you have no objection to our maintaining our observation team?”
“You can, providing you don’t flaunt the privilege. But please reassure yourselves. I don’t think she’s received much geneering, if any. She can’t last more than another thirty years, forty at the outside. Then it will all be over.”
“Excellent.” He leant forward a few millimetres, lips moving upwards into a slight awkward smile. “There was one other matter.”
Ione’s eyes widened with innocent anticipation. “Yes?”
“An independent trader captain called Joshua Calvert mentioned your name in connection with one of our agents.”
She squinted up at the ceiling as if lost in a particularly difficult feat of recall. “Oh, yes, Joshua. I remember him, he caused quite a stir at the start of the year. Found a big chunk of Laymil electronics in the Ruin Ring. I met him at a party once. A nice young man.”
“Yes,” Maynard Khanna said gingerly. “So you didn’t warn him about Erick Thakrar being one of our deep- cover operatives?”
“Erick Thakrar’s name never passed my lips. Actually, Thakrar has just been accepted by Captain Andrй Duchamp for a berth on the
