and the coffee percolator, throwing off a weak moire glow. Vincent raised a hand in acknowledgement from behind the counter where he was whisking some eggs. He had been the morning cook for the last fifteen years. Alkad waved back, nodded to a regular couple she knew, then pointedly ignored the Edenist Intelligence operative, a ninety-seven-year-old called Samuel, who in turn pretended she didn’t exist. Her table was in the corner, giving her a prime view out over the lake. It was set for one.
Sharleene, the waitress, came over with her iced orange juice and a bowl of bran. “Eggs or pancakes today?”
Alkad poured some milk onto the bran. “Pancakes, thanks.”
“New face this morning,” Sharleene said in a quiet voice. “Right nob-case.” She gave Alkad a secret little smile and went back to the bar.
Alkad ate a few spoonfuls of the bran, then sipped her orange, which gave her a chance to look round.
Lady Tessa Moncrieff was sitting by herself at a table near the bar where the smell of frying bacon and bubbling coffee was strongest. She was forty-six, a major in the Kulu ESA, and head of station in Tranquillity. She had a thin, tired face, and fading blonde hair cut into a not very stylish bob; her white blouse and grey skirt gave the impression of an office worker stuck in the promotion groove. Which was almost true. The Tranquillity assignment was one she had accepted with relish two years ago when she’d been briefed on the nature of the observation duty and the underlying reason. It was a hellish responsibility, which meant she’d finally been accepted in her rank. Reverse snobbery was a fact of life in all branches of the Kulu services, and anyone with a hereditary title had to work twice as hard as normal to prove themselves.
Tranquillity had turned out to be a quiet duty, which meant maintaining discipline was difficult. Dr Alkad Mzu was very much a creature of habit, and very boring habit at that. If it hadn’t been for her frequent rambles over the parkland, which presented a challenge to the observation team, morale might have gone to pot long ago.
In fact the biggest upset since Lady Moncrieff arrived hadn’t been Dr Mzu at all, but rather the sudden appearance of Ione Saldana almost a year ago. Lady Moncrieff had to compile a huge flek report on the girl for Alastair II himself. Interesting to think the royal family shared the same intense thirst for details as the general public.
Lady Moncrieff made sure she was munching her toast impassively as Dr Mzu’s glance took her in. This was only the third time she had seen Mzu in the flesh. But this morning wasn’t something she could entrust to the team, she wanted to observe the doctor’s reactions first hand. Today could well be the beginning of the end of the ESA’s twenty-three-year observation duty.
Alkad Mzu ran a visual identity search through her neural nanonics, but drew a blank. The woman could be a new operative, or even a genuine customer. Somehow Alkad didn’t think it was the latter; Sharleene was right, there was a refined air about her. She loaded the visual image in the already large neural nanonics file labelled
When she finished her bran and orange, Alkad sat back and looked straight at the AV pillar on the bar. It was relaying the Collins morning news programme. A sparkle of monochrome green light shot down her optic nerve, and the news studio materialized in front of her. Kelly Tirrel was introducing the items, dressed in a green suit and lace tie, hair fastened up in a tight turban. Her rigidly professional appearance added ten years to her age.
She had done local items on finance and trade, a charity dinner Ione had attended the previous evening. Regional items followed, the politics of nearby star systems. An update on Confederation Assembly debates. Military stories:
“This report comes from Omuta, filed nine days ago by Tim Beard.” The image changed from the studio to a terracompatible planet seen from space. “The Confederation imposed a thirty-year sanction against Omuta for its part in the Garissan holocaust of 2581, prohibiting both trade and travel to the star system. Since then, the 7th Fleet has been responsible for enforcing this sanction. Nine days ago, that duty officially ended.”
Alkad opened a channel into Tranquillity’s communication net, and accessed the Collins sensevise programme directly. She looked out of Tim Beard’s eyes, listening through his ears. And finally her feet were pressed against the ground of Omuta as she filled her lungs with the world’s mild pine-scented air.
What a wretched irony, she thought.
Tim Beard was standing on the concrete desert apron of some vast spaceport. Away to one side were the grey and blue walls of composite hangars, faded with age, stained by streaks of rust from the panel pins. Five large swept-delta Sukhoi SuAS-686 spaceplanes were lined up ahead of him, pearl-grey fuselages gleaming in the warm mid-morning sunlight. A military band stood to rigid attention just in front of their bullet-shaped noses. On one side a temporary seating stand had been erected, holding a couple of hundred people. Omuta’s twenty-strong cabinet were standing on the red carpet at the front, fourteen men, six women, dressed in smart formal grey-blue suits.
“You join me in the last minutes of Omuta’s isolation,” Tim Beard said. “We are now awaiting the arrival of Rear-Admiral Meredith Saldana, who commands a squadron of the 7th Fleet on detachment here in the Omutan system.”
In the western sky a glowing golden speck appeared, expanding rapidly. Tim Beard’s retinal implant zoomed in to reveal a navy ion-field flyer. It was a neutral-grey wedge-shape forty metres long, which hovered lightly over the concrete for a moment while the landing struts deployed. The scintillating cloud of ionized air molecules popped like a soap bubble after it touched down.
“This is actually the first ion-field flyer to be seen on Omuta,” Tim Beard said, filling in as the Foreign Minister greeted the Rear-Admiral. Meredith Saldana was as tall and imposing as his royal cousins, with that same distinctive nose. “Although the press cadre received special dispensation to come down last night, we had to use Omuta’s own spaceplanes, some of which are now fifty years old with spare parts hard to come by. That’s an indication of just how hard the sanctions have hit this world; it has fallen behind both industrially and economically. But most of all, it lacks investment. It’s a situation the cabinet is keen to remedy; we’ve been briefed that establishing trade missions will be a priority.”
The Rear-Admiral and his retinue were escorted over to the President of Omuta, a smiling, silver-haired man a hundred and ten years old. The two shook hands.
“There’s some irony in this situation,” Tim Beard said. Alkad could feel his facial muscles shifting into a small smile. “The last time a squadron commander of the Confederation Navy’s 7th Fleet met the Omutan planetary president was thirty years ago, when the entire cabinet were executed for their part in the Garissan holocaust. Today things are a little different.” His retinal implants provided a close-up of the Rear-Admiral handing a scroll to the President. “That is the official invitation from the President of the Confederation Assembly for Omuta to take up its seat again. And now you can see the President handing over the acceptance.”
Alkad Mzu cancelled the channel to Collins, and looked away from the counter. She poured some thick lemon syrup over her pancakes, and used a fork to cut them up, chewing thoughtfully. The AV pillar next to the tea urn buzzed softly as Kelly Tirrel nattered away.
The date was seared into Alkad’s brain, of course, she’d known it was coming. But even so her neural nanonics had to send a deluge of overrides through her nervous system to prevent her tears from falling and her jaw from quaking.
Knowing and seeing were two very different things, she discovered painfully. And that ridiculous ceremony, almost designed to reopen the wound in her soul. A handshake and an exchange of symbolic letters, and all was forgiven. Ninety-five million people. Dear Mother Mary!
A single tear leaked out of her left eye despite the best efforts of her neural nanonics. She wiped it away with a paper tissue, then paid for her breakfast leaving the usual tip. She walked slowly back to the StPelham foyer to catch a tube carriage to work.
Lady Moncrieff and Samuel watched her go, her left leg trailing slightly on the gravel path. They exchanged a mildly embarrassed glance.
The tableau hung in Ione’s mind as she stirred her morning tea. That poor, poor woman.
I think her reaction was admirably restrained,tranquillity said.
Only on the outside,ione said glumly. she had a hangover from the charity dinner party of the previous night. It was a mistake to sit next to Dominique Vasilkovsky all evening; Dominique was a good
