Cetaganda

cluttered every available surface. An even more whey-faced tech wearing the black undress uniform of Cetagandan military security sat before a console with the air of a man who'd been there for days, as evidenced by the caffeinated drink containers littered around him in a ring, and a couple of bottles of commercial painkillers sitting atop a nearby counter. But it was the third man, leaning over his shoulder, who riveted Miles's attention.

It wasn't ghem-General Chilian, as his mind had first tried to assume. This officer was a younger man, taller, sharp-faced, who wore the bloodred dress uniform of the Celestial Garden's own Imperial Security. He was not wearing his proper zebra-striped face paint, though. His tunic was rumpled and hanging open. Not the Chief of Security—Miles's mind ratcheted down the list he had memorized, weeks ago, in mis-aimed preparation for this trip—ghem-General Naru, yes, that was the man, third in command in that very inner hierarchy. Kety's deduced seduced contact. Called in, apparently, to lend his expertise in cracking the codes that protected the Great Key.

'All right,' said the whey-faced tech, 'start over with branch seven thousand, three-hundred and six. Only seven hundred more to go, and we'll have it, I swear.'

Pel gasped, and pointed. Piled in a disorderly heap on the table beyond the console was not one but eight copies of the Great Key. Or one Great Key and seven copies . . .

Could Kety be attempting to carry out the late Empress Lisbet's vision after all? All the rest of the chaos of the past two weeks some confused misunderstanding? No … no. This had to be some other scam. Maybe he planned to send his fellow governors home with bad copies, or give Cetagandan Imperial Security seven more decoys to chase, or … a multitude of possibilities, as long as they advanced Kety's own personal agenda and no one else's.

Firing his stunner would set off every alarm in the place, making it a weapon of last resort. Hell, his victims, if clever—and Miles suspected he faced three very clever men—might jump him just to make him fire it.

'What else do you have up your sleeve?' Miles whispered to Pel.

'Nadina,' Pel gestured to the table, 'which one is the Great Key?'

'I'm not sure,' said Nadina, peering anxiously at the clutter.

'Grab them all. Check later' urged Miles.

'But they could all be false,' dithered Pel. 'We must know, or it could all be for nothing.' She fished in her bodice, and pulled out a familiar ring on a chain, with a raised screaming-bird pattern. . . .

Miles choked. 'For God's sake, you didn't bring that here? Keep it out of sight! After two weeks of trying to do what that ring does in a second, I guarantee those men wouldn't hesitate to kill you for it!'

Ghem-General Naru wheeled from his tech to face the pale glowing bubble. 'Yes, Vio, what is it now?' His voice was bored, and dripping with open contempt.

Pel looked a little panicked; Miles could see her throat move, as she sub-vocalized some practice reply, then rejected it.

'We're not going to be able to keep this up for much longer,' said Miles. 'How about we attack, grab, and run?'

'How?' asked Nadina.

Pel held up her hand for silence from the on-board debating team, and essayed a temporizing reply to the general. 'Your tone of voice is most improper, sir.'

Naru grimaced. 'Being back in your bubble makes you proud again, I see. Enjoy it while it lasts. We'll have all of those damned bitches pried out of their little fortresses after this. Their days of being cloaked by the Emperor's blindness and stupidity are numbered, I assure you, haut Vio.'

Well . . . Naru wasn't in on this plot for the sake of the late Empress's vision of genetic destiny, that was certain. Miles could see how the haut-women's traditional privacies could come to be a deep, itching offense, to a dedicated, properly paranoid security man. Was that the bribe Kety had offered Naru for his cooperation, the promise that the new regime would open the closed doors of the Star Creche, and shine light into every secret place held by the haut-women? That he would destroy the haut-women's strange and fragile power-base, and put it all into the hands of the ghem-generals, where it obviously (to Naru) belonged? So was Kety stringing Naru along, or were they near-equal co-plotters? Equals, Miles decided. This is the most dangerous man in the room, maybe even on the ship. He set the stunner for low beam, in a forlorn hope of not setting off alarms on discharge.

'Pel,' Miles said urgently, 'get ghem-General Naru with your last dose of sleepy-juice. I'll try to threaten the others, get the drop on them, without actually firing. Tie them up, grab the Keys, and get out of here. It may not be elegant, but it's fast, and we're out of time.'

Pel nodded reluctantly, twitched her sleeves back, and readied the little aerosol bulb. Nadina gripped the chair-back: Miles prepared to spring away and take up a firing stance.

Pel dropped her bubble and squirted the aerosol toward Naru's startled face. Naru held his breath and ducked away, barely grazed by the iridescent cloud of drug. His breath puffed back out on a yell of warning.

Miles cursed, leapt, stumbled, and fired three times in rapid succession. He dropped the two scrambling techs; Naru nearly succeeded in rolling away again, but at least the beam nimbus brought the ghem-general to a twitching halt. Temporarily. Naru lumbered around on the deck like a warthog mired in a bog, his voice reduced to a garbled groan.

Nadina hurried to the table full of Keys, swept them into her outermost robe, and brought them back to Pel. Pel began trying the ring-key on each one. 'Not that one . . . not that . . .'

Miles glanced at the door, which remained closed, would remain closed until an authorized hand pressed its palm-lock. Who would be so authorized? Kety . . . Naru, who was already in here . . . any others? We're about to find out.

'Not . . .' Pel continued. 'Oh, what if they're all false? No . . .'

'Of course they are,' Miles realized. 'The real one must be, must be—' He began tracing cables from the cipher tech's comconsole. They led to a box, stuffed in behind some other equipment, and in the box was—another Great Key. But this one was braced in a comm light-beam, carrying the signals that probed its codes. '— here.' Miles yanked it from its place, and sprinted back to Pel. 'We've got the Key, we've got Nadina, we've got the goods on Naru, we've got it all. Let's go.'

The door hissed open. Miles whirled and fired.

A stunner-armed man in Kety's livery stumbled backward. Thumps and shouts echoed from the corridor, as what seemed a dozen more men stood quickly out of the line of fire. 'Yes,' cried Pel happily, as the cap of the real Great Key came off in her hand, demonstrating its provenance.

'Not now!' screeched Miles. 'Put it back, Pel, put your force-screen up, now!'

Miles ducked aboard the float-chair; its force-screen snapped into place. A blast of massed stunner fire roiled through the doorway. The stunner fire crackled harmlessly around the sparkling sphere, only making it glitter a bit more. But the haut Nadina had been left outside. She cried out and stumbled backward, painfully grazed by the stun-nimbus. Men charged through the door.

'You have the Key, Pel!' cried the haut Nadina. 'Flee!'

An impractical suggestion, alas; as his men secured the room and the haut Nadina, Governor Kety strolled through the door and closed it behind him, palm-locking it.

'Well,' he drawled, eyes alight with curiosity at the carnage before him. 'Well.' He might at least have had the courtesy to curse and stamp, Miles thought sourly. Instead he looked . . . quite thoroughly in control. 'What have we here?'

A Kety-liveried trooper knelt by ghem-General Naru, and helped straighten him and hold him up by his shoulders. Naru, struggling to sit, rubbed a shaking hand over his doubtless numb and tingling face—Miles had experienced the full unpleasantness of being stunned himself, more than once in his past—and essayed a mumbling answer. On the second try he managed slurred but intelligible speech. ''S the Consorts Pel and Nadina. An' the Barray'arn. Tol' you those damned bubbles were a secur'ty menace!' He slumped back into the trooper's arms. 'S' all right, though. We have 'em all now.'

'When that voyeur is tried for his treasons,' said the haut Pel poisonously, 'I shall ask the Emperor to have his eyes put out, before he is executed.'

Miles wondered anew at the sequence of events here last night; how had they