“Pale ale.”
“Aurelian or Edauer?”
“Edauer.”
Van took the ale and, with his plate, eased into a corner behind the antique piano, where he took a sip of the Edauer, a brew with a decidedly hopped edge, but an edge that was welcome after all the talking. Then he began on the sandwiches.
“Commander?”
Van turned to see an Argenti colonel standing almost beside him. He didn’t know the man, but replied in Hispyn. “Colonel? I am afraid we have not met.”
“No, we have not,” the officer replied. “I’m Colonel Ferdinando Casteneda, Colonel Marti’s replacement.”
“I’m pleased to meet you.” Van inclined his head.
“And I, you.” The colonel smiled.
“When did you arrive in Valborg?”
“Yesterday.” Casteneda shrugged. “It was a most sudden transfer.”
“From where, might I ask?”
“You could, and I would be obliged to answer only generally. I was working in a certain information…capacity.”
Van laughed. “That is either bureaucracy, senior command staff, or intelligence, but I won’t press the matter.” He’d already assessed the other’s reaction to each possibility and decided that Casteneda had been in intelligence—and he wanted Van to know it, but without saying so directly. That was another troubling factor about the Scandyan situation—a high concentration of intelligence and potential scapegoats in the same place. “When did Colonel Marti leave?”
“The day before I arrived, I was told.”
“Is your ambassador due to be replaced soon?”
The colonel smiled faintly. “I would not be among the first to know that. Is yours?”
“Not that I know.”
“You see?”
“I appreciate your letting me know of your arrival. We should meet more formally once the Scandyan independence celebrations are over.”
“I would concur.” Colonel Casteneda bowed slightly. “I look forward to that. I will be contacting you once I am more settled.”
“The best of fortune in that,” Van replied.
“Thank you.” With a last bow, the Argenti colonel slipped away, as if he were almost relieved not to have spent too much time with Van.
Van finished the small sandwiches, then went back for seconds. As he ate what passed for his dinner, he noted that he had not seen Major Murikami, not that he had expected to find anyone from the Coalition consulate. He passed off the empty plate to a server, tall and blond, and, pale ale in hand, drifted through one room, then another.
Perhaps an hour passed before he returned to the bar, where he traded his half-drunk and warm pale ale for another. He had also observed some individuals he had not met, but who appeared to be from more distant systems, including one woman in traditional Hyndji garb. He wondered how many others there were, and whether they might play any role in the developing struggle over Scandya.
“You look deep in thought.” Emily Clifton reappeared, trailed by Sean Bulben.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Van replied after a quick swallow of the Edauer pale ale. “I was just thinking that I ought to be thinking.”
“About what?”
“That was what I was thinking about.”
Emily shook her head, but Sean just looked bewildered.
A flurry of energy pulses—comm pulses—seemed to flash around Van, although the sense of flashing was more of an illusion created by his RSF implant to provide a semivisible signal to him. “Isn’t the Scandyan premier due to arrive at any time?”
“I think he just did,” Emily replied. “I can see some more Scandyan security by the doors to the main reception area.”
“It won’t be long before they start the fireworks and flareshow,” Sean said, glancing from Emily to Van. “We should go out into the side garden. The ambassadors are going out there. They’ve got places on that stand. We’ll have to peer over everyone…”
“I suppose we should,” replied Emily, a hint of resignation in her voice. “The ambassador always asks how their show compares to our last one.”
The three moved slowly, with the sluggish flow of bodies toward the doors that had been opened out onto the south lawn. It took almost fifteen minutes before they were out into the cooler night air.
The sky had finally darkened into the deep green-tinged purple close to black that was full night on Scandya. In the west, halfway between the horizon and the zenith, Van picked out the unwinking disc-point that had to be Malmot. Despite the growing crowd on the stretch of lawn just to the south of the embassy building, Van could smell the fragrance of lilacs and roses, two of the more durable remnants of the flora of Old Earth. Farther from the embassy, stretches of grass and garden were still without more than isolated clumps of functiongoers, as if most wished to remain close to the embassy.
Van turned and looked across the dais where the ambassadors and, in some cases, their spouses, had settled in. Then, he realized something. The comm pulses he’d felt on and off all evening had faded almost entirely away. That bothered him, although he couldn’t say why.
At one end of the dais, a server was offering various drinks upon a tray.
Van could sense something…something about the tall blond server, and he eased away from Emily and toward the server. Despite his garb and demeanor, the young man looked and felt more like a Marine—and yet he didn’t.
Van looked toward the other end of the platform where the ambassadors were seated, and then back to the middle, where the premier sat. Two security types in white and green stood behind him, and another pair were stationed on the ground behind the dais. The Scandyan security guards—three men and a woman—were carrying sidearms in throw-holsters, but Van couldn’t tell what the sidearms might be—wide-angle stunners, slug throwers, or tanglers. On the far end of the dais was another server, also tallish and blond.
Van began to feel very uneasy, and began to work his way through the crowds to a point closer to the dais, through diplomatic staff in groups, closely bunched, but not jammed in tight. “Excuse me…please…excuse me…”
He got more than a few glares, but the uniform helped—he thought.
A single green beam of light flared upward, corruscatingly brilliant, the green a perfect match with the
