The Reaches

'Let him up,' Piet said, obviously relaxing. 'I don't think he'll be any difficulty.'

'Piet, there's somebody in the building behind this,' I said, nodding toward the French windows.

The Oriflamme touched down. While the thrusters' roar reflected from the ground, the doubled noise rattling the window casements made further speech impossible, Piet gestured first to me, then to Lightbody, and last toward the outside stairway. Stephen nodded the ceramic barrel of his flashgun and stepped to a window from which he could command the whole back of the garden.

I'd reached the midway landing when Salomon shut off the Oriflamme's motors. The sudden silence released a vise the noise had clamped around my chest. I wasn't aware of the pressure until it stopped.

'Sir?' said Lightbody. I glanced over my shoulder. 'Will there be treasure in there?' He nodded down the path ahead of us.

'In a manner of speaking,' I said, because I had a notion as to just who might be housed in the cottage. 'Not that'll make us rich, though.'

I wondered if Piet had the same suspicions I did; and if so, what he'd meant by sending me to investigate.

The gardener continued spraying his roses with a can designed for a Molt's three-fingered hands. He crooned in a grating voice as we passed, but it wasn't us he was speaking to.

The Oriflamme's ramp began to lower with a loud squeal. The ship was going to need a lot of work. I didn't believe she could ever be reconditioned to the point she could pass the Breach a second time.

The curtain on the window to the left of the door fluttered as we approached. I paused to hang the cutting bar from my belt. . though of course, she could be guarded, probably would be guarded. The place had blue trim and white stucco walls, though both were flaking to a degree.

'Open in the name of the Free State of Venus,' I said, pitching my voice to command rather than threaten.

Nothing happened. I tried the latch. It was locked.

'This is absurd,' I muttered.

Lightbody stuck the muzzle of his shotgun into the six-pane window casement and swept the barrel sideways, shattering half the glass and snatching the curtain aside. There were two women within. I'd expected only one, and these were both tough-looking. They wore the white jackets of the Federation military.

'Open the door, then!' Lightbody said. His face grew red and his voice sank into a growl. 'You whores!'

'We're not armed!' snarled the 40-year-old woman with light brown hair. The name tag over her left pocket read VANTINE. She might have been handsome at one time, but not since the scar drew up the left side of her mouth.

Lightbody kicked the center panel out of the bottom of the doorframe. He was furious. 'Easy. .' I warned, but his bootheel smashed the central crossbrace from the door, flinging jagged fragments into the room. Vantine jumped back from the latch when she realized that we were in no mood to play games.

'Lightbody!' I said, but I might as well have been in Betaport for the effect I had. He half turned, then lunged against the remnants of the door. The back of his armored shoulder hit the top panel. It splintered also as Lightbody spun into the small living room. The furniture-a couch, two chairs, and an end table-was of local wood with lacework coverings. The oval area rug was patterned in small pentagons of gray, pink, and white thread.

The two women backed toward the couch, keeping their hands plainly in sight.

I stepped between them and Lightbody. 'Where's the person who lives here?' I asked. The cottage had two more rooms, a kitchen and-through a bead curtain-a bedroom.

'We live here,' said the second woman, whose black hair was shot with gray. Her name tag read PATTEN and her face was less attractive than Dole's. 'We're not billeted with the other soldiers because we're women, can't you see?'

'You're whores!' Lightbody shouted. 'Soldiers of Hell, most like! Prancing about as if you was men!'

He swung his shotgun toward Patten. I grabbed it with both hands. He was bigger than me and stronger for his size. He forced me back.

I snatched the cutting bar from my belt. 'Lightbody!' I shouted. I thumbed on the power and triggered the bar. 'If you won't obey me, then by God you'll obey this!'

I don't think it was the threat that brought Lightbody to his senses so much as having my face pressed into his above the crossways shotgun. He slumped back.

'Sorry, sir,' he muttered. He turned his face aside and wiped it with his callused right palm. 'It's against God and nature to see women pretending to be men.'

I let go of him. I was trembling. The bar shook as much with my finger off the trigger as it had the moment before. 'We're not here for that,' I said. My voice shivered too.

I turned. The women watched with a mixture of anger and loathing. Patten wore a crucifix around her neck. I jerked it with my left hand, breaking the thin silver chain. 'We're not mutineers,' I said, 'we're from Venus. And we're Christians.'

I'd spent more time in the Governor's Palace than I had in a church, and I'd only been to the palace twice.

I slapped the crucifix into Patten's hand. 'Keep your idols out of sight, or I won't answer for the consequences.'

The bead curtain rattled as I walked into the bedroom. The chance that either Patten or Vantine was the secretary's mistress was less than that of Piet swearing allegiance to President Pleyal.

I opened the large freestanding wardrobe beside the door. The clothes within were gauzy and many-layered, decorated with lace and ribbons. Shades of blue predominated. The bottom of the wardrobe held shoes in ranks; no one was hiding there.

The wood above me thumped. I backed a step and looked up. A flaring cornice ornamented the wardrobe's top. The hollow behind the cornice was about twenty centimeters deep. A blond woman, gagged and with furious blue eyes, peered over the edge at me.

I tossed my cutting bar onto the bed to free both hands. 'Lightbody, watch that pair of yours!' I warned.

I got extra height by hopping onto the wardrobe's bottom shelf, scattering delicate shoes. The woman squirmed completely over the cornice, trusting me to take her. Her weight was no problem.

Her wrists were tied, first behind her back, then to her ankles. Patten and Vantine had been busy in the minutes they'd had since we landed. They'd used filmy stockings for the bonds; not Terran silk, but something at least as strong. I ripped my bar's ceramic teeth across the fabric with the power off.

The captive pulled the gag out of her mouth when I'd freed her hands. She was in her mid-twenties and far, far too supple and beautiful to be wasted on a pig like Secretary Duquesne. .

Well, that was true of a lot of women, and no few men.

'Thank you, sir,' she said as she got to her feet in a motion as smooth as that of smoke rising. 'My name is Alicia.'

She walked into the living room without looking back at me. I suppose she was used to having men follow her without question.

Alicia's dress was pale orange. The soft fabric fit loosely and had no particular shape of its own. She moved like a puff of flame.

Lightbody faced the two soldiers, holding his shotgun at low port. His eyelids flicked in surprise when he saw Alicia. Patten and Vantine glared at her with molten hatred. My thumb slid the bar's power switch forward.

'Sergeant Vantine here. .' Alicia said coldly. She stepped to the soldier's side without coming between Vantine and Lightbody's shotgun, then reached under the tail of Vantine's tunic.

'. . has a gun,' Alicia continued. Vantine moved minusculely. I reached over Alicia's shoulder and touched the tip of the bar to Vantine's right ear.

Alicia pulled a small revolver from Vantine's waistband. 'I know about it,' she went on in the same distant voice, 'because the sergeant-'

Her face suddenly broke into planes like those of an ice carving, inhuman and terrible though still beautiful. Alicia backhanded Vantine across the jaw with the butt of the revolver. Vantine staggered.

Alicia hit her again, this time on the forehead. Vantine's head jerked back. There was an oval red splotch