Change of Command Read online

  "That's not how it works, here," Hazel said. Prima had heard that before, but it was hard to believe. Ensign Serrano was her protector, on the guarantee of his grandmother; he had the right to decide where they would live, and how. "He'd probably be delighted if you found a place where you and the others could be happy."

  "I don't know how to do that," Prima said. "I don't know where to start."

  "You could ask Professor Meyerson."

  "Waltraude?" This had not occurred to Prima; she knew that Meyerson claimed expertise in Texan history—though a very strange version of it, from Prima's viewpoint—but what could she know about other worlds?

  "She's a professor—finding things out is what she does best."

  "Could you explain it?" Prima asked. She was much more comfortable with Hazel, even Hazel in men's pants, than with Waltraude in a dress. Waltraude looked at them all as if they were carrots and beets and potatoes on the kitchen table—as if she were considering how they would fit in a stew.

  "If she comes back in time. Prima—one thing I came to tell you—I'm leaving later today. I should be on my way to the ship now—clearing customs is going to take longer than usual. I'm going back to my family."

  "Oh." She had known, in a way, that Hazel would leave, as the former captive women had left. Those women—she still worried about them, but they had all insisted on going, some to restorative surgery, others with voice synthesizers, back to their families if they had any, or a life of independence that Prima could not imagine wanting. "I'll miss you, Hazel," Prima said, feeling the hot tears rise.

  "You were good to me," Hazel said, and came to hug her. Prima could feel the girl's young breasts now . . . Hazel was breeding age, but she would not breed. She would do—might already have done—terrible things to herself so that she would have no babies until much later. She might already be an Abomination.

  Yet Hazel was a good girl—honest, kind, gentle. She had been so desperately worried about the two little girls, in the beginning; she had been so sweet to all the children. If she'd been Prima's daughter, Prima would have been proud of her. But now she'd go off to some school, or fly on a ship, or—Prima could not even imagine all the possibilities, and knew she couldn't. How could a child like this know what she wanted, what was right?

  "God's blessing on you," Prima said, greatly daring in offering a blessing to a heathen. She wanted to tell Hazel not to use any abominable technology, but she knew that was futile. The girl was the product of that technology; her family used it, she would use it too. She prayed silently that God would keep Hazel safe.

  * * *

  SECTOR SEVEN HEADQUARTERS

  "We now know what happened, Admiral." The chief medical officer touched the display controls, and blurred blots of color sharpened into focus. "The Surgeon General's office sent this out by ansible; the research labs finally figured it out. In a normal rejuvenation, on the left, the metabolites of the rejuv drugs are each involved in scavenging specific degradation products."

  "In plain language?" Vida Serrano asked. She knew, and knew they knew, what was meant, but she was determined to make them say it in language that anyone could understand. She had already been briefed, very secretly, by Marta Katerina Saenz.

  "The rejuv drugs break down in the body into other chemicals, and those chemicals—metabolites—bind to and remove the chemical compounds characteristic of aging."

  "Very well."

  "In a normal rejuvenation, that leaves only healthy, undegraded tissues as a matrix for replication, the second part of the rejuvenation process."

  "So the first part throws out the old, as it were, and then the second part builds up the new?"

  "Yes, Admiral. But on the right—if you'll look right here—you can see that these tissues, which stain green, are not being removed. No green on the left, and green—"

  "On the right. Yes. And I presume that means that age-deteriorated tissues are left in the matrix when the rejuv proceeds."

  "Exactly. Which replicate into age-deteriorated tissues, so that after some years—it depends on the amount of deterioration in the original as well as the exact kind of faulty drug—the deterioration affects brain function like any other senile dementia."

  "So—how do you fix it?"

  "Unfortunately, we don't know. It appears that if no actual functional degradation has occurred, then a rejuvenation with good drugs produces a fresh start. But when we tried that on one of the first patients, it didn't work. The body rejuvenated to a young age, but the mental function stayed the same. We have been observing him for months now, and while the deterioration has not progressed, it has also not improved."

  "What about other treatments? Surely you had something for this kind of problem before rejuv?"

  "No, not really. Admiral—I know that nobody likes to hear this, but medical miracles are rarely miracles."

  Marta had told her the same thing, but she'd hoped for better news.

  "How early can you detect the problem?" If they couldn't reverse it, perhaps catching it early would work.

  "Within a year of a bad rejuv, which is plenty of time to correct it. But the tests take weeks—maybe we can speed it up later, but not yet—and we have a lot of people to test."

  What were they going to do with those whose rejuvs had failed, who had already been damaged . . . Vida shuddered. Rejuvenate them to youthful bodies and senility of mind? Who would take care of them? For how long? Or . . . let them die? Neither horn of the dilemma seemed tenable, and for once she was glad that it wasn't her decision. Let the Grand Admiral and the Surgeon General figure it out; the mathematics of equity in this escaped her.

  ZENEBRA, TWO DAYS BEFORE THE SENIOR TRIALS

  For dinner, Pedar had chosen Raymond's, that year's fashionable restaurant. She steered him away from discussing the Trials—he wanted her to dissect all the other competitors for his amusement.

  "It's not right," she insisted. "They're my friends as well as my fellow competitors; it's not honorable to pick them apart like that." She touched the table controls and brought up the chessboard. "Let's play."

  "Don't be naive, Cecelia," Pedar said. Had he rejuved yet again? She couldn't tell. He still dressed more like an actor in some deep-historical play. Her interest in history didn't extend to clothing styles, so she wasn't sure what period. "There's no place in real life for honor. In sports, perhaps—" He picked up a black knight and a white, and made them bow to each other. "But even you know that what really matters is winning." He clashed the pieces together.

  "If you break the rules," Cecelia said, trying to be reasonable, "they eliminate you."

  Pedar tilted his hand. "Then you might say that Bunny broke the rules."

  She could not believe what she was hearing. "You—"

  "Cecelia—the rules are on a different level, when you're talking about realities . . . surely you know that." His tone indulged her, the knowledgeable adult to the ignorant adolescent. "Men like Bunny make the rules . . . until someone else displaces them." He pushed the white king along the board, knocking the other pieces askew, until it rested on the edge of the board. "Yet there are always rules beyond rules . . . the rules that keep a man in his place—or move him away." His finger touched the game piece; it teetered a moment on the edge of the table, then fell.

  Her body tensed, as if she had seen an unexpected ditch looming beyond a jump she thought she knew. His expression shifted, reflecting hers; she hated that he had noticed. But he kept smiling, waiting her answer. She couldn't think what to answer. She had to say something, though; she could feel his smile beginning to stiffen in place, like overbeaten egg whites.

  "I see," she said, buying time. She didn't understand about Bunny yet, what rules he had broken that brought this man and his faction to the desperate action they had taken. She didn't understand why he had hinted so broadly, or what he expected her to do about it. But she did see that none of it was accidental, not Bunny's death, or this dinner meeting, or anything else Pedar did. P
erhaps as far back as the Trials several years ago, her first ride in years. He had tried then to talk to her about the politics of the Rejuvenants, and she had dismissed it as mere fashion. "I do wonder," she said after a long pause, "what, if anything, the New Texas Godfearing Militia has to do with Rejuvenants."

  He relaxed just that fraction which told her she had chosen the safer alternative at that conversational fence.

  "People need something to blame for their disappointments," he said. "As some opportunities are foreclosed, others must be seen to open. Or unrest might become general."

  Cecelia puzzled at this. Again, he waited for her, that indulgent smile which told her he expected her to be slow to understand. She hated that patience; if this was what she would become, as a Rejuvenant, she might just as well run her horse over a cliff and be done with it. Opportunities foreclosed—that had to be because Rejuvenants could live well-nigh forever, and who was going to give up power and privilege while still young and capable? Mentally, she transferred the problem to horse breeding, where it made more sense to her. If the old horses didn't die off, and you kept breeding at the same rate . . . well, of course.

  "I wonder if rejuv drugs would work on horses," she said, before she could get a lock on her tongue.

  Pedar burst out laughing, and the bald man at the next table looked up. "Cecelia, my dear! Only you would think of rejuvenating a horse!"

  She could feel the heat in her face. Yet—if he laughed at her like that, he was not afraid of her wits. She allowed her voice to carry a little sting. "I see what you mean, Pedar. Those who cannot afford rejuvenation, or who are simply impatient, see ahead of them a lifetime of blocked opportunities—blocked by the Rejuvenants. But the universe is large—if they are discontented and ambitious enough, there are colony worlds—"

  "Theft is always more profitable, until the thief is caught," Pedar murmured.

  "That's—" She was about to say ridiculous, when a tension in Pedar's face silenced her.

  She had too much to think about, and she did not really want to think about any of it. Of what use were her wealth, and her skills, and her rejuvenated body, if she couldn't do what she liked without having to worry about the rest of the universe? What she had wanted—what she hoped to gain—was a long life full of her own particular pleasures . . . which began, though they did not end, in that stable block on Rotterdam. Which centered on horses and the people who had identified themselves as horse people since long before humans left Old Earth.

  She reminded herself that she had time for both, now. No longer need she fear the advancing years, the aging of joints and bones that would make her slower, clumsier. She could afford to spend a few months now dealing with whatever complication Pedar meant, without losing it.

  But she didn't want to.

  And Pedar knew that. As she dipped the asymmetrical spoon always used with Biaristi cold soups, as she refreshed her mouth afterwards with a sip of Eran ale, and went on to the crunchy-coated strips of spiced rock grouse, she was aware that Pedar, in sounding her out, was expecting exactly the retreat she most wanted to make. He had turned the conversation back to the Trials, to her chances, and his. She answered automatically, but watched as from a distance the subtle signals of his expressions.

  What a toad the man was, after all. He would dangle some conspiracy in front of her for his own amusement, sure that she could not concentrate on anything but horses for long enough to learn anything dangerous, or do anything . . .

  "I think you're quite right to ride anyway," Pedar said. "After all, it's too late to attend any ceremony."

  "The horse is ready," Cecelia said, fighting back an urge to change her mind and not ride after all. "And so am I. You're staying too."

  "For the same reasons," Pedar said. "I'm ready; my horse is ready, and my competition . . . is here."

  And because it gave him a strong apparent alibi. While someone had plotted Bunny's assassination, Pedar had been very publicly visible a very long way away, supervising his horse in training for the Senior Trials. Cecelia knew it would have been possible to have it done—anyone knew that—but finding and proving the links would be more difficult. And dangerous.

  She was, she discovered on the day, more ready than she knew for this particular event. While nothing could make the Senior Trials effortless, she was hardly aware of the effort she exerted. Seniority reacted well to her detached calmness, and put in faultless cross-country and stadium rounds . . . which, in the end, were enough to win, when the dressage leader (also faultless in cross-country) had a rail down the next day. Liam Ardahi had to withdraw during the cross-country, when Plantagenet refused the water repeatedly. Cecelia wondered if that were entirely an accident; Plantagenet had always been bold into water. But if Pedar wanted her distracted by a major win . . . he was ruthlessly competitive, but he had won a much larger competition—as he saw it.

  She smiled for the press on her victory gallop, and remembered to thank all her staff, enclosing a personal note with the bonus credit each received. At the reception that evening, she wore her amber necklace carved in the likeness of Epona. Like that enigmatic goddess, she smiled and accepted congratulations, finally pleading a sore elbow in order to leave before midnight.

  An hour later, wearing a groom's overall, she was hacking down the dark road to the spaceport on Max, whose alert ears and brisk movement revealed that the horse, at least, thought this was a fine idea. If anyone asked, her groundcar was parked in the stable lot, and everyone knew that she was likely to have gone to the stables to end the night's celebration there. Colum had had Max saddled for her—an extra hack would do that one no harm—but had been out of sight when she led the horse out.

  Five kilometers away, where a service road met the tracks of A Course, Phase C, Dale waited with the truck and trailer, in which a horse stamped its impatience; Roz had driven her own battered little groundcar. Cecelia swung off Max, helped load him in the trailer beside Dulcy—Max could be difficult to load in an empty trailer—then struggled with the car's cranky driver-side door. Roz slammed it from outside, and climbed into the truck; Cece drove off alone to the regional airport.

  * * *

  The advantage of piloting her own ship was that her flight plan and her actual destination need have nothing to do with each other. She had discussed with her staff the training schedule for Seniority and Max for the rest of the season, and told them she was going to visit EquiSite's lab before returning to Rotterdam, to check on a new gene-sculpting technique only recently applied to horses.

  Then she filed a flight plan for Rotterdam, knowing that her staff would not comment.

  Her new planet-to-jump craft allowed her to bypass Zenebra's crowded station. She expected Pedar to check on her flight plan, and her jump vector. Fine. Let him check. The exit vector for Rotterdam actually led to the first intermediate jump point, and from there she could route to Castle Rock easily. She spared a moment to thank Heris for suggesting that she get a license and learn to pilot her own craft.

  Though she did miss the luxury of Sweet Delight, and the deference accorded a full-size yacht. What she really wanted was another long, hot bath and a massage. She had managed to cram in a small wet-bath facility and the necessary recycling gear by eliminating any possibility of inviting someone else along. So a shower and no massage, and she would expect to wake up stiff in the morning. Even a rejuvenated body couldn't do the Senior Trials without strain.

  Still, it was worth it. Pounce had more speed than her old yacht, as well as the ability to land onplanet. She was past the orbital station now, following the beacons out to the system's jump point.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two uneventful transits after leaving Zenebra, Cecelia was

  in Castle Rock's nearspace, confirming that Miranda was still onplanet and still in residence in the Old Palace. When she called, the staff person who answered reported that Miranda would indeed be willing to see her. Cecelia made her shuttle reservation while waiting for the statio
n tug to bump her gently into the docking harness. The paperwork necessary to clear the Rockhouse Major Dockmaster and Customs seemed to take forever (had Heris really coped with this much, or was it worse because of the assassination?) but she made her shuttle with a few minutes to spare. She saw no one she knew on Rockhouse Major, and no one familiar on the down shuttle. That suited her; she was in no mood to talk to any of her acquaintances.

  But when she came out of the shuttleport entryway, looking for a hirecar, she saw one of the long black official cars, with the Familias seal on the doors, and the driver clearly recognized her.

  "Lady Cecelia?"

  "Yes?"

  "Lady Miranda sent us for you. Your luggage?"

  "In the dump," Cecelia said, handing over the ID strip. The driver nodded to his second, who took the strip and went off toward the dumps. Belatedly, Cecelia wondered if she should make sure of their identity and authorization—Heris, she thought, would be scolding her if Heris were here. But the driver was now holding out a flat packet.

  "Lady Miranda wanted you to have this first," he said.

  Cecelia opened it. A note from Miranda, and a flatpic of the driver and assistant. "You may not be worried," the note said, "but we have learned we must all take precautions. I look forward to seeing you."

  In minutes, the assistant was back with Cecelia's few pieces of luggage, all marked with the striped tape that meant they'd passed Customs. Cecelia got into the car and wondered, as it shot forward into traffic, if they were taking the same route Bunny had followed the day he was killed. She didn't ask.

  At the Palace, everything seemed normal at first. The same uniforms at the gate, at the doors. The same quietly efficient staff who guided her first to her guest room overlooking a small garden, and then, when she had showered and changed, to Miranda's suite. It was hard to remember, in this quiet gracious place, that Bunny was dead, and all their peace in peril. She found herself expecting to see him coming down the corridor, his pleasantly foolish face lighting with a smile.