Ascending - James Alan Gardner [58]
Uclod snorted. “Conducting everything in the open won’t prevent that, missy. If I were a spy and everything you did was fully public, I’d be convinced you were hiding something really juicy. I’d tear the place apart looking for it.”
“You’d do that,” my friend said, “but that’s because Unorrs have a genuine work ethic. I doubt if the Hemlock’s spies are that keen—almost no one in our pampered Technocracy has a sense of enterprise these days. Certainly not the toadies who spy for high admirals.”
“Hmmph,” I said. “It sounds like your spies have Tired Brains.”
Festina cocked her head and looked at me with her garishly green eyes. “Speaking of Tired Brains…” She stared at me keenly for several moments without finishing her sentence. I stared back, attempting to look as Un-Tired as possible. Finally my friend shrugged and said, “Let’s talk.”
7 Since I had seen her last, Festina had apparently risen from lowly Explorer to lofty Admiral—but she assured me this did not mean she was evil like Alexander York, because her admiralship was more a legal fiction than an actual Rank Of Power.
12
WHEREIN I GATHER CRUCIAL INFORMATION
Ticking Bombs
The conference room had chairs that swiveled. This was most excellent indeed—if you sat with your knees tucked up to your chest, you could keep spinning round until you got dizzy. Even better, one whole wall of the room was a great panel showing a blizzard of stars; the panel pretended to be a window, but Festina said it was actually a computer simulation. Either way, when you spun on your chair, you saw stars whizzing past like white streaks…which just goes to show Science is not totally bad, if it can make highly advanced chairs for Personal Amusement.
While I spun, Festina revealed how Royal Hemlock came to be in this region of space. Apparently, it was due to Uclod’s great-great-uncle, an elderly person named Oh-God. Like all Unorrs, Uncle Oh-God was a terrible criminal—one who happened to specialize in an offense called smuggling. (I did not quite understand why smuggling was such an odious crime, nor why humans gave it the cozy name “smuggling,” which sounds like a pleasant bed game, not a felony at all; but my head was reeling in circles, so that is my excuse for not following the logic.)
This Oh-God had not always been a professional lawbreaker—in younger days, he belonged to the Technocracy’s Explorer Corps, though he was not human.8 Ex-Explorer Oh-God still kept in touch with his friends from the corps…which is why he contacted Festina when he heard the Unorrs intended to release Admiral York’s secret files. He had warned Festina that trouble was brewing—there was no telling what the High Council might do to prevent the full truth from coming out. Therefore, Oh-God advised Festina to protect herself.
As soon as my friend received Oh-God’s message, she realized the Admiralty would try to erase all signs of what had happened on Melaquin. Accordingly, she raced for my planet to preserve what evidence she could. Festina did not know that four navy ships had several hours headstart on her; nor had Oh-God mentioned that his great-grandnephew Uclod had set out for Melaquin even earlier. Therefore, Festina hastened through The Void, thinking she had a chance of reaching Oarville first…and she would have flown all the way to my planet, if her ship had not detected the brief transmission I made before the Shaddill jammed our communications. Since it was not far off her intended route, she ordered her crew to check the source of the signal. That is