Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [31]
When he had exhausted his information search on Luna, he turned his attention to Marchella Pellegrini. Yesterday’s idle game of spying had acquired new purpose. If his position as the next Principe were to be challenged by his tia and if Luna il Longa chose to entangle him in her own games, then he would not be played for an idiot.
But Marchella’s records were scant and uninteresting apart from one detail—her outright ownership of the lucrative Pablo underground mines. Strange that Franco had allowed such a thing. Perhaps he had paid his eccentric sorella to leave Pell?
The mine was certainly the best provided for on Araldis. Marchella’s gratis log showed that an extraordinary amount of her earnings was spent on stocking Pablo with provisions for the small workforce she employed there. Trin found this puzzling. Perhaps she merely had a misplaced sense of philanthropy—and no head for economics.
Aside from this inexplicable dispersion of her earnings, his maiden tia had no ready secrets to un-closet. No illicit bambino to protect. The record of her current residence was imprecise. She moved too often for anyone to keep track. Her gratis was drawn on from Dockside to Chalaine-Gema. The only fact that Trin could substantiate was that she rarely came to Mount Pell. Why now, then?
Unable to arrive at an answer, Trin moved on to Franco. What do I wish to learn? Everything... a man who would dissect a woman for her genetic code so that his son might have her talent... and nothing…and yet cast that son from his home without the means to survive.
Trin instructed the organic to chart the Principe’s personal expenditure but it refused to display that information. Frustrated, he tried a lateral approach.
‘Compile the safety violations incurred by Pellegrinis and the higher-caste familia—and their outcomes,’ he told it.
Trin discovered a surfeit of offences: safety issues, claim jumping, unfair trade, tax disparities, exortortionate machinery hire and conveyor tolls—yet almost all the cases had been dismissed by OLOSS’s visiting judiciary. He could see only one explanation for such repeated leniency: his father was bribing the judge.
He searched more stored data, meticulously copying every useful scrap of information to his own sponge.
Rantha called him up at midday. ‘You wish to eat?’
‘No. I’m busy,’ he said, annoyed at being interrupted.
She frowned and signed off.
Trin didn’t think of her again until a few hours later when she stood before him with a plate of overly soft linguine. The sauce had stained her fellala. ‘I thought you might be embarrassed to eat with me, so I brought food here.’ Her face was puffy from crying.
‘No. I was busy,’ he said, truthfully.
‘Busy? Here?’
He rotated the deskfilm so that she could see Scali’s data tree. ‘These records of all these things are logged but rarely used for anything.’
Rantha shrugged. ‘So?’
Trin spoke her name to the deskfilm. Tabbed reports overlaid each other. ‘See? You are pure-bred Cipriano. You have three fratellas and your gratis rating is seven. It would be higher if you did not spend it all on out-sys texts.’ He wagged his finger mockingly. ‘You are not contributing anything much to our cultural development, Rantha Cabone.’
‘Cultural development? On Araldis? This place is for men and ginkos.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I do not think Signor Malocchi will like what you are doing, Don Pellegrini.’
Trin’s smile faded to a scowl. ‘He put me in this worthless position. What are the point of records you cannot use?’
‘It depends, I suppose ... on how you use them.’
Trin stared at her. Rantha was clever enough to know that he was planning something. Perhaps he had showed her too much. ‘Grazi, for the meal. We could meet tomorrow in the refectory?’ he suggested.
It was her turn to stare. He was offering her a tradeoff—to keep silent about his delving in return for his company.
‘Si,’ Rantha said