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  “I guess so. None of the gangers were thinking much about that, not when they left.”

  “What happened to them?” Abby asked. Was there a mass grave somewhere out there in the wastes of Five Corners?

  But Bronc just shrugged. “You want me to find out?”

  “No! For God’s sake. Stay clear of anything like that.”

  “We hear about more hiring, you want to know?” Cara asked.

  “No! I mean yes! I mean I don’t want you two getting close to something for me. But if you hear anything, I wouldn’t mind getting an info copy. But stay clear of this Longknife woman. Lots of people have tried to collect on her head. They’re dead and I’m still washing her hair.”

  The two kids eyed Abby, still undecided.

  “Listen, when you get a chance, you see what your ’puter can tell you about her. Listen carefully. Then, oh, double what it told you cause I can tell you a lot about her ain’t on the news. A whole lot.” Abby paused for a second. “And I was there for most of it. Okay.”

  The kids nodded, then raced for the exit as the familiar Ryes stop was called. Buying a computer with Bronc at your elbow had to be about the most fun Abby’d had with her clothes on in fifteen years. Only he didn’t want to buy a computer.

  He turned up his nose at the completed units…and headed for where they sold the components. Why was Abby not surprised.

  He started with the box. They had everything, from tiny ear and glasses units to a few obsolete reader-type boxes. He picked the cheapest. It actually had a black-and-white screen.

  “You don’t have to go for the absolute bottom,” Abby said.

  “I want a box so it’s got plenty of room to add stuff. And I don’t want it looking too fancy or, you know…”

  “But color is nice to have when you need to read plans, stuff that’s using color. You can always have black and white for your default,” Abby added.

  Bronc didn’t need more persuading.

  He settled for a midlevel processor and storage. Abby bought him the high-end sniffer submodule. He grinned at that. “I better not tell Mick I got that. He’ll get jealous.”

  All the parts in a bag, they were ready to check out and head for a pizza parlor the kids knew. There they’d find a quiet corner and put all the pieces together. But Cara pulled Abby aside. “Could I have something?”

  “What do you want?”

  Cara led Abby to the jewelry counter…not the expensive end, but the counter with the cheap costume stuff. There, a fake, green emerald had an image of the Madonna and Child etched into it. On the other side, it was a full-function phone.

  As much as Abby wanted to say “sold,” she paused. “You know this isn’t just a phone. When you’re carrying it…”

  “They can track where you are without you knowing. They can turn it on and listen even if you don’t have it on. Yeah, Bronc’s told me. He also says he can fix it so it don’t.”

  Abby glanced at the boy. He nodded his head confidently.

  “If Granny Ganna has security in her house, it will sniff this out even if you do squelch it.”

  “So I don’t take it home. I got a place I can hide it.”

  Twelve years old and already briefed in on spying basics. Said something about the home she was brought up in. Abby would have to think about all that said about Momma Ganna, but for now she’d buy the bobble. She also needed to think about why a twelve-year-old kid was attracted to a picture of a mother cuddling her child close.

  Bronc won a five-dollar bet with Abby. He had his machine up and running before the pizza arrived. “The screen is up. I got a lot of stuff still to do, but it’s awake and working.”

  So Abby paid.

  It was doing more before they finished the pizza. Abby paid for software downloads. She’d arrange for more later under special instruction. One thing she made sure of. She didn’t leave until he’d squelched Cara’s new commlink.

  It was not yet dark when Abby paid their fare back to Five Corners. “Don’t tangle with a Longknife. And if you know anyone that you wouldn’t like to get suddenly dead, tell them the same.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Auntie Abby. We know how to take care of ourselves,” they both answered.

  They were so young. So confident.

  If only Abby felt half so sure.

  19

  Princess Kris Longknife wondered whose good day she was having. It couldn’t be anything she deserved.

  The morning started with a fine run with the Marines. Some Navy and Army personnel attached to the embassy jogged along with them. Even Chief Beni and Commander Malhoney were up early, leading a small detachment in a spirited walk. Strange what having a princess around did to middle-aged men.

  And the business hagglers had finally talked themselves out. They settled within pennies of where Kris figured they would three days earlier. But they’d spent those days arriving at it, and both sides seemed delighted at how hard fought their victory had been. Their bosses would be so proud of them.

  And there’d be no questioning that they’d earned their expense accounts.

  You’d think they’d won a battle.

  Kris did her best to join the victory spirit, including lunch at The Vault, one of the most expensive places Garden City had to offer.

  It should have been a fabulous time. Four men paid court to her, each trying to outdo themselves in their wittiness and praise for their home planets and reasons Kris should visit. Two had sons her age she might enjoy meeting.

  But Kris watched this three-martini lunch while drinking soda water. From that perspective, none of them were quite as witty as they thought.

  She was saved from having to stay as lunch ran into happy hour, and maybe even supper, by a call from Inspector Johnson. “Can we talk?”

  Five minutes later, the inspector picked her up in front of The Vault. “Do you lunch there often?” the inspector asked, giving her an investigative eye that would make even one of those Longknifes feel guilty. Maybe.

  “We just finished bargaining for some of Eden’s computer technology. Some real sharp types wanted to impress me with their expense accounts.”

  “Did they?”

  “Oh, they impressed me. Just not the way they figured.”

  “Clearly, they haven’t studied the reports on you. Money does not impress you.”

  “What someone does with it might. Waving the raw stuff around…” Kris shrugged. “Did you call me out here to discuss business ethics. I don’t mind. I needed out of that lunch sometime between now and breakfast. Thank you.”

  “Actually, I do have a reason for taking you off on this little drive.” Now Kris noticed that they were not heading back to the embassy. NELLY, ANY IDEA WHERE WE’RE GOING?

  NOT A CLUE, KRIS. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU FIND OUT.

  It was bad enough when a computer wasn’t helpful. But one that sassed you back to boot! Kris really needed to schedule some time with Trudy.

  Kris edged around to face Johnson…and make it easier to reach for her automatic. She also rechecked the backseat of the sedan. It was empty.

  The inspector must have felt the tension. “No, I am not kidnapping you, poor fool who tries.”

  “That’s nice to hear. So, where are we going?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I’ve got the car set for random turns. Anyone starts following us, and I may be calling on your weapons expertise to save my hide.”

  “What about yours?”

  “Ten-for-ten at twenty-five feet. But I have never had to actually shoot a man.”

  “Lucky you,” Kris said, dryly.

  “I believe so. Now, the cause for our peripatetic journey is some good news for you. And, as is the custom around you, some bad news.”

  “And as is my custom, I’ll take the good news first.”

  “Higher-ups have decided that we should grant you a temporary license to carry arms and a special protective contingent. That particular stunt yesterday of mixing your team with those guarding M
rs. Tordon was quite brilliant. With some of your Marines guarding her, she already having a permit, and then switching off guarding you, it might well result in a plea that they had a weapon on her detail and got switched so suddenly to your detail that they didn’t have time to return their arms to the armory. A brilliant sleight of hand. But then, General Trouble is also your great-grandfather.”

  Kris considered relieving the inspector of his illusion, but thought better of it. Once in a while a good deed should get the kind of reward it deserved. The Marines had taken it upon themselves to stand up a guard for their general’s woman with not a second’s thought. If it now got them the freedom to shoot back when shot at in the cause of protecting his great-grandbrat, well. Good for them.

  Kris felt good for all of three seconds, then remembered the lead-in to this little chat. “And the bad news is…?”

  “Since this is a temporary permit, any security used that is not already under license by the Personal Security Administration of Garden City, such as your Marines, will have to use only nonlethal protection devices.”

  Kris considered that for a long moment. Then said, “I am going to produce my weapon, since it is now, I assume, legal.”

  “It is legal. I will not feel any obligation to confiscate it. Assuming it shoots nonlethal darts.”

  “There is that issue,” Kris said, bringing out her Browning automatic. “This little puppy was given to me by, well, never mind. It chambers a 4-mm dart, either from the right magazine, which loads Colt-Pfizer’s highest-quality sleepy darts. Or, at the flick of a switch, armor-piercing rounds from the left magazine. I assume if I and my Marines promise to always keep the selector on the right side, you won’t be all that concerned if the left magazine is not empty?”

  “It could complicate an investigation,” the inspector said, but he didn’t contradict her.

  “You are aware that with enough of a propellant charge a sleepy dart will smash flesh, bone, and skulls?”

  “Oh, it can? I hadn’t heard” didn’t reach the usual level of conviction that Kris had come to expect in the most two-faced of diplomatic exchanges.

  And Kris suddenly felt very tired of playing guessing games and “Thimble, thimble, who’s got the thimble,” where the thimble probably wasn’t anywhere within a day’s drive.

  “Inspector, you and I both know that my exit from Hotel Landfall a few days back was not by the normal route. And I left a rather high body count on the pavement between there and the embassy. Yet none of that made it into the papers; none of the bodies showed up at the morgue. You want to tell me where they went? More important, if my Marines need to put a similar number, or more, of such optimists down hard, will their bodies do a similar disappearing act or be used as evidence against me and my Marines in a court of what passes for law on Eden?”

  “Why don’t you ask your maid?”

  That answer from deep in left field knocked Kris off her stride. “What does Abby have to do with this?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, she visited the hood where most of those shooters were hired. She met with the gang bosses, at least one of them. She spent quite a bit of time with several members of the gang and even gave one of them a computer and bought supper for him and his girlfriend.”

  Kris felt like she’d launched herself for a skiff drop from orbit…but forgot the skiff.

  NELLY, DID YOU TRACK ABBY’S WHEREABOUTS YESTERDAY?

  NO, KRIS, SHE THROTTLED HER SQUAWKER. SHE SENT A MESSAGE TO HERSELF WITH A CC COPY TO YOU FOR OPENING LATER LAST NIGHT, BUT SHE ERASED BOTH WHEN SHE GOT IN. I DID NOT OPEN IT AND HAVE NOTHING AVAILABLE TO LOOK AT NOW.

  NELLY, I’M VERY UNIMPRESSED WITH YOUR WORK PERFORMANCE.

  I KNOW, KRIS. BUT YOU ALWAYS KNEW THAT ABBY WAS BUYING THE TOP-OF-THE-LINE ENCRYPTION SYSTEMS. AND SHE CHANGES IT TOO OFTEN FOR ME TO CRACK IT.

  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS LATER. “Inspector, can you share with me where my most loyal maid went yesterday? Royal courtesy or what have you?”

  “I shouldn’t,” he responded, but he was clearly enjoying being ahead of Kris on something. A map of Garden City suddenly reflected off the sedan’s front window. A line appeared in red, with various other colored lines intersecting it. Sometimes they merely crossed. Other times, they went quite aways together.

  KRIS, THE MESSAGE WAS SENT FROM THERE. And a green X appeared along with the red and black line late in the day. It was on Kris’s vision, not something the inspector could see.

  “Well, Inspector, it appears that you know something I don’t know—ah, didn’t know. I will need to look into this.”

  He grinned proudly.

  “Oh, and could you tell me why you’re the one letting me know about my new permit? Shouldn’t Lieutenant Martinez have delivered it?” That put a dint in his grin.

  “Your case has been elevated. I’ll be handling all your issues for the time being.”

  And thus keeps me from talking to someone who can’t vote and might give me an interesting perspective on your planet.

  Kris gave the inspector the empty-headed socialite grin she occasionally got away with. Clearly, she had a lot on her plate at the moment. And the inspector had played his distraction game very well.

  Kris made a mental note. There had to be something in the fine print that would leave her with a question or two. A question that she really didn’t need to bother a full-fledged inspector about.

  But first, matters close to home. Why was Abby talking to the people who had done their best to kill Kris?

  20

  Nelly, TELL JACK, ABBY, AND PENNY I WANT THEM IN MY QUARTERS NOW! Kris thought as she marched into the embassy. TELL THEM FIVE MINUTES AGO WOULD BE EVEN BETTER. OH, AND TELL PENNY SHE CAN BRING HER THUMB SCREWS.

  YOU ARE JOKING, KRIS?

  JUST TELL EACH OF THEM WHAT I TOLD YOU TO TELL THEM.

  YES, YOUR HIGHNESS, MA’AM, BOSS.

  Kris found Abby already in her quarters.

  “You got a command performance, baby duck,” she said, removing Kris’s cover and running a testing hand through her hair. “Ambassador says there’s this charity art show that you just must make an appearance at. Oh, and he suggests that you spend some of that Longknife money buying some of this art…for goodwill sake.”

  Kris stepped away from her maid. Was this for real, or was Abby just doing another one of her Oh-we’re-so-busy-no-time-to-talk song and dances?

  The arrival of Jack and Penny interrupted that dance. To Kris’s disappointment, the professional interrogator was not juggling thumb screws or pushing a rack.

  And people said Kris had problems following orders!

  Abby raised an eyebrow at the intrusions, then did her best disappearing act, backing herself up against a wall and leaving the floor to the others.

  “Not this time,” Kris said, and used Abby’s own movement to corner her. “What were you doing yesterday?” Kris demanded.

  “You gave me the afternoon off. I was on personal business. Even a poor maid needs a bit of time to herself,” Abby said as self-righteous as any who spoke for the downtrodden masses.

  Kris shook her head. “Not good enough. What were you doing yesterday meeting with the very gangs that provided the shooters that I was running from three days ago? Why did you have supper with two of those gang members?”

  Now Kris found Jack at her right elbow, Penny at her left. They said nothing, getting their briefing, as it were, from Kris’s own questions. But what they heard caused narrowing eyes to go hard as they locked on Abby.

  “I thought everyone had a right to some privacy. Isn’t there any time a poor working woman can call her own. And why were you spying on me?” Abby shot back. It hadn’t taken the maid very long to find grounds for a counterattack.

  She was good.

  “I was not spying on you, though the next time you throttle the GPS squawker on your computer you better have a good reason. No, Inspector Johnson seems to have all of us under surveillance. Don’t spit on the sidewalk, any of you, or
you’ll end up with a rap sheet. But let’s get back to the questions I’m asking. Why were you meeting with gang leaders?”

  Abby pulled herself to her full height, and if possible, her back got even more rigid. She sniffed. “I was not meeting with them. I failed to avoid them while getting the hell out of Dodge. They demanded to know why they shouldn’t take out on me some of Your Highness’s bad karma with them. My argument was brilliant, and they bowed to my logic.”

  “How many did you kill?” Jack demanded.

  “None. I said they bowed to my logic.”

  “Am I the only one having a hard time swallowing this?” Penny said.

  Once again, Abby was doing a great job of misdirecting her interrogators. Kris held up three fingers. “Okay, let’s say you answered one. Why buy a couple of gangers supper?”

  “Because Bronc needed the time to put together the computer I’d bought him. The cops did mention that I bought one of them a set, or rather the parts to build a set.”

  This was getting weird. Kris still had two fingers up. She would not let Abby confuse her…or deflect this line of questioning.

  “You bought two ganger’s supper?”

  “No, I bought pizza for my niece, who I assure you is not part of any gang. And I bought a computer for her boyfriend, also not part of any gang, for helping me do what I went there to do,” Abby said very slowly. “He also liked the pizza. I hear most teenage boys do.”

  “So why were you in that part of town? With your squawker off!” Kris demanded.

  “I. Was. Looking. For. My. Mother.”

  “Your mother” came in three separate gasps.

  “Yes, my mother. Everybody has one, don’t you know, Kris.” Abby gave Kris one of her dry scowls. “Didn’t your mother give you the basic talk about the birds and bees? Princesses have mothers. Maids have mothers. Princess’s usually have fathers. For a maid it is optional. Makes it easier. If you’re born a bastard you don’t have to work so hard to earn the title…as some around here do.”

  “She did say she was from Eden,” Penny pointed out.

  “And I didn’t want to come back here, may I remind you.”