Adele heard the vehicle coming some ways before it pulled up in front of Cutter 614's boarding bridge. It was a tractor from the port's maintenance division, meant to drag trailers carrying heavy parts. At this hour of the night there was very little traffic, and the caterpillar treads rang on the beryllium-mesh road surface like a continuing alarm.
Adele got up from the console and joined Tovera at the hatch. "Hogg's bringing Mister Leary back," Tovera said. "They're alone."
She took her hand out of her attaché case. Adele knew that the precaution was as natural to Tovera as breathing, but apparently her servant was concerned that greeting the visitors at gunpoint might appear discourteous.
Adele smiled slightly. Tovera probably didn't care what Daniel thought regarding the matter, but Hogg's opinion was something else again.
"When I was out walking one morning for pleasure . . ." Daniel sang. Liquor had roughened his clear tenor voice, but he got down from the tractor without stumbling and walked straight as a plumb line along the boarding bridge.
Hogg followed his master, obviously unconcerned. As these things went, Daniel was as sober as a . . . well, as sober as Adele herself.
"I met a young spacer—" Daniel continued. He stopped dead and spread his arms wide. There was a bottle in his right hand.
"Why, hello, Adele!" he cried. "What are you doing here?"
"I told Timmons and Claud to go find a party," Adele said, "and that I'd be anchor watch in their place. I don't know that they'd have taken any other order from me, but they didn't argue that one. I wanted a full-sized computer and decided to use 614's instead of putting a cot in the Communications Room at Squadron House."
She stepped back to let Daniel enter the cutter. She didn't add that while she knew she'd be welcome aboard the Tonnant, she wasn't willing to trust her data to Deirdre Leary. Adele was under no illusions about her ability to safeguard information that passed through the Tonnant's system.
Daniel wore the pips of a full commander and two broad stripes on his cuffs, but the upper stripe on either sleeve was only pinned. He hadn't had his uniform off since his promotion, so there'd been no opportunity to sew on the stripes properly.
He raised the bottle to his lips, then stared at it in surprise. It was of yellow glass and fluted; rather attractive, Adele thought.
"It's empty," said Daniel. He set the bottle carefully on the arm of the command console. "I didn't know it was empty."
The bottle slipped from the cylindrical cushion and shattered on the deck. Daniel didn't appear to notice it. "The Hermes is gone, the Sissie's gone too," he said. "I'm not going to sleep on shore, and I'm not going aboard the Tonnant either. Deirdre might want to talk about things I don't want to talk about."
Daniel's face scrunched into a combination of fury and despair. "Adele?" he said. "My father's going to think I did what he asked. What am I going to tell him?"
Adele slipped her personal data unit into its pocket. Daniel could have almost any woman on the planet tonight, but instead he wanted a ship he'd commanded to share his triumph with him. He displayed a touching innocence at some times.
"Daniel?" she said. "Are you able to come up on the hull with me? I'd like to look at the stars."
Daniel laughed. "Officer Mundy," he said with drunken solemnity. "I am a commissioned officer in the RCN. I can climb the ladder upside down, if you like. Indeed, I'll do that regardless just to prove I can!"
"Please don't," Adele said. "I'll become dizzy and fall, leaving you with my death by drowning on your conscience."
Laughing at the way she'd disarmed his deadpan bluster, Daniel reached out of the hatch with his left hand. He caught a rung of a hull ladder and swung himself outside, then climbed with as little hesitation as he'd shown walking aboard in the first place.
Adele followed in a stolidly cautious fashion, moving one hand or foot at a time. She felt ridiculous in her concern, but she knew that she'd be even more ridiculous if she let herself fall.
Hogg and Tovera watched Adele's progress from the hatch, speaking quietly to one another. The servants were on terms of mutual respect and even liking, if one could properly use that word to describe Tovera's mental processes. They stepped back into the belly of the ship when she'd reached the spine and Daniel offered her his arm.
Adele knew that they could overhear her conversation with Daniel if they wished to; she was simply making the point that she wanted privacy, a wish that they could respect or not as they chose. She rather suspected they would, but she wasn't going to worry.
Daniel sat cross-legged, leaving the dorsal foremast to support Adele's back. He pointed at what to her was a fluttering blur over the water of the slip.
"That's a balloon bird from Golconda," he said. "They're amphibians, really. Here they only come out at night or on cloudy days, because direct sunlight would make the methane in their lift bladders swell enough to burst them."
Adele wasn't interested in natural history generally or balloon birds in particular, but she dutifully pulled her goggles down over her eyes and followed the line of Daniel's arm. A flat creature hovered just above the slip. It had transparent pustules which she supposed were the lift bladders. The fringes of its body rippled against the faint breeze, permitting it to hold its position.
"It dangles a lure into the water," Daniel explained. He wasn't using his goggles. "When a fish takes it, barbs open like the head of a harpoon and the bird jerks it into its belly. If it misjudges the size of the fish, it has to either disgorge or digest its meal floating on the water."
He turned to Adele and grinned. "How do you suppose creatures from Golconda got here, Adele?" he said. "I could imagine a thousand paths, none of them likely. And maybe none of my guesses would be right."
"I agree," Adele said. "And that has some bearing on what I want to tell you."
Because Daniel had dropped the subject of his father, she thought of letting the matter be. Daniel wouldn't forget it even if he never mentioned it again, though. Better to have it out now.
She took off her goggles and put them in her lap. She wanted to bring her data unit out simply as a mental crutch, but that would be weakness.
"Daniel," she said, "I ran DNA analyses of you and Oller Kearnes through the Hermes' Medicomp. Both of you were in the RCN database, of course."
"I hadn't thought of that," Daniel said. "Go on."
"There was no statistical similarity," Adele said. "If Corder Leary is your father, he wasn't the father of Oller Kearnes."
Daniel didn't speak for a moment. His moonlit face could've been carved from wax. Then he started to laugh.
"Oh, Adele!" he said. "Well, there's no certainty in life, but based on what I know of my mother's personality, I'm pretty sure that I'm Speaker Leary's son."
He leaned his head back and laughed again in relief and delight. The balloon bird skittered downwind and vanished into the reeds poking up around the water's margin.
"So it was really that easy?" Daniel said. "Anybody could have done it!"
"Yes," said Adele, keeping the edge out of her voice by the greatest effort of will. "Anybody at all."
Daniel stopped laughing abruptly. He turned to face Adele directly. "You know," he said conversationally, "I've been drinking quite a lot tonight, but I don't think that has much to do with it. I'm perfectly capable of saying stupid things when I'm stone sober. My pardon, Adele. I should have said, 'Any librarian would have asked the question, so it was fortunate that someone finally brought the problem to a librarian.'"
He squeezed, then released her right hand. "Thank you, Adele," he said. "That will silence my father."
"I'm not done yet," Adele said. "I did a general sort, since I had the parameters entered in the database already. I found one close match."
She turned—turned her face toward the water but really turned it away from Daniel. A humped form edged from the reeds like foam moving against the breeze. She couldn't see the balloon bird clearly without putting her light-amplifying goggles back on; and anyway, she didn't care about the cursed bird!
"Commander Slidell's elder brother was named Jan," Adele continued. "He was at one time your father's legislative aide."
"That's correct," Daniel said. "Had I told you that?"
"No," said Adele, "you hadn't. I looked it up—"
In a political database that was one of the tools Mistress Sand had provided her.
"—after I found a genetic match between Commander Slidell and the late Oller Kearnes. I should say 'the late Commander Slidell and the late Midshipman Kearnes,' I suppose. The similarity is consistent with Kearnes having been the son of Slidell's brother. Since they're all dead now, it may not matter."
"On the contrary, Adele," Daniel said. "I think it matters a great deal."
"I won't insist on this, Daniel," Adele said, her eyes on the bird. "But I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention my name when you discuss that matter with your father. I'm most comfortable when I exist in a world completely separate from that of Speaker Leary."
Apart from the man who had my whole family murdered . . . for good and sufficient reasons, but murdered nonetheless.
"I don't think I'll be discussing it with my father after all, Adele," Daniel said. "It turns out the business has nothing to do with the Leary family, whatever he may think. And I do better in a world separate from him too."
Daniel rose, then offered Adele a hand to help her up. "Judging from where the smaller moon is, it's nearly three in the morning," he said. "I'm ready for bed. But first, if you wouldn't mind—I'm sure Hogg can find a bottle somewhere. Will you drink with me to friendship, Adele?"
"I will," Adele said. "To that, I'll drink the whole bottle."