Cauldron of Ghosts Read online

  Victor frowned and glanced at Zilwicki. Who, for his part, spread his hands.

  “Don’t look at me. I kept my description vague. Really vague. And it was all over before I got there anyway.”

  “Jeremy,” Victor muttered. “Damn him. He told me—I asked, later—that there hadn’t been any recordings made.”

  “He’s been known to lie.” That came from Anton.

  Cachat’s frown faded into a mildly irritated expression. “Sort of like plutonium is radioactive.”

  He looked back at Cathy. “Yes, I trained for it in a simulator. A much bigger and more sophisticated simulator than the portable one I take with me, of course. How else could I have managed it?”

  She felt like she was being extremely rude, all of sudden. Whatever might be Victor Cachat’s exotic history and peculiar attitudes, he was the man who had saved the lives of all three of her adopted children. And done so at incredibly great risk to his own.

  So she extended both her hands this time and took both of his, in a gesture that was not formal in the least. “Please. Be welcome in this home. Now and always.”

  Cachat’s poise faltered for an instant. “Well . . . thank you,” he said awkwardly, seeming to shed a decade and two inches of psychic armor in the process. Cathy now understood the truth of something Anton had once said to her about his Havenite partner: that somewhere deep underneath Cachat’s ferocious skills and adamantine willpower there remained a shy and lonely boy from the slums. Only a handful of people in the universe were ever made privy to that inner core, he’d told her—and Anton himself wasn’t really one of them. Or only partly so, at any rate.

  “I’m not sure if he lets anyone into that sanctum, except Thandi Palane and Ginny Usher,” he’d told her. “Probably Kevin Usher, too.”

  Cathy decided then and there that she’d add herself to that small list. First, because she owed the man that much. Second, because she enjoyed a challenge. And finally—

  She couldn’t keep herself from giggling. At her age!

  “What’s so funny?” asked Anton.

  “Never mind.” She didn’t think even Anton would understand, not really. He thought—she was sure almost everyone did, except Jeremy X and Web Du Havel and maybe Empress Elizabeth, who’d been a close childhood friend—that Cathy’s rebellious history stemmed from her deep political principles. And . . .

  That was indeed true enough. But she couldn’t deny that at least a part of the reason for her notorious past was simply a juvenile glee in thumbing her nose at the establishment. Any establishment.

  As Countess of the Tor, Cathy’s coat of arms carried the family motto I cannot, which according to family legend referred to the heroic stance taken by an early politician who refused to sign on to a popular but unwise law. Cathy had her doubts about the legend, but the motto suited her well enough. In the interests of full disclosure, though, she’d sometimes thought she should add to the motto Épater la bourgeoisie—or use it altogether as a substitute.

  She’d already scandalized Manticoran polite society with her longstanding association with the terrorist madman Jeremy X—now, sadly for polite society’s amour-propre, reborn as a respectable cabinet member of Torch’s government. Now she could add the scandal of a friendship with the man who was rapidly becoming the Republic of Haven’s most notorious secret agent.

  How delightful.

  She led the way through the foyer and into the rooms beyond. The first of which had the official title of “the salon” but which Anton insisted on calling “the extravagansory.” Or, sometimes, “the playing field.”

  Cachat looked around, his expression one of mild interest.

  Anton grinned. “Didn’t miss a beat. Congratulations, Victor. The first time I came into this room I said ‘holy shit!’ It took me four hours in here before I worked up the nerve to ask where the bathroom was. Were, as it happens. There are eight of them. Would you believe she calls this a ‘town house’?”

  “Are you quite done?” said Cathy. This was an old jape of Anton’s. Most people would have let it go by now, but he was from the Gryphon highlands. One had to make allowances.

  “By certain values of ‘town’ and ‘house,’ the label is perfectly appropriate,” said Cachat. His tone was as relaxed and casual as his expression. “To be sure, the values are ones that should be lined up against a wall and shot.”

  That was said just as mildly. Cathy wasn’t fooled. She was quite certain that if—no, more likely to have been when—the Havenite agent ever lined someone against a wall and shot them, he’d do so in the same relaxed and casual manner.

  Oh, this was going to be so delightful. She’d have to make sure she had a doctor in attendance, though, when she trotted Cachat out for his first public appearance at one of her soirees. He was bound to say something that would cause one or two of the more rigid members of Manticore’s upper crust to suffer cardiac arrest.

  * * *

  “He’s a little unsettling, isn’t he?” was Empress Elizabeth’s first comment after Haven’s delegation withdrew from the conference room. She looked at Honor Alexander-Harrington, who was sitting to her left a little way down the large table in the middle of the room. “Special Officer Cachat, I mean.”

  Honor chuckled and reached over to scratch the ears of the cream-and-gray treecat perched on the back of the chair beside hers. “At least this time he wasn’t carrying a suicide device. I don’t think he was, anyway.”

  Captain Spencer Hawke, her personal armsman, was standing just behind her. His already-stiff stance became rigid. “I assure you, My Lady, he carried no such device . . . this time. We checked him over thoroughly.” A bit grudgingly, the Grayson added: “So did the Queen’s Own, of course.”

  “Not to mention that we had a trio of treecats keeping a beady eye on him,” added Hamish Alexander-Harrington, who was seated across from Honor with Samantha, Nimitz’s mate, curled up neatly in his lap. She made a very pleased with herself sound, and Nimitz and Ariel, the somewhat younger male treecat on the back of Elizabeth’s chair, bleeked with laughter. Samantha deigned to open one grass-green eye and look at each of them with a predator’s thoughtfulness, then closed the eye once more.

  Honor shook her head. “I’m afraid neither of you really understands Victor Cachat. First of all”—she looked at Elizabeth—“to answer your question, yes, he’s a little unsettling. But he’s not a monster or a maniac. He’s more like the closest thing a human can come to a treecat.”

  Nimitz issued a sound that was halfway between a purr and a growl. Ariel echoed the sound an instant later, but Samantha merely flipped the tip of her tail.

  “The point being,” Honor continued, “any suicide device he’d carry—anywhere, not just here—wouldn’t be a bomb, or anything that would wreak indiscriminate damage. It’d be very selective, with just himself as the target.”

  She glanced back at Captain Hawke and then over at the two members of the Queen’s Own Regiment standing guard against the wall behind Elizabeth. “We analyzed the one he brought aboard Imperator when he and Zilwicki paid me that little visit. If he’d activated it, it would have injected him with a chemical compound which would trigger a previously implanted chemical compound that was inert in the absence of the right catalyst . . . at which point it would have sent his heart into severe ventricular fibrillation while simultaneously triggering both brain and pulmonary embolisms.”

  The Empress grimaced. So did Hamish. For that matter—Honor glanced around the room—so did all the other people seated at the table. Those consisted of William Alexander, Baron Grantville and Prime Minister of the Star Empire of Manticore; Sir Anthony Langtry, the Star Empire’s Foreign Secretary; and two admirals: Sir Thomas Caparelli, First Space Lord, and Admiral Pat Givens.

  “So don’t be too sure what Cachat might or might not have been carrying,” Honor continued. “If he thought it was called for, he’s perfectly capable of having a biological mechanism designed so that we could only detect it if we
gave him a complete somatic screening. Which we didn’t, of course. That would have been undiplomatic, to say the least.”

  Prime Minister Alexander looked alarmed. “If I’d known he was capable of that, I think we should have insisted on a somatic screen.”

  Honor started to answer, but the treecats beat her to it. This time, all of them issued sounds that were pretty much pure growls, and Nimitz followed up by pressing one true-hand’s palm to his mouth, then swinging it in a throwing away motion before touching the outermost finger of the same true-hand to his forehead. None of the humans in the room had any problem translating the sign for “bad idea,” and Hamish barked a laugh.

  “It seems none of the six-limbed participants in this little discussion agree with you,” he observed, then looked at Honor for a few seconds. “But I see what you’re getting at. The issue isn’t what Cachat could do but what he would do.”

  Honor nodded. “Yes.” She turned back to Elizabeth. “You already knew what Anton Zilwicki’s capable of. Well, now you’ve gotten a feel for how far Cachat will go for something he thinks is really important, which is why you asked for him to come to Manticore. As partnerships go, I think the two of them are the most capable pair of spies the galaxy’s produced in a long, long time. Which is the reason they’ve turned out to be such a nightmare for our real enemies—ours and Haven’s—and a blessing for us. Men like them don’t give their loyalty lightly, but once they do, it’s stronger than battle steel.”

  The last phrase came out flat, certain, final.

  “In other words, you’re telling me it’s time to quit shilly-shallying,” said Elizabeth.

  “If you dress that up a little, yes. It’s time to decide whether you’re on the floor or sitting out the dance.”

  The Empress chuckled. So did Hamish. Both admirals just smiled.

  For his part, Foreign Secretary Langtry looked unhappy, but didn’t seem inclined to say anything. Prime Minister Grantville sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “If I can put this into more formal language,” he said, “what Honor is saying is that while it’s possible Zilwicki and Cachat are wrong, it’s unlikely. And it’s not possible at all that either man’s loyalties are in doubt. Which means our course of action should be based on those presumptions.”

  “Spoken like a true statesman, Willie,” said Honor. Nimitz issued a noise that seemed approving. So did Ariel.

  Samantha just nodded once, in the gesture the ’cats had learned from humans centuries ago.

  * * *

  “The meeting with the Empress went pretty well, I think,” said Victor later that night over dinner, in response to a question from Cathy. “Hard to be sure, of course. Nobody in that room got where they are by being easy to read.”

  Cathy cocked her head. “Then . . . why do you seem a bit apprehensive?”

  Startled, Cachat looked up from his plate. “I do?”

  “Tense as a drum,” said Anton. “It’s pretty hard to miss, especially coming from you.”

  “Oh. That.” Victor had barely touched his food. Now, he laid down his utensils. Much as a medieval knight on a battlefield might lay down his sword and shield as he conceded defeat.

  “I wasn’t actually thinking about that at all,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “We sent the courier to Torch five days ago, right after we arrived here. It should have arrived at Beacon by now.”

  Anton sucked his teeth. “Carrying your message to Thandi letting her know that, hey guess what, you’re now on Manticore. Having not stopped at Torch on your way to Haven.”

  Cathy looked back and forth between the two men. “Do you think she’ll be upset with you, Victor?”

  “Is Uranium 235 fissile material?” mused Anton.

  “She’s going to kill me,” foresaw Victor.

  Chapter 10

  Thandi Palane glowered at the figures on the computer screen. She was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole: make a too-skeletal logistics network support the number of combat units she wanted for Torch’s military. Palane believed in a teeth-to-tail ratio that belonged to a tiger rather than a tadpole, but the tadpole was fighting back pretty fiercely.

  Her mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the person sitting next to her, Captain Anton Petersen, had told her so. Several times, in fact, albeit politely. He had far more experience than Thandi did with these sorts of problems. Her own experience as a company grade Solarian Marine officer had been heavily concentrated in combat operations. Logistics on the level with which she was now trying to grapple had been something she left to others.

  Her experience was short in other areas, as well. So, very soon after Torch was founded, Thandi had put in a request to both Manticore and Haven for training missions to be sent to provide her with advice and assistance.

  Both star nations had agreed, although it had taken Haven a while to put their own mission together. Petersen and his aides, on the other hand, had arrived within two months. He was an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy who’d compiled an impressive record in command of two destroyers and the light cruiser HMS Impulse before he’d been badly wounded. During his regeneration and physical rehab he’d moved over to the staff side and discovered he was even better at that than at commanding a Queen’s ship. His superiors had thought so, as well, and he’d been working directly for its First Space Lord, Sir Thomas Caparelli, before his sudden transfer to Torch.

  Anton had now been with her for more than a year, and he’d been invaluable. Although he was still technically nothing more than an “adviser,” he was one of Palane’s handful of chief subordinates and for all practical purposes he was in charge of Torch’s navy. Even the Havenites got along well with him, after they arrived.

  None of which improved her disposition at the moment, however. I-told-you-so may be a fine fellow but he’s still not likely to be welcomed with open arms when he tells you so.

  There was a buzz at the door to Thandi Palane’s office. “Open,” she said.

  Colonel Shai-gwun Metterling came in. “A courier just arrived from Manticore. It seems—ah . . .”

  Hearing the hesitation and trace of trepidation in her aide’s voice—Shai-gwun was normally a sanguine fellow—Thandi looked up immediately. “What is it?”

  “Well. It turns out Special Officer Cachat and Anton Zilwicki went to Manticore from Haven instead of, ah, as we thought they would—Cachat would, anyway—returning here.”

  Thandi stared at him for a couple of seconds. Then said: “He’s a dead man walking.”

  Metterling opened his mouth; closed it. Advising his commanding officer on matters of the heart went farther outside his military occupation specialty than—than—

  He couldn’t think of an appropriate comparison. Composing an opera, maybe?

  “Dead,” Thandi repeated. Abruptly she rose from her seat. “Don’t let that courier ship so much as shift a kilometer out of its orbit. I’ll be taking it to Manticore. Anton, hold down the fort for me.”

  “Yes, General Palane. When do you expect to return?”

  But she was already brushing past him and out the door. Moving like one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  Death, to be specific. Famine, Pestilence and War would be straggling far behind.

  * * *

  Although he wasn’t willing to insert himself into a domestic quarrel between Palane and Cachat—talk about Scylla and Charybdis!—Captain Petersen didn’t feel he could in good conscience say nothing to anyone about his superior officer’s plans. She was so riled up she seemed oblivious to the fact that she was about to go AWOL. That was bad enough if you were a rating. If you were the commanding officer of the entire military . . .

  He put in a call to Hugh Arai. In doing so, he was going completely out of channels, since Arai had no official position in either Torch’s military or government. Torch had never gotten around to adopting a formal definition of a monarch’s consort.

  In the real world, however, he was the right perso
n to contact. Arai was privy to all the plans and discussions of the “inner circle,” people listened to him, and Petersen had a great deal of confidence in his judgment.

  In the event, the captain’s concerns proved overblown. As furious as she was, by the time Thandi got to her apartment—that took fifteen minutes—and packed her bag—that took three minutes—she’d calmed down enough to realize she couldn’t simply commandeer a courier vessel and head off to Manticore.

  So, she put in a call to Petersen. “Sorry, Anton. I . . . sort of lost my temper, there. Cancel the hold on the courier. I’ll be back within the hour.”

  But by then, Petersen had already alerted Arai and the consort-in-fact-if-not-in-name had informed his monarch and bed partner. He’d also given her his advice and, as she usually did, Berry accepted it.

  She called Thandi at her apartment—not more than thirty seconds after Palane had broken off her call to Captain Petersen. The conversation that ensued was the last thing Thandi had expected.

  “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”

  “Since when do you call me ‘Your Majesty’? I’ve got great news, Thandi! It turns out that Daddy and Victor wound up on Manticore. Imagine that! So I’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone. Well, I guess that’s a silly way to put it, but the point is that I want to combine seeing Daddy again with an official state visit to the Star Empire. I started to give the orders myself but then I realized that was probably inappropriate and you should do it instead. So tell the captain of the Pottawatomie Creek to get ready to leave for Manticore as soon as possible. Oh, and you need to pack a bag. I want you to come with me. Captain Petersen can manage things and you’ll want to see Victor anyway. I’m bringing Web and Jeremy too. Hugh will stay here and hold the fort while we’re gone.”

  Thandi stared at the image of the young woman on the screen. Her brain seemed to have taken flight like a startled bird and was flapping around aimlessly.

  She heard someone’s voice behind Berry but couldn’t make out the words. Then, another voice, but she couldn’t understand what it was saying either.