Starliner(70)

"Weapons?" Wanda said in open amazement. "Why, none. I'm just here to pick up a distressed passenger from my ship."

Platt bent to check the empty luggage spaces under the seats. Rental vehicles were built without frills like paneling and insulated bodies. This car obviously carried nothing but the Trident officer herself.

"Surely it's not illegal to be armed in Tidal, Marshal?" Ran asked.

Someone in a passing car jeered and threw a fruit skin at Platt. It slapped her pants leg. She didn't appear to notice. "Don't you be telling me what's against the law here, buddy!" she snarled. "We don't need Earthmen telling us what's what!"

She lowered her arm and backed away. Franz nodded curtly and climbed into the car. Ran followed, calling, "Our government will protest about this!"

"Fuck you outsiders!" Platt cried. "Just because some broad goes off for a good time with a couple local boys, you wanna make it a crime! Well, I'm not having you starting a shootout in my jurisdiction!"

Boardman, her deputy, belched. He'd been doing that regularly since Ran and Franz appeared to make their complaint. Tidal needed some sort of officialdom, however minor; the trouble was that in a society which prided itself so thoroughly on rugged individualism, the sort of folks willing to take municipal jobs were incapable of handling any job competently.

Wanda put the car in gear. It rode even more harshly than the taxi had. "What was that charade about?" she asked.

"Just that," Ran agreed. "A charade. If we didn't make a formal complaint like civilized people, they'd figure that we were going to behave like locals—and be ready for us when we did."

"They, in this case," Wanda said, "being a rancher named Humboldt who came here from Grantholm thirty years back. He's not in a big way of business, but he's got about a dozen hired hands at any given time."

Wanda looked like a nervous driver because her head and eyes were constantly in motion. Ran noticed that her hands and feet were steady on the controls, however, making only necessary corrections and those small ones. The car was headed back toward Longleat and the Empress.

"How do you know this?" Franz demanded. The front seat was wide enough for three slim people, but there was nothing for him to hold onto. The slick fabric cover had him sliding into one officer, then the other.

"She used Bridge to penetrate the municipal data banks," Ran explained. "It was long odds they'd cleared the business with their tame law, just to avoid accidents."

"Nope," said Wanda with a smile. "It was easier than that. The kidnappers called her father, the minister, and I back-traced the call to the Humboldt ranch. Then I checked the records office."

Ran grimaced. "How did Lin react?" he asked. "I suppose they want him to turn over all his data to get his daughter back."

"Probably," Wanda agreed, "but I didn't let the call through. Bridge'll keep noting a fault until somebody removes the block I put on."

She turned and leaned forward to be able to catch Ran's eyes. "This is going to be a real embarrassment if things don't work out," she added. "Though I don't suppose we'll have to worry about answering questions."

Ran nodded grimly.

Wanda pulled off the road as soon as she was beyond the slaughterhouses and their waste dumps, lethal pit-traps in the growing darkness. They continued cross-country at 30 kph, a moderate speed under any other circumstances.

The young Grantholmer's face was set in a hawklike expression in the instrument lights. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"Just out of the way," Ran explained. "We don't want too many people watching the rendezvous. Some of them might guess what was going on."

A great beast with wrinkled skin and tusks like shovels loomed up in the driving lights. Wanda wrenched the steering wheel hard, but the animal blatted and fled. The tuft of white hair on its tail wobbled like a flag in the beams' side-scatter.

"Ah—Franz?" Ran said. He barely avoided saying "boy" instead of using the youth's name. "You should maybe opt out of this one."

Streseman looked at him. "Of course not," he said crisply. "This is properly my affair, as a man, as a—as a lover, of course. You are the ones who are going beyond what could be expected of your duty."

"It's just possible Commander Kneale would feel that way," Wanda murmured. "He's not the sort to second-guess his people, though."

"What I mean, Franz . . ." Ran said. He rocked forward in his seat as Wanda braked to avoid a straggling line of cattle, their eyes flaring red in the headlights. "What I meant is, now that we know it's Grantholmers who've grabbed Oanh."