WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(10)

He pinched the breast of his gray uniform, beneath the single drab medal ribbon.

"—is the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, after all. I guess I'm as fit to fight my country's enemies as the next fellow, and if I get promoted for it—"

His smile lit the room.

"—well, that's fine with me too."

Adele didn't laugh with Leary, but she felt her lips twisting in a grin. He seemed very young. The chances were his attitude would seem young to a person like Adele Mundy even if he were fifty years her senior. Leary's enthusiasm was infectious, though, and he knew something about books.

She squirmed to the logbooks Vanness had unpacked earlier in the morning. "You might be interested in these," she said, lifting the top one and opening the metal cover. The sheets within were handwritten and for the most part limited to dates and numbers. "They're hardcopy logs of pre-Hiatus vessels. So far as I know—"

And no one but Mistress Boileau herself might know better.

"—no electronic media as old as them survive. Because this ship's officers backed up their computer logs with old-fashioned holograph, we still have a record of the voyages."

Leary took the log with a reverence due its age—though in fact the nickel-steel case by which he handled it was about as sturdy as the palace's walls. He turned the first page at an angle to the light and read, "San Juan de Ulloa, out of Montevideo. A vessel from Earth herself, mistress, and here we hold it in our hands."

His grin broadened. "Space will teach you something about not trusting equipment no matter how often you've checked it, that's the truth," he added. "If you survive, that is."

"I apologize for the condition of the collection," Adele said bitterly as Leary scanned sheets one at a time. They'd been filled out loose, then clamped between the covers. "I only arrived three weeks ago, but frankly unless I find a way to get real workmen instead of artists too good to throw up simple shelves, I don't see that the situation will have changed in three years."

A sort of smile—not a pleasant sort—quirked the corner of Adele's tight mouth. "Though of course I won't be here myself," she said. "I'll probably have been executed for murdering a master carpenter, or whatever they do to murderers here."

"They were using the Hjalstrom notational system . . ." Leary said. "Or a precursor of it, at least. That was supposed to have come from Spraggsund University near the end of the Hiatus."

He closed the metal covers, then looked directly at Adele. "I don't mean to intrude in another citizen's business, mistress," he said, "but sometimes going outside a bureaucracy is easier than going through it. My manservant Hogg is very good at finding people who can do things. If you'd like him to locate some common carpenters . . . ?"

Adele snorted. The library budget, if there was one, wasn't under her control. On Bryce, Walter's envoys had given her a travel honorarium. By stretching it Adele had managed to survive since her arrival, but no member of the Elector's staff had flatly admitted it was even their responsibility to arrange for the librarian's future pay. At the end of the week her concierge would be looking for the rent, and Adele would very likely be trying to find room for a bedroll here in the chaos.

"I appreciate the offer," she said, "but I regret that I'm not in a position to take advantage of it. Unless your man could find the carpenters' wages as well as the carpenters themselves."

Leary grinned, but there was a serious undertone in his voice as he said, "I really don't dare suggest that, mistress. While I don't think Hogg would be caught, I'm afraid his methods would bring spiritual discredit on a Leary of Bantry. What Hogg does on his own account is his own business, but if I set him a task . . ."

He laughed again, in good humor but apology.

The world had gone gray around Adele. "You said, `a Leary of Bantry,' sir," she said. Her voice too was without color. "You'd be related to Speaker Leary, then?"

Leary grimaced. "Oh, yes," he said. "Corder Leary is my father, though we'd both be willing to deny it. If you mean, `Will I inherit Bantry,' though, no—I certainly will not."

He tried to smile, but the expression that formed was a mixture of emotions too uncertain to identify. "In the first place, Father looked healthy enough to live another fifty years when I last saw him six years ago. My elder sister is the proper heir anyway—the Learys don't divide their estates, which is why Bantry is still Bantry. And finally, my father and I are not on terms of intimacy. Or any terms at all."

"I see," Adele said. Her voice came from another place, another time; from the past that had led to this present. If there was a deity, which Adele very much doubted, it had a sense of humor.