WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(11)

She crossed her hands behind her back. "Lieutenant Leary," she said, "I have a great deal of work to do before this collection is ready for visiting laymen like yourself. You're a Cinnabar citizen and I will presume a gentleman. I therefore request that you cease to trouble me and my staff until such time as the Electoral Library is opened to the public."

Vanness had been standing nearby, listening to the discussion of books and media. His mouth opened in amazement as he turned quickly away. His cheeks were already showing a flush.

Daniel Leary reddened also. He replaced the logbook on the pile and made a stiff half-bow. "Good morning, mistress," he said. "No doubt we'll meet again."

Leary strode from the library by a circuitous route to avoid passing close to Adele on his way. He moved with a caged grace.

An interesting fellow, Adele thought as she watched him leave. Bright, knowledgeable, and she'd be the first to admit it had been pleasant to hear a Cinnabar accent again. There hadn't been many on Bryce, not since the war restarted.

And the son of Speaker Corder Leary.



Daniel Leary sat on a bench in a terraced formal garden that was probably half a mile from the Elector's Palace. He wasn't sure of the distance or even the direction; he'd simply walked till the adrenaline burned off and he needed to sit.

He hadn't been so angry since the afternoon he broke with his father.

Well-dressed Kostromans, mostly in couples, leaned on railings or sauntered along promenades of limestone figured with white inclusions. The plantings were of exotic species—which meant that Daniel absently recognized several common varieties from Cinnabar as well as other ornamentals which human taste had spread beyond their original worlds. The gardens hadn't been well maintained in at least a decade, but the present ragged profusion had a certain charm.

He'd have to challenge her, of course. The insult had been too deliberate to ignore. He'd take care of that in the next few days. Lieutenant Weisshampl of the Aglaia, the communications vessel that had brought the delegation to Kostroma, would probably act as his second. Weisshampl had served under Uncle Stacey. . . .

The whole business was a black pit that had opened without warning. The librarian's cold insults were as unexpected as a section of cornice falling on Daniel's head. He didn't even know her name!

Well, Weisshampl could probably make do with "Electoral Librarian."

The gardens sloped up from the gate at street level, but a tunnel led down to a grotto within the terraces. Green tile rippled on the tunnel walls and the statuary Daniel could dimly glimpse was of a marine character.

He should have tipped the gatekeeper as he entered the gardens. That official, a real battleaxe of a woman, had stretched out her hand to Daniel—and stepped aside when she looked at his face.

He'd been too angry to spare thought to the gatekeeper's presence or her silent request. God only knew what she'd thought of his scowl. He could pay her when he left, but . . . his purse was very light.

Daniel's mother had died when he was sixteen Terran years old. Corder Leary had attended her several times during her final lingering illness, though he'd been in Xenos on political business when she died.

Speaker Leary remarried the day after his first wife's funeral. The bride was Anise, his secretary; a pleasant woman in her forties and very different from the succession of young mistresses whom Daniel had glimpsed wafting in languid beauty through the Leary townhouse in past years.

Daniel had taken an aircar to Xenos when he heard. He'd had the Devil's own luck not to wreck on the way, and the Devil in his heart in all truth when he confronted his father. He'd called Anise a whore, though she'd mothered him the times he'd come to Xenos and he felt as much affection for her as he did for anybody but his mother and Hogg. He called his father worse, and his father hadn't minced words either. For all the difference in their interests, the Leary men had the same volcanic temper.

Had Corder and Daniel been any relation but parent and child, there'd have been a duel in the back garden that afternoon. As it was, Daniel left to join the navy as his father behind him bellowed for his attorney.

Four Kostroman laborers were carefully wheeling a handcart holding a Fleyderling in its atmosphere tank down the ramp to the grotto. Humans were in contact with three non-human races which had developed indigenous stardrives. There had never been a conflict between different species: the metabolic requirements were varied enough to make trade difficult and tourism hugely expensive. This Fleyderling must be the equivalent of royalty on its own ammonia world.

There was no shortage of interstellar conflicts within species, of course.

Daniel had never fought a duel. It wasn't the done thing in the country. Oh, there were fellows who were duelists just as there were fellows whose relations with livestock went beyond the normal meaning of animal husbandry. Neither sort were invited to the homes of their neighbors.