Adele entered the hedged enclosure. It was empty. She heard the sound of a man playing a guitar and singing nearby.
"Good morning, mistress," said Markos's aide behind her. Adele turned. The pale woman had her usual half-smile; not so much superior, as Adele had first thought, but appraising.
"Here," Adele said, holding out the data chip in the middle of her right palm. She didn't care who saw her. She wasn't a spy; they couldn't force her to act like one.
Fingertips brushed her hand, lifting away the chip. "Good day, mistress," the aide said.
The aide walked toward the garden's rear entrance, passing other strollers without seeming to be moving quickly. She was nondescript even in her bright clothing; a person whose presence and absence were equally unremarkable. A person who didn't seem to exist as a human being.
Adele Mundy returned to the palace. She wondered whether she herself had any more existence than a data console did.
Daniel Leary, whistling snatches of the contredanse which had ended the Admiral's Ball, entered the library and stared in pleased astonishment. "Say!" he said. "They are coming along. And the lighting's up, I see."
"Yes, or you wouldn't see," Adele said, coming from the half of the big room which wasn't already filled with shelving. She held a pair of loose-leaf binders covered in the hide of something scaly. "Your crew has been indispensable, Daniel. Which is not to denigrate the contribution—"
She turned and nodded to a young man wearing a green cummerbund and holding a tape measure, one of the several Kostromans who'd come forward with her when Daniel arrived.
"—which Master Carpenter Bozeman and the journeymen of her staff have been making toward the project's aesthetics."
"We're veneering the edges of the shelving and supports," the fellow with the measure said. "When we're done, you won't be able to tell the result from prime cabinetry. Even the plastic!"
He frowned and added, "When there's books on them, that is. We can't do much about it otherwise."
Daniel, swinging a knotted handkerchief in his left hand, walked along the end of the stacks and peered into a bay. The racks rose nearly to the room's high ceiling. There were no books or bound papers above head height, and the shelves in use were only partially full. Wooden blocks formed bookends to keep the end volumes from falling over.
"Are the higher ones . . . ?" Daniel said, nodding toward the bare ranks of shelves above him.
"They may be useful at a later date," said Adele who'd fallen into stride with him. The three Kostromans watched with a respect that had been notably missing the day Daniel first visited the library. "Woetjans says she'll rig rolling ladders on each stack. I'm inclined to leave that part of the job for the time at which it's needed. An intermediate floor might be preferable for staff members who aren't—"
She smiled.
"—starship riggers. On the other hand, the future won't have Woetjans and her crew as a part of it. I'm undecided."
"Ah, how are these . . . ?" Daniel asked. "That is, the arrangement."
He waggled his handkerchief toward the shelves. One of those nearest him was a rank of cookbooks. Standard volumes on astrogation—including many obvious duplicates—filled the two shelves immediately below.
Adele smiled wryly. "By number," she said. "I open the boxes of material and assign a number to each volume I find. Mostly I scribble it on a scrap of paper. These—"
She flicked open the leather covers of the binders in her hand, one and then the other.
"—would be one-forty-seven, both of them. They're profit and loss statements from Teichnor Clan trading ventures of the past century."
Daniel nodded. The accounts were nothing that would ever interest him, but he knew how valuable they'd be to someone who understood the context in which they were created.
He'd read Uncle Stacey's logs. They were merely dry listings like, "Antenna Forty-one sheared under acceleration. Stepped replacement and entered Matrix as calculated." That would mean nothing except to someone who'd listened avidly to Commander Bergen talk to the friends from the old days who'd come to Bantry to see him.
"I'll take them, mistress!" said one of the Kostromans brightly.
If you knew the language—which meant more than grammar and vocabulary—there was no useless information.
"Thank you, Vanness," Adele said, handing the binders over with a smile visible only to Daniel. She continued, "My assistants take the item to the numbered shelf while I dig out the next one. Vanness and Prester agreed to stay late tonight because I need to clear more floorspace for the next stack. Before the morning."