“I can probably go back to Michelangelo with a pitch to investigate a Sheldon lifeboat. That way I won’t be completely exposed. How’s that?”

“Good enough. But you do realize that Baron will know it was you who put me onto her? Our Oaktier connection is inescapable. You can expect a visit from people like Simmonds and Deakins, if not a great deal worse.”

Mellanie pushed her shoulders back. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can, young Mellanie. I’m curious. Do you actually have a weapon? A gun of some description?”

“No.”

“May I suggest you purchase one. I can give you the name of a reliable underground supplier.”

“I’m not a warrior, Paul. If I need physical protection, I’ll hire a security expert.”

“As you wish. But please be careful.”

“Sure.”

Mellanie swapped cabs three times before she got back to the motel they were staying at in the Rightbank district. She paid cash each time. The fact that Alessandra’s webheads could backtrack Paul was a worrying development. Even with her SI inserts she certainly didn’t have his skill; that left her feeling strangely vulnerable.

Their little chalet was on the end of the long row that curved around a grubby swimming pool. Only two others had cars parked outside. It wasn’t yet late enough for the motel’s main trade to start using the bleak, utilitarian rooms for their professional pay-by-the-hour encounters.

The chalet was made out of cheap composite panels that had bleached under Oaktier’s strong sun. Long cracks webbed the edges, exposing the reinforcing boron fibers, which were already fraying. The faded red door creaked loudly when she pushed it open.

All the blinds were shut, permitting only slim blades of late-afternoon sunlight to slide through the slits between them. The air-conditioning wasn’t working. It was stifling inside, with the old paneling groaning as the thermal loads shifted. Dudley was curled up on the bed, staring at the wall.

“We have to move,” Mellanie told him. And how many times had she spoken that phrase since Randtown?

“Why?” Dudley grumped. “Are you off to see him again?”

She didn’t ask who he meant by him; she wasn’t about to play that game. Besides, the memory was too strong: walking out of the rec room into the main barracks. Her blouse had been torn beyond use; she’d had to borrow Morty’s dark purple sport shirt to wear. Both of them grinned like naughty schoolkids as the rest of Cat’s Claws hooted and jeered at the state of them.

She gave him a last lingering kiss in the open doorway, with his hands squeezing her buttocks. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised.

That had been two days ago. She wanted to go back, to feel his body pressed up against hers. The wonderful reassurance of old times, when life was simpler and so much easier.

Dudley, of course, had embarked on a two-day sulk at the very notion of an old lover coming back into her life. She hadn’t admitted sleeping with Morton, but it was pretty obvious what they’d been up to. She’d still been wearing Morty’s shirt when she got back to the chalet.

“No, Dudley, I’m not visiting Morton for a while. We have to go to Earth. I’m making another pitch to Michelangelo about investigating Dynasty starships.” She’d never come so close to simply walking out on him. It was guilt pure and simple that had made her come back to collect him rather than take a cab straight to the CST planetary station.

Alessandra would find the motel, if she hadn’t already. Even cheap thugs like the ones who’d gone after Paul would blow Dudley away, and probably in a very painful fashion. Let alone what would happen if one of the Starflyer’s wetwired agents tracked him down…

She’d got him into this, and that made him her responsibility.

“Why can’t we just get out?” he moaned. “The two of us. Leave. We’ll go back to that resort in the forest, nobody will know about us, nobody will care anymore. If we don’t interfere with the Starflyer and the navy, then they’ll forget all about us. Why don’t we do that? Just the two of us.” He rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Mellanie. We could get married.”

Oh, save me! “No, Dudley.” She said it fast and firm, before he had any chance to work on the idea. “Nobody should even be considering things like that, not with everything that’s going on. Life’s too uncertain right now.”

“Then how about afterward?”

“Dudley! Stop it.”

He bowed his head petulantly.

“Come on,” she said in a more considerate tone. “Let’s get packed. There are some great hotels in LA. We’ll stay in one of them.”

***

It was raining again, a persistent, miserable cold drizzle that smeared windows and turned pavements to slippery ribbons awash with a dismaying amount of litter. Hoshe Finn never ceased to be surprised and depressed by how wet it was in the ancient English capital city. He’d always assumed the old jokes were simple exaggeration. Walking to the office from Charing Cross station as he did every morning, he’d learned better. The UFN environmental commissioners who shared the vast stone government building with Senate Security must have been more successful than they admitted in reversing the global warming trend.

He shook his raincoat out in the elevator, and held it at arm’s length as he walked down the corridor to his office. Unsurprisingly, Paula was already in, and poring over screens on her desk.

“Morning,” he called out.

She gave a cursory smile, not looking up.

Hoshe hung his coat on the back of his dark wooden door and settled behind his desk. The number of files awaiting his attention was dispiriting. He’d only left at half past ten last night, and now it was barely eight. The RI had spent the night pulling out anything relevant to the queries he’d made yesterday. He started on the old Directorate report of the Cox Educational charity.

At eleven o’clock he gave the door to Paula’s office a perfunctory knock and walked in. “You might have been right about the educational charity,” he told her.

“What have you got?”

“There are some anomalies between the files I requested.” He sat in front of her desk, and told his e-butler to display the data on the big holographic portal that took up one wall. “First off I started with the report that the Directorate’s Paris office put together after the attempted hack against the charity’s account in the Denman Manhattan bank. Your old colleagues were reasonably thorough; they investigated the charity for any evidence that they were a front. The report’s conclusion is that they’re not.” He waved a hand against the rows of names and figures that were scrolling down the portal.

“This is the list of all the outgoing donations. It’s pretty comprehensive. The Cox supported over a hundred academic projects at one time or another. Recently they’ve declined considerably, although they’re still going. The Gralmond University astronomy department was just one of them. So far, so ordinary; according to the report there is nothing here to be suspicious about.”

“So it looks,” Paula said.

“Okay. That was my starting point, then I began checking references. There are a couple of things that are unusual to start with. Not illegal or suspicious, just odd. The charity’s funds come from a single private donation deposited thirty years ago in the Denman account. The sum was two million Earth dollars, which was transferred to the Denman bank from a onetime account. Secondly, there is no named founder. The firm of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku registered the Cox with the New York charity board, and opened an account with one dollar. The two million was transferred in a month later. It has only ever had three commissioners: Mr. Seaton, Ms. Daltra, and Mr. Pomanskie, all of whom are associates of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku. Your original Directorate investigation team never pursued that, which is something of a lapse if you ask me.”