She wouldn't tease him about it, though. Not even later, when they were in private again. By now, she knew Victor well enough to know that he'd simply retreat into obfuscation. He'd advance complex and subtle reasoning to the effect that retaining the personal trust of the Zilwickis would actually work to Haven's benefit, in the long run, and that it would be foolish to sacrifice that for the sake of petty maneuvering.

And it might even be true. But it would still be an excuse. Even if Victor didn't think there'd be any long-range advantage for Haven, he'd behave the same way. And if that excuse failed of its purpose, think up a different one.

Judging from the Mona Lisa smile on Anton Zilwicki's face, Thandi was pretty sure he'd figured it out himself.

Anton now cleared his throat, noisily enough to break Queen Berry out of her hands-planted-on-hips disapproval. "That's not why we came here, however. Victor, there's something I need to raise with you."

He nodded at Princess Ruth, who was perched on the arm of a chair across the room. "We need to raise with you, I should say. Ruth's actually the one who broached the issue with me."

Ruth flashed Victor a nervous little smile and shifted her weight on the chair arm. As usual, Ruth was too fidgety when dealing with professional issues to be able to sit still. Thandi knew that Victor considered her a superb intelligence analyst—but he also thought she'd be a disaster as a field agent.

Cachat glanced at Berry, who'd moved over to the divan next to Anton's chair and taken a seat there. "And why is the queen here? Meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty—"

"I really, really hate it when he calls me that," Berry said to no one in particular, glaring at the wall opposite her.

"—but you don't normally express a deep interest in the arcane complexities of intelligence work."

Berry transferred the glare from the wall onto Cachat. "Because if they're right—and I'm not convinced!—then there's a lot more involved that the silly antics of spies."

"All right," said Victor. He looked back at Anton. "So what's on your mind?"

"Victor, there's something wrong with Manpower."

"He doesn't mean wrong, like in 'they've got really bad morals,' " interjected Ruth. "He means—"

"I know what he means," said Victor. Now he looked at Berry. "And I hate to tell you this, Your—ah, Berry—but your father's right. There really is something rotten in the state of Denmark."

Berry and Thandi both frowned. "Where's Denmark?" demanded Thandi.

"I know where it is," said Berry, "but I don't get it. Of course there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. It's that nasty cheese they make."

January, 1920 PD

"So," Zachariah McBryde asked, watching the head of foam rise on the stein he was filling with the precision of the scientist he was, "what do you think about the crap at Verdant Vista?"

"Are you sure you want to ask me that question?" his brother Jack inquired.

Both brothers were red-haired and blue-eyed, but of the two, Jack had the greater number of freckles and the more infectious smile. Zachariah, six T-years younger and three centimeters shorter than his brother, had always been the straight man when they were younger. Both of them had lively senses of humor, and Zachariah had probably been even more inventive than Jack when it came to devising elaborate practical jokes, but Jack had always been the extrovert of the pair.

"I'm generally fairly confident that the question I ask is the one I meant to ask," Zachariah observed. He finished filling the beer stein, handed it across to Jack, and began filling a second one.

"Well," Jack gave him a beady-eyed look. "I am a high muckety-muck in security, you know. I'd have to look very askance at anyone inquiring about classified information. Can't be too careful, you know."

Zachariah snorted, although when he came down to it, there was more than an edge of truth in Jack's observation.

It was odd, the way things worked out, Zachariah reflected, carefully topping off his own stein and settling back on the other side of the table in his comfortably furnished kitchen. When they'd been kids, he never would have believed Jack would be the one to go into the Mesan Alignment's security services. The McBryde genome was an alpha line, and it had been deep inside "the onion" for the last four or five generations. From the time they'd been upperclassman in high school, they'd both known far more of the truth about their homeworld than the vast majority of their classmates, and it had been a foregone conclusion that they'd be going into the . . . family business one way or another. But Jack the joker, the raconteur of hilarious stories, the guy with the irresistible grin and the devastating ability to attract women, had been the absolute antithesis of anything which would have come to Zachariah's mind if someone mentioned the words "security" or "spy" to him.

Which might explain why Jack had been so successful at his craft, he supposed.

"I think you can safely assume, Sheriff, that this particular horse thief already knows about the classified information in question," he said out loud. "If you really need to, you can check with my boss about that, of course."

"Well, under the circumstances, partner," Jack allowed with the drawl he'd carefully cultivated as a kid after their parents had introduced them to their father's passion for antique, pre-diaspora "Westerns," "I reckon I can let it pass this time."

"Why, thank you." Zachariah shoved a plate loaded with a thick ham and Swiss sandwich (with onion; they were the only ones present, so it was socially acceptable, even by their mother's rules), a substantial serving of potato salad, and an eleven centimeter-long pickle across the table to him. They grinned at each other, but then Zachariah's expression sobered.

"Really, Jack," he said in a much more serious tone, "I'm curious. I know you see a lot more on the operational side than I do, but even what I'm hearing through the tech-weenie channels is a bit on the scary side."

Jack regarded his brother thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up his sandwich, took a bite, and chewed reflectively.

Zachariah probably had heard quite a bit from his fellow "tech-weenies," and it probably had been more than a little garbled. Under a strict interpretation of the Alignment's "need-to-know" policy, Jack really shouldn't be spilling any operational details to which he might be privy to someone who didn't have to have those details to do his own job. On the other hand, Zachariah was not only his brother, but one of Anastasia Chernevsky's key research directors. In some ways (though certainly not all), his clearance was even higher than Jack's.

Both of them, Jack knew without false modesty, were definitely on the bright side, even for Mesan alpha lines, but Zachariah's talent as a synthesizer had come as something of a surprise. That could still happen, of course, even for someone whose genetic structure and talents had been as carefully designed as the McBryde genome's. However much the Long-Range Planning Board might dislike admitting it, the complex of abilities, skills, and talents tied up in the general concept of "intelligence" remained the least amenable to its manipulation. Oh, they could guarantee high general IQs, and Jack couldn't remember the last representative of one of the Alignment's alpha lines who wouldn't have tested well up into the ninety-ninth-plus percentile of the human race. But the LRPB's efforts to preprogram an individual's actual skill set was problematical at best. In fact, he was always a little amused by the LRPB's insistence that it was just about to break through that last, lingering barrier to its ability to fully uplift the species.