Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 3 - Winning Colors.pdf

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Winning Colors
Elizabeth Moon
Dedication
This one's for Mary Morell, who introduced me to science fiction in the ninth grade, and then insisted the
wonderful (!) stories I wrote in high school were lousy. (She was right.) And for Ellen McLean, who refused to
be my friend in the first grade, only to be a better friend later than anyone could ask. And for all the horses,
from the horse next door to the little bay mare who presently has her nose in my feed bucket, who enriched
my life with everything from (a few) broken bones to the feel of going at speed across country.
Chapter One
Twoville, Sublevel 3, on the planet Patchcock,
in the Familias Regnant
Conspirators come in two basic flavors, Ottala thought. The bland vanillas, usually wealthy, who meet in
comfortably appointed boardrooms or dining rooms, scenting the air with expensive perfumes, liqueurs, and
good food. The more complex chocolates, usually impoverished, who meet in dingy back rooms of failing
businesses or scruffy warehouses, where the musty air stinks of dangerous chemicals and unwashed bodies.
The vanillas, when they cursed, did so with a sense of risk taken, as if the expletives might pop in their
mouths like flimsy balloons and sting their tongues. The chocolates cursed without noticing, the familiar
phrases embedded in their speech like nuts in candy, lending texture. The vanillas claimed to loathe violence,
resorting to it with reluctance, under the lash of stern morality. The chocolates embraced violence and its
tools as familiar and comforting rituals. No wonder, since when the vanillas chose violence, they employed
chocolates for it.
Ottala much preferred luxury herself; she considered that a long leisurely soak in perfumed water was the
only civilized way to begin the day. She too felt the little shock of surprise when she heard the expletives
come out of her own mouth with no immediate punishment. Her skin preferred the sensuous touch of silk; her
taste buds rejoiced during elaborate dinners created by talented cooks. But she could not confine her
sensuality to the bland end of the spectrum. Vanilla was not enough. In her own mind, she considered her
taste for chocolate an expression of unusual sensitivity.
What she tasted at the moment was the sour underbite of processed protein extruded into pseudo-sausages
nested in pickled neo-cabbage. She sat on a hard bench, elbow-to-elbow with the rest of Cell 571, munching
the supper that preceded the evening's entertainment. Or so she called it; she was aware that her fellow
conspirators considered it more important than anything else they did with their lives.
Her friends would not have recognized her. Her normally bronze skin had the pallor associated with the
underbellies of cave-dwelling amphibians; her dark eyes were masked with blue contact lenses, which also
gave her red-rimmed lids, the better to fit in with the locals. She wore the same dark, ill-cut coveralls and had
the same fingertip calluses as the others; she had held a real job on the assembly line—with faked papers,
which wasn't that unusual—for the past two months.
It was all a great adventure. She knew things about her family's company that she had never imagined; she
would have incomparable tales to tell when she went back topside. Meanwhile, she could eat sour
pseudo-sausage, drink cheap wine, use words her parents didn't even know, and find out for herself if the
reputation of Finnvardian men was deserved. So far she wasn't sure. . . . Enar had ranked only average on her
personal scale, but if Sikar would only look at her . . .
She finished her supper, as the others finished theirs. Odd, how the same custom held at tables high and
low—everyone tried to finish at the same time. Across the room, Sikar stood, and silence spread around him.
He was the contact from higher up, the man whose respect they all wanted. Even in the baggy dark clothing,
he had presence. Ottala couldn't analyze it; she only knew that she felt his intensity as a pressure under her
rib cage. She wanted that pressure elsewhere.
As usual, Sikar began speaking without preamble. "We, the young, serve the old," he said. "And the old can
live forever now, and they expect us to serve forever. We will grow old and die, but they will not. Is this right?"
"NO!" the room vibrated to that angry response.
"No. It was bad before, when the old rich first set their hands against the gate of death, but a hundred fifty
years is not forever. That is why our fathers and grandfathers submitted; they hoped to afford that process for
themselves, and it was limited. But now—"
"They live forever," a woman's voice interrupted from behind Sikar. "And we work forever, and our children—"
"Forever." Sikar made the word obscene. "Their children will live forever too; our children will DIE forever." An
 
angry rumble, indistinct, shook the room again. "But there is a chance. Now, while the government is shaken
by the king's departure." They had discussed this, night after night, what it meant that the king had resigned.
Would it help the cause, or hurt it? Rejuvenants littered both sides of the political scene; almost everyone rich
and powerful enough to be a force in the government had been rejuvenated at least once. Apparently the
hierarchy had decided: it was a good thing, and now they could act. Ottala pulled her mind back from its
contemplation of the aesthetics of Sikar's striking coloring—those fire-blue eyes, the pale skin, the black hair
with the silver streak—to listen to his speech.
"But before we act," Sikar said, "we must purify ourselves. We must not allow any taint of the Rejuvenant to
corrupt our purpose. Are you sure—sure—that none among you harbors a sneaking sympathy with those old
leeches?"
"No!" growled the crowd, Ottala among them. Her parents weren't old leeches; they were merely idiot fools.
When she had to say these things, she always thought of people she didn't like.
"Are you sure?" Sikar asked again. "Because I am not. In other cells, we've found those pretending to be with
us, and secretly spying on us for the Rejuvenants—"
"Secretly spying" was exactly the kind of rhetoric that Ottala enjoyed. She curled her tongue around it in her
mouth, not realizing until Sikar stood in front of her table what he was leading up to. The tool in his hands,
though, clenched the breath in her chest. She recognized it; everyone did, who had ever changed fertility
implants. It would locate even unexpired implants, and could be used to remove them. But—no one here had
implants. She did.
"Put out your arms, brothers and sisters," Sikar said. "For this is how we found the traitors before—they had
implants."
She couldn't move. She wanted to jump and run; she wanted to scream, "You don't understand," and she
knew that wouldn't work. Sikar smiled directly into her eyes, just as she'd wanted since she'd first seen him,
and the people on either side of her forced her arms out flat on the table. The tool hummed; even though she
knew she could not really feel anything, she was sure her implant itched. The skin above it fluoresced, a
brilliant blue.
"Perhaps she was a manager's favorite—" said Irena, down the table. She had liked Irena.
"Perhaps she's an owner's daughter," said Sikar. "We'll see." He pressed the tool to her arm; she had no
doubt of the next sensation. No anesthetic spray, no numbing at all—the tool's logic ignored her pain and
sliced into her arm, retrieving the implant, and pressed the incision closed with biological glue. Her arm
throbbed; she was surprised that she hadn't screamed, but she was still too scared. Those holding her
tightened their grips. Sikar held up the implant. "You see? And this tool will tell us whose it is."
She had forgotten that, if she'd ever known. Implants carried the original prescription codes; that had
something to do with proving malpractice. Sikar touched the implant to a flat plate on the tool's side, and
laughed harshly.
"As we suspected. This is no Finnvardian assembly worker. This is a Rejuvenant, child of Rejuvenants, our
mortal enemies. This is one who would enslave our children to her pleasure, for all time."
"No—" She got that out in a miserable squeak before Sikar slapped her. It hurt more than she had imagined.
"I hate you!" That was Irena, who had come up behind her and now clouted her head. "You lied to me—you
were never my friend—"
"I was—" But no one was listening. Shouts, growls, curses, those hands tight on her arms, and Sikar staring
at her with utter contempt.
"Rich girl," he said. "This is not a game."
Before she died, she wanted to revise her earlier opinion, and say that some conspirators tasted of neither
vanilla nor chocolate, but of blood. But she could not speak, and no one would have listened if she had.
Castle Rock: the former king's offices
Midafternoon already, and they'd hardly made a dent in the day's work. Lord Thornbuckle leaned back in his
chair and stretched. "I could be angry with Kemtre about this, too: because he was an idiot, I have to sit here
doing his work."
"You wanted the job." Kevil Mahoney, formerly an independent and successful attorney, had agreed to help
his friend in the political crisis left by the king's resignation. "Am I supposed to sympathize? I could be in
court, showing off—"
"As if you'd miss it. No, we're doing the right thing, if we can pull it off."
"If? The eminent Lord Thornbuckle has doubts?"
"Your old friend Bunny has doubts. Nothing makes a rabbit nervous like the predator who pretends not to see
him. We haven't heard anything from the Benignity; by now, I expected at least one raid."
"Don't stare at that fox too long, my friend: there are wolves in the world too."
"As if I didn't—" He paused, as his deskcomp chimed, and flicked the controls. "Yes?"
"Sorry, milord. An urgent signal from Patchcock. Shall I transfer, or bring it in?"
"Bring it," Bunny said. "And the coffee, if it's ready." He would have that, at least, no matter what the trouble
 
was.
One of the senior clerks—Poisson, he thought the name was—came in with a cube, followed by two juniors
with a trolley. Poisson waited until they had left before handing over the cube.
"It's partly encrypted, milord, but I read the part that wasn't. It's the same region on Patchcock where the
troubles were before, and apparently a Family heir has gone missing."
Family. Bunny could hear the capital letter that elevated mere genetic relationship to political power—not just
a family, but a Family, one of the Chairholding Families.
"Ottala Morreline, the second oldest but designated heir of—"
"Oscar and Vitille Morreline, Vorey sept of the Consellines. Right." One of his own daughter's schoolmates.
He remembered Bubbles—no, she was calling herself Brun now—talking about her. Brun hadn't liked her; he
remembered that much, though he didn't remember why. The Consellines . . . that extended family had over a
dozen Chairs in Council; the Vorey sept, though the minor branch, had five. The Morrelines held four of them.
"Kidnapped?" he asked.
"Ah . . . no. It seems she had disguised herself as a Finnvardian and infiltrated a workers' group—"
"A Morreline?" The Morrelines had, for the past two centuries at least, chosen to emphasize their darker
ancestry. And the video of Ottala that came up when he inserted the cube showed a dark-skinned,
dark-haired young woman. A beauty, Bunny noted, remembering now that he had seen her at some social
function a year or so before. She had matured, as Brun had, showing more bone structure. But how had this
girl imitated a pale, blue-eyed Finnvardian?
"The family located the skinsculptor. She bought a four hundred day depigmentation package, bleached her
hair, wore blue contact lenses—"
"Why didn't she get an eye job while she was at it? What if she'd dropped a lens?" That was Kevil Mahoney,
cross-examining as usual.
Poisson shrugged. "I couldn't say, sir. When she didn't turn up for her younger brother's seegrin, the family
popped her emergency cache, and found her last report. She included a vid of herself after she adopted the
disguise, and said she planned to involve herself in a workers' organization to see what it felt like."
"Ummm." Bunny watched the cube readout. Ottala's disguised self looked very different, he had to admit—if
not quite Finnvardian, at least nothing like the Morreline heir. He wondered if she'd had a temporary bone job
too—her face seemed to have changed shape as well as color. According to the readout, she had had no
trouble buying false IDs, and getting a job in an assembly factory on Patchcock. But she'd dropped out of
sight, without notice to her work supervisor or anyone else, some forty days before her family came looking.
"The problem is, milord, that it's Patchcock. . . ." Bunny looked up.
"Yes?"
"I don't know if you knew . . . all about Patchcock."
"Not really. It was a nasty situation, is all I know, and someone in the Regular Space Service messed up in a
major way."
"I think perhaps you need to read the background briefs." That was far more assertive than Poisson's usual
approach, and Bunny stared.
"Very well. If you'll—"
"Here they are." A stack of cubes it would take him hours to wade through, all marked with the security code
that meant they were encrypted and could be read only with all the room's security systems engaged. Bunny
glanced at Kevil, and sighed.
"Don't remind me that I volunteered for this job. I could cheerfully strangle his late majesty." Poisson, he
noticed, had the look he had always imagined concealed satisfaction at landing responsibility on someone
else.
The Patchcock affair, when they finally got it straight late that night, explained a lot of things . . . many more
than were explicated in the cubes, revealing as those were.
"That had to be the stupidest thing Ottala could have done," Kevil said, summing up the latest chapter in the
story. "Going undercover in a workers' organization would be risky enough right here in Castle Rock—but on
Patchcock! Didn't she know any history?"
"We didn't," Bunny pointed out. "If she thought it was just a military blunder, if she didn't know how her family
came to gain control of the investments there—"
"She must be dead, you know," Kevil said. "If she were alive, she'd have refreshed her emergency cache."
"Captive? Held for ransom?"
"No. My criminal experience tells me she's dead. They found her out somehow, stripped her of any
information they could pry out, and killed her. Eventually the Morrelines will figure that out too, and
then—then we'll have real trouble."
"Yes." Bunny thought about the Morrelines: he knew them in the casual way that all the Chairholders knew
each other, but they were not really in his set. They didn't hunt, for one thing. But he had dealt with them
more than once in business, and in the Council—they were tough, aggressive, and very sore losers. That this
 
could be a self-description he recognized, but that didn't make the prospect of angry Morrelines any more
appealing.
"If we send Fleet back in there, it will only make things worse—"
"If she's dead already—" If she was dead already, why bother? But he had to know what Ottala Morreline had
found, even if he couldn't bring her back. He sighed, and stretched his back out. The whole situation he'd
inherited—jumped into, he reminded himself—felt dangerously mushy. Too many things he didn't know, past
and present. Too many ways to make mistakes even if he did know everything. And the image of his daughter
Brun intruded—Brun had already involved herself in wild adventures, working her way across Familias space
as an ordinary spacer. If Brun heard about this, she would insist on going herself to find out about Ottala.
Where could he park her safely?
"At least," Kevil said, stretching in turn, "it'll be a change from this stupid bickering about rejuvenation. Those
poor bastards in the mines and factories on Patchcock have more substantial concerns."
Bunny nodded, but his thoughts kept running to Brun. Finally he thought of the one thing he might be able to
do; in the morning he would place a call to Heris Serrano.
"I must thank you again, for whatever you said to my daughter," Lord Thornbuckle said. He didn't look much
like Bunny in his dark formal suit, in the paneled office. He didn't intend to. "She was, I'm sure, about to do
something rash. What she told me afterwards was that she'd planned to run away and join the Regular Space
Service anonymously—but I expect it was worse than that."
"No—or at least, that's what she told me." Heris Serrano had been aboard the yacht, supervising the last of
its refitting. Her office aboard looked nothing like his; on the wall behind her were only a military-grade
chronometer and the framed certificates of her rating. She had a new uniform, not the loud purple Lady
Cecelia had once used, but the same competent expression, the same intelligent dark eyes. She paused a
moment, but he said nothing. "She outgrew herself in a hurry, on the island."
"I know. And she seems to have inherited ancestral temptations to adventure. You know how she got to
Rockhouse Major from Rotterdam ?" Heris nodded. "Even the unpleasantness she got into didn't dissuade
her. And now she wants to use some of her inheritance to finance a small expedition—a small ship, rather,
on which she intends to wander around looking for excitement. Responsibly, she assures me. Nothing wild of
the sort she did in her youth." Lord Thornbuckle snorted. "Youth. The girl's barely old enough to consider a
Seat in Council, and you'd think she was fifty."
"She did come through safely, sir," Heris ventured. He could tell she was being tactful, wondering if he would
understand how important that was. Some people, following every rule of prudence, could hardly travel to the
corner and back without breaking an ankle. Brun's luck had to be more than luck, perhaps that unconscious
intuitive grasp of situation and character which was more valuable than all the education in the world. But not
only the military recognized and used that quality.
"Yes, I know, and I know it means she's inherited—no doubt from the same ancestors—the ability to survive
adventure. But I'm not sure I can survive her acquisition of the necessary experience. Not without knowing
there's someone with more expertise and more . . . er . . . maturity to help her out of the tight spots she's so
determined to get into. Even Thornbuckles have limits to their luck; get Cece to tell you about my great-uncle
Virgil."
Heris focussed on the comment that might refer to her. "You were thinking that I might know someone with
the right skills to accompany her?"
"I thought you might be that person. Not that alone—" He waved off the protest she opened her mouth to
make. "I know, you'll be traveling with Cece. But she said she wanted to do more than make the various
horse events, and I wondered if you'd let Brun come along. As an employee, or passenger, or whatever you
like. I would of course pay her passage. . . ."
"No, sir," Heris said quickly. "Don't pay her passage; if she's set on adventuring, she might as well earn her
own way. She's already proved she could. I assume she has an allowance; let her use that, if she wants."
"Right. Fine. Then you'll take her?"
"I . . . don't know." She had liked Brun well enough, he knew, but clearly she was thinking about the
difficulties inherent in mixing a girl like Brun into a crew already facing difficult adjustments. She wouldn't
want trouble; she had had enough already. "I'm not sure I'm the right person," she said finally.
Lord Thornbuckle leaned over and touched his desk; he gestured to the row of red lights that came on, and
waited for her look of recognition. "Heris, let me tell you something that must remain a secret. A young
woman Brun knows—knew—a schoolmate, went off on an adventure, joined a workers' organization over on
Patchcock, and got herself killed when she was discovered. Brun doesn't know; we've managed to suppress
it. But the girl's family is furious with me. They want me to send the R.S.S. to Patchcock again—"
Heris stared. "That's—not wise, sir." She could easily imagine the carnage; it had been bad enough the first
time.
"No, I understand that. I've seen the classified briefings now. The thing is, Brun's the ideal hostage to use
 
against me. Either side might try it. She's too old to send home—she wouldn't stay, and I can't tell her about
Ottala. . . . I know she won't be safe, really safe, anywhere, but you might be able to keep her safer than
anyone else."
Heris nodded. "All right. I'm willing to have her aboard, if she's willing to come. I'm not about to shanghai
her."
"Oh, she's willing. Apparently she made some friends in your crew, didn't she?"
Heris looked puzzled, then her face cleared. "Sirkin, I suppose. At least they went around together for a
while, but that was our plan, a way that Brun could pass information about Lady Cecelia to me indirectly. I
wouldn't have called it a friendship—Sirkin's lover had just died—but it's something. All right . . . I suppose
Brun could have considered it friendship," she said. "I'll list her as unskilled crew, and let them teach her
some things, if that's acceptable."
"Good." Lord Thornbuckle smiled at her. "On top of everything else, I'll be glad to have her out of pocket while
the political situation is so uncertain."
The country house of Kemtre Lord Altmann,
formerly king of the Familias Regnant
"I don't see why you can't understand," Kemtre said, trying not to breathe heavily. "They're your sons as
much as mine."
"They're no one's sons," his wife said. Although she seemed to lean on the end of the table, elbows on either
side of a tray of fancifully carved fruits, that was illusion, a matter of expensive communications equipment
synchronizing her image from past breakfasts with her voice from very far away. "Certainly not mine, and not
yours either, if you only knew it. They're clones, constructs, human only in genome. You were never a father
to them; I was never a mother."
He pressed his fingers to his temples, a gesture that had been effective in Council meetings. It had not
worked with her for years, and it did not work now, not least because she did not have the visual display on
her console turned on . . . he kept hoping to see the telltale red light turn green. He wanted to meet her
eyes—her real eyes, not those of the construct, and convince her with his sincerity. "They're all we've got,"
he said. "They could be our sons, if you'd only—"
"They're grown," she said. "They're not little boys. They're bad copies of Gerel . . . was he the only one you
cared about?"
Of course not, he wanted to say. He had said it before, just as they had had this argument before in the
weeks since his resignation. At first face-to-face, then down the length of that long dining table, then by the
various communications devices required by the increasingly great physical distances between them as she
removed herself from his demands.
"Please," he said.
"No." The faint hollow noise of a live connection ended; the construct sat immobile, waiting for his finger to
extinguish its imitation of life. He put his thumb down and cursed. She wanted him to give it up, deal with the
loss of his sons, get on with whatever life was left him. He couldn't do that, not until he had at least tried to
get the clones to cooperate. They were the only sons he had now; he couldn't just give them up.
The Boardroom of the Benignity
of the Compassionate Hand
"I don't see any reason to butcher the cash cow," said the Senior Accountant. "Breed her, and we'll have
more calves to send to market."
"She's a shy breeder," muttered one of the diplomatic subordinates, who should have kept quiet. It was his
last mistake.
When the meeting resumed, several people walked across the damp patch on the carpet as if nothing had
happened. It wasn't unusual, and it didn't really reflect on Sasimo, whose protégé had been unwise. Every
senior man present had discovered that a first appearance in the Boardroom could unsettle a youngster
previously considered promising.
"Still, he had a point," the Chairman said. No one asked who, or what point; those who couldn't figure it out
didn't belong there. "The Familias walks like a tart, and talks like a tart, but carries a hatpin in her purse." The
hatpin being, as they all knew, the Regular Space Service's unbought fraction, which they knew down to the
level of cook's assistants.
After a respectful silence, the Senior Accountant coughed politely and began again. "It is a short hatpin, not
long enough to reach the heart of a strong man. A little risk, a prick perhaps, and—better a marriage than a
disgrace, eh?"
"Quite so," said the Chairman. "If it is only a flesh wound. Perhaps our admiral would review the situation?"
But indeed, the situation looked good. Not only were so many Fleet personnel on the Compassionate Hand
payroll, as it were, but they had been placed into critical positions. Given a good start, with new forward
bases increasing the number of jump points they could reach undetected, the Regular Space Service should
be immobilized by uncertainty as well as internal problems.
 

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