Reclamation

Iyal blinked at him. She tried to take her time to formulate a decent reply. That was a mistake, because it gave Allenden's little speech time to sink in. He'd obviously rehearsed it several times. Maybe he'd even talked to some people who had better sense than he did. If you believed in conspiracies, the formula made too much sense, and if you'd ever seen the Vitae organize a project, you believed in conspiracies.

It would still mean that Perivar had lied to her, and that Aria had lied to her, and that Zur-Iyal ki Maliad had seen the chance for profit and advancement and had lost track of the overall situation.

That was not acceptable.

"I said, if you want to question my judgment, you take it to Our Cousin Director. Until he fires me, I'm your supervisor, and I say that Aria Stone is my responsibility, not yours." She folded her arms and directed her attention to the cattle pens. Keyenar slammed the truck's gate shut and waved to the driver. The transport rolled across the grass. Its balloon tires molded to the damp ground so the turf would be disturbed as little as possible. The labs only had an allotment of ninety-five acres of chopped ground and they needed all of that for gardens and pens. They couldn't afford to go hacking up the fields.

Allenden reached across the chair's boards and with one, bone-thin finger tapped six keys, one after the other. The manifest cleared from the main screen and in its place appeared a view of Lab #20. Aria Stone hunched in front of the comm screen on Allenden's research table. Iyal squinted over the dark woman's shoulder and saw nothing but a blur of gold light on a black screen. Allenden keyed for the security camera to zoom in closer on the text. Aria had the screen set for the fastest scan level and the words flashed by too fast for Iyal to do more than pick out one or two at a time, but she did catch the gold logo of the First Families and the green-and-blue globe of the Kethran Diet.

Seven screens of information flashed past before Iyal realized Aria was reading transcriptions from the Diet sessions. Reading high-formal tense, legally extensive and twisted documents restricted to First Family access. Iyal touched two keys and brought up a profile from the second security camera. Aria's black eyes flickered back and forth. She was really reading them, and reading them faster than Iyal could.

Iyal sat back in the chair, not caring what Allenden made out of the bewildered look on her face.

Impossible. Ridiculous. She had only started learning the language four weeks ago. She didn't even have full command of one level of grammar yet. She barely knew where an ON switch on a view table was. How in all the worlds that lived had she gotten into secured files?

Allenden planted both hands on the edge of the board. "We've got a spy in the ranks, Cousin Manager."

"No."

"What do you mean no!" Allenden reared up like a startled cow. "Look at her!"

"Yes." Iyal gestured at the screen. "Look at her. Right in front of the security camera. Clear as all outdoors and solid as dirt. You're telling me a spy, a VITAE spy, is going to tap the secured network from the lab in front of a camera?"

Allenden's mouth opened and closed three or four times before he finally said, "Then what else could she possibly be?"

"1 don't have any idea." Iyal hit the HOME key on the chair's control board at the same time. "But I'm going to go find out."

"You can't just…" began Allenden as the chair's legs telescoped up to their active length.

"I can, and you'll wait until I have before you say another word to anybody." The chair rocked forward, picking its quick, mincing steps over the grass. Iyal twisted around to see if Allenden understood. "We need to know what we're dealing with before we make a fuss."

Allenden nodded. Iyal took that as a good sign and settled back into her chair again. The sedan carried her down the paths that bisected the beds of medical plants and grains. The lab section had been laid out for efficiency, not aesthetics. Domes of white polymer skins alternated with square, white concrete buildings that sat in the middle of squared-off plots of plain grass. A quarter of an acre of grass had to be reserved for every cubic meter of building so that solar reflection and environmental absorption would balance each other out.

People and drones hustled to and fro down the prescribed paths. One or two raised their hands in greeting, but Iyal only nodded absently in return.

Aria Stone. Aria Stone. Iyal had been all but breathing Aria Stone since Perivar had brought her to the lab. For weeks now, Iyal had wished in vain that she could find whoever had designed the woman's ancestors so she could shake their hands, and then pick their brains, even if they were the Vitae.

She'd told Perivar that Aria was a walking work of art, but now Iyal was ready to revise that interpretation. The woman was nothing short of a miracle.