Free Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber, Eric Flint Page B

Sharon ?
    Imbesi said it for him. “So all hell’s about to break loose.” He nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll let the triumvirate know. Sharon, High Commissioner Radamacher—”
    “Call me Yuri, please.”
    “One moment, Walter.” Sharon leaned forward a little. “As long as we’re on the subjects of secrecy and all hell breaking loose, when can we expect a briefing from you regarding the new relationship you’ve forged with Maya Sector? Congratulations, by the way. You’ve come up in the galaxy. You used to launder money and now you’re laundering superdreadnoughts.”
    She smiled sweetly. “Seeing as how we’re allies, as you just pointed out.”
    There was no reaction at all on Imbesi’s face in response to those comments. Which were obviously something else Yuri needed to be briefed on.
    After a moment, Imbesi just said: “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Have a pleasant day.”
    The screen went dark.
    “I can’t remember feeling like such a complete ignoramus since I was twelve,” Yuri complained. “When I got called on in class to enumerate the noble gases and I didn’t have a clue what the teacher was talking about. Since when did chemical elements have an aristocracy?”

Chapter 7
    The alley below was vacant, except for the usual piles of debris. Cary Condor removed her finger and let the curtain covering the window fall back in place. It was an old-style material curtain—a piece of decorated fabric—rather than a modern electronic screen. There was a screen in place also, and Cary flipped the switch to turn it back on.
    “Are you really sure this is necessary?” she asked, as she turned away from the window. “It seems . . . pretty unsanitary.”
    “The curtain?” Stephanie Moriarty looked up from the table where she was working at a portable computer. “You’d be surprised how effective a simple material block is to a lot of surveillance techniques. There’s more to the world than electrons. Besides, how is it any more unsanitary than everything else in this dump?”
    Cary didn’t have a good answer for that, beyond I’m used to crappy clothes and bedding. So she shifted her objection to the curtain onto other grounds. “If somebody comes in here on a raid it’ll be a dead giveaway that we’re trying to hide something. Nobody in this day and age, not even in Mesa’s seccy quarters, uses antiques like this.”
    “Oh, for—” Moriarty took a deep breath. “Cary, if ‘somebody’—and, gee whiz, who might that be other than security goons?—comes busting in here on a raid, explaining a curtain will be the least of our problems.”
    There came a hoarse chuckle from the figure lying on a bed in one of the corners of the room. “Probably won’t be any kind of problem at all. On account of we’ll be in little bitty pieces two seconds after they come in. Both of you and what’s left of me.”
    Karen Steve Williams raised her head from the pillow enough to gaze down at her legs. Her nonexistent legs, below the knees. “I try to look on the bright side. At least my damn feet would stop itching.”
    Moriarty’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Be careful what you wish for. If your no-longer-there feet can still itch, how do you know that your no-longer-there body won’t itch too, once you’re dead?”
    Karen chuckled again. “Talk about a fix! Spend all of eternity trying to scratch a nonexistent itch with nonexistent hands.”
    Cary gave her two companions an exasperated look. She did not share their amusement with silly whimsies. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Not there. Your body isn’t nonexistent, you are. Itching is irrelevant. It’s like saying the color yellow won’t be in harmony any longer.”
    “Spoilsport.” That came from Karen, whose head was back on the pillow and whose eyes were closed again. She didn’t have much energy these days. Cary didn’t think she’d live for many more weeks. The injuries the young woman