Free Investments by Walter Jon Williams Page A

Martinez bit back the question.
    Of course they could have blasted, he thought; but explosive wouldn’t have added a hefty enough overcharge. Then Martinez remembered, during the party held in his honor at Rio Hondo, a conversation between Lords Pa and Mukerji. Something about the geologist’s report ...
    Suddenly Martinez wondered if Mukerji— the plunging gambler— been the Chee Company official responsible for approving the cost overruns. He was president of the company, after all, very possibly he could approve such things.
    But Mukerji had never been to Chee— the requests would have had to chase him all over the empire as he went off on his quests for funds. Mukerji had never been to Chee, and wouldn’t have been available to fill most spending requests.
    Unless . . . unless Mukerji was part of the conspiracy. Receiving payments from the conspirators in order to relieve his gambling debts.
    “Interesting,” Martinez said.
    Ahmet’s eyes glittered in the lamplight, the admiration of one thief and confidence man for a job well and professionally done. “Fascinating,” he said, “isn’t it? Geology?”

    *

The question was how to reveal to Eggfont the relationship between Lord Mince and Lady Belledrawers. If Eggfont was told by the valet Cadaver, that would tell Eggfont something about Cadaver that for the present should remain hidden. Yet how else could Eggfont find out in time for the Grand Ball ...?
    A token, Severin thought. A mysterious token, which Eggfont would understand but which would be opaque to anyone else. But introduced by who ?
    Severin tapped Lady Liao’s ring on the arm of his couch in slow accompaniment to his thoughts. He had to admit that his invention was flagging. It was three hours past midnight in Surveyor’s official twenty-nine-hour day, and Severin was tired. He could call for a cup of coffee from the wardroom, he supposed, but that would mean waking up someone.
    Perhaps Severin should put his puppet show aside and find something else to occupy his thoughts. Commanding the ship, for instance.
    Surveyor ’s control room had the usual stations, for navigation, for controlling the engines, for communications, for the captain and the pilot and the sensor tech. Each station featured a couch balanced carefully in its acceleration cage, and each couch was equipped with a hinged control board that could lock down in front of the occupant.
    At the moment the sensor station was occupied by a very bored Warrant Officer Second Class Chamcha, and the screen that occupied his desultory attention wasn’t tuned to the spectacular starscapes of Chee’s system, but to a game called Mindsprain, which he was losing through inattention. The sensor station had only been crewed because regulations required it, just as regulations required someone at the engine station, at the moment Lily Bhagwati, another at communications— Signaler Trainee Jaye Nkomo— and yet another, qualified to stand watches, in the captain’s couch— Severin himself.
    The ship had completed the hour out of each watch dedicated to hard acceleration, and breakfast was still hours away. Severin’s attention drifted vaguely over the smiling pictures of Lord Go’s family that the captain had attached to the command board— the captain was lenient that way, and each station in the control room was decorated with personal items belonging to the various crew who served at that station. Pictures of family, notes from loved ones, paper flowers, jokes, poems, pictures of actors and singers and models, someone pretty to dream about when you were three months away from the nearest ring station.
    Severin wished he could put a picture of Lady Liao on the board, as provocative a picture as possible. But then she was married to a prominent Peer and jurist, and Severin could hardly advertise their relationship that way.
    Severin realized that he’d been staring for many minutes at Lord Go’s family, the smiling wife and waving