Chapter Ten

Two weeks later, Lunzie disembarked from the freighter Nova Mirage in the spaceport at Tau Ceti and stared as she walked along the corridors to the customs area. The change after seventy-five years was dramatic, even for that lapse of time on a colony world. The corrugated plastic hangars had been replaced by dozens of formed stone buildings that, had Lunzie not known better, she would have believed grew right out of the ground.

She felt an element of shock when she stepped outside. The unpaved roads had been widened and coated with a porous, self-draining polyester surface compound. Most of the buildings she remembered were gone, replaced by structures twice as large. She had seen the Tau Ceti colony in its infancy. It was now in full bloom. She was a little sad that the unspoiled beauty had been violated although the additions had been done with taste and colour, adding to, rather than detracting from their surroundings. Tau Ceti was still a healthy, comfortable place, unlike the gray dullness of Alpha Centauri. The cool air she inhaled tasted sweet and natural after two weeks of ship air, and a week’s worth of pollution before that. The sun was warm on her face.

Lunzie appreciated the irony of carrying the same dufflebags over her shoulder today that she had lugged so many decades before when she had left Fiona there on Tau Ceti. They’d all showed remarkably little visible wear. Well, all that was behind her. She was beginning her life afresh. Pay voucher in hand, she sought Nova Mirage’s office to collect her wages and ask for directions.

The trip hadn’t been restful but it had been fast and non-threatening. The Nova Mirage, an FTL medium-haul freighter, was carrying plumbing supplies and industrial chemicals to Tau Ceti. Halfway there, some of the crew had begun to complain of a hacking cough and displayed symptoms that Lunzie recognized as a form of silicosis. An investigation showed that one of the gigantic tubs in the storage hold containing powdered carbon crystals had cracked. This wouldn’t have mattered except that the tub was located next to an accidentally opened intake to the ventilation system; the fumes had leaked all over the ship. Except for being short fifty kilos on the order, all was well. It was merely an accident, with no evidence of sabotage. A week’s worth of exposure posed no permanent damage to the sufferers, but it was unpleasant while it lasted.

Lunzie had had the security alarm on her infirmary door during her sleep shift. It hadn’t let out so much as a peep the entire voyage. The hologram and its attendant cubes remained undisturbed at the bottom of her dufflebag. None of the crew had sensed that their friendly ship’s medic was anything out of the ordinary. And now she was on her way to deliver it and her message to their destination.

“I’d like to see Commander Coromell, please,” Lunzie requested at Fleet Central Command. “My name is Lunzie.”

“Admiral Coromell is in a meeting, Lunzie. Can you wait?” the receptionist asked politely, gesturing to a padded bench against the wall of the sparsely furnished, white-painted room. “You must have been travelling. Citizen. He’s had a promotion recently. Not a Lieutenant Commander any more.”

“Admiralties seem to run in his family,” Lunzie remarked. “And I’ll be careful to give him his correct rank. Ensign. Thank you.”

In a short time, a uniformed aide appeared to escort her to the office of the newly appointed Admiral Coromell.

“There she is,” a familiar voice boomed as she stepped into the room. “I told you there couldn’t be two Lunzies. Uncommon name. Uncommon woman to go with it.” Retired Admiral Coromell stood up from a chair before the honeywood desk in the square office and took her hand. “How do you do. Doctor? It’s a pleasure to see you, though I’m surprised to see you so soon.”

Lunzie greeted him with pleasure. “I’m happy to see you looking so well, sir. I hadn’t had a chance to give you a final checkup before they told me you’d gone.”

The old man smiled. “Well, well. But you surely didn’t chase me all the way here to listen to my heart, did you? I’ve never met a more conscientious doctor.” He did look better than he had when Lunzie saw him last, recently recovered from cold sleep, but she longed to run a scanner over him. She didn’t like the look of his skin tone. The deep lines of his face had sunken, and something about his eyes worried her. He was over a hundred years old which shouldn’t be a worry when human beings averaged 120 Standard years. Still, he had been through additional strain lately that had no doubt affected his constitution. His outlook was good, and that ought to help him prolong his life.

“I think she came to see me. Father.”

The man behind the desk rose and came around to offer her a hand in welcome. His hair was thick and curly like his father’s, but it was honey brown instead of white. Under pale brown brows, his eyes, of the same piercing blue as the senior Coromell’s, bored into her as if they would read her thoughts. Lunzie felt a little overwhelmed by the intensity.

He was so tall that she had to crane her head back to maintain eye contact with him.

“You certainly do tend to inspire loyalty, Lunzie,” the Admiral’s son said in a gentle version of his father’s boom. He was a very attractive man, exuding a powerful personality which Lunzie recognized as well suited to a position of authority in the Intelligence Service. “Your friend Teodor Janos was prepared to turn the galaxy inside out to find you. He certainly is proficient at computerised research. If it were not for him, I wouldn’t have had half the evidence I needed to convince the Fleet to commission a ship for the search, even with my own father one of the missing. It’s nice to finally meet you. How do you do?”

“Very well. Admiral,” Lunzie replied, flattered. “Er, I’m sorry. That’s going to become confusing, since both of you have the same name, and the same rank.”

The old man beamed at both of them. “Isn’t he a fine fellow? When I went away, he was just a lad with his new captain’s bars. I arrived two days ago and they were making him an admiral. I couldn’t be more proud.”

The young admiral smiled down at her. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one Admiral Coromell,” and he gestured to his father. “Between us, Lunzie, my name will be sufficient.”

Lunzie was dismayed with herself as she returned his smile. Hadn’t she just vowed not to let anyone affect her so strongly? With the painful breakup with Tee so fresh in her mind? Certainly Coromell was handsome and she couldn’t deny the charm nor the intelligence she sensed behind it. How dare she melt? She had only just met the man. Abruptly, she recovered herself and recalled her mission.

“I’ve got a message for you, er, Coromell. From Captain Aelock of the Ban Sidhe.”

“Yes? I’ve only just spoken with him via secure-channel FTL comlink. He said nothing about sending you or a message.”

Lunzie launched into an explanation, describing the aborted dinner date, the murder of Aelock’s contact and the attempted murder of the two of them. “He gave me this cube,” she finished, holding out the ceramic block, “and told me to tell you, ‘It’s Ambrosia.’ “

“Great heavens,” Coromell said, amazed, taking the block from her. “How in the galaxy did you get it here without incident?”

The old Admiral let out a hearty laugh. “The same way she travelled with me, I’ll wager,” he suggested, shrewdly. “As an anonymous doctor on a nondescript vessel. Am I not correct? You needn’t look so surprised, my dear. I was once head of Fleet Intelligence myself. It was an obvious ploy.”

Coromell shook his head, wonderingly. “I could use you in our operations on a regular basis, Lunzie.”

“It wasn’t my idea. Aelock suggested it,” Lunzie protested.

“Ah, yes, but he didn’t carry it out. You did. And no one suspected that you were a courier with top secret information in your rucksack - this!” Coromell shook the cube. He spun and punched a control on the panel atop his desk. “Ensign; please tell Crypotography I want them standing by.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the receptionist’s voice filtered out of a hidden speaker.

“We’ll get on this right away. Thank you, Lunzie.” Coromell ushered her and his father out. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to keep this information among as few ears as possible.”

“Well, well,” said the Admiral to an equally surprised Lunzie as they found themselves in the corridor. “May I offer you some lunch, my dear? What d’you say? We can talk about old times. I saw the most curious thing the other day, something I haven’t seen in years: a Carmen Miranda film. In two-D.”

Lunzie passed a few pleasant days in Tau Ceti, visiting places she’d known when she stayed there. It was still an attractive place. A shame, on the whole, that there hadn’t been a job here for her seventy-four years ago. The weather was pleasant and sunny, except for a brief rainshower early in the afternoon. By the hemispheric calendar, it was the beginning of spring. The medical center in which she worked had expanded, adding on a nursing school and a fine hospital. None of the people she’d known were still there. Flatteringly enough, the administrator looked up her records and offered her a position in the psychoneurology department.

“Since Tau Ceti became the administrative center for the FSP, we’ve seen a large influx of cases of space-induced trauma,” he explained. “Nearly a third of Fleet personnel end up in cryogenic sleep for one reason or another. With your history and training, you would be the de facto expert on cold sleep. We would be delighted if you would join the staff.”

Tempted, Lunzie promised she’d think it over.

She also interviewed with the shipping companies who were based on Tau Ceti for another position as a ship’s medic. To her dismay, a few of them took one look at the notation in her records indicating that she’d been in two space wrecks and instantly showed her the door. Others were more cordial and less superstitious. Those promised to let her know the next time they had need of her services. Three who had ships leaving within the next month were willing to sign her on.

She spent some time with old Admiral Coromell, talking about old times. She also found it affected her profoundly to be in a familiar venue in which no one remembered many of the events that she did. To her, less than four years had passed since she had left Fiona there. The Admiral was the only other one who recalled events of that era and he shared her feelings of isolation.

Two weeks later, Coromell himself stopped by to see her at the guest house where she had taken a room.

“Sorry to have booted you and Father out of the office the other day,” he apologised, with an engaging smile. “That information required immediate attention. I’ve been working on nothing else since then.”

“My feelings weren’t hurt,” Lunzie assured him. “I was just incredibly relieved that I’d got it to you. Aelock had impressed its important on me. Several ways.” The assassin’s grim face flashed before her eyes again.

Coromell smiled more easily now. “Lunzie, you’re a tolerant soul! To cross a galaxy with an urgent message and find the recipient is brusque to the point of rudeness. May I make amends now that all the flap is over and show you around? Or, perhaps, it’s more to the point that you show me around. I know you’d been here when Tau Ceti was just started.”