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At the end of the south wing, Alexandra found a metal stair spiraling up to an oval door. She glanced back down the hall, again up at the door.
Oval? she wondered. What a strange shape for a door in a house.
Through the windows beneath the spiral stairs, she could see the great white sun of Dyuna moving on towards evening. Long shadows stabbed down the hall. She returned her attention to the stairs. Harsh sidelighting picked out bits of dried earth on the open metalwork of the steps.
Alexandra put a hand on the rail, began to climb. The rail felt cold under her sliding palm. She stopped at the door, saw that it had no handle, but there was a faint depression on the surface of it where a handle should have been.
I hope that's not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one's individual hand shape and palm lines. But it looks like a palm lock. And there are ways to open any palm lock---as I had learned in school.
Alexandra glanced back to make sure she was unobserved, placed her palm against the depression in the door. The gentlest of pressures to distort the lines---a turn of the wrist, another turn, a sliding twist of the palm across the surface.
She felt the click.
Success!
But there were hurrying footsteps in the hall beneath her. Alexandra lifted her hand from the door, turned, saw El-Gaff come to the foot of the stairs.
"There are men in the great hall who say they've been sent by the Duke to fetch young master Alexei," El-Gaff said. "They've got the ducal signet and the guard has positively identified them." She glanced at the door, then back to Alexandra.
A cautious one, this El-Gaff, Alexandra thought. That's a good sign.
"He's in the fifth room from the end of the hall, the small bedroom," Alexandra said. "If you have trouble waking him, call on Dr. Rasputin in the next room. Alexei may require a stimshot."
Again, El-Gaff cast a piercing stare at the oval door, and Alexandra thought she detected loathing in the expression. Before Alexandra could ask about the door and what it hid, El-Gaff had turned away, hurrying back down the hall.
Botkin certified this place, Alexandra thought. There can't be anything to awful in here.
She pushed the door. It swung inward onto a small room with another oval door opposite. The other door had a wheel handle.
An airlock! Alexandra thought. She glanced down, saw a door prop fallen to the floor of the little room. The prop carried Botkin's personal mark. The door was left propped open, she thought. Someone probably knocked the prop down accidentally, not realizing the other door would close on a palm lock.
She stepped over the lip into the little room.
Why an airlock in a house? she asked herself. And the thought suddenly of exotic creatures sealed off in special climates.
Special climate!
That would make sense on Dyuna where even the driest off-planet growing things had to be irrigated.
The door behind her began swinging closed. She caught it and propped it open securely with the stick Botkin had left. Again, she faced the wheel-locked inner door, seeing now a faint inscription etched in the metal above the handle. She recognized Galactic Russian words, read:
"O, Man! Here is a lovely portion of God's Creation; then, stand before it and learn to love the perfection of Thy Supreme Friend."
Alexandra put her weight on the wheel. It turned left and the inner door opened. A gentle draft feathered her cheek, stirred her hair. She felt change in the air, a richer taste. She swung the door wide, looked through massed greenery with yellow sunlight pouring across it.
A yellow sun? she asked herself. Then: Filter glass!
She stepped over the sill and the door swung shut behind her.
"A wet-planet conservatory," she gasped.
Potted plants and low-pruned trees stood all about. She recognized a mimoza, a flowering pyatnadsat', an oporsy, green-blossomed pleniscenta, green and white striped akarso...roses...
Even roses!
She bent to breath the fragrance of a giant pink blossom, straightened up to peer around the room.
Rhythmic noise invaded her senses.
She parted a jungle overlapping of leaves, looked through to the middle of the room. A low fountain stood there, small with fluted lips. The rhythmic noise was a peeling, spooling arc of water falling thud-a-gallop onto the metal bowl.
Alexandra sent herself through the quick sense-clearing regimen, began a methodical inspection of the room's perimeter. It seemed to be about 10 meters square. From its placement above the end of the hall and from subtle differences in construction, she guessed it'd been added onto the roof of this wing long after the original building's completion.
She stopped at the sound limits of the room in front of the wide reach of filter glass, stared around. Every available space in the room was crowded with exotic wet-climate plants. Something rustled in the greenery. She tensed, then glimpsed a simple clock-set robotnik with pipe and hose arms. An arm lifted, sent out a fine spray of dampness that misted her cheeks. The arm retracted and she looked at what it had watered; a fern tree.
Water everywhere in this room--on a planet where water was the most precious juice of life. Water being wasted so conspicuously that it shocked her to utter stillness.
She glanced out at the filter-yellowed sun. It hung low on a jagged horizon above cliffs that formed part of the immense rock uplifting known as the Shield Wall.
Filter glass, she thought. To turn a white sun into something softer and more familiar. Who could have built a place like this? Did Nicholas build it? It would be just like him to shock me with such a gift, but there hasn't been time. And he's busy with matters more urgent.
She recalled the report that many Dyuni houses were sealed by airlock doors and windows to conserve and reclaim interior moisture. Nicholas had said that it was a deliberate statement of power and wealth for this house to ignore such precautions, its doors and windows being sealed only against the omnipresent dust.
But this room embodied a statement far more significant than the lack of waterseals on outer doors. She estimated that this pleasure room used water enough to support a thousand persons on Dyuna, possibly more.
Alexandra moved along the window, continuing to stare into that room. The move brought into view a metallic surface at table heights beside the fountain and she glimpsed a white notepad and stylus there partially hidden by an overhanging fan leaf. She crossed to the table, noted Botkin's daysigns on it, studied a message written on the pad:
"TO THE LADY ALEXANDRA---
May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me.
Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from these same teachers:
The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
My kindest wishes,
LADY LUCIENNE PASTERNAK
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Alexandra nodded, remembering that Nicholas had referred to the Sultan's former proxy here as Count Pasternak. But the hidden message of the note demanded immediate attention, couched as it was in a way to inform her that the writer was another Bala Garrasaid. A bitter thought touched Alexandra in passing. The Count married his Lady.
Even as this thought flicked through her mind, she was bending to seek out the hidden message. It had to be there. The visible note contained the code phrase every Bala Garrasaid unbound by School Injunction was required to give another Bala Garrasaid when conditions demanded it: "On that path lies danger."
Alexandra felt the back of the note, rubbed the surface for coded microdots. Nothing. The edge of the pad came under her seeking fingers. Nothing. She replaced the pad where she had found it, feeling a sense of urgency.
Something in the position of the pad? she wondered.
But Botkin had been over this room, doubtless had moved the pad. She looked at the leaf above the pad. The leaf! She brushed a finger along the under surface, along the edges, along the stem. There it was! Her fingers detected the subtle coded microdots, scanned them to one passage.
"Your son and Duke are in immediate danger. A bedroom has been designed to seduce your son. The S loaded it with death traps to be discovered, leaving one that may escape detection." Alexandra put down the urge to run back to Alexei: the full message had yet to be learned. Her fingers spread over the microdots: "I know not the true nature of the menace, but it has something to do with a bed. The threat to your Duke involves defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant. The S plan to give you as gift to a minion. As far as I know, this conservatory is safe. Forgive me that I cannot tell you more. My sources are few as my Count is not in the pay of the S. In haste, LP."
Alexandra thrust the leaf aside, whirled to dash back to Alexei. In that instant, the airlock door slammed open. Alexei jumped through it, holding something in his right hand, slammed the door behind him. He saw his mother, pushed through the leaves to her, glanced at the fountain, thrust his hand and the thing it clutched under the falling water.
"Alexei!" She grabbed his shoulder, staring at the hand. "What is that?"
He spoke casually, but she caught the effort behind the tone: "It's a hunter-seeker. I caught in my room and smashed its nose, but I want to be sure. Water should short it out."
"Immerse it, then!" she commanded.
He did so.
Presently, she said: "Withdraw your hand. Leave the thing in the water."
He brought out his hand, shook water from it, staring at the quiescent metal in the fountain. Alexandra broke off a plant stem, prodded the deadly silver-metal thing.
Yes, it was dead.
She dropped the stem into the water, looked at Alexei. His eyes studied the room with a searching intensity that she recognized---the B.G. Way!
"This place could hide anything," he said.
"I have reason to believe it's safe," she said.
"My room was supposed to be safe, too. Botkin said..."
"It was a hunter-seeker," she reminded him. "That means someone in the house had to be operating it. Seeker control beams have a limited range. The thing could've been spirited i her after Botkin's investigation."
But she thought of the message on the leaf: ....defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant." Not Botkin, surely. Oh, surely not Botkin.
"Botkin's men are searching the house right now," he said. "That seeker almost got the old woman who came to wake me up."
"The Hudtap El-Gaff," Alexandra said, remembering the encounter at the stairs. "A summons from your father to..."
"That can wait," Alexei said. "Why do you think this room's safe?"
She pointed to the note and explained about it.
He relaxed, but just slightly.
Alexandra remained inwardly intense, thinking: A hunter-seeker! Merciful Mother! It took all her training to prevent a fit of hysteria and trembling.
Alexei spoke matter-of-factly: "It's the Seppanens, of course. We shall have to destroy them."
A rapping sounded at the airlock door---the code knew of one of Botkin's corps.
"Enter," Alexei called.
The door swung wide open and a tall man in a Romanov uniform with a Botkin insignia on his cap leaned into the room. "There you are, sit," he said. "The housekeeper said you'd be here." He glanced around the room. "We found a cairn in the cellar and caught a man in it. He had a seeker console."
"I'll want to interrogate him personally," Alexandra said.
"It's not possible, my Lady. We messed him up capturing him. He died."
"Nothing to identify him?" she asked.
"We've found nothing yet, my Lady."
"Was he a Dyuni?" Alexei said.
Alexandra nodded at the astuteness of the quesiton.
"He has the native look," the man said. "Put into that cairn more than a month ago, by the look, and left there to await our coming. Stone and mortar where he came through into the cellar were untouched when we inspected the place yesterday. I'll stake my reputation on it."
"No one questions your toughness," Alexandra said.
"I question it, my Lady. We should have used sonic probes down there."
"I presume that's what you're doing now?" Alexei said.
"Yes, sir."
"Send word to my father that we will be delayed."
"At once, sir." He glanced at Alexandra. "It's Botkin's order that under such circumstances as these the young master must be guarded in a safe place." Again, his eyes swept the room. "What of this place?"
"I've reason to believe it's safe," she said. "Both Botkin and I have inspected it."
"Then I'll post guard outside here, m'Lady, until we've been over the house once again." He bowed, touched his cap to Alexei, backed out and swung the door closed behind him.
Alexei broke the sudden silence, saying: "Had we better go over the house later ourselves? Your eyes might see things others would miss."
"This wing was the only place I hadn't examined," she said. "I put it off to last because..."
"Because Botkin gave it his personal attention," he said.
She darted a fast look at his face, a questioning look.
"Do you now distrust Botkin?" she asked.
"It's not that; he's getting old and overworked. We should take some of the load off him."
"That would only shame him and impair his efficiency," she said. "A stray bug won't be able to wander into this wing after he hears about this. He'd be shamed that..."
"Still, we must take our own measures," he said.
"Botkin has served 3 generations of Romanovs with honor," she said. "He deserves every respect and trust we can pay him...one thousand times over."
Alexei said: "When my father is bothered by something you've done, he says, 'Bala Garrasaid!' like a curse word.
"And what is it about me that bothers your father?"
"When you argue with him."
"You are not your father, Alexei."
And Alexei thought: It'll worry her, but I must tell her what that El-Gaff woman said about a traitor in our midst.
"What are you holding back from me?" Alexandra asked. "This isn't like you, Alexei."
He shrugged, recounting the exchange with El-Gaff.
And Alexandra thought of the message on the leaf. She came to a sudden decision, showed Alexei the leaf, told him of its message.
"My father must learn of this at once," he said. "I'll radiograph it in code and send it off."
"No," she said. "You will wait until you can see him alone. As few as possible must know about it."
"We should trust no one?"
"There's another possibility," she said. "This message may have been meant to get to us. The people who gave it to us may think it's true, but it may be that the only purpose was to get the message to us."
Alexei's face stayed sturdily somber. "To sow distrust and suspicion in our ranks, to weaken us like that," he said.
"You must tell your father privately and alert him about the aspect of it," she said.
"I shall."
She turned to the tall reach of filtered glass, stared out to the southwest where the sun of Dyuna was sinking, a yellowed ball above the cliffs.
Alexei turned with her, said: "I don't think it's Botkin, either. Is it possible that it's Rasputin?"
"He's neither a lieutenant nor a companion," she said. "And I can assure you that he hates the Seppanens as bitterly as do we."
Alexei directed his attention to the cliffs, thinking: And it couldn't be Gustav....or Grady. Could it be one of the sub-lieutenants? Impossible! They're all from families that have been loyal to us for generations---for good reason!
Alexandra rubbed her forehead, sensing her own fatigue. So much danger here! She looked out at the filter-yellowed landscape, studying it. Beyond the ducal grounds stretched a high-fenced storage yard---lines of spice silos in it with stilt-legged watchtowers standing around it like so many startled spiders. She could see at least 20 storage yards of silos reaching out to the cliffs of the Barrier Walls---silos repeated, stuttering across the basin.
Slowly, the filtered sun buried itself beneath the horizon. Stars leaped out. She saw one bright star so low on the horizon that it twinkled with a clear, precise rhythm---a trembling of light: blink-blink-blink-blink-blink.
Alexei stirred beside her in the dusky room.
But Alexandra concentrated on that single bright star, realizing that it was too low, that it must come from the Barrier Wall cliffs.
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She tried to read the message, but it was in no code she'd ever learned.
Other lights had come on down on the plain beneath the cliffs, little yellows spaced out against a darkness of blue. And one light off to their left grew brighter, began to wink back at the cliff---very fast: blinksquirt, glimmer, blink!
And then it was gone
The false star in the cliff immediately winked out.
Signals---and they filled her with premonition.
Why were lights used to signal across the basin? she asked herself. Why couldn't they use the communications network?146Please respect copyright.PENANAieBqZpHwkq
The answer was obvious: the communinet was sure to be tapped now by agents of the Duke Nicholas. Light signals could only mean that the messages were being sent between his enemies---between Seppanen spies.
There came a tapping at the door behind them and the voice of Botkin's man: "All clear, sir---m'Lady. Time to be getting the young master to his father."
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