CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Aboard Vanguard

“Captain, Bassoon wants you,” Vanguard’s comtech said.

Ky switched to that channel. “Vatta here.”

“Captain Vatta, I’ve just had a disturbing message—via ansible—from ISC. Apparently my repair tripped some kind of automatic signal, and they’ve threatened to have Bassoon arrested anywhere we go, for violation of the Commercial Code.”

“Did they get your ship ID?”

“Yes. They stripped our beacon. I’d explained it was an emergency situation, with ships attacked and casualties, and they said that was no excuse. I…er…I shouldn’t have, but I did say I was part of the Space Defense Force—”

“No reason you shouldn’t,” Ky said. “What happened?”

“They said they had no record of any such organization. Of course they don’t, but…then they said it must be an illegal organization and they’d report that, too.”

“That’s not good,” Ky said. “Not that I’m blaming you, Dan. It’s my fault, if it’s anyone but theirs. If they’d repaired their ansibles in a timely manner, none of this would’ve happened. I wish I knew if Rafe—the ISC person we had aboard for a while—was at ISC headquarters by now or not. He might be able to straighten this out, but trying to contact him could be tricky.”

“They said any attempts to contact them would result in gathering more evidence against us,” Pettygrew said.

“Well…I may have a roundabout way of doing it so they don’t know it’s us,” Ky said. “It’ll take awhile to work out, though. Meanwhile, we should get in a better defensive position in case something unfriendly comes through the jump point.”

“Do you expect anyone?”

“Not really. But we don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised, either by pirates or by an irate ISC ship. We can protect Metaire best if we’re not sitting on top of either the ansible position or Metaire itself.”

“You know we expended a lot of our missiles—”

“I know. We don’t want to fight a serious battle, but we could manage a fighting retreat. Metaire’s worse off than we are, and they’re still picking up their dead.”

“There’s a lot of junk out there,” Pettygrew said. “It’ll take them days to find all the remains, if they can.”

“Kalin’s hoping one of his messages got to the relief convoy so they can call in a hazmat ship,” Ky said. “But he’s not prepared to abandon the search just yet.” She had already added minesweepers and post-battle hazmat teams to her wish list, with the wry thought that Spaceforce Academy hadn’t really prepared her to organize a fleet. “You’ll need to reposition, and I’ll contact Argelos—we’ll have a brief all-ships conference in two hours.” If nothing happened before then. “Meanwhile, I’ll also tell Colonel Kalin what we’re up to.”

“All-ships including Ransome’s Rangers?”

Ky rolled her eyes. “I suppose…for the part of it they won’t think too boring. They served us well, whatever we think of them.”

“True. Well, then, I’ll be on my way,” Pettygrew said.

Two hours later, Ky convened the conference. “This will be short,” she said, “since we know that hostiles were undoubtedly made aware of the defeat of their people and may decide to attempt retaliation. We can’t leave, because Metaire is still retrieving casualties and several of us have Mackensee personnel, including wounded, aboard. I’ve discussed Metaire’s situation with the Mackensee officer in command. He’s expecting a group of Mackensee ships in ten to twelve days, but those ships think they’re bringing troops to change out for training exercises. He is unwilling to leave until they arrive. They will be armed, of course…and our first concern is that they not attack us, thinking we’re the enemy. We know these ships are coming, and approximately when. We don’t know about the others—the pirates and, unfortunately, ISC. Pirates are likely to attack in force, if they come. They will know we expended ammunition and there’s no place here to resupply; they will know that a Mackensee ship was seriously damaged and that Mackensee had many casualties…they may realize that we’re still here and more vulnerable than before. But since we don’t know if they’re coming, or when they might get here, or with how many ships if they do come, our ability to plan for them is limited. Our discussions earlier, you recall, led to some excellent suggestions for situations like this, so—” Ky put up a diagram. “This is what we’re going to do—”

Nexus II,
ISC Headquarters

Rafe looked out the window at the swirls of snow and wished he were out there somewhere, anonymous, going about his business—whatever that might have been—able to stop in to any shop, ride on any carrier, without arousing attention. He had come to work in the private car, as usual, with his own private bodyguards; it was now the only way he could go anywhere.

He had dealt with the first of the morning’s work, and now he could not put off any longer the problem his father insisted was urgent. Here and there, in the vast territory where ISC had once held an unbreakable monopoly on long-distance communication, ansibles out of service were coming back online…but not because ISC repair crews had fixed them. Economically, in the short term at least, this was a good thing: the more ansibles, the more traffic, and the more traffic, the more profit. He had made this argument with his father. If they didn’t have to send a repair team, it saved costs; if the calls went through, they were paid.

But his father insisted that it was a dangerous precedent, that letting systems fix their own ansibles was tantamount to giving them part ownership in them. It violated the old licensing agreements; it ran counter to those sections in the Universal Commercial Code that ISC had insisted on putting in.

And what exercised his father most was the Slotter Key repair, which had been done—no secret about it—at the behest of Grace Lane Vatta, now Sub-Rector of Defense. In his father’s mind, the line of guilt from Lew Parmina ran straight to anyone he’d befriended…and he had befriended the Vatta family. Vattas were at least suspect, his father insisted. He had been appalled to learn that Rafe had spent time—a lot of time—with two surviving members of that family, that Rafe expressed anything other than suspicion of their motives.

And now ISC’s legal staff were scrambling to deal with requests from an intellectual property lawyer on Cascadia who wanted to know where patents relevant to “mobile ansibles” might be filed. Rafe knew exactly where that request came from. Ky had said flat out she intended not only to use the shipboard ansible installed on Osman’s ship, but also to share the others with allies. Stella…Stella had seen the economic side; clearly she was preparing to manufacture and sell them. And Toby…whether the rest of the family knew it or not, Toby was one of those rare tech geniuses, and Rafe had recognized it. If Toby had been tinkering with the design, who knew what might come out of it?

He hadn’t yet told his father about this, but he would have to soon. Though his father was progressing slowly in rehab—the brain damage had been more severe than they first hoped, and neural regeneration proceeded at its own measured rate—he insisted on being kept up to date on the main issues at ISC. If Rafe didn’t tell him, one of his old friends might—even though they had been told, by the doctors, not to talk business with him.

He could imagine the response. His father had seemed, when he was a boy, so calm and reasonable…but now, in the wake of Lew Parmina’s betrayal and his own injuries, he had formed this one unshakable, irrational conclusion. Lew had counted the Vatta family as friends; therefore the Vatta family was, most likely, an enemy. The whole shipboard ansible mess was their fault—hadn’t such ansibles been found on a Vatta ship? And wasn’t it another Vatta who insisted on using them? And now Stella Vatta was trying to find out about the relevant patents.

“Excuse me, sir.” Emil Borcaster, borrowed from the family’s own legal firm as his personal assistant, tapped on the door frame. Emil had checked out clean, according to Gary’s people…unlike some of the other candidates for the job.

“Yes, come in.”

“There’s a new report on the ansible repair situation. A relay ansible’s been brought online by something calling itself the Space Defense Force, Third Fleet. We don’t have them in our records—they don’t have an account with us or anything—but I did a little digging. Our people on Adelaide report that a group of three ships showed up there, calling themselves the Space Defense Force, and made an ansible connection to the offices of Vatta Transport on Cascadia.”

“Surely you jest,” Rafe said, swallowing the urge to scream and slam his head on the desk. Ky. It had to be Ky. What she was doing in Adelaide when she’d started off in the opposite direction, he didn’t know, but clearly she’d created that multisystem force she’d been talking about. The “Third Fleet” part sounded overdone, though. He was willing to bet it was a ruse, and all she had was what came with her.

“No, sir; it’s not a joke. And the commanding officer of that group of ships was a Kylara Vatta. With an account at Adelaide Central Bank; the records on the financial ansible at Adelaide show a funds transfer to Vatta Transport on Cascadia.”

“And I thought the day couldn’t get worse,” Rafe muttered.

“Sir? But this makes it clearer, doesn’t it? The Vatta family is working against ISC.”

“Where did you hear that?” Rafe asked.

“Well…down in Enforcement, they’re saying that’s three. Grace Vatta pushing to get Slotter Key’s Spaceforce to meddle with their ansible. Stella Vatta trying to infringe our patents on ansible technology, and now Kylara Vatta and this illegally constituted organization calling itself Space Defense Force tampering with another ansible. Four if you count the shipboard ansibles on Osman Vatta’s ship. I know you don’t, but some do.”

“There’s something you don’t know, Emil,” Rafe said. “As my assistant, you have to be in on this, but you must keep it quiet…besides us, only Legal knows, and they aren’t talking.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“We have no patents on the shipboard ansibles.”

“What? Of course we do! ISC patent attorneys are famous for patenting anything and everything—”

“Yes. And the decision was made, years back, to use that reputation, not actual recorded patents, to protect the mobile ansible technology.”

“But…but that was stupid! Why—?”

“The danger of letting it be known what was possible, even if it was protected under law. We’d have had to file the plans, including the details of how the design was kept from interfacing with system ansibles. At that point, someone somewhere could have accessed them, taken them to some system that wasn’t entirely within the law, and started manufacture.”

“Did your father make that decision?”

“No. But he concurred. What we have now is an attempt to stonewall while we see if there is any way at all we can claim rights in the technology, or if someone else—the pirates who are using it, for instance—managed to file patents on it in some out-of-the-way mudball where our staff doesn’t usually troll for inventions, because there aren’t any.”

“Then—then Vatta Transport isn’t trying to infringe?”

“No. They’re trying not to infringe—they actually inquired—and if they went on and manufactured onboard ansibles by the shipload, we’d have no legal complaint. Not at the moment, anyway.”

“But if they’re just small, lightweight versions of system ansibles—I know ISC holds the patents on that—”

“They’re not,” Rafe said. “I’ve examined them—and I already knew, pretty much, how they differed. It’s a mess, is what it is, and we’re not doing ourselves much good by stonewalling. I’m going to try to convince the Board of that.”

“They won’t like it.”

“I don’t like it. But with so many systems angry that we haven’t restored their communications, and our income stream still dropping, I don’t see that we’re going to get much satisfaction in the courts if we try to fight it.” Rafe shook his head. “The legitimate members of the Vatta family—and no, I don’t count Osman—found and used the shipboard technology that originated in our research labs. But they didn’t steal it from us; it had already been stolen because we didn’t protect it, either physically or legally. None of those units had been manufactured here. It’s one of the things I checked. Moreover, we didn’t take out the necessary patents, so…legally…there’s nothing underhanded at all in what Stella and Ky Vatta did about those.”

“But the other—”

“Vattas aren’t the only ones to do unauthorized ansible repair,” Rafe said. “We have a dozen, don’t we, on the list?”

“Fourteen today, sir.”

“Right. And only two of them remotely associated with Vattas.”

“That we know of,” Emil said, scowling.

“That we know of. Fine. But still…if Lew Parmina hadn’t made such a point of being friendly with them, would anyone seriously suspect them?”

“No…I suppose not. But he did, and you said we still haven’t found all his people in the organization.”

“Vattas aren’t his people. Just an ordinary—well, ordinary for rich—family he chose to be friends with. For all we know, as cover.” Though, now that he came to think of it, why had Lew Parmina chosen to get close to the Vatta family? And how close?

Unfortunately, he couldn’t call Stella and ask her. That would raise an even bigger stink.

“So—did Enforcement send a message on this latest repair thing?”

“Of course. They stripped the beacon off the ship involved—Bassoon, with Bissonet registry. In fact, it’s listed as part of the Bissonet Free Militia, which is—or was, until the recent unfortunate events—what Bissonet calls their privateers.”

“And the captain is Kylara Vatta?”

“No, no. Bassoon’s captain is Daniel Pettygrew. Vatta’s ship is the Vanguard, Moscoe Confederation registry. Anyway, Enforcement told Pettygrew that they didn’t recognize the organization as a legal entity, and that they’d stripped his beacon and filed a complaint against him in every available jurisdiction.”

“Who’s in charge down there this shift? Oh, right, Jessie Squires. Get her for me, will you?”

“You’re not going to rescind it, are you?”

“Not personally, no. The more I can do through established channels, the better. I will convince Jessie it’s in our best interest to rescind it. Bissonet’s fallen to the pirates and their allies; Pettygrew’s a refugee. Yes, he probably knows our rules, but he’s actually done us a service. And if Pettygrew is with Ky Vatta, they’re hunting pirates—which is exactly what someone needs to do before they’re walking into this office and blowing our heads off.”

“You don’t really think that could happen, do you, sir? We have our own space forces.”

“Emil, you have never been in real danger in your life, have you? Ever been on a space station when someone blew a ship, or a hole in the station? Ever been in a ship someone else was trying to blow? Ever had even one weapon fired at you in your whole life?”

“No…sir.” Emil looked confused.

“I have. More times than I care to remember, someone has tried to kill me personally, or me along with a lot of other people they didn’t care about. I know we have, on the books, more armed spacecraft than anyone else we know about, and we have a lot of people assigned to Enforcement Division. And I know exactly what the reality is: this planet is as vulnerable as any other, this office is as vulnerable as any other, and you are as vulnerable as any other.”

“And you, sir?”

Rafe had two of his weapons out before Emil finished speaking. “I, Emil, am one degree less vulnerable because I believe I can be killed.” Emil, he was glad to see, had turned an unpleasantly pale shade of his normal coloring. “Don’t panic, boy; I’m not going to kill you. But anything as big, as rich, as powerful, and as centralized as ISC has TARGET written on it in large glowing letters.” Rafe slid the needler back into its holster and the blade back up his sleeve.

“But we’ve never been attacked—” Emil stopped as he saw Rafe’s expression. “Have we?”

“The short answer is yes, but not for a long time. Aside from things like abduction, like my father, and attempts at assassination.” Rafe reached for one of the folders on his desk. “Let me read you something. Remember I asked for an update on Enforcement’s resources?”

“Yes…”

“ISC maintains an armed fleet—everyone knows that. The thing about armed fleets is that they cost a lot. Then you have to crew them: ships without crews don’t do you any good. And that costs a lot. Then you have to train the crews and keep them in practice: crews that never go on maneuvers are easy meat for those that do. And that costs a lot, not only for the munitions and fuel and other supplies to go on maneuvers, but also refitting and repair…because anything you use deteriorates, and rough use wears it out faster. Are you following this?”

“Yes…”

“So…” Rafe opened the file and started reading. “Average age of ISC armed vessels: sixty-eight years. Average age of ISC group commanders: sixty-four years. Average time from last weapons upgrade: thirty-seven years. Average interval since last maneuvers with live fire: six years. Percent of armed vessels deemed battle-ready—are you ready for this?—eleven.”

Emil stared back at him, a mix of confusion and fright on his face. “That’s…not good, is it?”

“That’s pathetic,” Rafe said. “We might be able to scare a backward colony planet into thinking we’re all-powerful, but any competent military force that knew what I now know wouldn’t hesitate to take us on. What’s protecting us right now is our reputation. Enforcement doesn’t understand that; they haven’t actually done much in a long time, so they think having thousands of ships on the books is the same as having thousands of ships that can actually fight. The back of this report is one long self-serving explanation of why the damning figures up front—that I insisted on seeing—don’t matter. But they do matter.”

“Your father—”

“Apparently accepted Enforcement’s view of our military might.”

“Were you…uh…in another military while you were…uh…gone? Is that how you know so much?”

Rafe laughed. “No, I’m not soldier material. But despite folk mythology that you have to do it to understand it, even the sterile can understand how babies get made, and even a pacifist can understand supply, tactics, and the chain of command.” Emil looked shocked this time; Rafe sighed and excised the irony from his tone. “I had a friend who was a soldier,” he said instead. “I learned a lot by listening.”

“Oh. All right. But if ISC is so vulnerable, what are you going to do about it?”

That was the sticker. “I’m not sure,” Rafe said. “It will probably involve, like most things military, a lot of misdirection and the expenditure of enough money to make Accounting blench. Hopefully no one will find out how feeble our resources are until we’ve had time to strengthen them, but we can’t count on that. Parmina may have taken the reports at face value, like my father, or he may have known how weak we are—and if he knew, he might have told his pirate allies, or he might have kept it to himself, something he could use later on. We have to assume, worst case, that the pirates do know. At the moment, I’m sending you down to Enforcement to hand-carry a note to Squires that she’s to come up here. You will not—repeat after me, not—tell her what I’ve been telling you.”

Emil nodded and left. Rafe felt like sneaking out and disappearing into the snow, which had now thickened to blizzard proportions. The task was too big, the difficulties too many and too complex. He was fit for the little jobs, not this one.

But here he was, mired in an expensive suit in a vast office where most people seemed to think the purpose of their job was to feed him comfortable lies. He looked at the notes Emil had put on his schedule. Meetings with a cabinet official at 1100, with another government department head at 1300, with the senior representative of Crown & Spears at 1500. They all wanted to meet him, get to know him, tell him how much they respected his father and how sorry they were and if they had only known…or so yesterday’s meetings had gone.

And all because of ISC’s reputation as a powerful, necessary monopoly, which was now—though they didn’t know it yet—shattered and gone: that incredible wealth, that reputation for toughness and strength. When they found out how hollow the gold statue really was, he knew who would get the blame. The old man’s son, the bad boy who wasn’t, after all, up to the job.

He knew what to do—unpopular as it would be with the Board, the bankers, the government. If he called Stella himself, he could probably get her to deal with him, maybe even put out the shipboard ansibles under ISC’s label, which would give them an immediate market advantage. But—could he do it? Would the Board back him? Would his father?

Cascadia Station

Stella Vatta listened to the lawyer’s recitation of ISC’s delaying tactics with mounting anger. “I thought it was illegal now to register patents in obscure jurisdictions—”

“It’s supposed to be, certainly, though it was common practice before the Commercial Code was approved. And Nexus is a signatory to the code, so it should apply to ISC for all patents issued within the past hundred-and-seventy-odd years. I’ve searched all the relevant databases; no patents relating to shipboard ansibles are in any of the five systems where patents are supposed to be registered. But ISC’s legal department claims that some of the technology could have been patented before adoption of the code, or could have been registered remotely, as their research labs are widely scattered—but they won’t tell me where, for reasons of security, they say.”

“I’ll bet they don’t even have patents,” Stella said.

“I find that hard to credit,” the lawyer said. Like all Cascadian attorneys, he was studiously courteous.

“If they had patents, they’d be eagerly telling us what they were,” Stella said. “I don’t think they’ve lost them; I think they never had them. Rafe said they were practically paranoid about secrecy, and were convinced that the technology involved would endanger their monopoly. They’d know about patent searches; they’d be worried someone could figure out how to pirate the tech, produce it remotely somewhere—”

“Then, if you’re convinced of that, let’s go on and apply for patents here,” the lawyer said. “From the little you’ve told me, this is revolutionary stuff.”

“It will blow the top off communications,” Stella said. “And it’s time you knew all about it.” She took a data cube out of the pocket of her suit. “Here. Look at this on my machine, right here.” She handed it to him, then sat back and watched as he read from the screen.

“Oh…my…trees and leaves and roots and branches,” he said. “This really works?”

“The pirates have the old form,” Stella said. “The stuff that someone stole from ISC’s research lab—don’t know who, or when, or how. We’ve improved it considerably, as you see.”

“It makes system ansibles obsolete,” the lawyer said. “Or almost.”

“Not really,” Stella said. “All regular communications nets tie into them—planetary and station communications, for instance. What this does is give ships the ability to go ship-to-ship even when a system ansible doesn’t exist, and ship-to-ansible at distances where lightspeed communication to and from a system ansible is slow and difficult. System ansibles will still carry most traffic.”

“But if they can be mounted on ships, they can be mounted anywhere—on stations, even in offices and homes.”

“True. But I still think the existing communications networks will keep system ansibles in business.”

“You need to apply for patents right away,” the attorney said. “Today. Is this the only complete dataset?”

“No. But it’s the only one that’s out of secure storage.”

“I assume you’d rather I didn’t take it with me?”

“Correct.”

“Then I’ll contact my office, download the appropriate forms, and—may I see one of these in operation?”

“Yes, of course. We do in fact have one here.” Stella took back the data cube and led him into the back office, which now connected to the “research lab” where Toby worked. She had finally gotten all the parts out of their apartment living room. Toby looked up from his workbench; Rascal, at his feet, looked up, then lay his nose back on Toby’s foot.

“Toby, we need a demonstration. What’s the time in Aunt Grace’s office?”

“I’ll look it up,” Toby said.

“Conventionally, I’d use a regular long-distance service, call the system ansible, and set up a call to Slotter Key’s ansible. That ansible would route my call through local call centers to the code number I specified. There would be delay at both ends, attenuated by something ISC refers to as a ‘system booster’ to near-natural conversational pauses. From the effect, we’re guessing these are smaller, less powerful ansibles placed in orbiting satellites, but we don’t actually know.”

“Nine in the morning,” Toby said. “We’re back in sync for the next few days.”

“Slotter Key’s rotation isn’t the same as the standard day length here,” Stella explained. “But we’re lucky, because I can call Aunt Grace right now. In fact, we’ll place two calls—one by conventional, and one using our own ansible—and you can observe the difference. Toby, you start the connection on my mark. I’ll be calling on the ordinary one.”

Stella picked up the desk phone, said “Now” to Toby, and entered the origination codes for an ansible call to Slotter Key. She handed the headset to the attorney so he could hear for himself the familiar clicks and buzzes that went with an ansible call. The status lights went from red to green, and there was a brief display of Slotter Key’s logo.

“She says what do you want, she’s busy,” Toby reported, from his side of the room.

“I’ll take that,” Stella said as she heard a voice on the attorney’s headset.

To that one, she said, “I’m Stella Vatta, calling for Grace Vatta. I know she’s on another line, but ask her to confirm that the other line is an ansible call from Vatta Transport headquarters.”

The attorney listened in as a male voice came back on. “Yes, she is on such a call. What’s going on?”

“Just a test of our equipment,” Stella said. “Tell her Stella sends her love and things are looking up.”

She walked across the room and gestured Toby aside; he was pink to the ears. Aunt Grace, who had turned on her video pickup, glared out of the screen.

“Stella! What are you playing at? Why two calls on two lines from your office?”

“Good news,” Stella said. “But I can’t give you details yet.”

“Young lady—”

“There are a few legal threads to tie down,” Stella said. “And that’s all I can say.”

“You were born a tease,” Grace said, still scowling. “So—how’s the business?”

“Growing,” Stella said. “No more ships lost, and the ones we have are moving at ninety-seven percent capacity. And how are things on Slotter Key?”

“Calm,” Grace said. “Except of course where I’ve been stirring the pot. Your mother and Jo’s children are fine—growing like weeds and showing every sign of being Vattas to the core. Anything else? I do have a full day, and I’m already running behind.”

“No, that’s it. Thanks, Aunt Grace.” Stella cut the connection and looked at her attorney.

“Most impressive. I’ll certainly be able to attest to the efficacy of the device. So if you’ll let me have a terminal, I’ll get busy. We should be able to file for patents today, as organized as your data are.” In his eagerness, he spoke almost as directly as a non-Cascadian.

“Good.” Stella led him back to the main offices, installed him at a terminal in her own, and left him to it. A few hours later, he called her in and presented a sheaf of hardcopy for her to sign.

“And what name did you want those patents in? Vatta Transport?”

“No. Toby did the work; he should get the credit.”

He shook his head. “He didn’t do all the work; you said he started with the pirated design. I’d recommend Vatta Transport for the rest, with Toby—if you insist; he’s still a minor in law, and you as his guardian could be named instead—listed only for those things he actually designed himself.”

Stella agreed. Even if he held only those patents, he would be secure for life, assuming the pirates didn’t blow them all away.

By the close of business, the patent applications were filed: “Patents Relating to the Design of a Working Prototype of a Small Ansible-Based Communications Device Mountable on a Ship and Interfacing with Existing System-Ansible-Based Communications Networks.” The Moscoe Confederation, as one of the five systems in which patents were registered for recognition under the Uniform Commercial Code, had a reputation for speedy processing, but Stella was surprised at how fast that could be. Shortly before mid-first-shift the next day, her assistant told her she had an incoming call from planetside.

“Stella Vatta?” The man on the screen wore a Patents Office shield clipped to his lapel.

“Yes,” Stella said.

“We have examined your…remarkable patent application. I see you took the advice of Brinkles, Patrick, and Stansted as intellectual property attorneys…”

“Yes,” Stella said. “Is anything wrong?”

“Not at all. They have an excellent reputation; I’m sure that if they say a search for prior patents was made, they did in fact make it. And I see that your attorney attests that he personally observed the…er…device in operation and is satisfied that it does in fact work as claimed. I did have a few questions for you. Were you planning to manufacture the device in this jurisdiction?”

“Yes,” Stella said.

“And were you planning to manufacture and sell the device without ISC knowledge?”

“Without their knowledge? Not at all. We had asked them, when we couldn’t find any record of patents they might have held…so they know what we’re doing.”

“I see. And were you planning to manufacture and sell the device under the name of Vatta Transport?”

“No; I planned to designate a separate entity for that.”

“Very well. I am pleased to tell you that we were all impressed by the…device, and its likely scope for manufacture and sale. We would expect a reaction from ISC, of course, but the device could benefit many, which…is another reason to approve the application. I will forward the relevant numbers and papers at once, and proceed with registration. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Stella said. She could hardly catch her breath. It had worked. It had worked, and so fast. It wasn’t, she reminded herself, anything but a start—but it was a strong start.

She found Toby glowering at a monitor. “Aunt Stella, I only made eighty-seven on my history exam. And I think I was right.”

“On what?”

“First Expansion was from Old Earth to its system satellites, right?”

“As far as I know.”

“And Second Expansion was from Old Solar to Central Sector only?”

Stella shrugged. “I don’t know, Toby. I don’t remember. And anyway, we have something to celebrate.”

“If I don’t get a higher grade in history, Zori Louarri will beat me out for class honors,” Toby said.

Stella paused. Toby had been topping his class easily until now, and he’d shown no interest in class honors. She’d urged him to find friends, go places with other kids—which he sometimes did—but mostly he stayed in the lab, working.

“Who’s Zori Louarri?” she asked.

“She’s…just a girl,” Toby said, going pink.

Even geniuses had hormones. And he was still a teenager. Stella sighed to herself; being Toby’s guardian might turn out to be more of a challenge than she’d thought.

“Why don’t we go out to lunch, and you can tell me more about her?” she said.

“There’s not much to tell,” Toby said, sliding off the stool. “She was top of the class before I got here; everybody likes her except the doormops—”

“Doormops?”

“You know. Kids that don’t like anybody but each other.”

“What does she look like?” Stella asked, leading the way out of the offices, and tapping her wrist to indicate lunchtime to the receptionist.

Toby turned pinker. “She’s…kind of…well, she’s a girl, you know. She has soft hair. And…and things…”

He was sunk. He was completely sunk. Stella remembered, all too well, her own first crush. It had been the boy’s jawline, just that angular, bony shape, which made her knees weak. And Toby was old enough for it to be more than a simple crush.

Phrase by broken phrase, on the way to the restaurant where she’d made reservations, Toby told her more than enough to make Stella both sympathetic and amused. Zori was smart, she had a laugh that made everybody laugh, the “soft hair” was thick and black and shiny, she had eyes as black as her hair, she played on the wally team—wally, Toby explained when Stella asked, was a ball game where you bounced two balls off the walls of a small room and scored by a complicated system that made no sense to Stella, even after explanation.

“And her family’s been here since forever, and they don’t like newcomers that much, but Zori’s nice to them anyway—”

“I’ll have the mock duck à l’orange,” Stella said to the woman in the black smock. “Toby?”

“Oh. Anything—” He looked at the menu finally. “Can I have that lamb thing, Aunt Stella?”

“Of course, dear. I said this was a celebration.”

“What are we celebrating?”

“I’ll tell you later. Rack of lamb,” she said to the waitress. “And we’ll want dessert later,” she added, grinning at Toby.

When the waitress had gone, she leaned closer to him. “We have the patents,” she said.

His face lit up. “All of them? Already?”

“Yes. And the ones you invented are in your name; the rest are in Vatta Enterprises.”

“Is it going to make us rich?”

“Toby, we are rich. Compared with most people, anyway. But yes, it will make us a lot richer. If I don’t do something stupid.”

“You won’t do anything stupid, Aunt Stella,” Toby said. “You’re much smarter than you think.”

“I’m glad you think so, Toby,” Stella said, her mind racing ahead to all the things she had to do to get the ansibles into production, through sales, before the profits she hoped for would roll in.