“You bet I will!”

The look of intense relief on Aelock’s face was reward in itself. From a small pocket in the front of his tunic, he took a tiny ceramic tube and put it in her hands. “Take this message brick to Coromell and say: ‘It’s Ambrosia.’ Got it? Even if you lose this, remember the phrase.”

Lunzie hefted the cube, no bigger than her thumbnail. “ ‘It’s Ambrosia,’ “ she repeated carefully. “All right. I’ll find a ship tomorrow morning.” She tucked the ceramic into her right boot. Aelock gripped her shoulders gratefully. “Thank you. One more thing. Under no circumstances should you try to play that cube. It can only be placed into a reader with the authorised codes.”

“It’ll blank?” she asked.

Aelock smiled at her naivete. “It will explode. That’s a high-security brick. The powerful explosive it contains would level the building if the wrong sort of reader’s laser touches it. Do you understand?”

“Oh, after tonight, I believe you, even if this whole evening has been like something from Tri-D.” She grinned reassuringly at him.

“Good. Now, don’t go back to the BOQ. They must not realise that you’re with me. It could mean your life if they think you are connected with the Fleet. They killed my friend, a harmless fellow, a welder in the shipyard. His family had been at Phoenix. Couldn’t hurt a fly, but they killed him.” Aelock shuddered at the memory. “I won’t tell you how. I’ve seen many forms of death, but that sort of savagery ...”

Lunzie felt the Discipline boost wearing off and she’d little reserve of strength. “I won’t risk it then, but what about my things?”

“I’ll have them sent to you. Take a groundcar. Go to the Alpha Meridian Hotel and get a room. Here’s my credit seal.”

“I’ve got plenty of credits, thank you. That’s no problem.”

Aelock saw a groundcar, its ‘empty’ light flashing, and hailed it. “That one ought to be safe, coming from the west. Someone will bring your things to the hotel. It will be someone you know. Don’t let anyone else in.” He opened the car hatch and helped her in. He leaned over her before closing the car. “We won’t meet again, Lunzie. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You’re saving lives.”

Then he slipped away into shadow as yellow street-lights washed across the rounded windows of the rolling groundcar. Lunzie buckled herself in and gave her destination to the robot-brain.

The Alpha Meridian reminded Lunzie of the Destiny Calls. In the main lobby, there were golden cherubs and other benevolent spirits on the ceiling holding up sconces of vapour-lights. Ornate pillars with a leaf motif, also in gold, marched through the room like fantastic trees. A human server met her at the door and escorted her to the registration desk. No mention was made of her casual clothing, though she appeared a mendicant in comparison to the expensively dressed patrons taking a late evening morsel in cushiony armchairs around the lobby.

The receptionist, who Lunzie suspected was a shapechanging Weft because of the utter perfection of her human form, impassively checked Lunzie’s credit code. As the confirmation appeared, her demeanour instantly altered. “Of course we can accommodate you. Citizen Doctor Lunzie. Do you require a suite? We have a most appealing one available on the four-hundredth-floor penthouse level.”

“No, thank you,” Lunzie replied, amused. “Not for one night. If I were staying a week or more, certainly I would need a suite. My garment cases will follow by messenger.”

“As you wish. Citizen Doctor.” The receptionist lifted a discreet eyebrow, and a bellhop appeared at Lunzie’s side. “One-oh-seven-twelve, for the Citizen Doctor Lunzie.” The bellhop bowed and escorted her toward the bank of turbovators.

Her room was on a corridor lined with velvety dark red carpet, and smelled pleasantly musky and old. The Meridian was a member of a grand hotel chain of the old style, reputed to have brought Earth-culture hostelry to the stars. The bellhop turned on the lights and waited discreetly at the door until Lunzie had stepped in, then withdrew on silent feet. In her nervous state, she flew to the door and opened it, to make sure he had really gone. The bellhop, waiting at the turboshaft for the ‘vator to come back, threw her a curious glance. She ducked back into her room and locked the door behind her.

“I must calm down,” Lunzie said out loud. “No one followed me. No one knows where I am.”

She paced the small room, staying clear of the curtained window, which provided her with a view of a tiny park and an enormous industrial complex. The bedroom was panelled in a dark, smooth-grained wood with discreet carvings along the edges near the ceiling and floor. The canopied bed was deep and soft, covered with a thick, velvety spread in maroon edged with gold trim that matched the smooth carpeting. It was a room designed for comfort and sleep but Lunzie was too nervous to enjoy it. She wanted to use the com-unit and call the ship to see if Aelock had made it back safely. A stupid urge and dangerous for both of them. Shaking, Lunzie sat down on the end of the bed and clenched her hands in her lap.

Someone would be coming by later with her clothing and possessions. Until that someone came, she couldn’t sleep though her body craved rest after the draining of Discipline. The hotel provided a reader and small library in every room. Hers was next to the bed on a wooden shelf that protruded from the wall. She was far too restless to read, the events of the evening on constant replay in her mind. Even if the two assailants had been captured, that didn’t mean they had been alone, or that their capture would go unremarked. That left a bath to fill in the time and that at least was a constructive act, helping to draw tension out of her body and ready it for the sleep she so badly needed.

While the scented water was splashing into the tub, Lunzie kept imagining she heard the sound of knocking on her door and kept running out to answer it.

“This is ridiculous,” she told herself forcefully. “I can take care of myself. They would scarcely draw attention to themselves by levelling the hotel because I’m in it. I must relax. I will.”

Her clothes were dirty and sweat-stained and there was a large blot of sauce on the underside of one forearm. She tossed them in the refresher unit, and listened to them swirl while she lay in the warm bath water.

The bathroom was supplied with every luxury. Mechanical beauty aids offered themselves to her in the bath. A facial cone lowered itself to her face and hovered, humming discreetly. “No, thank you,” Lunzie said. It rose out of her way and disappeared into a hatch in the marble-tiled ceiling. A dental kit appeared next. “Yes, please.” She allowed it to clean her teeth and gums. More mechanisms descended and were refused: a manicure/pedicure kit, a tonsor, a skin exfoliant. Lunzie accepted a shampoo and rinse with scalp massage from the hairdressing unit, and then got out of the tub to a warmed towel and robe, presented by another mechanical conveyance.

It was close to midnight by then and Lunzie found that she was hungry. Her entree at Colchie’s had turned out to be an assassin with a needlegun. She considered summoning a meal from room service but she was loath to, picturing chalky-faced waiters in silk capes streaming into the tiny room with guns hidden in their sashes. She’d been hungrier than this before. Wearing the robe, Lunzie climbed into bed to wait for the messenger with her bags.

Most of the book plaques on the shelf were best-sellers of the romance-and-intrigue variety. Lunzie found a pleasant whodunnit in the stack and put it into the reader. Pulling the reader’s supporting arm over the bed, Lunzie lay back, trying to involve herself in the ratiocinations of Toli Alopa, a Weft detective who could shapechange to follow a suspect without fear of being spotted.

Somewhere in the middle of a chase scene, Lunzie fell into a fitful dream of pasty-faced waiters who called her Jonah and chased her through the Destiny Calls, finally pitching her out of the space liner in full warp drive. The airlock alarm chimed insistently that the hatch was open. There was danger. Lunzie awoke suddenly, seeing the shadow of an arm over her face. She screamed.

“Lunzie!” Tee’s voice called through the door and the door signal rang again. “Are you all right?”

“Just a moment!” Fully awake now, Lunzie saw that the arm was just the reader unit, faithfully turning pages in the book plaque. She swept it aside and hurried to the door.

“I’m alone,” Tee assured her, slipping in and sealing the locks behind him. He gave her a quick embrace before she realised that he was wearing civilian clothes. “Here are your bags. I think I have everything of yours. Sharu helped me pack them.”

“Oh, Tee, I am so glad to see you. Did the captain tell you what happened?”

“He did. What an ordeal, my Lunzie!” Tee exclaimed.  “What was the scream I heard?”

“An overactive imagination, nothing more,” Lunzie said, self-deprecatingly. She was ashamed that Tee had heard her panic.

“The captain suggested that you would trust me to bring your possessions. Of course, you might not want to see me ...” He let the sentence trail off.

“Nonsense, Tee, I will always trust you. And your coming means that the captain got safely back. That’s an incredible relief.”

Tee grinned. “And I’ve got orders to continue to confuddle whoever it is that sends assassins after my good friends. When I leave here, I am going to the local Tri-D Forum and watch the news until dawn. Then I am going to an employment agency to job hunt.” Tee held up a finger as Lunzie’s mouth opened and closed. “Part of the blind. I go back to the ship when you are safely out of the way and no connection can be made between us. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes indeed,” Lunzie said. “I never got past the appetizer and I haven’t eaten since you and I had breakfast this morning. I don’t dare trust room service, but I am positively ravenous. If the wooden walls didn’t have preservative varnishes rubbed into them, I’d eat them.”

“Say no more,” Tee said, “though this establishment would suffer terrible mortification if they knew you’d gone for a carryout meal when the delights of their very fancy kitchens are at your beck and call.” He kissed her hand and slipped out of the room again.

In a short time, he reappeared with an armful of small bags.

“Here is a salad, cheese, dessert, and a cold bean-curd dish. The fruit is for tomorrow morning if you still feel insecure eating in public restaurants.”

Lunzie accepted the parcels gratefully and set them aside on the bedtable. “Thank you. Tee. I owe you so much. Give my best to Naomi. I hope you and she will be very happy. I want you to be.”

“We are,” Tee smiled, with one of his characteristic wide-flung gestures. “I promise you. Until we meet again.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. “I always will love you, my Lunzie.”

“And I, you.” Lunzie hugged him to her heart with all her might, and then she let him go. “Good-bye, Tee.”

When she let him out and locked the door, Lunzie sorted through her dufflebags. At the bottom of one, she found the holo of Fiona wrapped securely in bubblepack. Loosening an edge of the pack, she took the message cube out of her boot. At the bottom of the bubblepack were two small cubes that Lunzie cherished, containing the transmissions sent her by her daughter’s family to Astris and the Ban Sidhe. One more anonymous cube would attract no attention. Unless, of course, someone tried to read it in an unauthorised reader. She hoped she wouldn’t be in the same vicinity when that happened. She could wish they’d used a less drastic protection scheme; what if an “innocent” snoop were to get his hands on it? She would have to be very careful. Hmm . . . she mused. Maybe that was the point.

Lunzie tried to go to sleep, but she was wide awake again. She put on the video system and scrolled through the Remote Shopping Network for a while. One of the offerings was a security alarm with a powerful siren and flashing strobe light for travellers to attach to the doors of hotel rooms for greater protection. Lunzie bought one by credit, extracting a promise from the RSN representative by comlink that it would be delivered to the hotel in the morning. The parcel was waiting for her at the desk when she came down early the next day to check out. She hugged it to her as she rode down to the spaceport to find a berth on an express freighter to Tau Ceti.