A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt Page B

she was disappointed. "I was in your uncle's employment," she said. "He owes me a considerable amount of money." She shifted her weight uncomfortably. "I'm sorry to bring up this sort of subject at a difficult time, but I think you should know."
    She turned away, terminating further discussion of the matter, and led the way into the study.
    She took a chair near the fire, and said hello to Jacob, who replied smoothly and without Page 24

    hesitation that she looked well. He produced warm fruit drinks, laced with rum. She sipped hers, put it down, and held her hands out to the blaze. "Feels strange here without him."
    "Yes. I thought that too."
    "What was it about?" she asked suddenly. "What was he looking for?"
    The question startled me. It wasn't an encouraging beginning. "Were you working with him on the project?"
    "Yes," she said.
    "Let me ask you the same question. What was he looking for?"
    She laughed. It was a clean, liquid sound. "He didn't tell you either, I take it?"
    "No."
    "And he didn't tell anybody else?"
    "Not that I know of."
    "Jacob would know at least some of it."
    "Jacob has been lobotomized."
    She glanced with amusement at the monitor, which still carried the image of her skimmer.
    "You mean no one has any idea what he's been up to these last few months?"
    "Not as far as I can tell," I said, with growing irritation.
    "Records," she said, in the way one explains things to a child. "There'll be some records."
    "They've got lost."
    That broke her up. She laughed like a young Viking, throwing shoulders and throat into it, shaking her head, and trying to talk all at the same time. "Well," she got out between spasms, "I'll be damned. But it's just like him."
    "Do you know anything? Anything at all?"
    "It had something to do with the Tenandrome. He told me I'd get rich. And he said that everything else he'd done during his life was trivial by contrast. 'It'll shake the Confederacy,' he said." She pressed her palms to her jaws and shook her head. "Well, that is the dumbest thing I've ever been involved in."
    "But you were a part of it. What were you supposed to do to earn your share?"
    "I'm a class III pilot. Small craft, interstellar. He hired me to do some research, and to take him somewhere. I don't know where. Listen, I'm a little uncomfortable with all this. But the truth is that he left me sitting out on Saraglia after I'd spent a considerable amount of my own money."
    "Saraglia. That's where the Capella was headed when it vanished."
    "That's right. I was supposed to meet him there."
    "And you don't know where he wanted to go afterward?"
    "He didn't say."
    "Seems odd." I didn't make much effort to mask the suspicion that she might be trying to take personal advantage of Gabe's death. "He had a license himself. He's had it for forty years, and I've never known him to let anybody else do his piloting."
    She shrugged. "I can't answer that. I don't know. But that was our understanding. Counting travel time, minus an advance, he owed me two months pay plus expenses. I have it all documented."
    "Is there a contract somewhere?"
    "No," she said. "We had an agreement."
    "But nothing in writing?"
    "Listen, Mr. Benedict." Her voice tightened. "Try to understand. Your uncle and I have done a substantial amount of business over the past few years. We trusted each other. And we got along fine. We had no reason to resort to formal contracts."
    "What sort of research?" I asked. "Having to do with the Tenandrome?"
    "Yes." One of the logs gave way and fell into the fire. "It's a Survey ship. It was out in the Page 25

    Veiled Lady a few years ago, and apparently they saw something." She allowed her head to fall back on the chair. Her eyes slid shut. "Gabe wanted to know what, but I never could find out."
    Saraglia is on the edge of the Veiled Lady, a remote, modular world of enormous dimensions, and varying gravities, last point of departure for the big Survey ships that continue to map and probe the vast Trantic Arm. "And you