Moonsteed. Manda Benson

      The Commodore must have noticed the spy’s head also, for a slight noise of disgust escaped him. Verity turned and saw him staring at the head. “You’re not going to leave him like that, are you?”

      “No.” The Inquisitor dipped his biscuit in his tea. “He’ll be put out of his misery once he divulges the information I need from him.” The biscuit broke as he lifted his hand, plopping into the tea. He made a distasteful face at the stub between his finger and thumb.

      The Commodore took a deep breath and straightened his belt. “You see that you do your job and make him. He may be a spy, but...well.”

      Verity stared at the head. Yes, he’d been a spy. She needed to rise above pitying him, thinking of him as a man, even, because he was a traitor to the Meritocracy, and this was what people who plotted to bring down the Meritocracy deserved.

      Commodore Smith cleared his throat and looked conspicuously away from the head. “Do you know anything of Private John Aaron? I don’t know if you will know the name. If you’ve seen him about before, have you ever picked up any...vibes from him?”

      “Hmm, Aaron.” The Inquisitor dipped another biscuit in his tea and put it in his mouth. He frowned as he chewed, turning away slightly and putting his fingers to his interface. “I think I know the one you mean. He had something he didn’t want others to know. He was very...assured in his convictions on a particular matter, although I’m not sure what it was.”

      “That would fit. It turns out he’s some kind of religious extremist. He just made an attempt on Verity’s life and now he’s AWOL.”

      “Hmm,” said the Inquisitor again. He glanced up at Verity. “Didn’t hurt you, did he?”

      Verity shook her head. Lloyd suddenly grinned. “Didn’t think he could. Ah well, absit omen.”

      “Well, if you have any information, please put it on the ANT.” The Commodore turned to leave. Something in his manner betrayed an eagerness to be elsewhere. Verity could tell he didn’t like the Inquisitor.

      After Smith had left, Lloyd said, “Who was that man you were speaking with in the stables, Verity? Did he come in on the last landing?”

      “He is a nearly-a-doctor who sires horses,” said Verity.

      Lloyd roared with laughter. He offered her his tin of chocolate biscuits.

      Verity didn’t want to eat them in front of the spy’s head, so she put them in her pocket.

      “How do you mean?” Lloyd asked.

      “He says he’s training to be a genetic engineer.”

      “Hmm.” Lloyd tapped his signet ring against his tea mug. It was an odd design, titanium with alternating bands of anodized violet.

      “Lloyd,” said Verity, admiring the strong shape of his brow and nose, and his broad shoulders. She never could think of what to say to him on that front. It wasn’t that he was older, because he couldn’t be more than ten years away from her, but because he was so much more senior. It always felt inappropriate somehow. “When you get the data off the spy, I know you can’t tell me what it is, but if there’s anything I need to know...” Verity found her gaze once more drawn to the head on the bench, where it watched her with an eye that looked somehow furious. “You will tell me? There’s something going on here, something to do with John Aaron. I tried to tell the Commodore, but I don’t think he really understood.”

      She didn’t want to reveal any more of her thoughts in front of the spy’s head. He couldn’t speak, but he must still be able to hear.

      “Of course,” said Lloyd.

      * * * *

      In the refectory she found Vladimir, sitting at a table by himself.

      She sat unceremoniously on a chair opposite him. “I think you’re a waste of my time, but the Commodore says I’ve to help you.”

      “Thanks...” said Vladimir. “I think.”

      Verity ripped open the top of her carton of food and stuck her spoon in. “I’ll show you the exercise centrifuge tomorrow. We can’t use it this afternoon because it’s Referendum Day today.”

      Vladimir made a pious face. “I don’t care about things like that. There’s work and more important things to be getting on with.”

      Verity stared at him across the table. He had a very fair complexion with light brown hair and eyes of that genuine blue resulting from no iris pigmentation. It occurred to her that with his broad shoulders, he would have been conventionally very attractive if he’d bothered to care about such things. “Ya. Right. Well, if you don’t exercise here, you’ll waste away in the low gravity. And you’ll have to exercise your horse too. I’ve never put a horse that’s not fearless in a centrifuge before. Should be interesting, at any rate.”

      Vladimir looked alarmed. “I have to handle him? There’s not staff here trained in it?”

      “The staff here look after the working horses. He’s your project. You are in charge of him.”

      He looked out the panoramic window at the sun on the horizon, and Jupiter in the sky. “When you say tomorrow, do you mean twenty-four hours-ish from now, or the next time the sun rises?”

      “I mean Terran standard time.”

      “It might have to wait longer than that. I think I caught some sort of cold on the transport ship, and now I don’t feel at all well.”

      “It’s like snot and crap and you feel like shit?” Verity stirred her food. “It’s a reaction to no gravity. All the fluid in your lungs and sinuses comes out of place and it feels like a cold. The other thing’s breathlessness and feeling tired? That’s because the air out here is less oxygenated. It’s like high-altitude air when you go up Olympus Mons.”

      “I’ve never been up Olympus Mons,” said Vladimir. He stirred his soup, looking away from Verity in an embarrassed sort of way. When he put his spoon in his mouth, his face crumpled. “This soup is awful! It’s like something I’d use in the lab! What is this stuff?” Vladimir rotated the container in his hands and frowned as he read the label printed on the white carton in plain black font. “Levigated esculents? It even sounds like something that belongs in a lab!”

      “It’s made out of genetically modified plants grown on sewage,” said Verity.

      “Tastes it.”

      “We have to have sustainable food. It would cost a fortune to keep shipping in proper food from Earth or Mars. Well, although they make an exception for the Inquisitor. He gets tea and complimentary biscuits.” Verity remembered the biscuits and put her hand in her pocket to find it full of melted chocolate, much to her annoyance. She held up her hand, spreading brown-smeared fingers. Vladimir glanced at her and made a face of mock disgust.

      “Don’t you ever miss proper food?” he asked as Verity licked her hand.

      “What, like bloody steaks, sheep’s hearts and liver? Ya, I miss those.”

      Vladimir shrugged. “The kebabs on Mars are the best. Don’t think they deliver out here, though.”

      Verity hadn’t expected him to say that. He looked like the sort of person who didn’t eat meat. “Kebabs aren’t proper meat. It’s just processed rubbish.”

      Vladimir leaned back on his chair and said, “What other animals have you eaten–I mean, worked with? Besides horses.”

      Verity tilted her food carton and scraped the remainder into her spoon. “Birds.”

      “Birds?”

      “Hawks. The Meritocracy uses them for surveillance. They can see in much more detail than people or computers can, and they’re tetrachromats, so they can see into the ultraviolet region.”

      Vladimir