"Yes," Festina said in a steely voice. "He’s your son. And your father. And your brother too, for all intents and purposes — he looks the same as your beloved Edward. Quite a trinity in just one package." She slid the scalpel lightly across Mr. Clear Chest’s neck, like she was giving him a dry shave. "And just one carotid artery. Which could very easily get nicked." Festina lifted her head and stared straight at the projected image of Sam’s face. "Don’t consider this an idle threat. It won’t be the first throat I’ve cut." Plebon and Tobit drew in their breaths sharply. Whatever Festina was talking about, both of them must know the story… and their reactions were enough to convince everybody else Festina wasn’t lying.

"All right," Sam said. "You have a knife to my father-brother-son’s throat. I can match that."

Suddenly, the vidscreen vanished. In its place, the glass wall went clear and a bright light came on inside the cube — giving us our first view of what the cube really contained. Samantha was there, wearing her dress golds — the showiest uniform a navy diplomat owns.

To Sam’s left, a gentle perched in front of a control console, monitoring the cube’s flight computer.

And to Sam’s right was a beautiful queen I recognized as Innocence. All grown-up now, bright glossy yellow, shining with strength.

Samantha held a gun to Innocence’s head.

44

TAKING THE CUBE

Dade was the first to move. He grabbed the stun-pistol out of Tobit’s holster and fired at Samantha in the cube. Nothing happened. Not to Sam, at least. I felt a tingle as the stunner’s hypersonics bounced off the cube and echoed back… but the effect was so thinned out by the time it returned to the parapet, none of us got knocked for a loop. Nothing more than a scritchy pins-and-needles sensation that passed in a heartbeat.

Grimacing with disgust, Tobit plucked the pistol from Dade’s hand and set the gun down on the parapet wall.

"Thanks," Samantha told Dade. "You just demonstrated you can’t touch me." She gave a nasty smile. "Just so everybody knows, Innocence here is the last Mandasar queen in the universe. If she dies, there’ll never be another. You can’t make a new queen without a full year of an old queen’s venom."

I called, "Are you all right, Innocence?"

"Quite well, Little Father," she replied in a cold, clear voice. "Do what’s right — don’t worry about me."

"She’s always saying noble things," Sam laughed, using her free hand to pat Innocence on the shell. "So irrationally heroic. It’s a pity I didn’t find her till last year; if I’d taken her under my wing when she was a girl, I might have brought her round to my way of thinking."

"You flatter yourself," Innocence said drily.

"I like flattery," Samantha replied, "and I’m good at it. I rather like your defiance too. If you start getting subtle, then I’ll worry."

Sam glanced my way. "Innocence has only been with me a few months, but she’s been a tremendous help. My troops fight so devotedly when they think they’re working for Verity’s rightful successor. Of course, I’ve had to make sure the girl doesn’t talk to anyone. Usually I keep her drugged unconscious… with little servomotors to make her body move, and a hidden speaker so my own words come out of her mouth. It’s not a bad system if you keep the room dark, and I’ve passed the word poor Innocence can’t stand bright lights. A result of chemical torture at the hands of an outlaw queen."

"If Innocence is so valuable," Festina said, "you don’t dare shoot her."

"She’s useful," Sam agreed, "but keeping her alive is a risk. Always the chance she might escape, or tell the wrong people how I’ve been using her. The sooner I kill her, the safer I’ll be. And why not do it now, when I can blame it on human provocateurs? I’ll put your fingerprints all over the gun, then blackmail the fleet for a few million: ‘Pay up or I’ll tell everyone the last queen was killed by an admiral.’ "

"The council wouldn’t care," Festina laughed. "They’d shout from the rooftops, MAD DOG RAMOS SHOWS HER TRUE SELF. As for the navy accepting responsibility for anyone but me… you’re looking at expendable Explorers, a woman controlled by alien parasites, and a man who’s never been right in the head. Look up deniability in your favorite dictionary, and you’ll see our pictures."

As she spoke, Festina got to her feet, lifting the unconscious man with her. She kept her scalpel to his throat by locking her knife arm under his chin. Then she hiked her other hand under his armpit, around his chest, and heaved straight up. Even though she was plenty strong, it was still an awkward maneuver; I could imagine my sister watching and wondering if there was a chance of killing Festina during those moments, while she was struggling and slightly off-balance with the man’s weight.

I worried about the same thing myself. It seemed crazy for Festina to take such a risk, hoisting the man up… and for what? To make it easier for Sam to see the knife blade glinting in the starlight?

Then my eye was caught by another tiny glint: a faint reflection, some star shining on the voice control for the clone’s Laughing Larries. Sometime in the past few minutes, Festina must have slipped the controller out of her belt pouch without any of us noticing; when she stood, she’d left it lying on parapet’s stone floor.

Now, while everyone’s gaze focused up on her hands, and the scalpel, and the exposed throat, her foot nudged forward a bit and sent the controller sliding toward me.

Um.

I didn’t have a clue what she wanted me to do… and she couldn’t tell me. Maybe she didn’t have a plan at all — just hoped the king would dream up something.

Um, um, um. I had to force myself not to chew my knuckle or Sam would know I was trying to think hard.

Um. Um. Okay. I had an idea.

Sam had started talking again. "You think the High Council has deniability? Wrong. You all came to Troyen in the Jacaranda… a ship known to run errands for Admiral Vincence. Dad will have a field day with that at the next council session. By the time he’s through, Vincence will be in disgrace, and the rest of the council will trip all over themselves to pay me hush money. But," Sam said, her voice turning cold and hard, "that’s none of your concern — it’s time for ultimatums. Drop your weapons and lie facedown on the ground. If you surrender right away, I might be in such a good mood I’ll let you and Innocence live a while longer."

Tobit actually laughed. "How stupid do you think we are?"

I told him, "You may not be stupid. But I am."

Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself to the parapet’s stone floor. In the process, I palmed the remote control Festina had shoved my way. As I laid myself down on my stomach, the little voice-controlled gizmo ended up right under my mouth.

The others kept talking — arguing with Sam, wrangling over treachery-proof schemes to exchange Dad’s clone for Innocence — but I ignored them. I was too busy straightening out in my head where my three Larries were: one still up on the parapet, the other two way down near the ground. Sam wouldn’t be able to see the ones below her; not when she was paying so much attention to Festina and the others. I just had to picture where those two Larries were in relation to Sam’s glass cube…

Taking a deep breath, I whispered orders into the voice control right under my mouth. No way to tell if the Larries were obeying me — I couldn’t see them for the parapet wall, and anyway, my face was pressed tight to the stone beneath me. I couldn’t hear the Larries either, because I’d told them to run as quietly as possible. All I could do was shift the lower two into what I thought was the right position, and tell the other one to get ready for a fancy maneuver.