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  Only when the venue had been secured would the man himself arrive, accompanied by a retinue of at least thirty people. One of them would be his bidet valet, employed to attend to his lavatorial comfort.

  This was Andrei Delaney’s world. He had never known any other kind of life. And though Davie had coaxed him into paying a private, solo visit to the Heron last time they were here, it had not been an experiment Andrei Delaney was willing to repeat.

  ‘So…’ Alex looked at Davie as they settled into the sports-shuttle Davie had landed at the Embassy. ‘How are things?’ Alex asked.

  Davie looked back at him, fingers working over screens as they lifted off under the admiring gaze of just about everyone at the base. Few people had seen a lezina before, but it was instantly recognisable as the most expensive sports-shuttle on the market. And even people who weren’t impressed by the classic lines or hand-made quality were inclined to stare – and blink – at the mirror polished chrome. Lezinas were never normally covered in chrome. Nor did they, as a rule, have Davie-Boy emblazoned across them in rubies.

  ‘Giraffes,’ said Davie. The car had been a gift for his nineteenth birthday, but he still looked a lot younger than that. His elegant business suit was a compromise to his father’s wishes, but the scruffy dark curls were a declaration of independence.

  ‘Gir…?’ A wide grin came onto Alex’s face as he made sense of that. Andrei Delaney was alarmingly enthusiastic in his ideas for Serenity’s biosphere. ‘Wouldn’t giraffes,’ Alex asked, ‘tend to fall over in earthquakes?’

  This had been an issue for many of the species Davie’s father had wanted to introduce. Serenity’s environment was so extreme, right on the cusp of survivability for humans, and every bit as challenging for wildlife. Even then, as the shuttle rose through atmosphere, the solar tide was lifting the surface of the ocean beneath them more than ninety metres. And there, behind, as dusk ripped across the rapidly-spinning planet, the horizontal pull of the star at the rims heaved plates sideways in a continuous ripple of tremors. Serenity was at a relatively quiet zone in its elliptical orbit, but even so the dawn and dusk tremors were enough to knock a human off balance. And even Alex, no wildlife expert, had an idea that giraffes were inclined to fall over.

  ‘They would, yes,’ Davie said, and took the shuttle superlight in one smooth dash as they left planetary orbit. ‘Which is why Papa has suggested they might be made with six legs.’

  Alex was still laughing as Davie brought them in to dock at the Entrepus, Andrei Delaney’s liner-sized super-yacht.

  He was quite serious, though, at least outwardly, as he was ushered into what he couldn’t help thinking of as The Presence. He had been subjected to the usual boarding procedure of decontamination, security scans and a courteous reminder of the protocols to be observed, then escorted by silent-footed staff to the lounge where Mr Delaney was waiting.

  It was the same lounge Alex had been in before, but the décor had evolved somewhat since he had seen it last.

  Don’t look, he told himself. If you allow yourself to look, you’ll stop and stand there with your mouth open, looking like an idiot.

  Even so, he could not help noticing that the lounge was full of dolphins. Not, thankfully, any real ones. But the dolphin theme was rampant. His fault, Davie would admit, later. He’d pleaded with his father to have at least one space on his ship which didn’t look as if ten different people had been fighting it out with completely incompatible decorative schemes. Just pick a theme, he’d implored, and stick with it.

  Andrei had done so, and the Dolphin Lounge was the result.

  Resolutely keeping his eyes fixed on the man who’d sent for him, Alex maintained his composure.

  ‘You asked to see me, sir?’

  ‘Ah-lex!’ Andrei Delaney got to his feet and held out his arms in greeting, as if intending to hug him, though making no move to come any closer than several metres away. He was nothing like his son – a big barrel chested bear of a man, though groomed to perfection. He was wearing one of his more modest outfits, a pure hand-made silk suit in turquoise, with emerald buttons. No cloak, though. At least that was something. ‘I thought I was going to have to have you kidnapped!’ He said, and guffawed at his own joke.

  He practically had kidnapped him, but Alex let that go. Andrei Delaney had been asking him to go aboard the Entrepus for a week, now, and he’d managed to avoid it until now.

  ‘I still,’ the League’s richest man informed him, ‘haven’t got around to getting a snake.’ And he guffawed again. This was an ongoing joke, at least for Andrei Delaney himself – a reference to Alex’s evident suspicion that he might be the kind of movie-villain plutocrat who sat there stroking a snake whilst feeding unsatisfactory staff to piranhas.

  Alex made no comment, but sat down when Andrei Delaney plumped himself down on a sofa, with a hospitable flourish to the seat which had been placed opposite.

  It was a chair, of sorts. In fact it was the kind of chair you got when you gave a half-mad artist a million bucks and asked them to create you a Dolphin Throne. There were no dolphins on it. The artist had decided he would make a throne for a dolphin, inspired by the sort of thing you might find at the bottom of an urban canal.

  ‘Papa…’ Davie protested, knowing very well that his father had had that chair placed there deliberately.

  ‘Da-vie.’ Andrei retorted, in just the same complaining tone, then grinned. ‘I am going to get him to laugh,’ he asserted, and with a rolling eye at Alex, ‘one day.’ But he seemed to accept that that day was not going to be today. ‘I only wanted to say,’ he told the stone-faced captain, ‘well done. You were right, I freely admit you were right, you and Davie-Boy work very well together, each to your strengths.’ He had, as the Fourth headed out on their mission, attempted to persuade Alex to step aside and allow Davie the role of Ambassador to Quarus, which he had, after all, been genetically designed to undertake. Finding that Alex, Davie and Silvie were immovable in their decision that that was Alex’s role, he had thrown up his hands, declaring that they were all three as stubborn and as wrong-headed as one another. This was as close as he was ever going to get to making an apology. ‘Though I still think…’ he caught Davie’s eye and backed down. ‘Well, never mind. What’s done is done. And done well, no arguing with that. So I want you to know, Alex, you’ve got my support. Whatever you want, whatever you need, on any of your missions, you need only tell the Embassy, all right? They’ll know who to call.’

  Stewards came in, placed tables and departed, as he spoke, but Alex took no notice of them. He was staring at Andrei Delaney and coming to the conclusion that yes, he really had just said that and yes, he really did mean it.

  ‘Totally above board, of course!’ Davie chimed in hastily, seeing the concealed mirth in Alex’s eyes harden into rising anger. ‘Obviously! Totally official, above board, on the record!’

  ‘Does that need to be said?’ said Andrei Delaney, looking as innocent as a man of his bulk and ursine appearance could contrive.

  ‘Yes, it does!’ Davie said, before Alex could answer. ‘Unless you want to spend the next forty minutes listening to him on the ethics of corporate entanglement with elected and appointed authority – and as funny as you might think it is to bait him, trust me on this, once he gets going on that the only way to stop him would be to shoot him.’ Leaving his father guffawing at that, he turned to Alex. He had seated himself, not coincidentally, at right angles to both of them, in the position of a referee. ‘And you, skipper, please…’ he pointed across the room. ‘Look at that,’ he asked.

  Alex looked, and felt his jaw slacken. The item Davie had forced on his attention was just one of the many hundreds of dolphin-themed items which filled the huge lounge, but even in that dolphin overload, this one stood out. It was more than three metres tall, propped on some kind of display stand. It was pink and yellow. It was very fluffy. It was a giant toy dolphin. And it was wearing sunglasses.

  ‘Ask yourself,’ Davie requested, �
��just how much social grace and sensitivity you can expect from someone who has that in their lounge?’

  Alex felt the righteous wrath dwindling under the impact of absurdity, and conceded the point with a very slight nod, relaxing then and reaching forward to pick up his coffee.

  ‘Hey!’ Andrei objected, and with a grumbling, ‘Everyone’s a critic!’ he held up his hand as if to take a cup someone was handing him. Instantly, one of the many minions around the room was there, whisking a cup from the table in front of him and placing it into the Delaney hand, then melting away again into the background.

  This was a man, Alex reminded himself, who had never so much as poured himself a drink, his whole life. He had never been out in public, never eaten anywhere unless his own catering staff were in charge, hardly ever even had a conversation with anyone outside his own family and highly trained staff. You couldn’t expect him to have any kind of normal social skills, really.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, totally noncommittal, uncommunicative, cold.

  ‘I forget,’ said Andrei Delaney, eyeing him with tolerant amusement, ‘what a touchy little lambkin you can be. But if you will persist in treating me as an evil megalomaniac intent on undermining democratic government, which is, I should point out, the most insulting thing you could accuse me or any member of the Families of, ever, you have to expect that I will tweak you a bit in return. Fair’s fair, Alex.’

  He had a point, Alex realised. He had a very good point. Andrei Delaney, like every member of the Founding Families, had been born and raised to regard the League Constitution as a holy script, and in the absolute belief that it was their sacred duty to uphold those constitutional principles. Even to think that Andrei Delaney might be offering some dark, underhanded secret funding to a League officer really was profoundly offensive.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I do apologise, sir.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ Andrei said, magnanimous and more than a little big smug. ‘And you can’t help,’ he added, ‘being so prejudiced. I blame the movies.’ He shook his head mournfully. ‘It’s always the same, in movies.’ He said. ‘The moment you see anyone in a movie who is super-rich and reclusive, you just know they’re going to be up to no good, having people killed, bribing governments, dumping toxic waste in kiddies’ playgrounds…’ He saw Davie’s swift look at that, and spoke to him in an aside, ‘And yes, I know, the toxic stuff on Carpania, but the money was there for them to run clean if they’d had the will to do it and honestly, can I be expected to sort everything out myself? So don’t start.’ And then, going back to Alex, ‘All right, okay, I may not be perfect. But the movies have a lot to answer for, that’s all I’m saying.’

  Alex found himself liking the man, as he had before, despite all his ethical reservations about Andrei Delaney’s corporate activities and a kind of horrified pity for the way he lived. There was a fundamental honesty about Andrei Delaney – quarians liked him. They liked him a lot. They said he was big, and generous, and kind. And Alex felt that, too.

  ‘And there I was,’ he said, ‘thinking you had a shark tank hidden under the deck.’

  Andrei Delaney gave a great roaring shout of joy, finding Alex actually unbending enough to joke with him, even if he was doing so with a dead straight face.

  ‘I’m not a shark guy,’ he said, and with a huge wave of his arm, indicated the lounge, declaring triumphantly, ‘I like dolphins!’

  Alex made the mistake of looking around. Dolphins, dolphins, everywhere. Steel dolphins, glass dolphins, gold and jewelled dolphins, a dolphin-woven carpet, a display case full of dolphin teapots… he looked up, and yes, there it was, the huge chandelier he had known would be there, from the glitter ball lights reflecting all around the room. It covered half the ceiling and there had to be at least two thousand crystal dolphin droplets. It must, he felt sure, be worth a fortune. But it would have been amazingly, stunningly crass even without the thousand upon thousand of pink diamonds.

  A small noise escaped Alex, more of a whimper than a laugh, but Andrei Delaney recognised it as the outburst of hilarity just too vast to be contained, even by Alex von Strada’s mighty self-control. Davie saw it too, and gave a merry little hoot as he reached for his third plate of cakes. No minion came rushing to hand him his plate. Davie, to his father’s bewilderment, had acquired some bizarre ways from his time with the Fourth, insisting on doing things for himself.

  ‘A-hah!’ Andrei exclaimed in delight, but in the next moment, switching mood at mercurial speed, was disappointed. ‘Silvie and the kids,’ he declared, ‘like my chandelier.’

  The kids, Alex realised, had to be the quarians, even the youngest of whom was twice Andrei’s own age.

  By the time he left, some half an hour later, Alex was feeling quite exhausted with the effort of not breaking down into howls of laughter.

  ‘Told you,’ said Davie, as he piloted him back to the base, giving him a sidelong grin. ‘Giraffes.’

  Alex understood. He and Davie always did understand one another, as they had from the moment they’d met. Giraffes was a shorthand indicating the ebullient mode Andrei Delaney was in, galumphing about the Serenity mission like an over-excited child. Giraffes can’t stand up? Give them six legs, then!

  Alex gave a small hitch of one shoulder and a wry look, indicating that it could be worse.

  ‘Could be rhinos,’ he observed, as Davie dropped them into atmosphere on a perfectly controlled vertical descent. Giraffes, after all, were passive if ungainly creatures. An aggressive rhino-in-a-china-shop attitude, on the other hand, could do a lot of damage.

  ‘Pvvvv!’ Davie spluttered, appreciatively, and then, after a moment, with an affectionate grin, ‘Got to love him, really.’

  Alex wouldn’t go that far, but he grinned back as Davie landed the sports shuttle precisely where it had been before, right outside the door to the Embassy. He could get away with that both because he was a League Ambassador in his own right and because Silvie had said that superhuman pilots did not have to follow traffic rules here.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, stepping back and raising a hand in farewell, as Davie lifted the shuttle away again with no more than the faintest whisper from its engines.

  ‘Hey!’ A shout from behind made him turn, and looking around he saw a tall, rangy-limbed man striding towards him, grinning hugely and waving as if he didn’t think Alex would see him, otherwise. He was dressed as a tourist, with garish holiday clothes and a transparent popover against the drizzling rain. ‘Alex!’

  Alex waited, conscious of the people who’d been drawn to watch the spectacular sports shuttle land at the Embassy door, and who were now gathering excitedly as they saw that Alex himself was standing there. There were only about forty or fifty of them right now, but as Alex had learned, the longer he stayed in one place, the more tourists would gravitate towards him.

  ‘Hello Simon.’ The man loping across the concourse was Professor Simon Penarth, a man with so many academic qualifications and titles that he claimed even he couldn’t remember them all. His position in the Fourth was unique, as a civilian consultant free to come and go whenever he liked. Even when he was months away from them, though, he kept what he considered to be a benign eye on their welfare.

  It was apparent to Alex, though, that this was a social encounter. And evident, too, that Simon wasn’t alone. He was towing a lady along with him, holding her by the hand and drawing her along rather faster than she wanted to walk. She was, Alex noted, very beautiful.

  ‘Meet,’ said Simon, while he was still approaching, ‘my wife! This is M’lind.’ He presented her to Alex like a prize he had won, beaming with happy pride.

  Alex smiled. What he wanted to do was groan and ask in despair, ‘What, another one?’

  This had to be Simon’s eleventh or twelfth marriage – they’d been apart for several months so Alex had lost track. He had, in fact, conducted Simon’s fifth marriage, to one of his officers, aboard the Heron. And the subsequent divorce, just a few weeks later. It h
ad, according to Simon, been one of his more successful marriages. One, at least, had never even made it past the reception.

  This one, if Alex was any judge, stood a fair chance of not lasting as long as the honeymoon. He could be wrong, of course, and would not claim any kind of expertise in relationships. But the bride was looking distinctly irritated at being hauled across the concourse at a speed which showed no consideration for her dignity.

  And that was Simon all over, of course. He expected people to keep up with him, physically and intellectually, and if she’d complained at the pace he was setting he’d have just told her to take off those ridiculous shoes. He was, indeed, selfish, arrogant and insensitive. And when she broke up with him and told him what a selfish, arrogant and insensitive pig he was, he would be genuinely bewildered. He had, after all, told her that about himself before they got married, so how could she be surprised when it turned out to be true?

  It surprised Alex, too, that he kept finding women who, even when told how many other wives had divorced him, leapt into marriage with Simon, often on no more than a few days’ acquaintance. But he no longer wondered why Simon himself even felt the need to keep marrying his light o’loves. Simon enjoyed getting married. He liked the romance and the celebration and being the centre of attention as a newlywed, he liked the wedding rituals and the lovely sense of hope and optimism. But it was getting married he enjoyed, really, not being married.

  ‘We just got married!’ Simon said, confirming Alex’s suspicion. ‘We’re on our honeymoon!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Alex said, because really, what else could he say?

  ‘M’lind,’ said Simon, ‘is an actor.’

  Alex saw the very slight wince and the resentful look she gave him for that. Movie star, he thought. A relatively minor movie star, probably, not much known beyond her home planet, but still, used to being treated as a star.