"Actually, I'd planned to return to the conference hotel and collect my luggage," Raven interpolated, leaning into the vid pickup.

"See me first," m'lord replied.

"I'll miss my jumpship."

"There's one every day.  In fact, don't reschedule your berth yet."

Raven's black brows flicked up.  "My time is money."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Raven shrugged amiably at m'lord's very dry tone, and followed Roic, both scuffing along in the paper slippers their hosts had provided while waiting for their stolen shoes to surface.

It was midafternoon when the police at last dropped Roic and his bemused companion off at the consulate.  The four-square house seemed unduly modest, in Roic's view, though he supposed that upholding the dignity of the Imperium at this distance was costly enough.  It did look as though it might provide a shower and a place to nap, Roic's two biggest remaining wants since the police had provided the freed captives with a meal, or at least as many ration bars as anyone would want to eat.  High in protein and vitamins, tasting like chocolate-coated putty with kitty litter—some horrors were universal, it seemed.

Roic stifled his wish for a wash-up and had Lieutenant Johannes guide them directly to m'lord, already ensconced like an invasive spider in the consulate's communications tight-room.  In most planetary embassies that Roic had visited in m'lord's wake, the tight-room seemed the secret nerve center of the embassy's affairs, hushed and urgent.  Here, it felt more like someone's leftover basement hobby room—for some very odd hobbies—retrofitted in high tech.

M'lord swiveled in his station chair and waved Roic and Raven to seats, dismissing Johannes with a "Thank you, Lieutenant."  Johannes, looking as though he longed to stay and eavesdrop, nodded and dutifully withdrew, closing the door with that muffled thump that betokened a good sound seal.  Roic ignored the faint serial-killer ambiance of the windowless chamber, and tried to appreciate that here at last one might enjoy a truly private conversation.

"Are you two all right?"  A perfunctory inquiry; m'lord didn't even wait for Raven's nod and Roic's grunt before continuing, "Tell me everything that happened to you.  And yes, I want all the details."

M'lord listened, brows tightening, as the full tale of the kidnapping and rescue unwound, rewarding the tellers at the end with a mere, "Huh."  He added to Raven, "I'm glad you're all right.  I shouldn't have liked to explain your loss to your clone-siblings, or mine.  I'd actually thought the Durona Group would send your sister Rowan."

"No, she's much too busy these days for off-planet jaunts," said Raven. "She's our department head for Cryonics—we have over five hundred employees, between our clinical services, research, and administrative overhead.  And she and that Escobaran medtech she married plan to pop their second kid from the uterine replicator any day now."

"Not cloned, eh?"