Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 by John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly Page B

he’s married,” she said.
     
    The picture was beginning to make sense. Carlos Fernando desperately wanted to control things, I thought. And he needed to be married to do it. “And once he’s married?”
     
    “Then he comes into his inheritance, of course,” she said. “But since he’ll be married, the braid will be in control of the fortune. You wouldn’t want a twenty-one-year-old kid in charge of the entire Nordwald-Gruenbaum holdings. That would be ruinous. The first Nordwald knew that. That’s why he married his son into the la Jolla braid. That’s the way it’s always been done.”
     
    “I see,” I said. If Miranda Delacroix married Carlos Fernando, she—not he—would control the Nordwald-Gruenbaum fortune. She had the years of experience, she knew the politics, how the system worked. He would be the child in the relationship. He would always be the child in the relationship.
     
    Miranda Delacroix had every reason to want to make sure Leah Hamakawa didn’t marry Carlos Fernando. She was my natural ally.
     
    And also, she—and her husband—had every reason to want to kill Leah Hamakawa.
     
    Suddenly the guards that followed Carlos Fernando seemed somewhat less of an affectation. Just how good were the bodyguards? And then I had another thought. Had she or her husband hired the pirates to shoot down my kayak? The pirates clearly had been after Leah, not me. They had known that Leah was flying a kayak; somebody must have been feeding them information. If it hadn’t been her, then who?
     
    I looked at her with new suspicions. She was looking back at me with a steady gaze. “Of course, if your Dr. Leah Hamakawa intends to accept the proposal, the two of them will be starting a new braid. She would nominally be the senior, of course, but I wonder—”
     
    “But would she be allowed to?” I interrupted. “If she decided to marry Carlos Fernando, wouldn’t somebody stop her?”
     
    She laughed. “No, I’m afraid that little Carli made his plan well. He’s the child of a Gruenbaum, all right. There are no legal grounds for the families to object; she may be an outworlder, but he’s made an end run around all the possible objections.”
     
    “And you?”
     
    “Do you think I have choices? If he decides to ask me for advice, I’ll tell him it’s not a good idea. But I’m halfway tempted to just see what he does.”
     
    And give up her chance to be the richest woman in the known universe? I had my doubts.
     
    “Do you think you can talk her out of it?” she said. “Do you think you have something to offer her? As I understand it, you don’t own anything. You’re hired help, a gypsy of the solar system. Is there a single thing that Carli is offering her that you can match?”
     
    “Companionship,” I said. It sounded feeble, even to me.
     
    “Companionship?” she echoed, sarcastically. “Is that all? I would have thought most outworlder men would promise love. You are honest, at least, I’ll give you that.”
     
    “Yes, love,” I said, miserable. “I’d offer her love.”
     
    “Love,” she said. “Well, how about that. Yes, that’s what outworlders marry for; I’ve read about it. You don’t seem to know, do you? This isn’t about love. It’s not even about sex, although there will be plenty of that, I can assure you, more than enough to turn my little Carlos inside out and make him think he’s learning something about love.
     
    “This is about business, Mr. Tinkerman. You don’t seem to have noticed that. Not love, not sex, not family. It’s business.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Miranda Telios Delacroix’s message had gotten through to Leah, and she called me up to her quarters. The woman guards did not seem happy about this, but they had apparently been instructed to obey her direct orders, and two red-clad guardswomen led me to her rooms.
     
    “What happened to you? What happened to your face?” she said, when she saw me.
     
    I reached up and touched my