"I didn't know they could be improved at all . . ."

"Oh yes." Luci looked smug. "I started reading offworld equine reproductive journals-couldn't afford a lot of what they talked about, but I made some changes in management, and everyone smirked at me until the first foal crop. Then they said it was normal statistical variation-but your second foal crop hit the ground this year, and it was a point ahead of last year's."

Esmay had never had any interest in equine reproduction, but she knew natural enthusiasm when she saw it. She had definitely picked the right manager for her herd . . . and maybe more than that.

"What did they say about selling off the bottom end without the family name? They were branded, weren't they?"

"No . . . I decided to defer branding until after the cull period. Papa Stefan was angry with me, but it was your herd, so he couldn't stop me."

"Mmm. And what criteria are you using for culling?"

"Several things." Luci ticked them off on her fingers. "Gestational length-early or late is one cull point. That could be the mare, but there's evidence it may be the foal, too. Time to stand and suck, and vigor of suckling; if they're outside a standard deviation on time to standing, or if they don't have a strong suck, that's another cull point. You already have good performance mares in that herd-but you'll benefit by having additional survival vigor."

Esmay was impressed. "I assume you'll cull mares later?"

"With your permission, yes. And while they're young enough to sell on . . . according to the

articles I read, after three foals you should know if length of gestation, foaling problems, foal vigor, and milk production are due to the mare. I can show you the references-"

"No, that's all right. You've done very well. Tell me what you think we should do with this herd."

"Produce exportable genestock," Luci said promptly. "We have the perfect outcross genome for at least five other major horse-breeding worlds. All our horses have been performing-we've culled for soundness, speed, and endurance. I entered a query in one database, to see if anyone knew of, or would be interested in, what we've got, and the response was promising. Here on Altiplano, with the reputation our family has, we can sell live animals, but the export costs are far too high to export anything but genestock . . . so I would concentrate on the most salable genestock."

"Sounds good to me," Esmay said. "When do you think we might see a profit on it?"

Luci looked thoughtful. "Not immediately. Since we usually do live breeding, and have never

exported genestock, we'd need an investment in equipment. I put the income from the cull sales into a fund for that, pending your approval."

"Would genestock from the rest of the family holdings, or from Altiplano in general, be salable?"

"I would think so. Possibly even other livestock, like our cattle . . ."

"Then I'll see if it's possible to make an investment from family funds, and then you could rent

the facilities."

"Would you really?"

"If it's possible, yes. Why not? It would benefit not only our family, but all Altiplano."

Luci nodded, looking satisfied. She made a notation in one of her books, then gave Esmay a

challenging stare. "You look worse than you did when you left," Luci said.

"You have less tact," Esmay said, nettled.

"Was it the fighting?" Luci asked. "They say the Bloodhorde is terrible."

"No." Esmay turned over a leaf in the studbook. "I don't really want to talk about it."

Luci cocked her head. "You weren't this grumpy before, either. You looked horrible for a day or

so, then better-and you were helpful to me. Something's wrong."

The girl was persistent as a horsefly, with the same ability to go straight to the blood of it. It crossed Esmay's mind that tactical ability could be shown in more than one way.

"I have had some problems. There's nothing you could do."

"Well, I can wish the best for you." Luci moved restlessly from door to window and back. "If you

were my age-" A long pause, which grew uncomfortable.

"What?" Esmay said finally.

"I'd say you were lovesick," Luci said. "You have all the signs."

"Lovesick!"

"That's just the way Elise said it, when she thought no one knew. But they did. Is it

lovesickness, or something else?"

"Luci." There was no way to explain. She tried another approach. "There are things I can't tell you about. Fleet things. Sometimes bad things happen."

"Esmay, for pity's sake-I grew up in a military household. I can tell worry about a war from a

personal worry, and you needn't try to pretend that's what's going on."

"Well, it is, Persistence. Great-grandmother died; I've had to take on the whole estate; there's a

lot to worry about."

Luci turned the conversation back to the horses, and for an hour they spoke only of this line or that, this outcross line or another. They walked up to the house together, still deep in the intricacies of fourth-generation distribution of recessives. At the door Luci said, with the most spurious wide-eyed innocence Esmay had seen, "Are you going to marry and settle down here, cousin, the way Papa Stefan wants?"

In the hearing of half the kitchen staff and Berthold, who had wandered into the kitchen before the meal as usual. Silence fell, until one helper dropped her knife.

"I'm a Fleet officer," Esmay said. "You know I told everyone I would have to appoint a trustee, and an heir."

"Yes," Luci said. "I know that. But you hadn't spent even a week on Altiplano yet. You could change your mind, especially if things aren't going well in your Fleet."

Berthold snorted. Esmay could have done without that; Berthold's humor was uncomfortable at best.

"You see what she's like," he said, around a couple of olives he'd filched.

"I'm ready for lunch," Esmay said. "And those had better not be the export-quality olives . . ."

Her warning glance took in the cooks and Berthold. He wagged a finger at her.

"You sound exactly like Grandmother. She could squeeze oil out of the very smell of olive."

"Lunch," Esmay said, leading the way. "A morning spent with lawyers and accountants, then Luci, has starved my brain."

Darien Prime Station

Pradish Lorany turned the pamphlet over and over in his hands. He wasn't sure about this. Yes, it was totally unfair that Mirlin had taken the children and moved away-that Sophia Antera had been promoted over his head-that over half the seats on the station citizens' council were held by women. He loathed the very thought of artificial births and manipulation of the human genome-if that wasn't interfering with God's plan, he couldn't think of anything that was. But while he agreed in principle that society was corrupt and degraded, and that it all began with the failure to understand the roles God had ordained for men and women, he could not quite convince himself that therefore it naturally followed that blowing up people was a Godly act. Especially since Mirlin and the children would die, too. He wanted respect from women, and leadership by men, and an end to tampering with human reproduction, but . . . was this the way to do it?

He thought not. He made up his mind. He would continue to support the Gender Defense League; he would continue to argue with his former wife that she was misunderstanding his reasons for disciplining the children by traditional methods . . . but he would not attend the next meeting with the representative of the Godfearing Militia who had attempted to recruit him to help place explosive charges.

In a spasm of disgust, he threw the pamphlet toward the orifice of the station's recycling system, but he turned away before it slid into the chute . . . and did not see it miss, to land right in front of the PLEASE ENSURE TRASH ENTERS HOPPER sign.

Nor did he see the prune-faced old woman who glared at his retreating back as she stooped to pick up the crumpled pages and put them in carefully-but who stopped, her attention arrested by the glaring grammatical error in the first sentence. Sera Alicia Spielmann, as ardent a grammarian as she was a supporter of public neatness, took the pamphlet home to use as a bad example in her next complaint to the local school trustees . . . but when she read it, she called her friend whose

grandson was a member of station security, instead.

She did not connect the "lazy litter-bum" or her own actions with the discovery, two days later, of the corpse of one Pradish Lorany who had been brutally attacked in his own apartment. Others made that connection.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.