"What makes you so positive they are in active contact with the Ballroom?" he asked after a moment. "It's not that I doubt your judgment," he added hastily, as Irvine's eyebrows lowered. "I just want a breakdown on the evidence so I'll have a better appreciation of the situation."
"Well," Irvine's expression eased, "there've been quite a few little things over the last few months. But the kicker, as far as I'm concerned, is that two new people have turned up. And neither of them is a sutler. In fact, neither of them is a seccy."
"Ringers from outside, you mean?" McBryde asked with a frown.
"I mean two people I've never seen before at all, hanging around with Carl Hansen and his group. One of them is working as a waiter in Steph Turner's restaurant."
"Who's she?"
Lajos waved his hand dismissively. "Just a woman who owns a small restaurant that caters to the seccy trade. Divorced, one kid, a teenage daughter. I've never mentioned her before, as I recall, since I don't think she's more than vaguely connected to the underground, if she's even connected at all."
McBryde nodded. Given the fact that slaves made up sixty percent of Mesa's population and seccies made up another ten percent, the anti-slavery underground was vast and extensive. For the most part, the underground concentrated on activities that were not directly threatening to the Mesan order: smuggling slaves out and contraband in; maintaining a network of social services that made up to a degree for the lack of such services provided by the government; and so forth. Only a small percentage of the underground's members had direct and close ties to the Ballroom or engaged in violent activities. If Lajos had been in the habit of reporting every seccy who had any connection at all to the underground or even the Ballroom, neither he nor Jack would ever be able to get any sleep. You had to be practical about these things.
"But it's the other one that mostly makes me twitchy. He's a Havenite. Claims to be a former StateSec agent, and seems to have the credentials for it."
McBryde frowned thoughtfully. "What would an ex-StateSec be doing hanging around with that group you're watching?"
"Good question. The waiter might just be another malcontent, although I'm almost sure he's not a seccy—or an ex-slave of any kind, for that matter. I haven't been able to get that close to him, so I haven't seen his tongue or gotten any DNA samples. But he's got a very pronounced and unusual phenotype, and it's nothing like any line we've ever developed. Not that I'm familiar with, anyway. But the StateSec guy . . ."
Lajos took a sip of his coffee. "For starters, there doesn't seem to be any question that he's legitimate. Meaning, his background is in fact what he claims it to be. I know for a fact that Cloutier is eager to pick him up—eager enough that she's been willing to dicker terms with the guy for some time now."
McBryde's eyebrows went up. Luff's top recruiting agent didn't handle run-of-the-mill hiring. Still, he couldn't recall any instance where Inez Cloutier had allowed a prospective contractor to dicker for more than a couple of days. Admittedly, Jack hadn't tried to keep entirely on top of that situation.
"In short," Lajos concluded, "one of them is definitely from outside the system and the other—the waiter, that is—could very well be. And regardless of their origins, I can't think of any legitimate reason either one of them would have any contact with Hansen's group. I'm thinking one or both is likely to be a Ballroom agent. Pulling them in and breaking them could give us an additional peek inside the Ballroom's plans where Mesa is concerned."
"Not all that likely, though," McBryde observed, and Irvine grunted in sour agreement.
They might have kept Ballroom agents from establishing any significant presence here on the planet, but Ballroom operatives seldom provided anything useful in the way of information, either. Partly because the Ballroom understood operational security at least as well as anyone else in the galaxy. It compartmentalized information tightly, and it applied the "need-to-know" rule ruthlessly. More than that, any of its operatives who possessed truly sensitive knowledge were also provided with the means for reliable self-termination. More than one of them had chosen surgically implanted explosive devices, which had taken their share of security personnel with them over the years.
"I didn't say it was likely," Irvine said. "I only said it could give us some extra information."
"Have you managed to pick up anything else about them? Anything more than just the fact that we don't know who they are, I mean?"
"Not a damned thing," Irvine admitted frankly. "I did get a few images of them, though. These are from the one and only time I ever spotted the two of them together in the same place. The StateSec guy seems to be having breakfast in the same restaurant the waiter works. Here."
He reached into the neck of his smock and flipped across a chip folio. McBryde caught it, extracted the single chip inside it, and inserted it into his desk computer. It took a moment for the computer's internal security systems to decide the data on the chip was acceptable, and then a holo image of two men appeared above his desk.
He gazed at them curiously. Whatever the StateSec man's purpose might be, if Irvine's suspicion that the other one also came from outside the Mesa System had any validity, then the waiter wasn't a seccy at all, even though he was working for one. McBryde had always wondered what went on inside the heads of escaped genetic slaves who voluntarily walked straight back into the lion's den. Unlike some of his fellows, he'd always respected their courage, and of late he'd begun to understand the kind of personal outrage which motivated many of them far better than he'd ever understood it before. Still—
His thoughts slithered to a halt. Somehow—he never knew how—he managed to keep his eyes from widening or his jaw dropping, but it was hard.
It can't be, his brain insisted quietly. Not here. Not even those two would be ballsy enough!
Yet even as his brain insisted, he knew better. The one sitting at a table was a thoroughly unremarkable-looking, almost slightly built young fellow. If Jack hadn't been told he was a Havenite, he would have assumed that the man was descended from any of several general laborer lines. But the other . . . At a glance, you might assume the other was obviously descended from a heavy labor line. But Jack knew Irvine was right. This was no line ever developed by Manpower. The guy was simply much too short for that incredible physique. When Manpower developed a line specifically for muscular power, they made them big all around. It would have been foolish not to do so, as a practical matter, and probably even genetically difficult.
McBryde studied the images, concentrating on the waiter. The facial features were different, but that could be done any number of ways. The things that were much harder to disguise . . . The coloring, that massive neck, that tilt of the head, those incredibly broad shoulders, like some dwarven mountain king—or troll . . . those McBryde recognized. Recognized because he'd seen them so recently, in a broad-distribution, priority memo, and he wondered how Irvine could possibly not have recognized them.
Because he never got the memo, he realized almost instantly. He's at too low a level, and it never would have occurred to anyone to look right here, on Mesa itself. The only reason Steve and I ever saw the memo was that it was distributed to everyone above Level Twelve, and Lajos isn't routinely cleared for anything above Level Three unless it's specifically related to his current assignment.
"Well," he said out loud, "I don't recognize them." He chuckled. "On the other hand, I don't suppose they'd send anyone they expect us to be able to pick out of a lineup, now would they?"