“Yes, sir.”
Brazis tapped out. Gone.
My God, Procyon thought. He felt sick at his stomach. He didn’t know why this business had arrived in his lap, except his teenaged stupidity in getting into a questionable group, in listening to ideas different from what he’d heard before—it was his only real sin in his whole life, politically speaking, in any sense that would ever reach to Earth’s files. One mistake, and it came back to haunt him. He wished this business were all over with, and for the rest of his life after, he swore he wanted to live as far away from Earthers’ notice as he could get.
We’ll get you back safely, kept ringing in his ears. And, Mr. Jones,for God’s sake.
What did Brazis think he was going into?
MAGDALLEN HAD SHOWN UP—on time for his appointment, give or take five minutes, but Brazis was in a touchy mood at the moment, touchy enough to keep an Apex agent waiting in his outer office. Several reports had flashed across his desk in the last while, most notably Marak’s irritated reaction to Procyon’s continued absence.
Worse, Marak, having followed the trail of the runaways to the brink of the ridge, was now well down on eroded terraces and sand slides, stubbornly proceeding where, Drusus informed him, underlying sandstone could crumble without warning. Marak had a few notorious flash points: deception in his contacts, mechanical devices in general, and Ian second-guessing his firm decisions at the head of the list. Left to his own devices, Marak might have given up the pursuit and come up again to take other measures; but then Ian,who had his own flash points, had gotten hot about Marak’s decision to go down off the ridge, Drusus had seen fit to relay that to Marak, Marak had gotten hot in return, refused Ian’s help, saying he had the beshti in sight, and now it was clear that hell would freeze over before Marak gave up and retreated.
It was already a delicate business, keeping what happened on Concord away from Marak’s lively and very experienced interest, while pursuing an investigation about Earth’s poking about in matters it should never touch—that was one thing. But Drusus, damn him, had straightaway committed them to a particular line of explanation that involved Earth—admittedly within the allowable degree of latitude, but letting Marak know that Earth was an issue in Procyon’s case. And if Marak did find out what was going on up here, he’d find it out while he was already feuding with Ian, again thanks to Drusus’s decisions.
The juxtaposition of issues was like fire near explosives. The very last thing any of them wanted now was Marak, already in a temper, conveying to the Ila, whose relations with Earth were ancient, unpleasant, and always full of acrimony, that Earth was now interfering with their taps, potentially including hers.
Thatwould fry the interface. Absolute disaster. He wanted to strangle Drusus, who hadn’t been aware how dicey things were.
Ian and Luz, meanwhile, already quarreling with Marak over methodology, were monitoring the aftermath of a second very strong quake to the south. Everything Marak had come south to observe was now in full career, a spectacle that had the geologists glued to their posts in anticipation. Over a matter of hours two high salt waterfalls had sprung out on the inward face of the Southern Wall, white threads presaging a far greater flood. Icy polar water was tearing itself a wider access to the hot southern pans of the inhabited continent. Marak had lost his bet with fate—source of half Marak’s temper, Brazis had no doubt. Ian had proven right: they should have used the rocket in the first place, and now Ian rushed to get a backup relay soft-landed on the Wall itself, a tricky bit of targeting, while the landscape out there was changing by the hour.
The northern end of the basin itself might have dropped another half meter relative to the Southern Wall in the last strong aftershock, which had the geologists on station scrambling to revise their predictions both of the extent and speed of the event, and of the consequences to anybody in that region, notably Marak and his stranded party. A major inland sea was arriving in what had long been mountain-shadow desert, deepening over an unknown amount of time, depending on how much that sand soaked up, for starters. The mountains in the northern part of the basin were predicted to become islands. The frozen southern sea, a weathermaker for the southern hemisphere, was in the process of acquiring a shallow, sun-heated annex, which, the meteorologists said, was going to mean fog. Mist. Rotten visibility, that was already obscuring the site of the break in the Wall.
And as for Marak, the need to reassess his party’s situation and cope with the aftershocks mightdistract him from asking more closely about Procyon for the next couple of days; but it wasn’t going to improve Marak’s mood or the ease of dealing with him.
Meanwhile hehad the inquisitive ambassador andFrancisco Magdallen to deal with. An Apex Council agent poking about in the usual habitats of trouble was a common enough nuisance throughout the territories, just the Council keeping tabs on Concord Station to confirm what the Chairman of Concord and the director of the Project patiently and correctly told the CG was the truth.
And to top things off they had the arrival of this Andreas Gide, who wanted Marak’s tap for a face-to-face interview. So to speak. Did he now believe that Magdallen’s presence was coincidence?
Trouble didn’t just come in threes: it gathered passengers as it went, and crashed nastily into bystanders.
He deliberately calmed himself. Had a few sips of caff, which had cooled enough by now not to scald his mouth.
He tapped in, a simple contact with his aide, Dianne, outside. Dianne escorted Magdallen into the office.
The man had clearly responded in respectful haste. The gray coat mostly covered a shirt that belonged on Blunt, the shoulder-length curls were done up in a clip without benefit of a comb, and the eyes, brown at their first meeting, were outrageous green, a green purchasable in cheap shops. Brazis didn’t take it for granted those particular lenses were cheap, or without augmentations, or that they were locally-bought lenses, at all. He proved it by a fast tap at a button on his desk.
Clean, however. No transmissions.
“Mr. Chairman.”
“Agent Magdallen. Have a seat.” Brazis waited, and poised himself comfortably backward behind his desk, arms on his middle. “So what’s your news this cheery day? I would expect there’s news for me, with all this going on.”
“Gide is on the station in an unfamiliar containment vessel. I don’t know its capabilities, but the bizarre impression it creates where he travels is surely part of his intentions. To intrigue us. To intimidate. To make maximum stir here on the outer edges of human civilization.”
“And among the ondat,a demonstration of technological wonder.”
“Forever the ondat,yes, sir. But one doubts they’re awed.”
“Gide has asked to see one of Marak’s taps. The youngest. Procyon.”
“Procyon.” Magdallen frowned. By his look, he actually hadn’t known about Gide’s summons of the young man, which argued that his major sources tended to be in the environment where that shirt was ordinary.
And one could then hope that Reaux’s office didn’t, at least, leak information too quickly to the Outsider streets, no matter where else it might go, among Earthers.
“Did this Gide give a reason for this request?” Magdallen asked.
“A whim, he would have us think. A five-hundred-light-year whim brought him here to ask for an interview with a, for all practical purposes, junior tap.”
“Perhaps Earth doesn’t like such a young man in the office he holds,” Magdallen said. The man had an annoying habit of not quite looking up when he spoke. “Or perhaps Earth doesn’t like what they hear of thisyoung man. Who does have unusual contacts present and past, of which I’m sure you’re aware. He has crossed my area of inquiry.”