“These illicits don’t…spread.”

Naive point. A laugh, from real relief. “Well, they’d be useless if they did. If you didn’t have to pay to get killed, there’d be no profit in them. And if you got killed every time, the labs would all go broke.”

“Labs here?”

“None that I know of.” The honest truth. “I don’t think there are any.”

“Genetic illegals—as well as illegal nanisms?”

“Both are out there. Biostuff and mechanicals. But nothing originating here.”

“Any talk, for instance, of Movement nanisms among these illegals?”

“No.” Another pulse jump. Were they back to that? “Absolutely none such.”

“Nanoceles?”

“No. Nothing of that nature that I know about. Absolutely nothing.”

“You don’t know of any leakage coming off the planet.”

“Can’t. Can’t happen.”

“They have rockets down there, don’t they?”

“Nothing but surface-to-surface. Landing vehicles go down. Nothing comes up. I don’t really think I’m qualified even to talk about this, sir.”

“Not qualified to tell me about information passed down and up by tap, little secrets committed to record utterly in soft tissue, no eavesdropping possible.”

“There’s no way,” he said, absolutely convinced, though rattled. Surely the truthers wouldn’t misread his disturbance as guilt. “No way that’s true.”

“You do doubt it, then.”

“The system isn’t like that. I’m appalled anybody would even think it. I don’t think you could do it at all. And if you pick up that I’m nervous, sir, I am. You’re asking me things I don’t know anything about, and I shouldn’t have tried to answer you on this topic at all.”

“Marak still doesn’t get on well with the Ila, does he?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

“So…by what I’m told is current fact…Ian risked the second most important person on the planet to go months out into hazardous terrain to set up a relay that one of your surface-to-surface rockets could have landed in a day. Why? Because Marak had rather take a long trip into the wilderness at this precise moment?”

On this he felt far more confident. “Marak does what he wants. If you know anything about him, you know that.”

“Is he dodging the Ila this year, perhaps? Is something afoot he’d rather not countenance?”

“I have no idea.”

“Mmm. So.”

“He took the relays out by caravan, as you seem to know, sir. There was no particular hurry about it. He does this sort of thing. He’s done it every few years. We had no way of knowing there’d be an earthquake of this magnitude.”

“Yet you knew that there would be, eventually.”

“Fairly soon. We knew that. And maybe he hoped to watch the Wall go. I don’t know.”

“Dangerous, would it not be?”

“It seems it turned out to be.”

“Tell me: if there were ever a resurgence of the Movement—where, logically, would they like to be to start with, and what would they like to do?”

“I absolutely have no idea, sir. Movement and Freethinkers aren’t the same thing.”

“They were once.”

“Now they’re not.”

“Oh, come, now, Mr…. Procyon. The Ila is still alive. Memnananher captain is still alive. All these people of that age are still alive. Therefore—so is the Movement, here, on the planet Concord watches.”

Spooked. Spooked and sweating. He couldn’t find a reasonable way out of this debate.

Flash of light. Of sound. A tap had gone active. A relay had turned on…nothing in the apartment, but maybe in Gide’s rig.

Something had just reached out and touched him. Electronically.

He immediately maneuvered to the side, dodging a potted plant, putting distance between himself and Gide.

The machine zipped forward, between him and the door.

“Mr. Stafford. Whatever’s the matter?”

“Don’t do that,” he said. He was shaking, hands trembling, but he stood his ground momentarily, trying to salvage this interview.

“Do what?” Gide asked.

Now he was leaving. No question. He hadn’t been Marak’s tap for nothing. He knew a dead-end debate when he heard one. He’d heard Marak talking about the Ila, and about Ian. He knew he skirted continually on a volatile relationship that held civilization together, and he knew another determined power when he met it. He was in direct danger. Likely he was being recorded right now on a dozen levels—even the tap was being probed. They’d already gotten way too much from him. Get out, Brazis had told him, if that happened.

“I can’t stay here,” he said, trying not to show his agitation. “Not when you do that, sir, I’m sorry, and especially not when you deny it.” He remembered his instructions, what he had to do. “I’ll report to my office, and if you want me to come back, maybe, but only if they say so. I’ll get clearance for your questions before I say anything else.”

“I won’t wish you good-bye,” Gide said. “Tell them, among other things, that they wantme to ask my questions. If I don’t get answers, it could be the worse for this place. Tonight. Tonight at 1800h, you’ll come back.”

“I’ll tell them,” he said, and headed past Gide, for the door.

The shell trundled close behind him. He hit the door switch frantically to get out.

“The door’s on mylock,” Gide said. “Do you want out, Mr. Stafford?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t trust himself to answer.

He heard the lock click. He hit the switch again and the door opened.

An explosion slammed him back, off his feet, skidding on his back on the polished tiles. Shock had hit all the way to bone and brain even before he slammed into one of the pillars.

Smell of burning metal. Absence of sound. Hazed view of blinking lights and something gold moving. Gide had shot him, he thought in shock, scrabbling after leverage to escape. The outside door was still open, past his feet. He scrambled to get his knees under him, and his hands slipped on the tiles, something fluid soaking his knee. Acrid fumes stung his nose and eyes. His hand came down on something sharp, and he felt the pain.

Sharp metal. A few feet away, Gide was over on his side, a living human body wriggling out of its gold shell and bleeding onto the tiles.

Gide hadn’t shot him. Gide himself was shot, struggling to get out of his confinement, injured, mouthing soundless words. Procyon stumbled up, dragged the man clear of the fuming plastics and torn metal of the shell.

Gide writhed around and struck at him, wildly shouting something that had no sound, no sound at all.

Angry at him. Blaming him. But he couldn’t hear anything the man said. Just the ringing in his ears.

He couldn’t stand here. He couldn’t be swept up by the police. He didn’t know what he decided in the next few seconds, but he found himself out in the garden. And after that he was running down the street outside, past scattered shocked onlookers in this exclusive district. He tried to tap in to reach Project offices, but when he tried a pain lanced through his eyes, and he stumbled half to a stop.

Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t call for help. He just ran after that, and Earthers being Earthers, people just stared at him without trying to stop him.

He reached a lift station and called a car, and the woman who arrived in it got out in a hurry and let him have it to himself. He programmed it for the Project offices and didn’t sit down, just hung on to the bar and hoped the police wouldn’t be fast enough to stop it.

The next thing he knew, he was walking sedately down a street nowhere near Project offices. He was outside Caprice’s, and why he was there, he couldn’t figure. His coat looked like hell. He brushed flecks of spattered plastic and white ash off his sleeve, but it smeared, and he took the coat off and dropped it on a bench along the frontage.

This wasn’t at all where he’d tried to go. There were blank spots in his mind. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here from the lift, but he saw his reflection in the shop windows. He looked like hell, and he kept walking, thinking vaguely he had to get home, and he was supposed to buy a present, and call his parents, and keep Ardath happy. But he couldn’t be conspicuous, walking around like this, deaf to the whole street.