“His own authority is looking for him. We’re pursuing every possibility…including the chance that some Earth-based entity with an agent here is your enemy. But there is the fact they didn’t kill you. They didn’t use force enough to kill you orMr. Stafford, who was far less protected.”
“What are you saying?”
“That it’s possible they didn’t intend to kill you.”
“Idiocy!”
“You are, however, alive.”
“I doubt my welfare was anywhere in their consideration.”
“In my personal experience of assassination attempts, sir, which has been several, the usual suspect is either some local disturbed soul with a direct line to God, or someone withinthe same system as the intended victim, who has a motive and a plan. If you’re not crazy, you don’t assassinate someone who can’t be an inconvenience to you. And you try not to botch the job. So why do you think someone would pick you in particular for a target, out of all the Earthborn officials that have ever come and gone here on a regular basis? It makes sense the motive lies in your specific business here. Though it’s possible they didn’t need to kill you, but to prevent you going further with that ship. Would there be any profit in that?”
Gide was paying attention now. “What are you getting at?”
“That’s all I can possibly guess. Our investigation is necessarily hampered by not having the least idea what authority you represent or what your future plans are.”
“I have the legislative seal. You accepted the documents. That’s all you need know. You can damned well take my word when I give it. Find Stafford. That’s your start.”
“Very well and good, Mr. Gide, if that’s the course you choose. But I’m sure Stafford, involved or not, didn’t pull the trigger. And assuming they made a serious try at killing you, I’m also sure it’s in your interest for us to find the agency responsible before you leave this hospital. You’ll have to walk our streets as a private citizen for the rest of your life.” He took a chance. “Or are you counting on being very much safer as soon as your own ship leaves?”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Whoever did this had resources much beyond a local lunatic or the average dissident. That shell was not easy to get, to hide, or to set up to use.”
“The Southern Crossdidn’t order this attack! Damn you, sir. Damn you for a complete incompetent!”
Temper. A deep breath. “Then you need to tell me the truth of what you represent, Mr. Gide, and don’t expect to set up and give orders on the basis of the documents you carry. If you’re banned and abandoned here, you become one of my citizens who I have to presume is in possession of some very touchy state secrets, and you become myresponsibility, both to protect you and to prevent any illicit use or compromise of those secrets. In that light, Mr. Gide, I suggest you make it clear to me what I’m protecting, or I’ll have to assume the worst case possible.”
Gide blinked, blinked twice, as if to question what he’d just heard—perhaps too much for the heavy sedation. But depend on it, Gide was not a stupid man—one didn’t get to the position Gide held by being a stupid man.
“Point,” Gide said, close-lipped. “Get these two idiots out of here. This is for your ears only.”
“Gentlemen.” Reaux motioned at his escort.
They withdrew. The door shut itself.
“I’m with the Treaty Board,” Gide said, and shifted up among his pillows—a move that occasioned a wince. “Career diplomat, specialty in the arrangements at Concord.”
“Hence the fluency in our language.”
“I never intended it to be this useful.” Gide had a sense of humor, it seemed, however deeply buried. “You say you have a working relationship with the local Outsider Chairman. Is that true?”
He had an Outsider tap-courier in the outside office. Which he didn’t intend to admit. “An operating relationship, to smooth jurisdictional boundaries. That’s all. I assure you I don’tleak restricted information in that direction.”
Gide stared at him. A clammy sweat had broken out with his slight exertion in shifting more upright, and it might be pain that drew down the corners of his mouth. Or distaste. Or a battle against the tranquilizer, which didn’t seem to be as heavy as the doctor indicated. The eyes were very sharp, very focused at the moment. “You and I have no choice but to get along, governor, or it might go very badly for your administration. We clearly have a mutual problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“I may be banned, but I amstill an agent of the Treaty Board. I become, in fact, your local agent, in a local office, whether either of us likes it or not. As to the reason for my presence here—finance is moving here to fund activities and recruitment for a First Movement cell.”
“Here?”
“Your Freethinkers, sir. Your tame Freethinkers.”
“In the absence of exact evidence, Mr. Gide—”
“The black market in illicits is involved in the finance of this cell, and we rather think it’s on Orb that the actual manufacturing facility exists, labs we’re watching very closely, labs capable of producing very sophisticated illicits. Leadershipis what Concord has to offer the Movement. Leadership that has existed since the last days of the War—leadership operating right under the noses of the ondatobserver as well as ours.”
“Here?”He had had a lifelong penchant for questions that made him sound like a fool. But Gide was talking all around the critical point, deliberately, and deliberately obscuring as much as he gave out. Leadership? “Are you talking about the Ila herself, sir?”
“It’s either a good time or a bad time for you to have close associations with the Outsider authority. It all depends on what you do with that situation, Governor Reaux.”
Him, with Jewel Sanduski in the outer office.
And from, an instant ago, him asserting authority over Gide, now Gide seemed prepared to unfold his tent and camp right in the heart of his authority, an entity outside local law, and impossible to get rid of. He didn’t know what to do.
“Let me have it clear, Mr. Gide. You think the Ila is in indirect contact with the Freethinker movement, passing information to them via the taps? And that some rogue lab on Orb is financing a cell here?”
“Yes.”
It was too incredible.
“I’m assured,” Reaux said, “that such information absolutely does not get out of Planetary Observations, sir. The Project Director reminds us this theory has surfaced every few generations, never substantiated in fact. Whatever you think of our information-gathering abilities, we’re constantly on the alert for such a move, however it would come, by some such technology as that pot you questioned, by any other means. We would be aware of any such breach of security.”
“You can’t even find Stafford after a thundering great explosion. Do I think you couldn’t be unaware of something clandestine operating under your nose? I want out of this place. I want office facilities and staff…”
“Staff, Mr. Gide?”
“You are required to cooperate, sir. My authority and my credentials haven’t terminated. It wasn’t my intent to establish an office of the Treaty Board here, but, de facto, it now exists, as a result of this attack on me.” Gide’s tone was brittle, his jaw alternately trembling and set hard among several chins. “I assure you, Governor, my credentials give me sufficient authority to form such an office, to engage security, to arrest and to bind for trial, in equal legal standing with the local governments and treaty-mandated offices, includingMr. Antonio Brazis, including you, sir. I’ll require a residency—the one you afford me is adequate. Office space— I’llchoose my own personnel, thank you, starting with my own security, in an office near yours. I’ll expect…Mr. Dortland, is it…?”
“Yes.”
“…Mr. Dortland to present me a list of possible hires, perhaps some from your staff, but by no means entirely. I’ll want clericals…I assure you, sir, my authority does not depend on the ship’s being at my disposal, and they may bar me from entering, but by damn, I can hold the ship here indefinitely or require they take enforcement action, if I’m not satisfied with the level of cooperation I’m receiving from your administration or from Mr. Antonio Brazis’s various imperial domains. You’ll respect those credentials, sir, or there will be consequences.”