In an inner, mostly numb spot, Reaux began to be afraid as well as outraged, while he tried to keep his expression neutral and his mind on track. This was a dangerous, intelligent man. Tranked as he was, unkempt as a drugout in a gutter on Blunt, he still tracked, still reasoned…still mounted a terrifying threat. What did it take to knock this man out? “I’ll make initial arrangements for office space, if you like. I understand your injuries will let you out of here in fairly short order.”
“I expect it.”
“I’ll relay your requests to Mr. Dortland.” He was scrambling, mentally, to find a pocket to drop Mr. Gide into—preferably a deep, dark one. And hit on a reassuring objection. “There is an operational precedent for cooperative administrative operations, in the Medical Authority itself, limited by the Treaty on this particular station, but having absolute powers in its sphere. And there is the PO. There’s always the PO, on Concord.” And my relations with it, he thought, doggedly, which weren’t going to change. “And the ondat,who have their own voice. Not to mention the planet itself. All of which I’m charged to keep in equilibrium. The Treaty Board has its powers, but, I’m constrained to point out, sir, the Treaty Board’s authority regulates Treaty compliance, not the planet, orthe PO, and certainly not the ondat,so I must dispute your interpretation of equal standing.”
“You have no authority over my office.”
“You propose to open an office to make yet one moreauthority on Concord, which only makes one of half a dozen, Mr. Gide, and you do notoutrank the Earth Authority, which appointed me, or the Apex Council, which appointed the local Chairman, nor yet, I assure you, the ondatauthority, in whose territory, let me recall to you, we actually sit. You don’t even outrank the Medical Authority, which I assure you is very potent within its own sphere. As governor, it’s my job to keep all these jurisdictions in balance and keep relations with the ondatand Apex in good order. Your investigation of any breach of containment crosses all these jurisdictions, but most of them are foreign, and that boils down to the fact that you can’t order these other jurisdictions to act, you can only request. Close cooperation, sir, close cooperation between your office and mine is essential, and I assure you that, whatever your credentials, you and your office cannot superimpose any authority over mine. On any other station, perhaps. But try to get me replaced, and discover that you’ll disturb all the alliances and working agreements extant here, in a way very disagreeable to Earth itself. You may be the advocate for the Treaty, but you exist in a constellation of authorities on this station, and you will exist cooperatively within that framework, or you will not function with any power at all. Now let me not be rude. Let me assure you you’ll receive very good cooperation from my office. But not obedience. You likewise need Brazis’s cooperation, to make headway in his sphere. I suggest diplomacy, Mr. Ambassador.”
It was the best speech of his life. It was absolutely his most eloquent, and after he’d delivered it he found he’d scared hell out of himself, but he meant it. And the one witness to his moment was the victim of an adrenaline load clearly running out, apparent in the droop of eyelids, the lines of pain and anger in a pasty-pale face. “Meanwhile my would-be assassin is loose on your well-run station, Governor, and you’ve conveniently misplaced Stafford.”
“We’ll find both, at high priority, I assure you. Meanwhile—” Reaux started foolishly to reach for a pocket and couldn’t, through the isolation suit. “Meanwhile the hospital staff can reach my office at any moment. Call me if you recall any further details, anything you may have noted and failed to state in the report.”
“Quite a blank at the moment,” Gide said muzzily. He reached for a water glass on the table. It escaped his hands. It fell, spilling its contents.
A cleaner-bot zipped out of its housing in the baseboard and sucked up glass and water both.
“Do you want me to call the nurse?” Reaux asked. “I’ll get you some more water.”
“The hell with it. I’m tired.”
“I’ll be in contact,” Reaux said. “Rest.”
Gide, falling back, shut his eyes, looking like a corpse.
Reaux walked out, earnestly wishing Gide were one.
9
DOWN ON BLUNT…down in a maze he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten into—Procyon walked somewhere among the warehouses that supplied the fancy shops on Grozny, somewhere near a bar he thought he recognized.
But that would mean he’d been going the wrong way.
He’d lost his coat somewhere. Stupid of him. He couldn’t remember how. He knew he was in trouble with Brazis, and he’d folded on his assignment, and the man from Earth wasn’t dead, but good as, with the suit breached. The explosion came back to him. The situation began to reassemble itself, in shattered bits, like glass, each one containing an image, and all out of order.
He did know he shouldn’t be where he was. It was a bad neighborhood. He’d thought sure he was headed right, and after a blank, he turned up here, disoriented, not even sure of the cross street. Bars and frontages changed on Blunt. They moved, sometimes color-shifted overnight without warning, and sometimes the owners just stripped the facade and glued it up somewhere else down the block, which wasn’t guaranteed to be at all where you remembered it being. Cops hated the zone. He wasn’t fond of it, himself, at the moment. He wanted to get home, was all, and he made repeated attempts to tap into the office directly from where he was, that only gave him headache.
He tried again. “Sir?”
Blood shunt and pain behind the eyes.
Bad pain. Really bad pain, right to the roots of his teeth.
“Procyon.”
The tap came crystal clear for a second.
It was a woman’s voice. Downworld accent. He figured it must be somebody really senior in the offices, somebody senior like Drusus, a tap so used to dealing with the Old Ones it just crept into ordinary speech.
“Where are you, Procyon?”
Pain ebbed. He could think. “In public, ma’am. Can you ease back? You’re coming through very high. It’s painful.” Tears blurred his eyes. But the tap was working. He wasn’t cut off. He didn’t care about the pain. It was all relief. “Tell Brazis I’m sorry…”
“What are they doing? What is Brazis doing?”
Then, sharply: “This is Luz. Answer me.”
It so confused him he stopped cold, out of breath and leaning against a building frontage, ducking slightly into a nook between frontages. He tried to form an answer. A coherent thought.
Luz? There was only one Luz that could be reaching him on that tap.
And she was downworld. Was he hallucinating?
“Answer, Procyon.”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“What happened?”
“Something exploded. Something blew up when I was talking to the ambassador. I think—I think I couldn’t hear for a while. I think the tap is damaged. My ears are still ringing. Tell Brazis.”
“Where are you?”
“On the street. I’m confused. I think I’m on Blunt. But I don’t know for sure where I am.”
“Are you badly injured?”
He looked down at himself. Except for losing his coat, except for the dizziness and the memory lapse, he didn’t look hurt. A little dust. He thought he might be bleeding here and there, but it was a dark shirt. “I don’t see anything physical. I’m just shaky. My ears hurt. I can still hardly hear the street. Like everything’s down a deep pipe. Can you help me reach the Chairman?”