Sweat stood on Magdallen’s face. “You forgot the cracking of the Southern Wall, to lay to my account.”

He ordinarily admired humor under fire. Not at this precise moment. He fixed Magdallen with a cold stare.

“I assure you,” Magdallen said, “that’s far beyond my abilities.”

“Nothing else seems to be. Your hidden tap code. If you please.”

“Three space two-one-four.”

He wrote it down. The deliberate act calmed him, let him think twice about simply tapping in and blasting hell out of the man.

“Thank you, Agent Magdallen.”

“Yes, sir.” Much more meekly.

“So spill it. Why are you here? The truth this time. I can tell you if the Ila thinks she’sbeen spied on, or that you’re responsible for her being spied on, you may be dead before next shift. Or worse. Her on-shift tap’s in hospital, fried. She may never recover. Do you understand me? In fact—you may have gotten her andLuz on your neck, in which case you won’t be safe again, waking or sleeping.”

Magdallen stared at him, absorbing that information.

In silence.

Brazis’s carefully cultivated patience ran out. “Talk, damn you.”

“I assure you we’re on the same side in this affair, Mr. Chairman.”

“Then you’d better figure from here on to cooperate with me, to hell with your orders. The situation is mutating by the hour. You can’t communicate with Apex fast enough, so start communicating with me. I amprotecting you from the Ila. I have all the taps damped down, way down, to the detriment of our supporting Marak, who’s currently in a nasty situation. I’m not sure how long our damp-down is going to resist a skilled hack from downworld. So for starters, I’d suggest you tap completely out.”

“I have.”

“So what brought Gide here? What have you got to do with it? And why am Ihaving to get my information from an Earthborn governor, who seems far more informed on this business than anybody else?”

A frown knit Magdallen’s brows. “The information can put you and me both in jeopardy with Council.”

“Right now, let me tell you, the Council is in dire jeopardy with me.And I willspill what I know to Ian and Luz and let them use their judgment how far to take it to the Ila and to Marak, because right now, this could look like an attempt by Earth to get their hands on one of Marak’s taps for no friendly purposes, and they may still be trying. I’ll tell you another tidbit of information. We don’t have readout from Marak at the moment. He’s either shut down to protect himself or he’s lying unconscious or dead somewhere in chancy terrain. Hati, thank our lucky stars, had lost patience with us and tapped out well before this happened. But in the general damp-down, we can’t get to her to find out. We daren’t reestablish contact until we know what Luz and the Ila have gotten up to and until we’re assured they’re not going to blast through again. So the Council’s displeasure looms small in my path, Agent Magdallen. Talk, and talk in depth and detail.”

“All right, all right, sir. The theory is, there is First Movement on the station. That’s why I think Earth’s come in. They theorize—they theorize the Ila has been passing tech up here via one or more of the taps. The Treaty Board on Earth contacted Apex, advising Apex they were sending a mission here. Apex sent me. I was under orders to burrow deep in advance and not to say what I know.”

“Did you attack the ambassador?”

“No. I didn’t.”

Truthers still greenlighted on the desk rim said that was the truth. But a little yellow also flickered there. Magdallen was hedging, or nervous about that question.

“You know who did hit him?”

“I don’t. By all evidence and circumstances, it could have been the black market.”

“The smugglers? That would be a damned fool thing, way too much public notice.”

“On one level, yes. But creating confusion, government hearings, a lot of finger-pointing…we go into hysterics, so does Earth, the politicians are busy creating greater security, and they cover their tracks and explore whatever protective system we devise to detect them.”

“If they were that bright, they’d be running the station.”

“That’s the point, sir. They may have very good direction. They may have tap communications they shouldn’t have, not downworld, but at least office-level.”

“The system has safeguards.”

“You didn’t find me before I blew my own cover out there in the outer office. You didn’t find the Ila until she blew through like a solar flare. Your alarms aren’t working, sir, have you figured that?”

The burglary alarm hacked. Undetected. A leaden cold settled in Brazis’s gut—and a sense of profound embarrassment chased after it.

Not that Magdallen seemed to be enjoying his moment: sweat still glistened on his face.

“All right, Agent Magdallen. Points to your side. So you damn well knewwe hadn’t picked you up in the system. You were operating in that shadow. It would have been civilized and prudent to warn us there was a problem with our alarm system.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you hadn’t detected the breach, or whether you’d consented to it. I wasn’t sure, sir, that you weren’t in collusion.”

Infuriating on the surface. But logical. He had to ask the next question. “Have you reason to be sure now, that I’m not in collusion, as is?”

“I think I know who hacked the system. The Ila did, no telling how long ago. I believe you didn’t know. Whether she knows about me at this moment is another matter. If she finds out—she may try to kill me. And I’m not that confident your systems can take the top off the spike if she decides to take the taps out entirely.”

“Go on.”

“There is a lab on Orb working on a medical illicit of a very worrisome nature, that may be an advanced tap, or at least something complex. Apex is extremely concerned. But nothing is going to leave Orb. Someone will see to that. There may have been a fire at that lab already. When there is, there will be arson arrests—on the lab staff.”

“And Earth is aware this is going on?”

“I believe so. Gide wasn’t discreet, coming in here. I can only hope if Earth’s agents have come in at Orb, that they’ll be quieter, or we’ll see our operation there blown. I hoped Gide’s protection would be stiffer. It wasn’t.”

“Damn.” Nanisms. Illicits. Smuggling. All the versions of the Movement had that particular focus, the hope of getting some magic bullet, a tap to enable their members to communicate unheard—more, a magic pill to make their members as immortal as the few down on the planet. “A medical nanism…not the immortality nanocele, nothing like that.”

“Not that we know,” Magdallen agreed. “Theoretically the Ila has her own reasons to keep that nanocele exactly where it is, so her enemies eventually die and she doesn’t, and none of them can get what’s her trump card. She’s been very careful where she’s bestowed it.”

“That’s the thinking.”

“An adaptive nanism, however, that could be weaponized…that could be in question at that lab on Orb. Earth is clearly scared. Apex isn’t happy.”

Scared? Adaptive nanisms, let loose in a population, let loose on Concord, of all sensitive places in the universe, where it could prove to the ondatthat remediation never had been the goal?

Kiss civilized understanding good-bye. Kiss containment good-bye. The genie could break the bottle for good and all. Ilia Lindstrom, the sole surviving member of the First Movement, sitting in a shelter that had withstood the planet-breakers, would just have to sit it out and wait for her ticket off planet, to take up the war where the Movement had left off.

They’d always known what the potential game was, in that woman’s survival.

“The lab fire has likely already taken place on Orb,” Magdallen said. “If Gide is here, they’ve probably already moved.”

“So Gide comes here looking for Movement contacts inside myoffices. Comes here forearmed with information on Procyon Stafford, so sure he’s to blame. If I can be sure of anything, that kid is innocent of any conspiracy.”