Did he half suspect that the Ila had timed her efforts up here to coincide with an era of maximum attention on a planet-changing event? He had his strong suspicions. His very strong suspicions. The whole Project had been concentrating on a narrow section of planetary crust—and never even thinking the tap system had become a sieve, coinciding with actions attracting Earth’s passionate disapproval.
Instruments could, however imperfectly, see beneath the clouds of condensation down there, and it was truly spectacular now, that waterfall.
Damnedlucky that Marak hadn’t had a closer view of it. Hewas diverted, Ian was diverted. Everyone was busy and a little desperate. And no matter how involved Ian might like to be now in the Luz-Ila matter, quakes down at Halfmoon would likely continue to be a priority, getting Marak and his people out alive.
The Ila had appeared to reform, abandoning her usual diversion of making a director’s life interesting. She had been so nicely cooperative lately. God.
What was this new sea about to bring the universe at large? The long-sought remediation? Proof that life on Marak’s World was unlikely to infect ondat? Proof that Movement technology, running down its own evolutionary track, could devolve into simple, nonaggressive biology, ultimately capable of working only in its own limited environment?
The Ila was dead set, as always, on blowing that happy outcome to hell.
So Apex would check her move at Orb, and if they were lucky, on Concord itself. The Treaty Board had settled an agent here in the mistaken theory they were going to overturn a conspiracy and get their fingers into all sorts of business, while Earth’s more conservative public, convinced by agelong propaganda that one simple mod was damnation, would view an assassination attempt on Concord and a lab raid on Orb as armageddon in full career. Concord and Earth were in for a period of unhappy and dangerous relations, while the Ila sat and watched, ever so pleased.
God, he’d like to ask the Ila’s tap some critical questions. But that was never going to happen.
And he had a meeting of the Council in less than an hour, in which time he now had to decide how much of Magdallen’s claim to let out to that body for debate. He decided that, no, he wouldn’tattend. But he did have to instruct his proxy. And he had to consider what Magdallen had said, that it might be time to turn over that office.
“Sir.” Dianne. “Drusus is reporting in, on one.”
Physical line. He punched a button on common com. “Drusus. Are you all right?”
“Not so good, sir. I’m at a public phone. But I’m on my feet. I heard it. Shall I go on?”
Drusus, veteran Drusus, didn’t ask what had happened to cause that blowup on the tap. Didn’t sit down and quit. But he’d been hit, wide open.
“Do you need medical?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I’m functional. Bad headache, but not so I can’t continue. I’ve talked with several people who know our man. They claim they haven’t seen him. That they’re concerned and looking for him. Which probably means he’s found a dark hole somewhere, if his head is like mine, right now.”
Brave Drusus. “Get home right now and relieve Auguste. Auguste was hit hard. We don’t know about his contact.”
“Yes, sir,”was all Drusus said, the public line being no place to discuss department business, and depend on it, Drusus was on his way at all possible speed, to take up a duty, bottom line, more important than Procyon’s survival. The man deserved a medal. And his reporting in meant the PO had one less worry on the streets.
He didn’t think the Ila had meant to kill Marak’s taps. Antagonizing Earth, threatening civilization, yes—on their scale a disaster; on hers, a maneuver that might or might not pay what she hoped. But a war with Marak, an antagonism that could keep an anger alive as long as Marak’s memory, he very much doubted was anywhere on her agenda. In their way, the oldest immortals stuck together in a dynamic of touchy personalities, and what Luz currently wanted, which was to find Procyon, the Ila seemed to want. She had told Procyon to get home. Her help was intended to win leverage, maybe, inside downworld’s ongoing politics…because Marak was going to be damned mad if he gathered the scattered pieces of this business and put them together, to find out that the Ila had harmed his watcher.
He had one more call to make before he briefed his proxy for the Council meeting: he wanted to find out what Reaux had learned from Gide, and simultaneously to drop a piece of information in the governor’s lap.
“GOVERNOR.” Jewel Sanduski hastened her pace to overtake Reaux in the hospital corridor right by the front doors. “The Chairman wants to talk to you. Where?”
There wasn’t a convenient place. “Take station there,” Reaux said to his bodyguard, pointing to a public restroom back down the hospital corridor. He walked back, ascertained it was empty, set them on watch to keep people out, and took Jewel inside the restroom foyer with him.
“Antonio?” he asked, over by the mirror and away from the door where his guards were. “We’re as secure now as we’re going to be.”
“We’ve had several problems just come to light. How’s Gide?”
“Not that bad. Angry. Very angry. He has credentials, and he’s threatening to establish an office of his own on station, which I don’t think I can prevent, but I can limit, by the Treaty itself. I’m headed back to my office at the moment. You caught me on my way out of the hospital.”
“Have you any word on your daughter?”
How in hell did Brazis know about Kathy? His face heated. His heart skipped a beat. But he kept his equilibrium. “No, I haven’t. Agents are out searching. No word on Mr. Stafford at the moment. No word from the ship out there. My staff’s monitoring the situation, but no one’s talking to us.”
“Someonewas talking, unfortunately. The Ila pirated her way onto the tap network looking for Mr. Stafford and completely fried her senior tap in the process.”
“God!”
“Every tap we had working is affected—migraines, nausea—and the one they’re trying to resuscitate, but they hold out very little hope she’ll ever function.”
“This is intolerable!” He wasn’t sure whether he meant this unnerving mode of conversation, through a tap-courier’s unexpressive mouth, or the fact the devil incarnate had breached station security while Earth was minutely scrutinizing every move he made.
“I did get brief contact with Procyon, in the process, but I couldn’t ascertain location. He is alive, and there are a lot of holes he could duck into. We’re trying to find him. Apex is upset. They have an agent here, who’s just presented himself to hear my strong complaints, and he’s likewise interested in what your Mr. Gide came here for—the notion of illicits getting up off the planet. He’s here to counter Mr. Gide’s presence. So we have a problem, Setha, a big problem. The Ila is involved, to the hilt.”
“She can get in on your system anytime she wants?”
“Unfortunately that’s turned out to be true. Worse, I fear she can do it with far less commotion than she just created. She’s had the Project tap for a very long time, which we did of course know: she acquired it from Ian. And now we know she’s breached our codes to reach us as noisily as possible, doing a great deal of damage. I wouldn’t put it past her to be involved with data-smuggling, if she had the means, and quite frankly, she may have found a way in. Why she blew through so publicly—the motive may have been to silence her own tap contact, who may have been passing information as Gide thought—or maybe to try to convince me she’s necessarily that noisy when she does it, and I don’t believe that for a moment. I think she’s been into our system many times without being detected. I’m ready to believe Gide’s suspicions may actually be valid.”