Authors: C. J. Cherryh
“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’s
been spied on, or that you’re responsible for Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 7 9
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
and
Luz 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
am
protecting 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
I
having 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
will
spill 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.”
2 8 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h
“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
knew
we 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.”
Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 8 1
“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.”
2 8 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h
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
ondat
that 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
my
offices. 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.”
“I’m sure so, too, sir. They have dossiers on every tap. I think it was the Freethinker connection that attracted their attention. Mistakenly so, in his case, but right on target in certain facts.”
“And why in hell, Agent Magdallen, didn’t you advise me of those facts before I sent that kid in there to investigate Gide?”
“I’d no way to do that without blowing my cover, which I was under orders not to do. Unfortunately—someone was aware of the Gide situation. Someone disposed of the guards and sat outside waiting there for the door to open, for Gide to be in view. If he hadn’t been, they’d have gone in after him. They didn’t snatch your tap. I don’t think they wanted to. They didn’t want him.”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps because they didn’t want you to invoke the police powers you have. They didn’t want Project law to activate, and it wouldn’t, so long as Procyon got back to us. I don’t know, sir. I only conclude that because they
didn’t
take him. They didn’t want that train of events to take place.”
“Meanwhile the Project tap has been hacked from down on the world. The alarm system hasn’t been functioning for months.
Years.”
Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 8 3
“The Ila could indeed have passed critical information. Or orders, to persons on this station. Yes.”
The Ila herself could have been behind the attack on Procyon.
He weighed the notion. Weighed it twice, and it came up far short.
“The Ila doesn’t botch her moves. Whoever did this missed killing the ambassador. Possibly the agents panicked. Possibly the result was what they wanted. But if at any moment she’d wanted to kill Procyon, she could have done it outright. Ask her current tap—who can’t be asked anything.”
“You say she doesn’t make mistakes. Possibly her hands up here did. But as you say, sir, the result fell short of murder.
Maybe the result was exactly what someone wanted. Not to kill either of them.”
“Only to penetrate the containment? To strand the man here? To create disturbance between our office and the governor?”
Magdallen shrugged.
“You think the Movement wants Gide stranded here?” Brazis asked him. “For what bloody reason? Gide is Treaty Board, almost certainly. And survives, now, as a permanent resident of this station? What possible advantage to the Movement?”
“I can say
I
didn’t attack Gide. Did you, sir?”
“No.”
“Because?”
“Because it would be stupid.”
“Exactly,” Magdallen said. “Exactly. Why would the Movement want Gide here?
Cui bono?
To whom the advantage—in this attack that doesn’t kill Mr. Gide?”
Not to the governor. Not to the Ila. Not to the Project or to Apex.
“To his own authority.” He didn’t like being led. But he followed the logic. Some Earth faction. It made uncomfortably thorough sense.
“To strand Mr. Gide here. To set him up here, an establishment without the trouble of negotiation against the provisions of the Treaty—negotiations that might take decades, provoke problems, and still be refused.”
It made disturbing sense. Negotiations would be refused. A Treaty Board officer, stranded here, alive, was still a Treaty Board 2 8 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h
officer. They might not have told Gide what they were going to do.
Gide might have been sandbagged by his own authority.
“Earth does have agents here,” Magdallen said, which was an of-course. Then: “Highly placed agents.”
“Specifically?”
“Dortland,
sir, to be precise.”
Dortland. Reaux’s security director, in command of all the special agents and all the Earther police on the station.
“Are you entirely sure of that?”
“Apex is sure of that.”
“What agency is he?”
“That, we’re not sure. But by the direction things are taking, someone who wants the Treaty Board to have an office here.”
“Damned little use if Dortland already is a Treaty Board officer.”
“If he can preserve his clandestine nature, that would be useful. And he may not be of Mr. Gide’s intellectual level. But I’m relatively certain Apex’s suspicions are correct. It’s suspected in certain underworld quarters that Dortland is slinking for some agency or another, that he’s just too well networked to be the usual governor ’s security appointee. He’s suspected of having his fingers on the pulse of Blunt—having contact with persons who, if picked up for any reason, don’t stay arrested. Persons that don’t form part of the ordinary criminal element, persons that make the criminal element very nervous. I personally wonder,”
Magdallen said, “if he’s been not chasing the same thing Gide is chasing.”
“And then attacks Gide, establishing him here?”
“There are rival agencies,” Magdallen said.
“None that would
want
a Treaty Board office here, none except the Treaty Board itself.”
“There is that point.”
“And the governor?” Brazis dreaded to learn. He had come to
like
Setha Reaux, in a limited way. “Is he in on this notion?”
“Certainly due to be watched by this organization, which holds a power quite outside the authority that appoints governors—an organization that doesn’t accept policy directives from the Earth Authority. Possibly they’re ambitious to expand their office. Gide will run an aboveboard operation. And Dortland will remain in the Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 8 5
shadows as a countercheck on Gide, never informing him that he was the one to strand him here.”
That theory was worth examining. It wasn’t the first time he’d wondered about Reaux’s staff. “His secretary, Ernst Albers?”
“Loyal, as far as I know, but Albers moves outside my circle.
There’s another point, however. Reaux’s daughter. Her friends have friends on Blunt. Her situation is worrisome. She’s run away to Blunt. She’s certainly vulnerable. Therefore, so is the governor, who may be asked directly for favors.”
“I doubt Reaux is part of this. He predates this mess.”
“I happen to concur, sir, for what it’s worth. But Earth may know about the contact you have with him and take a dim view of it, to Reaux’s great detriment.”
Damn.
Damn.
Warn Reaux about Dortland? Or not? Ask Magdallen’s opinion on the matter? Or not?
“You do have heightened security, sir,” Magdallen informed him. “Also from Apex. Word’s come down, through channels not unrelated to my presence here, that your personal security should take every precaution against your untimely demise. Don’t leave the offices unguarded. Don’t meet personally with Reaux. Apex had rather Reaux than, for instance, the governor’s opposition.