Chimera

Twenty-One

I've called for an embassy limousine," Ariel said. "It should be here shortly."

Ree Wenithal gave her a gloomy look, as if now regretting to go along with them. He had drunk four cups of coffee and swallowed a stimulant pill, and his mood had grown ever more somber.

Coren scowled at him. "Don't tell us you've changed your mind and don't want to go. Would you rather wait for Tresha and Gamelin?"

Wenithal looked startled. "Who?"

Coren almost smiled. "Your collectors. The ones you've been waiting for."

Ariel watched them regard each other, Ree Wenithal clearly unsettled and Coren smugly observant.

"We standing around playing Who Knows," Jeta Fromm asked, "or moving somewhere safer?"

Coren laughed. "Come on. Is there anything else you want to bring?"

"No," Wenithal said grudgingly, and stepped to the door.

Ariel touched Coren's elbow. When he looked at her, she pointed to his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I could use some painblock and a stimulant right now," he said, "but I can move. "

They exited onto the balcony warily, Ariel coming out last. Third shift was still a few hours from ending and the quiet made the warren seem deserted. Coren led the way down the steps to the courtyard and out to the avenue. Ariel went last, glancing anxiously over her shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to see into the shadows. She gripped the stunner in her pocket, knowing it would be next to useless against the thing that attacked them earlier, but unwilling to release its illusion of effectiveness.

Far to the right, at the end of the avenue, music and laughter reached them from a bar; otherwise, the area was still. They pressed back against the wall and waited in silence.

Ariel jumped when the limousine pulled onto the avenue. The long black vehicle stopped and the rear door slid open. As they neared the vehicle, two men emerged and quickly flanked Wenithal and Jeta. Wenithal stopped short, but Jeta whirled around, glaring.

"What is this, gato?" she demanded.

Coren stopped before her. "It's for everyone's piece of mind…Tresha."

She frowned at him. "My name is Jeta Fromm."

"I doubt it," Coren said. "But we can sort it out later, when we're in comfort and security." He looked at Ariel. "Is this going to cause problems?"

"Nothing I'm not used to," Ariel said. She addressed the guards. "Screen them."

One of the men took out a pad and walked around the pair. He reached inside Jeta/Tresha's jacket and removed a pistol. "That's all, Ambassador."

"Good. In the limousine, please. "

The guard took Tresha's pack, then Wenithal and Tresha were ushered into the capacious backseat. The guards watched them from the facing seat. Ariel went around to the passenger side front and got in.

Coren closed the door and leaned against the jamb.

"I'm going somewhere else," he said.

Ariel wanted to protest, but held back. "I see. I'll stay with these people, then, and set them up at the embassy."

He nodded. His eyes shut briefly. "When I get there, I think I'd better sleep."

"You wouldn't want to tell me where you're going, would you?"

"Not now." He smiled wearily. "Deniability and all that. Besides, I really don't know just exactly where…" He shook his head. "Get them to the embassy and safe. I'll comm when I'm finished. "

He pushed away from the limo. The door closed. Ariel watched him walk wearily away. She felt a sharp reluctance to let him out of her sight. For a moment she wanted to get out of the limousine and go with him, trusting the limo and the guards to get her passengers to the embassy.

Not very responsible, she thought peevishly.

Coren rounded a distant comer, disappearing from sight. Ariel leaned back in the seat, wondering at her uneasy mix of emotions.

"Embassy," Ariel said. She glanced over her shoulder at Tresha and Wenithal, and wondered idly how much of a diplomatic mess she had just created. Only i/they complain, she thought.

"Yes, Ambassador," the car replied and rolled on.

"This is nonsense," Wenithal said.

"What's changed?" Ariel asked. "You were prepared to shoot whoever came through your door earlier."

He glowered, then let his head fall back. Within a couple of minutes his eyes closed and his breathing deepened. Ariel wondered just how much alcohol he had drunk before they had arrived. Then she wondered how often people had thought that about her.

Tresha glared at Ariel, straight-backed and on edge, hands pressed against her thighs. Her backpack lay on the seat between the guards.

"That looks heavy," Ariel said. "What do you have in there?"

"Why?"

"Just curious. "

Tresha frowned. "My chops. Code bummer, datum, decrypter. Some clothes."

Ariel waited to see if Tresha would volunteer more. When she remained silent, Ariel asked, "Why Nova Levis?"

"Time. There's a list and a schedule. Nova Levis had the earliest opening. Besides, you hear there's a lot of tech there."

"You do?"

"They say, sure."

"It was an agrarian colony, started up by the Church of Organic Sapiens."

Tresha blinked at her. "They changed, then." She shrugged. "So, do you believe Mr. Lanra? That I'm not who I say I am?"

"Does it matter? Either you are and you need our help, or you aren't and we need to keep you under guard. "

Tresha shook her head. "Meddling. Spacers are always meddling. Why is that? What's all this to you?"

Ariel considered giving Tresha a glib answer, predigested and politic. It's my job, I was ordered to help. True as far as it went, but Ariel had never done anything purely for surface reasons. In this case, she felt she would have been justified to tell Setaris no and let herself be rotated back to Aurora as she expected to be.

She understood Derec's motives-he wanted to get his hands on a positronics lab one more time. The ground mission's lab was denied him and, though he still retained Thales, he simply could not do the research he wanted. And he wanted to stay on Earth, a desire about which she had grown ambivalent in the last year.

She understood Coren Lanra's motives, though she suspected there was more than he had admitted.

Ariel even understood Sen Setaris and the policy under which she had delegated the assignment.

But her own motives for going along with it?

"Until two hours ago I didn't know," she said. "Then I saw the enemy. " When they arrived at the embassy, Ariel summoned an extra security team to escort Wenithal and Tresha to separate apartments. "I want someone watching them full-time, highest level surveillance."

She went directly to her own apartment, then.

"Any messages, Jennie?" Ariel asked.

"Thales requests that you check in as soon as possible. "

"Thank you, Jennie." She tapped a code for the embassy security office. "I want an ID run, please. There is a woman just installed in the secure apartments calling herself Jeta Fromm. Verify. Check against records for a woman named Tresha, last name unknown."

As she stepped into the corridor, she felt a brief wave of weariness. She had been going for too long a stretch without more than ten minutes' sleep. Ariel shrugged it off and headed to Derec's apartment.

"Thales, do you have something for me?" she asked as she entered Derec's workspace.

"A number of items, Ariel. I have completed the recovery from the subject. Derec and Hofton have already viewed the relevant memories."

Ariel's pulse quickened. She sat down. "Then show me."

Ariel watched the entire episode, from the point where Nyom Looms confronted the dockworker to the point when collapse occurred after the murders of all the baleys. She did not move when it was done, staring at the screen. She felt warm, and a distant anger she knew would only grow with time.

"Do you wish to review any part of the material, Ariel?" Thales finally asked.

"No. Where's Derec?"

"In custody. The TBI have intervened and assumed authority over the investigation on Kopernik."

Ariel stood. "Wait." She went to Derec's bathroom and found a container of stim pills. She swallowed two and returned to Thales. "All right, Thales, tell me what's happened. " She took the embassy shunt to Setaris's offices.

Unexpectedly, Ambassador Setaris was in.

"Come in, Ariel, come in," Setaris said as Ariel walked in. "My door is always open for interesting people, and you've been so very interesting lately. "

Setaris sat behind her desk, gazing at the subetheric. Ariel glanced at it and saw Jonis Taprin speaking to a reporter in a formal interview setting. The sound was off.

"Derec Avery is in custody," Setaris said. "The TBI have seized control of Kopernik security from Chief Sipha Palen and are making very loud noises about security leaks and subversion. I have a protest filed from Ambassador Chassik demanding you be censured and dismissed from all embassy duties, pending an investigation of your fitness for executive responsibilities." She gestured at the subetheric. "Senator Taprin has been making very obnoxious noises about the treaties concerning our embassy missions. What did you do to him, Ariel? He's been almost shrill about reviewing Spacer presence on Earth."

"Nothing recently."

Setaris smiled wanly. "It's been a very long day. You've been excessively diligent in your assignment."

"Why is Derec in custody?"

"The TBI said something about evidence tampering and hindering an investigation. It's the sort of charge they make when they don't know what really has them angry. You two have stirred up a lot of trouble."

"I don't see how. We haven't done all that much yet."

"Yes, but you've done it in all the right places. You two have the damnedest luck. Gale basically wants you to stop looking into Nova Levis." Setaris frowned. "You didn't know Derec Avery was under arrest?"

"I just got back in," Ariel said evasively.

"Then why did you come here? I expected a barrage of protest and a demand to have him released."

"Maybe later." She leaned on Setaris's desk. "Why are we hiding a Solarian national?"

Setaris frowned. "I'm sorry, would you repeat that?"

"Rotij Polifos."

Setaris nodded slowly. "What do you know about him?"

"Derec got suspicious of him. Neither of us knew much about him, except that he's been director of the lab on Kopernik for six, almost seven years. That's a long time for an Auroran to hold a post here. "

"I've been here nearly twelve years, Ariel."

"We're diplomats; we're different. For someone like Polifos, it's an eternity. When I checked, I discovered that he had never once requested rotation to another post. No one from any office has questioned his long residency on Kopernik. Nothing you'd expect to happen in his position has happened. His stipend hasn't even changed in six years. "

"And why did you conclude he's a Solarian national?"

"A couple of things. A background check on his name came up with an old Solarian family, for one, but there are no birth records or citizenship papers for him. The family itself has only two remaining members and, like most Solarians, they're recluses. The other thing is that all his Auroran documentation originated here."

"How did you manage to learn that?"

"I'm very good at my job. The third detail is precedent. We've done this before with defectors who may be subject to extradition under the Fifty Worlds Mutual Accords. Did I guess wrong?"

"No. But-"

"I'm not finished. I did another search then, one I wouldn't have thought to do. We've been so busy tracking down who used to own Nova Levis we never thought to find out who worked there. Five researchers were senior staff they ran the research protocols. It was their lab. Four of them are dead."

Setaris regarded her quietly. "And the fifth?"

"Was a Solarian. He vanished. Interestingly enough, the document trail for Rotij Polifos begins shortly before Nova Levis was closed down. The Solarian presumably returned to Solaria, but I could find no evidence that he ever got there. A couple years later, Polifos assumes directorship of the positronics lab on Kopernik. "

Setaris nodded. "As you say, you're very good at what you do. Though this isn't exactly your job."

"It has become my job," Ariel said.

"Point taken. Anything else?"

Ariel felt herself get angry then. Setaris was being "diplomatic" and neutral, superficially uninvolved-"professional," she would say. Ariel decided to thoroughly ruin her day. "Did you know about the cyborgs?"

Setaris's face lost all expression for a moment. Her skin paled then. "You're joking."

"I wish I were. "

Setaris's face flexed with comprehension, brow furrowing deeply, mouth opening and closing wordlessly, eyes scanning the surface of the desk as if for something lost. It took less than a minute for her to regain composure. When she did, though, all the casual annoyance and alloyed humor were gone, replaced by pragmatic professionalism.

"Tell me what you know," she said.

"What I know isn't much. What I saw…Coren Lanra claimed he saw a robot with masking capabilities. What I saw tonight could only be a cyborg. It's entirely probable that it's what he saw as well. The blood sample Derec took from the collapsed robot's hand is more than likely a close relative of Nyom Looms. The material mixed with the sample-myralar-suggests robotics, but until tonight it made no sense to me. "

She blew out a breath. "Nova Levis is still technically owned by Solaria. It was renamed after a Settler colony leased it from them, but the original title never transferred. There is also an old research lab-here on Earth-called Nova Levis, among which I found Gale Chassik listed as an original shareholder. Plus Rega Looms and Alda Mikels. Tonight I met a retired policeman who was investigating kidnappings twenty-some years ago who says that, among other things, a number of infants were taken from orphanages here and transported offworld. He suspected a slave trade. But several of these infants were hopelessly handicapped…UPDs, he called them. Nova Levis was one of the labs he'd investigated, but he claims that it was clear of any culpability."

Setaris shook her head. "What did the lab do? And what does all this have to do with cyborgs?"

"I don't know. Nova Levis the lab was involved in prosthetics research, though. "

"Why did it fail? Prosthetics is a fairly lucrative field on Earth. "

"I don't know that, either, " Ariel replied. "What I want to know is if this blockade around Nova Levis has anything to do with it. With cyborgs. I want to know if you knew. "

"Why would I have known?"

"Because you gave me some pathetic reasons to start this investigation. "

Setaris raised an eyebrow. "Assuming I did, why wouldn't I tell you?"

"Oh, some sort of attempt at objectification. Maybe, though, you knew but had no proof. You wanted me to verify your suspicions."

"Rather shabby use of my people, wouldn't you think?"

"It wouldn't have been the first time."

Setaris narrowed her eyes. "When this is over, Ariel, I will sit you down and give you a lesson in the realities of the diplomat's life. You've been able to function largely unaffected by them since you've been here. In the meantime-"

"In the meantime," Ariel interjected, "I need Derec out of jail, and I want a little cooperation from the TBI. I don't think diplomacy will solve this particular problem."

Setaris frowned, and gestured toward the guest chairs. "Sit down, Ariel. Shut your mouth while I tell you what the situation actually is. Then, if you want to make demands, I'll listen."