Chimera

Twenty-Six

Ariel felt intense relief upon seeing Coren Lanra.

He slumped in one of her sofas, head propped on one hand, elbow on the sofa arm, eyes half-lidded. He looked profoundly weary, fighting sleep. He smiled crookedly when he saw her, and made an effort to sit straight. He put weight on his left arm and winced.

"As long as you're here," Ariel said, "we're getting that shoulder looked at."

"No time," Coren protested. "I had an interesting talk with the police last night. "

"Don't avoid the issue, you have no choice. I won't continue this with a damaged partner."

His eyebrows raised. "When did we become partners?"

"I'm not sure. Am I assuming too much?"

"That depends."

Ariel ignored a spike of annoyance. "It always does." She started unsealing his shirt. "You 're still getting looked at. "

"That was never a question. " He smiled.

Ariel hesitated. Then, impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed him, very quickly and lightly, on the mouth. Coren stared at her, startled and, she thought, pleased. She continued removing his shirt.

"What have you been doing since Taprin?" he asked.

"Hiding for the most part. Turn around."

"The police surgeon said it's cracked." '

The bruise was spectacular. "Is there some point you need to prove by finishing this in pain?"

Coren laughed sharply. "I told you I made an appointment with my doctor. You didn't answer my question."

"Nor did you." She stood, his shirt in one hand. "But you will have that looked at."

He shook his head. "I need to talk to Jeta. Tresha. Whatever her name is. Where is she?"

"Three floors down, under guard. She'll wait."

He tried to stand. "Then I have to go to Nova Levis."

Ariel frowned. "The colony?"

"No, the lab."

She pressed down on his shoulder. He winced but sat back down. "Don't bother. It really was dismantled." She turned toward her robot. " Jennie? Who's working the infirmary now?"

"I don't suppose I can reason with you," Coren said.

"Dr. Jerios," the robot replied.

"Of course you can," Ariel told Coren. " Just do what I say. Thank you, Jennie. Let her know I have a patient for her-we'll be right down. And bring me a robe, please."

Coren let his head fall back. "Can't she come here?"

"She can; her equipment can't. Come on. Up. One more trip before you can sleep."

"Make up your mind, will you? Up or down." Coren grunted as he got to his feet. He stumbled. "Oops. One stim too many, I think. What do you mean, Nova Levis was dismantled?"

"What I said. After it was closed down, the facility was gutted and converted to its present use. There's nothing there." Ariel took his right arm and guided him toward the door. " Jennie, route my calls to the infirmary."

"What about Wenithal?" Coren asked.

"He's fine. Same floor, separate quarters, under guard."

"Guard?"

"Infirmary first. "

"I need to talk to Tresha first. "

"No, first-"

"She's not Jeta Fromm." Coren disengaged from Ariel. "The police identified Jeta's body in Lyzig. We need to speak to Tresha now."

Ariel regarded him for a moment. "All right. We can stop there on the way. "

"Fine."

They continued on down the corridor to the elevator.

"Ambassador Burgess?" he said.

"Yes."

"Thank you. "

"For what?"

Coren smiled. "The list is too long. Just say 'you're welcome."'

"You 're welcome. "

The elevator let them out on the guest floor. Ariel led the way to the rooms.

A tall, uniformed Auroran stood outside each of two doors along the corridor. Ariel led Coren to the nearest. The guard bowed slightly and stepped aside.

Tresha sat on the bed, pillows behind her, watching the subetheric across the room. Ariel glanced at what was being broadcast-it was a very old hyperwave drama; she remembered it vaguely, something based loosely on the first modern Terran permitted to visit a Spacer world after the long quarantine of Earth-and stepped in front of the set, blocking the woman's view.

"I hope you're here to apologize," Tresha said as she touched the remote to switch off the subetheric.

"For what?" Coren asked. "Not recognizing you sooner?"

The woman laughed. " Just who is this 'Tresha' person you keep talking about?"

"You tell me," Coren said. "I'd like to know why she killed Jeta Fromm."

"Tresha shook her head. "Look-"

"Jeta's body was found…and identified."

Tresha stared at him, eyes narrowed. Finally, she shrugged.

"Why kill her?" Coren asked. "She was just a data troll."

"Why worry about her?" Tresha returned. "She was, as you say, just a data troll."

"Did Mikels order it?"

Her eyes widened briefly. Then she shrugged again. "If you know so much…"

Ariel said, "We have both Kyas Vol and Yuri Pocivil in custody. Your cyborg is dead-it's being dissected even as we speak. So, if you want to play guessing games, it's all right with me, but we don't have to participate."

Tresha pursed her lips. "You 're talking to the wrong person, gato. I don't know anything."

"Nonsense," Coren said. "You were the contact for Damik and Wenithal. You handle all the legwork on the ground."

"So the messenger is supposed to know what the message is?"

Ariel waited for Coren's move. He said nothing. Tresha looked at him, then at Ariel, her eyes no longer so certain.

"Ask," Tresha said.

"Why'd you kill Jeta?"

"She was nosy. She poked around into the wrong places."

"How'd you pass for her in Lyzig?"

"They didn't know her. I moved in there shortly after we terminated Fromm."

"Why take her place?" Ariel asked.

"Common sense. If one commission for that data had come her way, more might. I wanted to find out how many vectors there were leading to that information. "

"And the baleys?" Coren asked quietly.

Another shrug. "I don't think I'll answer that."

"Do you think you're getting out of here without answering it?" Ariel asked.

Tresha smiled thinly in response, then looked at Coren. "I understand your ex-lover died on that last run. For what it's worth, I apologize. It wasn't personal."

"That's very comforting," Coren said tightly. "You've been tidying up, haven't you? Closing things down. Were you going to kill Wenithal when you showed up at his apartment?"

Tresha touched the remote again and turned up the volume. Music swelled.

"Your cyborg is dead!" Coren shouted.

Tresha looked at him and shook her head. "We're done." She smiled briefly, then ignored him.

Coren stalked out of the room.

"Who's the Solarian in charge?" Ariel asked. When Tresha continued to ignore her, she spun around and jabbed the OFF on the subetheric. The sound died instantly. "The Solarian in charge," she repeated. "Who is it?"

Tresha sighed. "You 're not as bright as I thought. "

"Do you have any idea what it is you're playing with?"

Tresha snorted derisively. "Oh, please! Is this going to be an appeal to my naivety, or just my conscience?" She sat forward. "It's all power, Ambassador-raw, absolute, overwhelming, carnal, irreducible power. Do I know what I'm playing with?" She grinned. "I'm not playing, Ambassador."

She stabbed the remote again, once more filling the room with sound.

Ariel found Coren waiting in the corridor, his back to the wall.

"Do you want to talk to Wenithal?" she asked.

"No. Let's get my shoulder looked at first." He said no more till they arrived in the embassy infirmary, where two robots placed him on a gurney and pushed him into a diagnostics bay.

"What's the problem, Ariel?" Dr. Jerios asked as she tapped commands into her console. "He looks like he needs about three days' sleep." Jerios frowned at her. "So do you, by the way."

"That would be a good start. But I need him up and alert by morning. He's been running on stims and painblock for about four days now. His left shoulder is-"

"Cracked," Jerios said. "My word, how did this happen?"

"He was grabbed by a very strong hand."

Dr. Jerios shook her head skeptically, gazing at the scan image. "Some hand. I can see why he's in pain. All right, I can pump healant and accelerant into this. Actually, the stim saturation will be harder to deal with. He should be allowed to sleep it off."

Ariel shook her head. "No time."

"Then he's going to be very grumpy."

"As long as he's alert."

"Oh, he'll be alert. I hope you get along well if you have to work together tomorrow."

Ariel looked at Coren through the transparency separating them. He looked asleep now, his face relaxed as the robots carried out Jerios's instructions.

"I think we get along well enough, " Ariel said. In a whisper, she said to the sleeping Lanra, "You 're very welcome. " "Ariel, there is an emergency comm message for you," R. Jennie said.

Ariel opened her eyes. For a moment, she did not remember where she was; then realization came. She was in her own apartment, still fully dressed. Coren was asleep in the guest bedroom. She blinked at her robot.

"A message from…?" she asked groggily.

"Security."

Ariel snapped to her feet and crossed the room. She slapped the ACCEPT on her comm. "Ambassador Burgess here."

"We've had a break-in, Ambassador," the security officer said. "Two guards have been found unconscious, a third dead. We're sealing the embassy grounds and alerting staff. Please stay in your apartment-"

"Negative. Send extra security to the protected apartments. The two people I brought in last night-"

"We've already dispatched extra personnel there. I am to advise you-"

She broke the link and ran out the door. The scene she found when she stepped onto that floor shocked her. At least five guards lay broken along the corridor. Both apartment doors stood open.

Tresha was missing. No real surprise there, Ariel thought angrily.

She found Wenithal in his bathroom. He was dead-eyes staring blindly, head tilted at an awkward angle.

"Damn!" she shouted.

Behind her, more security officers rushed by in the corridor. She knew, though, that Tresha was long gone. The security recordings of the corridor showed the guards entering the hallway. They joined the two already on station. Minutes later, something caught their attention from the direction of the elevator. Their hands, almost as one, went to their sidearms, but they began falling, one by one, twisting around, writhing in pain, thrown to the floor. Two of the guards managed to fire shots, but they, too, were suddenly seized by some spectral force and crushed.

After they had all been subdued, Tresha's door opened, and she emerged. She rushed up the corridor to Wenithal's room and entered.

The view showed no one emerging.

"Masked," Coren said.

"But before or after the attack?" Ariel asked.

"After," Coren said. "We never saw her leave the room before the attack, so that means she had help."

They watched the recording on Ariel's subetheric. Coren lay propped up in her bed, his left shoulder covered by a thick pad. He had slept nearly six hours. Ariel knew he was angry that she had let him sleep while her people had scoured the embassy for the woman who had pretended to be Jeta Fromm, but he had said nothing in rebuke.

"No one saw her leave the embassy," Ariel said, "but we can assume she's gone. The question is: where did she-or they-go?"

"Petrabor maybe, " Coren said glumly. "Tell me about Nova Levis."

"I had a long talk with Ambassador Setaris last night. I hate it when I'm treated like a child who can't be told the truth." Ariel let herself experience the anger and irritation-she had felt during and after her meeting with Setaris. Just for a few moments, while she composed her thoughts.

"We've known that Solaria has a compound on the ground on Nova Levis for several years, but until now we had no idea what it was or what they were doing. Just an enclave on an island, away from the Settler towns and cities. A lot of traffic in and out. Nothing we could do anything about. It was a Solarian holding originally, and they then let it to a Settler colony, so we had no legal grounds to go in there to investigate. Several years ago, though, when the first talks began between Earth and Aurora to try to reconcile our differences, we were able to share data on black market trade. Nova Levis was interesting because it seemed to be acting as a haven for several of the ships suspected to be regular contraband runners. Aurora made a few tentative inquiries with Solaria, Solaria offered to look into it, and what followed was a series of reports telling us that nothing illegal was happening on Nova Levis. Then the Tiberius incident happened."

"That's what precipitated last year's conference?" Coren asked.

Ariel nodded. "One of the things. A Terran smuggler challenged by an Auroran police cruiser. For whatever reason, it had drifted into our space and we insisted on inspection rights. They refused and were fired upon. The Tiberius was on its way to Nova Levis. Among the facts that did not become public was that several Solarian nationals were on board-primarily positronics specialists, but also a few geneticists. We decided then to push for more cooperation with Earth as a first step toward forcing Solaria to open up."

"Which blew up in everyone's face."

"Solaria will not allow ground inspections of Nova Levis. "

"I thought Nova Levis was refusing."

"Same thing, as far as we're concerned."

"So why hasn't Solaria's involvement been made public?"

"Games. Aurora can't risk war with Solaria until we know who our allies are. Or how much of the Solarian government is involved. We have to pretend to accept everything at face value until we have the proof necessary to convene a general council of the Fifty Worlds."

"And the Theians?"

"We're using them as a potential cause for convening that council on other grounds if we can't get it any other way. If Solaria moves to interdict a Theian ship, we have the excuse. If Nova Levis fires on a Theian ship, we have the excuse."

"And if Earth actually gets permission to do the ground inspections?" Coren asked.

"What we find will give us the excuse," Ariel replied.

"In the meantime, the dance goes on until someone steps wrong."

"The wonderful world of diplomacy. "

"I suppose that's preferable to arbitrarily getting several hundred thousand people killed. "

"Is it any different in the corporate world?"

"Worse. You can't ever declare open war on each other. At the end of all the games, you still have to sleep with the enemy."

She smiled. "I suppose even that could have its pleasant moments."

Coren shot her a look. "I'm sorry, Ambassador, but I don't find any of this particularly amusing."

Ariel jerked as if she had been struck. "I didn't mean-"

"Someone very special to me is dead because you people are playing games. I understand them, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable. "

Ariel's expression hardened. "Don't bleed too much, Mr. Lanra. You might pass out when I need you. "

Coren looked away, reddening. He visibly controlled himself, then cleared his throat. "So what does Aurora think Solaria is doing on Nova Levis?"'

"Until this, we had no idea. Black market trade is too vague to really attack them with-to one extent or another, we all participate, or at least our citizens do." She spoke evenly, the same tone of voice as before, as if their disagreement had not occurred.

"Until now. You mean the cyborgs?"

"Settlers couldn't build them. Solaria has to be behind it. " She took a deep breath. "Which means that, if part of the research and development was done here, there had to be a Solarian contact on Earth to funnel materials and technologies and manage the program."

Coren blinked. "Gale Chassik was one of the original shareholders in Nova Levis."

"But he divested before assuming head of the Solarian mission. "

"Which would make sense…But-why?"

"That's a very good question. I-"

Coren's comm chirped. He snatched it up from the table at his right and stabbed at it. "Lanra." He listened for a time. Gradually, his face lost its composure. He looked momentarily confused, then shocked. "I'll talk to him. Where is he now? Good. No, don't tell him I'm coming. Thanks."

"What is it?"

"Come with me. We have to see someone."

"You need more-"

"Now, Ariel. Please." They took an embassy limo to the DyNan compound, where Coren easily passed them through security. He led the way to the elevator, and tapped in the destination; a minute later, they stepped into a spacious, comfortably furnished suite.

Someone was sitting in a chair, watching the subetheric. Coren held a hand up and felt Ariel bump into it.

The subetheric showed Rega Looms at a press conference. "

– decision has not been taken lightly or capriciously. For personal reasons I choose not to go into at this time, I must announce my withdrawal from this campaign. I apologize to all those who have shown me their support through the last several months. I know all our hopes have been compromised, but I trust they have not been destroyed. There are others, more qualified than myself, to step into office and carry on the work to which I have pledged myself my entire life. I do not-"

The screen went blank. The man who had been watching now stood and turned.

Coren stared. "Rega?"

Rega Looms looked at them both, his face expressionless and pale.

"What are you doing, Coren?" he asked quietly. "Why are you here?"

"Trying to find out why your daughter was murdered."

Looms shook his head. "I want you to stop. I don't want you to go any further. I want this ended. Now."

"Why?"

Looms shook his head again. "I don't choose to discuss it."

"That's not good enough, Rega."

Looms looked mildly puzzled for a moment, then scowled. "You work for me, Coren. This investigation is over."

"Why?"

"I told you-"

"Why didn't you tell me you had a son before Nyom?"

Rega Looms turned his back on Coren and faced the dead subetheric. Coren waited till it seemed Looms would say nothing more and reached down for his pack.

"I've withdrawn from the campaign," Looms said. "I was contacted by someone who threatened to release the fact you've just mentioned to the public and tie me in with people and concerns I broke from years ago. Of course, in the public's imagination, nothing is ever finished-if I had once been in league with the enemy, I must still be so. Without even a chance to explain, my ability to function would be compromised and my reputation crippled."

"Do you know who sent it?"

"No. Not specifically."

"When did this happen?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I tried to comm you, but you were unavailable. I decided late last night to withdraw rather than hurt the Church."

Coren wanted to argue with him, tell him that people would understand, that they would support him because blackmail was so odious. But he knew better. The appearance of hypocrisy and the suggestion of a lie, even one of omission, turned people crudely incapable of compassion and robbed them of the ability to think when it came to politics. Coren had worked for the government, seen too many politicians go down in a mangle of innuendo simply because their constituency thought they had been betrayed by a promise compromised. There was nothing else Looms could do.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Coren repeated.

"I didn't tell anyone. It was nobody else's business. It was my own grief, my own horror. No one else has a right to that."

"Ree Wenithal knew."

Looms turned toward him. "Wenithal? What in god's name are you doing with him?"

"He came up. There was a kidnapping case and evidently you were part of it. "

"Wenithal is a corrupt policeman who failed to follow through on that investigation. I was peripheral to his case at the time, but we had several interviews because of Jerem."

"Jerem? That was your child's name?"

Suddenly, Looms' eyes flowed with tears. His hands curled into fists and he looked toward the ceiling. "Why won't you let this end?"

Coren waited again. Looms sighed shakily and sat down on the edge of a couch. " Jerem was born with a compromised immune system. Unusual, but not unknown; standard treatments exist for it. But they didn't work. It got worse. When he was a year old, it was obvious something was killing him. Finally, he was diagnosed with a nonorganic system infection. A nanotech disease. A leftover. " He glared suddenly at Ariel. "A gift from our flirtation with technologies we should never have allowed. " The fury waned as quickly as it had emerged, and his gaze returned to the floor. "No treatment. Life support was available in certain institutions, but we had to…surrender him into their care…"

He sobbed loudly. "It was easier. They offered anonymity and promised to make him comfortable till he died. "

"Did they tell you when he died?" Coren asked.

"No. That was part of it. We had to walk away. In return, we guaranteed that it would never be made public."

"What about birth records?"

"Security locks. The system has been in place for a long time."

"Locks can be picked, Mr. Looms," Ariel said. "This one was."

"Let me guess," Coren said. "You bought shares in Nova Levis because they offered research into exactly what killed Jerem."

"Oh, much more than that. I named the place! Nova Levis. 'New Light.' Something I'd…borrowed…from the Church." Looms shook his head. "I was naive. I hadn't yet realized that the original anti-robot movement had been absolutely correct in their analysis that any concession on the issue of nonorganic life was nothing but a danger, a complete betrayal of all things human. That this idea was fundamentally destructive and could never be controlled. "

"We've proven them wrong," Ariel said.

"Have you? You're so utterly dependent on your robots that you're dying out. You don't even reproduce anymore."

"That's-"

"What? Untrue? What is the average birthrate on a Spacer world? Is it sufficient for replacement? Or are your populations dwindling?"

Ariel said nothing.

"Life is good among the Spacers," Looms went on, warming now to his own arguments. "Two, three hundred years to explore the insides of your own psyches to the exclusion of all else, even the future. The possibilities of self-indulgence are so wonderful that you forget the most basic necessity of organic life-to breed. It's seen as an oddity, a curiosity, a peculiarity. Solarians don't even share the same households, they can't stand to be near others. They breed ex utero. Aurorans find children too undignified and simply avoid the whole embarrassing thing. But you compensate-you make life through your robots. I imagine that this goes quite a distance in fulfilling the void in your hearts by the absence of real children."

"We don't have orphanages to warehouse the unwanted and uncounted," Ariel said.

Looms stared at her.

"Why did you sell your shares?" Coren asked.

"Um…the research took a direction that repulsed me." He frowned. "They began developing symbiotic prostheses-nonorganic augmentation that combined with organic systems, became essentially one with them. I found this… unacceptable. "

That's a lie," Coren said. "You got out because Jerem died."

Looms glared at Coren. "I know my own mind. Jerem died two years before I sold my holdings."

"But it frightened you," Ariel said. "The research."

"Yes, Ms. Burgess, it did. To preserve the few, we were threatening the very definition of 'human.' "

"Isn't that a little extreme?"

"Is it? Where's the line? Do you know where it is? Would you call your positronic creations 'living; Ms. Burgess? I wouldn't. And I saw no good in blurring the distinctions further, no matter how many suffering infants it saved. "

"So you bailed out," Coren said. "Did you know there was a sister lab on a Settler colony?"

"No. But that wouldn't have changed my decision."

Coren sighed wearily. "It's too late to stop this, Rega. I have to finish. "

"Why? I left it alone for almost thirty years, why can't you drop it now?"

"I…" Coren coughed. "I loved Nyom. This is personal for me."

"You work for me."

"I quit. "

Looms' face reddened.

"This is out of your hands anyway, Mr. Looms," Ariel said. "Aurora has a joint interest in this with Terran authorities. Nova Levis is the source of a problem to which your naivety may well have given birth. "

"You can't make me responsible for any of this."

"No? Try this: If you hadn't turned your back on what you did and pretended since that it never happened, maybe what's happened now would never have gotten this far. You surrendered any chance of control over it when you surrendered your responsibility."

"I did not act alone!"

"None of us ever do. Some of us forget that, though. Then there's a mess to clean up." She stepped up to Coren. "Mr. Lanra, Aurora offers you a job working on our behalf in this matter. Along with that comes our sanction and protection."

Coren could not look away from Looms, even when he said, "I accept, Ambassador Burgess."

A day earlier, the expression of betrayal he saw on Looms' face would have broken his heart. Now it only annoyed him.

"Very well," Looms said finally. "If you insist on going ahead. Use whatever facilities DyNan has. Both of you. Any assistance my company may offer, feel free to use, Ms. Burgess."

He walked past Coren, to the door. For a moment, Coren thought he might look back. But Looms passed through, out of the suite.

"You didn't tell him that his son is still alive," Ariel said.

"I see no purpose in cruelty now." Coren looked around the office as if trying to memorize its details. "Besides, " he said at length, "is it really his son anymore?"