Regenesis

“Probably time,” Grant said softly.

“I’ll look in on Paul,” Justin said. “Just he sure he’s all right.”

He got up very quietly went back to the bedroom and opened the door in silence, saw Paul had turned on his side, his favorite way to sleep, and pillowed his head on his arm, and looked comfortable enough. He shut the door then and came back to the living room as Grant got up.

“What are you doing here?” Jordan asked.

“Been here awhile,” Justin said.

“Damn.” Jordan said. “So you’re still walking around. Princess’ pets.”

“In charge of Alpha Wing, actually, so we go pretty much where we please, which is the way things are, today. Hicks isn’t in charge any more. I can’t say I’m too sorry.”

“Hicks,” Jordan said, and raked a hand through his hair and winced. “God.”

“Dad.” Justin said, and Grant laid a hand on his arm, pressure toward the door.

“How long have you been here?”

“An hour or so. Dad, I want to talk to you.”

Grant took hold of his arm, hard, and he shut up.

“Justin was worried about you,” Grant said. “Thought we’d go to dinner.”

“We can go to dinner,” Jordan said, “if they’re not shooting people on sight. Paul?”

“We can cook something here,” Justin said. “Or call out.”

“No reason we can’t go out.”

“There’s a good one.” Justin said. “You’re sleeping it off, and so is Paul, for two different reasons.”

“What’s that?” Jordan asked, frowning at him.

“Paul’s taken tape,” Justin said. “Just his regular tape.”

“The hell!”

“His regular tape. Dad, which I have access to, and have had, for some time, and while you’re busy trying to kill yourself, Paul’s been the forgotten element in this transaction.” He had the datastick in his pocket. He laid it on the counter. “This has the primary file. I’ve installed it in the minder, for his convenience.”

“Damn it!” Jordan came up off the couch and hit the corner of it.

“Watch your step,” Justin said.

“Damn you, you damned conniving, ass‑kissing bastard!” Jordan made it past the couch and Grant shoved, sent Justin back and turned toward Jordan as Jordan swung.

Grant went down, knocking into Justin, and Justin caught him short of the floor–Grant wasn’t out, just shocked, and started trying to get up again while Jordan loomed over both of them.

“Get the hell back!” Justin yelled at Jordan, and hauled, helping Grant up, and Grant grabbed him.

“That’s entirely enough,” Grant snapped, and spun him back toward the door.

“It’s not enough,” Justin said, and stood his ground. “Jordan, you self‑centered bastard, you listen to me. You let Paul come out of it on his own, you keep your mouth shut until you know how he is, and if he isn’t all right, you call me and I’ll come.”

“Did she organize this?”

“She? Did sheorganize this? What do you think, that I can’t run basic tape on somebody I’ve known since the day I was born? Or maybe it’s harder than I think. Clearly you were having trouble doing it…”

“Justin,” Grant said, and got an arm around his ribs and hauled.

“No, Grant, he’s wanting a fight. For all I know he’ll go in there and start in on Paul, drunk as he is. For all I know that’s what he hasdone!”

“You watch your damned mouth! Get out of here! Get out of here and don’t let me see you again, don’t let me ever see you!”

“What, you’re going to avoid mirrors from now on? I’m you, damn you, Jordan! That’s what you had me born to be, isn’t it? The newer, better you?”

“On your best day you aren’t, you little bastard! You’re her piece of work, you’re back in bed with her–”

“Forget your favorite obsession! You knew that territory before I ever got to it, you knew it, you connived your way into it, maybe you were even, God help you, in love with something other than having your own way. Maybe you can remember that. Maybe you can remember what it’s like to care about somebody besides yourself. Paulmight appreciate it!”

“You shut up about Paul! You let him the fuck alone, damn you!”

“Good!” he said. “Finally! Thank you!”and he gave way and let Grant drag him the rest of the way to the door.

And out it.

At which point they stood there in front of the security desk, and Mark and Gerry straightened up properly, as the door shut.

Justin drew in a deep breath, and looked up at Grant, who nursed a cut lip. “Is the tooth all right?”

“I’m sure it’s very solid,” Grant said. “I apologize. I sincerely apologize.”

“What for? For taking the punch?” He was all but vibrating with anger, but he had no one around him who wasn’t azi, and absolutely didn’t deserve what he was feeling; at the moment, a combination of the desire to break something and a conviction trying to surface, that what he’d just done and said hadn’t been the right thing–damn it. Damn it all, he’d set Jordan off, and not to Paul’s good. “I should go back in there.”

“You absolutely should not,” Grant said. “He’ll do many things, but he won’t hurt Paul.”

“What do you mean he won’t hurt Paul? He’s done nothing buthurt Paul.”

“Trust yourself. Trust Paul to handle it. Let it be.”

They had four witnesses who hadn’t asked to be witnesses, and who looked entirely confused and slightly upset.

“It’s all right.” Justin said, obliged to say it, being the only born‑man in the hallway, and supposedly rational. “It was a born‑man argument, over with. No one was hurt.”

“It is all right.” Grant said to the guards, who probably saw Grant as the sane and offended party, who had a bloody lip. “We’ll go to dinner now.”

“Are you going to be able to eat?” Justin asked, remorse and a decent shame finally making it to the surface. And he was still shaking with anger. “I don’t think I have much appetite.”

“Fruit ice,” Grant suggested. “That might do for a sore jaw.”

He was tempted to say a bar would do better, but not after his quarrel with Jordan. “Fruit ice,” he agreed, and they took the lift down and bought ices for Mark and Gerry while they were at it, over in Ed, where the best ice parlors were.

Everything was normal. Kids ran and played. Two preoccupied lovers walked along the mall, under the willows. The ice parlor had a vid, and it flashed, ominously enough, with the News logo.

Justin took a hard draw of the shaved lime ice, just watched. They had the transcript crawl on. It said:

Councillor of Information Catherine Lao has been taken to the hospital this evening with chest pains…

He nudged Grant, but Grant was already watching, solemn‑faced.

The Councillor’s sudden crisis came in a late committee meeting. She has been in failing health for several months. The Proxy Councillor for Information, Adlai Edgerton, has not been available for comment.

Meanwhile the crisis continues in Defense, as the incumbent Councillor for Defense has continued to postpone any announcement of a Proxy appointment; and has been closeted with the Proxy Councillor for Science in a session closed to the news media.

Meanwhile the state of affairs in Reseune seems to hare normalized, with a declaration by Reseune Administration that, while Yanni Schwartz, current Proxy Councillor for Science, remains as Administrator of Reseune. Ariane Emory, aged eighteen, has formally assumed administrative control of ReseuneSec…

“So they know,” Justin said.

“Lao being sick, that’s no news.”

“That’s the sort of thing they say before somebody turns up dead,” Justin said.

“And Edgerton’s gone quiet.” Grant shook his head and took another draw on the lime. “It’s not sounding good.”

“It’s sounding like we could have a new Councillor for Information before long,” Justin said. “It’s what Ari said, we’re losing too many that have a grasp of what went on.”

“Ignore it,” Grant said. “It’s over our heads. We don’t have an opinion. Keep it that way.”

“I do,” he said. “That’s the hell of it. I can’t advise her. It she asked me what to do, I wouldn’t know the least thing to tell her. And she put me in charge, mores the pity.”

“I’m not sure Yanni knows what to do at this point,” Grant said. “Cheer up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” Grant said. “I just know it’s what I said, over our heads. We can’t stop it. We can’t do a dammed thing, except–”

“Except wait for Jordan to blow?”

“That, yes.”

“He’s not speaking to me. Remember?”

“I give it seven days.”

“I don’t know why. He has a very good memory.”

“He’s something we can take care of,” Grant said, “so he doesn’tland in young Ari’s new security office…and neither do we. We stay out of there, and we’re doing the best we can be expected to do.”

“And we keep Alpha Wing from revolt,” he said, feeling a little lighter‑hearted. “At least that’s not going to happen.”

“Won’t,” Grant said. “But we can double‑check that the services are going to work, if we do get another shut‑down.”

He nodded. It was a practical thing to do, a Grant kind of thing to do. He’d interfered outside Alpha Wing for what he’ promised himself was the last time, the only time. If Jordan wanted to talk to him hereafter, he’d talk; but if Jordan wanted not to, well, maybe in a quieter world and with Paul better off, he might have options that didn’t exist with the current state of affairs. Time cured some things.

It hurt. It hurt a fair bit that Grant had taken the shot for him, but that was a revelation in itself. Maybe it would penetrate Jordan’s hard head, that that was exactly what Paul had done. Jordan’s perfectly run little hell had just gotten revised, for good or for ill. And what was Jordan going to do about it? Suggest to Paul that he go on absorbing guilt and responsibility, the way things had been?

He didn’t think Jordan would do that, not when it came to putting it into words. And maybe if Jordan read the manual he’ll annotated for twenty years, read it in the light of what he and Grant had just done to fix it, there was a remote chance Jordan would even see it for himself.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xi

JULY 27, 2424

0403H

“So you want to know about the military,”the first Ari said, out of Base One. “Are you having trouble with Defense?”

“Yes,” Ari said.

“So did I,”the voice said, which was more and more like her voice, or vice versa. “I particularly had trouble with Azov, who was a bastard of the first order. But you probably don’t want to hear about Azov. Is your question about Azov?”

She was tempted. But it was the small hours of the morning, and her head hurt so, and she didn’t have the time. “No.” she said.

“Is your question about defense projects or about the Bureau of Defense? You can give a keyword now. The program will find it.”

“Military azi.”

“Military azi, as in the azi who served in the armed forces.”

“Yes.”

“Question?”

“An alpha azi named Kyle AK‑36.”

“Giraud’s assistant. Correct?”

“I need to take him down. I need to deprogram Kyle AK‑36. I need advice.”

A small pause. Her heart picked up its beats, apprehension that the first Ari might not have any advice to give about the man who’d gotten through her defenses.

“This program can locate files on Kyle AK‑36. Proceeding.”

“Could Defense have reprogrammed Kyle AK‑36 while he was in the military? I have reason to believe Kyle AK‑36’s mindset no longer corresponds to his personal manual. His axe code failed.”

Another long pause. Longer than the first.

A mechanical voice, different than Ari One’s, said, “Base One is prepared to open file on Kyle AK‑36.”Then a synthetic female voice said: “Axe code failure. Causes: 1. Incorrect manual, 2. Block installed. 3. Psychset conflict. Choose one.”

“1,2, and 3. Psychset conflict. Report.”

“Psychset conflict: axe code failure. Three cases on record.”

“Print case files to local computer.”

“In process.”

“1. Incorrect manual, re Kyle AK‑36. Check and report.” She had a sip of coffee. She didn’t think it was the cause, either. Kyle had functioned well enough to be in Admin, in both a military and a civilian operation. A conflict tended to show. Running on an incorrect manual–showed.

“Manual on file corresponds with original manual.”

“Block, re Kyle AK‑36. Check and report.”

A much faster answer. “Information incomplete. Base One cannot access information from Defense secure system. Further attempts may leave trace.”

“Thank you. Base One. No further attempt. Method of removing a Defense‑installed block.”

A long pause. “Case record follows.”

“Physical print, Base One.”

“Printing. Transcript is three hundred and two pages.”

Her head hurt even thinking about it. But the print began shooting into the tray.

“Base One, Giraud failed to detect Defense Bureau block on AK‑36 when he used an axe code. Method of concealment of block: check and report.”

“Base One has no record of Giraud failure.”

“Well, he did fail, dammit.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Base One, did Ari ever successfully deal with a Defense Bureau block? if yes, did Giraud ever access that file?”

“First question: yes. Second question: Giraud’s Base insufficient to access Base One record.”

Well, therewas an answer. And he hadn’t gone to Ari. He hadn’t admitted failure. He might not have recognize it. Faced with dealing with an alpha, he hadn’t opened up his files and Denys’ to Ari’s close scrutiny, especially counting that Denys’ certificate was a damned lie. His secrecy would have been compromised if he’d let Ari into the manuals he had. Open one, all might have been of interest. Wasn’t that like Giraud, too?

“Note for Giraud Two: dealing with failure. Tell Base One. Dammit.”

“Recorded.”

She thought a few beats, while the printout flipped into the tray. “Base One, did Ari ever successfully deal with a Defense Bureau block in an alpha subject?”

“ Yes.”

“Print case file.”

“Printing. Transcript is three hundred and two pages.”

“Is that the same file currently printing?”

“Yes.”

Damned stupid computer. “Cancel second print. Continue.”

Same case. At least there were only three hundred two pages to read before she slept.

Catherine Lao was in the hospital with a coronary, a real one, and diminishing liver function. It was likely the tail end of rejuv. Nobody could locate her Proxy, who was either dead in Swigert Bay or hiding out under an assumed name, trying not to be dead, and it was getting chancy whether Yanni could muster the usual closely knit bloc of Reseune‑friendly vote’s on Council. Yanni could call the Council of Worlds into session–but that got into regional fights and vote trading between stations and Bureaus and it was just a whole either headache. They didn’t want to go to that, and get Pan‑Paris at odds again with Fargone… God, no. Yanni had done his job. Catherine Lao was asking Yanni to come to the hospital, and Ari’d told Yanni no, don’t go, just come home, but was he going to listen?

She couldn’t swear to it–because it Yanni wasgoing to call a Council of Worlds, it was more politic to do it from Novgorod; and because Jacques hadn’t gotten right onto the evening news and made Tanya Bigelow his Proxy Councillor…

God, it was a mess. And she, meanwhile, was wasting time trying to figure out who’d been responsible for killing her predecessor twenty years ago, which wasn’t relevant, and trying to make sure Yanni had good information, which was; and most of all trying to find out if Kyle AK had gotten some signal for some other kind of mayhem, beyond murdering her…which could relate to what he’d been into twenty years ago, when somebody, maybe the same people that wanted Khalid in office, had been politicking behind closed doors in the Defense Bureau, dealing with Jordan with one hand and arranging her predecessor’s murder with the other.

She took a headache remedy. She wasn’t supposed to. She’d do better going to the hospital herself, or just asking Wes to look her over, but her pupils looked the same size in the mirror, and she didn’t want to upset Florian by admitting he’d cracked her head that hard. So she just took the headache remedy and then threw up, and took another, with less water, which staved down.

It might not be smart. But it was what she had to do. Scan the files she had to absorb, make sure they were safe, and then have a long stint with deepstudy.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xii

AUG 2, 2424

0548H

Breakfast on a sunny morning in Novgorod…they’d been down to granola bars and coffee they made themselves, things from random vending machines, since they’d stopped trusting the hotel kitchens.

But after days of short commons, Quentin AQ, the Carnath girl’s Quentin, had showed up with a case of dried fruit, another of oatmeal, four cases of bottled water, five kilos of ground coffee, a case of orange drink, a commercial carton of real eggs, fifteen loaves of bread, a case of precooked bacon, five bottles of vodka, and a large carton of irradiated sandwiches that wouldn’t go bad for the next decade. Thatlot was a gift for which Yanni and Frank marked Amy Carnath down for future brilliance. They’d sent ReseuneSec down to the hotel kitchens to confiscate a portable grill, a room refrigerator, plates, silverware, and detergent, and ran their own kitchens in the diplomatic suite. A man named Bert BB‑7 and his partner took instruction from Frank on elementary cooking, managed not to overcook the eggs, which the Carnath girl had offered to resupply on call; and they’d three times hosted Jacques, damn him, who showed up with two aides and a lengthening list of concerns, the last over a supper meeting of grilled sandwiches, salted chips, and wine Jacques brought, while he and his staff stuck to the vodka.

In the first three meetings it had gone moderately well: Jacques wasn’t sure of Bigelow and said there was some concern because the station Defense people weren’t happy with her, and they wanted to propose another candidate, a Tommy Kwesi, who’d been out at Beta…who would be here in a week.

“We can’t have this dragging on another week,” Yanni had objected, and then alter two days of arguing for him, Jacques revealed that Khalid was landing within the hour in Novgorod, and that Khalid absolutely refused to accept either Bigelow or Kwesi.

“He didn’t winthe election,” Yanni had said to that, and Jacques had ducked his direct gaze, and said they had to have consensus within the Bureau, because without it there were some officers who were going to take the matter to the judiciary, and the rest of Defense didn’t want that precedent.

Then the stinger, from Jacques: “There’s a contingent pushing Albert Dean.”

He’d said, “Dean’s a damned fool.” Dean was the one who’d consistently voted with Khalid’s allies on appropriations, trying to get increased military spending at Mariner and Pan‑Paris, which played well politically on the stations that wanted the construction, but infringed on treaties in more ways than they could count. “He’s playing politics, he’s been playing politics, while we’ve spent the last thirty years trying to build trust on that border–the only damn border we’ve got, and he wants to go turning up the heat on it! You want to see two years of absolute stalemate in Council–no. We can’t work with him.”

“I don’t think, in the long run, that what Science can work with is the ultimate criterion for the Proxy I choose.”

“No,” he’d said flatly, “it isn’t. It is, however, what the rest of Council can work with. Dean may play well with the Council of Worlds, but they don’t originate the budget, and you can’t get a majority to back his program.”

“So he’s safe,” Jacques said with a shrug. “Dean talks. He makes his listeners happy. Nothing of his program ever gets done.”

“And your Bureau goes on with its internal business, stirring the pot constantly.”

“Some say Science is far too monolithic. Far too one‑sided.”

“It has advantages, having some sort of consensus. We don’t live in a friendly universe, but nothing’s helped by provoking our trade partners–and talk provokes, even if the program doesn’t pass. It keepsus from progress in negotiations.”

“Their trade goes on their ships through our territory. So does ours.”

“That’s the way State wrote the Treaty. If you want to change it, debate it in Council. Don’t set up a program guaranteed to rip the peace apart by degrees, dammit, Councillor. Khalid didn’t win the election, not by a long shot. You have no needto accommodate him.”

Jacques had had another wine. He had another vodka. They’d settled it down. But he didn’t think the last meeting with Jacques had gone at all well. Dean wasn’t much better than Khalid, except that Dean was so damned abrasive he’d alienated half those who might have been his allies. And Khalid back on the planet was not good news.

“See if we can come up with a third choice,” Yanni suggested at the last. “I’ll give up pushing Bigelow. You suggested Dean because you know what I think.”

“Science isn’t my only consideration,” Jacques said.

“It’s the old coalition. It’s the one that’s got things done. You think you can work with Trade? I don’t think so. Trade suffers from the same split that’s in Defense. One way one time, another way the next issue. You can deal with us.”

That was the way they’d parted company yesterday.

Today, in the small hours when dayshift and nightshift were trading places in the twenty‑four hour city, his own staff had gotten to Mikhail Corain, and Corain, Frank said, was on his way up. Bert was making a decent breakfast, toast and eggs, orange and coffee.

Corain showed, quietly arrived, and surrendered his gray overcoat to Frank–it wasn’t quite a hand‑shaking meeting: Yanni didn’t expect it, and in Council there was meaning to such events; but Corain very readily took his place at the small dining table, and took the coffee Frank poured for him.

“You’re still in charge?” Corain asked him.

“Pretty firmly so,” Yanni said. The news had settled down on the matter of Ari’s takeover. “It’s an internal matter. I doubt she’ll hold the office too long. The tower blowing–that’s on Hicks’ watch. That’s an issue. Paxers are an issue. Lao’s an issue. Nothing caps the Defense mess.”

“Murder,” Corain said over his coffee cup.

“Bureau warfare,” Yanni said. “Khalid. We have nodoubt. And we have intelligence that’s as good as Defense’s.”

“We have our constituency,” Corain said, “and rumor, which is running in the same direction–and our constituency doesn’t like it.”

“I don’t blame them,” Yanni said.

“Do we have a consensus with Jacques?”

“We have an agreement for one more meeting. He’s pushing Dean.”

“Good God.”

“We may get Kwesi.”

“There’s worse,” Corain said, and Frank began to serve breakfast, and they ate, Corain without comment about the irregularity of the affair. Bert wasn’ta class one chef.

“You’re keeping out of the media.” Corain said finally, “but I’ll tell you, there’s a nervous mood. Lao’s on her deathbed. Guards at her door. I was over to see her. She wasn’t awake. Harad’s worried. You’re shut in your hotel and haven’t given interviews. Jacques shows up and goes right back into the Defense Bureau, doesn’t give interviews either. Media’s camped out there.”

“You’re right about the level of security,” Yanni said. “I’m not going the way Spurlin went. I’m watching what I eat, and I know where this came from.”

“I’m a family man. I don’t like this. I don’t like this level of goings‑on. What in hell have we come to?”

“Bad times, I’m afraid, if Council doesn’t do something about Defense. I’m afraid Jacques is going. I’m very afraid he’s not going to live past naming a Proxy.”

“You’ve got Lynch guarded to the max.”

“Absolutely. I like being just Proxy. I don’t want to hold the seat solo.”

“It’s crazy.”

Yanni finished his eggs, had the orange drink in three gulps, set his forearms on the table edge, and stared at Corain.

“It’s a damned ridiculous way to conduct Council business, sitting here in a hotel room, cooking on a hot plate, and both of us worrying about dying of what we might eat down in the class one restaurant downstairs. It’s slipped up on us. Half a year ago we wouldn’t have believed it could get this ridiculous. And two weeks from now God knows how ridiculous it’s going to get. Somebody’s blown up a precip tower. That’s more than a building. That’s environmental stability. That has a psychological message, doesn’t it? Today it’s the Council huddled together worried about their physical safety. What’s it going to be come New Year’s, if the man who assassinated his rival gets into office, and Lao’s dead–”

“And I’m up for election,” Corain said. “Grisham’s filed for the seat.”

“Oh, there’sa nice moderate voice. On stable ground, you could blow him out, no question. If you’re forced into hiding, like this, because he’s got, say. Paxer backing, and it’s gotten dangerous–that fool could get into office. And where’d we be?”

“I think about quitting. Quite honestly, I think about my family. I think about their safety.”

“Don’t we all?” Yanni said somberly. “Don’t we all, Mikhail Corain? I have family. I have Frank. I have a daughter. She’s a fool, but I have a daughter. An ex. People I’d like to see live their lives.”

“You’ve got a lot better security than other departments. You’ve got a damned army.”

“We try to use it responsibly,” he said wryly. “Right now I hope it’ll be useful.”

“While it’s in shamble’s,” Corain said, “back home.”

“I wouldn’t call it shambles,” Yanni said. “I’d call it some serious questioning as to why we didn’t see things coming. But not too much time in hindsight, right now. I’m more interested in seeing my old friends stay in office and stay alive.”

“Old friends, is it?”

“You. Lao. Harad. De Franco. Chavez.”

“Harogo,” Corain said. Internal Affairs was no friend of Science, but was, of Citizens.

“And Harogo.” Yanni said, fitting his coffee mug in salute. “Honest, if against us. In this age, it’s damned sure worth respect. Bogdanovitch–and son–the same.” That was State’s Proxy. He drank and set the cup down. “Mikhail, if you think you have imminent reason to worry, get the family on separate planes and get them up to Reseune Airport. There’s lodging for them, safety, no question. Security we can’t provide here.”

“You’re serious.”

“You and I may be sitting in a bunker before this is over. I’m dead serious. The offer’s open to you, too.”

“That’d look like hell, wouldn’t it?”

“It might, but the offer stands. If you think it’s a choice between resigning or sending your family up there, send them.”

“What the hell are we’ going to do?”

“Got the Office of Inquiry to speed it up. Brace ourselves. I think Jacques is going to crumple. We’ll get somebody we don’t want. Lao–can’t even findher Proxy, what time she’s conscious. Edgerton’s either hiding or dead. You, and I, and Edgerton it we can find him… Harad will go with us.”

“Harogo,” Corain said. “Five of the Nine, right there.”

“If we have unanimity minus one, we can refuse to seat whoever Jacques names.”

“It’s never happened.”

“It can happen. That’s the point. We can refuse to seat whoever they name. We can force them to another election. And another. We can take them outof the political process.”

“And into something altogether unthinkable,” Corain said. “My God, Schwartz.”

“Exactly. They think we’ll fold. We don’t fold. If we do, there’s alreadybeen a coup. What more are we afraid of?”

Corain sat and stared at him, and finally rotated his coffee mug full circle, handle back to his hand.

“Unanimity minus one,” Corain said.

“We can do it. No debate, no reasoning, just a straightforward vote: the part where we all vote to seat the new Councillor, and everybody goes to lunch? This time we vote no.”

“We can’t find Edgerton,” Corain said. “Lao maybe dead tomorrow. If we lose her–we devolve down to the Secretary of Information, with the Proxy in doubt and Edgerton missing. If we call a vote and fail the majority, because somebody doesn’t show–that’s all it takes. Spurlin being murdered–that’s just real fresh in memory.”

“They mean it to be. They mean us to be afraid. They mean us to play by rules they’re not even going to worry about. We’re worried about unanimous votes and legalities. The man who ordered Spurlin killed wasn’t worried about the legalities. He won’t be when he plans his next move. He’s already over the line. And I could be killed, and you could, Lao’s terribly vulnerable. Pretty soon we’ve got a Council full of shiny new Proxies without a clue who to trust, and a strong, strong likelihood that just one of them will fold and let him take the seat.”

“And Edgerton…”

“As long as Lao’s alive, she can name another Proxy,” he said. “As long as the media can come and go, that word can get out, and she can take the Proxy back and name somebody we canfind. Mark my word, media access may not last, if Khalid decides to shut it down. There won’t be media at all where the bodies really start to fall. Lay odds on it.”

Corain nodded. “I think we’ve found a mutual issue. I’ll get to Affairs and State; Finance; I’ll talk to Finance, too. Or get Affairs to do it.”

“De Franco, Harad, Lao,” Yanni said. “I can get them in.”

Corain sat there a moment. “You’re the one who has the clandestine organization to move on him. If it came to that.”

“We can’t penetrate Defense,” Yanni said. “We could try. But on Cyteen, we’d be sitting here in the rubble, hopingAlliance would be disposed to pull us out. And Defense has warships out there. We don’t begin to counter that. Alliance could; would, pretty damned fast; and then what have we got? Not much. Another war. One where the lines would be very, very different than they’ve ever been. You want the nightmare, Mikhail Corain, that’sthe nightmare. And that’s the universe Khalid wouldn’t mind having back, the one where he had his real power. He was head of Intelligence. He ran the secrets. Agents provocateurs. He knows damned well how to get a situation going, where to hit, who to bribe, who to eliminate, and when. He’s in his element, in this. But to have the respect and influence he wants, he needs to get into ours. That’s where we have to draw the line. We don’t let him get legitimacy, or we have nothing.”

Corain nodded. Bit his lip. “All right. This is how. I’ll call on Harogo, get Harogo to get to Chavez, down the chain. I can’t say how fast. I can’t say I can findHarogo without some trial and error, and that’s not going to be quiet.”

“We may not be back in touch until the vote. Just do it with interviews. That’s enough. Watch the vid. I promise you’ll see me. More coffee?”

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xiii

AUG 5, 2424

0122H

Deepstudy and more deepstudy, until the here and now buzzed about her ears–Ari had an orange drink and an iced muffin to fill the space in her stomach and to shoot some sugar into her veins. The headache had faded in favor of a knot on her skull that she mostly felt when she brushed her hair, and she wore it loose, because the usual knot and pin hurt that spot.

Catlin and Florian didn’t say a thing, just kept staff at bay, communicated with Rafael, who physically occupied the desk down in ReseuneSec–Rafael actually had had tape about how it all worked, and it was invaluable. Ricks’ receptionist knew who was supposed to be where; Hicks’ secretary knew what was supposed to be filed, and Rafael just kept people moving, and saw to it that surveillance watched where it was supposed to and that information was directed where it needed to go. Chloe in Yanni’s office actually called to ask if she’d heard anything about Yanni, who hadn’t reported; and Rafael was able to say with some confidence that Yanni periodically sent an all‑okay signal, but didn’t give them details.

That said, more than most things, how things were in Novgorod. Amy wrote a log and put it into her Reseune account, and it was full of information, like a news report on the city, but Amy didn’t mention Yanni, except to give the codewords “totally in love” referring to a dessert at the hotel. It didn’t have a thing to do with desserts: it said she was safe so far and being useful. She also used the code “I’m trying to get information from the shipper,” which meant she was trying to get something out of Yanni, and hadn’t, and then, “I’m not even thinking about a shopping trip right now. I’m talking to the University about a blenny breeding setup and I’m going to be looking at warehouses so we can take advantage of supplies and the shipping network in the city. It’s salt water out there, nothing usable, without a lot of treatment, but if we set up there, and run a real strict filtration, well, just say it’s going to take a lot of work.” That roughly translated to: “I can’t do anything about getting Yanni out at the moment. I’m reconnoitering. I’m not finding a lot I can do, but we’re being careful and we don’t expect this to be easy.”

She’d had a decade of practice reading Amy’s deliberate blithe nonsense. She read it well enough that Amy could freehand phrases and she’d catch most of it. It wasn’t worse than she thought; it wasn’t better, and Yanni was being obstinate–was that a surprise?

Meanwhile she knew AK‑36 in intimate detail. She knew everything on record in his manual, at least, and the first Ari said, “A block isn’t constructed out of thin air, or off some recipe. It’s made out of the deepest fears and the strongest determination of the subject. The subject helps you construct a block. He may help you unravel one if you can gain his cooperation on some point stronger than the block itself. Finding such an item is unlikely, but not impossible.”

And then Ari said. “Knowing the history of the individual is key, being able to correctly identify the sensitive points and particularly the most primal areas of the mindset.

“At the point of fracture the psychological stress may well trigger the fight‑flight response to an extreme degree.”

She knew that.

She asked Base One, in a variation on a question a dozen times posed: “Who in Reseune, living, has ever dealt professionally with AK‑36?”

“ Adam Hicks,” the inevitable answer came back, the same as always. It omitted Giraud. He was dead. And a long, long string of azi, some CITs who wouldn’t have dealt with him in the offices.

Useless.

She changed the question. She said, “Who in Reseune, living, holding an alpha certificate, has ever dealt professionally with AK‑36?”

It said, solemnly, after “ Adam Hicks.” “ Ariane Emory.” Stupid program. Base One occasionally, in some applications, had trouble sorting her out from her predecessor, or figuring out that the first Ari was dead, but then, it was true, too: she did fit the qualifications.

It went on with Petros Ivanov, medical…anybody who’d been in the hospital might have run into Petros. Chi Prang, alpha psych down in the labs, again, logical, from when Giraud had been running things.

And then Base One startled hell out of her: “ Jordan Warrick.”

She filed that for thought and changed the question: “Who outside Reseune, living, has ever dealt professionally with AK‑36?”

The answer came back: “ Yanni Schwartz. Frank AF.” It listed a long string of azi. “ Numerous persons outside Base One tracking: no data available.”

“Big help,” she muttered to Base One, peevishly. Yanni and Frank were clearly notin Reseune at the moment. Yanni would have been a help. But Chi Prang, alpha supervisor down in the labs, was old, but not that old. Wendy Peterson wasn’t involved. Edwards was too voting. Jordan Warrick was too young to have had a hand in the creation of a mindset 122 years old. She was eighteen and she had a real piece of archaeology on her hands, in AK‑36.

“Base One, year of birth for Jordan Warrick.”

“ 2358.”

“Base One, year of birth for AK‑36.” But she knew it before Base One answered: calculated it for herself.

“ 2298.”

God, the last of the sublight ships hadn’t run their course when AK‑36 came into the world. Union had been just a collection of dissidents with a planet and a space station. The birthlabs and azi production were still in setup when AK‑36 had come out of them, and he’d gotten swept up into the military, because the fact Cyteen existed had just tipped the human species over into war. Kyle was old the way Ollie was old. His memory–

His memory must go way, way back. Jordan had been a baby himself when Kyle had first come back to Reseune after serving in the military. Jordan had grown up while Kyle was assisting Giraud. Kyle had been part of the scenery for whole lifetimes of people who themselves had actually died of rejuv failure and old age.

He’d still put up a hell of a fight for an old, old azi, and it was a wonder Florian hadn’t killed him when he’d had to shoot him full of paralytic. Suicide by non‑lethals, Catlin had said, and explained later that it was possible if you got hit the wrong way, or by more than one of them at once. And that was still an old, old, azi who’d taken all that to keep him down.

Tough as they came, Clever. Devious.

She said, “Base One, Alpha Detention.”

And when one of the agents on duty there answered, she responded: “Get a blood and tissue sample from AK‑36 and take it to Dr. Petros Ivanov in Hospital Admin. Say I want a compete workup, identity match, total, and I want it run on all AK‑3’s ever to come out of the labs, and I want a strict chain of custody on those samples.”

That was going to take time. Chemistry took time. They didn’t havethat much time, but it was a test overdue, if they were going to try to crack what Kyle haddone, and pin down who had had him do it.

She put in a call to Justin, meanwhile.

“ Ari?”

“Can you possibly call your father and set up both of you working on a file I’d like analyzed? I really need to ask you two some questions.”

A moment of silence on the other end. Long silence. Justin said, quietly, “I don’t think I can talk him into anything at the moment. I’m sorry. I take it this isn’t part of the lessons.”

“It’s not. It’s pretty important.”

“I think–I don’t know. He’s not speaking to me. I don’t think he’ll even open the door to me at the moment. You might actually get more out of him.”

That bad? she thought. “Is he speaking to Grant?”

“I don’t think so, honestly. He tossed us both out.”

“Well,” she said. “Thanks. Thanks all the same. Would you and Grant look over some files for me? I’m going to shoot it over to you. I really need it. I need it fast.”

“Sure. I’d be glad to.”

She sent AK‑36’s basic manual over, sent over AK‑36’s personal manual with it, which had Giraud’s annotations, and Hicks’ marks.

She called Chi Prang, and had her run an analysis.

And she thought a moment, and then she did a little file manipulation, recast the date, created a new timestamp, and called up Jordan.

“Jordan? Jordan, this is Ari. I have a problem.”

Long, long wait.

“This is Paul AP, sera. Jordan’s–Jordan’s in the shower at the moment. Can I help?”

“Actually, yes. I’m going to send a file over. I want your opinion on it. Both of you, if Jordan wouldn’t mind. It’s a set with a problem. I’d really like an analysis.”

“You can send it over, sera, of course. I’ll advise him when he gets out of the shower.”

“It’s an alpha file. We’ve had a criminal act. It’s fairly urgent. Thank you so much, Paul.”

Name was erased. Date was erased. It was all couched as current work. Which it certainly was…in the emergency sense.

She leaned back in the chair, wishing the processes of chemistry ran a little faster or that the processes of polities ran a little slower.

A lot slower.

“Sera.” Catlin said. She had her handheld, but she stooped, picked up the wand from the table and popped the main display over to the news channel.

Councillor Jacqueswas on camera. Jacques of Defense.

“After much deliberation,”Jacques said, “and thought.”The man had an unfortunate delivery. He never sounded altogether bright. “–I have reached a decision on the Proxy appointment, bearing in mind a sensitivity toward the Spurlin family, friends, and supporters, to whom we extend our most profound and heartfelt condolences…”

Get on with it, for God’s sake!

“…but we are constrained by considerations of the welfare of the nation to make an appointment representing the will of the electorate as expressed in the recent election. I am therefore retaining the seat, but will appoint as Proxy Councillor Vladislaw–”

“Good loving God!”

“–Khalid, who will serve starting immediately. This decision has been reached after, of course, considerable–”

“Cut it off.” she said to Catlin. The headache was back. And Catlin just stood there, seeming sure there would be some order to come. “I wish I could think of something,” she said to Catlin. “Thank you. Thank you for turning that on. I wanted to hear it. The man’s a fool.”

“He will likely die very soon,” Catlin said, the same assessment she’d reached, even contemplating it. “Khalid will succeed him. Am I right about the law?”

“Khalid got some hold on him.” she said. “Yes. You’re right about it. And he’ll last just long enough for the media attention to cool down about Spurlin, or until he objects to something Khalid does. Monitor Rafael. See if he’s getting any news from ReseuneSec in Novgorod or elsewhere.”

“Yes, sera,” Catlin said, set the wand on the table, and was off like a shot. Florian would be likewise engaged, might already be hauling in information via ReseuneSec–was probably doing that from the apartment security station: Wes and Marco were, she hoped, getting their rest: it was going to be a long twenty‑four, thirty‑six hours.

They’d just lost Defense as an ally and gained a bitter enemy. Yanni was still in Novgorod, so was Amy: they’d at least be aware what had just happened.

Meanwhile, having found out what she knew about their internal problem, she was, herself, stalled out and making noprogress on the ReseuneSec situation, and didn’t know if they had a greater threat inside Reseune or out. They’d taken in thirty‑odd alphas in the batch they’d recovered from the military. Most of them were retired, now, only ten, counting Kyle, still serving, and all others of those were in esoteric fields, unsocialized–so concentrated on their specialities it was likely immaterial to them what planet they were on or whether the rest of the human species existed.

Worth investigating, when she had time.

Spurlin death Lao dying. Lao’s Proxy still missing. And Yanni had had a meeting with Corain, which gave her a better opinion of Corain than she’d ever had. But at the moment. Council was not in session, couldn’t go into session until three Councillors showed up in the Council chamber and formally called for a session to occur: it wouldn’t be legitimate to do business until five showed up, and the numbers available to show up were getting scant.

That news feed would have gone all over Reseune, down to the town and the port. It would have gone just about everywhere.

And should she get on the air immediately after and tell everybody it was all right?

That would be a lie. It wasn’t all right. Anybody above the age of eight had to have figured that out; but all right, it was a psych question: people wanted to hear from the people they trusted to make decisions, and right now, that had to be her.

She decided, however, not to go to the media at large. A full‑blown media event, down at the airport, the usual venue for such press conferences, wouldn’t help Yanni in his situation; and her appearance, and a declaration of challenge, might push Khalid just one step farther than she liked at the moment.

She had, however, to figure what she said and how she appeared might leak out.

So she brushed her hair, put it up in the skewered twist she lately favored, even if it hurt like hell. She put on a little rouge, put on a blue, high‑collared jacket over the black jersey tee she was wearing, zipped it up and took a seat at the desk that had the vid camera.

She punched in. “Base One. Activate Channel One, override Channels Two through Two Hundred.”

“ Done,” Base One said. Her own image appeared on the screen in front of her, but she didn’t look at that. She looked into the camera, somber, but perfectly relaxed, the way she’d practiced that expression.

“This is an informative bulletin. This is Ari Emory, acting Director of Reseune. You may have noted the outcome of the Defense Proxy appointment. I am in communication with Director Schwartz in Novgorod, and I’ll be working with him during this period, opening communication with the new Proxy Councillor for Defense. We aren’t sure how long this process will take. Let me state we are both appreciative of the response of Reseune CITs and azi to the recent domestic upheaval–which I am glad to say is fairly well along in process of resolution. We request that everyone keep on doing as you have been doing, conducting business as usual, but we also suggest that places of public assembly review their emergency procedures and be sure that storm tunnel accesses are clearly lighted and in good working order.

“Bear in mind that we are now in August, approaching the fall storms, so this is the semi‑annual announcement in that regard. What is not routine is the incident upriver, and what happened recently in a security breach. Please bear in mind that should an area evacuation emergency occur during an otherwise routine weather alert, all residents and workers should not risk outside exposure;. Use the tunnels, not the outside exits, to reach a secure area, and tend away from any area of disturbance, as you will be advised to do. Sequence flashers will indicate appropriate direction. Please review these procedures with your employees and with members of your family, and arrange several meeting places as contingencies in case one is unavailable. This in no way signals a cause of imminent danger. We have dealt with and arrested the known problem. We have no immediate reason to anticipate another such alert, but we will be in a state of heightened awareness until that matter has been investigated to a conclusion. Until Director Schwartz returns to assess the situation, I am erring on the side of caution and placing Reseune on a moderate level of alert. Thank you.”

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xiv

AUG 7, 2424

1300H

“Ser,” Ari said politely, visiting Adam Hicks, who’d spent the last number of days in a very restricted part of Alpha Wing–

Behind the Alpha Wing security office, in fact.

It wasn’t a bad little suite Hicks occupied: there was a dining table, there was a comfortable chair, there was a wide selection of books available via reader. There was a bed, and unlimited access to crossword puzzles–Tommy’s idea. Hicks had been a cooperative inmate. He kept the place neat, the bed made. He could send out for coffee and food as desired, and the restaurant passed things to his guards. There was a used disposable cup waiting on a small table by the door–that was the only disorder in the place.

“Sera,” Hicks said with a little nod. And as she took a seat at his dining table. Florian and Catlin arranged themselves, both standing, nearby. Hicks quietly took a seat at that table within the corner, opposite her, insulated from Florian and Catlin–she marked that.

She had her handheld in her coat pocket. She took it out, set it on the table facing Hicks, and played the short bit from Yanni: “If he’s not innocent he’s not a friend of mine. You can tell him that. Tell him I said cooperate with you or I’ll break his neck.”

Hicks’s brows lifted. Drew down again as his stare locked with hers.

“That’s Yanni’s opinion,” she said mildly, repossessing the unit. She dropped it into her jacket pocket. “For the record, I’m increasingly sorry for the roughness in the takeover. Yanni tells me you’re to be trusted. So I’m very sorry for the contusion, and I’m sorry I had to take the measures I did, but I had reason for concern. I don’t know if you know. I’m assuming you don’t. Kyle was our target.”

“Kyle?”

“I’m sorry to say, his axe code never did work: he’s been reporting to Defense for years. For about six decades, in fact, going way back into Giraud’s administration.”

Hicks looked numbly shocked. Shook his head. “I can’t accept that. That’s just not so. You’re wrong.”

“Giraud got you your provisional precisely so you could have a legal partnership with him. I take’ it this represents a strong friendship.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s fine, or as fine as he can be, considering the contradictions he’s carrying inside, which I suspect involves a real attachment to you. He’s on a suicide watch. We’re worried about that.”

“God. This is complete nonsense.”

“I’m sorry it’s not.”

“It’s a damn trick!”

“Not that, either. He got past Giraud, he got past the first Ari, for that matter. She relied on Giraud and she shouldn’t have, in his case. She was busy at the time. It’s very likely that Kyle was the agent in turning Abban. It’s at least certain he was reporting to Defense every time you were in the building. I am very, extremely sorry for the situation.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“I do believe,” she said quietly, “that you honestly don’t believe it.”

“I don’t.”

“This isn’t about fault. The fact is, very likely Defense, or someone in Defense, ordered my predecessor murdered, and that Kyle was how it happened.”

“No.”

“Jordan didn’t do it. Abban may have, but would Giraud order it? I don’t think so. I don’t think you thought so, at the time.”

“Warrick–”

“That was Giraud’s bias. He was dead sure it was Jordan who’d done it, by some means or another. And he was wrong. It was Abban. We thought Denys might have accessed Abban to do it, but here’s the stinger: Denys’ certificate was a fake. He couldn’t do it. That leaves Giraud, who I don’t think had the motive. And it leaves Kyle. I don’t say Kyle had a personal choice in the matter, understand. And we could solve his situation in one sense by packaging him up and sending him off to Defense to finish his career there. But he knows a lot that we’d rather Defense didn’t get the rest of. And I’m not sure they’d be kind to him, no matter how well he’s served them–because I’m not sure all of Defense is behind what he did, and I don’t think some of Defense would like him to answer questions.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“There’s a lot of vulnerability he could have created. I’m sure Defense now has the building plans for much of Reseune, and we’re going to have to do some major revisions. Worse, I’m sure they’ve got some keys; and codes, anything Kyle could reach; so Base Two is going to have to change some codes. That makes a very messy situation, since Yanni is still off in Novgorod, and I can’t get him new codes that easily: so if I don’t change how you access Base Two, I expose him to problems, and if I do, it’s another kind of risk, of his not being able to handle all the programs he might need to. I appreciate that it’s not exactly your problem at the moment, but it is a problem, and I know you’re a friend of Yanni’s. At least he thinks you are. He’s in serious danger, where he is. Spurlin’s dead; you do know that. We think Jacques will be soon. Lao’s in hospital. We’re having a real crisis in the Council.”

“What are you saying?”

“Khalid’s got Defense again. Jacques just named him Proxy.”

Hicks’ face didn’t react much; but he just seemed to wilt a bit, physically.

Ari said, “You’ve dealt with Khalid.”

“I have.”

“Did you like him?”

A slight shake of the head. Hicks looked a little pale, lips tightly compressed. “Didn’t.”

“What kind of feeling did he give you?”

“That’s subjective. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think you may record impressions a lot better than you think you do. How did Kyle react to him?”

“Kyle was just business, that’s all. I didn’t like Khalid. It wasn’t my job to judge him, just negotiate with the man.”

“Did Khalid ever propose anything you thought unethical?”

Hicks shook his head.

“Possibly Kyle told him in advance what you’d agree to. And what you wouldn’t.”

Eyes dilated. Contracted. Dilated again.

“That’s a damned fish.”

“It must have been particularly hard to negotiate with him. I hope you’ll think about that issue. Try to recall specific incidences where he seemed to know exactly how far you’d go. It may help us dealing with this man. It seems were going to have to, unfortunately.”

“I’ll think about it.” Hicks didn’t look cooperative, quite the opposite; but he was retreating a little, accepting some arguments, or acting as if he did. He was actually very smart on a beta level. He wouldn’t buy any whole package. He knew tricks, and he kept things in reserve, and he knew she was Working him to get hooks on an azi he regarded as a brother.

“You know I’m going to have to do something with Kyle,” she said. “I will–because, unfortunately, I’m about the best Alpha Super alive right now, and I’m only eighteen.”

He just stared at her.

“So,” she said. “I’m not as good as I’d like to be. And I don’t feel as confident as I’d like. I’ve got a lot of my predecessor’s techniques–I’ve studied. I’ll try. I want to do it the best, the safest way possible.”

“How many people did you just kill, shooting up my office?”

“Nobody’s dead. None of yours needed more than on‑site medical. One of mine’s still in hospital. Kyle’s not hurt at all, beyond a few bruises, He just got a dose of a non‑lethal and went out.”

Hicks absorbed that, seeming guardedly relieved.

“Yanni says he wants you back in charge of ReseuneSec,” she said, “and I’m not going to argue with that, personally, if we can get Kyle straightened out.” Thatbrought a sharper attention. “And I’ll tell you why I agree with Yanni. Reseune is running shorter and shorter of people with an actual memory of what happened back in our beginnings. Kind of odd to think of, but I have that kind of memory–just sort‑of. Just enough to know how much really valuable detail is still going to go away with administrators like you, like Yanni. Kyle’s age makes him very valuable, if we can just get him back–get him to the state you believed he was.”

No response to that. No challenge, either.

She said, “Absolutely if that axe code never did take, he’s been conflicted, he’s probably been very painfully conflicted over certain things he’s done, which he probably tries not to think about too often. He’s worked it out, saying to himself he never hurt Giraud, never hurts you, not in his self‑adjusted view of the universe. Everything’s for the ultimate good. He’s been doing what Defense asks, being a good soldier while he’s in Defense; and then he can go home to Reseune and follow a program that will ultimately make the world run better. He’s comfortable again, since Denys died, because Yanni’s been making the Novgorod trips, and he’ll never have to go to Defense again.”

“Fantasy. The code took. He’s not guilty. He is what he’s always been. You want the man who murdered your predecessor, look at the man you brought back from Planys.”

“If you’re right and it is true, we’ll find it out in the process, and we won’t stress Kyle at all; if I’m right, there will be stress. There’ll be a block; and we’ll have to go after it before we can apply the axe code and get him back.”

“He’s not young, for any of this.”

“And you’re worried I’ll botch it. But you’re really, extremely worried it could possibly be true.”

“I’m worried an eighteen‑year‑old kid is going to start messing with his psychsets and upsetting him, and he’s not young.”

“Would you like to be there?”

“I wouldn’t liketo be there. But I want to be there, yes.”

“He’s very strong, considering–he put up a hell of a physical fight. But you’re quite right: if there is a block, this is going to hit his endocrine system like a hammer, and at his age, it could have an impact on rejuv. So what my studies tell me is that he should have complete medical support. Everything to safeguard him. But mostly, you should be there. He’s your companion. You arehis Supervisor, at least one of his Supervisors, though I’m betting there’s another in Defense. I hope he’ll respond to you. And I do want him to come through this all right, not just because I want the truth from him.”

“ You’resaying he’s guilty of everything in the book. That he killed your predecessor. What reason do you have to want him to be all right?”

“ Youdon’t think it’d be his fault, do you? I don’t either.”

“If it were true in the first place,” he said, “no, it’s not his fault.”

“I’m calling in Chi Prang. And Justin Warrick.”

“Oh, that’s a help.”

“You know you’re not his favorite human being, no more than Giraud was. But I know Justin as well as I know anybody outside my personal staff; and he’s very good. He’s professional. He’d never hold a grudge against an azi. And you should also know I’m consulting Jordan. Jordan’s mad at me, no question. He’s probably mad at you and at Kyle. But I don’t think that would ever extend to his work on a case.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Jordan’s actually written an important paper on this kind of operation–what they learned about blocks, both creating and undoing. I read it. He’s probably the best authority on it of anyone still alive.”

“I’m saying he has a grudge, and he’s the man who’d hold it. I’m saying I knew your predecessor, and she was a bitch. She’d lie with a straight face, when it suited.”

“Most people will,” she said quietly, “in a good cause. But she was exactly what you say, sometimes. And I won’t say I haven’t had a little trouble unwiring my own feelings about Abban. It got personal, about him. It never should have, because my feelings misled me. I’ve asked myself how I feel about Kyle, because I don’t think I could work if I were ambivalent on this. So I tell myself he’s been in a hell of a position for a long, long time, and I wish for a lot of reasons that Giraud hadn’t made a mistake in handling him. I wish Giraud had told Ari he had a potential problem, instead of testing his own ability to handle it. But Giraud didn’t want Ari to start paying attention to his psych operations, and particularly to Denys, whose certificate to run Seely was an outright lie–and Giraud had run the certification… I found that little detail. Youhad no reason to think Kyle had a problem, since you got him from Giraud. Kylecouldn’t tell you; and you weren’t going to spot it–being a provisional Super–but frankly, I know you’re better than Denys. Denys wasn’t really doing any direct Supering until Giraud died; and then he was handling both Abban and Seely and you could just watch the stress pile up on both of them. I saw it. I didn’t know at the time what I was seeing–particularly in Abban. I learned a lot from that. Is Kyle happy?”

“I think he has been.”

“Particularly in recent years?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ve asked that of people he worked with, your office people–other azi who’ve worked with him. He used to be tense, with Giraud; calmed down, after Giraud died and he shifted over to you. Tight‑focused on his job. Zealous. All good things. He’d laugh.”

“He can.” Hicks said…feeling better, perhaps, with the implied positives.

“Abban couldn’t,” she said, fast, like a knife cut. “So you’re better than Denys. You’re a lot better than Denys. Reports say you’re real good with the betas. So I think you know that you’re the one that can help him–or really hurt him. And he’ll be safer if you’re there. Let him focus on you. And stay steady. Stay absolutely steady.”

Hicks’ face was quite, quite pale. He kept gnawing at his lip. “What happens if you do find a block?”

“It’s usually very simple. It’s usually just like at beta or gamma level, something hooked right to the deep sets. We give him a lot of kat, we convince him to let it go, and we give the axe code, because we want to redo everything fast. He’ll need a Contract very quickly. That’s you, if you want to take it on. That would be the easy thing.”

“A block–” Hicks said, “can stop a heart.”

“I know it can,” she said. “And we’ll support him, with everything we have available, the best in Reseune. I’m not blithely optimistic on this. I know the danger to him. It’s why I want you there. I know, whatever your opinion of me, you’ll support him.”

“I will,” Hicks said.

“Good,” she said. And rested her arms on the table. “There’s one other, unrelated matter I want to ask you about.”

Immediately defensive. Suspicious. Very justifiably so.

“Anton Clavery,” she said. “What do you know about that name?”

“We don’t,” he said. “We’ve investigated, connected it to the Paxers. But that’s all.”

“So you haven’t solved that one.”

Hicks shook his head, relaxing a little, deciding, maybe, that it was a change of topics. “Why Patil used that name, she died knowing. We’ve been all through her affairs. And we have nothing to show for it.”

“She knew one other thing we don’t,” she said. “She knew what Defense knew about the project she was going to work on. She knew all sorts of things Defense knows, and we don’t. It could have to do with what Defense is doing. I was just curious.” She got up and offered her hand.

Hicks took it with a peculiar look, as if wondering if there had been a connection between the two topics after all; and maybe after an hour or two he’d begin to see there was. His hand was cold. Probably it would be good to have Wes have a look at him, just in case. If they lost Hicks, they lost Kyle, almost certainly, and she didn’t want to lose either one: Hicks, for Yanni’s sake, and Kyle, because if they lost him, they’d likely never know what he’d done and what he knew and what he could say…or if he’d been contacted recently, with new orders.

So she did what she could with what she could reach.

Meanwhile Kyle, besides being on a suicide watch, was pretty deeply under, for as long as they thought it safe or good, and she wasn’t going to trouble him with an inquiry he’d only have to resist. The less apprehension he carried into the session the better, and the greater the chance they could keep him from crisis.

Put him and Hicks on ice for the duration and concentrate only on Novgorod? She thought about that, about her whole list of priorities. She thought about going down to the capital in person–which would draw media attention, maybe draw other things, but it would get attention–planetwide and up in orbit.

She thought about how the first Ari had let Reseune matters slide, and trusted Giraud to handle what he was certified to handle, when she went up to Novgorod–her mistake, her very big mistake, a long time ago. And that was the bottom line. Ari had trusted Giraud to handle what Giraud said he could handle, a simple matter for somebody with that level of certification–if Giraud hadn’t been dealing with the best Reseune could turn out, with the bollixed‑up psychtech Defense could manage, exactly the kind of thing that couldfool somebody who, being a by‑the‑book operator himself, only expected what was in the books.

So, faced with a choice of going to Novgorod before she had the requisite years behind her, she trusted Yanni not to make a mistake–with something not simple, either. Sometimes you just had to let things go in the hands of people who were expert at what they did. Yanni had been talking to Council for years. He knew them. He knew his contacts.

Meanwhile she had to figure out what a spy inside Reseune could have told Defense, and what kind of an organization their enemies had been building, from the War years when Reseune and Defense had had a tight, tight relationship.

Jordan, she thought…when Ari yanked back the azi from the combat zones, they’d been dealing with the old Contracts, and undoing what had been done and undone around the time of the War. Jordan, a junior in the labs in those days, must have heard the first Ari fight her battles with Defense…and when Ari was old, and he was in his prime, he’d gone to Defense with an offer to betray Reseune. Defense, who already had a man inside, had double‑crossed him–why?

Because they weren’t interested in what Jordan had offered them. They’d heard what he said and drew some other conclusion. Hadn’t they? Jordan hadn’t proposed murdering Ari. Had he?

One thing seemed evident, Jordan had written that paper. He’d at least met the problem of the military sets, post‑War, and analyzed the security measures Defense had set into its azi soldiers, a self‑destruct if captured, in some instances–Defense work cobbled into Reseune’s clean psychsets. Involving Jordan was a risk–to Kyle AK, mentally; to Justin, emotionally; in all respects, to himself–and to Reseune, if he was still bent on revenge.

But if you wanted to dig up the things that lay buried in Reseune, Jordan Warrick was one who knew, and who’d been in a position to know. Yanni, who also knew, was in Novgorod, out of reach. There was Ivanov. There was Wendy Peterson. Neither of them had been involved in the labs the way Jordan had.

It might be a big mistake. If he said yes instantly, it was time to worry.

But he might also be their best asset.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xv

AUG 9, 2424

0808H

Prang was her first visit. Chi Prang, Alpha Supervisor, another of the old hands, met her with a notion of what the case was about. Ari had told her that in a letter sent along with the file; and Prang didn’t have much encouragement. Prang said if she had ever been notified the code had had any questionable outcome she would have taken AK‑36 in immediately. She said that she had, yesterday evening, checked records that Giraud had sent and the notation was simply that AK‑36 had had the code administered, that he was “doing well,” and that he was under Giraud’s Supervision.

Giraud had, Prang added, maintained an ironclad and prickly secrecy about his department, his operations, and his personnel; she recalled he had had arguments with the first Ari on that topic.

The first Ari, Ari thought to herself, hearing that, had isolated herself, had set everybody at distance, didn’t read the people she was living with as well or as impartially as she read everybody else she dealt with.

Read a stranger? Absolutely. Instantly.

Read a group of people? Easily.

Read the Nyes? Not well enough. The first Ari had grown up with them; been a child with them. Of courseshe knew them. If you stared at a thing a long time, after a while you weren’t really seeing it. Your mind started being busy, and you knew what you were staring at hadn’t moved, but maybe you didn’t see every detail. You didn’t notice when it blinked or its eyes dilated. You didn’t know when it changed its mind. You didn’t notice when loyalty to something else had gotten to the surface and started to move its thoughts in another direction. You didn’t notice that, the older Giraud got, maybe, the more Giraud was being run by his younger brother–who was the real Special, as Ari knew, and brilliant in azi psych, but who wasn’t a damned good Supervisor. Do this for me. Do that. Don’t let them know. Don’t let them inquire. Giraud, fix it for me. Giraud, keep them out. Giraud, she’s dangerous. She’ll be rid of us…

Major blind spot. Giraud loved her, not many had, but Giraud had, and of course she could trust Giraud’s motives.

Put thatin the notes to her successor: mind her own relationships.

Like Justin. Like Amy. Like Yanni. It was scary. It was one thing to say the first Ari should have done it; it was another, to think of doing it with Florian, with Catlin, Justin, and Amy…

“He won’t come through it,” Prang said bluntly, regarding their chances of dealing with Kyle at this point. “He won’t likely survive it.”

“Is the block likely in the deep sets?” she asked. “Did Defense have anybody that could do it that way?”

“The fact that they didn’t have anybody who could,” Prang said solemnly, “doesn’t mean they didn’t try. They had a high failure rate. There were azi we never saw again. Killed in combat. Always killed in combat. Alphas, no less.”

“How many were lost?”

“Twelve. None that belonged in combat. None psychologically fit for it. They didn’t want usenabling combat in an alpha. They wanted their career officers to run them, not have an azi taking combat command. They were clear on that score. Ari–your predecessor–worked to get them all back, and it took the turning point in the War and a slowdown in our production to bend them.”

“Betas lost?”

“I don’t recall the numbers. High hundreds. Gammas. God. Near four thousand.”

That made her mad…mad, and she thought she’d lie awake tonight thinking about it. That attitude in Defense, and then Prang’s little shrug, as if–what could we do? What could anyone do?

She’d spent a very little time with Prang, which put her on the edge of furious.

Then she wanted to go ask Jordan about what he remembered, but that wasn’t going to work, if she went in on a frontal assault.

So she went to Justin’s office instead–went just with Florian, and asked him and Grant if they’d reached any results in the case she’d given them.

Justin said, “I can’t tell you where any block is. I can tell you, if I were good, where I’d put it, if I were working on the psychset in the original manual. Grant agrees.”

She sat down by them and let them show her, just where; and it was where she thought.

But then she asked, “What if you were a total fool? If you weren’t that good, and you just wanted to go ahead anyway, and you weren’t that smart?”

They both frowned, even Grant, who rarely did. And then Grant said, “If you were a fool, maybe,” and searched the file and showed where you could put it in the secondary sets, and it made sense to her–secondaries was where ethics went, and they played off the deep sets, but they were shifty things, and interrelated, and they mutated considerably over a lifetime. It was whyazi went back time and again for refresher tape.

Ethics…and emotional needs.

“Could be,” Justin said, and added: “Kyle was a cold bastard, whenever I had to deal with him. I can’t say my opinion’s entirely clinical. I’ve tried to get past that. I’ve asked myself if it was partially null‑state, on his part. And it could have been. I could have misinterpreted it.”

“You mean when you were arrested.”

“He was there, during some unpleasant sessions. I knew him. I can’t say I know him lately–I can’t say I can do an impartial assessment on him, at all. Except–the azi this original manual should have produced–would have had some emotional reaction. He didn’t. That’s why I say, subjectively, it could have been a partial shutdown.”

“He could have done that,” Grant said. “Justin and I have talked about it. We think it’s not just that the axe code didn’t take. He’s self‑adjusted, possibly even to the point of being his own reason the axe code didn’t take. He’s been running internal adjustments, whatever situation he’s in. If he takes tape, which I’m sure a provisional Supervisor would want him to do, he takes it surface‑level, absorbs it as a behavioral guide. It steadies him down, re‑teaches him what his responses ought to be in order to fool everybody. He has an emotional capability: that’s currently completely engaged with his Supervisor. He gets pleasure out of doing the best he can, but he probably knows how messed up he really is. He knows, constantly, that he’s lying to the one he’s attached to, except when he’s dealing with his Supervisor in Defense, whoever that is–and whether it’s been the same person all along, or whether that’s changed, he’ll be loyal, and emotionally engaged, and if what they ask him to do throws his deep sets into confusion, his actions will still be clear, even through the conflict. I’ve studied the military sets. Actions are the real loyalty. That’s the mantra way deep in what they used to set. Do what you’re told.”

She could see it, in what Grant pointed out, the ethic to follow instructions and do no harm until one could get to a Supervisor, the sort of thing you’d set in for somebody who had to survive where Supervisors weren’t going to be as close as the nearest office. It was a beta kind of setting. Grant was more complex on that issue. Florian–

Florian, right beside her, was capable of intense argument: you had to know how to get him to do what he didn’t want to, and you had to make it clear to him it really was an order.

And then he’d do anything. Absolutely anything. Catlin would do it even faster, and not need advice and sympathy after; Florian did.

So what sort was AK‑36?

By all she’d read, he’d have been a Catlin sort. Point him at an enemy. He was setted for headquarters security, and that was what he’d been intended to be, in the purest form of his psychset.

But somebody had done something with the secondaries, and he had become, to all intents and purposes, self‑steering ever since, and they’d flung him into Supering combat betas and other alphas. Surviving. Trying to comply with his deep sets. Everybody did. Even born‑men did that, in their own chaotic way.

Ask Florian? There was a level at which she didn’t mess with her security’s working mindsets. Theory was a designer question, and she wasn’t as good yet as she would be. It was, more specifically, a Grant kind of question, if you were going to ask an alpha.

It was a Justin or a Jordan kind of question, if you were going to ask a designer.

She left, thinking about it, and she went into the security office and, in a small conference room with Florian, she called Jordan.

“It’s Ari,” she said. “Do you have a moment, ser?”

No answer, for a long time. Florian had been standing, and in the quiet and the privacy; sat down opposite her, signing, He’s there.

“Jordan? I really need to talk to you. Please answer.”

“Please? There’s a foreign word. Do I recognize that?”

“I need your help. Would you mind if I dropped by?”

“Oh, now this is familiar. ‘Would you mind?’ Try telling the truth and see if I mind!”

“Are we talking about the manual I sent you?”

“I haven’t got time for games.”

“I want your opinion, ser. I need your opinion. You’re one of the few who might know, and I urgently want to talk to you about that manual.”

“Go to hell and take my son with you.”

“That’s not very nice.”

Laughter from the other end. “Fuck you!”

Florian’s face went dangerous. She held up a hand. “Do I take it, ser, that you recognize the case?”

“What is this, a fucking test? I told you, I’m too old for games.”

“Old enough to remember what everybody else has forgotten. I thought you were. I wasn’t sure. Now I know for certain I want you in on this.”

“On what? This isn’t a modern design. This is old history. This is old history; from before I was born, let alone working.”

“You’re good. You just proved that. And I still want you on this case.”

“The hell! It’s a damned trick, and I’m not going with it!”

He broke the contact.

Florian looked at her, questioning, perhaps, whether they were about to do something.

“I can’t force his opinion out of him,” she said. “Not in any useful way. But he knewwhat he was looking at. It made him mad that I didn’t tell him who it was.”

“Many things make Jordan mad,” Florian said. “He’s not that much like Justin, is he?”

It was a good question. She knew things that could make Justin mad. She’d done some of them. But the one that would Get him, above all else, was something happening to Grant; and the one that would Get him, just him, personally–

–if he were in Jordan’s place–

He’d know he’d put his companion in a hell of a place with his actions opposing Ari, that was one; and he’d be damned upset in his career if he was on the outs with Ari.

It was an interesting thought, too, what Jordan would have been, if he’d been lovers with the first Ari long‑term. But that had gone very, very wrong–not because Jordan hadn’t ever loved Ari, she was fairly sure of that, and not because Ari hadn’t likely loved him. What Jordan wanted was being partners with her, learning things, doing things, having that. It wouldn’t have mattered, if he were Justin, whose name was on a published paper; or whether he got official credit; but it had mattered very, very much to Jordan, because–

Switch personae dramatis again–because Jordan was driven, all his life, to be number one, the best, the one who ran things–

And he wasn’t the best. In his view, Ari had turned on him. But she’d seen a danger in him. Seen how thoroughly one hell of a sex drive overlying a god‑complex had blinded what otherwise really was a great mind…

She’d fixed it in the next generation, hadn’t she?

This is it. This is all there is. This is all there’ll ever be.

All there is.

He’d been seventeen, Justin had, and that had to have hurt, because Jordan had always taught him not to trust Ari; but Justin’s own ambition to be the best had driven him to Ari; and afterward–

Afterward he’d had that mantra echoing in his skull, and Grant was the one he could trust, forever after, the way Jordan trusted Paul. Justin had come, finally, to a point he could like her. Just– likeher; and that was a long, long way for that mindset to come.

She’d met Justin on the same territory, hadn’t she? She’d been half afraid of him. And then targeted him for her first adult conquest. And shied off again, bluff called. He’d been scared of her. Grant had been willing to fling himself between. But that had been a dose of ice water, and she’d thought about it later and thought–thank God they hadn’t. Wouldn’t that have made a mess of things?

Liking was good enough.

Jordan hadn’t been that lucky. Neither had the first Ari.

I’ve found two of your mistakes, she thought, addressing Ari. One was ever sleeping with Jordan; the other was letting Giraud run and never just having the fight it would have taken and looking into his competency to do what he was certified to do.

You knew about Denys, didn’t you? Knew damned well he was a genius, and knew Giraud was almostbright enough to handle things. Giraud really wasan Alpha Supervisor. He just wasn’t the best one on the planet. When an alpha gets messed up, it’s a question of who canunwind the tangle he can make of his sets, and that’s probably just very, very few, even among those with the license, isn’t it? It’s hard for me to judge–because I’m good; it was probably hard for you to judge. I wonder how often you ever ran into Kyle, or if you ever looked twice at him.

She looked at Florian, pocketed the com, reached across the table, and laid her hand on his, a little calm‑down.

“I’m not worried about Jordan,” she said. “I’ll Get him. I’ll Get him and not lose Justin in the process. They’ve had a fight about something. But we’ll fix it.”

“We’re worried about Defense,” Florian said somberly. “Sera, we don’t have resources there.”

“We don’t,” she said, “but we’re smarter.”

“They have weapons andnumbers.”

Here and now, Florian meant. Here and now didn’t always figure when she set her thoughts ranging; but trust Florian to pull her back to the real world. Defense, she thought, was her enemy and consequently all Reseune was in danger. Defense was, in the terms of their childhood game, the Enemy, and Vladislaw Khalid…was its modern face.

What have they got? was one thing to ask.

And it was always, always smart to ask–How does what we did play out in their eyes? What do they thinkwe did?

Overthrowing Denys…who had agreements with them.

Bringing Jordan back.

Bringing Jordanback, where Jordan, if he weren’t Jordan, might have been moved to tell her things. A lot of things. Jordan had been dealingwith Defense before Kyle turned Abban into a weapon aimed at the first Ari.

She’d assumed Jordan was innocent. But if there was one person inside Reseune besidesAri in those days who could have run a timebomb like Kyle, it wasJordan. Giraud damned sure couldn’t, and Prang didn’t think she could crack what Defense had done and an alpha had worked over for decades…

Jordan had taken one look at that psych manual and exploded…not because there was anything in it of what Defense had done, but possibly because he knew exactly what Kyle was, and where he had been, if not where he was now.

“Sera?” Florian asked. The real world. The immediate threat.

“We’ve got to take measures to defend Reseune,” she said. “We can’t assume we’re safe from physical attack. And not just me. Everybody. The labs. Everything. We don’t know how crazy things can get.”

“Good,” Florian said, the way he’d used to say when they’d laid plans in the storm shelters. “That’s good.”

They went up to her office then. They called in Catlin, and Wes and Marco, and they said maybe they should talk to green barracks as well as the ReseuneSec senior officers–who weren’t happy about having a very young azi like Rafael down there in charge of them; but, Catlin said, after Wes and Marco, old green barracks instructors, had gone down and explained there was a danger, and that Rafael BR was under expert advice and orders, then ReseuneSec’s seniors had been a lot happier.

There were cases spilling over to Alpha Wing’s attention, a fight between two CITs at the port, over a lover in the town. It was the sort of thing Hicks had used to handle, and that Ari would have gladly given him back, but they couldn’t trust him yet with communications, and Rafael had no idea what to do with CIT fools who were themselves warehouse managers and assistant managers.

So she wrote a letter to the offenders: All of Revenue is in danger right now and Director Schwartz is trying to straighten things out in the capital. You have violated a number of community laws, and if Director Hicks were in charge at the moment you might both be doing community service for months. It’s stupid to fight when it’s the other person’s choice which of you she sleeps with, or neither. A ReseuneSec officer will ask her how she wants things to be. Her word will he final. If I read any of your names again on reports, including hers, regarding this matter, you’ll be in front of a judge and this as well as the next offense will go to trial. Sincerely, Ariane Emory.

It put herin a fighting mood, and she wrote another letter to all department heads: Regarding the recent call to review atmosphere breach procedures with all employees and all persons under your charge: we will be conducting unannounced drills. Conditions in Novgorod and recent sabotage upriver have made this review’ imperative. Places of public assembly, likewise review your procedures and be prepared. We cannot he sure the first call will not be a real emergency.

She was just out of deepstudy the next morning when she received, via Yanni’s Chloe, an exasperated message from the birthlabs:

We hope that Administration is aware that we risk losing work in progress due to security drills. We wish to he made an exception in all except an actual emergency.

She considered it, looked up the rules, considered lives at stake and wrote, to the labs: Actual emergency is by regulation announced as such. Labs will conduct unannounced internal drills once daily in lieu of ReseuneSec drills. –Ariane Emory.

She wasn’t in a good mood about that. She wasn’t in a good mood today about a number of things, and her head was muzzy from the deepteach drug, which probably argued she shouldn’t be writing to departments. She asked Florian, via com, “Has Yanni checked in? Has Amy?” and being told that neither had, she keyed up the night’s news. It was the fourteenth of August. And Lao was at death’s door.

That continued, Lao was rumored to be on life support, which could cover almost anything. Her Proxy was still missing. Other Councillors had declined interviews. The mayor of Novgorod had declined an interview, except that he had canceled all police and fire service leaves. The news services reported panic buying of foodstuffs and water. Parents were keeping children from youth activities.

Rafael reported, from ReseuneSec, that there had been two robberies overnight in Novgorod, four muggings, one hundred eighteen incidents of public intoxication, fourteen resolved cases of missing persons, one that hadn’t been resolved, some cases of panic buying of foodstuffs, a break‑in and looting at a liquor dealer’s, and a case of vandalism in the subway, where someone had painted Free Jordan Warrickon a subway car. The latter had gone through ten stations without being reported, and three more stations before the car had been taken out of service for cleaning.

Rafael said that older officers called it an uncommonly quiet night. Her own experience, slight as it was, said the night’s activities were usually ten times that, except in a few categories.

“People are afraid,” she reported back to Rafael. She put thatin her population dynamics equations and it came out very simply, that the azi‑born weren’t causing any trouble they could avoid and that the CIT‑born were worried and expressing it in liquor consumption.

She twisted her hair up, skewered it, asked herself if she could bear deepstudying Ari One’s notes on military psych one more time, and thought she’d done it enough.

Com went off. She punched in.

“Sera.”Catlin. “The scheduled 0800 flight from Novgorod has taken off an hour late. It will land here rather than Moreyville. We’re not getting a passenger list, sera. ReseuneSec has taken notice. We are insisting. They’re just saying they have a Council order.”

It could land at either airport. It had the extra stop if there were passengers with a Reseune destination. Council order. Yanni might be aboard.

Possibly Amy, on Yanni’s ticket.

Somebody was coming in, or some message was. And the airplane wasn’t talking to security.

“I may be going down to the airport,” she said to Joyesse and Del, and went to her room and put on a light blouse and a beige suit–media lived down at the Reseune airport, the ones with clearance to be here; and if it was a wave of more media coming in she was prepared to be exercised about it.

Nerves. She got the reports from Catlin, told Catlin to advise her when it was within half an hour of landing.

When it was on approach, Catlin and Florian showed up in full kit, reported a car would meet them at the side exit of Alpha Wing, which was right by Wing Security–an exit which didn’t even, to this day, have a road connected to it.

She went downstairs. Florian and Catlin were talking to ReseuneSec; and there was no use speculating. If it was Yanni coming in, he didn’t want his presence on the plane advertised, and there could be very, very good reason for that.

She saw the plane coming in as they came the last bit down to the shoreline road, down beyond the first AC barns, saw it touch and roll to a stop. Novgorod Air, it said on the side. Not Reseune One, which was sitting idle at Novgorod under round the clock guard; not even ReseuneAir, which was alsositting idle; its fleet consisted of one of the three planes here, one at Novgorod, one at Moreyville, and they were all idle, lacking ordinary traffic this week.

“Sera,” Florian said then. “It’s not Yanni aboard, nor Amy. Two passengers show the name Corain.”

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xvi

AUG 14, 2424

1122H

They kept the media away, used the restricted arrival lounge, and the handful of passengers that debarked and walked to that area were an older woman–Emily Latu, ReseuneAir security informed Florian, and Florian relayed it: Emily Latu, wife of Mikhail Corain, her adult children Rebecca Latu. Rebecca’s spouse Andrew Gaines, and three children; and Alexander Corain, spouse Morag Westfall, and babe in arms.

It was beyond a disappointment. It was ominous. Ari stood looking at the arrivals with a chill about her heart, then bestirred herself to walk toward Latu, as Florian indicated her to be, and to offer her hand. “Sera. Welcome to Reseune. I’m Ariane Emory.”

“Sera Emory.” Latu looked to be on the brink of tears. “My husband wanted us to come here. Councillor Schwartz said we’d be safe here.”

“You’re very welcome. Is your husband all right?”

“Yes,” Latu said, “yes.”

“And Yanni Schwartz?”

“As far as I know, he is. Lao’s dying. Nobody can find her Proxy. Defense is walled up in their Bureau, and it’s just scary. It’s scary in the city. My husband–my husband sent this.”

Latu offered a datastick. Ari took it, gave it to Catlin.

“He doesn’t want publicity about your being here,” she said. “Is that so?”

“He said–he said go ahead and talk to the media once we’re safe. That they’re trying to call Council into session. Without the Information Proxy they haven’t got a special measures quorum. They’re hoping to get hold of Edgerton. Everybody says he’s in the city–that Trade actually knows where he is.”

That was hopeful news, actually. There were legal maneuvers. Yanni was still trying that.

“What is the information you gave me?”

“My husband–my husband has a message for the city. For everybody. If you can get it out.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. Not knowing what Corain had said, she wasn’t going to run Corain’s family past the media, not yet, not now. She said to Catlin, “Get cars for them. Get them up to Wing One, our old apartment.”

“Yes,” Catlin said, and talked to ReseuneSec.

It wasn’t the arrival she wanted. And when she played for herself, on her handheld, what Corain had sent, it took on a far, far more ominous character.

“This is Mikhail Corain, Councillor for Citizens, addressing you not from the Council chamber or from anywhere I wish to disclose at the moment. The murder of one Councillor of Defense and the disappearance of another has left no doubt of the intent of persons inside Defense to stage a coup and takeover of civilian government. Citizens of Union, your Council still exists. We have not given up our lawfully elected posts in favor of murderers and conspirators, nor will we step aside. We call on the Defense electorate to reject all orders from Vladislaw Khalid. Citizens calls for the arrest and detention of Vladislaw Khalid and for the immediate declaration of legitimate elections in the Bureau of Defense. Khalid’s acts are void of authority and Citizens calls on Khalid to vacate the premises of Defense and submit to arrest.”

It wasn’t a great speech. But it was, given the arrival of Corain’s family, an earnest one. She sent it out over the public address in Reseune itself, for starters. That, for all the department heads that had lately objected to the drills.

And she sent a copy to the media waiting at the airport. The plane had taken off, on its way to Moreyville before it returned to Novgorod.

But Mikhail Corain’s speech was headed for Novgorod much, much faster.

And she hoped to God she was doing the right thing–and that Corain and Yanni both were braced for the fallout from it. It was a declaration of civil war.

Sitting on it, however, even for a matter of hours– thatcould have consequences, too.

The Enemy wasn’t likely standing still, not if things were so bad the Council was sending relatives to safety.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xvii

AUG 14, 2424

1301H

“Khalid’s acts are void of authority and Citizens calls on Khalid to vacate the premises of Defense and submit to arrest.”

“They got there,” Yanni muttered to Frank. “Thank God. Time to move.”

Frank used the house phone to talk to their guard, which occupied the downstairs of the hotel, simple signal, verbal code. The hotel was down to five other guests, two women who were visiting a relative in the city, and a family from Novgorod who’d suffered an apartment fire, and was keeping very, very quiet under the circumstances. Four businessmen, three from Svetlansk and another from Big Blue, had checked out this morning to catch the flight, the first in two days, that had gone up toward Moreyville and Reseune. Amy Carnath had reported her hotel mostly vacant, and the news said barges were stacking up in the port because dock and warehouse workers weren’t showing up and there was no room to offload. Local groceries reported shortages, while food piled up on barges that couldn’t find a berth.

That was the condition of the city, as bad a mess as it had ever been during the War. There were rumors, constantly denied in news reports, of Paxer sabotage directed at the precip towers that defended the city, and workers consequently reported sick rather than go into large exposed areas like the docks and warehouses, construction and transport. Companies temporarily shut down operations rather than pay the few workers that did show, and in some families, credit was running short. The city ombudsman had launched a court inquiry as to whether companies would owe back pay, and the city mayor had threatened arrest and confiscation in any shop jacking up prices for necessities like food, water, and medicines.

It was a damned mess, was what, and it was getting worse. Yanni put on his coat over a tee that covered a bulletproof vest, Frank wearing the same protection under his, and carrying the critical briefcase. They met their exterior guard outside, picked up two more at the lift–the two at the hotel room door would stay there to make sure the room staved secure–and they took the lift down to pick up four more guards at the lot occupying the lobby. They numbered more than before. The ones from ReseuneSec offices across town had come over, and the hotel was an armed camp–in case. Reseune promised the hotel that it would pick up the tab–and that kept management happy about ReseuneSec filling hotel rooms and supervising in the kitchens–the Carnath girl and her azi were, he hoped, on that plane that had carried Corain’s family. He didn’t want the kid involved any deeper, not today, and the last thing they needed was those two getting swept up in some operation–or worse–and needing him to get them out.

The ReseuneSec locals had a car–several cars–and the hotel airport bus. They used the bus for a decoy and transport for the other guards, and Yanni got into a car with two others and a lot of guns. Frank got into the seat beside him, and they started off with a speed more apt for Reseune’s lonely portside road than a Novgorod street. They whipped onto Central, and sped along about a kilometer toward the white tower that sprawled onto a block off Central, then squealed around a turn and up to the emergency entrance of the hospital, where the hotel bus met them.

No wasted time. Frank opened the door, got out as armed guards formed up, and Yanni got out. A handful of hospital security stood at the door, and locked it in apprehension, but unlocked it after a moment when Yanni took out his wallet and showed his Council insignia through the glass.

“Catherine Lao’s room,” he said when they stood in the emergency room lobby “Take us there. Now. Council business.”

The guards clearly weren’t used to making executive decisions, but one of them led the way down the hall and talked on his com while he was doing it. He said, protesting, “Ser, she’s in Intensive Care. She’s not doing well.”

“I know that.” Yanni said. “If she’s got a pulse, I need to see her. Fast. The longer I’m here, the more likely there’s going to be a disturbance to the other patients. Let’s move, shall we?”

“Ser,” the guard said, and got them all to a large lift, and up to the third floor. Then a double door and a desk where a nurse posed a more formidable barrier.

“Yanni Schwartz,” Yanni said, showing the wallet badge. “Council business for Councillor Lao.”

“She’s on life support, ser.”

“Can she be made conscious?”

“A doctor has to order that.”

“Find one and do it. Now. Council order.”

The nurse didn’t look happy in the least. She cast sideward glances as she talked on the com, and stopped the conversation with a commanding gesture downward, meaning the guns. Yanni made a small gesture of his own, and they lowered. The nurse answered something to whoever was on the com, and then shut down the connection.

“This way, ser. Just you.”

“And my aide,” Yanni said, meaning Frank. The nurse scowled, but they went through the double doors together, and the visible guns stayed in the foyer.

The room held more machines than human presence. Lao seemed lost among them, a human face, an arm, a white sheet. She’d grown incredibly old, since he’d last seen her, so shrunken and pale it was shocking. The nurse made adjustments on the panel, and after a moment, Lao’s dark eyes opened a slit, black as space, all the eye that was visible. Tension touched the forehead, lines of pain.

“That’s Yanni,” Lao murmured.

“Kate.” He came closer and set his hand on hers, which was cold as ice. “Kate, we’re in a hell of a mess. Khalid’s got the Proxy, Jacques has disappeared, not seen in weeks, Edgerton’s missing…”

“Addy’s missing?”

“Could he dead, for what we know. We need to call a special quorum. The planet’s in a mess. We need a new Proxy for Information. I’ve got the document. You just have to give us a name and sign it.”

The white brow knit. Hard. “Damn, Yanni. I’m not focusing well.”

“Just a name, Kate. And a signature.” Frank had the document, folded, in his coat pocket. Yanni took it, and a pen, and moved the recorder off the desk to get a flat surface.

“Carris?” she asked.

“Not been seen.”

The frown staved. Lao had the pen in her fingers, and lost it. He steadied it.

“Can’t see the damn line.”

“Here.” He showed her where. “Just sign it, Kate. Just sign it.”

She signed, carefully, most of her ordinary signature before it trailed off.

“I can fill in the blank,” he said. “Who do you want for proxy? Recorder’s running. Say it, and I’ll fill it in.”

“Ariane Emory,” she said.

“Kate, it’s 2424. Kate?”

She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t hearing anything. The lines on the machines had all stopped.

“White Rabbit,” Yanni said, on com, the car speeding back through the streets, and when he heard Mikhail’s voice. “White Rabbit, how’s it going?”

“Affirmative. Affirmative. We’ve got him. Come ahead.”

The call cut out. Fast. His heart did a little flutter.

He looked at Frank. “They got him,” he said. Meaning Edgerton. Chavez of Finance had told Harogo of Internal Affairs that he knew where Edgerton was, and they’d just made contact…which meant they might not need to file that questionable paper. Edgerton was going to show in the Council chambers for about five minutes, which was what they needed. Lao had appointed a dead woman to take Edgerton’s place, but they’d, thank God, located Edgerton’s hidey‑hole somewhere in the city, Chavez had just worked a miracle, and Yanni told the driver, “Council Hall.”

The ear veered. The airport bus, caught by surprise, caught up with them three intersections on, and trailed both escort cars.

They crossed the river on Council Bridge, and the administrative tower, closest to the river of all the various bureau office towers, loomed up closer and closer.

The portico showed ominously vacant, compared to the usual press of media vans and reporters. Nobody was there but one lonely media stakeout with her cameraman, them and a small number of Council aides, with another car giving up its occupants as a third car and the airport bus came squealing up the drive, and more security bailed out.

Guns came out. “Easy,” Yanni said. The other car was Mamud Chavez, and Yanni went to meet him, and go with him through the doors. “Mamud.” He offered his hand as they passed the doors and came under the scrutiny of Council security. Chavez, ordinarily not his ally, took the handshake with uncommon sincerity.

“Good to see you,” Chavez said, the statement itself an earthquake in Council relations. “Corain went to the back entry.”

‘”Good,” he said. He stayed worried as they reached the lift, and gathered their bodyguard in, both of them. It shot them up to the Council level, and let them out into a vacant hallway.

Frank opened the door for them. Yanni and Chavez walked into the Hall of the Nine itself, and immediately he saw Corain and Tien, of Industry. That was four of the five they needed for a simple quorum, four of the eight they needed for the vote they intended.

“Harogo’s on his way up,” Corain said. “Harad’s coming.”

Five. And six. Harad. State, had been a cliffhanger: he’d been an ally of Gorodin’s, in Defense; and it hadn’t been certain where he came down–he hadn’t liked Jacques or Spurlin.

They tended toward their seats. Took them, in the arc that constituted an official seating. There was no Council clerk. They passed a sheet of paper down, signed their names, and fed it into the automated slot that immortalized it, irretrievable, a statement of their presence here, on this day, to do Council business.

Five more minutes. Harogo came in, Internal Affairs, frail, and surrounded by his own security, from Fargone Station. Two more minutes, and they had word from Corain’s watch at the back entry that Harad was in the building, and then Ludmilla deFranco arrived downstairs.

One more needed. Yanni looked at the clock. Seventeen minutes. The longer they sat, the more vulnerable they became.

Eight. Harad came in, walked to the fore of the desk.

“He didn’t make his appointment,” Harad said, as agitated as Yanni ever remembered him. “I have no word.”

He. Meaning Edgerton.

“Damn,” Corain said. “Damn it.”

“It’s not safe to stay here,” Chavez said. “We risk getting pinned here.”

“Five more minutes,” Yanni said.

Harad came up to his seat. DeFranco came in, conferred quietly with Harad, took her seat. And they waited.

Frank talked on com with someone, probably downstairs. Frank walked over to him, leaned near his chair. “There’s a military presence at the hotel. And another squad at Councillor Lynch’s condominium.”

“We can’t do this,” Harogo said. Harogo sat next to him. “We need to move. We’ve failed the quorum.”

“We can get the eight we need,” Yanni said. “Lao’s dead. But she named another proxy.” He got up and slipped the paper into the slot. “Ariane Emory.”

No restriction on the ability of a Councillor to appoint a Proxy. No restriction even of age. None of bureau registration. In the wild early days of chancey transport, anybodywith credentials could carry a vote into the Council on behalf of an absent Councillor.

“Irregular!” Harogo said.

“Legal,” Corain said.

“We can’t vote here without our eighth,” Yanni said. “I call Council. Reseune Administrative Territories, on the twelfth of September.”

“Second that,” Corain said.

“Those opposed?” Harogo said, and then wrote on the screen under his hands, and filed it. “Each of us has declared a Proxy. In case.”

“Go,” Yanni said, and got up from his seat. He alone couldn’tfile a Proxy; only Lynch, Councillor for Science, could do that, and Lynch was holed up in his residence, too old and too timid for what was afoot. He couldn’t lay all the blame for their situation to Edgerton’s lack of nerve: for all he knew, there was trouble hot on Edgerton’s trail. Or Edgerton was dead.

He gathered up Frank, then caught Mikhail Corain at the side of the door. “Thanks.”

“Done as much as I can,” Corain said, and in the lowest possible tones. “ Didshe sign it?”

“I’ve got the recording,” Yanni said. “Or Frank has it. It’s legal. Stay low and stay safe.”

Out the door then, downstairs as fast as they could gather a lift‑load of Councillors, aides, and security. In the lower hall they separated, headed for the north doors and the south portico.

ReseuneSec held the doors.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xviii

AUGUST 20, 2424

1438H

Nearly a week since the broadcast, and Ari had long since taken pity on the reporters camped out at the airport and physically cut off from their news organizations, their families, their means of being elsewhere–she comped meals, laundry service, delivered unlimited vid entertainment, and ordered the restaurant there to vary its menu daily and be open twenty‑four hours, the little airport bar to open at 2000h and stay til 2400h nightly.

She’d also sent down two ReseuneSec agents to help out at the bar, and to gather up any tidbits of information and rumor that came in by various links that didn’t belong to Reseune.

There were rumors down there, no question. Broadcast news continually said Lao was alive. Rumor at the bar said she was artificially sustained for legal reasons. The broadcast news said Council had met but Khalid had not shown up, nor had the Proxy for Information, and Council had adjourned quickly. Rumor said Edgerton was in hiding somewhere in the city and that he and Council were under direct threat of the military.

On August 20, Amy called–finally, and reported that Yanni had taken over the hotel he was in, that Corain was living there, too, and that she and Quentin had moved in for safety, because her hotel had been used for a barracks. She also said that yesterday there’d been a breakdown in the subway that added to problems in the city. People said it was Paxer activity, but mostly it was just rumors–anything that broke was automatically Paxers.

Meanwhile, Amy said, Khalid was threatening to put the city under martial law; but without the Council he knew he couldn’t do that, so he was trying to locate Council members, and that military had been searching hotels, including her former one, and trying to bully Councillors into showing up when hecalled Council. It was certain Khalid knew where Yanni and Corain were, but hadn’t made a move on them or searched their hotel. He hadn’t found enough of the other Councillors to get eight of the Nine–and without them, he couldn’t declare martial law, couldn’t convene the Council of Worlds, and couldn’t do a lot of things, legally, so there was no point in his raiding the hotel where two Councillors definitely and publicly were.

That was the sum of Amy’s report, except to ask how they were, and Ari said they were all fine.

But late on August 23, a barge came up from Moreyville, and fourteen people got off at Reseune docks, fourteen very tired, dirty, and hungry people, among them Ludmilla deFranco, far less than the immaculate person she ordinarily was. Her blonde hair was dyed dark, her customary couturier dress traded for a dockworker’s blues.

All the same, a spark of triumph glistened in deFranco’s eyes when Ari came down to the docks to meet her.

“A pleasure,” deFranco said, and startled her and Florian with an unexpected embrace. “God, you look like her, don’t you?”

“I should,” Ari said, but she didn’t actually mind the hug, she was just startled by it. “I’m glad you’re safe. Did you come up all the way by barge?”

“To Moreyville by plane,” DeFranco said. “Then the barge.” DeFranco had to be past her hundreds, and it was still a long, hard pull, deFranco and this crowd of people, some of whom must be younger relatives. “Has Yanni been in touch? You’re Lao’s Proxy.”

“How?” she asked.

“Filed and legal,” deFranco said, and sank onto a convenient counter edge. “Yanni got it from Lao in person. Filed it in chambers, all of us to witness. You’re the new Proxy for Information. Council’s to meet here on the twelfth of September.”

“Here. On the twelfth. Why are they waiting that long?”

“There’s preparation to make. Contacts. People to be felt out…some of them inside Defense. Those still there are working that angle, making contacts as best they can, pulling every string they’ve got–of which I don’t have enough left to matter. I’m getting too old for this, nearly as old as Lao, and she’s dead. We’re in a war, sera. We’re in an outright war for control of the government. Khalid can’t call Council to get a declaration of martial law; he needs eight Councillors, and I, my dear, and now you, are sitting here preventing that from happening, no matter how he threatens us. He can haul in every Councillor left in Novgorod and without us, he won’t have sufficient votes either to get seated or to declare martial law.”

“And if he comes here?”

“There’s a practical limit to what he can order the military at large to do. Individual units, individual arrests, yes, he’s got his people. But he can’t move divisions. Not what it would take to get in here. Some things he doesn’t dare order, because he isn’tseated.”

Yet, Ari thought, chilled by the thought. What Khalid would and wouldn’t dare once he had enough power and legitimacy was another matter–but she didn’t say that. DeFranco, an old ally of her predecessor, deserved accommodation in Wing One, too, along with her relatives or staff or whoever they were. “I’m very sorry we’re so tight on space,” she said. “It’s not adequate. But we can settle you up the hill. Close to Mikhail Corain’s family.”

“It will be absolutely adequate,” deFranco said, “if we can all get warm showers and beds that don’t bob up and down. Beds with sheets. That would be wonderful.”

“Come with me,” she said, and gave? orders and personally took them all back up the hill on the bus, giving other orders via Florian and Catlin on com. “We’re going to have visitors,” she said, “the whole Council, eventually, maybe their families and relations. More worrisome, we may have the military making a move on us. Tell Wes to go down to the green barracks. He’s going to be liaison down there for the next few days. Tell ReseuneSec to put the bots on a hair trigger. Tell Tommy–hell, tell Tommy do something about the logistics in Wing One. We can’t put part of these people in luxury and part of them in rooms with scaffolding. They’re Councillors. They need beds, sheets, towels, ID, and a charge tab for the restaurants, everything you can think of.”

Tommy acknowledged. That would happen and she didn’t have to worry about it. She did have to worry about Yanni–Yanni was still in Novgorod risking his neck. So was the rest of the Council. And Amy. And there wasn’t a thing she could do for them–except keep the media down at the airport as informed as she could; so she sent the reporters a message; there would be a news conference at 1800h sharp, and she’d be down there to fill them in on the arrivals from Novgorod and what they’d had to say.

She chose to host the media at the airport. That meant keeping them happy–in all senses. They were an asset. They were also apt, as Catlin put it, to become an issue with the opposition–possibly a target, if certain forces decided they didn’t like the news reports coming out of Reseune. And there were a great many innocent people at risk if that happened. Khalid couldn’t order large units…didn’t dare; that was what deFranco assured her. But the military at large could be lied to. Khalid, with unopposed control of the Bureau, firm control of Intelligence, and sole control of the military information network could tell them anything–if he controlled all the sources of information. And she had one of those sources. She had one and she had to protect it and use it to keep Khalid from shading the truth. The rest of the military hadto learn what Khalid was doing.

There were storm tunnels under the town. There were, for that matter, defenses on the cliffs, near the precip towers. Khalid had shown what he could do up at Strassenberg. He’d launched that maybe to signal something–but it signaled them, too, to take precautions.

She reached her desk and said, “Base One. Defense of the precip towers. Specifics.”

Base One delivered information. She mined it at deeper and deeper levels and stored the result. She called Catlin in and then called Rafael.

“Review this,” she said. “You and Florian both. Rafael, you too. See what they’ve got, what we’ve got. Tell me how bad it could get.”

She didn’t have people tapped into the military, to know what they had. From orbit–Defense had everything, including warships. They could turn Reseune into a smoking ruin if they wanted to, and nothing could stop it, no shelter withstand it. But deFranco said Khalid didn’t dare…politically speaking. DeFranco believed some people wouldn’t take his orders.

Bet on it? She didn’t dare. Not with all they had at risk.

And finally–pause for breath in a day in which she’d skipped lunch, and now remembered she hadn’t had breakfast–she ordered up a sandwich and a tea, and sat there thinking, and thinking–about Amy, up there in the middle of something Amy didn’t understand and was having to learn fast; and Yanni, trying to use the influence he did have, to keep Khalid from taking the whole board… Khalid was a man who’d use what he had, but, possibly, Khalid’s asset andtheirs, he was too smart and too cautious to try to use even thing. He’d move what he could rely on. That was Intelligence, maybe isolate special operations, some elements of the Fleet…the latter especially if he could con them.

She didn’t truly understand the inner workings of Defense, or how they made decisions, or who had the ultimate say in the various services. She’d heard the first Ari’s advice. But it was limited, and dated. And current politics mattered inside that Bureau, but she didn’t have good ins into its workings.

Giraud had been upset when she’d gone after Khalid.

Maybe she had, in some way, brought this on. She’d certainly made an enemy that day.

Maybe. Nothing proved Khalid was more of an enemy than he’d ever been, just that Khalid, for some reason, was moving before he had full support inside his own Bureau–that argued he was in a hurry for some reason. Mainly Khalid hadn’t wonthe election. That would have given him a tougher position. And people still defied him. Corain had outright called on elements of Defense to defy him.

Right now, deFranco might be right. She hoped so.

God, she’d done everything she could think to do, and if she hyped up on stayawakes to try to keep thinking, she’d be increasingly crazier, especially after all the deepstudy she’d done on the AK‑36 case. It was time to let bodily chemistry do what it had to do for a few hours. It was time to get some rest. If they were lucky, they had a few days before Khalid got really upset or really desperate.

There wasHicks, who’d dealt with Defense. She could let him loose, dust him off, reinstate him, give him a chance to be a hero, and hope that resentment didn’t make him a highly irrational personal enemy.

There was Yanni, whom she couldn’t reach. There was deFranco, whom she could. DeFranco–if she knew how to read deFranco–was a resource she could use freely; except it was one without a crosscheck: she either believed deFranco’s assessment wholesale or she didn’t. She could ask department heads like Wendy Peterson and John Edwards, and Ivanov, who’d at least been around as long as Yanni.

But people that really knew what had been going on with Defense, long‑term–that was Hicks; and Kyle, who wasn’t on Reseune’s side at the moment.

And…there was Jordan Warrick.

She ought to go to bed. She ought to fall in and go to sleep and stay there pending the next alarm. But the brain was going to stay active.

And she had enough energy left to get up, leave the apartment, and walk across the hall–Catlin and Florian were both on errands, she didn’t even alert Theo or Jory, and it was one of a few times in her life she’d left where she lived without one or the other of them.

She knocked at Justin’s door. And Justin answered it.

“Ari.” Eyes flicked to the hall. The missing escort.

“I need Jordan,” she said. “I need to talk to him. I need what he knows. I need you to go with me. Khalid’s not attacking us yet, but the whole Council’s coming here on the twelfth, deFranco’s just come in for refuge, and there’s Kyle downstairs, who I’m afraid I’ll kill if I try to deal with him. I don’t even know if it will do any good, but it’s what we cando, while we’re sitting here being a target. I want to know what Jordan knows. I want his help with the case I handed both of you.”

Grant had showed up, at Justin’s shoulder.

Justin started to say something. And then seemed to change his mind. “Come in,” he said somberly. “I’ll get my coat.”

“You said he’s not speaking to you.”

“You’re likely to get the door opened. I want to be there to give him an alternate target. Where’s Florian and Catlin?”

“On an errand,” she said, and that had echoes, way, way back, to the day her predecessor had died. “I can get your Mark and Gerry to come. It’ll be all right. Your father’s not the danger. I think–I don’t know–possibly–possibly Kyle AK is supposed to come after me.”

“God.”

“It’s dead serious, Justin. That’s why I wanted you both on it.”

“And what I read says he’s able to kill, if you want the short summation.” He pulled his coat on. Grant did the same, and Grant took his pocket com and called the downstairs security office, by the sound of it. “Gerry BG,” he said, “Mark. Meet us downstairs.”

She’d been too tired to function. She’d planned to talk to Jordan in the morning. Maybe. If she could talk Justin into it. But now that Justin was in motion, she thought–just do it. Just do it the best way possible, and she went with them, down the hall, down the lift, thinking, How odd, just to walk with somebody, in a safe building. How odd, to trust two people that aren’t staff, that don’t have all safe connections–because Jordan really wasn’t safe.

She did take out her pocket com and call Theo. “If my security asks, I’m with Justin and Grant. I’m going downstairs and over to Wing One. It’s quiet, all’s well, no problems.”

She wasn’t totally surprised when, as they picked up Mark and Gerry, Jory showed up from the lift, out of breath, and added herself to the group; and before they’d reached the security desk at the exit, Florian showed up from the other direction, sweating a little, but perfectly composed.

Then she felt guilty, and touched Florian’s shoulder, and said, “It wasn’t going to be this long or this far.” He was as tired as she was. And it hadn’t been fair.

“Yes, sera,” he said, a little out of breath. And they went on through to Wing One, herself, Florian, Justin, Grant, Mark and Gerry, and Jory, all of them into the dim storm tunnel of Wing One, and into the lift, and up again.

“Let me,” Ari said, and went and pressed the button at Jordan’s door. “Ser. Jordan Warrick.”

There was some delay about it. Then the door opened. Paul was there.

“He says he’s going to take a shower, sera, I’m sorry. Justin–” Seeing Justin and Grant just behind her, and the security, he hesitated.

“He can wait about the shower,” Justin said. “Paul. Now.”

“Come in, sera,” Paul said, and she walked in and all of them walked in. It might not be the best thing to do. It likely wasn’t. But she wasn’t going to tell Florian to stay outside. Ari felt his presence right at her back. And Jory’s. Mark and Gerry were there, the whole lot of them.

They waited. Paul came back again, and this time Jordan walked out, in his bathrobe.

“So?” Jordan said.

“That file I sent you,” Ari said. “I know you’ve got an opinion.”

Jordan drew himself up and folded his arms, staring at her. “This isn’t the way I do consultation. Try tomorrow. Without them.”

“You read the file. You recognized it.”

“I recognize the type.” His voice was edged with anger. But restrained, and he shot a glance past her, full of fury. Then back. “What, did you think I wouldn’t?”

“That set’s older than I am by a bit.” She cast a nod over her shoulder. “Older than Justin is, or Grant. They’ve never worked with the military sets. But you have.”

“I studied the mess the War sent us back. We all did. As I’m sure you know, since you get into every damned thing you like.”

“If I had everything you know, I wouldn’t have to ask. You worked with the Defense sets.”

“As a student. You’re talking about ancient history.”

“You consulted with them. You talked with them. You wrote one very good paper.”

“Several.”

She thought about the next question. Florian and Jory were there, if anything untoward happened. Mark and Gerry were. She didn’t think Justin would side with Jordan if he went for her.

She said, “Did you know an azi named Kyle, who worked with Giraud?”

Brows lilted slightly. “Alpha. Is that who this file is about?”

“Yes. Did you think he’d been axed?”

A little delay. She wasn’t dealing with the son of a bitch Jordan, the opaque stare. Calculation was quick and sharp. “You’re saying he wasn’t. He’s still alive?”

“He was, according to records, a Fleet Alpha Supervisor. And no, the code didn’t take. After which he had access to Abban, among others Giraud had in his office. He was still working for Defense. Defense was talking to you about breaking with Reseune. Ari found out and pulled you home. Defense knew that my existence was a possibility–knew that from you andfrom Giraud’s office. Knew that Ari didn’t have that long anyway. Youwere there with a grudge that was provable. Perfect vector for suspicion. Giraud had been in Novgorod, talking with Defense. So had Abban. So had Kyle, just one of the aides.”

“Bloody hell. This is a fucking setup. Get out of here.” He waved an arm toward Justin. “Get himout of here. Get away from me!”

“No,” Paul said, from over by the bar counter. “ No.”

“The hell” Jordan said, and turned and walked out of the room.

Paul still stood there, facing them, Paul immaculately dressed, very steady. “Sera,” he said, “Justin, Grant.” A little dip of the head, “Jordan and I need to talk. We are goingto talk. If you’d please call him in the morning.”

There was something changed in that equation. She didn’t know what. But Justin said, “Good. –Ari, he will.”

Jordan came back around the doorjamb, stood there, arms folded.

“You’re not welcome here, boy. As for you–” He looked straight at Ari. “You think Kyle murdered Ari?”

“I’m fairly sure there’s a connection between him, Abban, and that event, yes. All that’s in the past. What we’ve got nowis the possibility, the very real possibility of a military operation directed at Reseune, and people getting killed.”

“Notably you.”

“And a lot of innocent people who haven’t the least idea they’re in danger. You won’t be safe here if Defense launches something. You know far too much. Defensewas perfectly content while you were shut up inside Planys. You never heard them complaining about your being yanked away from Novgorod and going home with Ari that session. You never heard them arguing that it was some political set‑up when you got blamed for Ari’s murder. No. And Yanni didn’t send you to Fargone for exile for one very good reason: because you wouldn’t have lasted the week there.”

“You’re saying Kylekilled her.”

“Was behind Abban doing it. But Defense did it. Let you take the blame. And while Denys and Giraud were in charge, Defense was real easy for them to get along with, if nothing else, because they didn’t push the way Ari did. The same day I took on Denys, Ihauled your ass out of Planys to keep anybody from Denys’ staff from doing you in; and I think that same day some faction inside the Defense Bureau got very, very upset that you’d arrived here at Reseune proper, and worse upset by the chance you might finally be talking to me. I don’t know what Yanni knows. I don’t know if he knows all of it, or just suspects and never could prove it. But I think he knew you were in danger back then, and he saved your life…if nothing else, he intervened more than once to put your son on a safer course and to keep him out of Denys’ path. So I don’t think he was ever against you–the same way he didn’t argue against my bringing you back here. So you’ve had friends all along. Noneof them are in Defense.”

He’d drawn up just a little. His face had gone white, just white. The anger was still there. But he might be thinking. Better yet, he might be listening.

“Nice theory,” he said.

“I wasn’t there,” she said. “I haven’t any way to know any of this. No record shows it. I just watch where the pieces moved, and who moved them. And I draw my conclusions.”

He made an impatient gesture. “You want my help? You want–what?”

“I want your help with Kyle, I want your help cracking the block that’s keeping him on the Defense rolls. My doing it’s probably going to kill him and get no information, because I haven’t had the experience. I need your help, ser. I need your expertise, and I need you to help me find out what else Defense has got inside our walls, before they get desperate enough to do something–like kill me, yes. About now, they’d like to see another Ari, who’ll get to grow up until shestarts asking questions, and maybe die again. Always keeping the power together, keeping Reseune together, dying before she gets to be a threat, reborn just to keep the power together–and let Reseune stay under caretakers they can deal with. Well, I’m not ready to die, ser. I don’t intend to. But I don’t think that’s what Khalid’s playing for at the moment. His actions have been too high, too wide. He’s going for a Council that will give him martial law. Control over all of Cyteen. And us.”

“Where’s Yanni?”

“Still in Novgorod. Hicks is under arrest and we’re on shaky ground with ReseuneSec. The department heads are all mad at me because I’m insisting on security drills and upsetting their routine. Somebody murdered Patil, somebody murdered Thieu, they probably had you on their list to make sure that what you knew didn’t get out–but didn’t want to stir up the old murder case and get questions asked. They were doing just fine as things were–until you came back here. They lost the election and they murdered Spurlin before he could take office in Defense–never mind they hadn’t read the results yet, they had the polls. They could work math. And they moved. That’s a faction at work. Somebody blew up a tower upriver, and it wasn’t the Paxers. It was a diversion of our energies. Or a signal to somebody. Lao’s dead. Khalid’s trying to force martial law. He’s getting very frustrated by now, because Council can’t muster a special decrees quorum if it wanted to, and I don’t know at what hour he’s going to get tired of reporters down at our airport sending out bulletins about Councillors’ families taking shelter here, which is what’s happening. Pretty soon he’ll figure out he’s got to do something about the reporters, and me, and maybe you. I’m due down at the airport in a few hours to talk to them so Councillors in Novgorod know their families aresafe, and more to the point, so Khalid can’t lie to his own Bureau about what’s going on here. But if we make a mistake here at Reseune, the whole of Union is in for Khalid in charge of the government, and that’s not going to be good, so, no, ser, Yanni isn’t here, I’m doing the best I can with not too many people left alive who know what’s going on or even what it’s about, and I need you to tell me what your deal was with Defense, because you’re the cause the Paxers have taken up, while they’re bombing subways, and because you’re the one the first Ari hauled home because you’d been dealing with Defense. And you’ll notice Defense moved fairly fast once you came home to Reseune.”

“My dealwith Defense was to get me the hell out of Reseune.”

“They didthat part of it,” Justin muttered, and drew a black scowl from Jordan.

Then that stare snapped back to her. “If Kyle was theirs, I never knew it. I absolutely never knew it.”

“Who were you dealing with in that Bureau? Was Khalid any part of that group?”

“You want me to come clean? Then I’ll tell you my conditions. My name cleared. Cleared. Freedom to leave. Freedom to write and say what I want– anything. And I’ll tell you about Khalid. Yes, I knowKhalid. There are questions I’ve got, too, with this azi you’ve got, plentyof them.”

“We’ve got a few days,” she said, “maybe a few days to figure out how to get through to him. And I want bothof you working on this.”

“The hell,” Jordan said. “He can stay out of it.”

“Jordan and I will talk about it,” Paul said quietly.

Curiously, then, Jordan glanced aside, didn’t look at any of them, shrugged, and walked back into the inner apartment.

“In the morning,” Paul said to them. “We’ll talk.”

Family, she thought. Family more complicated, in its way, than her dealings with Denys. But it was somehow functioning. She had the feeling something was moving. Maybe it was something Jordan had finally believed. Maybe there’d been some other change in the atmosphere. Paul. Paul had never said a word before. And now Paul had an opinion.

And Justin had asked about Paul’s manual. Hadn’t he? She’d been distracted. Nowshe knew what the latest fight was about.

She walked with Justin and Grant back to Alpha Wing and back to their mutual parting, all their security in attendance, and didn’t say anything but, “Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Grant. Try to work with him. Please.”

“I intend to,” Justin said. “I fully intend to.” After which he and Grant went inside.

She went into her own place, with Jory, with Florian, and felt like asking for a vodka, but she still had to go down to the airport. She still had to talk to the reporters.

She went into her office. Only Florian went that far with her.

She turned then, and looked at him.

“Please don’t do that again,” he said.

“It wasn’t fair of me. I thought I was saving you having to run back here. I didn’t intend to go farther than Justin’s apartment. Then it seemed safe. I think it was.”

“It scared us.” Florian said. Very few things did, but she saw that that was very much the truth.

“The first Ari made that mistake,” she said. “I’ve asked too much, sent you this way and that, asked you and Catlin to do more than you ever ought to have to. I won’t send you apart from me again.”

“We’re not tired,” Florian said. He didn’t lie often. He didn’t do it particularly well, no more than Justin ever did.

“I love you,” she said, and hugged his shoulder, which was solid and sure as he was. She rested her head against it for a moment. He put his hand on her head, and stood there.

A long, long time. Until she grew tired of standing.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xix

AUGUST 24, 2424

1421H

“…we will continue to support the Council as elected by the people of Union, and we will continue to provide for family and relatives of the Council who have appealed to us for a safe haven, this in the wake of the murder of one elected Councillor and threats against families of living ones. Two Councillors are with us at Reseune.

“We support the people of Novgorod in resisting the threats of those elements who create civil unrest and we call on them to use their creative energy to sustain the city and its services. Those of you who hold public service jobs, count them of extreme importance and consider your duty critical to the safety of all citizens. Those of you who have sworn or Contracted to defend Union, support the Council in its determination to uphold the law.

“The Council has designated a date for assembly and will act. We call on all citizens and azi to support the Council in the face of bullying and threat of bodily harm. We call on the loyal armed services of Union to support the Council and to refuse unlawful orders. We call on every citizen to document every act of intimidation, every unlawful demand on the rights of the public, with numbers and vid records where you can secure them safely. These unlawful acts will come to trial and the people of Novgorod will have their day in court.

“Long live the Union.”

The little minx, Yanni thought, and shut down the vid. She was that. She’d just appealed to Khalid’s own Bureau. She hadn’t told the whens and wheres of the Council plan, just that Reseune sheltered two Councillors’ families, a Councillor and a Proxy Councillor…she didn’t mention that one of the two was herself.

And if Khalid didn’t currently know where Edgerton was, any more than they did, she’d just clouded the issue…and maybe thrown off that search.

“Sounded good to me,” Frank said.

They sat in a hotel they now shared with Corain, Amy Carnath, and Quentin. They knew damned well the plainclothes watchers across the street weren’t civilian police, and the hotel employees were down to a few–

“Go home,” Yanni had told the manager, personally. “Dismiss your staff. Those who stay to maintain the systems will get triple pay. Reseune will see to it if I survive to get back to my office. Those who stay on duty, the same. But it’s no longer safe. Go home.”

Seven of the staff, including the manager and assistant manager, the head custodian, two of his people, one sous‑chef, and the head of housekeeping, had stayed on, and they kept things running…making them more comfortable than they might have been.

Sit still, and wait. That was what they had to do right now. ReseuneSec had a handful of plainclothes agents throughout the city that made quiet visits to watched areas, and that made tight transmission to receivers here and there, data‑squeal that made it quick and thorough. The latter was Frank’s expertise more than his. He didn’t set it up or critique it: he just knew how to receive it.

And one message had come in which in no way heartened him.

It said, Trying to make contact with Lynch. Not answering last two days. Will continue effort pending outcome of other inquiry. M.

State, Defense, and the city government had police powers, and so, by a trick of history, did Reseune Administrative Territory and its adjunct at Planys. Reseune, with its ability to police azi welfare in every factory and office in Union, had an investigative and enforcement organization in some respects as extensive as that of Defense and the city government.

And Reseune used it…not the way Defense did, with obvious intimidation standing on the curb out there in the rain, no. With a little more finesse, Yanni hoped. Finesse might never have been his strong suit inside Reseune, but out here, with armed Fleet agents with drawn guns scaring hell out of the sous‑chef when he took a look into the alley, he tried not to offend the people they hoped to contact. He sent quiet queries to certain Defense contacts in other services, and hoped for answers–like the removal of surveillance from his curb.

He didn’t reply to the message from M. He just absorbed it and every other tidbit of information that came wafting in. He had dinner scheduled with young Amy, her Quentin, Frank, and Mikhail Corain. They maintained at least some of the comforts of home.

And deFranco had made it safely to Reseune. Chavez and his family were somewhere en route, granted he’d gotten through to the airport. Tien would go there next, solo; his family were safe on remote Viking. Harad, State, commanding another security apparatus, independent of Defense, would be the next to last to leave the capital.

He had the short straw. His people were armed and spread throughout the city–in plain clothes. He hoped to hell the agents that had scared the chef had been vastly exceeding their orders. But they were prepared to fight their way to the airport if they had to.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xx

AUGUST 27, 2424

1430H

Hicks had had a heavy dose of trank–he wasn’t happy that the Warricks, father and son, with Grant and Paul, were involved in Kyle’s case at all; but he was a little glazed, and sat having a little fruit juice during prep, eyeing them all the while with distrust. Chi Prang was there, with her assistant. Ivanov took the medical end of things, with two psych nurses, a cardiovascular surgeon and her two surgical nurses on call. Supportive machinery was in the room–it was Ivanov’s suggestion, and Ari took the advice, even if it crowded the immediate area.

The Admin clinic couldn’t remotely handle an operation of this complexity, so they set up in the hospital’s A wing, a real surgery, with specialized monitors brought up from the psych labs, plus the other options, if that was what it took. It had needed two days to set it up.

Today finally involved Hicks. And the rest of them. And the monitors. And Kyle.

Kyle, for his peace of mind, didn’t know a thing about it–he arrived tranked out, though he seemed robust enough, once the monitors started telling what they knew. They lit up, one miniaturized bank alter another.

“We’re being careful.” Ari said to Hicks, who looked increasingly anxious as the moments went on and the monitors came up. “You’ll be right by him when he starts to wake up. Just keep him calm–you can touch him, but only say, ‘I’m here.’ Say your name and say, ‘I’m here.’ Nothing else outside the script.”

“I understand you,” Hicks said. He was, at the moment, scared as all hell, determined not to get thrown out of the operation, Ari thought. But that wouldn’t happen. That would be the worst thing for Kyle AK; if they lost Hicks’ active participation, they might lose Kyle, or lose him, mentally for good and all. If Hicks folded, they’d have to put Kyle back under, fast.

She went over to the rest of her group, who were going through the procedures book and script, a physical printout, with notes. Florian and Catlin attended her and kept to the background; Mark and Gerry were there with Justin and Grant–they weren’t short of security if they encountered a problem, but at the moment security meant four more bodies in not much space for the operators, just behind the heart‑lung apparatus.

Jordan was team leader. Jordan and Prang had worked together before, Jordan had said they were the two who’d actually done this kind of intervention once and a long time ago, and he bluntly wanted to be in charge. There wasn’t to be any freehand, just carefully planned branches: if Kyle did this, then that; if Kyle branched in another direction, something else. All possible paths were mapped, all with more care than any operation Ari had ever read; Prang had come into the conferences, and she and Jordan had laid down the increasingly complex map, with Ari’s participation and Justin’s, and they’d done it in three marathon meetings–fascinating, under any other circumstances. Fascinating, too, when Jordan was on business, talking about this branch and the other, and what the trigger might be. He was fast in his decisions, and focused only on the problem. The one point where he and Prang differed was about where the block actually sat, and exactly where a not‑very‑adept military operator had put in something and just told Kyle to protect it.

“Here,” Jordan had said, and pointed to the same area Grant had indicated, down in the secondaries–but then he’d linked it to a second item. Kyle had programming from back in the first days of the azi participation in the War–a routine about defending what his Contract‑holder set him to defend. That was fine, Ari thought, but to an alpha that defendwent metaphysical real fast, and they didn’t do that kind of thing; that had stood out, to her eyes. She found that kind of generality in the programming at four other points she could see, things they didn’t dowith alphas or even betas nowadays, because things hadgone wrong. She had those circled on her own copy, and Justin and Grant both had tagged them as inappropriate from the start. Old‑style programming. Old as the azi in question.

Kyle being, himself an Alpha Supervisor by the military’s make‑do procedures of the day, had considerably reworked his own programming by the time Defense sent him back to Reseune as a spy…that clearly had happened.

Prang had said, regarding the initials on the file, “IC. Carnath, maybe.”

“Huh,” Jordan snorted. “That’s Charles. Ivan Charles, not Carnath.”

“Him,” Prang had said, and when Ari asked who Ivan Charles was. Prang said simply, “He worked on the military sets.”

But Jordan had said, “Emory Senior used to take his crappy work and just shove it through. It made money. They were turning out azi by the hundreds, same type, same geneset. You could have a whole damn company the officers couldn’t tell apart, no attempt to do a sociology set on the unit, you just shoved them out the door and they went out to some godforsaken operation and died by the hundreds; and then they’d patch up the survivors out there on the lines and send them back to the War. Emory Senior had some damned idiot staff writing broad‑based tape back during the War. Defense wanted to control everything, every damned subclause and dot, a routine to do this, a routine to do that–the client wanted certain things, they got them.”

Ari had been a little offended at that assessment. Then she realized Emory Senior, in that context, meant OlgaEmory.

Way, way back, then.

“Certificates weren’t specific either,” Prang had said. “The higher‑end operators handled both the betas and the alphas, and there wasn’t any certification in the sense we use now.”

“We’re not teaching a damned history lesson,” Jordan had said. “Kyle’s alpha. He got a crap initial set. They all did.”

“He was supposed to serve in headquarters,” Prang had said, “no nearer the front than Alpha Station.”

“His military record is nowhere in file and we don’t know where the hell he was,” Jordan had said. “We weren’t around for Olga’s goings‑on. We assume what we have to assume. But we’re notassuming when we say he’s kill‑capable. The axe code didn’t take, did it? That means, alpha or not, he came back to us with it, and nobody could have installed it on him in ReseuneSec unless the axe code worked. But somebodydid it. That meant he was near the lines, and myguess is he got crap‑work patched in to shape him up to work in a combat zone. Sure, Defense swore they didn’t ever do that. But they swore to a lot of things that were a flat lie.”

“Why,” Ari had asked–and she hadn’t wanted to interrupt the train of thought, but it was an important question, “why, if he got back to Reseune in ‘62, why didn’t the first Ari ever look at him? Why didn’t she catch it?”

Prang had said. “I checked the timeline. Your predecessor had resigned the directorship to take up the Council seat. Yanni was taking over the Directorate. Giraud was running Security. Those two didn’t see eye to eye. Giraud handled his department; and Giraud got Kyle. Ari wasn’t even at Reseune when that was going on. She came back and Kyle was Giraud’s ongoing pet datasource.”

“Giraud was a damned fool,” Jordan had said. “Ari had gotten Defense to turn over every alpha they had and most of them were over in technical. But this one–this special one–I’m betting he was handling azi line troops, and if he was, it’s a damn certainty he got beta tape and got shoved out thereto patch them up, because they didn’t ever ship betas back to some nice safe hospital ship. We never sent out any alphas suited for combat. So what else do you think they did, to get alphas that could take the hammering, on the lines? Beta tape. Next most applicable, and they had a pile of it.”

It had been hours. Hours of Prang and Jordan arguing, and then Justin arguing with Jordan, “You don’t have to touch the tertiary sets at all. If he’s self‑modified, they’re irrelevant.”

“What are we suggesting?” Jordan had snapped. “Go straight after the deep sets?”

“I’m saying it’s linked back to that secondary you named, and at least…”

“Oh, let’s just do deep sets and go for an early lunch.”

Justin hadn’t flared. He’d said, as calm as Grant, “One sharp stress and a calm‑down.”

“You’ll kill him. That thing in tertiary will have a trap on it like you haven’t seen. And remember he’s built off it for decades. It’s got all sorts of embellishments hung on it.”

“We do have him supported,” Ivanov said.

The talk had gone way deep into medical jargon at that point, and Ari had just sat with her chin on her fist, fascinated, and listened to four of the best there’d ever been going at it line by line–Prang was clearly outclassed; Grant and Paul got into it, and Justin stuck to his argument that they needed to do a preliminary fix in the secondaries.

Then she said, after listening to all of it, and flipping back through the lines of programming, the originallines of programming, that Kyle had started with. “The self‑defense ethic. That’s where.”

Jordan had given her a sharp, hard look.

“Support it,” she’d said, “don’t attack it. That’s part of his original deep set.”

“Who said attack it?” Jordan had said peevishly.

She said, “We support the deep set, right where this beta tape’s taken hold. We say an enemy’s gotten inside his defenses, and we know it’s beta, and he has to find this enemy for us. So he’ll identify that tape and shove it outside his safe perimeter. If you’re right, he’s wired everything off that start–so he’s the safest one to unwire it. Isn’t he? He trusts Hicks. If we get Hicks to say he has to get ID on the beta section, can’t he do it? Convince him it doesn’t belong. And then we tell him to erase the intruder–so he just starts taking out the secondary level, unwiring the combat ethic the block relies on. Doesn’t he? Everythingthe military’s done is going to be based on the tape they put in. They aren’t us. They can’t workon secondary, and the tape they know best is the tape they put in.”

It had at least gotten their attention, and made a silence, and made Jordan frown at her.

“Maybe,” Jordan had said. “Dangerous as hell.”

“She’s got a point,” Justin had said.

“She’s been studying fucking Emory.”

“You know I have,” she’d said calmly. “For more than half my life.”

Prang had just kept her mouth shut, but Paul had said, echoing Justin, “She has a point. Avoiding fighting it out down on tertiary would be safer, because tertiary may be a lower charge, but it’s just that much wider. Whatever they did creating that block just spreads out into territory he knows and we can’t map. And maybe, if he can ID the tape, we’ve got it on file. Maybe they didn’t risk anything they’d written or modded and it will turn out to be Reseune tape.”

Jordan hadn’t said anything about it for the rest of the session, not until the next meeting, when he’d said, “All right, Ari Junior, Justin, Grant. Elaborate. How are you preventing a breakdown if we go into this operation with the happy theory they didn’t write their own beta routine–and maybe didn’t even write their own block?”

“We ask Dr. Ivanov to keep the physiology stable,” Ari said. “Just keep shooting him full of the same feel‑good juice the compliance ethic, which we’re triggering, naturally manufactures; and we just let Hicks argue him into erasing the beta tape.”

“Too risky,” Jordan had said then. “I want this man to live to talk.”

“So do the rest of us,” Ari had said, as gently, as reasonably as she could, even when she wanted to jerk Jordan sideways. “Honestly, Jordan.”

And she said it before Justin, drawing a deep breath to argue, could say anything.

“Well, let’s look at it,” Jordan had said, then, in the same reasonable way, and with a dark glance at Justin, who kept his mouth shut. “How fast can Library cough up a tape, if we can ID it?”

They’d kept from each other’s throats today. They got Hicks calm, and instructed, “We’re going at this in a way that will protect him from stress,” she’d said to Hicks at the outset, “and we’re not going to lose him. We have an idea what the problem is. But to make our fix work, we have to have youdo it.”

That had gotten Hicks’ attention. He’d been angry, he’d been scared, he’d figured out she was dead serious, and he’d listened to the program.

“You can do it,” she told him now, in the room with Kyle, and she laid an encouraging hand on his back. “Just go sit down by him, take his hand, tell him you’re here. Ivanov will give you specific signals, and have the script on the monitor. We’re here, we’re all here if we have to improvise. We don’t want to. But if we do, those lines will be in red, so you’ll know. You’re high beta. We trust you to know how to do what you need to. For his sake. That’s all we’re asking of you.”

They drew far off from Hicks and Kyle, who lay on a white‑sheeted table, under restraint for his protection and theirs. There was lighting in Kyle’s area, none in the observation post–just the soft light from the vid screen and the readouts. Ivanov was right at hand with Kyle, with the same readouts, and Hicks–Hicks sat on a tall stool and set his hand on Kyle’s shoulder, talking to him, just giving him legitimate reassurances, while the machines, flashing with lights, scrubbed the trank out of Kyle’s bloodstream and fed in a mild dose of kat.

Kyle came awake slightly. “Weak,” he complained.

“You’re fine,” Hicks said. “Kyle, are you hearing me all right?”

“Yes,” Kyle said. “Where are we?”

“Stronger dose,” Jordan said to Ivanov sharply, through his earpiece.

Ari thought she would have waited for Hicks to calm him down, but that was all right. Hicks had deviated just a hair off the permissions they’d given him, they were taking Kyle right under again, and it wasn’t going to hurt him, it was just going to prevent him taking closer notice of his surroundings. He’d hear. He’d see. For the first half hour they’d just run his base sets, primer tape, from way, way back in his childhood. They had a list of what his intermediate base had been, and of what the military had had access to, therefore what they might have illicitly used. Their best guess was a conversion of beta tape from the best of the marine units, something to instill aggression into the alpha that had to be patching them up and advising them, doing the work a Reseune‑trained born‑man should have been doing.

They didn’t dare take their guesswork for granted, not until they had their theory confirmed–or not, in which case they had to abort and hope they could patch their way out.

“We found a mistake in your sets,” Hicks said gently at one point, right down the script. “Kyle, you haven’t felt altogether right for some time, and we’ve found the cause. Somebody gave you wrong tape. It’s beta. It was when you were in service, on the lines. Do you remember getting tape then? I’m your Supervisor. I can ask this. Did you get tape when you were on the lines?”

Kyle’s brow contracted. “Sometimes.”

“They gave it more than once?”

“More than once.”

“You know who I am. I’m Adam. I’m your Supervisor. Someone once gave you a beta tape. What was the number? Where does it start? Can you find it for me?”

“Viking. October 13 shiptime, 2320, US Amity.”

“Keep going. Find it.”

A long pause. Then: “Tape sequence B14‑2818‑6.”

Jordan nodded sharply in Ari’s direction.

She spun around to the console keyboard, called Base One, and made a fast key entry–deep in tape archive, no question. The number enabled retrieval; retrieval enabled an exact excision of what had gone in; and Base One pulled it out past gateways that would have hidden it from any ordinary search.

Let him sleep,Jordan sent to Ivanov, then. They hadn’t been at it thirty minutes, and they dropped the subject back into kat‑induced limbo.

But this time they had substance to go on. They had a foundational tape in a sequence that Kyle himself had cobbled into an alpha level routine. They had one piece of a jigsaw of accommodation; but it was a piece with the design on it.

“Hicks, come in on this one.” she said, and that didn’t please Jordan, but Hicks was qualified on beta, he’d made a good go at handling an alpha, and he had the glimmering of a hope of understanding the issue as well as the specific azi they were trying to fix.

He sat with them in an adjacent conference room, and Jordan flipped through what he’d pulled up. They went over it independently. It was short, simple. It gave a line soldier permission to kill without conscience where ordered by the Bureau.

“Conflict,” she said. “The minute he takes it out, he’s got conflict with other programming.”

Jordan nodded. “Insert an exception: he may remember killing or arranging killing in the past. This is gone now. It was a temporary condition. He’s not guilty.”

Hicks looked sharply at Jordan, and Jordan didn’t even look his way. Jordan was as clinical, as detached as an Alpha Supervisor had to be…even when he was talking about the specific crime he’d been sentenced for. Not guilty. No karma.

“He’ll attach to Hicks for any future permissions,” Paul said, and Jordan nodded again and inserted a line.

Ari found her arms tightly folded, as if there’d been a chill. Florian was close by. Catlin was. They’d know what Jordan was doing. Their own alpha tape enabled killing. Readily. They were hair‑trigger, both knowing what personal issues Jordan was dealing with, what a dangerous thing Paul was saying, with that “Attach to Hicks.”

But Hicks was ReseuneSec. He was, at least by his provisional certificate, entitled to have that responsibility.

“You’re the Supervisor,” Jordan said then, looking straight at Hicks, and said it in his best clinical voice.

“Agreed,” Hicks said. Hicks had arrested Jordan, in the long ago. Helped send him to Planys. He’d arrested Justin, multiple times.

Jordan gazed at him a moment, then nodded, quietly still, deathly quiet in the room.

“Say;” Ari said, “He also has to respect the authority of Reseune Directors. That won’t conflict.”

“Good idea,” Prang said, and that went in.

“Then we’re go with it,” Jordan said. “We go with heavy kat and unwind it.”

Jordan got up. They all did. They went back to the room, where, for Kyle AK, time had stood still.

Now time started up again with the specific beta tape, and they played it under instructions, relayed via Hicks, to erase it, step by step, from memory.

Reaction. Slow, at first, but Kyle was alpha; cross‑referencing told him in the first instant he was going to be in trouble.

“Deeper,” Jordan said, and Ivanov frowned, and deepened the kat.

Kyle was calmer, then. “Come on, Kyle,” Hicks said. “It’s Adam. I’m here. Listen to me.”

Lines on the monitors had spiked all over the place. They sank abruptly. Ticked way up. And down again. That much kat was a risk.

It took two hours and forty‑five minutes to get him stable. And while Ivanov was working, word came from the airport that Councillor Chavez had just come in, with two aides. With her mind strongly elsewhere, but with the assurance nothing was going to happen soon up at the hospital, Ari made the trip down to welcome the Councillor officially, to see him up to Wing One, and for him to meet with deFranco in a conference room and deliver the news from Novgorod as of three days ago. It wasn’t much news, but it wasn’t good, military police were patrolling the streets of Novgorod, to the exclusion of Novgorod police.

With nodeclaration of martial law. That was definite, too…because Reseune sheltered the requisite Councillors.

It was suppertime in the outside world; but her stomach was on a different schedule. She entrusted the two Councillors to a good catered supper ordered up from Jamaica and took herself and Catlin and Florian back to the hospital as fast as she decently could. She had a sandwich from the hospital cafeteria–Catlin got it for her–and then settled in to catch up and hear the report from Ivanov, who’d finally gotten the subject calmed down and stable. Ivanov had had to give Hicksmedical help; rapid heartbeat.

“I can’t give Hicks much more help without putting him to bed,” Ivanov said. “He’s not young, any more than the subject is.”

“We either leave Kyle in limbo for the night and see he doesn’t dream.” Justin said, “or we go after the block tonight. Stress continues on both of them–even–”

“Go for it,” Jordan said, “if young sera’s through taking her own sweet–”

Paul’s hand landed on Jordan’s shoulder, pressed hard, though Paul didn’t say a thing.

“We need her concentration here” Jordan said, “dammit. This isn’t a picnic.”

“You’ve got it,” she said. “I don’t blame you. You’ve got it. No complaints, no objections.”

“Let’s just go, then,” Justin said, and Grant got up, and Justin did.

Hicks, asleep on a cot, took a little rousing. “At this point.” Jordan said, “you don’t have to do anything. Just talk to him occasionally. Tell him what we tell you. Verbatim.”

Hicks nodded. They took their positions. They’d unraveled the kill‑capability. Now they went after the block. Hicks’ job was to let him progress gently, find the block, figure what symbolized it, and encourage Kyle to set it in a neutral position.

And Kyle seized.

Machines ticked on, took over, cleaned out the adrenaline surge, supplied a gentler cocktail, and got Kyle breathing on his own again.

It was past midnight, into the next day.

Justin leaned over the mike, “Tell him reset. It’s all right.”

Jordan said, “Tell him–tell him to open the door.”

Hicks did. Kyle’s face contracted, then relaxed. His breath went out, and came in again.

“Tell him. Reset,” Jordan said then.

“Reset,” Hicks said, and Jordan let go a long breath and said, softly, gently into the mike, “It’s usually a door, in some sense or other. You’ll want to put that into his manual. It isn’t broken. He’s keyed on you now, we’re not going to have to break it. Tell him he can clean up, put things to rights. It’s all right. He can trust what comes in if you say he can. Get him to agree.”

Hicks did that, quietly rephrasing.

Kyle lay there, breathing deeply. His face was quiet, seeming to have acquired lines. He had fluids going in and coming out. He had machines doing a lot of the work for him, while he just lay there and breathed on his own, and blinked from time to time. But the storm on the monitors had decidedly quietened.

“Get him to say your name.” Jordan said.

“It’s me,” Hicks said then. “You know me. You know my name.”

“Adam,” Kyle mumbled. “Adam Hicks.”

“Run the code,” Jordan said then, sharply. “Straight into the Contract.”

“You’ll–” Hicks started to protest angrily, and shut himself down, lips bitten to a thin line.

Jordan said, “Go.” And Ari thought so, too. She looked at Justin. Justin said, “Code.”

Fast as they could, before stress piled up. “Code in,” Paul said, and sent it through with the push of a button. Kyle sucked in a breath as if he’d fallen into icewater. The monitors spiked up, a jagged mountain range of crisis. Then Kyle let the breath go.

Contract tape followed immediately. “You have an assignment,”it routinely began. “You have a place. You are wanted…”

Kyle went on breathing. The lines of stress evened out to a steady tick. Strengthened.

Giraud couldn’t have done this one, Ari thought to herself. No way in hell. That beta tape was ancient history. It had taken Base One to haul it out of storage. It was tape that didn’t belong to any azi living…now that they’d pried it out of Kyle AK.

They got up from their small table, then, moving quietly, while Ivanov checked and took notes. Jordan moved closer to their patient. Ari did, out of curiosity to see, besides the monitors, how he was doing.

Then Jordan leaned over Kyle, very close, and said, fast, before anyone could stop him, “Who was your Supervisor before Adam Hicks?”

Contraction of the brows. Ari tensed. Kyle’s eyes flew open. He was still deeply under.

“Arbero,” Kyle said. “Captain Vincente Arbero.”

“Did you ever put Abban under kat?”

Kyle opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Hicks grabbed Jordan’s shoulder and shoved him back, and Florian had moved in. Florian restrained Jordan gently, just put himself in the way, while Catlin faced Hicks.

“Yes.” Ari heard Kyle say in the interim, and she touched his pallid face gently and said, “You’re forgiven. It’s all right now. You can rest a bit and wake up later. Adam Hicks won’t leave you. Remember Vincente Arbero. But never listen to him again.”

She looked toward Hicks, who was still furious, then toward Jordan. “That’s on the record,” she said. “It’s on the record, Jordan, and all of us know it. It was recorded.”

Jordan wasn’t fighting against Florian, who wasn’t touching him now: he looked on the edge of a collapse, himself. Justin had moved in close, and laid a hand on Jordan’s shoulder.

“Let’s go,” Justin said. “Let’s go back next door, let him sleep it off. We did it, Dad. It’s done. Everybody heard.”

“ Idid it,” Jordan snapped, jerked his shoulder aside, and looked at Ari. “So what do you propose to do about it?”

“What I promised I’d do,” she said. “Let’s go next door. Come on. We need to talk. Now. Come on. Everybody.”

They went to the conference room, then–a window on the outer hall, one on the operating room itself. Petros Ivanov had gotten Hicks back to one of the consoles, to a stable chair with a back on it, was talking to him, probably medical advice. A nurse had come in.

Jordan didn’t say a word, meanwhile, didn’t sit down. He just stood there, against the wall of the conference room, staring at the windowed view, arms folded, not talking.

“Arbero,” Catlin said, quietly, having consulted her handheld. “Not on the Defense rolls. No CIT number.”

“That’s two,” Ari said. She was disappointed, deeply disappointed, but a thought began sliding sideways in her mind, just out of one compartment and into another. “Anton Clavery. Vincente Arbero. Every CIT has a CIT number. But arethere people in Defense that don’t? We’ve been assuming the radical underground. Paxers. Rocher Party, everything but somebody in uniform. Kyle’s given us a name that doesn’t exist. And, under deep kat, he saysthis person was in Defense with a high rank.”

Jordan had unfolded his arms. Justin and Grant sat looking at her. So did Mark and Gerry, Florian and Catlin, who weren’t going to talk, not in front of the rest.

“Florian,” she said. “Catlin. What are you thinking?”

“That CITs in other places are supposed to have numbers,” Florian said. “But we can’t get into Defense to find out if the rules are different there.”

“If they made hollow men,” Catlin said, “they’d have all sorts of resources to do that. People died in the War. Some die in training. And they’d be hard to track. Hollow men with all sorts of identities available.”

“We assumed a whole Bureau is going to observe the law,” she said. “We assumeif they were breaking the law somebody would talk about it.”

“Well, somebody didn’t,” Jordan said, “until he went under deep kat.” A muscle jumped in Jordan’s jaw. “Khalid runs Intelligence. Covert operations. I said I’d met him. Bastard. Thorough arrogant bastard. Asked mequestions I declined to answer. The man collects bits and pieces of everybody. Gets real pissed when you don’t react when he gives you that look. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I found out, the second meeting. People tried to hint to me you didn’t cross him. I probably went down in his book as a potential problem. Maybe it had something to do with their decision, the way they handled my case…they didn’t have a handle on me; they wanted more information and I wouldn’t give it to them, if you want the bloody truth. You all assumedI told them any damned thing they wanted to hear, and I didn’t. I told them what Ari was doing– therewas a dark little history, nasty little secrets left over from the War, the azi designs that didn’t work, that she put down and wouldn’t give me fucking access to try to fix them…you want to know where you can get any human material you want? Ask about herdeals with Defense, ask what kind of spies shecould create that never would have a CIT number…” He drew breath, waved a hand. Said, in a quiet voice, “It doesn’t matter. If they exist, we can’t get at them.”

“An honest Defense Councillor could,” she said.

“Naive,” Jordan said.

“You say Khalid did it, ultimately. We’ll never attach things to him. If we take it to the media and can’t prove it, ultimately that’s a problem, because he’ll deny it, and we’ve damaged our credibility with everybody. I’m not that naive, ser, to try to prove anything yet. I’m thinking what we can do now to get him stopped.”

“Well, first you find an honest Defense representative and then you get his electorate to put your honest Councillor in. Spurlinwasn’t likely it–just somebody who wouldn’t kiss ass with Khalid, which is why he’s dead and you’re probably right. You’re a target, I am, everybody who’s heard this is, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think having a Council meeting on the quadrangle out there is going to make Defense run for cover. You’re thinking he’ll observe civilized limits. He’s already out of civilized limits.”

“It’s a problem,” Ari said.

“It’s a problem,” Jordan echoed her nastily. “Damned right it’s a problem. So I’m innocent. The world’s going to hell anyway and a Council vote isn’t going to fix it.”

“I may need you again,” she said. It was scary, being told by a very bright Special that he was out of answers, and that there was no fix for the problem. It was particularly scary, because at the moment she didn’t see a fix, either, and whatever was wrong inside Defense had been going on for sixty years. Their problem had had a lot of time to build an infrastructure in that Bureau. “Go get some rest. Thank you, especially, Jordan. Thank you for doing this.”

“The hell,” he muttered. “You go prove I’m innocent. Get me my license back.”

“We should get on back to the Wing,” Justin said. “We’re all exhausted.”

Jordan didn’t move.

“You’ll get your not‑guilty,” Ari said.

“Promises, promises.”

She stood up, leaned on a chair back with both hands. “We’ll figure things out,” she said. “Yanni will get back, we’ll hold a vote, and we’ll see what the Council actually can do.”

“Hold a vote. Hell.” Jordan shoved away from the wall and walked out.

Paul lingered a moment, looking distressed.

“It’s all right,” she said to Paul. “He could be right, you know. But I hope not. Good night, Paul. Tell him good night. –Justin, Grant, Sera Prang… Justin, you can–”

The overhead lights flashed.

Then the storm siren sounded.

“There’s no weather,” Ari said, and then thought of the pile of papers and manuals in the surgery, at that back table. “The records. Kyle.”

“Our territory,” Prang said. “We have enough help. I’ll help Petros with the patient. Go!Get herdownstairs!”

“Damn,” Ari said, and by then Florian had her one arm and Catlin had the other, and Prang was headed for the surgery.

“I’ll get the manuals,” Justin said, and he and Grant headed out of the room, headed the same direction, Mark and Gerry close behind them, while the siren howled.

“Sera, come on,” Florian said, and she surrendered. She had to. Florian and Catlin pulled her out into the hall and down the nearest stairs.

They were on the next flight down when something screamed overhead, the walls rattled and the ground heaved up, like a blanket toss.

BOOK THREE Section 6 Chapter i

AUGUST 27, 2424

1927H

Giraud blinked, flinched, moved wildly, first at an unprecedented jolt, then at the abrupt cessation of everything in his world.

Then the rocking and the sounds started up again, regular as the heartbeat that ruled it, and he, and Abban, and Seely, all slowly settled and relaxed. They all had something approaching a memory for the first real event they had ever experienced, knit together for the first time in one experience, at one specific age. They couldn’t define it. But they had all been in the same situation.

They were too old, however, to be seriously inconvenienced by a glitch, They each weighed about a kilo–still none of them carrying the weight they needed for that unruly world that had just intruded. They were adding neurons as fast as they could grow them. Their brains were organizing so one day they would be able to remember things. They were packing on body fat, storing it up, not anticipating any other such disturbance, though hormones had surged and they remained unsettled for some un‑thought reason.

They didn’t plan. They didn’t anticipate. They just did things their DNA told them to do, and right now, with all the nutrients they could get, they just filled out their skins and grew eyelashes, because their DNA said it was time to do that.

BOOK THREE Section 6 Chapter ii

AUGUST 27, 2424

2011H

The drills in underpopulated Alpha Wing hadn’t remotely conveyed the urgency of a populated area or the fear in a gathered crowd who’d felt that shock. They’d possibly had a tower fall. That was the image Justin framed in his mind; one of the big precip towers on the cliff must have come down, and of all disasters in his life, of all things that had ever happened to him and Grant–that imagination was the worst: atmospheric breach. Death, if you got caught outside.

Traffic in the tunnels had slowed to a general milling movement…slowed, and slowed, until they reached a concourse where people, now in one of the most reinforced areas of the system, generally stood about waiting for information, speculating grimly on what had blown up, talking about the inadequacy of the recent drills, wondering about the whereabouts of relatives and cursing the overloaded communications system, which had flatly shut down all non‑official accounts.

Mark and Gerry had kept up with them. They all four had briefcases full of classified papers and the manual they’d rescued–they’d managed that coherent task, amid everything else. But they didn’t know what had happened up on the surface, nobody else did, so they made their way generally toward Alpha Wing, with hundreds of other people caught out at restaurants, in residences, working night shift. And, Justin thought, he might get through on Base One, on his handheld, but he didn’t want to make himself a target of questions from everybody else who was missing a relative. They didn’t have a place where they could do it in any privacy.

“Can you gather anything?” he asked Gerry, pausing to let those two overtake them. “Is your com working?”

“Just ops and tracking, ser,” Gerry said. “They aren’t saying, except there’s an emergency channel, and our group’s not authorized on it while we’re detached, ser. Sera’s security, sera’s security is saying just stay–”

Then a familiar young voice said, over the general address: “This is Ariane Emory, in ReseuneSec Admin, Defenses have brought down a device on the grounds. There’s no significant damage to Reseune facilities, just a hole in the ground where it hit. Please stay in the tunnels until an all‑clear, but it looks as if we’re all right for the moment. Section doors will now open, but they may close again if there should be another alarm, so be alert. Upper doors will remain shut for a while yet, so you can’t get back home yet anyway. Don’t cross a section line once the lights start blinking, observe the drills and remember, everybody stop moving if the lights flash red. We’ll provide further information as we get it. No one is to go outside except authorized agents at the moment. Thank you.”

Everybody broke out in conversation at once, voices with an undertone of alarm, frustration, and some relief.

“Let’s get home,” Justin said, and they weren’t the only ones. A waft of cooler air came through, that was the opening of the section doors that would let them leave the concourse. There began to be a general drift in the crowd, mostly toward the right hand tunnel.

Their own way lay left, and it was thinner traffic over there, a little faster progress. They lost no time clearing the concourse, and entering the cross‑corridor that would take them over to the Wing One tunnels.

Much less traffic once they were going that direction, which was to be expected, so much of Wing One being under construction, but once they got to the Wing One concourse, there were faces Justin didn’t immediately recognize, and that was entirely surreal; people standing around in the generally dim light the tunnels afforded–two Justin recognized from news reports as guests in the wing, both standing near the stairs, talking with, of all people, his father and Paul.

He could hardly ignore it. “Jordan,” Justin said, as they joined the group in passing. “Councillors.” A nod to Councillor deFranco, Councillor Chavez.

“My son Justin Warrick,” Jordan introduced him. “And Grant ALX.”

“Sera. Ser.” Justin set down the briefcase and offered a hand in courtesy. Grant did the same. “An honor.”

“I’d say it’s a pleasure,” deFranco said, “except for the circumstances.”

“Khalid, damn him.” Chavez said. “Taking this little business up a notch. Probably aiming at the airport. Maybe at the media people. Or us. This is getting damned serious.”

“A crazy universe,” Jordan said, and put a hand on Justin’s shoulder, just a little unfriendly pressure of the fingers that said he was, at the moment, as welcome as the plague. “Here we are expecting the rest of the Council, and Vladislaw Khalid casts an early vote. I don’t think it’s going to win him friends.”

“I’ve got to get back to Alpha Wing,” Justin said.

“You aren’t going anywhere until they open the upstairs doors,” Jordan said.

“I’ve got a responsibility next door. And twenty kilos of records to stow. I’ll at least get through to the tunnel.”

“My talented son,” Jordan said, and let him go.

He went. He picked up his briefcase, gathered up Grant and Mark and Gerry without a word and went on into the nook that separated Alpha Wing. “Try the key,” he asked Grant, not even looking back, and to his vast relief it did work, and let them through, out of Jordan’s vicinity.

It let them through at least as far as the guard station and two others of Mark’s and Gerry’s unit.

“Can I possibly get upstairs?” he asked.

“Keycard will actually override, ser,” one said, “but it’s advised you stay below. We don’t know that that’s the last that will come in. Best to go into the safety tunnel, ser. Anyone you’re looking for is probably there.”

Nothing sensible to do, then, but go aside, down the ramp to the deeper fortification, where, in fact, everyone else had gone. There was a bank of chairs, a galley an auxiliary command post, quite a few of Ari’s staff out and about. Maddy Strassen, Tommy and Mika–they were there. Wes and Marco were busy at the command post…

“We’re all right,” Justin said to Mark and Gerry, and walked into the command post alcove to set down the heavy briefcase. “Wes, Marco: these belong to Ari.”

“Thank you, ser,” Wes said.

“What have we got out there?”

Monitors were active. There was a large one above the console. Wes moved a hand, and that one went live.

It didn’t make sense for a moment…a floodlit area in the dark, beside a white strip that appeared to be part of a road. A lot of twisted metal, lit against the night.

“That’s the airport road,” Grant murmured.

Then the scale made sense, the twisted metal–a small plane, maybe; but large enough to make a hell of a hole. It was surreal, the crater and that wreckage beside the main road, right near the streetlight–it was tilted; outraged bots were scurrying along the perimeter, never coming closer. A handful of hazard‑suited figures were out there, in the shadows.

That it hadn’t hit any building when it had come down had been, Justin thought, their supreme good luck.

That crater was–dammit–right near the hospital.

“What is it?” he asked. “What was it?”

“Missile,” Wes said, and Marco, “Seems to be out of Svetlansk. There’s a Defense base up there.”

“God,” he said. “They’re crazy.”

And then he thought that Mark and Gerry might have had training that enabled them to accept explosions as part of the environment, but that Grant certainly hadn’t. Justin took hold of Grant’s arm. “Are you all right with this?” he asked.

“I’m not sure I ever quite expected things falling on the grounds,” Grant said in his best attempt at levity. “I think I’m doing all right. It’s like being shot at, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s a little worse than that,” he said. It wasworse, for everybody. “Come on. Leave the briefcases here. Mark, Gerry, you’re on your own.”

He walked with Grant just outside the alcove, and ran into Maddy. “Any news?” Maddy asked.

“Not much, except it may be a missile,” he said quietly “Is there coffee?”

“In the galley. Staff will get it. Sandwiches if you want them.”

“Thanks,” he said. His stomach didn’t want food. But a drink of something hot was more attractive. He and Grant walked on toward the galley–didn’t even get close, before one of Ari’s staff–Del, it was–presented them a choice of juices and sweet rolls.

Juice, he decided. Grant took one, too, and they went and had a seat at the galley tables, which had been let down from the wall. There was a news monitor nearby, people talking into the camera, a low, steady sound.

“I think they wanted to take a tower down,” he said, “just like upriver. They wanted to scare us.”

“Well, they’ve certainly done that,” Grant said over a sip of juice. “What are the chances of another one, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” he said, which was the truth.

“Reseune defenses will get it,” a young voice said, and Tommy Carnath arrived with his sister, settling near them, likewise with juice. “If they come near the towers and they’re not aircraft, they’ll knock them down.”

Not saying what they’ll fall on, Justin thought unhappily, but, considering Grant, he kept that observation to himself.

“Attention.”The vid changed abruptly. Ari was suddenly on camera, not with the news, but somewhere else, somewhere office‑like. “We’ve identified the object as an I‑82 air to ground missile, serial number 38298, which did detonate conventional explosives. It came from the military base at Svetlansk. It fell in the green space between the airport and the warehouses, and it’s no longer a threat. We have the following statement:

“Reseune asks why any Defense installation on Cyteen is in possession of such armament and what enemy they anticipate to exist on this planet. Reseune asks who authorized its import and storage. Reseune asks who targeted it at a sovereign Administrative Territory, where only Union civilians are present.

“Reseune calls on the Council Office of Inquiry to ask these questions where appropriate and to relay their findings to the Council of Nine and the Council of Worlds. The citizens of Reseune call on patriotic members of the Bureau of Defense to consider this event and act immediately to prevent another such attack on the constitution and the rights of the people of Union.

“We will interrupt tonight with bulletins only if necessary. Security doors will open at this point. Please proceed to your destinations and remain alert in the event we are not done with alarms. Thank you.”

Justin finished his drink, put a hand on Grant’s shoulder, and said, “Well, what do you want to do? Stay here, or go up?”