The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 42 —

Lupo could not shake a ballooning pessimism. He tried to study intelligence abstracts but his mind refused to focus.

Simon Tregesser cruised up. He was subdued, too. "I heard you had something." He had not recovered from finding his refuge destroyed by a berserk Outsider.

"We've had sightings of two more Guardships headed in to Starbase. VII Gemina and XXVIII Fretensis."

"That's three pretty fast. Any statistical significance?"

"No."

"Why so glum, then?"

"The unpredictable variables aren't coming our way often enough to please me."

"You want to put the Web locaters back, don't you?"

"If it sours, we lose our investment."

"And I say that strategy, run to fight another day, is hopeless."

"But..."

"But you have some right to your argument, Lupo. Put the damned things back."

"They won't know they can run. I'll give them sealed orders to be opened only on receipt of an unlocking code."

"Good. Have you made plans to get us out, too? With your usual devotion to detail?"

"Yes."

"It's the waiting. Relax. Go play with a woman."

"Yes."

"Can you say anything else?"

"Yes. But it'd be on a subject you don't want to talk about. You have to consider bypassing Valerena."

"It isn't done, Lupo."

"The House will suffer."

Tregesser made burbling, grumbling, contrary noises.

"She is a Tregesser. But she comes up short on perspective, Simon. She has no sense of timing. She's lacking in the intangibles. She can't hang on to loyalties."

"If she's feeble, she won't last. That's the way it's done."

"Blessed will take it away from her. But at what cost? Suppose we catch a Guardship. You want to imagine Valerena having her own Guardship?"

"We grab a Guardship, Valerena won't get her hands on it. Get me one. You'll have no worries."

"You'll give it to Blessed?"

"The hell I will. I'll give it to me. I'll succeed myself. You can make me a new damned Other, a healthy one, and I'll move into it when you do the personality impression."

"That's an interesting idea. If you can get away with it."

"Why shouldn't I?" Tregesser did not notice Provik saying "you" instead of "we," though he replied with "I" instead of "we."

"No clone has ever been anything but an artifact, except Valerena. But officially only you and I know about Valerena."

"Be the same thing, Lupo."

"Hardly. How the hell would you hide Simon Tregesser suddenly turning up with a healthy body? The Directors would claim it wasn't you. They'd say it was some scheme of mine to take over the House. Hell, it's been tried before. Somebody works a deal with Banat-Marath and Troqwai and gives it a shot, and everybody cheers him for giving Death the slip, then they show him the door to the nearest DownTown. There's too much wealth and power at stake."

"Crap."

"Human nature, Simon. It don't work. It's the iron law. They'll let you cheat death once if you're at the top but the price is you have to start over at the bottom. As an artifact."

"Bah! Crap, I say! Watch me! You're my man, aren't you? If we can flout the law and human nature and historical inertia to put together that mass of firepower out there, we can get around the Directors. Can't we?"

"No doubt." Lupo Provik maintained the neutrality of billet steel. He was Simon Tregesser's man, worthy of the trust he had been given, but his loyalty had been subscribed in the certainty that Simon Tregesser was not immortal.

"Hey! The more I think about it, the more I like it." Big mad peal of the old Simon Tregesser hilarity. "I'm going to get on it. Something to while away the hours. Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Immortality. Wouldn't that be a bitch!"

A screaming bitch, Lupo thought as Simon zipped away, roaring and treating his aides and allies with complete disregard. A bitch so big he would have to reexamine his commitments and undertakings if Simon pursued it.

Not that he objected to immortality per se. It was good enough for Lupo Provik.