The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 24 —UGG— “All sins are justified…”

The memorial convocation for Malena Graham was nearly over when Mikhail Dryke returned to the auditorium. Sasaki was at the podium, a slender but powerful figure in her wide-sashed black and red kimono. Rather than create a distraction by returning to his seat in the front row, Dryke found a spot along the back wall and stood there.

Dryke had resisted Sasaki’s plans to address the convocation in person, just as he had resisted the decision to hold the Block 1 pioneers over for two days at all three centers. Both actions seemed foolishly defiant, a challenge and invitation to any fanatics who might have been inspired by Evan Silverman’s example. Neither Sasaki’s movements nor the Project’s internal schedules were made public, but Dryke was under no illusions that he could ensure either remained a secret.

The gathering made a lovely target, and Sasaki’s presence vastly sweetened the prize. When com services could easily place her “in” the auditorium with an Oration hololink, it seemed to Dryke a foolish risk for her to leave the controlled environment of Prainha for the urban front lines of Houston. When Sasaki dismissed his objection without discussion, Dryke could not help but read it as confirmation that she had lost confidence in him.

But he had been wrong—wrong about the decision, and perhaps wrong about the meaning. Because of his everyday access to her, Dryke realized, he had lost sight of the power of Sasaki’s mystique, the calming influence of her quiet leadership. Since the word began to spread that she was coming to Houston, and especially since her arrival three hours ago, Sasaki had worked a transformation on the mood of the center more profound than that managed in three days by the center’s army of counselors.

And now, with the closing words of her panegyric, she was sealing the change.

“There have been many rumors—many more, no doubt, than have reached my ears,” Sasaki was saying. “I have heard that Malena Graham’s place on the ship’s roster will be filled by her sister. That her body will be carried on Memphis for burial in space. That she anticipated her death and recorded in her diary a hope that she would be interred on a world of Tau Ceti.

“I must tell you, perhaps to your disappointment, that these rumors are false.

“Malena Graham’s diary was filled with anticipation of her life on Memphis, with reflections of the dream and the goal that we all share, with the private thoughts of the heart and the spirit. She had no inkling of what was to come.

“Malena Graham’s family has requested that her body be returned to them for burial near Franklin, in Virginia. The coroner’s office of the Texas State Police has already complied with their request. Her body was never in our custody. Nor would the police have recognized any claim to it we might have made.

“And I have decided that Malena Graham’s place on Memphis will be filled by a random draw from the qualified alternates— which is the usual process by which vacancies are filled.”

Despite the inhibiting solemnity of the event, a scattering of voices was raised in unhappy protest. Dryke was shocked, but Sasaki remained unperturbed, holding up her hand to ask for silence.

“I know that Dr. Oker’s office has received several hundred messages urging that Malena’s place be left vacant, as a memorial,” she said. “I sympathize with the sentiment. But I cannot believe that Malena would want us to deny to another, in the name of honoring her, the gift that she had been so grateful to receive herself.”

The audience marked its agreement with applause—well short of universal, but louder and more emphatic than the protests which had preceded it.

“Over this last year, our family has lost a dozen members to accident and incident,” Sasaki went on. “We mourn them and remember them, but we carry on.

“If we leave Malena’s place vacant, we are as much as saying that we could have done without her, that her contribution to the community—and therefore her death—were trivial and meaningless. And that is not so.

“If we make an exception for Malena because of the way she died, we are raising a memorial not to her, but to her murderer, for making her unique. And that I will not do.”

This time, the applause was spontaneous, spirited, and strong. She had won them back.

Sasaki continued, “A meaningful memorial to Malena Graham would respect her commitment to the Project and preserve her contribution to our community. It would leave her joined to the Memphis family as more than a memory. It should be a living memorial.

“I can tell you now that we have an opportunity to create just such a memorial.”

Dryke, knowing what was coming, marveled at Sasaki’s flawless control. The auditorium was absolutely still, spellbound, all attention focused on the woman on the stage.

“All of you who have endured it know how thorough Selection’s biomedical testing is,” Sasaki said. “Many of you also know that Malena Graham was a childhood victim of poliomyelitis. She did not think that remarkable, and it was clearly no obstacle to her selection.

“But it did make her different, and that difference is now a blessing. Because of her polio, when Malena Graham came here, she was among the several dozen new arrivals subjected to an additional battery of tests to evaluate their reproductive health,” said Sasaki. “She was given a hormonal accelerator, and a few days later, eight ova were collected. Two of those eggs were consumed in the testing. But the remaining six were not needed and were placed in cryostorage for future tests, if necessary.”

As those listening began to realize where Sasaki’s words were leading, Dryke began to see heads bob and joy-tearful smiles appear on the faces of those standing near him. The funeral spell was shattered, the blanket of gloom dispelled. The applause grew from scattered knots to spreading waves as the audience came joyfully to its feet.

“That future use will come, time willing, on the first colony world you found,” said Sasaki over the rising tumult. “For I direct that Malena Graham’s eggs be added to the gamete bank aboard Memphis, and ask you to take her essence with you to Tau Ceti—not as a memorial, but as a legacy. And when the first child is born of her line, then you may give her an epitaph worthy of the dream she dreamed, and a fate better than that which befell her here:

“Non omnis moriar.

“ ‘I shall not altogether die.’ ”

It was a challenge to reach Sasaki in the friendly crush that followed, and a greater challenge to separate her from it. Finally, Dryke resorted to deception and professional prerogative, catching her arm to tell her that there was a security alert in the complex, and then hustling her away to a private room on an upper floor.

“I’m sorry, Director. There is no threat,” he said when they were alone. “I have to leave the center shortly, and I needed to talk to you before I did.”

“Does this have to do with your disappearance from the convocation?”

“Hugh sent up a package from the data analysis lab at Prainha, eyes-only. I went out to collect it from the courier and to find a tank.”

“And?”

“And I have some news that I hope will do for you what your eulogy did for those people downstairs. We’ve located Jeremiah.” He said it pridefully, looking at her expectantly.

But Sasaki’s reaction was disappointing. Her eyes widened briefly—surprise?—and then narrowed into a questioning, almost disbelieving gaze. “Located or caught?”

“Located. That’s why I have to leave. I’m taking four locals from security and the two top systems texperts with me.”

“Where is he? Is it a he?”

“The Pacific Northwest. Oregon. I’m not sure on the other.”

She frowned. “Then this is hardly an authoritative identification, is it?”

“No. Not yet. We have two addresses, one a business. We’ll sort it out when we get there.”

“He tracks you,” Sasaki said, fretting. “He will be gone before you arrive.”

“He tracks my screamer,” said Dryke. “Which is leaving any minute for Chile, with appropriate disinformation on the bounce. I’m going off the net until I have him. There’ll be nothing out there to point to where I am, and I’m telling no one but you.”

“He may already be gone.”

“The line’s been active within the half hour.”

She nodded, accepting the point. “What was the break? Was it Katrina Becker?”

“No. Becker has been—immovable.” Dryke smiled coldly. “No, it was the bragging that got him. We backtraced his rant over the Munich hit past the Albuquerque node which had stopped us the last time. This time we had more ears to the ground and matched to a dedicated line.”

“How easily?”

“What?”

“I remind you of your discourse on the art of fishing, and the lesson of the great fish.”

Dryke stared, the self-congratulation leaving his face. “I have a good feeling about this, Hiroko.”

“You are too valuable to lose to a feeling,” she said. “If an Evan Silverman was willing to kill a Malena Graham for such little gain, would a Jeremiah hesitate to kill you?”

“I won’t give him that chance.”

Frowning, she wrapped her arms around herself. “Mikhail, I am most serious about insisting that you examine your judgment. You received the failure of the Munich operation and the death of Malena as personal defeats. You may have perceived them as blows to your prestige. Am I unreasonable to think that Mikhail Dryke might be so eager to restore himself in my eyes that he would alter the equation of risk?”

He looked away, up toward one corner of the ceiling, and sighed. “No,” he said finally. “You’re not unreasonable.”

“Thank you.”

“But you’re wrong,” Dryke added. “This is Jeremiah, and I can get to him.”

Her hands slid down the sleeves of her kimono until her arms were crossed over her chest in a more forceful pose. “Despite the week’s events, I do not require vindication of your competence, Mikhail. And I do not welcome assurances spoken by the voice of personal pride.”

Dryke felt himself bristling. “We’ve been closing in on him all year. Every time he spoke, every stunt he pulled. There were already signs pointing in this direction. This is consistent with all of them.”

“And it is exactly when all is as expected that the wary may become inattentive, and a trick most effectively employed. I ask only that you exercise prudent caution.”

To be reminded by Sasaki of such an elementary principle stung Dryke’s pride. “If you really believed in me, you wouldn’t need to ask that.”

“Have I lost the right to question you, Mikhail?” she asked, eyebrow arching. “What message should I read in your defensiveness—insecurity, or impatience? Either would be reason to send someone else in your place.”

Drawing a quick breath, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then looked at her and nodded. “You’re right. My apology.”

“Not necessary,” she said, relaxing. “But accepted.”

“It is personal. I don’t deny it,” said Dryke. “I want him. But that won’t make me reckless. Just the opposite—I’ll be that much more careful. I’ve been chasing Jeremiah long enough. I want it to be over.”

“As do I,” Sasaki said. “As do I. May your journey be fruitful. Report to me at first opportunity.”

“I will. But there’s something else we need to settle. Do I still have authority? Will you support me?”

She studied him for a long time, her eyes deep crystal black and unblinking. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“But be sure. Be very sure.”

“I will.” He glanced at his watch. “The others should be ready. I have to go,” he said, and started for the door. Then he paused and added, “I nearly forgot—”

“Yes?”

“Word came in while you were in the convo. The command and navigation package is safely aboard the ship.”

That earned a smile. “I am glad to hear it.”

“Feist says that the virus turned up with every archive copy of the package on site in Munich. All five of them. Every time they tried a restore, the virus would come up, look for its parent on the main net, and go crazy when it came up missing.”

“Then consider yourself vindicated,” said Sasaki. “Can you tell me now where the operational copy was stored?”

Dryke grinned. “In a bulk cargo cask in the holding yard at Palima Point, waiting for a cheap ride to orbit.”

“Tagged as what?” Sasaki’s eyebrows were frowning.

“As the personal freight of a new Takara immigrant, one Atsuji Matsushita.”

“Did he know?”

“The only person who knew was Matt Reid, who had to make the intercept.”

“And the awkward questions from Mr. Matsushita, wondering what’s become of his socks?”

“For the price of his immigration fee, Mr. Matsushita was prevailed upon to help smuggle some contraband up to the colony,” said Dryke. “Believe me, he’ll be too scared to ask any questions about its disappearance.”

An hour later, Dryke’s team boarded the tube at the DFW transplex. Already dispersed through the waiting line, the five men and two women ended up scattered between six different compartments on the two-car train.

Dryke, with an end seat in number 9 of the second car, was able to watch through the window as the containerized cargo and luggage slid on board below his feet. He wondered if the team’s kits had passed railway scrutiny; the bags did not carry the Federal Weapons License scanner tags to which he and the corpsecs were entitled. Although that limited their options, it also avoided a verification call-out, which could alert Jeremiah of their approach.

At the Phoenix interline station, the team separated into two groups. The texperts drew the longer route, the Midlands tube back to Chicago, then west again to Seattle, where they would wait for Dryke’s call. Dryke and the four corpsecs stayed on board for the coast run to Portland.

The elderly woman at his left was garrulously inquisitive, but Dryke was not interested in conversation. Before long, he detached the eyecup display and earpieces from his slate and donned the slender headset which held them, pointedly withdrawing to the artificial reality they created.

But it was hard to make the time pass quickly, impossible to calm his inner restlessness. The correlation files and quicksearch reports stored in his slate were dry as a brittle leaf. And the DBS link of the expensive Korean-made slate was useless a hundred meters underground. The train was isolated from the direct broadcast skylinks, except for what the National Railway chose to relay from surface antennas—and to sell by the minute to its captive audience. But Drake could not afford to have his account show any activity, especially not aboard a tube.

He realized suddenly that he was tired. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the preparations was gone, leaving him weary-limbed and energyless. His kit contained antifatigue tablets, but it was just as well that they were out of reach. Watchman worked as advertised, but exacted a horrible price when it finally wore off.

He realized, too, that he had missed two meals that day and had nothing with him to fill the void. The thought was enough to awaken an empty-bellied hunger which had lain dormant to that point.

Extracting the stylus from his holder, Dryke began to doodle idly on the slate—filling the frame with patterns of nested diamonds, blanking it to fill it with concentric circles, then with the squares of a chessboard grid. It did not amuse him, but it occupied him, and that was almost enough.

He thought ahead to Jeremiah, ahead to the mission. There was little doubt in his mind that the team would succeed. The end of the chase was in sight, if not yet in hand.

But, oddly, there was little pleasure in the anticipation. After all the travel, all the trauma, he would have thought he’d be happier. Even his curiosity had been dulled. He no longer cared to know what moved his adversary, what tricks and tactics had prolonged the siege. The weariness ran deeper than blood and muscle. It had infected his spirit as well.

It’s time to move on.

The thought surprised him. Move on to what? To serving Mikhail Dryke. To carrying on a normal life. But he wondered if he knew how to do either. To keeping all those promises consigned to the future—Castillo de San Marcos, Loches, Peveril Castle. To walk the ruins of the Great Wall from Shanhaiguan to Jia-yuguan and the edge of the desert—

“Are you a historian?” asked the woman beside him.

“Eh?” He turned toward her. “Excuse me?”

She pointed toward his slate. “I was wondering if you were a historian?”

Dryke looked down at his lap and laughed despite himself. The last sketch that had come from his deft fingers and idle mind was a half-completed plan for an assault on a mountain redoubt he had labeled Fort Jesus.

“No, ma’am,” he said, his voice soft and weary. “Not a historian. Just a boy playing soldier.”

She left him alone after that, even though he might have ultimately welcomed the distraction. The thoughts that possessed him were black and joyless. Victory is a more difficult art than war. Which American President had said that? Wilson? Roosevelt? Gingrich? Dryke could not remember. Others had learned the same lesson. The Duke of Wellington explaining to Lady Shelley: I always say that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained. An old secret, indeed, now being revealed to Dryke.

It was a decision he did not want to make, wrapped in questions he did not want to answer. If there was a Katrina Becker in Munich, an Evan Silverman in Houston, a Javier Sala in Madrid, who might there be in Prainha, or Kasigau, or Takara? How long would it take an organization which had intercepted company mail and jammed Newstime to find where their Prophet was hidden?

Would the people who had knocked down a T-ship and spilled poisons on the ground be any less bold in trying to reclaim their leader? Could he rest easy knowing that his enemies played breathless electronic tag on the nets unimpeded, and found the Project’s defenses as intimidating as the Maginot Line?

There were a hundred questions, and yet they were all the same question: How long would it go on if he let it go on? He hoped that circumstance would save him from having to find an answer, save him from touching that place inside where white fire lived and no act was forbidden.

All of the decisions were coming hard.

They had two targets, each difficult in its own way: the Peterson Road house, a hundred klicks outside the city, and Pacific Land Management, ten stories up in the heart of Portland’s financial district. Dryke had too few troops to cover both at once— the small size of the team was part of the price for moving quickly and quietly. Nor could they touch local law enforcement for help. There was no way to control what went out into the net. There was no way to know who was Jeremiah’s friend.

One or the other. It had to be one or the other. But if they chose wrong, Jeremiah would have a chance to run. And a man like Jeremiah with a network like Homeworld could run for a long time.

But which one was Fort J?

It came down to probabilities. Pacific Land Management had nineteen registered partners, twenty-eight comlines (counting eight on the building’s Sky LAN), and its fingers in half a billion dollars’ worth of land and real estate in four countries—a splendid foundation for the infrastructure of a revolution. By contrast, the Peterson Road house had a modest four comlines, an overdue property tax bill, and a reclusive owner with legitimate connections to most of the state’s business and political leadership.

Dryke chose the Peterson Road house.

He hedged his bets by calling the texperts down from Seattle and leaving one, the brooding man named Ramond, to play stakeout at Pacific Land Management. But the rest went with him to Hoffman Hill, a six-hundred-meter summit just six klicks from Peterson Ridge and belonging to the same whorl of valleys and steep-sloped tree-covered fold mountains. Hoffman Hill was a nearly ideal staging area—just a one-minute dash from the target for the armed and armored Beech Pursuit that Ramond and Dru had leased for them in Seattle.

By that time, all of them were well into their second dose cycle of Watchman. While Dru set up sky monitors and spotting snoops on the ridge line, Dryke huddled with the others in the predawn chill to lay out the logistics. They made a skeptical audience.

“We come in from the top, he’s got a lot of room to hide. We come up the road and hit his gate, and he’ll sky,” said Loren, the most senior of Dryke’s recruits.

“I know,” said Dryke. “That’s why we’re going in both ways.”

“I’d sure rather be doing this with fifty bodies than five.” Loren’s frown was dyspeptic. “What do you know about the defenses?”

“Boundary fenced and a hailer. That’s all that’s on the books. I’m sure that’s not all there is.”

“Anti-air?”

“Maybe.”

“How many people up there?”

Dryke reached down to the open kit by his feet and tossed the corpsec a clear-skinned frag helmet. “Can’t tell you. So flash goggles, bug-heads, and torso armor for everyone. And keep your fagging heads down.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to just pump a rocket or two into the house from here?” asked Liviya with a grin. She was cradling her frag helmet under her arm like a basketball while she checked her pistol.

“I’m sure,” Dryke said. “Dru will do battle management from here if it comes to that. But I really don’t want this drawn out. If it’s not over in five minutes, we’re going to be in more trouble than I want to think about.” He looked up through the trees at the brightening sky. “Any questions?”

“I want another look at this guy’s picture,” Loren said.

Dryke keyed the frame and wordlessly handed Loren the slate.

“With five minutes warning, they’ll be able to dump all their files and break both ends of every link,” Dru called to them without looking up from her work. “Five seconds would be enough if it’s all volatile storage.”

“We’re not going in for files. We’re going in for Jeremiah— or whoever speaks with his voice.”

“If we have to shoot to stop someone—” Liviya began.

“Then shoot straight,” Dryke said. “Any more questions?”

In the silence, Loren handed back the slate.

“Dru, anything?” Dryke called to the texpert.

She shook her head. “Outside lights went off a minute ago. Two comlines active, looks like background traffic. Might be there. Might not. Nothing conclusive.”

“Do you have the tracer ready?”

“Yes.”

“Send it.”

“Will do.”

With the skylink’s cellular narrowcasting and active message routing, every personal receiver sent regular updates to Central Addressing, so that the net would know where to “forward” the owner’s messages. Trace queries—ordinarily not processed without a court’s “order to locate”—retrieved the current address in the system.

“For whatever it’s worth, the tracer’s still pointing here,” Dru announced a few seconds later.

Dryke nodded grimly. “Let’s go find out if it’s worth anything.”

Like chrome hummingbirds waking to the dawn, the team’s three cars rose from the muddy track of Lawrence Road and fanned out over the forested slopes.

Loren and Liviya’s skimmers stayed at treetop level, swinging north and west in snaking arcs that kept them below Fort Jesus’ horizon. Dryke took the Pursuit straight up along the slope of Hoffman Hill and exploded skyward, clawing for the altitude he would need in a look-down shoot-down scenario, showing Fort J only the armored underbelly of the flyer.

But there was no response from Peterson Ridge—not when the skimmers flashed over the boundary fences, not even when the Pursuit’s climb flattened out and turned over into a heart-stopping dive.

“No delta,” said Dru, watching the comline traffic. A burst coder carried her words to all three vehicles. “Repeat, no delta, nothing to squash.”

As the double dome of the house grew larger before him, Dryke saw the two skimmers slow and drop down into invisible gaps in the trees and disappear.

“Unit Four on station, all clear,” said Loren. A breath later, Liviya logged in a near-echo.

Still there was no response.

The purr of the Pursuit’s engines climbed to an annoyed whine as it braked for touchdown. With a last-second sideslip, Dryke dropped it on the concrete scorch pad in front of the garage, blocking the middle half of the double-wide door.

“System lock,” he said. “Code Eben-Emael.”

“Locked,” said the autopilot AIP.

Dryke flipped down his own bug-head and climbed out on the left side of the flyer, keeping its bulk between him and the house. He looked to see if Loren had come up the road into position and was answered with a wave.

“Liviya?”

“Ready.”

“Going in.”

Crossing the yard to the front door under the gaze of the house’s many windows was an act best done without thinking. Once on the porch, Dryke waved Loren forward and waited until the black man was alongside the Pursuit.

“Dru?” asked Dryke.

“No change.”

“What?”

“No change?”

“Ramond?”

“Nothing is happening here, Mr. Dryke.”

“This is bad. This is very bad,” warned Loren. “Maybe we ought to wait until we know it’s clean.”

“Goddamm it, he’s gone,” Dryke fumed, reaching for the door. “We’re too late.”

“Oh, man—”

Dryke touched the controls and received a shock—the door was unlocked.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, staring. “Dru?”

“No change.”

“Not even a fagging burglar alarm?”

“Nothing.”

Dryke puffed out a breath. “No one else comes in,” he said, and stepped through the doorway.

Inside the Fuller were the ordinary private places of a man of some means, but few affectations. A gentleman’s kitchen, tidy and highly automated. A morning-facing breakfast nook, with a hummingbird feeder hanging outside the windows. A working study dotted with motion toys and engineering models. A dark bedroom with an empty, neatly made bed.

Stinger in hand, Dryke moved warily from room to room, wrestling with a mixture of heart-thumping fear and squeamish embarrassment, waiting for a nasty surprise and fearing he had already received it. The house felt empty, like a set piece, a fabrication.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “Loren—check the garage.”

In a moment he had his answer. “Got one Avanti Eagle and one Honda SD-50, as registered.”

Dryke swore. “Then where is he? Does anyone have anything?”

“Could have been picked up by someone,” Loren said. “You want some company in there?”

Frowning, Dryke tipped the shield of his helmet halfway up. “I suppose. Liviya, baby-sit the Pursuit, will you?”

While he waited, Dryke drifted back to the study, the most interesting room. When Loren joined him, he was sitting in the chair at the comsole, playing with a model of a self-lifting crane.

“Bastard got away from me again,” he said, his voice almost emotionless.

“I did a space inventory on the way through—not a very good house for playing hide-and-seek.”

“No. And I’m tired of that game.” Frowning, Dryke discarded the model on the desk. “I guess we can have Dru take a look at this, anyway.”

“Somebody’s going to have to come pick me up,” Dru reminded.

Under the weight of Dryke’s disappointment, it seemed like a major decision. “Liviya—no, better keep the flyer here. Ah, who’s in Unit Four?”

“Zabricki.”

“Just a moment.” Loren leaned closer and peered at the com-sole. “Dru? You still showing traffic on the lines into here?”

“Sure,” she answered. “The same background stuff—ad frames, financials, junk fax. Intermittent but steady.”

Puzzled, Loren swung his head toward Dryke. “Where’s it going to? This system’s not logging anything.”

“What? There must be an AIP trashing it.”

“Even that would show as activity.”

Loren and Dryke stared at each other for a long moment. Then Dryke stood and flipped his shield back down into place.

“Zabricki, Dru, stay put,” Dryke said. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Loren. “Where?”

“Down,” said Loren. “Has to be down.”

“Let’s find it.”

“Look for natural seams, inside corners. I don’t think there’s any wall volume unaccounted for. Probably in the floor.”

“Kitchen,” said Dryke, his eyes lighting up. “Parquet floor. Come on.”

The seams were almost perfect, the door almost invisible. It filled the rectangular space between the pedestal counter and the sink cabinets along one wall. Dryke stood looking down at it with hands on hips, chewing on his lower lip.

“How much do you want to bet there’s another way in?” Loren asked. “Tunnel to the woods? To the garage?”

Dryke shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He’s not here.” He sighed. “What do you think, voice command? Through the house AIP?”

“Probably.”

“And what else?” Dryke scanned the kitchen. “A lot of control contacts here. Some unlikely combination—”

“I can’t imagine them taking the chance of someone trying to make some toast and raising the door instead.”

“And I can’t imagine him not building in a safety net. AIPs can be corrupted.”

“We can force this,” Loren said. “There’s a power chisel in my skimmer.”

“No,” Dryke said, walking to the sink at the middle of the rectangle. “If we force it, the files are sure to be dumped.” He turned on the cold water and splashed a double handful on his face. “It wouldn’t be anything you could do by accident.”

“It wouldn’t be anything that would open it while you’re standing on it,” Loren said with a grin.

The water still running, his face still wet, Dryke stared sideways at the other man. “No, it wouldn’t,” he said slowly. He touched the sweep contact on the wall behind the sink and watched as the faucet head swiveled in a circle to sweep away particles loosened by the ultrasonics. “But all you’d need is a little interlock, a pressure sensor—”

As the sweep cycle ended, Dryke stepped back from the sink, retreating past the edge of the door. From there, stretching out across the countertop, he could barely reach the contact behind the sink. But he could reach it.

With a faint whir, the floor began to rise, the first few centimeters straight up, then canting toward Loren. Dryke jumped back and stared.

“He must have longer arms than I do.”

Loren was marveling. “Son of a bitch. How did you know where the switch was?”

“Because I know him better than I want to.”

The panel stopped rising when it made a sixty-degree angle with the rest of the floor. Beneath it was a lighted passage, a carpeted stairway.

“Stay here,” Dryke said to Loren, and started down.

He descended the stairs cautiously, the edge suddenly back in the game. Halfway down, he crouched for a peek into the room below.

Where the walls should have been, he glimpsed a golden-red desertscape, a flash of light on water, the brilliant greens of a fern-filled rain forest. The whole chamber was a tank, ten meters across, with earthscape murals playing on the shell. At the center was a large-scale table display, an interface controller with its multicolored screens, a curved desk.

And, in the high-backed chair beside the desk, a man. He was facing the stairway and looking directly at Dryke.

“Lila, begin,” said the man in the chair.

His breath still caught tight in the binding of his surprise, Dryke descended the last few steps as an automaton. The man in the chair had but a passing resemblance to Jeremiah—his face beardless and too lean, the hair thinner and darker. But there was something in the eyes that was the same.

“I expected you, Mr. Dryke, but not this soon. Take off your hat and stay awhile—”

There was something oddly theatrical about the man’s demeanor, something scripted about his words and tone. But where was the audience?

“Did you get that?” Loren was calling from the kitchen. “Mr. Dryke, did you get that?”

Dryke heard him through the helmet, not the coder. “Get what?” he called back.

But Loren was already descending the stairway with quick steps. “Dru says all the lines from here are lit up. Land and sky—Dru? Dru? Damn, I’m losing her. This place must be shielded.” He stopped short of the landing and blinked. “Jesus Christ. There’s somebody here.”

“Ready,” said a woman’s voice from nowhere.

“Thank you, Lila,” the man said calmly. “This is William McCutcheon, speaking for Jeremiah and the Homeworld—”

The whole chamber is a tank. Dryke spun around and looked at the ceiling behind him. A three-eyed camera limpet hung from the ceiling above the stairway.

“As you can see, I have visitors this morning. As you might guess from the weapons they carry, I did not invite them. Mikhail Dryke, chief of the security forces for Allied Transcon, has invaded my home to arrest me. My crime—”

“No!” shouted Dryke, whirling. “No more fucking speeches!”

Behind him, Loren wordlessly retreated halfway up the stairs. “Dru?” Dryke heard him saying. “Dru?”

“Do you really think that you can stop us?” asked McCutcheon. “That your efforts have made any difference at all? Do you think I count so much, that you have only one enemy? I’m just one link in the chain, one cell in something larger. When I’m gone, someone else will step in to take my place.”

“And someone else will step in to take mine,” said Dryke. Something had snapped inside him, like a switch being thrown.

He no longer cared if his words were being broadcast to the world, no longer could bear to be taunted and lectured.

“You don’t understand what you’re fighting.” McCutcheon’s tone was dismissive.

In that moment, Dryke realized that he had made the decision on the train. He realized, too, that if he let McCutcheon go on talking, the moment would slip away. Later, he would want to tell himself that he had been driven past the edge by rage and fear, necessity and fatigue. But the truth was that it was a willful act. He touched the white fire and let it fill him. Only afterward did it burn.

“Wrong, Jeremiah. I do.” He raised his gun and pointed it at the middle of McCutcheon’s chest. “This is for Malena Graham.”

He fired four times, four neatly spaced and carefully aimed shots, then lowered his arm slowly to his side. He stood, swaying on his feet, and watched the shattered shell of William McCutcheon die, and felt cheated because triumph tasted as bitter as defeat.

Ripping his helmet off, Dryke threw it aside, turned his back, and started up the stairs. Loren was staring at him. “Dru?” Dryke said as he reached the kitchen. “How much got out?”

“Just the first ten or twelve seconds,” she said. “I jammed the skylinks and Ramond got the lines through Pacific. What happened?”

“Can you put a message up for me to the Director?”

“I can do better than that. I can get her direct.”

Dryke shook his head, aware of Loren’s watching eyes, though he would not meet them. “I don’t want to talk to her,” he said. “Just tell her for me that Jeremiah is dead.”