“Sure. I’m just stressed and depressed after EdenBurg, is all. That goddamn Isabella. Why doesn’t anyone care about her? Not her friends. Not her family. If you vanished, people would wonder, they’d ask questions. I’d want to know what happened to you.”
“That’s because you’re a good person.” He hesitated. “Look, Hogan will be watching you, but I can pursue Isabella on the quiet if you’d like.”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed a hand irritably over her brow. “There are no quiet inquiries left. I either turn it into a big deal or drop it completely. Damn, you don’t suppose Hogan could be right, do you?”
Tarlo laughed. “Never. See you later? I want to tell you all about Mars. It really was a strange place.”
“Yeah, I’ll be in soon.”
He patted her shoulder and left.
Renne took another bite out of her burger, and munched slowly. Maybe she had become obsessive about Isabella. It wasn’t a crime to run off and join the exodus. There were hundreds of thousands of people on each of the worlds close to the Lost23 who’d left home with no explanation, most of them scuttling off to worlds on the other side of the Commonwealth. Silvergalde was also a popular destination, and if Isabella had gone there she really would be out of any electronic contact.
“You shouldn’t discuss confidential information in a public place,” a woman’s voice said. “Office procedure has certainly slipped recently.”
Renne stood up and looked over the partition at the neighboring table. Paula Myo sat there, nursing a glass of orange juice.
“Jesus, Boss!”
“Can I join you?”
Renne grinned, and gestured to the empty seats.
“Sounds like you’re having a bad day,” Paula said as she settled in the chair Vic had vacated.
“I can handle it. I just keep asking myself what you would do.”
“That’s very flattering. So how is it going at the office?”
Renne took another bite from the burger, giving Paula a calculating glance. Was the boss deliberately testing her to see how much she’d divulge?
“You should know; all our data is available to Senate Security.”
“I wasn’t referring to the data from your investigations, I’m more interested to hear how Hogan is doing.”
“Coping, barely. He isn’t you.”
“For which I suspect he and I are both grateful. How did he take the request to spy on Alessandra Baron?”
“Didn’t you hear? Tarlo says badly. But I think that’s more to do with the fact you requested it than the manpower scheduling. What do you think Baron has done?”
“She’s a Starflyer agent.”
Renne stared at her old boss. “Are you serious? You really think it exists?”
“Yes.”
“Hell, Boss. What proof have you got?”
“The behavior of several people, including Baron. She’s part of a network of agents who are acting against human interests. We’re compiling information on them which should lead to their arrest.”
“Shit, you do mean it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So why tell me?”
“I’d like to know why you have a warrant out for Isabella Halgarth.”
“The shotgun, the one which claimed Doi was a Starflyer agent. There was something wrong about it.” She explained her misgivings about the whole setup; and the way Isabella had subsequently dropped out of sight.
“Interesting,” Paula said. “Especially her connection with Kantil. We are looking for any Starflyer connection among the Commonwealth political elite. She might well be the link.”
“Isabella as a Starflyer agent? That’s hard to swallow.”
“You said yourself there’s something wrong about her. That shotgun did a lot of damage to the Guardians’ credibility. It is logical to assume the Starflyer would use disinformation of that nature to damage its one true opponent. Her involvement would confirm her connection to its network.”
“But she’s only twenty-one, and she was going out with Kantil two years ago. How would she get messed up in something like that so young? She spent most of her early life on Solidade. You can’t get more sheltered and protected than that.”
“I don’t know. Is there any chance you could research her background more thoroughly?”
Renne blew her cheeks out as she sighed. “That won’t make me terribly popular with Hogan.”
“Yes, I heard. Your choice, of course.”
“I’ll do what I can, Boss.”
“Thank you.”
Paula stayed at the table, finishing her drink as Renne walked out. Her virtual hand touched Hoshe’s icon. “She’s leaving now.”
“Yeah, we’ve got her. The team’s boxing her. Monitor programs for her unisphere access are loaded and running.”
“All right. Let’s see what we turn up.”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“I hope it isn’t, but who knows. If it is, the information I’ve just given her should goad her into making contact with someone in the Starflyer network.”
Although it wasn’t far from New York to the Tulip Mansion, Justine kept her own apartment on Park Avenue. It was a nice base in town for those times she wanted to be on her own, or throw a small soirée for close personal friends and important contacts; it was also somewhere private for affairs she preferred to keep quiet about. The building was two centuries old, a massive art deco–Gothic block favored by both the urban chic and serious old money. Her apartment occupied half of the fortieth floor, which gave her a nice view out over the park from her balcony. Tall marble gargoyles lined the stone balustrade, framing the city’s magnificent ma-hon tree as it glittered rose-gold in the late evening sunlight. She never tired of the unique sight of the biochemical anomaly. It was always a shame CST had closed its homeworld off, she felt; now there would never be any more transplanted to the Commonwealth worlds.
The maid had prepared a light supper of poached salmon and salad. Justine ate it cautiously before her guest was due. Sure enough, twenty minutes after she finished she had to rush to the bathroom, heaving up most of it.
“I’d forgotten this part,” she said to herself as she wiped her mouth with a tissue. It would have to be cold still mineral water and plain crackers when the meeting was over.
Her e-butler told her Paula Myo was on her way up from the lobby. She took a bottle of mouthwash from the medicine cabinet, and swilled it around. The horrible bitter acid taste was replaced by a clinical peppermint. It wasn’t much better.
“Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself,” Justine told her reflection in the mirror. She splashed some cold water on her face, which wasn’t looking so hot these days. Ah well, it wasn’t as if she was on the prowl for lovers right now. Her virtual hand touched her father’s icon. “She’s here.”
“I’m on my way down,” Gore said; he had the apartment above.
As always, Paula Myo was dressed impeccably, in a blue suit that was obviously tailored in Paris. There was a stern expression on her dainty face as she looked around the big living room with its exquisite antique furniture.
“I was in another Park Avenue apartment yesterday, about a kilometer away from here,” she said. “I thought that was ostentatious, but it would fit in this room and still rattle around.”
“Some people are aspirant,” Justine said. “Some of us obtained a long time ago.”
“Materialism never really appealed to me.”
“Is that part of your Huxley’s Haven heritage?” Justine had almost said: Hive heritage.
“I don’t think so.”
“Course it is,” Gore Burnelli said. He marched in through the living room door, dressed in a mauve polo sweater and black jeans. The overhead chandeliers reflected a burnished amber light off his golden skin. “Materialism would distract you from your obsession, wouldn’t it, Investigator? The Foundation wouldn’t want that in their police force; I suppose it makes you immune to bribes, too.”<
br />
“Father!”
“What? Everyone appreciates honesty, especially a policewoman.”
Justine was too weary to remonstrate with him. She could feel her stomach churning again, and hurriedly told her e-butler to get her an antacid. It acknowledged the request, and told her Gore’s subsidiary personality programs were filling the apartment arrays, moving with him like attentive ghosts.“Can we get started, please?” Justine asked; it was almost a plea. The big windows leading out to the balcony turned opaque and shimmered with a gray curtain of energy, sealing the room. She sat in one of the big couches as a maidbot trundled over carrying her a glass filled with a milky liquid. Gore came and sat beside her, while Paula chose a high-backed chair, facing the two Burnellis.
“I’ll start with my bad news,” Justine said. “I haven’t been able to confirm who told Thompson about Nigel Sheldon blocking the examination of cargo to Far Away.”
“Damn it, girl,” Gore complained. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not the most popular Senator in the Commonwealth right now. All that goodwill I was getting at the start because of Thompson’s death has just about evaporated. Columbia and the Halgarths are building themselves a lot of new alliances, and of course Doi’s always keen to receive their votes. Those of us who ask awkward questions are gradually being frozen out.”
“Then burn your way back in. Come on, this should be child’s play to you.”
“I’m up against some masterclass opposition here, actually,” she snapped back. “Not knowing if I can trust the Sheldons is proving to be a real problem; it’s leaving me very isolated in several committees.”
“You’ll pull through,” Gore said. “I can always depend on you. That’s why I’m so proud of you.”
Justine blinked in surprise. That wasn’t like him at all.
“The navy has made some progress on the Mars data,” Paula said. “Not that it’s particularly helpful. I asked the Admiral to pursue the matter, and he took that to a level I never expected.”
“I heard they actually went there,” Gore said.
“Nigel Sheldon made a CST wormhole available,” Paula confirmed.
“Which is interesting in itself. Whose interest is he considering, pursuing this lead against the Guardians? In any case, the navy team managed to find out what all the data was that’d been encrypted. It’s purely meteorological.”
“Did they find a key?” Justine asked.
“Unfortunately not, the encryption writing software was a use-expire program. There’s nothing left of it. Forensics are running a quantum scan of the hardware, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pick out a remnant. The actual data remains beyond us unless the Guardians choose to make the key available.”
“So even if we decrypted it, we wouldn’t know what they wanted it for.”
“I’m afraid not, Senator.”
“This is such bullshit,” Gore said. “If you ask me, the Guardians have just notched up another smart hit against the navy. All that stealing meteorological sensor crap is a clever piece of misdirection. There’s got to be something else hidden on Mars. Some transmission from a secret base or device, maybe a weapon. If they’ve been landing Von Neumann cybernetics on the surface, who knows what they could have built by now.”
“The research packages which robot ships dropped on Mars are well documented,” Paula said. “There is no surplus mass unaccounted for, not in twenty years. And the navy team didn’t see anything unusual at Arabia Terra.”
“Four computer geeks and two characters from ancient history on a nostalgia trip don’t make what I call a decent exploration team. There could have been a missile silo right under their feet and they’d never have known.”
“Or even a hollowed-out volcano,” Justine muttered.
“I don’t believe they would have been able to smuggle anything like a cybernetic factory onto the surface,” Paula said levelly. “We know the Guardians simply purchase whatever equipment they want.”
“Weather!” Gore grunted in disgust.
Justine covered her smile by drinking more of the antacid.
“I believe Mars is something we will have to put aside for the moment,” Paula said. “One of my ex-colleagues in the Paris office may have uncovered another Starflyer agent: Isabella Helena Halgarth.”
“Shit!” Gore said.
Justine took a second to place the name, pleased she didn’t have to use her e-butler to reference it for her. “Damn, do you think that’s their link to the presidency?”
Gore held up a hand. She could see her own distorted reflection in his palm. “Wait,” he said. “I’m analyzing this. I always fucking knew there was something wrong about that weekend we hosted in Sorbonne Wood. Let’s see. Patricia was always willing to accommodate every party; at the time I thought she was doing it to secure endorsement for Doi. But take a look at the weekend from the Starflyer’s perspective. Assume it wanted a human navy for its war between us and the Primes. Yes, goddamnit. Think of the true sticking points we faced. Either Isabella or Patricia was there to oil things along every time. Isabella even slept with Ramon DB.”
“He slept with her?” Justine couldn’t help the indignation. She pursed her lips, vexed with herself for caring. After all, they hadn’t been married for eighty years. Still … he’d done it under her roof, technically.
“It was even Ramon’s parallel development idea which helped the agency move all the starship production facilities to the High Angel with the minimum of fuss,” Gore said.
“Which he produced on Sunday morning,” Justine said coldly. “I suppose we’ll never know who actually came up with the idea.”
“I assumed it was Patricia, who relayed it through Isabella,” Gore said.
“It’s the kind of compromise a presidential aide could come up with in an instant. Now, though, we’ll never know.”
“You could ask him,” Paula said.
Justine finished off the last of her antacid drink, which might have accounted for the little grimace of distaste. “Yes, I could. I’m not sure he’d give me an answer.”
“He will,” Gore said. “You know he will.”
“Maybe, but he’d want to know why.”
“Is he strong enough to join us?” Gore asked. “We need allies.”
“He’d need some very strong proof,” Justine said carefully. “I’m not sure what we’ve got right now is enough.”
“What more can we give him?” Gore asked. “For Christ’s sake, Ramon isn’t stupid.”
“I’m not about to tell him we suspect Nigel Sheldon of being behind the greatest antihuman conspiracy there’s ever been. He’d shoot us down in flames.”
“You’ve got to find a way to get to him.”
“I’ll try.” She thought of how she’d have done that in the old days. A hotel in Paris maybe, a weekend spent together, restaurants, fine wines, coffee on the left bank, talking, arguing, laughing, theater in the evening, long passionate nights in bed. How she missed those simple times now.
“This still doesn’t tell us which of them was pulling the strings, Patricia or Isabella,” Gore said. “And were they working in conjunction with the Sheldons?”
“We don’t know Nigel is a part of this,” Justine said. “Not yet.” She told her e-butler to run a full background check on Isabella and Patricia.
“It would be logical for Isabella to be a courier to the Starflyer network,” Paula said. “Kantil would be working deep cover, taking her time to infiltrate the Commonwealth political structure. The unisphere shows are full of innuendo that Doi is heavily dependent on her advisors and opinion polls.”
“Which is why I was suspicious about her original backing for the Starflight agency,” Gore said. “Spending that much tax money was never going to be a vote winner before the barrier came down. She took a very uncharacteristic risk backing the formation. Something pushed her into doing that.”
“I don’t have any grounds to arrest Kantil and subject her to a forensi
c neurological examination,” Paula said. “We ran similar appraisals on suspects yesterday, which came to nothing.”
Justine listened to them discussing options while the data on Patricia and Isabella ran across her virtual vision. Patricia’s background was well documented, and verified by investigative reporters eager to find the smallest discrepancy in her official history and so prise open a covered-up scandal. Less information was available on Isabella, primarily because of her youth and the fact that she’d spent a lot of her life on Solidade. The Halgarths’ private world didn’t have public records. Justine started to review associated files which the e-butler’s cross-reference function had thrown up.
“Wait a minute,” Justine said. “Isabella’s father, Victor. Fifteen years ago he was appointed director of the Marie Celeste Research Institute on Far Away. He ran it for a two-year term before moving back to EdenBurg, where he secured a vice presidency in a Halgarth Dynasty physics laboratory.”
“That’s how it got to her,” Paula said with satisfaction. “She was just a child. I didn’t understand how anyone that young could be involved.” She frowned. “Neither did Renne.”
“If Isabella is a Starflyer agent, then her parents have to be as well,” Gore said.
“Yes,” Paula said. “We must watch what they’re doing. However, there is a limit to how many observation operations Senate Security can mount. It is not a huge organization.”
“Our family has a decent-sized security team,” Gore said. “Be good for them to get their asses out of the office and do some fieldwork for a change. I’ll organize something.”
“I appreciate that,” Paula said. “But I can arrange for the Halgarths to be watched. I have a well-placed friend in the Dynasty. There is something else I need you to help me with. Hoshe has established that Bose’s original astronomical observation was financed by the Starflyer. Someone in my old Directorate’s Paris office covered up the information when I was investigating him. I’m running several entrapment operations on the personnel to find out which one. But I’d like a proper financial analysis of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku. That could result in some important leads.”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 148