Bareilles shook her head.
“At each arrest, he paid additional fees to have everything but tombstone data deleted from his files.”
The Scarecrow despised the Anglo-Spanish. They were empty, existing only for money. And they had a price for everything.
“Before the issuance of his merchant permits,” Bareilles said, “we’ve got nothing. No records of birth, previous contracts or education. He appears out of nowhere.”
“So he paid to start a new life, and made sure his arrests didn’t link him to any part of his past,” the Scarecrow said, “but all this exposure and run-ins with the law don’t fit the profile of a spy. So what was he doing with information on the Middle Kingdom intelligence operatives and why did he route it where the Puppets would find it?”
The Scarecrow lumbered forward, regarding the arrest record photos as they turned.
“We don’t know yet,” Barielles said. “But I have one more possible link. One of our political commissars at the Union Consulate in the Free City found an unreported transmission involving an Arjona. A meeting. We don’t know if it’s the same Arjona.”
Political commissars had full clearances to all official records, messages and orders within their client nations. There was always a basal level of chatter that tried to circumvent surveillance. Most of it was unimportant, minor betrayals that were rarely elevated to his attention. Majeur Bareilles was not the kind to bring up irrelevancies.
“Arjona was meeting a Major Iekanjika,” she said.
“And?”
The holographic display switched to a split view: one half was the record system at the Union Academy at Harare, and the other was the personnel records system of the Union Navy.
“There is no Major Iekanjika,” Bareilles said. “The Iekanjika family was politically powerful and well-represented in the general ranks one and two generations ago. But the family and name died out in the 2470s. There is no Iekanjika in the navy. The last Iekanjika to graduate from the academy at Harare was fifty-eight years ago.”
The Scarecrow had no heartbeat, no adrenaline, nor anger. It had loyalty, and affront when faced with disloyalty. This was not evidence of disloyalty, but he could think of few reasons why a client nation would use false identities, or commission officers out of sight of their patrons.
“One of our client citizens, in collusion with one of our client’s consulates, is moving under an assumed name,” the Scarecrow said.
“So it would seem,” she said.
“It’s time for me to speak with this Arjona and this major, neither of whom come from anywhere.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
IT TOOK MARIE eighty-six hours, even with the robots, to build a pressure chamber with an airlock in it. What made it more difficult than building it in the penthouse of a fancy hotel was that one of the walls of her new pressure chamber had to be the outer window to the ocean itself.
Robots brought more equipment down from the yacht. I-beams to brace the new chamber against the opposite wall. Reinforced steel to brace the windows around the new airlock. Special pressure-resistant sealant and welding equipment.
The seal of the airlock to the glass most worried her. She’d used smart adhesives and biomachinery to weld the metal into the glass, and X-ray scattering showed no gaps. That probably meant that there were none, but this was a high-risk construction project. If the seal had too many flaws, and one might be too many, a thousand atmospheres of sub-surface ocean would tear its way into four atmospheres of penthouse.
Del Casal had been unhelpfully present during most of her work. His skills contributed nothing, but his presence bolstered her cover story. The one thing he was good for was bringing her whiskey. The Grand Creston had excellent whiskey.
“Merde, Phocas,” Stills said in his electronic voice, “how can you not be done yet?”
“I’ll be done when I’m done,” she said. “You may survive a high pressure implosion, but me and the doctor won’t.”
“Fucking character flaws.”
“At least I only have that one.”
“Arjona picked you for your lack of flaws,” offered Del Casal.
She eyed the doctor. “Yeah, he did.”
“You know Arjona better than we do, Miss Phocas,” the geneticist said. “Presumably he is equally free of flaws. Do you think this scheme of his will work?”
“What? Phocas worked with prissy-pants before?” Stills asked.
“Some,” Marie said, looking at the X-ray diffraction readings on her seals. “He’s hired me for protection a few times, but until now, he’s never found a full use for my talents.”
“You two don’t look like a matched set of cock and balls,” Stills said.
“Am I cock or balls?”
“Take your pick. Baseline humans all look the same to me.”
“I’ll be balls,” she said definitively. “I met him about six years ago in a casino bar. I was pretty hammered, which is hard to do with all the physiological augments the navy gives their NCOs. The whole place was talking about some kid who’d just taken down Eridani Fats in a marathon face-to-face no limit poker game.”
“I heard about that game,” Del Casal said.
“I found him with a casino-supplied escort on each arm,” Marie continued. “He was drunk too. Not impressive. I asked him if he was the one who’d just won big. His girlfriends started fawning about how amazing he was, how no one had ever beaten Fats. It was puke-worthy. I told the arrogant little bastard he got lucky and that I had a system.”
“What was your system?” Del Casal asked.
“I can’t remember. I was really drunk. But I remembered at the time. And he seemed more interested in my system than in his escorts, so I told him.”
“Did he laugh?” Stills asked.
“He didn’t even let me finish!” Marie scoffed. She lowered her voice to do an impression of Belisarius. “‘That’s not a system. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. It’s just glitter.’”
Stills activated an electronic laugh he’d obviously programmed to make fun of air-breathers. Marie threw a wrench at his pressure chamber.
“You don’t fuck with a drunk Congregate NCO, not unless you want to be smeared on the decor,” Marie said. “So all polite-like, I leaned over his table, letting my sleeves come up to show off my NCO tats, and I told him he didn’t understand statistics.”
“Did he back down?” Stills asked.
“The jackass said, ‘I’m made of statistics’,” she said.
Stills laughed again. “So much for the honor of the Congregate navy. Did you teach him to watch his mouth?”
“I took a handful of decorative rocks from his table, ground them to powder in my fingers and said, ‘This is glitter’, as I whipped it in his eyes. Then I up-ended his table and took a swing at him.”
“You’re a dirty fighter,” Stills said appreciatively.
“It didn’t help,” she said, looking at another set of X-ray readings. “He was on his feet quick, trying to get the rock dust out of his eyes. When I swung, he sidestepped, like he knew where I was, even blind. But he was still drunk, and he upset the table of the Saguenay Deep Shafts.”
“The hockey team?” Del Casal asked.
“None other,” she said. “One grabbed Bel by his tux jacket and lifted him off the floor. The rest came for me. Just before they got to me, I saw the one holding Bel seize up and collapse.”
“Then what?” Stills asked. “Get your ass kicked?”
“Are you kidding me? They were big, and some had sports augments, but nothing military-grade. They certainly weren’t going to get between me and somebody who’d insulted my system.”
“What was this system?” Del Casal asked.
“I don’t remember! It was really smart, though.”
“So then you pounded big brain?” Stills asked in exasperation.
“When I’d made the hockey team run off with their wounded, I found Bel at the bar. He’d found the only unspille
d drink in the place. I was itching to pound his I’m-made-of-statistics face into pudding.”
“But you didn’t,” Del Casal said.
“He asked me if I was looking for a job on the side.”
“That’s it?” Stills demanded. “Why didn’t you clock him?”
“He paid really well. I made a lot of money hiring out as muscle for his plans,” she said. “When I tried my own plans, I got cashiered.”
“So you think he can pull this off?” Del Casal asked.
“Damned if I know, but I wasn’t doing anything else, so why the hell not?”
Del Casal made a face and finished his whiskey.
“Alright, doctorcito,” Marie said, packing away the X-rays equipment. “Now’s the dangerous part. You can go to the yacht and lift off. We’ll see you at the rendezvous if we all survive.”
“Good luck then, Miss Phocas,” Del Casal said. “Good luck, Mister Stills.”
Del Casal entered the elevator and reclined on its large sofa as it began its twenty-three kilometer ascent.
“Civilians,” Marie scoffed in French. “I hope he’s comfortable.”
“You got that,” Stills answered. “Ready to get me out of this tub?”
“As long as I’m not around to smell it,” she said, signalling the robots to move Stills’ chamber into her new airlock. Marie brought in high-pressure industrial tools and laid them beside Stills, and then shut the first thick steel door, then the second.
“You can hear me?” she asked.
“Get on with it. You’re more boring than piss in water.”
Marie stopped herself from calling Stills a manatee, and checked the seals and fittings on the pressurized hoses one last time. She’d already broken into the penthouse walls and routed most of the plumbing feeds into her pumps. They now flooded the airlock. It didn’t take long to fill, but that only got it to four atmospheres. The pumps whined mechanically, for long minutes, continuing to force in minute quantities of water, increasing the pressure as the joints of her airlock creaked. The noise of the pumps became louder and louder, until her equipment reached its limit.
“That’s as far as I can go, Stills,” she said. “Six hundred atmospheres. Can you survive in that?”
“I’m gonna have to, aren’t I? I thought your damn pipes were gonna work.”
“I got it to six hundred and got bored. Stop whining and work fast.”
The read-outs showed him cycling the airlock to his hyperbaric chamber. She wiped at sweat she hadn’t realized was there.
Stills could probably survive. His natural pressure was in the seven hundreds. It didn’t sound like a lot of difference, but the proteins of the Homo eridanus were engineered to survive the highest oceanic pressures of Indi’s Tear. At lower pressures, important proteins could expand and stop working. She’d been dealing with the reverse problem for months with the high-pressure explosives.
He cycled his lock slowly, letting the seven hundred atmospheres of pressure around him bleed out. He knew pressure better than she did. Was he trying to avoid giving himself the bends? Or an aneurysm? It sure was boring. Finally, he opened to door to his chamber and swam into the airlock she’d built.
“Hijoeputa, it stinks in here! What the hell is that?”
“Air freshener?” she guessed. “How the hell should I know? It’s hotel water.”
“I hate fresh water. It’s going to make me bloat.”
“Tell me about it. Sometimes I feel it in my ankles. Finish building the airlock, you’ll get all the salt you want.”
“Keep bustin’ my ass, Phocas, and I’m gonna leave some explosives close to this hotel room.”
“You sound like my last date,” she said, squinting into the monitor showing the inside of the airlock. “Hey! Are you wearing a furry pouch around your waist?”
“Fuck off. I haven’t got a waist.”
“Nevermind. Of course you wouldn’t wear a man-pouch. Keep it moving.”
He pulled tools from the pouch sluggishly. The real problem was that Stills now had to cut through the window. He had a torch that would burn even in these crushing depths. They’d planned to equilibrate the airlock with the outside and then cut. In only getting the airlock to six hundred atmospheres, that left a four hundred atmosphere pressure difference across the window.
He could cut fast, but if the window weakened before the hole made it through, the whole window might shatter inward, possibly throwing heavy chunks of forty-centimeter thick glass at the other end of the airlock, or possibly shaking the airlock enough that the seals and welds cracked. The sudden pressure change could also set off the explosives. Stills lit the welding torch and applied it to the center of the glass.
Chapter Thirty-Six
GATES-15 BROUGHT the Puppet trading ship down at one of the church landing stations. Gun platforms pointed upward and outward. On the icy surface of Oler, tiny figures in weaponized exoskeletons watched them. Magnets clamped invisible fingers over the landing gear, and the whole platform sank into the icy crust. Soon, they’d all know if Del Casal was as good as Belisarius had said.
The platform descended a smooth channel of ice ribbed with wires and metal struts that occasionally opened onto dark bays. Through the top of the cockpit window, the vacuum-dark sky shrank within a constricting circle, starpoints seemingly winking away one by one in the glare of industrial lights. William had probably just seen his last star.
Finally, the elevator stopped. The platform and ship slid into a landing bay and a steel door closed them in. Ultraviolet lamps shone around them, making ghostly fluorescences. William breathed around a tightness in his chest.
“Are you all right?” Gates-15 asked. He did William the courtesy of not looking at him.
“I’m fine. Aren’t you fine?”
“I’m ready.”
“Not a beautiful place, your home.”
Gouts of air poured out of vents in the bay walls, clouding and snowing in the cold. Infrared elements glowed redly as the bay pressurized. It lent the scene the look of a chill hell.
Lights began flashing above half-sized doorways. A wheel on an airlock door spun and four armored Puppets emerged, surcoats of orange giving them an unreal look under the red of the infrared heaters. They carried short assault rifles, built for their size. They took up ready positions at the four corners of the bay.
“Episcopal troops,” Gates-15 said in some awe. “Holy knights. The finest Puppet fighters.”
“Are they going to shoot us? Did they already see through our disguises?” William asked.
Four more followed, flanking the small doorway. Puppet priests. Finally, the two last Puppets stepped into the bay. Tall, richly decorated hats and embroidered robes didn’t match with what looked to be iron collars and shackles peeking from the hems at wrist and ankles. The Puppets fidgeted.
“They sent two bishops,” Gates-15 said.
The cockpit console lit with a holographic image of the faces of the bishops in front of their ship. “Mister Geoff Kaltwasser,” the image said, “we are most honored to offer you the welcome and reverence you deserve.” The dialect was antique Anglo-Spanish, a couple of centuries old, only a few steps past the merging of Spanish and English.
William swallowed, but did not answer.
“We understand that you’re ill and nothing causes us more pain. We’re here to care for you.”
“Answer,” William whispered.
“Your Grace,” Gates-15 said, “Mister Kaltwasser is a bit nervous. Shall I help him into your presence?”
“Warren Lister-10,” the image said, “you have done a great thing over these long months in keeping Mister Kaltwasser safe as you brought him home. Of course you may bring the divine out.”
William and Gates-15 sat still for long moments. Finally William unstrapped himself. “Luckily I won’t need to fake nervous.” He crouched to the back of the cockpit.
“I wish I was as confident as you,” Gates-15 said, following him.
“You’re not going to die,” William whispered. “This might be the start of you really coming home.” Gates-15 shivered slightly at his words.
His ears popped as Gates-15 equalized the pressure between their ship and the bay and then opened the main door. Icy air spilled in, following soft blue UV fluorescence. Gates-15 descended the ladder and stepped away, looking up at him with both longing and expectation. William squeezed through the narrow Puppet door and into the cold. Geoff Kaltwasser was born.
The bishops and their priests approached skittishly, as if ready to bolt, sniffing the air. Like Gates-15, they had fine faces and bodies, between ninety and a hundred and twenty centimeters. Their eyes appeared cunning to him, menacing, but that was perhaps his own fear writing on the world. He had to perform now.
“I’m Geoff Kaltwasser,” William said. “Thank you for receiving me.”
The two mitred heads bobbed.
“I am Bishop Grassie-6 and this is Bishop Johnson-10. We have decontamination facilities inside. Then we can bring you someplace more comfortable.”
Grassie-6 led the way into the low hallway. William tried to move, but found his legs leaden. He was the fall guy. That was his job in the crew. William sucked at the icy air and ducked his head to follow the bishops into the low passage.
“I apologize for the way, Mister Kaltwasser,” Grassie-6 said. “In the old days, only Puppets came through these hallways. The architecture and traffic around the Forbidden City has grown so much that there’s no way to directly bring in a ship with someone like you aboard. To be safe and secure, we brought you through the outskirts of the Free City.”
William’s back was getting sore and he bumped his head against the icy ceiling. The sounds of furtive sniffing followed him. They crossed several Puppet-height rooms before emerging into a mall of dark regolithic brick arching two storeys above and filled with archways leading to oddly quiet offices and common areas. William straightened his back with a relieved groan. Grassie-6 stopped at an office with a bronze plaque showing a rod and two coiled serpents. The few furtive-eyed Puppet priests watched him with a kind of anticipation William had never seen.
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