“Murder,” Corain said over his coffee cup.
“Bureau warfare,” Yanni said. “Khalid. We have no doubt. 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’t a 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’s a 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 find her 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 out of 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 already been 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 can find. 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, hoping Alliance 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’s the 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 find Harogo 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 not in 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 have that much time, but it was a test overdue, if they were going to try to crack what Kyle had done, 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. Jus
tin 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 Jacques was 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…”
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