The Elysium Commission

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Send another projection. Use evasive tactics.

  The attack was Al-directed and clearly a response to my snooping into the registry. I doubted the AI knew what ex­actly was inside the villa. I wanted the clones occupied while I tried some of my new toys.

  One was a nanite-burst englober, with an energy tracker.

  I sent one toward the clone operative hidden between my wall and that of Soror Celestina.

  He/she/it never knew what happened. The englober projected a high-energy shield around the energy source of the target, then disassembled a very small amount of ultra-ex. Since the field held the energy within the shield—for less than half a second—before the shield and miniature gener­ator failed, everything englobed was reduced to very small fragments. Unfortunately, as I discovered, looking at the large gap in my wall and the section of the sister's behind, the explosion created larger fragments beyond. It also destroyed the electroshield, most probably carried by the operative.

  Max took out the other operative, who suddenly stood exposed on the wall beyond the cherry trees. Nothing ex­otic. Just an instabile bullet fired from an old-fashioned slug thrower. No sense in using the new toys where Civitas sur­veillance could record them. The electroshield had covered the englober, but once the shield failed, the slug thrower was better.

  Leave the mess for the Garda to observe.

  Affirmative.

  With broadband open again, I fired a report and com­plaint to the Garda.

  They wouldn't be happy. They never were.

  They didn't even bother with a virtie response. Instead, a patrol flitter dropped into my front courtyard in less than three minutes. That was most revealing—and disturbing.

  The scans revealed a real patroller, if in nanite armor-cloth, with shifting bodyshields. That was very bad.

  I decided to walk out and meet him. It was better than allowing him or her inside.

  The morning sky was a silvered blue-green. By even mid-morning and especially by afternoon any place without cli­mate control would be hot and muggy. I couldn't recall an autumn day as unreasonably hot. Maybe the sun's radiation had peaked, and the atmospheric service was having trouble with the orbital solar screens. I was sweating slightly by the time I walked down the stone steps to where he waited by the one-person flitter. His namestrip read JAVERR.

  He didn't look at me. Not at first. He pretended casually to survey the damage—another gap in the upper section of the wall overlooking Soror Celestina's garden and a crater in Cuarta Calle outside my gates. I hadn't noticed that be­fore. He pointedly overlooked the three areas of shattered paving tiles outside the utility entrance.

  "You arrived quite quickly," I said pleasantly. "Thank you."

  "I'm surprised that you filed a report, Seignior Donne.

  Unauthorized use of ultra-ex within Thurene carries a heavy penalty. I trust you realize that."

  "I'm quite aware of that, Patroller Javerr. However... I wasn't the one who employed the explosives. You might test the outer surfaces and the pavement outside my walls. I think you will find that the attack was directed at me."

  "That is quite possible, but if you are found responsible, even as a target, for inciting the attack, there is the charge of complementary accomplicement."

  The young patroller had clearly been briefed—and paid off—most likely by Legaar—in some fashion impossible to track. He'd also been told to use the letter of the law—or the Codex. So I'd been threatened in two fashions, one after the other, and all because I'd wanted to see the financial registry figures on Eloi Enterprises. The ones I'd copied only bore a passing resemblance to the actual figures. Of that, I was certain even before studying them. But that re­semblance might be enough to give me a better idea of what Legaar was hiding.

  Maybe it didn't have anything at all to do with Maraniss and Elysium, whatever and wherever Elysium might be. Maybe it was just a programmed response as well, warning anyone who got curious to leave Eloi Enterprises alone.

  "I'm certain that whoever is behind the attack would enjoy that, but if you check the past records of the satellite surveil­lance monitors, they should show the slightest haziness that accompanies the use of an inward-directed electroshield."

  "The feeds were disrupted, but we will check the original records, Seignior Donne. We always do, especially in your case. You've been known to follow the shadows, and that is where vanishments occur. The sisters are not pleased at un­explained disappearances."

  "I've had nothing to do with anything like that."

  "Not that has been proved. That is true. For now."

  Another warning. Two, actually.

  "I do appreciate your directness. Thank you." I smiled. I kept smiling until he was in his flitter and well on his way back to his Garda station.

  Then I walked back into the villa. Unexplained disap­pearances? I'd never vanished anyone. Caused a death or two, yes. Were there so many disappearances that the Garda was looking for someone to pin them on? Why me?

  Max, commission an independent lab to take samples from all the outer walls. Promise anything, but get them to authenticate the results and send a copy to the Garda. Three copies. One for our records. One to Officer Javerr, and one to Captain Shannon.

  Yes, sir. Max was programmed for SpecOps salutations, to me, and to those who respected them, and to the customs of others, insofar as the system could determine them.

  An analysis of the figures I'd copied was next. I couldn't exactly claim I'd stolen them. The "originals" were still in the registry, and were the city advocates or the Garda to charge me, I'd claim that I had nothing. I wouldn't by then. They'd look silly trying to claim that I'd breached their sys­tems. Besides, if I'd wanted to have paid an advocate three times my fee, I could have gotten most of what I'd lifted un­der the Open Records Act. The problem was that it would have taken close to a year, and the process would have alerted Legaar Eloi and given him a year to target me before I could even find anything.

  Less than a stan later, I had an answer... of sorts.

  I'd had to compare Eloi's financials to the major pubs and the overall trade and commerce stats, but it was clear enough that Legaar was funding some sort of major research effort. Compared to pure tech operations, Classic Research had a similar level of expenditures, but why did Eloi need a pure research budget at all? For an entertainment corpentity?

  Of course, no other source anywhere in the public do­main had any information whatsoever on Classic Research. I was going to have to get very creative. And I'd have to sur­vive while I was being creative.

  1O

  To believe without knowledge is to live without thought.

  The problem was that, creative as I needed to be, I was having trouble thinking of exactly who had information and who might be willing to tell me anything about Legaar Eloi. Those who were willing didn't know what I needed to discover. Those who knew weren't about to talk if they valued their own survival, except for Odilia, and I would be seeing her—and the opera—on Vieren.

  While I was wrestling with that, Max alerted me.

  Incoming from Myndanori Morgan.

  Accept.

  "For a straight-straight who operates out of his own villa, you're a most difficult man to reach." She smiled generously, with wide and full lips. "She" was a nominal term, since Myndanori was somatically and physically female and genetically male. I wouldn't have known that, except she'd been a client where I'd had to know such things. She wore a jacket and trousers, navy blue, with a cream blouse, severely cut. That didn't disguise a figure that was the best that credits could engineer and purchase. Her carrot red hair was bobbed.

  "I was originally trying to return your link," I pointed out. "You're the difficult one to pin down."

  "Oh? Have you ever tried?"

  I winced. Straight-straight, and a straight man to boot. "I'm returning your vid, returning mine, returning yours."

  "You remain particularly well-mannered." The friendly smile returned. "I'm having a
few friends over next Sabaten evening. Not this one, but next week. I was hoping you'd join us. Either by yourself or with a friend."

  "Most likely by myself."

  "You're no longer..." Even that was pressing, but Myn-danori usually did.

  "Rokujo?" I laughed. "I refused to give up the villa for a more splendid palace with four interconnected villas. It wouldn't have been mine, and it was outside Thurene."

  "You always have done things your way, Blaine."

  "What can I say? A week from Sabaten? What hour?"

  "Eight. I'm opposed to early."

  That I knew.

  "I also had a question for you."

  She raised her perfect eyebrows.

  "A Dr. Guillaume Richard Dyorr. You're in the medical field. What do you know about him?"

  Myndanori frowned. Her eyes glazed slightly, with the expression that came to some people when they linked to their systems.

  I waited.

  "His list of pubs and studies is amazing for a doctor that young. He's head of consciousness studies and therapy at the Institute. You've got to be good even to get on staff there. He's obviously better than good."

  "Do you know him?"

  "I'm in gender ID and reinforcement. We've probably never been in the same room. I'm a psych theoretician, not a practicing medical doctor."

  "I just wondered."

  "You never wonder. What's the problem?"

  "I've got word that he's a hidden samer who's proposed to a young woman—straight-straight. Family thinks he's not after her but her inheritance."

  Myndanori winced. "Nasty business."

  I understood what she meant. If it weren't true, it didn't help the doctor. If it were, it didn't help Marie Annette—or the Medical College of the Institute.

  "You think it's true?" she asked.

  "That's what I have to find out. And I need to find out without ruining people. Unless they deserve it."

  "You'd better keep the knighdy ideals in the shadows, dear man. They don't even cover expenses."

  "Who would you suggest I talk to?"

  "You could try Jaelysana Hurrtedo. Here's her code. She's an admin clerk for the Devantan Medservice Review Board. She knows the grime hidden in the deepest corners."

  "What about the stuff that's hidden in brilliant light?" I laughed. "Will she talk to me?"

  "You're charming enough that even a samer hardfem would talk. She might laugh, but she'd talk."

  "I love you, too."

  'Talk like that could get you in trouble, Blaine."

  She was right about that as well.

  "I'll link and tell her to expect you."

  "Thanks. And I will be at your place next Sabaten."

  "With all I've done for you, dear man, I would certainly hope so." Her smile held both good humor and restrained lechery. Sometimes, I wondered if I was hopelessly straight-straight, or just hopeless.

  I decided not to tackle more on the Elysium commission until I talked to Odilia.

  Over the next half stan, I read what looked to be the sim­plest of Dr. Dyorr's many short publications. If I under­stood it—and that was open to question—he was suggesting that human consciousness was the result of what I would have called sympathetic biological resonance with the quan­tum effects of the sub-brane interactions between dark en­ergy and solid matter. At least, I thought that was the point. The study didn't go anywhere near that far. It just noted the resonance correspondence.

  After I shook my head, I tried a vidlink to Jaelysana.

  She took it, but with no background. That meant it was her personal link, but she was at work. She was a broad-shouldered woman, with a wide forehead, and large blue eyes that looked innocent under butch-cut blond hair.

  "Seignior Donne. Myndanori said you'd link. You want to take me to cafe in a stan and a quarter?"

  "I'd be delighted. If you can tell me where you are."

  "Here's the map."

  It flared onto my recessed screen, and I saved it.

  "I'll meet you at Michaela's," she added.

  In the end, I took my own groundcar. The Medical Ser­vice Board was located off Bizet to the northwest of the Boutique. The area was a mixture of small restaurants and shops at street level, with various unnamed commercial es­tablishments above them. In practice, most of the upper-level space was consumed by systems, with a few handfuls of techs and infocessors, along with the directors and subdi-rectors who still had to meet and direct people. Some as­pects of civilization still didn't virtie well. They probably never would.

  The carpark was a long block from Michaela's. I still made it with ten minutes to spare.

  The decor of Michaela's was meant to replicate an an­cient old Earth cigarette factory, and there were bullfighting posters on the walls. Jaelysana already had a small table by the wall.

  "You're no Don Jose," were Jaelysana's first words to me.

  "I'd hope not. Like a lot of people, I'm trying to do a job." I used the pop-up holo menu to order an earlgrey. Jaelysana was already sipping a tall dark caf6 that blended cinnamon and chocolate and who knew what else.

  "Myndanori said you have some questions."

  'They're the delicate kind. I'm trying to find out whether there's reason for rumors about a well-known doctor. I don't want to spread rumors by asking, but if the rumors are true, someone else could be hurt."

  Jaelysana shook her head. "About half the docs in Thurene have rumors about them. Most aren't true."

  "These are more personal. What have you heard about a Dr. Guillaume Richard Dyorr?"

  "He's a fashion plate. In a restrained professional sense. Everyone respects him. He's never had a claim brought forward against him. He gets better results than anyone in function restoration."

  A serving girl slipped my earlgrey onto the small circu­lar table. The tannish crockery mug had two handles. I didn't want to speculate on what they might put in it that re­quired both hands.

  "He's very proper, then. Formal and slightly cool?"

  She shook her head. "Formal, but friendly. Not an arthro­pod at all."

  "Does he have many friends?" I sipped the tea. It was strong, black, and more bitter than I preferred.

  "From what I've heard... I haven't heard that much, you know ... he's friendly to everyone but not particularly close to anyone, except his fiancee."

  "That's Marie..." I let the name drop.

  "Dr. Tozzi. She's a surgical resident"

  That was interesting. Great-grandmother Tozzi hadn't mentioned that Marie Annette was already a doctor. As a resident, she was also a student of sorts, but most people would have noted she was a doctor. Noted with pride.

  "Is she good? As a surgeon?"

  "She can't be bad. They only take the best."

  "But it's hard to tell from outside when they're still resi­dents exactly how good?"

  She nodded.

  "Are there people who are jealous of Dr. Dyorr's success?"

  That brought a laugh. "When you've got academics and doctors in the same place, there's always jealousy. There's less with him. Some of the other doctors are jealous of Dr. Tozzi."

  "Women?"

  "No. The women don't seem to mind. It's some of the junior docs."

  "Any names?"

  She smiled. "That's not something I'd feel comfortable saying."

  "I understand."

  "The two most junior docs are in trauma surgery and endocrinology."

  Jaelysana didn't care for either. That was clear.

  "Is there anything else I should know?"

  "I need to get back to work." She eased herself and the backless chair away from the table. "Just.tell Myndanori she owes me."

  "So do I. Thank you."

  She stood. "I'll keep that in mind, Seignior Donne. Sometimes we all need a friend."

  I rose as well, nodded, and let her leave. Then I paid for both cafe and tea and headed back to the carpark.

  I needed to find a time and place where both doctors would be present
... and where I could observe them. I also needed to find out more about two junior docs.

  11

  In whose darkless streets light blazes, incandescent words drown phrases.

  Beyond the high windows, the muted lights of the Left Bank outlined the river, yet the tower sitting room was cramped, or so it seemed, after the airy lightness of Elysium and the open expansiveness of Gaiea beyond my white city of the golden light. Coming back to Thurene, or anywhere on De­vanta, was always hard, for there were too many narrow-minded aristos whose idea of greatness was anticipating the next fashion trend and sculpting themselves into it.

  Even the brilliant ones like Eleyna had succumbed in the end, and her daughter, who could have done so much, had become a mere doyenne of display, a manipulator of men, and a sycophant of the Sorores. The Institute had become ever more rigid and doctrinaire, so much so that even its brightest graduates were little more than semi-independent cydroids, good for little more than suggesting minor im­provements and writing enormous studies with involuted equations proving the ultimate anthropic principle—that we all lived in the best of all possible universes. Even as they toiled over such trash, they believed that they were being candid and not just providing a gloss upon the forbidden fruit of knowledge, which they had plated so heavily with words and studies that it was neither edible nor understand­able.

  I could offer back the garden, and yet no one could see beyond the Writ of Wrightsen, the almost-but-not-quite per­fect Theory of Everything. No one wanted to admit that the

  Sage of Sangloria had stubbed his toe on the hidden branes of the multiverse.

  The single sheet lay on the side table. I didn't need to read the hard-copy lines again. Those who needed such repetition were mentally and morally deficient, not to mention intellectually indolent.

  The Fox has been reincarnated. The Shadow Knight has been engaged. Remain on Devanta and use your abil­ities. You're welcome at Time's End, and that would put you closer to matters.

  Closer to matters? More like under Legaar's ever-constant scrutiny. Yet the offer was tempting, if only for the privacy and the greater ease of departing for Gaiea once what the Elois thought was a crisis had passed. What mattered if a broken and regened special operative might be investigat­ing? There was nothing to find, not anywhere that he could penetrate. That was just one of the beauties of it all. Even Legaar didn't understand, and he wouldn't, not until it was far, far, too late, and then the Frankans and the Assembly bu­reaucrats could blame each other. It might even be interesting to see whether hostilities got to the point where the Alliance and the Assembly discharged their energies in more than verbal virtuosity and insidious intrigue. Or if the Assembly forced a reformulation upon the Civitas Sorores.