That still left a couple of large questions. What was Elysium, and why was it so much of a threat? And if the sisters knew that it was, why couldn't they do anything? If they didn't, why couldn't they find out more?
Or was it all some sort of hidden commercial struggle, with Legaar trying to make whatever it was workable on a large scale before others found out? Did he have a deal to sell it to the Frankans?
But what was "it"?
It was as though there wasn't anything to discover. But how could that be?
I might also be facing a hard question myself. If... if I did discover hard evidence, then what? If die evidence got in the wrong hands, all Devanta could suffer. But whose hands were the wrong ones?
I shook my head. I was speculating on who would get what I hadn't found and never might. And I still had four other unresolved commissions, and some of those might end up paying more as well. The sisters didn't exacdy spend credits freely—not unless a lot was at stake. That thought didn't help my frame of mind, either.
Siendra's comment the night before had gotten me to thinking about the missing heiress. Why had Maureen left TFA when she had? Especially if she'd been doing well? But had she? Or had something else been going on?
Max... all info on TFA—Thurenean Fashion Alliance from eight years ago until the present. Check correlations with Maureen Gonne. Order chronologically, oldestjirst.
Within minutes, information piled up in the pending section of the system.
I began to sift through it There was nothing of interest for the first six and a half years, just media presentations, fashion commentary, economic projections. Of course, there were spreads on the new fashions and lots of in-depth holos trying to sell clothing. The first intriguing article appeared in Devantan Banker—the netsys industry journal—close to two years ago in what amounted to the rumors column. It was called "Spare Change." I read the tidbit carefully.
... Melaryn Daavidou is recovering from a near-fatal drowning accident incurred in a Pays du Sud cataract-rafting tour. Daavidou is the assistant comptroller of TFA, but he will take medical retirement to complete rehab...
If I read that correctly, Daavidou had suffered severe brain damage and would never be the same. I wondered if he'd been invited by Tony. I tried a search on Daavidou, but found nothing else about the accident or about his efforts at TFA.
I kept searching through the slag, searching for more that had been overlooked.
In Duem of 1350, a little less than two years ago, after Maureen had departed, a civil complaint had been filed against TFA, alleging unspecified "civil abuses." The complaint had been settled. Then in Quintem of 1350 the Civitas
Sorores had frozen all records at TFA and begun a criminal investigation of the deputy director of TFA and her immediate subordinates and staff. The deputy director—a Magdalena Portius—had vanished, and her assistant had been found wandering in the River Crescent, his intellect reduced and his memories vanished. TFA had been placed under compliance monitoring.
But none of the stories or information revealed the nature of TFA's offenses. I tried the public regulatory record as well. The criminal and civil orders against TFA were on file, and still in effect, but there were no details except the notation that TFA was operating under a "personal civil rights" compliance plan.
"Civil abuses" suggested some form of sexual predation, but that was only a guess. The "accident" that befell the assistant comptroller and the vanishment of the deputy director suggested links through Tony diVeau to Legaar Eloi. Again... all guesses.
But... all that might well explain why Stella Strong/ Maureen Gonne did not want to claim her inheritance. If she knew more about the TFA scandal... and if Legaar Eloi were indeed involved, she might feel that no inheritance was worth that kind of risk.
Yet, once more, I really had no proof. I wasn't up to chasing people. Not physically. Not yet. I did make a hard copy of the names of the TFA top personnel and their staff assistants. Then I had Max run dossiers and seek personal images. If I had to chase people, it would have to wait until Lunen.
I wondered what sort of search I could run on Terrie McGerrie. I couldn't think of one.
So I went down and did a modified workout, one that took into account the sad state of my arm.
After cleaning up and dressing for the gathering at Myndanori's, I returned to the study.
I vidlinked to Krij. She wasn't there.
I tried Siendra. Neither was she, but I left a brief message.
"Thank you for last night. I appreciated the cooking and the company more than I can say." I did, too. That might have been because those kinds of words came hard, except in a professional sense. I didn't want to be professional with Krij and Siendra.
I turned and perused the shelves. I settled on a classic— Culture Crash. The Exton Land book ranked up there with The Prince and The Republic, although it had been written half a millennium after Machiavelli's masterpiece. Land had gotten more than a few things right in foreshadowing the fall of Old Earth and the Diaspora. But then, the truths of history are always there for those who will look. Most people can't bear to.
No one vidlinked. No one that I wanted to talk to or had to, and I enjoyed rereading the book.
At a litde after seven, I set Culture Crash aside and headed down to the garage. From there I drove myself.
Myndanori lived in the Heights, the district just to the north of the Narrows. I had to use the communal visiting carpark and walk a good two hundred meters. Her dwelling was a narrow glass-fronted structure that rose three stories above the faux cobblestones. It towered above the brick bungalows on each side. That was somehow fitting.
Even more fitting was the red-smoky half-disk of Berg-erac almost directiy above the dwelling as Iwalked up the rusty brick steps.
Before I reached the door, it opened. An angular man with eyes far older than the youthful figure he inhabited stood there. "You must be the mysterious Blaine Donne." He stepped back.
"I'm hardly mysterious." I entered the foyer. Loud voices reverberated from the sitting room beyond.
"Any straight-straight that Myndanori invites is mysterious. I'mTyresias."
'Throbbing between two lives, no doubt?"
"For that, you ought to be the hanged man." Tyresias laughed good-naturedly. "Not the shadow knight."
"They don't hang people in Thurene. They just vanish."
"Blaine!" Myndanori emerged from the square arch into the sitting room on the far side of the foyer. She hurried across the room and flung her arms around me. "We must get you a drink. Tell me what naughty things you've been up to."
Her arm entwined with mine. My left. The gesture was possessive only in proclaiming me as a trophy of sorts. Her grasp was gentle enough to preclude any additional pain.
"Your arm is stiff."
"There's a nanocast on it. I had an accident."
"That sounds naughty enough. How did it happen? Did you hurt anyone else?"
"Let's just say that they paid for it," I replied as I accompanied her back to the small study. There an array of wines was set out.
"Besides the good doctor that you know about, I'm chasing an elusive heiress and a reclusive dramaturge. Neither seems to want to be found. There are millions of credits involved with the heiress." I studied the vintages and picked the Sauvignon Thierry. I poured half a glass. That would be more than enough.
'Tell me about the heiress. She couldn't be me, could she?"
"You're better-looking and doubdess more personable. Her name is Maureen Gonne or Stella Strong. She used to be a media linkster at Thurenean Fashion Alliance until several years ago. Then she vanished."
"TFA? There was a nasty little scandal there several years back. I don't remember all of it, but a sister of one of the models charged that she—the model, that is—had been conditioned to perform unspeakable acts and to enjoy it. The model vanished, and the sister fled to someplace like Moraviana. The Civitas Sorores did something, an
d I never heard another word."
"I think Legaar Eloi was involved. A deputy director also vanished."
"The Elois ..." Myndanori shuddered.
"Do you know them?"
"Most thankfully, I do not. Those I know who have met them insist that both are sadistic straights—puritanically conventional and privately hedonistic, without a single quark of compassion."
That sounded about right. I took a small sip of wine. "The heiress case is bizarre. You'd think someone would want to collect millions."
"I would." Myndanori laughed, tossing her head and flipping the short carrot red locks. They immediately settled back into fauldess place. "Then I could really enjoy life."
"You already do."
"You could have, too, Blaine. Rokujo would have made an honest man out of you in a moment, taken you right out of the shadows."
"I need the shadows."
"Maybe this heiress does, too. Why does your client want her found? Usually, other potential heirs don't want people to come forward."
"I probably should have asked that question directiy, but the client implied that she preferred the heiress get her share rather than having it go to the other potential heirs."
"And you believed her? You're getting soft, Blaine."
I'd told myself that earlier. "You may be right." I took another small sip of the Sauvignon Thierry. It didn't taste as good as it had the night before. "I've returned your vidlink..."
'This way..." She led me through the next door and closed it. We stood in an even smaller room—an actual library. "Everyone will think the worst."
"What—"
She gave me a passionate and very intimate hug before disengaging herself. "That, dear man, is part of my payment"
If that had been part, I wasn't sure I was ready for the remainder.
"There's not much there, and no one wants to say much."
"I'd figured that"
"But... one former lover of Darlya Rettek did let something slip. Oh, you were right about Darlya, but you have good instincts about women."
That was news to me.
"She is a samer, and ... until recendy, she had been having a very quiet... shall we say closeness... with Dr. Tozzi." I couldn't help but nod.
"There's no proof other than what a few people have said," Myndanori went on, "but knowing you ..."
"Your confidence in me is boundless."
"You'll manage. Now ... back to the party ... and you can't sneak off for a while."
I inclined my head. "I wouldn't think of it."
She led the way back to the sitting room.
She didn't introduce me. Tyresias had already spread the word. That was the way it worked. Two or three of die samer males looked in my direction, then away, more to confirm that I was straight-straight than to check me out.
Myndanori stopped next to a petite brunette whose long hair was swirled up into an elaborately coiled French braid. It emphasized her long, elegant neck. "Shanyta, you'd said you wanted to meet Blaine." Myndanori inclined her head in a gesture I couldn't interpret. Her eyes went back to me. "Let me know if you need anything."
I had to admit that Myndanori cut a fine figure. I knew that she meant what she said. I also knew that anything beyond continuing our past client-professional relationship would be trouble. The moment in the private library had emphasized that.
"Blaine Donne..." Shanyta's voice was warm and husky. I had the feeling she was a samer. "How long do you think the Garda will keep letting you walk the shadows?"
I wasn't about to answer that. Besides, I didn't precisely walk them. Occasionally, I used them to assist someone.
"Myndanori said that you were a straight-straight who talked like a straight-samer and acted like a hidden samer."
Whatever that meant. I shrugged. "We all do what we must. Sometimes, we even do what's right."
"What is right?" Shanyta's voice was huskily direct, without the game-playing of earlier words.
"If we knew that before we acted, life would be a lot easier. And a lot messier." The most deadly people were those who knew what was right. Especially for everyone else.
My words got a laugh. "I see what Myndanori meant"
I wasn't about to pursue that. "What are your interests?"
"A polite way of asking whether I work or lounge. I work. I'm a talent coordinator for RealNet"
"That makes for a long week. Most people believe they have more talent than they do."
Shanyta nodded.
"You meet a few people." I paused. "Have you ever run across Terrie McGerrie or Carey Douglass?"
"The dramaturges?" Shanyta shook her head. "I like McGerrie more than Douglass." She offered a languid smile that was also predatory. "If what she writes is any reflection, I can see why you'd be interested."
I couldn't help frowning. "Oh?"
"Cool and reserved on the outside, white-hot within. Straight-straight female, I'd guess, too."
I laughed, ruefully. "I hadn't thought that. I'm trying to locate her for a client." I was clearly missing something about Terrie McGerrie, because Shanyta was a samer and could see something I hadn't. But then, I'd always had trouble reading beyond people's reserves, despite what Myndanori had said. Fortunately, as I'd discovered in my line of work, very few people were really reserved. They only thought they were.
"Best of fortune." With a polite smile, Shanyta slipped away.
I wandered from group to group. There were only four. No one had heard of either Stella Strong/Maureen Gonne or knew Terrie McGerrie/Carey Douglass as more than names. I got nothing new on Dyorr, either. That in itself tended to confirm my feelings.
A good two stans had passed, and I'd nursed half a glass of the Sauvignon Thierry through the whole time. There was only about one sip left That suggested it was time to leave.
A loud voice caught my attention.
"Patrice thinks that the libertarian losswits would be happy to go through reformulation to get rid of the sisters." That statement was delivered by a pseudo-Apollo who had ap-parendy just arrived. I hadn't seen him before, anyway.
"They may be losswits," replied Alorcan, a thin man, handsome in a reptilian way that proclaimed his mixed gender, "but they do have a point."
The distaste and disgust must have shown on my face.
"You disagree, Seignior Donne?" Alorcan delivered the "seignior" in a tone close to derogatory.
"No. I believe that people can be that stupid. Especially people who haven't experienced a reformulation. They haven't seen families disrupted and parents whose reconditioning has stripped them of all memory of family or children. They haven't seen the sudden poverty and the hunger created when political instability translates into profiteering and when food costs more than the poorest can afford. They haven't seen the riots and the bodies."
"And I suppose you have?"
"I'm a former special operative. I've seen it twice. I don't want to see it again. Especially not here." Alorcan edged back.
The pseudo-Apollo beamed. "Surely, you won't argue that the sisters aren't repressive."
I laughed. Harshly. "All functional governments are repressive. By nature, government has to be repressive. It's only a question of who's repressed. If a government represses the anarchists, the criminal element, and would-be looters, we believe it's a good government. Unless we're among the repressed. If it represses the ability of people to express their verbal opinions, if it represses open economic competition and grants favors to those with ties to government, we claim it's bad government. Repression isn't the question. Whom government represses is."
"Any repression is bad..."
I just inclined my head in dismissal and walked back to the study, where I placed the empty glass on the sideboard.
Myndanori appeared. "You do have a way of getting the last word, dear man."
"It's only the last because I couldn't think of any more."
"You were most eloquent, Blaine," offered Myndanori with
a cheerful laugh, tossing her head. "It's a pity you're not transgender-attracted."
"I'm not geneticized or conditioned that way, but if I were, you'd be the first person I'd look up."
"You're always gallant. It's too bad the straight-straight females don't appreciate it."
"I probably don't look in the right places." I smiled. "I apologize for my last remarks. You were kind to invite me, and I do appreciate your thoughtfulness. I especially appreciate the information."
"Oh ... you'll have Apollon and Alorcan arguing for stans. They love to argue. It will be great fun."
She escorted me to the door and kissed me on the cheek before I left. It wasn't quite a sisterly kiss.
I stepped out into a cold damp wind. Ragged streamers of clouds obscured Bergerac. The red moon was low in the western sky, barely visible above the roofs of the houses of the Heights. Would that I could stand in the moon and call it good, sleep by night, and forget by day, but that would not be things as they are.
The drive back to the villa seemed longer than the drive out. Longer and lonelier.
35
Total direct honesty will destroy any human civilization as surely as will unspeakable vileness. It will also destroy all too many personal relationships.
After returning from Myndanori's gathering on Sabaten evening, I ended up working late because I had to develop two items for the luncheon the next day with the Tozzis and Dr. Dyorr. One was my approach to the principessa, and the other was the more formal media/development plan for Dr. Dyorr's research.
Then I slept late on Domen, almost to midmorning, when I woke with a start. I hadn't realized how tired I was until I let down a bit. Just a bit. I still went through a light workout before getting cleaned up, rehearsing my approach to the principessa the whole time.
I had engaged a fully armored private limousine for the trip to the palacio of Seldara Tozzi. This seemed wise, given my less-than-optimal physical condition. The trip to her palacio was uneventful, except we did pass what looked to be a kite festival in the Pare du Roi. I'd always wondered why it wasn't the Pare de la Reine. The archives had no answers to that question, but then, names are often a sop to the masculine ego.
The Elysium Commission Page 25