The Ecologic Envoy

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  He shifted his weight enough to turn his body. Three quarters of a turn and ten levels later, he spotted the woman, rising in the slower outer lane. She was now wearing a light blue cloak, but the squarish face and dark severe haircut were the same. She had been the driver of the tunnel cab that had dropped him off outside the concourse. “Don’t they ever give up?”

  Before he finished mumbling the question, he realized the stupidity of it. And the irony. Here he was, trying to get the Empire on edge, and already they were harassing him, trying to get him on edge.

  One thing was becoming clearer and clearer. There were more players and higher stakes than Accord had anticipated. When he had a moment, if he ever had one again, that should be conveyed to the Prime.

  For the time being, he had another problem. First, was whatever faction of the Empire trailing him going to be content with merely keeping tabs on him, or would they attempt another put-away action? Second, was the driver an attempt to divert his attention from a more immediate and closer danger?

  He shifted his weight again, leaning to let himself slide into the highest speed central lane. Shifting lanes in mid-level was frowned upon but not forbidden.

  With half an eye on the well-built woman driver, he began to study the others in the shaft both above and below him. A front tail was certainly possible.

  Only a thin young man who was squirming into the high speed lane had showed any possible reaction to Nathaniel’s shift. As the Ecolitan passed the fiftieth level, he jumped onto the high speed exit stage and trotted straight down the walkway toward the drop shaft on the other side.

  Coming up on the drop side, he studied the drop lane, then jumped to the top of the side barrier, rather than walking all the way around to the entry point, and took a running dive down through the traffic.

  “Clang! Clang! Danger! Danger! Unauthorized entry!” screeched the automatic warning devices, slowing the drop shaft speed momentarily.

  Nathaniel let his momentum carry him to the far side of the shaft, reaching the exit stage and an upright position and the forty-first level all at the same time. He saw neither the woman nor the nervous man. The public fresher on the corridor to the official servarium served several purposes—letting him relieve himself, allowing him to catch his breath, and affording him some privacy while donning a thin gold film cloak to reduce the impact of his diplomatic blacks.

  Before leaving the fresher stall, he took from his inside-thigh pouch a small wooden tube, a smaller version of the dart gun he had used earlier but with the same type of dissolving needle darts that rendered the victim delirious within seconds and which dissolved within minutes.

  The drug wore off within two or three hours but left the victims with scrambled memories and intermittent headaches for days.

  If those tailing him were as persistent as he suspected, at least one would be waiting somewhere.

  Both were—right outside the servarium and seemingly oblivious to each Other.

  The woman stood by the main entrance, visibly consulting her timestrap and pocket calendar as if to call attention to the fact that her friend, contact, or lover had been delayed.

  The thin and nervous man, now wearing a rust cloak, sat on a public bench several meters away reading a faxtab. Neither had noticed him.

  Since the servarium was close to the lift shaft, the corridor was wide and foot traffic frequent—perhaps several people moving past the entrance every few seconds—but the spaciousness of the ten-meter width and the high ceilings reduced the visual impact of the numbers.

  Nathaniel didn’t hesitate. If the Empire wanted to play hardblast, he’d oblige them. Placing his locked datacase against the corridor wall, he slipped the tranquilizer tube, good for two shots, one from each end, just so he could trigger it without the action being obvious to others.

  The way the woman was positioned, the Ecolitan should be able to get within a meter or so before she would be aware of him.

  She saw him in the wide-angled mirror attached to the calendar and twisted it in an effort to line up the long axis of the calendar toward him.

  Nathaniel dropped, triggering the tube with the facility of long practice.

  The needle caught her in the neck and began to dissolve. At the same time, he was inside her guard and knocked aside the pocket calendar and whatever weapon it concealed.

  “You…” she muttered, as she began to shudder. “Told me you were slick… devils! Get the devils!” Her voice mounted to a shriek.

  She began to convulse. Nathaniel knew the muscular contractions were not exactly convulsions, but anyone not versed in the depths of Coordinate military medicine would not catch the differences soon.

  Three or four passersby immediately gathered. A chime in the corridor began ringing.

  Nathaniel had already left the woman and had covered half the distance to the bench and to the thin man.

  The nervous Imperial agent was better than the woman or took advantage of the slight warning he had. The glint of metal as the angle of the faxtab held by the sitting man shifted indicated he held something ready. Nathaniel stretched his arm toward the man, triggering the tube from three meters. On the range his accuracy was only about eighty percent. Here he needed one hundred percent.

  The Imperial twitched as the needle whistled by his ear, losing his concentration momentarily. Long enough for Nathaniel to cover the last meter at full dash and knock aside the short barreled weapon with his right hand as it discharged. The Ecolitan felt the surge of nerve pain in his right shoulder but clamped down on his reactions.

  Jabbing his left hand with force just short of crushing the larnyx, he silenced the bench sitter, who was trying to get to his feet. Despite the waves of pain radiating from his shoulder, he snapped three fingers of the man’s right hand in forcing him to drop the nerve tangler.

  A knee to the groin left the Imperial agent retching on the ground. After taking only seconds to snap another needle into the tube, Nathaniel fired, it into the man’s neck while bending down as if to help the poor unfortunate.

  As the emergency medical unit, a low-slung silent cart, pulled up, he kicked the tangler under the bench and slid the faxtab over it. “Here! Here!” he called. A health officer and a medtech appeared. “What happened?”

  “I was walking up to get something to eat. This man started yelling. He threw down what he was reading, got sick, and went into convulsions.”

  “May I have your name, citizen?” The new voice belonged to an Imperial Monitor, otherwise known as the Emperor’s Police, who was dressed in a silver tunic with gold piping and brandished a computab, all with the bored look of all police in all eras.

  “Not a citizen am I, but a visitor, and quite surprised, officer. I have an appointment up-level later, but I wanted to eat. This man goes crazy. Then somebody behind me yells and screams. I just don’t understand. Now you want to know who I am. He’s the one who started this business. “

  “I understand that, sir. But could I please have your name for the record? In case we need witnesses.”

  “Of course. Nathaniel Whaler.”

  “Whaler?”

  “W-H-A-L-E R.”

  “I. D. number?”

  “Don’t have one. Diplomatic number.” Nathaniel pulled out the diplomatic “A-C-O-3.”

  “Very sorry to bother you. Lord Whaler. Can we call you if we have further questions?”

  “Certainly. I’ll be back at the Legation after 1500.” By the time the few questions had been answered, the two Imperial agents, if that had indeed been their calling, had been carted off in small and silent corridor buggies.

  Lucidly, his datacase was where he had left it, apparently untouched.

  Getting into the servarium wasn’t nearly so hard as getting there had been. “Do you allow diplomatic credentials?”

  “Of course, sir. Of course.”

  Most of the clientele seemed to be mid-level junior bureaucrats. Two women to every man. Servarium was a fancy name for self-service
off a compuchef, but the odds were that his food at least wouldn’t ambush him.

  Settling on an elaborate omelet and liftea, he gave the machine his credit card, took it back, and made a hornetline for a small corner table where he couldn’t be approached from behind.

  “You’re getting paranoid again,” he said to himself. After a minute, he decided he needed to answer himself. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t all out to get you.”

  He wasn’t sure he believed himself, but he dug into the omelet anyway, which seemed half real, half synthetic, but filling all the same, and polished it off.

  The lemony taste of the liftea relaxed him fractionally, just enough to lower his pain threshold and bring the throbbing in his shoulder back to his attention. He let his fingers run over the shoulder, but there was no exterior soreness, and the nerve twinges would probably pass within a few hours. So he hoped. Two shots to his right arm and shoulder area in a matter of days wasn’t helpful.

  If the nerve tangler had hit him full in the chest at that power, he’d have been the one carted off, with an emergency sheet over his face and the diagnosis of coronary arrest.

  Checking his other shoulder and the rest of his blacks, he’d noticed a black bump on the fabric behind his upper arm almost impossible to see. He recognized the snooper instantly.

  When had anyone touched him? Not Courtney. She’d kept her distance. The Imperial crowds were sparse and avoided each other. No one had come within body lengths.

  Charles! The friendly receptionist had brushed him when he had left Courtney’s office.

  That was how he’d been tracked. The only question was for whom Charles worked.

  He resisted the impulse to crush the bug on the spot. Instead, pretending to adjust his cloak, he worked it free and slipped it onto a scrap of plastic.

  He studied the others eating in the servarium, listening while he looked, finally zeroing in on an obnoxious-sounding man who was complaining to his tablemate, another man, about the unvarnished ambition of his boss, a woman.

  Nathaniel headed from his table toward the exit. Stumbling slightly as he passed the complainer and banging the datacase against the table, he brushed against the man and left the snoop affixed on his shoulder.

  The stumble had gained him a momentary dirty look, but so intent was the man that he scarcely let up on his tirade. The switch would only deflect things for a few minutes, and he’d have to be even more on guard from now on. Outside the servarium, in the same relative positions as the previous team, were another man and woman, both consulting pocket “calendars” which presumably indicated that Nathaniel was still inside. Neither reacted as he passed.

  Checking as he went, he could find no one tailing him as he took the lift shaft to the one hundred fourth level and to the office of Special Assistant Ku-Smythe.

  The exit stage time readout indicated 1410 when he walked off and toward the directory. Marcella’s office was down the branch corridor to the right.

  Before he got close to her office, he ran into a security gate and a console with maroon clad guards sporting both blasters and stunners. “Your business, citizen?”

  “I’m not a citizen,” He drew back the cloak to reveal his diplomatic blacks.

  “Your business?” repeated the woman, not knowing or caring what the uniform meant.

  “Nathaniel Whaler, Envoy of Accord. Fourteen-thirty appointment with Ms. Ku-Smythe.”

  “Your I.D.” The Ecolitan handed it over. “One moment, Lord Whaler.” The guard tapped several keys on the console screen. She seemed startled at the result. “You’re expected!”

  “I knew that before you asked,” he said flatly, knowing he was being snide, petty, and nasty, but tired of all the potshots, literal and verbal. “Room, 104 A-6?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  The gate opened. Hoisting his datacase, he went through. The gate buzzed loudly. “Weapons, sir?”

  “Just a stunner.” He fished it out of his pouch and handed it to the guard. “You can pick it up on the way out.” Ten to one, by the time he left it would have been rebuilt with a complete snoop and trace system inside. He decided to “forget” to pick up the stunner. He also wished he could get rid of the datacase—the damned thing was always getting in the way. He was used to having both hands free. Room 104 A-6 was a small, functional reception area with two maroon pilot chairs, a table, indirect lighting, and a receptionist.

  For the first time, it seemed, the receptionist was a woman, small, coming to his shoulder, with long black hair and brown eyes, olive skin, dressed in a maroon and cream tunic with matching maroon trousers. “Lord Whaler?”

  “The same.”

  “You are early, but Ms. Ku-Smythe will be with you shortly. Please have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?”

  “No… but do you have the latest faxtab?”

  “Standard, Ministry, or Court?”

  “What’s the difference between Ministry and Court?”

  “Not much. They have the same columns and gossip.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “The Privy Council reads the Ministry edition.”

  “And the Court edition is mainly for socialites and appearances?”

  The receptionist smiled, one of the first genuine smiles the Ecolitan had seen since he’d arrived in New Augusta… except perhaps for Sylvia. “I’ll take the Ministry edition.” She tapped several studs on her console, and with a series of buzzes, three pages burped forth, which she delivered to Nathaniel. “There you are, Lord Whaler.” About half the faxtab consisted of factual briefs a paragraph or two long in relatively simple Panglais. Fifth Fleet dispatched to Sector Eight in support of the Sector Governor on Byron. Would Senator Rysler retire and turn over his Agriculture Committee to Ngnoma? Failure of the synde bean crop on Ferne II and the need for Imperial aid. Possible breakdown of the Parthanian Cloud talks. Need for tax reform more urgent and might appear on the Emperor’s Legislative Calendar for the new Senate. Repeal of the sex determination ban to be brought up again by the pro-choice faction.

  Nathaniel skipped to the “personality” section or “Scandalous Sam.”

  Nothing mentioned about Accord or one Envoy Whaler. That was a relief after such bits as: “… should we tell you which Assistant Deputy Minister, after being seduced by his luscious receptionist (what a man!), asked his contract-mate for a dissolution?” Or “…it’s rumored that the coronary arrest suffered by the Delegate from Greater Srik Nord wasn’t.”

  “Lord Whaler?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Ku-Smythe will see you now. Through the portal on the left.”

  He folded the faxtab, laid it on the table, slipped to his feet, picked up his datacase, and strode through the left portal.

  The office, with cream wall hangings and a sweeping panoramic window, was three times the size of either his own office as Envoy or that of Courtney Corwin-Smathers.

  Marcella was attired in a formal cream tunic and matching trousers, with a set of gold Commerce pins on her collars. A single maroon ring circled each tunic cuff. Her hair was upswept, severe, and she stood behind her wrap around console, formally, not advancing to meet him.

  The console, at the far end of the office, allowed Marcella to survey both entry portals and the window. He bowed and could feel the portal shut behind him. “Greetings again, Nathaniel.”

  “Greetings to you, Marcella.”

  She gestured to the padded antique leather wing chair across from her console. He wondered at the real age of the chair with the new maroon leather, but sat down with the datacase at his feet.

  “How’s the business of Commerce with the Special Assistant?”

  “As well as can be expected. What about you?” He hesitated. Should he tell Marcella anything? He let his face show some indecision. “Not terribly well received somewhere, is that it?”

  “More complicated than that. I’m not sure where to begin, a
nd beginning at the beginning would take much time.”

  He pulled at his chin. “This business is getting more involved than I’d anticipated, and did I not think I would have any illusions about the degree of difficulty.”

  Marcella sat back in the swivel, waiting, seemingly ready to let him take his time to get to the point. He doubted she had that much patience. But she was capable and a good actress to boot.

  “Yesterday, Courtney Corwin-Smathers suggested I come by today to discuss Senator Helmsworth’s interests in trade negotiations. I arrived at the appointed time, was warmly greeted, explained our interests in arriving at a favorable settlement without antagonizing any of the parties involved, and left her a copy of our preliminary proposal.”

  He thought Marcella’s eyes narrowed slightly, but went on.

  “Rather politely, and oh-so-pointedly, Ms. Corwin-Smathers suggested that while I certainly could let the Ministry of Commerce see such a proposal, I would be well advised to put my faith in the Senator.”

  “Did she put it exactly that way?” Marcella leaned forward in her swivel, brushing a strand of sandy hair back over her ear.

  Nathaniel chuckled. “Are you serious? Let me see if I can recapture the essence of the conversation. I am not much on innuendos, you know, but try I will.” He composed his face into a stern mask. “I do wish you luck with your contacts… we’re regarded as poor innocent bystanders… and Commerce could certainly ratify your agreement if that is really what you want… Ms. Ku-Smythe would surely be pleased not to deal with other influences …”

  “She mentioned my name?”

  “As I recall.”

  “Did you say you were coming to see me?”

  “No. I made a point of being vague about my appointments, but she seemed to know I had an appointment with you. And that leads on to the next thing, which was even stranger.”

  “Stranger?”

  “I took a tunnel cab over here from the Senate Office Tower and was dumped out in the tunnel outside the concourse—”

  “Outside the concourse?”