“You should water your cukes more often,” Anya remarked wryly, nodding at the dead plant. It seemed odd to Anya that O’Bygne or someone was growing vegetables in the lab, but she and her staff were known to be a bit oddball. “Are these artifacts the Marines brought back from Atlas?”
“Yes they are, and no, lack of water had nothing to do with that cucumber plant’s untimely and lamented demise. I have the answer in here to what Lavager was up to in those labs of his.” She paused and looked frankly at Anya, who nodded and waited patiently for the scientist to announce what she’d discovered.
“Well?” Anya asked at last.
“Let me show you something,” O’Bygne flicked on a 2-D viewer. “These are images the Marines took during their raid on the Cabbage Patch. These are shots one of them took inside a building they concluded was not being used to develop weapons components, so they left it alone. Look.”
All Anya could see were huge vats. “Yes. Well? What’s in those vats?”
“Those are fertilizer vats, Annie. Everything the Marines brought back from Atlas, even the uniforms they wore on the reconnaissance and raid, were shipped here for analysis. Often in weapons labs chemicals get into the environment and by subjecting impregnated clothing to microscopic examination we can tell what kind of explosives are being manufactured in them. We even collected the soil and dirt on their boots and analyzed that. You will be surprised at what we found.” She nodded at the cucumber plants.
“Come over here.”
O’Bygne guided Anya to the table where the two plants, one drooping, the other flourshing, sat in their pots. O’Bygne lifted a petri dish and shook it. Inside was dirt. “This is soil that came from the building with all the vats in it. We’ve analyzed it carefully. Would you like to guess what it contains?” Anya shook her head. “It contains refined plant nutrients like boron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, a whole array of nutrients and,” here she paused, “a catalyst we haven’t yet been able to identify, probably because it’s an artificial agent developed in Lavager’s Cabbage Patch. Ah, what an appropriate name!” She opened another dish and took out a seed. “This is an ordinary cucumber seed, Cucumis sativus . This particular seed is of the gherkin variety. They usually grow to only two to seven centimeters in length. Remember that. Those two plants came from seeds like this one. One is dead, the other thriving. Do you know how long it took us to grow those plants, Annie?”
Anya shook her head. “I’d guess weeks, but I know you haven’t had the seeds here but what, only a few days?”
“Now you’re catching on! They were both planted forty-eight hours ago.”
“What!”
O’Bygne nodded. “Forty-eight hours ago, dearie. We took only a pinch of this soil from the boots, put it in the big pots, added a little water, and voilà! Take a look at the live one. Go on, examine the leaves, pick up one of the cucumbers.”
Cautiously Anya bent and took hold of a cucumber and, with some effort, she detached it from its runner. It was hard and solid to the touch but blotched, as were the leaves and the stems. But it was about sixty centimeters in length! “My God, it weighs at least a kilo!” she exclaimed. “What is happening here, Bloggie?”
“Coffee?” O’Bygne asked, offering her a cup and pouring hot kaff out of a beaker. “Sip some of this coffee. That plant is already dying. See the wilt? By the end of the day it’ll be as shriveled up as number one over there.” O’Bgyne grinned. “Dearie, your old buddy, Lavager, he’s not building a weapon, he’s developing a miracle fertilizer. Either he hasn’t yet figured out how to stabilize the growth process, or we just haven’t found out what it is but, Anya, if he has found out, that fertilizer will totally revolutionize agriculture on every world in the Confederation. If those plants were regular cucumbers, not gherkins, the cukes would be two meters long.”
“My God,” Anya whispered, setting her coffee cup down gently. “Cucumbers sixty centimeters long?
Why—”
“The fertilizer in that petri dish could grow tomatoes as big as a house.” She finished her coffee and poured more into Anya’s cup.
“Food for everyone in Human Space! Instant crops! Lavager is—”
“An agricultural genius, Annie. The old man just wants to be a farmer. But there’s a downside.”
O’Bygne held up a forefinger. She changed the images on the viewscreen. “Do you know what that little sucker is?”
Anya stared at the image on the screen. “Some kind of microscopic germ?”
“Bacillus postii, Annie. It’s been around for ages. It’s a form of bacterial wilt. At least that’s what it was. We’re not sure if this is a mutated variety or not. We sent a sample to Dakota University’s agronomy lab and should have a report in a few days. But this bacterium is deadly when it comes to cucumbers. No, no, it’s been safely isolated so it had nothing to do with what you just saw. Those plants died of ‘old age,’ I guess. But do you know where this little devil on the screen here came from?”
Anya shook her head.
“Off the Marines’ uniforms. Bacillus postii is not native to Atlas. The Marines went in clandestinely. Get the picture?”
“Oh, Allah’s pointed teeth!” Anya wailed. “They couldn’t have been sanitized! Atlas has a strict decontamination procedure. They brought this bacterium in with them.”
“Yes. Have you seen the Board of Trade reports lately? There was a sudden dip in Atlas’s crop exports yesterday. It’ll get worse, much worse before they figure out what hit them.”
“Does the Director know any of this?” Anya’s voice had gone tight and slightly high-pitched.
“Sure. We filed a full report. He has all the data.”
“Can you do me a really big favor? Can you download this data onto a crystal for me? I have the necessary need-to-know.”
O’Bygne waved a hand. “Don’t pull that crap with me, dearie. We’ve been friends too long. You bet your sweet ass you can have the data.”
R-76 Quadrant Desk, CIO Headquarters
Back in her cubicle Anya Smiler rested her head in her hands. She felt like crying. She had just checked the outgoing messages, and so far Adams had not reported O’Bygne’s findings to anyone. Would he?
Well, that was the question. What advantage would there be to withhold something like this? Anya thought she knew.
It was then she was summoned to the Director’s office. Office of the Director, Central Intelligence Organization Anya Smiler stood hesitantly in the middle of the Director’s inner sanctum, a nervous smile on her face, and after the briefest hesitation, gave his proffered hand a perfunctory squeeze. J. Murchison Adams beamed beatifically at the young woman. “Please, have a seat, Anya. My, my, my, we haven’t had a chat in a long time,” he said as he guided her to the coffee table arrangement where he entertained visitors in a relaxed atmosphere.
They took seats in ortho-sofa armchairs opposite each other. Anya had never sat in one of the things before. They were too expensive for her. Besides, she’d heard too many stories of them malfunctioning, particularly the one about the senator who’d been assassinated when someone rigged her chair to crush her to death. Almost as if he read her mind, Adams grinned and said, “Wonderful things, aren’t they?”
He adjusted his position and moved his chair closer to Anya, to where their knees almost touched.
“Perfectly safe, these conveniences,” he smiled. “Anya, excuse me, but some caviar?” He gestured at a sideboard containing crackers and cloacaian caviar. Anya shook her head. “When was the last time we had a talk, my dear?”
“Uh, we never really have, sir.” Anya felt faintly uneasy, being this close to Adams, whom she’d never really liked but had grown to hate. The director was too thin for one thing and his face too narrow; to Anya, he always looked as if he were hunting for something to eat. When he grinned at her, as he was doing now continuously, showing his long, yellow teeth, she had the uncomfortable impression he was regarding her as—prey. She longed for that highlighter
she’d just seen being tested in the lab. She imagined what it would be like to direct a laser beam into Adams’s Adam’s apple, watching him die screaming, blood spurting from his ruptured aortas. Oh, it would be so nice!
“Well, more’s the pity, my dear. Valued employees such as yourself, Anya, deserve more attention.” He waved a finger, as if to forestall contradiction. “Yes, ‘valued employee,’ Anya, that’s you! I know a lot about you, my dear! You are a top-notch analyst! That is why I personally—personally, Anya—selected you to replace old Whatsisname in R-76. You’re on your way up now, my girl!” He beamed.
“Thank you, sir—”
Adams held up a hand. “You are disappointed at the transfer, I know. What professional wouldn’t be?
You know your sector, you’ve spent time on one of the worlds there, you are experienced in field work, wonderful combination of talent and practical knowledge, Anya. But I am thinking of bigger things, Anya.”
“Sir—?”
“I am thinking of the future of the Confederation Intelligence Organization, Anya. Oh,” he shrugged,
“Atlases come and they go; political and military crises boil up all the time everywhere in Human Space. Dealing with such things is the price we pay as professional servants of the Confederation, Anya! But the crisis of the moment passes and we move on. My job is to see that we all remain sharp and engaged and that I have the best possible people in the right positions to deal with things.” He leaned close and placed a hand on her knee. The hand was cold.
“Sir, I appreciate that you took the time out of your busy schedule to see me. But—”
“Never too busy for one of my best analysts, Anya!” His hand remained on her knee.
“—but I would like to ask to be sent back to the Atlas desk, sir—”
Adams leaned back in his chair. As soon as he removed his hand from her knee, Anya let out her breath. He tilted his head to one side and regarded her with one eye half closed, as if he were a huge bird eyeing a potential meal. “Um,” he said, steepling his fingers, “impossible.”
“But, sir, now you need me on that desk more than ever! I-I know that sector better than anybody. I see a trend in the reports coming from Atlas that is very disturbing, sir, and—”
“Yes, very disturbing, Anya, so disturbing that I have personally taken over monitoring the events on Atlas. As you know, I’ve already had two conferences with Madam Chang-Sturdevant about events there. But Atlas is in good hands, and so is R-76. The former because I am closely watching things there and the latter because you are now on the job. And I might add, Anya, that my job is made all the easier because of the fine work you did down there. You really know what’s up, and your profile of this Lavager fellow has been most helpful.”
So far, no mention of O’Bygne’s report. Anya felt a flush of anger. And was he saying to her now that her profiles on Lavager were being used to portray the man as a threat to the Confederation? How monstrous! Her face reddened and thinking it was modesty on her part, Adams hurried on. “But Anya, that was then, this is now. Must I point out to you, my dear, the substantial increase in pay that your new job carries with it? Your base pay rises by three thousand credits per annum and your locality allowance by an equal amount. Now, my dear, you can afford one of these.” He thumped the ortho-sofa he was sitting on and grinned. The grin bore no warmth and Anya detected a hint of impatience in the way Adams inflected the words. Clearly, the interview was near an end.
“Yessir, thank you. Uh, sir, has the lab reported yet on the materials brought back from Atlas?”
“No, no, net yet, my dear. Maybe in a couple of days.” Adams smiled again, this time more relaxed. “I think we should have these talks more often, Anya.”
“Yessir. May I ask one question, sir?”
“Certainly.”
Anya hesitated. “Well, what are we going to do about Atlas, sir?”
Adams did not let his expression show what he was thinking: This goddamned meddlesome little bitch!
Another one of these dedicated fools who refused to see the Big Picture. It’s a good thing I got her in here and felt her out like this. She’s trouble. Time to send her little ass far, far away. “Well, Anya, of course we need to know more about what Lavager is really up to out there. We’ve sent our own team, undercover, of course, to investigate. One can never really trust these military folks completely, you know.” He moved his chair back to its original position and stood. Anya felt sick. A “team”? Did that mean someone like Wellers Henrico? Among Anya Smiler’s many fine qualities, stupidity was not one. “Well, I understand, sir, but I only thought I could be of more immediate service if I volunteered to return to my old job. Thank you very much for explaining things to me, and thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.”
Adams guided Anya to the door, one hand resting gently on her shoulder. “Come and see me anytime you like, Anya, always a pleasure to talk to a professional of your caliber,” the director said. As he spoke his hand slid gently down to the lower part of Anya’s back. “Do come back, Anya.” The hand slid down even farther.
Twenty years of training, experience, dedicated service, concern about the security of the Confederation, her career prospects, all that vanished in a flash of red-hot anger. Anya whirled suddenly, her eyes flashing with indignation and disgust. “I don’t think so!” She gritted in a voice so loud that Adams, a sudden expression of alarm, almost fear on his face, started and stepped back from her. Back in her cubicle Anya sat at her station and tried to calm herself. Her hands were shaking and she was nearly in tears. She took several deep breaths. All right, all right, she told herself, Take it easy! With effort she managed to control her breathing. Cautiously she fingered the crystal in her pocket. The information on that crystal had to get to President Chang-Sturdevant. After a few moments her hands stopped shaking. What to do? Well, first priority was get herself out of the CIO! It was clear to Anya Smiler that she would be persona non grata at Hunter, and the sooner she got out the better it would be for her. Besides, she couldn’t continue working for swine like Adams. Anya had a friend at the Ministry of War. That ministry hated the CIO. She knew what she had to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Office of the Deputy Minister for Intelligence, Ministry of War, Fargo, Earth
Anya waited three days before asking for an interview with Adams’s counterpart at the Confederation’s Ministry of War, Jeremy Boast, Marcus Berentus’s Deputy Minister for Intelligence. Anya had known Boast (“J. B.” to everyone in the intelligence community) for some years and he had frequently tried to entice her away from the CIO. She had politely declined those offers, but the seed had been planted. When she asked for an appointment it had been granted immediately.
“Come to spy on us, Anya?” Boast asked, laughing, as she was ushered into his office. She could not help contrasting J. B.’s office with Adams’s. The furniture consisted of old-fashioned straight-backed padded chairs and plain tables. On one wall hung an artist’s rendition of the Battle of New Reading that had taken place in 2253, where an understrength Marine infantry division had succeeded in holding off an entire army trying to force a strategic pass in the Gondular Mountains. The action was known as “New Thermopylae,” only with a happy ending. On the opposite wall hung a very old painting depicting Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn. “The Alpha and Omega of military tactics,” Boast was fond of remarking. On the wall directly behind his desk—a massive affair made of real wood with a polished top covered by a huge piece of glass—hung his military award certificates engraved on vellum and trid images of Boast’s career as a Marine intelligence officer. “I’m a double-dipper,” he’d tell visitors, meaning he was drawing both his military pension and a civil service salary. Boast himself was in his early nineties, spare, energetic, a man who never minced words. The office décor matched his personality perfectly. As soon as Anya entered the place she knew she would be taken seriously there.
“Sassi?” Boast aske
d. Sassi was a popular soft drink. Anya, who for the past several days had spent too much time communing with a bottle of bourbon, accepted gratefully. Boast served her himself from a cooler that sat in one corner of the office.
“Are you still on the Atlas desk?”
“Until a few weeks ago, sir.”
“Promoted?”
“Yes, kicked upstairs, so I quit that fucking disaster, sir,” she said bitterly.
“Umm. I see. What you been up to these past weeks, then?”
“Spending too much of it getting drunk, sir, washing my cares away,” she said lightly.
“That’s an honorable enough pastime, Anya, I used to do a bit of that myself.” Anya could not possibly imagine J. Murchison Adams drunk.
“You don’t by any chance have an ortho-sofa, do you, sir?”
“What?” Boast laughed, imagining one of the monstrous devices in his Spartan surroundings. “No, I don’t trust the hedonistic things, Annie. We had a senator squashed to death in one of them a while back. Maybe you heard about it? I don’t trust anything I can’t install and fix myself. All those outrageous technicians, they’re becoming the new priesthood, know what I mean?” He handed her the Sassi, which he expected her to drink right out of the bottle. “Besides,” he continued, sitting behind his desk and putting his feet up, “those damned conveniences make a man—or a woman—soft, too comfortable, takes the edge off.” He drank from his bottle of Sassi. “I have a job opening, if that’s why you’re here, Anya.”
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