A Dark and Hungry God Arises (50 page)

And the attack no on Sixten Vertigus no made everything MUCH worse no, don't think about that. Absolutely not.

It would be better to answer his calls than think.

Restricted to UMCPHQ.

Suddenly he felt sure that the only conceivable way to minimize or at least contain the damage to the UMCP -

and, by extension, Holt Fasner - was to go to Earth, visit Igensard and Carsin and Len and even dear old outdated Sixten Vertigus in person. In person he might be able to talk them down from their hysteria, swaddle them in blather; mop the sweat of paranoia off their brows, so to speak. He was at his best in person. Any technological interference, even by video down-link, neutralized the charm which made him good at his job, the ability to spin gossamer illusions and make them seem substantial.

It was intolerable that Warden Dios seemed determined to commit seppuku in this bizarre fashion; taking his director of Protocol with him.

Immersed in fears he didn't want to recognize, Godsen flinched involuntarily when his intercom chimed. He dropped the hardcopy of his orders as if it were hot enough to burn him. His hands shook as he toggled the intercom.

'Yes?'

'Director Frik, I have a call from Holt Fasner. '

His secretary had been chosen because she had the kind of dulcet and accessible voice - this was Godsen's phrase - which gave newsdogs wet dreams. He hated it and her down to the ground.

He kept his loathing to himself, however. In an avuncular rumble, he answered, Tut him through, my dear. It doesn't pay to keep the High and Mighty waiting. '

'Yes, sir. '

At once one of the speakers on his desk — the channel he used for his most private conversations — came alive.

'Godsen. ' The name wasn't a question. And the voice didn't identify itself. It didn't need to: Godsen would have recognized it in his sleep. What the hell's going on down there? The votes are pissing pure alum. '

'Mr Fasner - sir, ' Godsen blurted out while his brain fumbled for the first consecutive sentence it could find,

'I'm glad you called. I was just about to contact you. I've been working on a report -'

'Spare me the bullshit, ' the Dragon retorted. He sounded incongruously cheerful. Tut it where it might do all of us some good. If you wanted to talk to me, you would have called by now.

'Try telling the truth instead. What -I mean this literally, Godsen - what in hell is going on?'

Old reflexes kicked in. As if he were behind a podium facing a hostile news conference, Godsen countered, 'Can you be more specific?' Real dignity was beyond him at the moment, but at least he could sound starched and irritable at need. There are any number of "hells" going on. Which one do you want to talk about first?'

'Oh, stop it. ' Holt may have been enjoying himself.

'You know perfectly well what I want to talk about. '

Quailing inside, Godsen clung to his reflexes. The first that comes to mind, sir, is the attack on Captain Vertigus.

Do you want to hear my usual speech about the diligence and integrity of UMCP investigations? Or perhaps a side-bar on the merits of GCES Security? I'm afraid that's all I have to offer. Only the Enforcement Division director or Warden Dios might know more, but if they do they haven't revealed it to me. '

'My, my, you are in a state today, ' Holt sneered. 'One might almost think that kaze was aimed at you. ' Without transition his tone became a snarl. 'No, that is not what I'm asking about. '

Godsen winced. What else was left? As stiff as card-board, he suggested, 'Then I suppose you're interested in the director's video conference with the GCES?'

'Good guess, ' Holt returned trenchantly.

Godsen resisted the impulse to come up with other possibilities. They wouldn't distract the Dragon. Instead he said, 'In that case I'll suppose as well that you already know what actually happened - who said what to whom, that sort of thing. '

Holt Fasner waited. His silence sounded even more ominous than his voice.

'I'm going to suppose that what you want to know' -

Godsen hung fire momentarily - 'is why the director did it. What he hopes to gain. '

The Dragon still didn't speak.

'Mr Fasner -' Without meaning to, Godsen stopped.

What could he say? More to the point, what could he say over a communications link which was inevitably being recorded somewhere in the bowels of UMCPHQ?

I think Warden Dios has lost his mind.

Good choice.

I think he's trying to sabotage Data Acquisition. He's too pure to like operations like the ones we've launched against Thanatos Minor, so he wants to get them prohibited in the future. Hashi only went along with it because he's too full of his own cleverness to realize the truth.

Even better.

I think he's trying to hurt you, Mr Fasner, you and me and maybe everything the UMC stands for, God alone knows why.

No, that was definitely too frightening to say. Even recognizing the existence of such issues was dangerous.

It was typical of the Dragon to be careless of other people's security considerations.

Swallowing heavily, Godsen began again.

'Mr Fasner, you don't really want to talk about that now. In any event, I probably don't know the answer.

The director' - even now he couldn't stifle his rhetorical impulse - 'hasn't taken me into his confidence on this subject. '

While Godsen sweated, the Dragon remained silent.

Then he replied with unexpected good humor, 'So don't talk to me. You're probably right - I don't want to hear it like this.

'Grab a shuttle, ' he commanded, 'and come over here. '

Here meant his 'home office', his corporate station orbiting Earth only half a million kilometers from UMCPHQ.

'Do it right away. You can give me this so-called "report"

of yours in person. '

Helplessly, hopelessly, Godsen's mind went blank with alarm.

For better or worse, his mouth went on talking even when his mind failed him. He could easily imagine himself still talking long after he died, trading orotund cadences and earthy homilies with the flames of hell.

'I can't, sir, ' he said without thinking. 'I'm afraid it's out of the question. I would if I could - you know that.

But we're in a state of emergency here. I'm up to my hips in disasters. I've actually had to refuse calls from the President of the Council, can you believe it? The minute, the very minute, I can break free, I'll be there as -'

'Godsen. ' The Dragon's voice pierced like an icepick.

'Stop talking. Restart your brain. Then try again. '

He knew the PR director too well. That was one of the many things Godsen disliked about him.

Nevertheless Godsen closed his mouth obediently. He took a deep breath through his nose. While he let it out, he picked up the hardcopy of his orders as if a mere piece of paper could protect him from Holt's disapproval.

'I've got orders, sir, ' he said more carefully. 'Straight from Ward. I'm restricted to UMCPHQ. Until further notice. If I leave now, he won't have to be content with calling it insubordination. He can call it malfeasance. '

Harsh with amusement and irony, Holt laughed. 'And what do you suppose, ' he drawled back, 'I'll call it if you refuse?'

Godsen Frik's heart froze.

There it was. Without forewarning; without preparation: the central crisis of his life.

On one side stood all his ambitions, as well as all the sacrifices he'd made to achieve them - all the shit he'd swallowed, all the hate and fear he'd refused to spit back up.

On the other stood survival.

He believed that Holt Fasner had both the ability and the will to make him President of the Governing Council for Earth and Space - the most heard and visible public figure on the planet.

He also believed that Fasner didn't give a long piss in the sewer of the universe whether Godsen himself lived or died in the process.

He believed that Warden Dios disliked and distrusted him; no, worse, that Warden Dios considered him dangerous, a chancre on the pure and impossible body of the UMCP. Even worse - he could think about this now only because he had a greater fear to face - he considered it likely that Dios had gone mad; that the director's instinctive revulsion for the double-dealings and manipulations of power had become so extreme that it had turned self-destructive.

He also believed that Dios would defend his own people with the same stubbornness and skill he gave to all humankind.

In other words, he believed Warden Dios capable of committing professional suicide. He did not believe him capable of aiming a kaze at Sixten Vertigus; of sacrificing either Captain Vertigus or Godsen himself for the sake of his own ends.

The Dragon, on the other hand, was entirely incapable of suicide - and perfectly capable of murder.

Godsen felt his head and stomach move in different directions, as if he were about to pass out. Leaden nausea dragged at his abdomen: vertigo sucked at his brain.

Stalling for time so that he could think, he said slowly,

'Sir, let's imagine for a minute that what you want is possible. Let's imagine that my orders aren't on record yet - that the shuttle crew and dock-handlers don't know I've been restricted. Are you telling me to violate a direct order from the director of the United Mining Companies Police?' Get a recording of it. If it's true, make sure it can be proved. 'Are you telling me you don't care if he fires me?'

Are you telling me I'm expendable?

Holt actually chuckled. 'No, Godsen, I'm not telling you that. You didn't hear me say anything of the sort.

What I am saying is this. If you don't make up your mind in ten minutes - if you don't shuttle your ass over here and give a report in person immediately - I don't care what you do. '

The speaker went dead. Holt Fasner's voice disappeared into the black gravity well that restricted UMCPHQ to its orbit.

In a fury of trepidation, Godsen crumpled the hardcopy of his orders and flung the defenseless wad against the wall.

This was Warden's doing. If he hadn't changed the rules the PR director lived by, Godsen's career and his ambitions and his existence would be safe. Deliberately -

Godsen was suddenly sure it was deliberate - Warden had forced him to choose between the UMC and the UMCP.

The UMC owned the UMCP, for God's sake! That was the only clear thought in Godsen's spinning head. Of course he should do what the Dragon wanted, and damn the consequences. Otherwise everything he'd ever done or suffered was wasted.

But in his weighted stomach he believed, knew, that Warden Dios didn't kill the people he was sworn to protect.

If a kaze could get into the members' wing of the GCES complex on Suka Bator to attack Sixten Vertigus, no one was safe. Godsen Frik had to ask himself which he distrusted more, Warden's self-destructiveness or Holt's consuming disdain.

His ten minutes were almost up when he finally summoned the courage to chime his secretary.

'Communications must have recorded the conversation I just had with Holt Fasner, ' he said to her. 'Tell them I want a copy of it on Director Dios' desk immediately.

Tell them to flare it. I want him to look at it right now. '

His voice didn't shake. In fact, he sounded more digni-fied than he would have thought possible.

That small victory gave him the fortitude to begin looking at his messages from Len, Igensard and Carsin so that he could figure out how to answer them.

Min Donner had also received orders.

Like Godsen's, hers made her feel strangely misused, as if she'd been cheated or thwarted in some way; neutralized or disenfranchised.

Like him, she sat in her office and chewed them like gristle, trying to imagine what they meant.

Unlike him, she knew what to do about them. And she wasn't scared. She was angry. She was battered and tired, stretched too thin to react with anything except anger.

She'd recovered her hearing: that was the good news.

Except for a small high-pitched whine far back in the audible spectrum, sounds and voices reached her without distortion. But everything else —

Her whole body ached from the force of the kaze's bomb. For a while that pain had settled into a dull, steady throb: noradrenalin and serotonin had made it easy to ignore. But now it was growing stronger, more acute, as her body demanded attention for its needs. Her shoulders and hips felt arthritic, nearly immobilized. The corners of her jaw hurt as if she'd been grinding her teeth hard enough to dislocate the joints. Her mind felt muzzy and numb, packed with polypropylene insulation. At unpredictable, infuriating intervals, fresh blood dripped from her nose, demonstrating her weakness for anyone to see.

If she'd stopped to think about it, she would have realized that she hadn't slept since before Warden had briefed Angus Thermopyle and Milos Taverner; hadn't eaten since the crew of the shuttle to Suka Bator had given her a sandwich. She didn't have time to think about such things, however.

By itself the attack on Captain Vertigus would have been enough to consume all her attention. But in addition she needed time as well as emotional space to consider the implications of her conversation with Warden.

Unfortunately those weren't her only responsibilities -

She also had a disaster of staggering proportions on her hands.

Godsen Frik was dead. Less than twenty minutes ago, he'd been blown to pulp and splinters by a kaze.

Men and women still ran and shouted in the corridors; clearing away wreckage and a few bodies; making way for damage control workers and investigators; hunting for more kazes.

Too late all of UMCPHQ was on defense alert.

She felt that she could still hear the explosion, even though she'd been too far away to distinguish anything except an impalpable shock through the muffling walls and infrastructure. The whine in her ears seemed more like an echo of Godsen's death than a residue of the attempt on Captain Vertigus.

She was Min Donner, director, UMCP Enforcement Division. Her domain included UMCPHQ Security. She couldn't blame herself if a kaze got into the members'