Flight of the Vajra (57 page)

“So tell us,”
I said, to Ulli and
Cioran both, “what you think almost slipped through your fingers just now.”

We were all seated in the common area—myself,
Angharad, Cioran, Ulli, and the two officers. Enid had come back out of her
room but as before chose only to stand in the doorway. After all that, I
thought, I wouldn’t want to get very close to Cioran again either.

Cioran and Ulli looked indignant. Enid and I
looked wounded; Angharad looked let down. Kallhander and Ioné were masterfully
expressionless.

“Cioran’s already told me a great deal,” I went
on. “I can echo it back to you, or you can tell me in your own words what’s
going on here. Do I take him on face value, or do you want to issue a denial,
or—”

“I’ll speak for both of us,” Ulli said, and she
had a shrillness and tremor in her voice I would not have associated with her.
“It’s the least I can do for his sake as well.”

“Thank you,” Cioran murmured.

“Everything Cioran has told you is correct,” Ulli
went on. “He and I have been pooling resources—my finances, when he chose to
accept them, combined with his own freedom of movement.”

“If only because you spoke so enviously of such
movement.”

“I did, but only because you labored to paint it
in such romantic strokes!”

“Anyway,” I said.

“Yes. Well—I told him what it was I was searching
for and under what circumstances; that much of the story you have heard from
him directly. What remains is how I came to learn of it all in the first place.
You see—” Her attention had come to rest on Angharad, who was seated straight
across from her. “—as you know, the Gang of Ten pools its efforts and funds
research in multiple venues. Some of us directly fund it; others create
environments where experts can congregate. Each contributes as best they can.
My particular contribution has been creating one of the aforementioned
venues—specifically, an annual summit, an invitation-only affair for experts in
entanglement-drive research. I bring the right people together, and with any
luck out of their collaboration the right solutions will also arise.”

“Did they ever,” Cioran said.

Ulli slapped the side of his arm with the back of
her hand. “Hush. This is my story and you know it. —Well, I should make
something else clear. Nothing in the nature of what I created constituted a
demand
that information be shared. Granted, you can badger a man into prying his own mouth
open, but
how
he tells you what he knows will be quite different.”

I had trouble not hearing that as a cheap shot at us,
but she went on:

“There was one summit, a few solar years back. It
was after the day’s sessions had ended. There came a message—I haven’t the
faintest idea how this person found me—from someone claiming to be an
ex-engineer for ‘a certain ship maker whose name would be immediately
familiar’. He refused to identify himself, but he spoke convincingly of
internal details for that company: that they had held their internal
engineering summits on such-and-such a world and in this-and-that suite at a
particular hotel. He fairly bombarded me with details like this at first until
I finally gave up and said, ‘All right, I believe you. What do you want?’

“From what he told me, there had been presented a
proposal at the previous internal summit—not by him, mind you—for an improved
entanglement engine system which would provide sub-light-second accuracy. The
board was curious about funding research into it, but the other senior
engineers felt the plan was ‘impractical at best’. Their words, not his. I
pressed him for details, but he insisted he didn’t have much. The project had
never been formally funded and the details had been compartmentalized, since he
wasn’t on the panel that approved engineering budgets for submission to the
company’s board. But he later found out the project
had
been funded—just
not formally. Sometimes a project would intrigue the boardmembers, even while
they knew full well they couldn’t openly justify the investment. In such a case
they would set up a company with no direct connection to them but funded with
their own personal money. The project would be formally declared dead, but then
started up again under this side company and continued. If it generated useful
and justifiable results, they would then purchase the company in question and
bring it all back into the fold. If the research was no good—or too
questionable to lay claim to—they could write it off quietly and never speak of
it again.”

“And you believed him?” I said. I knew full well
such things existed; I just wanted to see what kind of due diligence she’d
done.

“Over the course of the next four solar months he
proved his case. He wasn’t able to provide me with details about the research
itself, but he showed me he knew what he was talking about. He told me of
another failed side project of theirs organized under a shell company named
‘Tomita Materials Sciences’, and how it was going to be ‘canned’ the following
week. One week later the answering address for Tomita Materials Sciences ceased
to exist, and they stopped filing tax statements after that as well. Many
things like that. But he’d made his case: they were working on such a thing,
and doing it as far off the books as they could. He fed me as much information
as he could before he was fired. Right after that happened he told me, ‘I’ve
learned a bit more about how this thing is meant to work. It’s not remotely
practical, they were right about that. But that won’t stop
some
people
from trying to use it.’ He wouldn’t elaborate. And . . . I haven’t
heard from him since.”

“Did you learn anything from that drive module?” I
asked Kallhander.

“Not yet,” he said. “It’s only just been submitted
for analysis—”

“Well, don’t let it languish in analysis for
too
long,” Cioran spoke up. “Because, technically speaking, that’s my property.”

“No,” I shot back, “it’s technically still
Arsèni’s property. You didn’t actually
pay
him for it yet, did you?”

“His point’s valid,” Ioné said. “Although it’s
safest to say his property is currently under confiscatory inspection, and
therefore it’s ‘our’ property.”

“Pettifogger,” Cioran said from behind his balled
fist.

“Ulli,” Angharad asked, “what is it that we might
expect this drive module to do?”

Ulli’s head-shake was quick and curt. “I haven’t
determined that. I imagine it’s an enhancement to the navigational subsystem.
But if that drive is the same one ‘liberated’ from the Trungpa derelict, it should
provide you with all the proof you need. I have confidence in my
intelligence—in both the ‘brains’ and the ‘espionage’ senses of the word.”

“That, again,
technically
makes it stolen
property which should be returned to its original owners.” Kallhander stressed
that word with what from anyone else I would have called sarcasm.

“And if they have developed such a thing, how is
that not a violation of the Hierotymous Charter?” Ulli’s indignation was
well-managed, but still recognizably indignation. “It’s illicit war materiel.”

“Ulli,” I said, “do you really believe for a
minute invoking the Hierotymous Charter is going to give whoever built this two
seconds’ pause? The Charter’s not even a legally binding document, and you know
it. It’s a bunch of guys who all held up their right hands and said ‘I won’t
make weapons that facilitate interplanetary war; cross my heart and hope to
die.’
 
”

“Henré!” Ulli went from indignation to gentle
chiding. “You’d be surprised how strong a force moral indignation and ostracism
can be. Then again, perhaps you wouldn’t.” Her gaze drifted over to Angharad.
“There are just enough people, and in all the right places, to be very upset
about such a thing.”

“And besides!” Cioran broke back in. “If it’s theft,
then it’s Arsèni who’s responsible for it, isn’t he?”

“A man whom you have recorded ties to,” Ioné said,
“and whom it could be argued you were knowingly receiving stolen property
from.”

“You’re not seriously talking about filing charges
over all this, are you?” Cioran looked between the two of them, then added Ulli
to his roster of people to stare at. “We’re diplomatic envoys. That would be
messy business, to put it mildly.”

“We wouldn’t be the one filing any charges,”
Kallhander said. “But in your particular case, all of the relevant information
would be turned over to Angharad. You are, after all, her co-envoy. And Madam
Kijusto’s statements would need to be formally entered into a dossier for the
sake of her own superiors.”

Ulli swung back to indignant, full tilt. “You—
can’t
be serious.”

“I’m afraid we’re very serious about this, Madam.”
Ioné managed, amazingly, to look and sound like she was the one who had failed
Ulli. “If your own people elect to file charges, they would be well within
their right to do so.”

No one said anything. Ulli had clearly been ready to
shout—she’d sucked in enough air to do it—but instead she filled the silence
that followed with something close to begging.

“Don’t any of you understand what’s happening
here? This isn’t a flight box with someone’s fishing tackle in it. It’s a
weapon, a
weapon
.” Her imploration turned to outrage. “I’ve spend the
last decade of my life looking for this little horror and trying to keep my
mouth shut about it at the same time, knowing full well the wrong word to the
wrong people could destroy everything we all say we hold dear! You haven’t the
faintest idea how difficult it’s been, what’s been at stake!” She blinked
faster as she spoke, and I thought: No, no, please don’t go into tears on us.
That’s going to make things even more awkward than they already are.

Angharad held up one hand. It was the gesture of
someone who wanted recognition to speak, but it also seemed like the precursor
to the go-in-peace gesture she’d given me on departing from her company for the
first time.

“Officers,” she said, “in the interest of
maintaining decorum, and allowing the summit to continue apace, I recommend any
enforcement or intelligence actions outside of our immediate circle be
postponed until after the conference is concluded.” She looked at Kallhander
and Ioné, whose faces were both still clearing as they considered this. “Ulli
can hardly be considered a flight risk—after all, she still carries the burden
of her official duties.”

“Understood,” Kallhander said. “I still need to
formally enter her statements, though.”

“Very well. Cioran, however—”

“Ugh-h-h. All right, all right.” Cioran
frog-hopped out of his chair and landed at Angharad’s feet, where he twisted
himself into his usual cross-legged position. “I’ll make this extra easy on
everyone. I’ll stay put if it means less pressure on Ulli . . . and
everyone else, for that matter. Besides, it’s not as if I have anywhere else to
really
go
at this point. But—” He twisted his head to face Kallhander,
and I realized then how his neck rotated just a few degrees further than mine
would have. “—do you really think it makes sense to file charges against the
very people who might well have prevented your collective fat from being
fried?”

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Ioné shot
back.

“And see you will, my little Continuum chickadee! Ulli’s
right, you know—I don’t think any of you really
do
want to understand
just what’s been unearthed here.”

“I know I do,” I said.

“I
think
I do,” Enid said, sounding like
she hated herself for speaking it.

Ulli, one hand still pressed against the side of her
face, knelt down and hugged Cioran from behind.

Things mercifully wound down after that.
Cioran retired to his room and agreed to have his CL cap reinstated. “It’s for
her
that I do this,” he said, and I went back and forth as to whether he meant Enid
or Angharad. Enid hadn’t hung around to find out; she’d retreated back to her
room and thrown herself into a fight program, which went on until I CL-knocked
and waved a bowl of black-bean noodles under her nose.

She was halfway through slurping it up before I
dared to comment: “For someone who’s plenty pissed, you’ve got a good appetite.”

“It’s in
spite
of that.” She had to chew
and swallow before saying anything else. “I knew I needed to eat
something
,
and I figured the best way to make that happen and to get out some of my anger
was a workout.”

“I take it you’ve done that before.”

“Plenty of times.” She put her dipper back in the
bow and let out a broad palette of exasperated noises. “If it’s all right with
you, I’d like to go somewhere tomorrow that has nothing to do with him. Or this
whole thing. If there
is
someplace like that to go to down here.”

“How about a party?”

“That ought to do it. What kind of party?”

“Old friend of mine who’s now the chief of
security for the city invited me to a mixer. I’d been expecting to hear from her
one way or another, and she finally sent the invite over while we were out.
It’s me plus one. Angharad and Ulli got invites as well, but even if it’s
Ulli-plus-one I don’t think Cioran is going anywhere as long as he’s keeping
his promises.”

“Yeah. See how long
that
lasts.”

The note about the party had come in while we had
been “debriefing” Cioran and Ulli. I’d ignored it until I’d stepped away; the
fact that one of the two people just then giving me the biggest headache had
also
been invited brought no smiles to my face. But Ulli wasn’t the real source of
my grief, I thought, and as long as Angharad was around she ought to be on her
best behavior anyway.

I ordered a meal for myself—or, rather, tried to,
but was interrupted by word that a certain Malek Pirinçim was at the front
door. The suit, I thought: no surprise that all this would have pushed thoughts
of it clean out of my mind, and it wasn’t like I’d bothered to set a CL
reminder for myself about it anyway. I had once again been trying to let my
brain do more of its intended job only to have it flunk out on me.

Malek was at the glass airlock out front, head
tilted back to take in the staggered array of windows and balconies above. Not
a CL projection of him; it was
him.
I stepped into the glass vestibule
and cycled him in.

“Thanks so much for taking care of this in such a
hurry,” I said. “And—good grief. You actually
came
here.”

“I’m only too happy to make the time for someone
like you, Mr. Sim. By the way, are you all right?”

Must have heard the news, I thought. “Me? I’m
fine; just a little shaken up. I was more worried about my friends than
anything else. They’re the ones who were in the most danger.” Yes, I thought,
as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, Cioran is still part of the
set known as
my friends.
Maybe he’ll do something to fully redeem that
label for everyone, and maybe he won’t. I’ve got plenty to do either way.

Malek handed me my suit in its hard-sided hanging
bag, and for a moment all I did was stand there with it draped out between us.
I’d bought the thing for the sake of people we might meet who are still easily
impressed by such things, but as I held it up I found myself growing all the
more impressed with it. Gleaming linen, immaculately sharp stitching
. . . Certain freshly-woven fabrics have a kind of inner light to
them, before too many wearings and cleanings (even protomic cleanings) dull
that light—but there’s another light, a softer and more motherly one, that
replaces it for a while before the item becomes completely worn out. Protomic
clothes go directly from brand-new to worn out with no stages between. They
never look like they’re broken in, or can be.

“I take it meets with your approval?” Malek said.

“It meets with approval I didn’t know I had.” I
turned the bag around and studied the back of the suit; it was just as
impressive going as it was coming.

“Do try it on as soon as possible, and if for
whatever reasons the telemetry and measurements I took from your existing
clothing don’t work for you here, come back into my shop for a complementary
refitting. That said, in the entire time I’ve been in business, I have had
exactly
one
such refitting. I am confident my work speaks for itself.”

“In volumes it does.”

Malek reached for the rolling case at his feet.
“And here is the outfit for the young lady as well—”

I CLed him the rest of the balance owed and went
back inside, a giddy bounce having insinuated itself into my step. I hadn’t
even tried to raise my spirits for the moment, but I was happier all the same:
receiving a piece of hand-crafted work courtesy of another artisan had done
wonders for my mood. Is that all it takes? I thought.

I stowed the case with the dress in the front
closet for the apartment, then went inside to find Enid had finished eating and
stowed her serviceware. I draped the contents of the bag against myself and
gave her a how-about-
that
? smile.

“Put it on, put it on!” She made shooing motions
at me. “I’ve never seen you in anything but that one suit!”

“Despite the fact that ‘one suit’ has about a
dozen pattern mods built into it?”

“Not the same thing, Henré!” She shooed me even
more vigorously, until I thought her hands were going to come loose at the
wrists. I guess it doesn’t take much for her to get excited either, I thought.

The suit fit me well enough to be buried in. The
feel of the jacket across my shoulders alone made it hard for me not to smile,
and by the time I stepped back out from behind the extruded screen I had a face
giddy enough to let people think I’d been drinking.

“Around!” Enid twirled a finger, and I turned, so
I didn’t see her pad up behind me and begin smoothing down the rear of the
jacket. That might be the first real linen she’s put her hands on in a long
time, I thought. Let her indulge.

She stood in front of me and clapped her hands to
my cheeks. “You look
adorable
! This what you plan to wear tomorrow to
that party? I’m going to need to get a program for my own to keep up.”

“No, you don’t. Go look in the front closet.”

I stood where I was, my smile cracking my face all
the more deeply, until I heard her let out a single jolting shriek of delight.

An entrepreneur, that’s how she looked in her new
outfit. Dress jacket, blouse with a pleated neckline, flared slacks, string tie
. . . I could have passed her off as my new investment partner. Enid
must have spent minutes on end in front of the mirror, alternating that with a
feed from my CL for contrast.

“I look
older
,” she said at last. “In the
sense of, I don’t see anyone seeing me in this and saying ‘Hey, kid,’ the way
they always do when I’m in my show duds.”

“Do you
feel
older?” I said.

“Like I should be doing something ‘serious’ on top
of this? Ask me when we’ve got a bunch of other people staring at us.”

I let her be giddy for a little longer, then decided
to venture back into murky water. “Listen—if Cioran does apologize to you, at
least do him the favor of hearing him out?”

“Well, so far I haven’t heard a blasted thing from
him. And why defend him all of a sudden?”

“He did offer to stay on our leash, which is a lot
more than I would have given him credit for. He’s nowhere near back in my good
graces yet, but if he brings you an olive branch, don’t just snatch it from his
hand and stick it up his ass, okay?”

“Give me a good reason not to!”

“Ulli. She’s one of the few people, save maybe for
Angharad, who can tell him what to do. And the two of them, Ulli and Angharad,
they have entirely different kinds of sway over him. If we show Ulli that we’re
willing to play that much fairer with Cioran, she’ll be that much more willing
to keep Cioran in line for us.”

“Even if you can’t stand Ulli?”

“What makes you think I can’t stand her?”

“It’s the way you look at her. It’s like, ‘Boy,
y’know, if only no one else was watching, I’d see how far around that head
could twist.’
 
” She
flexed her fingers as if preparing to dig into Ulli’s neck herself.

I had to laugh. “Where do you pick these things up
from? Just because I’m not her best friend, or vice versa—”

“You don’t think by now I don’t know what it looks
like when you’re dealing with someone you can’t stand?”

“All right, fine; so I have a tell when I deal
with her. Listen: There isn’t a whole lot of people I
do
like in this cosm.
That doesn’t mean I’m foolish enough to convince myself I don’t need to deal
with them at all. Not in these circumstances, that’s for sure. I don’t have the
luxury of turning my back on someone like Ulli in such close quarters.
Especially not when she claims to have been on the tail of something that
affects all of us, me especially so.”

“You really think she’s telling any of the truth
about this?”

“Enough of the truth that we can piece together
the rest on our own. Plus, from everything Cioran told us about her, and from
everything we already corroborated, that doesn’t seem like something she’d do
just to turn heads. If there’s one thing in this universe she’s serious about,
it’s entanglement drive research.”

“Serious enough to spin such a whopper about it,
maybe just to throw everyone else off?”

“Maybe. But then there’s the fact that a total
stranger was ready to shred himself and the rest of us along with him over that
thing. Even if it isn’t what she says it is, it’s important enough to inspire someone
to be that crazy—and in this case it was a protomics dealer who didn’t sound
like someone who stuck his neck out very far in the first place.”

“He did sound pretty wrapped up in his work,
though. You have to admit that.”

“Yeah, but enough to risk getting shot at,
grounded, arrested, and have his ship cut up like so much grapefruit? He’s
bottling
something
up. —And that tells me he’s not alone. Either he
doesn’t want to give someone else up—”

“—or he doesn’t want them coming back and pulling
out his spine.”

“Not much chance of that while he’s in an IPS lockup,
but point taken.”

“You don’t really think if someone wanted to get
to him in there, they wouldn’t be able to?”

I faced her; I’d been looking out at the
melted-ruby sunset, distracted by its light. “You’re shaping up to be an even
bigger cynic than I am. I don’t know if I should be impressed or appalled.”

“Would it hurt you to say I learned it from a
pro?”

“Maybe I should start teaching you some other
things. And consciously, too.” That and for someone who claims to be such a
cynic, I thought, you sure did a fine job of throwing yourself into Cioran’s
lap.

For every iota that CL expands your senses and
increases your awareness of things, it takes something else away. The fact that
I knew, in that moment, that Angharad stood at the door to our room and wanted
to talk, and wore a look of consummate exhaustion on her face, made it harder
for me to let her in than if all I’d heard was her knocking and her voice. But
her face brightened as soon as the door opened, and her first words to both of
us lifted a lot of the apprehension from me were: “My goodness—how
dapper
!”

 Angharad wasted no time
confounding
both of us with her first request.

“
Arsèni
?” I said to her. “Why do you want to
talk to
him
?” This isn’t the first time she’s done something this
baffling, I thought, and you know it won’t be the last. “He’s not Old Way,
that’s for sure. If he lives here on Bridgehead, that’s all but guaranteed.”

“Since he refuses to consider IPS an authority worth
speaking to,” Angharad said, “then perhaps Arsèni will respond to a different
form of authority.”

“Angharad, are you sure this isn’t just exhaustion
speaking? The way you looked when you came in here—”

“That was not my exhaustion from the day’s talks,”
she said, sounding as close to snappish as I’d ever heard her come (which still
wasn’t very). “That was my concern over the possibility that he might well
respond to me if I only allow him to. Such a talk would not even have to last
very long.”

“And how do you know he’s not just going to string
you along and feed you whatever? Let Kallhander and his people deal with
it—they’re giving him until tomorrow before they go to their superiors and get
authorization to replay his backup. Given everything that’s going on, they’ll
probably get
that
warrant signed in no time.”

“You and I both know such a thing will take an
inordinate length of time to provide them with the answers they seek, if it
even provides them at all. It might tell them everything; it might tell them
all the wrong things. It might tell them nothing. And it will never tell them
the sorts of things that Arsèni himself would volunteer freely to someone he
took seriously.”

“Yeah, but does that mean
you
?” Enid said.
“Besides, it isn’t like you don’t already have your hands full. You can’t
exactly bag off on the next round of talks tomorrow and do this.”

“I was planning to do this tonight.”

“And sleep
when
?” Enid reached out and took
the other woman by the shoulders, and then said in a voice that startled me for
being so pleading, “Why do you keep trying to be all things to all people?”