Forge of Heaven (44 page)

Lyle Nazrani, the financier, isn’t personally eligible for the office, not being Earthborn, but he’s certainly apt to be a prime source of information for this new Treaty Board installation, much of it aimed at Governor Reaux. Most significantly, Apex had rather have you over the PO, rather than wasting your time with the civil politics of the Council at this point. They wish you would resign the Council chairmanship forthwith in favor of your proxy and concentrate entirely on the PO. They assure you of their protection should you do so.”

For a moment it was not Magdallen speaking. It was a set of voices he knew, and little liked. An old argument, that he should remove himself farther from politics and controversy. But Magdallen managed to raise it not offensively, but as a matter of logic.

The Chairman General would love to have him out of the political arena.

But this time, in such grave circumstances, he found himself actually listening to the proposal and considering the step that 2 8 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

would set his proxy in the station administrative post for good and all. His hitherto placid PO domain had several major crosscurrents he hadn’t been able to monitor—one of which, the condition of the alarm system, might well have predated his administration. That had to be fixed. That was going to take some serious attention in the process.

But protection?
Damned
if he liked Apex meddling with his security. He had to accept the security arrangements that both watched the Project and protected
him,
but he didn’t want them triggered from Apex without warning, and he certainly didn’t like clandestine operations that came tramping through here, provoking reactions—knowledge that a stranger was on the tap system could itself have triggered the Ila to act.

And at the same time, Magdallen had failed to pass vital information to him. Advance information might have preserved the Ila’s tap, the one person who could have informed them on the Ila’s guilt or innocence. But that person was now in hospital and not likely to recover.

Magdallen had been investigating
him,
to top it off, and very embarrassingly finding holes in Project security.

A fool would get mad about that situation and not listen to the information that came from the investigation. A fool would react more to his own embarrassment at being outmaneuvered than to the fact of who had actually bypassed the alarms and what it meant.

“I’m going to warn Reaux about Dortland. I see no benefit in keeping him in the dark. The governor may become more valuable, given the situation you project. Do you have any advice about that move?”

“No, sir. That’s entirely within your discretion to do. I’m not qualified to make that decision.”

“I’ve done your kind of work. I’ve been in your position, Agent Magdallen, as you may have learned. It’s a lot easier to find out things than to know that things are found out. I know the uncertainties in your job, and I know our own limitations in security.

Some classified data may have gotten out under our noses. Now we know. If the Ila’s involved, I assure you this present affair’s not a life’s work for her, but an hour’s amusement. Her senior tap is not likely to survive in any conscious way. The woman will not Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 8 7

likely be able to answer the questions we’d like to ask—ever. So we have the ambassador about to set up a subversive office here to watch us, the governor’s daughter has gone missing, Dortland’s doubled, every tap working has a headache, and Procyon is wandering somewhere on Blunt with minimal awareness where he is.

Is there any other piece of bad news you’d like to tell me?”

“No, sir, to my knowledge, no.”

“Can you lay hands on this stray daughter?”

“I can try. I have limited physical resources.”

“Just get the daughter off the list.”

“Her street name,” Magdallen said, “is Mignette.”

He was forming a new category for Magdallen—not trusted, but possibly an asset. He’d just laded Magdallen with various tidbits of information the future vector of which he wanted to test . . . a trick which Magdallen might see through. Or not. There was no way to query Apex about Magdallen’s credentials: he had to find out for himself whether Magdallen had been feeding him a string of lies—or not.

Clearly Magdallen was wishing he were somewhere not laced with tap relays and in proximity to the Ila.

So was he. But that was where they all lived.

He had to pull Drusus back off the search for Procyon, if he could find Drusus, no matter if he had promised Procyon Drusus would find him. They need him in contact with Marak to prevent that situation blowing up. Time to get every tap they had off the street. The chance that Earth might have meant to kidnap Procyon was nil. If they didn’t want Gide back aboard, no chance they’d want a kid with mods shedding skin cells and breathing into their systems. Earth’s agents getting their hands on him, here on Concord—that was, operationally speaking—entirely possible; but if they hadn’t done it by now, they likely didn’t want to do it. If Procyon could just get off the street, get to somewhere safe, where some unlucky cop might nab him and create a real mess—

He was hesitant to make a committed move in any direction. He had too little sure information. But the consequences of inaction were as dire as those of a mistaken trust.

“The daughter’s safety,” he said to Magdallen, “the particular people you’re watching—all these things I lay in your lap, since 2 8 8 • C . J . C h e r r y h

you’ve clearly formed an informational network of some useful sort. But let me warn you—look at me, Agent Magdallen;
look
at me for a moment, and know very clearly that there is
one
authority on Concord, and only one, bottom line. If the Ila is acting in her own interests, those interests include infiltrating the PO and taking over this administration by remote, which will touch off the
ondat
.

The only defense against politics erupting down on the planet is
not
to alienate Marak. I can tell you he’s the one true moderating influence down there, where Ian and Luz have their differences.

He’s one human influence even the
ondat
regard as honest, for whatever reason proceeds through their alien brains, and if we lose him—if he’s been harmed by this venture of the Ila’s, which has affected
his
taps—or if he just gets mad enough to go walkabout and damn them all for the next hundred years—we’ll have to come to him confessing everything that’s going on, abjectly begging him to straighten things out and only hoping the Treaty with the
ondat
survives the incident. Treaty law, Agent Magdallen—as we have it fairly well established that’s what Gide represents—offended Treaty law is a danger I don’t want to risk. I want Procyon back, sane and in one piece, and I want him soon, without their hands on him. So if you see him, get him here alive and whole. That’s number one on the list. The daughter’s number two.”

“I’ll try,” Magdallen said somberly—indeed, looking him full in the eye for at least five seconds. “The daughter and your missing tap both. It’s a difficult order. But I’ll do my best.”

Brazis stared back at him. Magdallen’s stare back was a window into flat dark. There might be one loyalty for this man, but it wasn’t to him.

Mark down a heavy score against the Chairman General at Apex. There were so many.

It might finally be time to call in old favors at Apex. He hated like poison to involve himself in Apex politics, which he foresaw would take years to evolve and dangerously distract him at a time when he most needed to repair damage to Project systems.

But if even a fraction of what Magdallen had spun for him was the absolute truth, he might have erred dangerously in letting the situation with the Chairman General ride all these years. The CG

had launched a major investigation to participate in a question Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 8 9

Earth also was investigating, instead of just posing the question and asking him for a response, as the Apex authority on scene; and in doubt of
him,
and evidently believing Earth’s suspicions, the CG

had let a delicate matter reach a white heat, let the Ila blindside them all and destroy the evidence, then sit smugly by and watch the pieces fall.

The CG didn’t personally like him. So the CG had primed Magdallen not to trust him. And Magdallen, if honest, still wasn’t sure what he was dealing with.

“Yes, sir,” Magdallen said.

“Good. Go.”

The CG might indeed have overstepped his limits this time, he thought, staring at Magdallen’s black-coated back. This man was not stupid. This man was going to think, and think for himself.

A blink as the door shut. He activated his tap cautiously, contacted security, asked:

“Can the Ila’s tap be questioned?”

“Brain-dead, sir. They’re attempting restoration. They say the outlook
isn’t at all good.”

“Understood.” He tapped out in disgust.

For the rest . . . he punched physical keys, glossed through the med reports that flitted across the desk, one in front of the other.

Every tap on duty had been affected, and that included Auguste, who was suffering blinding migraine and who, despite valiant efforts, couldn’t find Marak. Or Drusus.

Lovely.

He
didn’t
tap down to the planet to investigate Luz or the Ila, and he didn’t contact Ian, who was very likely furious with Luz over the incident and probably had a headache to match his. He didn’t want another of the Ila’s messages blasting through the system—not at the risk of the taps.

The Ila had managed to set the whole system on its ear.

And the new rift in the Southern Wall, meanwhile, which was the slow tumble of a house of cards,
ondat
revenge, long postponed . . . that cataclysm just casually proceeded on its way like a juggernaut, as the plates had been moving for ages.

Did he half suspect that the Ila had timed her efforts up here to coincide with an era of maximum attention on a planet-changing 2 9 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h

event? He had his strong suspicions. His very strong suspicions.

The whole Project had been concentrating on a narrow section of planetary crust—and never even thinking the tap system had become a sieve, coinciding with actions attracting Earth’s passionate disapproval.

Instruments could, however imperfectly, see beneath the clouds of condensation down there, and it was truly spectacular now, that waterfall.

Damned
lucky that Marak hadn’t had a closer view of it.
He
was diverted, Ian was diverted. Everyone was busy and a little desperate. And no matter how involved Ian might like to be now in the Luz-Ila matter, quakes down at Halfmoon would likely continue to be a priority, getting Marak and his people out alive.

The Ila had appeared to reform, abandoning her usual diversion of making a director’s life interesting. She had been so nicely cooperative lately. God.

What was this new sea about to bring the universe at large? The long-sought remediation? Proof that life on Marak’s World was unlikely to infect
ondat
? Proof that Movement technology, running down its own evolutionary track, could devolve into simple, nonaggressive biology, ultimately capable of working only in its own limited environment?

The Ila was dead set, as always, on blowing that happy outcome to hell.

So Apex would check her move at Orb, and if they were lucky, on Concord itself. The Treaty Board had settled an agent here in the mistaken theory they were going to overturn a conspiracy and get their fingers into all sorts of business, while Earth’s more conservative public, convinced by agelong propaganda that one simple mod was damnation, would view an assassination attempt on Concord and a lab raid on Orb as armageddon in full career. Concord and Earth were in for a period of unhappy and dangerous relations, while the Ila sat and watched, ever so pleased.

God, he’d like to ask the Ila’s tap some critical questions. But that was never going to happen.

And he had a meeting of the Council in less than an hour, in which time he now had to decide how much of Magdallen’s claim to let out to that body for debate. He decided that, no, he
wouldn’t
Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 2 9 1

attend. But he did have to instruct his proxy. And he had to consider what Magdallen had said, that it might be time to turn over that office.

“Sir.” Dianne. “Drusus is reporting in, on one.”

Physical line. He punched a button on common com. “Drusus.

Are you all right?”

“Not so good, sir. I’m at a public phone. But I’m on my feet. I heard it.

Shall I go on?”

Drusus, veteran Drusus, didn’t ask what had happened to cause that blowup on the tap. Didn’t sit down and quit. But he’d been hit, wide open.

“Do you need medical?”

“I don’t think so, sir. I’m functional. Bad headache, but not so I can’t
continue. I’ve talked with several people who know our man. They claim
they haven’t seen him. That they’re concerned and looking for him. Which
probably means he’s found a dark hole somewhere, if his head is like mine,
right now.”

Brave Drusus. “Get home right now and relieve Auguste. Auguste was hit hard. We don’t know about his contact.”

“Yes, sir,”
was all Drusus said, the public line being no place to discuss department business, and depend on it, Drusus was on his way at all possible speed, to take up a duty, bottom line, more important than Procyon’s survival. The man deserved a medal. And his reporting in meant the PO had one less worry on the streets.

He didn’t think the Ila had meant to kill Marak’s taps. Antagonizing Earth, threatening civilization, yes—on their scale a disaster; on hers, a maneuver that might or might not pay what she hoped. But a war with Marak, an antagonism that could keep an anger alive as long as Marak’s memory, he very much doubted was anywhere on her agenda. In their way, the oldest immortals stuck together in a dynamic of touchy personalities, and what Luz currently wanted, which was to find Procyon, the Ila seemed to want.