He cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You were expecting me,” he remarked because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Of course I’ve been expecting you,” she muttered like the voices of her world. “Who else can you talk to?
“Move. You’re in my way.”
Warden glanced behind him, saw that he was indeed obstructing one edge of her view of the wall. Shrugging an apology, he took a step to the side! “Is that better?”
“‘Better’?” Something in the twist of her bloodless lips gave the impression that she was laughing. “If you think anything around here ever gets ‘better,’ you’ve wasted a visit. We don’t have anything to talk about.”
He frowned. He was in no mood for verbal sparring. Nevertheless he kept his response casual. “Forgive my choice of words. I certainly haven’t seen anything get better.”
Her toothless gums continued chewing. “No. And you won’t. Not until you finish him.”
Well, Holt had warned him that she was sharp; almost presciently cognizant of the world beyond her screens—the world she couldn’t see. Still her bluntness took him aback.
“‘Finish him’?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Although she appeared to focus on nothing, follow nothing, her gaze never left the restless movement of images. “Don’t you want me to tell you what you need to know to finish him?”
A frisson of alarm ran down Warden’s back, settled in his lower abdomen. How much could Holt hear? Softly, trusting her to pick his voice out of the gabble—trying to warn her—he asked, “Norna, does he listen in when you have visitors?”
He couldn’t tell whether she heard him or not. For a moment she was silent. Then her mouth gave another twist that might have been laughter.
“How should I know? I never have visitors.”
He made another attempt. “Should you be careful what you say?”
This time she didn’t pause or hesitate. “Why? There’s nothing left he can do to me. And if you were worried about yourself, you wouldn’t be here.”
Her blank concentration on her screens was eerie, almost ghoulish. Like a woman inured to death and corruption, she watched them as if they showed maggots feasting on corpses—one scene repeated from different angles on all the screens.
“Of course,” she went on, “he doesn’t realize how much I know. He has no idea what I might tell you. That could be dangerous. But I think you’re safe enough.”
Safe? The mere concept startled him. He raised a hand to interrupt her, ask her indulgence.
“Norna, forgive me. I guess I’m slow today—I’m not keeping up with you. What makes you think I’m safe here?”
Her face in the cold light looked so hollow and doomed that he half expected her to intone like a sibyl, Everyone who comes here is safe. This is the cave of death, where no other harm enters. As long as you remain, you are beyond hurt.
Her actual reply was more prosaic, however. “After all the trouble you’ve caused, he needs you. He can’t afford to punish you now.”
Baffled as much by the way she spoke as by what she said, he countered, “He’s Holt Fasner, CEO of the entire created universe. What can he possibly need me for?”
Again that twist like laughter. Apparently she liked his sarcasm. Almost soundlessly her lips shaped her answer.
“A scapegoat.”
Ah, Warden sighed to himself. Someone to blame. That made sense. He felt suddenly that he’d been freed from the confusion of the screens and the mystification of her manner. Now he knew how to talk to her.
“Thank you,” he said more confidently. “I think I understand.
“As I’m sure you can guess, I’ve just come from talking to him. You mentioned all the ‘trouble’ I’ve ‘caused.’ And he told me you warned him I was getting him in trouble. Does he know what kind of trouble it is?”
“Shame on you, Ward.” Through the interference of other voices she sounded like a disappointed schoolmarm. “That’s not the right question. You know better.”
Before he could absorb this criticism, she asked, “What did you talk to him about?”
He swallowed a rush of impatience. He was running out of time. Yet he had nothing to gain by trying to hurry her. Trusting that she didn’t need long explanations, he answered, “I told him that Joshua’s mission to Thanatos Minor was a success. But it was also a surprise. Joshua has come back into human space with some unexpected survivors.”
“Such as?” she inquired quickly.
He had no business discussing such things with her. On the other hand, why had he bothered to come here, if he weren’t willing to face the hazards involved?
Shrugging to himself, he let her have her way.
“Nick Succorso. Some of his crew—including a man named Vector Shaheed who used to work for Intertech back in the days when Intertech was doing antimutagen research. Morn Hyland.” He did his best to mention Morn as if she had no special significance. “And somehow she has a son—a full-grown kid, apparently. She calls him Davies Hyland.”
Norna considered this information for a moment.
“What does he want you to do about it?”
Warden felt that he was exposing his heart as he replied stiffly, “Deliver Davies to him.” Like Norna he didn’t need to refer to the Dragon by name. “Give Nick control over Joshua. Kill everybody else aboard.”
Her empty gaze didn’t shift. Chewing incessantly, her jaws leaked a small sheen of saliva into the smear on her chin. Only her lips reacted, twisting from side to side like a grimace.
Now he couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying.
He waited until her grimace eased and her cheeks fell slack. Then in a low whisper he repeated his question.
“Norna, does he know?”
“I told him,” she answered, invoked by mirth or grief. “But he doesn’t understand. He fears death too much. It distorts his thinking.”
“Most of us fear death,” Warden countered, still whispering. “Most of the time we’re able to ignore it.”
She let out a hiss of impatience or vexation. “This is no ordinary fear of death. Have you suffered under him so long without figuring that out? If I called it ‘mortal terror,’ that would be an understatement.
“He wants to live forever.” Bitterly she nodded to herself. “Yes, forever. Haven’t I seen it? Why do you think he keeps me damned here? I’ve spent fifty years paying for what I see.
“He thinks the Amnion are the answer. Genetic magic. He thinks they know how to rescue his body before it fails. Or maybe they can grow him a new one.
“He can’t make peace with them. Humankind wouldn’t let him get away with it. Human beings are stupid”—she referred to her screens—“but nobody is that stupid. But if he lets you go to war, he’ll lose everything he wants from the Amnion. So he needs this hostile truce.”
As if she were still on the same subject, she demanded, “What makes Davies Hyland so precious?”
Warden had asked himself that question half a dozen times already. Now under the pressure of Norna’s insight and his own needs, he forced himself to consider it again.
Thinking aloud, he murmured, “The Amnion used a technique called ‘force-growing.’ I’ve been hearing for years that they have the means to mature bodies rapidly. And it must work. Otherwise Mom would still be pregnant. She wouldn’t have a son yet, never mind a full-grown kid.
“But how can he have a mind?” That was the crucial question, the fatal unknown. “How did the Amnion compensate for all the years of learning and experience he didn’t get?”
Norna’s stare never left her wall of images, yet it forced Warden to go on.
“They must have some way to create minds artificially.” The human organism was inherently functionless without acquired training and information. “Or copy them.
“Copying sounds more plausible. But what did they use for an original?
“Did they impose one of their own on him? Then he would be an Amnioni??
?and Joshua would kill him, if Morn didn’t.” Panic and possibilities ran through him, riding a burst of intuition like high-brisance thrust. “They must have copied some human mind into his head.”
He didn’t need to finish the thought; didn’t need to say, If they could do that for Davies, they could do it for Holt. Norna was already nodding. Her mummified lips chewed saliva and silence as if that were her oracular secret; the meaning of life.
Is that really it? He manipulates the GCES, suppresses the immunity drug, handcuffs my people and me, keeps this undeclared war alive, betrays humanity, just so he can fucking live forever?
Dear God, he’s got to be stopped!
Fine. How?
Whose mind did Davies have? “Director Dios?”
Warden had been concentrating on Norna so hard that he hadn’t heard the door open, or seen the guard stick his head into the room.
“Time’s up, sir,” the man announced carefully. “Your shuttle’s waiting.”
Full of alarm, Warden turned his attention on the guard.
Almost immediately his prosthetic eye gave him one small piece of reassurance. The man’s aura spoke of impatience, boredom, weariness, but no unusual anxiety or strain. Therefore HS wasn’t preparing an ambush: Holt hadn’t changed his mind about letting Warden return to UMCPHQ. No doubt he was determined not to spare Warden the burden of betraying Angus and Morn.
“I’m coming,” he told the guard.
At the edge of Norna’s sight, however, he paused to bow and murmur softly, “Thank you. I’ll do what I can.”
Her parting words harried him out of the sickchamber like furies, naming his anguish and loss.
“That’s not good enough, Warden Dios.”
The guards looked questions at him, involuntarily curious—or perhaps only cautious. Not good enough. He answered them with a shrug and an impersonal frown.
Neither of them pursued the matter. He was the UMCP director—and they apparently hadn’t been ordered to challenge him. Instead they simply guided him back to his shuttle, letting him keep his shame to himself.
He knew, as well as Norna did that merely doing what he could wasn’t good enough. He just didn’t have any better ideas.
Battering his brain for inspiration all the way back to UMCPHQ left him in a foul mood. Holt’s orders galled him absolutely; they ate at his sore heart like an injection of vitriol. If he were the kind of man who threw up when he felt nauseous, he would have puked his guts out, trying to rid himself of his despair.
Angus and Morn were the children of his best passion, his deepest need. He could sacrifice Vector Shaheed and the rest of Nick’s people if he had to; could give Trumpet up and let Nick go: he’d done worse. Davies would live—and Warden could at least pray that something would happen to spare the boy from what Holt had in mind. But to give Nick power over Mom and Angus, to hand them over to degradation and death after what they’d already suffered in Warden’s name—
That was completely and utterly not good enough.
Fulminating uselessly as his shuttle approached dock, he told his crew to flare Hashi Lebwohl, order the DA director to meet him in one of his private offices in ten minutes. He may have failed to be good enough for Angus and Mom, but he was by God going to get the truth out of Hashi. He needed all his tolerance and more to endure the distress inside his own skull: he had none to spare for Hashi’s games.
The evidence suggested that Hashi was pulling strings behind Warden’s back, interposing his own decisions between the UMCP director and events. That could be called malfeasance; it could even be called treason. On the other hand, Hashi apparently wasn’t pulling strings for the Dragon. His game was his own, for good or ill.
Warden had half an hour left until his window opened on the best available listening post. He could wait that long before he coded and sent his orders to Min Dormer—before he made his own treachery irrevocable. In that time, he intended to find out how much harm Hashi had done.
Naturally, inevitably, the post itself belonged to the UMC: it was part of the vast communications network which Holt Fasner had put in place. In a hundred fifty years of hunger and aggrandizement, the Dragon had learned to plan ahead.
He would be able to obtain copies of Warden’s orders to Punisher.
That thought made Warden want to tear Hashi’s head off.
His anguish had nowhere else to go.
Ignoring the salutes of dock security and the urgent requests for his attention from Center’s communications techs—these days Center considered everything urgent—he strode through the corridors of his domain until he reached the office he’d specified in his message to Hashi Lebwohl.
The DA director was already there, waiting. His face wore a bleary, amiable smile, as if he’d just exchanged some pleasantry with the guards outside the office. In contrast, their expressions were nonplussed, uncomfortable: their relief as they saluted Warden was plain to his IR sight. Apparently they didn’t know how to take Hashi’s sense of humor.
“Director Dios.”
Hashi’s glasses, antique and uncared for, seemed to refract his blue gaze, confusing whatever he saw—or perhaps only whatever he allowed other people to see. Characteristically his lab coat looked like he’d, found it in a waste-disposal bin—and then slept in it for weeks. The laces of his old-fashioned shoes trailed at his heels: it was a wonder that he could walk without tripping himself.
“Inside,” Warden snapped brusquely as he thrust the door open. Without waiting for Hashi to precede him, he stalked into the room, rounded the desk, and sat down in his chair.
Hashi didn’t dally. He entered the office behind Warden, closed the door. As Warden keyed the door seals and security shields, Hashi came forward to stand in front of the desk. Despite his air of assurance and his disreputable-professor’s appearance, something in the twitching of his long fingers or the smudged glitter of his glasses conveyed the impression that he knew he was in trouble.
“From the origination of your flare,” he began as if he wanted to defuse Warden’s anger, “I deduce that you have just returned from bearding the Dragon in his lair. UMCPHQ scuttlebutt confirms this. And from the darkness of your glance I deduce that the encounter did not go well.” As if he were quoting, he intoned, “‘The great worm’s in his heaven, all’s wrong with the world.’ My condolences.”
Warden let a snarl bare his teeth. “No jokes, Hashi,” he warned. “Spare me your usual line of claptrap. Yes, I’ve just come from a meeting with my boss. No, it didn’t go well. Now I intend to find out why.”
Hashi permitted himself a bemused frown. Gesturing toward a chair, he asked, “In that case, may I sit?”
“No.”
Behind his lenses, Hashi’s eyes widened slightly. “I see. Apparently you consider me the reason your meeting with Holt Fasner did not go well. May I inquire how that is possible?”
“You tell me.”
Holding Warden’s glare, Hashi lifted his shoulders in a small, helpless shrug. “How can I? I have no idea what subject you wish to discuss.”
“I’ll give you a hint.” Warden clenched his hands into fists on the desktop. “Tell me about Free Lunch.”
Hashi blinked opaquely. Hints of tension sharpened his aura, but he may have been simply baffled. “What is ‘free lunch’? Conventional wisdom asserts that no such thing exists.”
Warden swallowed a curse. Softly, softly, so that he wouldn’t rage, he articulated, “Hashi, listen to me. This has gone on long enough. Where did you get that information about events on Billingate you reported to me a few hours ago?”
“As I told you at the time, sir”—apparently the DA director had decided to respond by acting huffy—“it arrived by routine drone service from a listening post in the Com-Mine Station asteroid belt. It was routed to me precisely because it was routine, and as a matter of routine I have assigned a high priority to any data or transmission which makes reference to Thanatos Minor.
“The listening post overheard a
broadcast from a ship that did not identify herself—therefore, presumably, an illegal.” The more he talked, the more Hashi’s pose of indignant virtue began to sound like a disguise for more complex emotions. “The broadcast was just that, broad cast, not tight-beamed to the listening post. I have no evidence that this ship knew of the listening post’s existence. She was simply trying to warn other vessels—presumably other illegals—of developments on Thanatos Minor, to the extent that she had witnessed them.
“Some of the details she cited—I mentioned this at the time also, sir”—he stressed the word sir—“were not ones which I would have expected to find included in such a broadcast. For that reason I distrust both the content and the motives of her transmission. However, I delivered the information to you because of its obvious importance.”
Subtly sarcastic, Hashi concluded, “In what way has my conduct in this matter contributed to the disagreeable outcome of your discussion with our revered CEO?”
As if he’d made his point, proved his innocence, he allowed himself to fold down into the nearest chair.
“Liar!”
Leaning forward, Warden hammered the desktop with his fists so hard that Hashi jumped out of his seat as if he’d been struck. His glasses slumped to the end of his nose: he stared at Warden over them in plain astonishment.
“You’ve betrayed me, and I won’t have it” Warden pronounced each word like an act of violence. “You’re finished. I want your resignation here”—he thumped the desk again—“in less than an hour.”
Hashi’s mouth hung open; he seemed to have difficulty swallowing. “You?” he gaped. “Betrayed you? Personally? What does this have to do with you?”
Warden gestured his disgust. “All right—I’ll say it differently. You’ve betrayed your trust. You’ve betrayed your job.”
Hashi’s reaction was instantaneous. His eyes flashed blue lightning as he retorted, “No. Never.”
His IR emissions said that he was telling the truth—if the word “truth” had any meaning where he was concerned.
“Then, God damn it, tell me about Free Lunch!” Warden let himself yell. If he didn’t, Hashi’s bland chicanery was going to drive him mad. “Min found her parked right on top of that listening post! She’d used the post to send a message, but Min couldn’t crack it because the codes were too goddamn secure. When she was challenged, she told Min she was working for the UMC—for Cleatus by God Fane himself! But Holt says that’s a lie—and he doesn’t lie as well as you do.”