Abruptly Warden dropped back in his seat. He took a deep breath, held it while he mastered himself, then let it out in a hard sigh. “So tell me the truth, Hashi, while you still can. What kind of shit is this?”
During Warden’s outburst, Hashi’s eyebrows crawled like insects on his forehead. Slow sweat beaded on his temples; a small flush, incongruously round and precise, appeared in the center of each cheek. Blinking furiously, his blue eyes seemed to send out flares of stark panic and absolute glee, as if for him they came to the same thing.
“In that case, Warden,” he murmured, “perhaps you’ll permit me to amend my earlier report.”
“Please.”
“Free Lunch,” Hashi said quickly. “Captain Damn Scroyle. If Captain Scroyle told the estimable director of Enforcement Division that he was in the employ of the United Mining Companies, either in the person of Cleatus Fane or through some other agency, he was”—Hashi made a palpable effort to restrain his instinct for rhetorical camouflage—“lying to protect his dealings with me.”
Warden scowled; but in other ways he kept his reactions to himself.
“Captain Scroyle is a mercenary,” Hashi explained. “I employ such individuals as occasion warrants. And I demand security for my operations. In addition, much of Captain Scroyle’s value to me rests on his ability to pass as illegal. For these reasons, he misled Director Dormer.
“On this occasion I had employed him several weeks ago to visit Thanatos Minor as my surrogate—what you might call a mobile listening post. I am not a complacent man, Warden. I trust the work I have done with Joshua, and I stand by it, but I do not care to rely on it exclusively. Therefore I employed Captain Scroyle to do exactly what he has done—to provide an early report on the outcome of Joshua’s mission.
“Have I acted unwisely?” he concluded. “Has Captain Scroyle’s information not already shown its value?”
Warden dismissed the value of Captain Scroyle’s information with a snort. “That’s not the real question, and you know it.” In fact that information was priceless. Yet it wasn’t as critical as his ability to trust the DA director. “The question is why you didn’t tell me all this. I’m the goddamn director of the UMCP. What made you think you should lie to me?
“You are in charge of Data Acquisition. It’s your job to give me facts, not bullshit.”
Hashi Lebwohl was the only man Warden knew who could prevaricate without showing it. A calm face and confident manner were easy; so were any number of disguises and distortions. But to inhibit the body’s autonomic response to stress was normally impossible. And the specific anxiety of falsehood had an IR signature which Warden had learned to recognize—in every case except Hashi’s. By this more than any other evidence, he knew that Hashi made no essential distinction between truth and lies. He showed no stress because he felt none.
He felt it now, however. His aura squirmed with it; his pulse labored under its weight. Warden’s demand touched a vulnerability in him which may have had nothing to do with truth or falsehood.
Shrugging uncomfortably, he replied, “I knew that you would be required to share any information you received with CEO Fasner, and I did not wish to compromise Captain Scroyle by making his usefulness known to men I distrust. In addition, I believed that your position with CEO Fasner would be stronger if he were denied knowledge of all the resources at my command—therefore at your disposal. On the other hand, it would be plainly fatal if you withheld information from your superior and were detected doing so. I chose to spare you that hazard.”
More bullshit, Warden thought. He could hear it as well as see it; he could practically smell it. On impulse, however, he decided not to challenge it. He wanted to see how deep Hashi’s dishonesty ran.
Glowering his impatience, he rasped, “That’s not good enough. How am I supposed to trust you now? How much do you think I can afford to tell you?”
Hashi didn’t need to study the question. He had an answer ready. “Our positions are dissimilar. You must report to the GCES, as well as to CEO Fasner. I report only to you. Neither great worms nor councils of indecision have power over me. Anything which you withhold from me can only damage my effectiveness.” Almost pleading, he said softly, “I cannot do my job, Warden, if facts are kept from me.”
Warden restrained an impulse to pound the desk again. He’d mastered his anger: it was cold and hard, and he used it to focus his scrutiny of the DA director. While all his hopes unraveled, and his chronometer ticked away the lives of the people he needed most, he concentrated on surprising, coercing, or perhaps earning one critical piece of accuracy from Hashi Lebwohl.
“All right. I’ll copy Min’s report to DA. You can study it in your spare time. But I’ll give you the real highlights.
“Trumpet is alive. She came out of forbidden space while Min was arguing with your Captain Scroyle, flared a transmission to that listening post, and headed on.
“According to her message, she succeeded. Billingate is gone. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Jerico priority has been superseded. Milos went over to the Amnion. That would have been a disaster if it hadn’t been so damn predictable. So Angus isn’t coming anywhere near here until we position someone to invoke his new codes.”
Hashi nodded to himself. His smile was impersonal, but it hinted at a certain complacency. His work with Joshua was being vindicated.
“He has quite a passenger list,” Warden went on. “If Trumpet were any smaller, they would be sleeping in the drive spaces.” He spoke in a drawl like a sneer, preparing the blow he meant to strike at Hashi—the first of several, if he needed them. “Nick is there. He brought four of his people with him—Mikka Vasaczk, Ciro Vasaczk, Sib Mackern, and—by some truly monumental coincidence—Vector Shaheed, whose name I’m sure you’ll recognize.”
“How could I forget it?” Hashi radiated confidence and falseness. “I lament for him whenever I go to my rest, although only my pillow hears me. To take his work from him before he could complete it was necessary, but unfortunate—grievous to a man of his abilities. Under better circumstances he would have been nurtured for his achievements rather than discarded.”
The DA director was stalling, Warden observed; filling the air with words to cover him while his mind raced to examine the implications of Shaheed’s presence aboard Trumpet.
Warden didn’t give Hashi time to think. After only a short pause, he announced harshly, “In addition there’s Morn Hyland.”
“Aboard Trumpet!” Hashi croaked. “Aboard Trumpet!”
Warden nodded. “With Nick and Angus.”
The information didn’t stagger Hashi. He sat down reflexively, as if his legs had been cut out from under him; yet his IR aura betrayed no shock. Instead it flared like an eager sun; sent out crackling flares of excitement and apprehension.
“So it is true,” he breathed. “I considered the eventuality that she might survive. I believed it—yet I feared to believe it. Why is it not impossible?”
Brutally dishonest, driven by shame, Warden demanded, “Do you still stand by the work you did with Joshua?”
Aren’t you to blame for this?
Of course he wasn’t. Warden had done it himself: he had no one else to accuse. But Hashi didn’t know that. And Warden intended to hit him as hard as necessary to learn the truth.
Hashi seemed not to have heard him, however; not to have felt the veiled accusation. His aura surged with emissions which would have indicated terror in anyone else, but which in him appeared to imply exultation.
“Director,” he murmured softly, “there is treason here. Treachery and betrayal. Nick Succorso is—”
But then he stopped himself. “No, I will not judge this rashly.” The smears on his lenses refracted his blue gaze into streaks of hope and apprehension. “Joshua’s mission has become a great and terrible thing. To master it, we must also be great and terrible.”
Hashi’s concentration had turned entirely inward. Trying to drag it outward—break past
Hashi’s defenses—Warden rasped through his teeth, “There’s one other highlight you should know about. Apparently she has a son.”
Hashi didn’t react. He might not have heard Warden.
“She calls him Davies Hyland. Nick’s kid—or Angus’.” The thought twisted Warden’s heart. “It turns out the reason—the only reason we have so far—they went to Enablement was so she could have this boy force-grown. Do you know anything about that? Do you know how the Amnion supply minds to kids whose bodies mature in hours instead of years?”
Whose mind has Davies got?
Hashi shook his head. His emissions wrapped around him in coils of self-absorption.
“Director, I must understand this,” he said from the center of his private thoughts. “Do you wish me to credit that Joshua has broken his programming?”
“What else?” Warden snapped.
Hashi blinked behind his glasses. At last he shifted his attention to Warden. “Can you think of no other explanation for Morn Hyland’s unlooked-for survival?” he countered. “Then why does he still act as we have instructed him, reporting his own freedom when surely escape is what he desires most?
“In some sense,” he concluded, “his essential instruction sets hold. He remains ours.”
“All right.” Warden conceded the point. “You tell me. Why is she still alive?”
What treason are you talking about?
Hashi pulled IR flares and flails into focus.
“Is it not possible,” he asked, “that her survival represents a bargain of some kind? Perhaps Joshua encountered situations, dilemmas, complexities on Thanatos Minor which we did not foresee. Perhaps the presence of Amnion warships—or Milos Taverner’s treachery—challenged him beyond his limits. Or perhaps Milos saw fit to adjust one or another of his priorities. Under those conditions, he may have recognized the need for aid.
“And to whom would he turn, if not to another of our affiliated operatives—to Nick Succorso? If Captain Succorso demanded Morn Hyland’s life as the price for his assistance, Joshua’s programming would not have precluded acceptance.”
“Fine,” Warden growled. He’d offered the same argument to Holt Fasner. It was false, and he knew it. “Why in hell would Succorso do such a thing?”
What’s this treason you’re afraid of? Are you talking about yourself?
Hashi straightened in his seat. As if he didn’t notice what he was doing, his hands made incongruous, tentative attempts to smooth his rumpled lab coat. For a moment he seemed unwilling to meet Warden’s gaze. Then he faced Warden squarely.
“Director, what I must tell you will anger you.” A wheeze of pressure made his voice raw. “Yet I believe I have acted with almost prescient wisdom.”
Warden folded his arms over his chest; waited grimly, hoping that he would hear the truth.
“You are angry,” Hashi began, “because I have not been wholly open with you. In terms our redoubtable Governing Council would employ, I have not practiced ‘full disclosure.’ For that you will censure or value me, as you deem fit.
“But I must say plainly,” he added with a defensive buzz, “that I do not consider ‘full disclosure’ germane to my duties. I have never failed to reveal my acquired data when it was needed. And it is clear that disclosure is necessary now.”
He adjusted his glasses to confuse or clarify what Warden saw.
“Captain Scroyle’s report is not the only transmission I have received concerning events on or around Thanatos Minor. There has also been a flare from Captain Succorso. The implications of his message explain my reluctance to reveal my data fully, as well as the actions I have taken in response.”
There is treason here. Treachery and betrayal. Nick Succorso is—
Warden bit down on the back of his tongue to contain his impatience. What treason? What actions!
“I will quote Captain Succorso exactly.” The strain in Hashi’s tone made him sound unusually formal. “He said, ‘If you can get her, you bastard, you can have her. I don’t care what happens to you. You need me, but you blew it. You deserve her. Kazes are such fun, don’t you think?’”
Startled out of his self-control, Warden echoed involuntarily, “‘Kazes are such fun.’ He said that!”
Hashi nodded. He may have been gratified by Warden’s surprise. “You see the difficulties. Superficially he appears to possess an implausible knowledge of our recent adventures. And his taunting references to ‘she’ and ‘her’ are obscure.
“I considered it my job, Director Dios, to draw conclusions from Captain Succorso’s transmission—and from Captain Scroyle’s. To account for the plain threat in Captain Succorso’s words, as well as to explain the suggestive details of Captain Scroyle’s report, I have constructed a scenario which appalls me.”
He didn’t look appalled. The smeared gleam of his eyes suggested pride.
Kazes are such fun. Fun?
“One more item of background,” Hashi continued pedantically, “and then I will proceed. As you know, Captain Scroyle makes mention of Soar, a vessel captained by a certain Sorus Chatelaine. Data Processing has presented me with the hypothesis that Soar is a retrofitted avatar of a former illegal by the name of Gutbuster. Perhaps coincidentally—and perhaps not—Gutbuster was responsible for the death of Morn Hyland’s mother. And Gutbuster also killed the original Captain’s Fancy, leaving only the boy Nick Succorso aboard alive.”
Warden tightened his arms, clamping himself in his stolid pose. Get to the point! he wanted to yell. What actions?
But Hashi’s love of his own explanations was inexorable. He plodded on.
“Nick Succorso, Morn Hyland, and Sorus Chatelaine are linked to each other by bonds of bloodshed. It may be, however, that those bonds are of opposing kinds. The natural assumption is that Morn Hyland loathes Gutbuster’s memory. In contrast, Nick Succorso’s survival aboard Captain’s Fancy may have been a gift from Sorus Chatelaine.”
Warden snarled in the pit of his stomach. “What’s the relevance of all this? I’m running out of time. I need facts, not moonshine.”
I need the truth.
Hashi flapped his hands as if he could wave away urgency. “Grant that it may be so.” His aura suggested more than pride; it hinted at righteousness; vindication. “Consider what follows.
“Morn Hyland and Nick Succorso are natural enemies, if for no other reason than because he must have used her zone implant against her. Being who he is, he could hardly do otherwise. And he and Sorus Chatelaine may be allies. Why would a man such as Nick Succorso risk visiting Enablement Station simply so that a natural enemy could have a son? And why would rumors of an antimutagen surround a possible ally on Thanatos Minor?
“Here, briefly, is my scenario.” Warden took a deep breath against the weight of his arms.
“Nick Succorso and Sorus Chatelaine propose to make themselves unimaginably wealthy.” Hashi spoke with his head tilted back, as if he were addressing the ceiling. Despite the abstraction of his delivery, he sounded almost smug. “At the same time they mean to punish us for our failures to give him support when he demanded it. Morn Hyland was taken to Enablement with the connivance of the Amnion so that she could be transformed into some manner of genetic kaze aimed at us.”
By an act of will, Warden showed no reaction. Yet his head seemed to reel as if it were full of ghouls. Autonomic terror squeezed sweat like blood from the bones of his forehead. A genetic kaze? Horrific idea: anyone but Hashi would have been appalled by it; dismayed to the quick. And it was possible. Warden had prepared or planned nothing which might have prevented it. And Angus would accept her in that condition, as long as he failed to detect any sign of genetic tampering.
Christ, it could work! Treason was too small a word for it. If Hashi’s view of the connection between Nick and this Sorus Chatelaine was accurate, Warden could think of no reason to dismiss the DA director’s interpretation.
Oh, Morn! What have I done to you?
Hashi hadn’t stopped, however. Sti
ll regarding the ceiling, he explained, “All subsequent conflict between Nick Succorso and the Amnion was mere chicanery, designed to conceal the truth. Morn was sent to the Bill by ejection pod as a pretense. Then she was reacquired, presumably with Amnion aid.
“For her part, Sorus Chatelaine began spreading the gossip that a mutagen immunity drug exists—and exists in her possession. The crewmember delivered to and then retrieved from the Amnion by Captain Succorso was a ploy to demonstrate the efficacy of the drug. That done, Captain Succorso positioned himself—perhaps by means of his past association with Milos Taverner—so that he and Morn Hyland would be preserved with Trumpet.
“What results? Apparently harmless, Morn is brought to us. UMCPHQ falls to genetic assault, terrorizing all of humankind. And where does the species turn for hope? Why, to Nick Succorso and Sorus Chatelaine, who possess a proven antimutagen.”
Finally Hashi lowered his gaze to Warden’s. “Does this not sound like our Captain Succorso? He becomes as rich as the stars. At the same time”—Hashi smiled bleakly—“we are discomfited. Hence his flare. He dares to taunt us because he believes that we cannot penetrate his deception—and he cannot resist displaying his superiority.”
Warden swallowed harshly. “That’s it?” He couldn’t force himself to stop sweating; but he kept his voice under rigid control. “That’s your scenario?”
Hashi nodded. Pride stained his aura like a malignancy.
“And you believe it?” Warden demanded.
“‘Believe it’?” Hashi waved away the question airily. “I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. It is a hypothesis, nothing more. I consider it plausible. Therefore it may be accurate. Belief or doubt are moot.”