“But it doesn’t scare you,” Warden pursued.
“‘Scare’ me? No, I am not scared. As a conception, I find it appalling. In practice I see nothing to fear.”
Warden released his arms in order to clench his fists on the desktop. He wanted Hashi to see his anger—and his restraint.
“It doesn’t scare you,” he rasped, “because you’ve already done something about it. You’ve already ‘acted with almost prescient wisdom,’ as you call it.” Done something great and terrible. “Don’t stop now. That’s the part I’ve been waiting to hear.”
Hashi’s mouth twisted primly. He adjusted his glasses, crossed one thin leg over the other.
“Director, I did not speak of this earlier because I did not trust the time. You will tell me whether I have judged aptly.
“When Punisher encountered Free Lunch and Captain Scroyle, he had relayed his transmission to me and was awaiting orders. In response I offered him a new contract.”
Warden was suddenly sure that he was about to heat the truth. “What contract? What was it for?”
Hashi faced his director like a blue sky. “In my judgment action was urgently required. Therefore Captain Scroyle has been handsomely remunerated to destroy Trumpet and everyone aboard.”
Warden nearly cried out; nearly broke into a yell—or a wail. His fists hit the desktop. Destroy Trumpet! Kill Angus and Morn just when Warden himself had almost literally moved heaven and Earth to keep them alive?
Hashi, you bastard! You unconscionable bastard.
But his surprise and shock pulled him in so many different directions at once that they held him mute; hurt him in so many different ways that he couldn’t utter any of them.
Destroy—?
This of course of course was the real reason Hashi had concealed his dealings with Free Lunch. He hadn’t wanted to admit what he’d done. Left alone, he might have taken his involvement in the ruin of what he saw as Nick’s treason to his grave.
Warden didn’t know how he kept from howling. His fists pounded the desktop so that he wouldn’t hit himself.
Hashi’s gambit dismayed him to the bone. But at the same time, oh, shit, at the same time it offered him a way to subvert Holt Fasner’s orders; a seductive answer to the treachery Holt demanded. Let Trumpet be killed by Free Lunch. Morn and Angus would be granted a clean death, if no mercy; Nick would die as well; and Davies would be kept away from the Dragon. Warden’s own hopes and needs would die with them; but he could claim with at least superficial honesty that his hands were clean.
Didn’t that make sense? If Morn was a genetic kaze?
No, he swore with all his heart. No. I will not.
He was ashamed to the pit of his stomach, the core of his heart; his blood burned with shame in his veins. He was beside himself with fury at the DA director—yet Hashi wasn’t to blame. This would never have happened if Warden’s own plotting and subterfuge, his complicity with the Dragon and his covert efforts to be free of it, hadn’t created an environment which permitted, encouraged, even necessitated manipulation and secrets for the people around him.
He was the director of the United Mining Companies Police; no one else. He was responsible.
And he was Warden Dios. Shame made him strong.
Grimly he unclosed his fists. He couldn’t swallow his anguish and rage, but he allowed himself no recrimination.
“There’s only one problem,” he retorted through his teeth. “It’s all bullshit. Your scenario may be plausible, but it’s not true. That’s not why Morn is alive.”
Hashi opened his mouth; closed it again. Streaks of apprehension ached across his aura. As if he didn’t notice what he was doing, he put down his hands to support himself on the sides of his chair.
“She’s alive,” Warden grated, “because I told Angus to rescue her. I changed his programming—I swapped out his datacore before he and Milos left. You’re trying to kill her”—the words broke from him like a cry—“and I need her alive.”
Hashi’s heart staggered; missed several beats. The blood drained from his face as if he were being sucked dry. Nevertheless he didn’t flinch; didn’t protest; didn’t refuse to hear or believe. The blow was hard, but he strove to bear it.
“You changed his programming.” He spoke like a sigh. “You need her alive.” His hands shook slightly as he raised them to his face and removed his glasses; folded the stems carefully; tucked the glasses into the breast pocket of his lab coat. Without them his face seemed oddly vulnerable, as if he wore them to conceal a weakness. “You are a challenge to me, Warden. Your game is deeper than I imagined.
“Only now does it occur to me that you might profit from Morn Hyland’s life.”
Warden hugged his pain and remained silent, giving Hashi time to think.
“In one sense,” Hashi went on, “she threatens us all. But in another—” His voice cracked; his emanations cried out with chagrin. More than anyone Warden had ever known, Hashi relied on his own mind. Now he was being told that his intelligence and skills had failed him. “Ah, your game is indeed deep. Now that the opportunity has passed, I ask myself how you might better demonstrate your honor and usefulness to our esteemed Council in these troubled times than by rescuing the very woman who has suffered most for your decisions.
“And the benefit is only increased by the threat she represents.” He seemed to be sinking in his chair; shrinking in his own estimation. “If she is a kaze, we are forewarned. We will be able to guard against her. But your honor and effectiveness—your survival—would inevitably be enhanced by the rescue of a woman who has such tales to tell at the Dragon’s expense.”
He may have been able to lie to the whole world, but apparently he couldn’t lie to himself.
“Please accept my regrets, Director. I have done you a singular disservice.”
True. But the contract had already been sent. It was beyond recall. Unless—
Wearily Warden asked, “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can contact Captain Scroyle?”
“Alas, no.” Hashi frowned in regret. “I cannot know where he has gone, except in pursuit of Trumpet. And he will not expect contact from me. Therefore he will not look for it.”
No, of course not. That would have been too easy.
“In that case”—bracing his palms on the desktop, Warden pushed to his feet—“you can go back to work. I’m out of time. Like everybody else around here, I’ve got orders to carry out.”
You don’t have to resign, Hashi. I still need you.
Hashi rose from his chair. Fumbling in his pockets, he found his glasses and put them back on his nose. He made no pretense of looking through them, however.
“Forgive me if I appear slow,” he wheezed. “I simply wish matters to be clear so that I will make no more mistakes. Do you have orders for me?”
“Yes.” Warden didn’t hesitate. “You have no more responsibility for Trumpet or Joshua. Leave them to me. If any more information about Billingate, the Amnion, Trumpet, Joshua, Free Lunch, or even Min happens to be routed your way, you will make sure I see it immediately.”
No more games, Hashi.
The DA director nodded. “I understand.”
“Instead,” Warden continued, “I’m leaving the investigation of Godsen’s murder to you.”
Hashi cocked an eyebrow, but Warden couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or relieved.
“Min isn’t here, and her Chief of Security is out of his depth. If you can’t uncover the truth”—Warden used the word deliberately—“about those kazes, no one can.
“But there’s one fact you may not know. Shortly before that kaze reached him, Godsen got a call from Holt Fasner. Holt wanted Godsen to go see him immediately. Godsen refused because I’d restricted him to UMCPHQ.”
After only a slight pause, Warden finished, “Before he died, Godsen called me to tell me what he’d done.”
Now Hashi’s surprise was unmistakable. He pursed his lips, hissed softly between his teeth. “So
our Godsen discovered loyalty before he died. I would not have believed it.”
“That’s why he was killed,” Warden pronounced harshly. “Because he discovered that particular loyalty.”
Are you listening, Hashi? Do you hear me?
“I see,” Hashi murmured while he considered the implications. “Then perhaps he deserves to be lamented.”
Warden forced himself to make his point more clearly. “Hashi, don’t let it happen to you.”
The DA director replied with a smile that left his blue gaze cold. “I am not afraid. His position and mine are dissimilar. No one but you has ever had reason to question my loyalty.”
He gave Warden a small bow, then moved to the door and waited for Warden to unlock it.
As the bolts and seals opened, however, he turned back to his director. “It occurs to me,” he said in a musing tone, “that the Amnion cannot force-grow a mind.”
Warden was running late. And he still had decisions to make—decisions on which any number of lives depended, including his own. “I jumped to the same conclusion,” he retorted brusquely.
Hashi didn’t stop. “It seems consistent with what we know of their methods in other areas, however, that they are able to copy one. Therefore, if young Davies Hyland has a mind, it must have been imprinted from someone else.”
“Fine,” Warden growled. “From whom? Nick Succorso?”
“I think not.” Hashi was still chewing on the question; but his emanations were calm, and his voice sounded confident. “Can you imagine that Captain Succorso would submit to such a process? Surely the Amnion could have offered him no certainty that his own mind would remain intact when it was copied.
“Indeed, it seems unlikely that any ordinary human being would have valued Davies Hyland enough to accept the hazards of such a process.”
Hashi flashed a speculative glance at Warden, but didn’t wait for a response. He reached for the door, opened it; in a moment he was gone.
Yet he’d left behind the hint Warden needed; left it in the air and silence after he closed the door as if he were trying to make amends.
Hashi Lebwohl, you God damn sonofabitch, you’re a genius. Davies Hyland must have a mind, a human mind. Otherwise the Amnion wouldn’t want him back—not badly enough to risk an act of war by chasing Trumpet. That was the whole point. If his mind was Amnion, they wouldn’t have lost him in the first place.
So where did he get it? Whose mind did he have?
Who would consider him precious enough to be worth the risk of madness or even a complete breakdown? What kind of person would do such a thing?
Only Morn.
Davies Hyland had his mother’s mind.
Warden couldn’t afford to think about it. He was perilously close to losing his window to contact Min Donner; to carry out Holt’s orders. And if he paused long enough to hope, he might be so shaken by it—or so paralyzed by doubt—that he would fail to grasp this one slim opportunity.
Slim? It wasn’t slim: it was by God emaciated. Slender to the point of invisibility.
Nevertheless he took the risk. It was all he had.
Dropping into his seat, he leaned over the desktop console and began writing Holt Fasner’s orders—as well as his own—for transmission to Min Donner and Punisher.
SIXTEN
Captain Sixten Vertigus was old.
He was old when he got up in the morning, and the face that greeted him in his mirror was as wrinkled and used as a sheet of crumpled tissue. What was left of his hair clung to his scalp in wisps so fine that they responded to any kind of static. When he shaved—an atavistic habit which he had no inclination to give up—his hands shook as if the exercise was strenuous; and the skin of his hands was translucent enough to let him see his veins and tendons. He couldn’t dress himself without fumbling.
He was old when he went to his rooms in the Members’ Offices wing of the GCES Complex, or to the Council chamber, and if he happened to forget his age, everyone he met from the lowliest data clerk to Abrim Len himself reminded him of it by treating him as if he were an invalid, temporarily risen from the bed in which he was long overdue to die.
He was old while his aides shuffled documents back and forth across his desk; while his colleagues feigned including him in their discussions because he was too much a legend to be ignored; while the other Members and their aides, and President Len and his aides, droned on and on about the endless, mindless, necessary details of governing human space. Sometimes when he stared at people he was actually asleep; and even when he was at his most alert, his eyes were so pale that he looked blind: he might have been a man to whom sight no longer meant anything.
On top of that, his whole body still hurt. The aftereffects of the explosion which had killed Marine, and which had very nearly done the same to Sixten himself, lingered in his fragile bones and tired head, his sore chest and unsteady stomach.
On some occasions—but especially this one—he felt more than old; he felt like an antique, a relic. The former hero of Deep Star and humankind’s first contact with the Amnion was abysmally and irretrievably ancient.
His condition was not untreatable, of course. As the GCES Senior Member for the United Western Bloc, he could easily have obtained the same rejuvenation techniques which had prolonged Holt Fasner’s life. But he didn’t do it; didn’t even consider it. He didn’t want to live long enough to see whatever future the Dragon made.
He was far too old to tackle the job of trying to bring Holt Fasner down.
If he could have thought of one other Member who might be trusted to take the chance and face the consequences, just one, he would have handed over the responsibility without hesitation. But to the best of his knowledge, there were no other candidates. The people on Suka Bator who might have been willing to accept the risk—Special Counsel Maxim Igensard came to mind because he was due to arrive in Sixten’s office at any moment—were tainted by motives which Sixten considered wrongheaded at best, fatal at worst. And everybody else—the Members even more than their aides—was too easily scared.
So eventually he considered that maybe it was good to be old. After all, what did he have to lose? There wasn’t much time left to him in any case. He’d never had any significant amount of power. His position as the hero of Deep Star and the UWB Senior Member, not to mention as a symbol of probity for such groups as the Native Earthers, was largely ceremonial; and he only endured it because it gave him an occasional opportunity to act on his convictions. And his self-esteem was in no real danger. For years he’d been about as effectual as the figurehead of an ancient sailing vessel: Failure now wouldn’t make him feel any more useless.
Still he had to ask himself whether he could truly bear to fail again.
That was the wrong question, however.
Could he truly bear not to make the attempt?
He’d told Min Donner that his “mission” on the Council had always been to oppose Holt Fasner in all his ambitions. He’d only had personal encounters with the UMC CEO twice, once before Deep Star was sent to establish contact with the Amnion, once afterward. Yet those experiences had determined the course of his life—to study what he did and how he did it until I could learn the facts which might persuade other people to oppose him with me—until, inspired by age and foolishness, he’d entrusted his research to his subordinates, and so lost it all.
In his own mind nothing larger than himself exists. In his own person he considers himself bigger than the United Mining Companies, bigger than the Governing Council for Earth and Space, perhaps bigger than all humankind.
In a sense, Sixten told himself now, his years and his old failures were irrelevant. Even the possibility that he might be killed was irrelevant. Instead of worrying over such things, he should be grateful that Min Donner had brought him this one last chance. If he failed again, nothing new would be lost. And if he succeeded, something of inestimable value would be gained.
In any case—whether he failed or succeeded, lived or died??
?he would know that he was still man enough, still person enough, to act on his beliefs.
He tried to feel gratitude while he waited for Special Counsel Igensard.
Unfortunately his years refused to take pity on him. Time didn’t care whether he was a hero or a coward. He intended to finish his work on Min Donner’s Bill of Severance; but instead he was sound asleep in his chair when Marine’s replacement chimed his intercom to inform him that the Special Counsel had arrived.
His eyes felt as dry as stones: he’d nodded off with them open. Blinking painfully, he fumbled for the intercom toggle. When he finally located it, he heard Igensard’s voice in the background. “Is he sleeping in there?”
Sixten hated the note of humorless complacency in the Special Counsel’s tone; the veiled contempt.
“Of course I was sleeping,” he told his pickup. He also hated the high, thin quaver of his own voice, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Do you think being this old is easy? Send him in.”
By the time Igensard opened the door and entered, Sixten had straightened his clothes, rubbed some of the blur off his gaze, and made sure that his private intercom was active.
Maintenance had done an efficient job restoring both his office and the outer hall where his aides had their desks and cubicles. The ceiling had been repaired; the walls, patched. The carpeting and even his crystallized formica desktop had been replaced. There was no visible evidence that a kaze had ever attacked him.
Nevertheless Maxim Igensard came into the room as if he expected to smell high explosives and blood.
He was a gray man who cultivated an air of diffidence which had the effect of making him appear smaller than he was. His hair capped itself to his head as if it didn’t want to attract attention. He wore tidy, gray bureaucratic garments with impersonal lines and no distinguishing features: his suit could have been worn by anybody. Because it hadn’t been cut to fit him, however, it failed to conceal the unexpected bulge of his belly. As a result, his stomach contrasted incongruously with his lean face and limbs. Except for his abdomen, he looked like a man who didn’t eat often enough to become fat.