“Damn!” Astringent stung the wound on her head. They had already pulled a finger-wide fragment of plastic out of her shoulder. Florian was in worse shape, having caught several, and having bled profusely, in no condition to be running check-in, but Florian was at one door and a reliable guard was at the other, making sure badges got checked and that Reseune personnel were accounted for.
Abban and the two with him were dead. I don’t know if they were his, Catlin had said. There wasn’t time to ask.
An arriving ambulance jumped a curb, and Justin reeled back, stumbled and recovered himself in the dark, in the chaos of lights and firefighting equipment, announcements over loud-hailers, guests in night-robes and pajamas huddled together in the street outside and onto the gravel garden area. Firelight spread through smoke, smoke hazed the emergency lights and the floods around the entrance and down the drive.
He was on the street then. He did not know how he had gotten there, or where the hotel was. He was wobbling on his feet and he found a bench to sit on, in the dark. He dropped his head into his hands and felt clammy sweat despite the night chill.
He was blank for a time more. He was walking again, confronted with a dead end in the space between two buildings, and a stairway down. Pedway, the sign said.
Find a phone, he thought. Get help. I’m lost.
And then he thought: I’m not thinking clearly. God, what if—
It was someone on staff. Security had checked it.
Abban—had checked it.
Was it aimed at me? Was I the only one?
Ari—
He stumbled on the steps, caught himself on the rail, and made it to the bottom, to security doors that gave way to his approach, to a lighted tunnel that stretched on in eerie vacancy.
“Uncle Denys,” Ari said; and of a sudden the load seemed too much—Uncle Denys, the way she had said in the hospital when she had broken her arm, when they had handed her the phone and she had had to tell Denys she had been a fool. Not a fool this time, she told herself that; lucky to be alive. But the report was nothing to be proud of either. “Uncle Denys, I’m all right. So are Florian and Catlin.”
“Thank God for that. They’re saying you were killed, you understand that?”
“I’m pretty much alive. A few scratches and some burns. But Abban’s dead. Five others. In the fire.” There was a limit to what they could say on the net, via the remotes Florian had set up with the mobile system. “I’m taking command of Security here myself. I’m issuing orders through the net. Security is compromised as hell, understand me. Someone got inside.” Her hand started to shake. She bit her lip and drew in a large breath. “There’ve been two other bombings tonight—Paxers blew up some track in center city, they’re claiming the attack on the hotel, and they’re threatening worse; I’m in contact with the Novgorod police and all our systems—”
“Understood,” Denys said, before she had to say more than she wanted. “I’m relieved. We’ve got that on the net. God, Ari, what a mess!”
“Don’t be surprised by much of anything. It’s all right, understand. Bureau Enforcement is moving on the hotel situation. Watch the net.”
“Understood. Absolutely. We’d better cut this off. I’ll up your priorities, effective immediately. Thank God you’re safe.”
“I plan to stay that way,” she said. “Take care of yourself. All right?”
“You take care,” Denys said. “Please.”
She broke the contact, passed the handset back to Florian.
“We have confirmation,” he said. “The plane has left the ground at Planys. They expect touchdown about 1450 tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said. “Good.” From the fragile amount of control she had.
“Councillor Harad is waiting on-line; so is Councillor Corain. They’ve asked about your safety.”
Strange bedfellows, she thought. But of course they would—Harad because he was an ally; Corain because, whatever he feared from her, he had more to fear from the Paxers, the radicals in his own spectrum; and the radicals in Defense.
“I’ll talk to them. Have we got reporters down there?”
“Plenty.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Sera, you’re in shock.”
“That’s several of us, isn’t it? Damn, get me a mirror and some makeup. We’re in a war, hear me?”
The mirror in the ped-tunnel restroom showed a soot-streaked face that for a heartbeat Justin hardly knew for his own. His hands and arms were enough to raise question, the smell of smoke about his clothing, he had thought; and now he turned on the water full, took a handful of soap and started washing, wincing at bruises and burns.
The dark blue sweater and pants showed soot, but water and rubbing at least got the worst off and ground the rest in. He went through an entire stock of soap packets and dried his hair and his shoulders under the blowers, looked up again and saw a face shockingly pale. He was starting to need a shave. His sweater was burned and snagged, he had a tear above the knee and a gash I where the tear was. Anyone who saw him, he thought, would report him to the police.
And that would catch him up in Cyteen law.
He leaned against the sink and wiped cold water across his face, clamping his jaws against a sick feeling that had been with him since he had come to. Thoughts started trying to insinuate themselves up to a conscious, emotional level: It was Ari’s wall; whoever did this was staff—whoever did this—
Abban. Giraud’s orders. But I’m only the incidental target. If she’s dead—
The thought was incredible to him. Shattering. Ariane Emory had years to live. Ariane Emory had a century yet, was part of the world, part of his thinking, was—like air and gravity—there.
—someone else is in charge, someone else—wanting—someone to blame.
Paxers. Jordan.
Amy Carnath waiting in the apartment, with Grant, with Security—if Ari’s dead—what can anyone do—
They’ve got Jordan, got Grant—I’m the only one still free—the only one who can make them trouble—
Something was wrong. Grant heard the Minder-call in the other bedroom—they had given him Justin’s, which was his own as well, out of courtesy, he thought, as the larger room, or perhaps because they had known. Florian had re-set the Minder to respond to Amy Carnath, so nothing of what it was saying got to him, but he reckoned that it was not minor if it wakened young sera in the small hours of the night. After that he heard both Amy and Quentin stirring about and talking together in voices he could not quite hear with his ear to the door.
He slammed the door with his open palm. “Young sera, is something wrong?”
No answer. “Young sera? Please?”
Damn.
He went back to the large and unaccustomedly empty bed, lay staring at the ceiling with the lights on and tried to tell himself it was nothing.
But finally sera Amy came on the Minder to say: “Grant, are you awake?”
“Yes, sera.”
“There’s been an incident in Novgorod. Someone bombed the hotel. Ari’s all right. She’s coming on vid. Do you want to come to the living room?”
“Yes, sera.” He did not panic. He got up, got his robe, and went to the door, which Quentin opened for him. “Thank you,” he said, and walked ahead of Quentin as far as his own living room, where Amy was sitting on the couch.
He took the other side of the U, Quentin took the middle, between him and Amy; and he sat with his arms folded against too much chill, watching the images of emergency vehicles, smoke billowing from breached seals on the hotel’s top two floors.
“Were people killed?” he asked quietly, refusing to panic. Sera Amy was not cruel. She would not bring him out here to psych him: he believed that, but it was a thin thread.
“Five of Security,” Amy said. “They say the Paxers got a bomb in. They aren’t saying how. I don’t know any more than that. We’re not supposed to do things on the phones that give away where people are or what’s going on or
when they’re going to be places. That’s the Rule.”
Grant looked at her past Quentin. Not panicking, not yet; but the adrenaline flood was there, threatening shivers, pure fight-flight conflict.
“I had a call from Dr. Nye warning me not to let you loose,” Amy said. “He says he’d really like me to send you downstairs to Security, but I told him no. I lied to him. I said you were locked up.”
“Thank you,” Grant said, because something seemed called for.
And watched the vid.
Makeup covered the minor burns, but she left the visible bruise and the burn on her cheek; she put two pins in her hair, but she let it fly loose about her face. She had a clean sweater in her luggage that Security had rescued from the suite, but she chose to meet the cameras in what she was wearing, the tailored, gray satin blouse, with the blood and the burns and the soot, and the watermark the firefighting foam had made.
She was also sure, having stalled off twice, that the clips would hit the morning news with full exposure in Novgorod.
“They tried,” she said grimly, in answer to the first question, which asked her reaction to what had happened; and she confronted the cameras with a rapid-fire series of answers that got around the fine question of who had done it and gave her the launching point that she wanted—
“We are very well, thank you. And I have a personal statement, which I’ll give you first. Then questions.
“I don’t know yet why this happened. I know part of it; and it was an attempt not quite to silence me, because I have no voice in politics—but to kill me before I do come of age enough to acquire one.
“It was a power move of some kind, because whoever did it wanted power without process. It cost the lives of brave people who tried despite fire and the dangers of more explosions, to rescue me and others; more, it was a clear attempt to destroy the political process, no matter who instigated it, no matter who perpetrated it. I don’t think that the Paxers had anything to do with this. That they’re anxious to claim they had is typical of the breed: and they hope to benefit from it—benefit from it, because that’s exactly what’s going on: that a handful of individuals too few to make a party and incapable of winning votes in debate thinks it can wear down the majority by terror—creates an atmosphere in which every fool with a half-conceived program can try the same thing and add to the confusion they hope to use. Let me tell you: whether this was the Paxers or one individual with a personal opinion he thinks outweighs the law, it’s the peace under assault, it’s our freedoms under assault, and every one of these attacks, no matter how motivated, makes the lawful rest of us that much more certain we don’t want killers in charge of our lives and we damned well don’t want their advice on how to conduct our affairs.
“Let me tell you also that within an hour of the disaster, Chairman Harad and members of the Council, Simon Jacques and Mikhail Corain, called me to express their profound outrage. Everyone, no matter what political party, understands what’s threatened by actions like this. I don’t need to say that to the people of Novgorod, who’ve held out against the tactics of the extremists and who’ve equally well held out against offers of help from the central government. I take my example from Novgorod. People can persuade me with ideas but there’s no way in hell they’re going to move me with violence or the possibility of violence.
“This isn’t the first time in history someone’s tried this; and by everything I’ve ever learned, the answer that works with them is exactly the land of contempt Novgorod turns on them and their ideas—contempt, but no patience, no patience. Every time the Council sits to debate honest differences, everybody wins, precisely because civilization is working and the majority and the minority are trying to work out a fair compromise that protects the people they represent. That’s why these types who want their own way above all have to destroy that; and that’s precisely why the best answer is a consensus of all the elected bodies that ideas are valuable, peaceful voices deserve serious consideration, human needs have to be dealt with in a wise distribution of resources, and the principle of life itself has to be high on our list of values, just under our regard for the quality of life and the freedom to speak our opinions. Whoever did this, from whatever misguided notion of right above the law, he hasn’t scared me into retreat, he’s made me know how important law is; and I will run for office, someday; I’ll run, and I’ll respect the vote in my electorate, whatever the outcome, because an honest contest is one thing, but creating chaos to undermine the people’s chosen representative isn’t dissent, it’s sabotage of the process, the same as the bombers are trying, and I’ll have no part of that either.”
Hear that, Vladislaw Khalid.
“If my electorate does think I should sit on Council I’ll remember the cost it takes to have Council at all; and I’ll remember that we have to have it, no matter the types who think they’re above the law and so right they can take lives with impunity.
“That’s the end of my personal statement. I’ve been very happy until now being as private as I could be; and I can’t be now, because somebody decided to kill people to keep me from ever speaking out. So now I will speak up, loud and clear and often as there’s something to say, because that’s the best way I know to fight the ones who want me silenced.
“I’ll take questions.”
It was all right, she thought. She got off with a: “I’m sorry, my voice is going”; and a tremor in the hand she used to wipe a stray strand of hair—no need to pretend the latter: she had hid it until then, and got away from the cameras and had to sit down quickly, but she had gotten through it and said exactly what she had wanted to say.
“Is there any word?” she asked Catlin, who had been monitoring the net.
“No, sera,” Catlin said.
She let go her breath and took the water Florian handed her. “Damn.” Tears threatened, pain and exhaustion and the frustration of the situation. It was dawn. She had not slept since the morning of Giraud’s funeral. Yesterday. God. “I’m going to make a phone call to Amy,” she said in a controlled, quiet voice. “Ask Lynch to set up a very brief meeting with the Councillors and proxies at hand; and with the Bureau; I want to be at the airport by 0900.”
“Sera, you haven’t slept. Allow for that.”
She sat a moment and thought about that. The blast kept replaying in her memory. The burned bodies. The smoke-filled halls, the lights shining out of haze.
She had no desire to shut her eyes at the moment, or to put food into her stomach, or to disturb her wounds by wrestling herself into the sweater she had brought: such little pains unnerved her, when there was so much worse to think about.
So one did not think about what-if and might-have-been. One handled things at the present, and trusted one’s long-prepared decisions.
One Worked the whole of Union if that was what it took. One promised order where order did not exist; one held out the promise of moderation and rapprochement to shore up Corain, who was the opposition she preferred to Khalid.
One moved close to center for a while, to move the opposition closer to one’s position—granted, of course, that they were trying to do the same: and granted at that point the clever and the quick would make the next jump out, leaving the opposition sitting bewildered at the new center.
Working the macrosystem, Ari senior would say.
While everything else went to hell and nothing that one wanted—stayed for long.
Except Florian and Catlin. Except the one flawless loyalty—the one thing that Ari’s murderer had not dared to face.
Justin waked, winced at stiffened joints and the cramped position the thinly-padded bench in the restroom afforded; waked and tried to move in a hurry at the sound of the outer doors, to rake his hair into some kind of order and get to his feet before the intrusion passed the second doors; but he was only halfway up and off his balance before he faced two men in work-clothes, who stared at him half a heartbeat in surprise. He just turned to the sink, natural as breathing, turned on
the water, wet his hands and ran them through his hair.
Except the two men showed up in the mirror, close behind him.
One moment he panicked. The next he thought: Hell, they’re not Reseune Security, and turned around with a right elbow and all the strength he had—shocked as it connected, but still moving in the tape-taught sequence, full spin and a punch to the breastbone.
He stared a split-second at the result, one man flung backward against the corner, the other down—God, he thought, and then seeing the first man bracing to go for him, darted for the door and knocked it banging, went through the second the same way, and came out into a tunnel already beginning to fill with morning traffic.
What if I was wrong? That man could die. I may have killed someone.
Then: No. I read it right.
And: I haven’t studied that tape since I was a kid. I didn’t know I could do that.
He slowed to a fast walk, shaking in the knees and hurting in his shoulders and his back and knowing he was attracting attention with his unshaven face and his agitated manner: he tried to match the pace of the general traffic, put his hands in his pockets and tried to look more casual, all the while thinking that the men could be after him now with more than robbery in mind.
Damn, I’d have given them the keycard and wished them luck using it, let them lead the police on a chase—
God. No. Novgorod doesn’t have a check-system. There’s no tracking system, they refused to put it in.
He turned on one foot—his neck and shoulders were too stiff—caught his balance, looked back and moved on. He was not sure he could even recognize the men among the crowds—
More strangers than I’ve ever seen at once in my whole life—too many faces, too many people in clothes too much alike…
People jostled him and cursed him: Damn z-case, a man said. He rubbed an unshaven chin and, since shutters were opening and shops were lighting up in this section of the tunnels, he found a pharmacy and bought a shaving kit; and a breakfast counter and bought a roll-up and a glass of synth orange. But the boy took an extra look at the keycard and made him nervous.