Now consider the matter of the immunity drug.
The moment Intertech’s research threatens to succeed, the Dragon perceives a threat. If humankind may be immunized against mutagens, the peril of the Amnion recedes. Therefore the necessity of the UMCP—and of its corporate host—recedes. Therefore the logic which sustains that host as the sole conduit for alien trade and wealth loses its syllogistic inevitability.
At once the Dragon moves to quash the research. It must be removed before it can become the means by which his hold on human space frays away.
So much is predictable, hardly worthy of comment.
But how does Warden Dios respond? Does he permit himself spasms of self-righteousness, as a lesser man might? Does he fall prey to scruples or fainthearted alarms? Does he oppose his putative master, either openly or privately?
He does not.
Instead he persuades the Dragon that Intertech’s research must be permitted to continue in secret—in my care, in fact. Employing his considerable resources of eloquence and charisma, he convinces the Dragon that an attained immunity drug—if it were kept secret—would be a tool of unmatched power. He does not stake his argument on the proposition that such a drug could be used to secure the safety of his own people. Instead he suggests using, not the drug itself, but knowledge of the drug against the Amnion. By “leaking”—odious term—that knowledge, he can induce them to be more fearful in their dealings with us. They will be at once confirmed in their distrust of humankind and eroded in their ability to act on that distrust. And this development will conduce to the security of the UMC as the sole conduit for alien etc.
How can the Dragon resist such blandishment? Its virtues are too plain to be refuted. The current state of poised but inactive hostility between humankind and the Amnion is reinforced. UMC profits are maximized. And Warden Dios’ purity as the instrument of Holt Fasner’s will is demonstrated. His natural enmity to the Dragon is apparently defanged by his implication in the Dragon’s disdain for humankind. Once again Warden Dios is subsumed by Holt Fasner’s avarice.
Inevitably the Dragon cedes his approval. And so the Intertech research comes to me, to complete and use as I advise—and as Warden Dios sees fit.
Therefore the commonly held view that Warden Dios is the perfect instrument of Holt Fasner’s will is affirmed, is it not?
I think not.
Consider the beauty of this outcome from the perspective of the UMCP. Certainly the Dragon is given what he most desires—the immeasurable and ultimately meaningless satisfaction of his greed. But the more significant, the more effective, benefits belong all to the UMCP. We have the drug itself, to use both for our own security and for the consternation of our opponents. The risks of actions we have already taken are reduced. The risks of actions which we have heretofore declined are made acceptable. We can manipulate the defensive postures of the Amnion almost at will. The consequences of humankind’s quite natural and comprehensible impulse toward piracy are diminished. We are given a bulwark against the depredations of politicians, protected by the mere existence of our secrets from ham-fisted tampering. Only Protocol suffers under the burden of secrecy—and such men as Godsen Frik are born to suffer. Both Enforcement Division and Data Acquisition are made stronger.
Warden Dios has gained all this—and at what cost? At no discernible cost at all, apart from the delicious expense of allowing the Dragon to retain his illusions. And failures of godhood will—they must—derive from any illusion. Thus Holt Fasner has been at once confirmed in his lust for power and eroded in his ability to control it by his most necessary subordinate—his most natural enemy….
… having no scruples myself, I do not hesitate to call myself a genius. However, I am more cautious when I apply that name to others….
… because of victories such as his handling of Intertech’s immunity research, as well as countless others, I state categorically that Warden Dios is a genius.
GODSEN
odsen Frik sat in his office and stared at the orders he’d just received. As he read the official hardcopy for the third time, he tried to believe that he wasn’t afraid.
Things like this weren’t supposed to happen to him. What was the advantage of being Holt Fasner’s protégé—what did he gain by his efforts to serve the United Mining Companies as much as the United Mining Companies Police—if things like this could still happen to him?
Where did Warden Dios get the nerve? Didn’t he understand that Holt Fasner was his boss—that the Dragon could simply fire him?
But if Warden fired Godsen himself first—and the Dragon didn’t consider the Director of Protocol worth losing the Director of the whole UMCP for—
That was the possibility Godsen concentrated on, so that he wouldn’t think about his real fear. A man who’d been fired by the UMCP for insubordination—or worse—wasn’t a likely candidate to succeed Abrim Len as president of the Governing Council for Earth and Space. All of his ambitions—not to mention his long years of patience and ass-licking—would come to nothing.
The other possibilities were too disturbing to consider.
What if this quicksand of plots and counterplots proved too thick for him; too subtle and deadly? What if he drowned in it? He could survive being fired. And if he was fired in Holt Fasner’s name, the Dragon would eventually reward him. But what if the plotting actually killed him?
There was blood in these orders. He knew without asking that they were a response to the attack on Sixten Vertigus. People were going to die before this tangle of betrayals sorted itself out. Somewhere, somehow, the decision had already been made that the stakes were worth killing for.
Godsen Frik didn’t want to be one of the casualties.
He reread the hardcopy obsessively in an effort to prevent himself from wondering whether his loyalty to Holt Fasner at Warden Dios’ occasional expense was reason enough for nameless madmen to want him dead.
Or whether he distrusted Dios enough to call the UMCP director a madman.
His orders were as clear as they were unexplained. Until further notice, Godsen Frik, Director of Protocol, United Mining Companies Police, was restricted to UMCPHQ.
What was Dios trying to do? Prevent Frik from taking one of his sporadic junkets to the fleshpots—Godsen loved words like that—of Earth, where he would presumably be an easy target? Well, in all honesty that wasn’t much of a hardship. Protocol was full of attractive women—he’d seen to that as a good PR director should—and some of them found him attractive in turn, for their own reasons. If they lacked the seductive perversion of the fleshpots, they were still women. Some of them were bound to be worth teaching.
In fact, being restricted to UMCPHQ wasn’t a hardship at all, in any obvious sense. His quarters were luxurious in ways which satisfied his sense of his own worth, ways which suggested that he was accustomed to wealth and status, but not ruled by them: his rooms were spacious; full of subdued art, quiet holograms, data terminals, and video screens; furnished with costly but understated rugs, sofas, chairs, tables, beds. And his office was spartan only by comparison with the official room which Warden never used except on occasions of public display. From where he sat he could perform all the necessary functions of his job: issue bulletins, hold meetings, fend off or gratify news-dogs; brief the votes either in session or in private, by public transmission or secure downlink; support or oppose the policies of his fellow directors.
So why did he feel trapped? Why was he scared?
Because there was so much at stake, sure, of course, that was the reason. Angus Thermopyle had been set loose against Billingate. Controlled by none other than Milos Taverner, in the name of heaven! And explicitly programmed not to rescue Morn Hyland. That was bad enough. But Dios’ explosive video conference with the GCES made everything worse. A nightmare for Protocol, impossible to clean up or sweep under the rug. He had “curled the moral hair” of the votes with a vengeance. Godsen had already received four calls from Maxim Igensard, five from UWB Jun
ior Member Carsin, and two more from Abrim Len—none of which he’d answered, for the simple reason that he didn’t know how.
And the attack no on Sixten Vertigus no made everything MUCH worse no, don’t think about that. Absolutely not.
It would be better to answer his calls than think.
Restricted to UMCPHQ.
Suddenly he felt sure that the only conceivable way to minimize or at least contain the damage to the UMCP—and by extension, Holt Fasner—was to go to Earth, visit Igensard and Carsin and Len and even dear old outdated Sixten Vertigus in person. In person he might be able to talk them down from their hysteria, swaddle them in blather; mop the sweat of paranoia off their brows, so to speak. He was at his best in person. Any technological interference, even by video downlink, neutralized the charm which made him good at his job, the ability to spin gossamer illusions and make them seem substantial.
It was intolerable that Warden Dios seemed determined to commit seppuku in this bizarre fashion; taking his director of Protocol with him.
Immersed in fears he didn’t want to recognize, Godsen flinched involuntarily when his intercom chimed. He dropped the hardcopy of his orders as if it were hot enough to burn him. His hands shook as he toggled the intercom.
“Yes?”
“Director Frik, I have a call from Holt Fasner.”
His secretary had been chosen because she had the kind of dulcet and accessible voice—this was Godsen’s phrase—which gave newsdogs wet dreams. He hated it and her down to the ground.
He kept his loathing to himself, however. In an avuncular rumble, he answered, “Put him through, my dear. It doesn’t pay to keep the High and Mighty waiting.”
“Yes, sir.”
At once one of the speakers on his desk—the channel he used for his most private conversations—came alive.
“Godsen.” The name wasn’t a question. And the voice didn’t identify itself. It didn’t need to: Godsen would have recognized it in his sleep. “What the hell’s going on down there? The votes are pissing pure alum.”
“Mr. Fasner—sir,” Godsen blurted out while his brain fumbled for the first consecutive sentence it could find, “I’m glad you called. I was just about to contact you. I’ve been working on a report—”
“Spare me the bullshit,” the Dragon retorted. He sounded incongruously cheerful. “Put it where it might do all of us some good. If you wanted to talk to me, you would have called by now.
“Try telling the truth instead. What—I mean this literally, Godsen—what in hell is going on?”
Old reflexes kicked in. As if he were behind a podium facing a hostile news conference, Godsen countered, “Can you be more specific?” Real dignity was beyond him at the moment, but at least he could sound starched and irritable at need. “There are any number of ‘hells’ going on. Which one do you want to talk about first?”
“Oh, stop it,” Holt may have been enjoying himself. “You know perfectly well what I want to talk about.”
Quailing inside, Godsen clung to his reflexes. “The first that comes to mind, sir, is the attack on Captain Vertigus. Do you want to hear my usual speech about the diligence and integrity of UMCP investigations? Or perhaps a sidebar on the merits of GCES Security? I’m afraid that’s all I have to offer. Only the Enforcement Division director or Warden Dios might know more, but if they do they haven’t revealed it to me.”
“My, my, you are in a state today.” Holt sneered. “One might almost think that kaze was aimed at you.” Without transition his tone became a snarl. “No, that is not what I’m asking about.”
Godsen winced. What else was left? As stiff as cardboard, he suggested, “Then I suppose you’re interested in the director’s video conference with the GCES?”
“Good guess,” Holt returned trenchantly.
Godsen resisted the impulse to come up with other possibilities. They wouldn’t distract the Dragon. Instead he said, “In that case I’ll suppose as well that you already know what actually happened—who said what to whom, that sort of thing.”
Holt Fasner waited. His silence sounded even more ominous than his voice.
“I’m going to suppose that what you want to know”—Godsen hung fire momentarily—“is why the director did it. What he hopes to gain.”
The Dragon still didn’t speak.
“Mr. Fasner—” Without meaning to, Godsen stopped. What could he say? More to the point, what could he say over a communications link which was inevitably being recorded somewhere in the bowels of UMCPHQ?
I think Warden Dios has lost his mind.
Good choice.
I think he’s trying to sabotage Data Acquisition. He’s too pure to like operations like the ones we’ve launched against Thanatos Minor, so he wants to get them prohibited in the future. Hashi only went along with it because he’s too full of his own cleverness to realize the truth.
Even better.
I think he’s trying to hurt you, Mr. Fasner, you and me and maybe everything the UMC stands for, God alone knows why.
No, that was definitely too frightening to say. Even recognizing the existence of such issues was dangerous.
It was typical of the Dragon to be careless of other people’s security considerations.
Swallowing heavily, Godsen began again.
“Mr. Fasner, you don’t really want to talk about that now. In any event, I probably don’t know the answer. The director”—even now he couldn’t stifle his rhetorical impulse—“hasn’t taken me into his confidence on this subject.”
While Godsen sweated, the Dragon remained silent. Then he replied with unexpected good humor, “So don’t talk to me. You’re probably right—I don’t want to hear it like this.
“Grab a shuttle,” he commanded, “and come over here.” Here meant his “home office,” his corporate station orbiting Earth only half a million kilometers from UMCPHQ. “Do it right away. You can give me this so-called ‘report’ of yours in person.”
Helplessly, hopelessly, Godsen’s mind went blank with alarm.
For better or worse, his mouth went on talking even when his mind failed him. He could easily imagine himself still talking long after he died, trading orotund cadences and earthy homilies with the flames of hell.
“I can’t, sir,” he said without thinking. “I’m afraid it’s out of the question. I would if I could—you know that. But we’re in a state of emergency here. I’m up to my hips in disasters. I’ve actually had to refuse calls from the President of the Council, can you believe it? The minute, the very minute, I can break free, I’ll be there as—”
“Godsen.” The Dragon’s voice pierced like an ice pick. “Stop talking. Restart your brain. Then try again.”
He knew the PR director too well. That was one of the many things Godsen disliked about him.
Nevertheless Godsen closed his mouth obediently. He took a deep breath through his nose. While he let it out, he picked up the hardcopy of his orders as if a mere piece of paper could protect him from Holt’s disapproval.
“I’ve got orders, sir,” he said more carefully. “Straight from Ward. I’m restricted to UMCPHQ. Until further notice. If I leave now, he won’t have to be content with calling it insubordination. He can call it malfeasance.”
Harsh with amusement and irony, Holt laughed. “And what do you suppose,” he drawled back, “I’ll call it if you refuse?”
Godsen Frik’s heart froze.
There it was. Without forewarning; without preparation: the central crisis of his life.
On one side stood all his ambitions, as well as all the sacrifices he’d made to achieve them—all the shit he’d swallowed, all the hate and fear he’d refused to spit back up.
On the other stood survival.
He believed that Holt Fasner had both the ability and the will to make him President of the Governing Council for Earth and Space—the most heard and visible public figure on the planet.
He also believed that Fasner didn’t give a long piss in the sewer
of the universe whether Godsen himself lived or died in the process.
He believed that Warden Dios disliked and distrusted him; no, worse, that Warden Dios considered him dangerous, a chancre on the pure and impossible body of the UMCP. Even worse—he could think about this now only because he had a greater fear to face—he considered it likely that Dios had gone mad; that the director’s instinctive revulsion for the double-dealings and manipulations of power had become so extreme that it had turned self-destructive.
He also believed that Dios would defend his own people with the same stubbornness and skill he gave to all humankind.
In other words, he believed Warden Dios capable of committing professional suicide. He did not believe him capable of aiming a kaze at Sixten Vertigus; of sacrificing either Captain Vertigus or Godsen himself for the sake of his own ends.
The Dragon, on the other hand, was entirely incapable of suicide—and perfectly capable of murder.
Godsen felt his head and stomach move in different directions, as if he were about to pass out. Leaden nausea dragged at his abdomen: vertigo sucked at his brain.
Stalling for time so that he could think, he said slowly, “Sir, let’s imagine for a minute that what you want is possible. Let’s imagine that my orders aren’t on record yet—that the shuttle crew and dock handlers don’t know I’ve been restricted. Are you telling me to violate a direct order from the director of the United Mining Companies Police?” Get a recording of it. If it’s true, make sure it can be proved. “Are you telling me you don’t care if he fires me?”
Are you telling me I’m expendable?
Holt actually chuckled. “No, Godsen, I’m not telling you that. You didn’t hear me say anything of the sort. What I am saying is this. If you don’t make up your mind in ten minutes—if you don’t shuttle your ass over here and give a report in person immediately—I don’t care what you do.”
The speaker went dead. Holt Fasner’s voice disappeared into the black gravity well that restricted UMCPHQ to its orbit.
In a fury of trepidation, Godsen crumpled the hardcopy of his orders and flung the defenseless wad against the wall.