Forge of Heaven

  "Go right ahead," the doctor invited him, more than anxious, he suspected, to get some official order to send Gide anywhere as long as it was out of his containment ward.

  Complex, kept echoing in Reaux's brain. Nanocele. The sort of thing only Project labs understood.

  Gide had come here to trace smuggling in the PO. Well, he'd found it, hadn't he?

  He heard, through the containment suit, Gide shouting at a nurse down the hall. Cursing. He heard some object bang and fall, as if thrown at a wall. A suited nurse exited Gide's sealed door, shaking his head.

  He put out a hand to forestall the nurse's resealing that door. Went in.

  Gide was sitting up in bed, feet tucked up, hair standing up at angles, hands clenched on the sheets. Whatever had just fallen, a medical bot had nabbed the contaminated article and retreated into the baseboards.

  "Mr. Ambassador," Reaux said calmly, "I'm here."

  "The hell you say!" Gide tore at his own hair, clamped his hands over his ears, grimacing. "There's something in my head, damn you! There's something in my head!"

  "I'm truly afraid there is," Reaux said, with honest compassion. "I wish I could tell you otherwise."

  "It buzzes!"

  "I'm sorry about that."

  "You stand there in that suit, all holy and sanctimonious! This is worse than dead!"

  "I wish I could offer you some honest comfort in your situation, Mr. Gide, but the doctors up here are at a loss. I personally recommend you transfer down to Outsider level. Their hospitals have a greater expertise in handling illicits, and the faster they get on it, the better a chance they can do something."

  "Damn you! Is that the care I get from my own people? My own doctor doesn't come to tell me this! And now he wants to ship me off to the Outsiders? My God, my God!"

  "I sincerely wish I had something better to offer. But I'm sure official Outsider levels didn't do this. There's an outside chance they might even recognize this item and be able to remediate, if you don't delay."

  "Considering it was clearly one of their minions that did this, they should know what it is, shouldn't they? Oh, God, the pain!"

  "Doctors in this hospital aren't expert at this sort of thing. But by all I understand, by what the doctor believes, the thing is likely a tap, a communication device."

  "Communication!"

  "Hence the noise I suspect you're complaining of, Mr. Gide, as it infiltrates the ear and the jaw, as a resonance device. It communicates with exterior relays that support whatever system it's tuned to. Whoever did this to you can hear what you say and to some degree hear sounds around you. ultimately, can communicate with you, once you habituate to the thing. That's the way they work-which you may know, but I didn't, when I first met Outsider systems."

  Gide had a thoroughly distracted look, utter panic, or a spate of activity had just happened in the device.

  "It's not lethal," Reaux said further. "Quite the contrary, the doctor says your wounds are healing very quickly, probably through its action."

  "It's complex, is what you're saying?"

  "Yes. That's exactly what the doctor fears. It's one thing for it to draw nutrients from your bloodstream, to build on. They do that. It's quite another to reach out and correct damage elsewhere, in cooperation with the body's own cells."

  Gide was stark pale, except a fever-blush around his right ear and along his jaw. His eyes stared, white-edged with fury. "This is sabotage. This is intentional sabotage from the Outsider Authority, and your sole solution is to turn me over to them?"

  "On security grounds, I by no means want to send you down there. But you came here to investigate activity that-listen to me, please-activity that the Outsider Chairman absolutely does not support. He's not in sympathy with whoever did this. I believe he would take a hands-off attitude towards information you might contain, under these circumstances. I think you might find him honorable in that regard-potentially an ally in your investigation."

  "Ally!"

  Reaux kept firm hold of both his nerves and his patience. "A working relationship with the Outsider authority, sir, is an asset-in this place of all places. This is not the introduction to the Chairman you'd have chosen, I'm sure, but, yes, I believe you'd find him a valuable ally."

  "Don't lecture me."

  "I'm trying to assure you-"

  "They're the people who did this!"

  "Listen to me, please. What will happen once that tap clarifies, is contact with its system, and it doesn't make thorough sense that Chairman Brazis would infect an Earth official with a tap that gives full access to their own highly restricted system. A common tap would be no use to anyone who wanted to eavesdrop. Do you follow my reasoning, sir?" He was far from sure Gide was reasoning with any clarity, at the moment; but he was suddenly reasoning clearly, himself. A moment before, he had held a niggling suspicion of Brazis-but once he followed the logic of the thing, he had far more suspicion of agencies that Brazis might be as interested as Gide in stamping out, agencies they hadn't known accessed this kind of technology, agencies that Gide himself had declared existed on Concord. "After all, sir, what did you come here looking for? Illegal nanoceles. I think you're right. And I think Brazis will be as upset as we are."

  Gide stared at him, disheveled, distraught, but the slack mouth clamped shut. The eyes registered a rational, if agitated, thought process.

  "Brazis could do this, I suspect he could, but I assure you he wouldn't," Reaux pursued his logic. "Someone that we know would, we didn't think had the technology, but you did think so, and that's where our mistake was, and where you were right. Unhappily. whoever did it is now in touch with you. And will be in touch with you, increasingly so, unless the Outsiders can clean this thing out of your system."

  "I can leave this forsaken station."

  God, didn't he wish. "That might be safest for you, all told, if you can find a place where you know the agencies responsible for this aren't. But the hell of it is, you can't necessarily know they're not operating wherever you go, and you can't go all the way back to Earth, which would be the only safe place. As soon as this nanism organizes itself, until you assume some sort of control over it, which, again, sir, Brazis's people could teach you, I'd suggest at least confining your more sensitive communications to writing. I'd suggest it, in fact, from now on, and you should insist those who talk to you do the same."

  "Damn you!" Gide cried. But it was a less furious protest, more a moan against a very unenviable fate. "Get me released from this place. Never mind hospitals. Just get me released. They're not doing anything helpful."

  "You're not likely contagious, that's true. Taps never have been. But there's another reason for keeping you in isolation. Until we know who aimed a missile at you-the station can't know what they'll do next. And if we send you out to a residency, it's very difficult to keep you safe from something worse."

  "What could be worse than this?"

  "Kidnapping. Kidnapping, sir, considering you're from governmental levels. The ones responsible for this attack would ask you a lot of questions, if they got their hands on you, and I don't mean legitimate authorities. No, sir." As Gide moved to protest the idea, Reaux held up a cautioning hand. "No! Panic is not useful here. Look at the positives. You aren't dead. You're not likely to die of this. The tap contact will develop over time. A tap is also two-way. You can use it as well as they can. And if you stay safe, you're a threat to them."

  "The hell with that!"

  "Hell it may be." Reaux drew a deep breath. This man had threatened him. Now-now, it seemed, it was perfectly possible for him to dictate where this man lived, what he did, with whom he ever had contact. A major threat to his life and livelihood had just become wholly dependent on his decisions. He watched Gide wince and clutch his ears as the fever progressed, and he managed, despite the satisfactions present, a touch of real compassion for the man. "I'm putting you under general security. Another warning. I've reason to suspect my personal head of security is taking orders from you
r ship, and I wouldn't entirely trust your safety to anyone he picked-if your ship should realize what a security risk it is to them, to have you here alive, and compromised."

  "Dortland?" Gide said.

  "He is Treaty Board, too, is he?"

  "He's not Treaty Board. He's Homeworld Security."

  "And you relied on him. So did I. A mistake."

  "Dammit." Gide sat with knees tucked up under the sheets, hands clamped over his ears, the picture of a man on the verge of panic.

  "Before this thing takes hold, before they can decipher what you say-let me suggest Dortland's probably told your ship everything. And if you are Treaty Board-"

  "I am!"

  "I doubt under these circumstances you're going to get any official support from your ship in setting up an office here. So I offer you mine. Expert counsel, in how to live with this tap. Medical care, should you need it. Meaningful protection that won't draw any resources from Dortland's office. And, of course, a home here, considering a return to Earth is not a possibility for you. If you can get your relatives out here-they'll find a very comfortable life, as comfortable as mine. Your official function on Concord has become beside the point. I've every reason to suspect that Dortland himself engineered the attack on you, if you want the honest truth. The missile was black market, from Orb, and who better to smuggle something so outrageous onto this station? I suspect he did it precisely at the behest of your office-I take it without your knowledge. Your own ship carried the orders and maybe the missile itself, all to set you up here and get you past my authority without an argument-I take it by the look on your face that none of this was with your personal knowledge. But I'm increasingly sure he was responsible, and remains responsible, and possibly intended to infiltrate your office when you set it up. But somehow-someone else got to you. One of the police, perhaps. An on-scene medic. Someone at the hospital itself. Someone who dealt with you, injected you with something that makes you a threat to Dortland, and to that ship, since certainly this kind of technology is very far from anything they'd handle. At this point, your office here is not in question. Your life is. Worse, your sanity. That's a very nasty mod."

  Gide, disheveled, distraught, looked up at him-not a weak-minded man, Reaux decided. A tough, dangerous man who'd thought a system governor couldn't stand up to his office, who'd been convinced when he arrived here that the system governor might have been part of the problem.

  Wrong, Reaux said to himself, with a coldness of soul that surprised him. Quite, quite wrong. He'd headed into this negotiation with Gide with his hands empty. Now he found they weren't. And Mr. Gide had just learned that fact.

  "I do care, Mr. Gide, humanly speaking. And I will help you, personally, with all my resources and good offices. Think about my suggestion you remove to an Outsider facility. It's made with your best interest in mind."

  "I expect reports from you."

  "I'll be glad to oblige, when I learn anything new. Is there anything you'd like me to relay to your ship?"

  "Nothing." Glumly. Dejectedly. "I'll think about this other hospital."

  "Rest assured we're taking every precaution for your protection."

  Gide said nothing.

  Reaux walked out, cleared main quarantine, and stripped the suit. "Get Gide's doctor," he said to his bodyguard when he emerged from the robing room, quite steady and serene. His hair wasn't even ruffled from the hood.

  His hands, however, had begun to shake. A thought of Kathy had intruded, the danger she was in, the action that was proceeding on his station. Illicits. Rogue nanoceles. Someone who didn't hesitate to attack a high official. Who might not stick at all at fifteen-year-old girls with high-placed parents.

  "Governor?" The doctor in charge showed up.

  "Dr. Lenn." He read the name, this time, off the uniform tag, and phrased matters as diplomatically as he could. "I agree with you that this poses a serious security problem. I've discussed the matter with Mr. Gide. And I am intending to clear the ambassador to go downstairs, to the PO's own hospital, if I can get them to agree and if I can get him to agree. For security reasons. How much time do you think we have for them to do anything?"

  "I have no idea, with a thing like this. Hours, maybe. But I have no objections, medically or otherwise. They're equipped for this. We're not."

  "A technical question. Can they completely wash this out of him?"

  "To our knowledge, not entirely, not a nanocele, if that's what it is. Dr. Kantorin, down there, is an honest man. I'd trust him-professionally speaking, at least. They might be able to limit its effects. There's been some suggestion that's possible."

  Trust him, the doctor said. Trust the Outsider government. not to take an unethical notion.

  "God, what a mess." Even when he looked at his bodyguard, he saw low-level people he'd had to use to avoid the traitor who was supposed to oversee his safety.

  The ones he'd stationed outside his house, the ones watching Judy, were Dortland's men.

  And did he dare call Dortland on the carpet at this point, tell him outright what he knew and see if Dortland had any bright suggestions at this point what to do? Dortland wasn't a monster. He had an agenda, which right now was going dangerously wrong.

  Calling Dortland in might be the best thing to do. It might be the best thing for his own career, before he delivered Gide down to an Outsider hospital, under that ship's witness. He could challenge Dortland face-to-face and see if there were any remaining truths that no one had told him. He didn't think Brazis expected complete collaboration of him. Only a reasonable accommodation, which he might yet achieve, reclaiming certain resources.

  He walked. He used his phone, that he hadn't dared use.

  "Ernst," he said, and got an answer. "Ernst, call Mr. Dortland, and tell him I want him in my office in ten minutes. Tell him I don't care what I interrupt. This is priority."

  Magdallen called-on the phone: that was what they were down to. Brazis grabbed the instrument off his desk and parked on the edge, one foot on the floor. "What news?"

  "News, Mr. Chairman? News is your boy is walking down the middle of Blunt at the moment with that ondat mark on his forehead, in company with his sister and a collection of the Trend's elite."

  Two motions of the heart. Relief and desperation in quick succession. "Good loving God. His sister?"

  "Your boy, a fair representation of the practicing Stylists, two little cleaner-bots and one repair bot, all moving right down the center of Blunt. People not involved are not interfering with them. I'll admit I'm not inclined to touch them, either."

  The phone was compromised all the way from the governor's office to the ship at dock, but what was happening down on Blunt wasn't exactly secret from the station at large.

  Dead middle of the street, and an ondat mark on his forehead. If it was gang revenge that had been perpetrated on Procyon Stafford, it was extravagant and stupid, someone anxious either to turn a young man into a pariah or to provoke absolute catastrophe in politics, not giving a damn if the ondat blew up.

  But he had this terrible, uneasy feeling, given the intrusion into the taps, and all else that had gone on, that there was some connection between Gide, Reaux's communication with the ondat, Dortland's treason, and that keepaway mark, that claim, on Marak's junior tap.

  "Which way is he going?"

  "Straight up to Blunt at 9th, away from Grozny."

  "Are you watching him now?"

  "From across the street." A picture flashed to his phone, zoomed in on a coatless young man in a black shirt, a young man who didn't seem to feel the ordinary chill of the street. The view zoomed closer, to a shocked, weary face that, yes, Brazis recognized, and a lime green mark that shimmered faintly gold underneath the fringe of disheveled hair as they passed between neon lights.

  The zoom backed off again, giving him the entire disturbing picture.

  Procyon, no question. With his sister. With a man called Spider. Isis. And three ankle-high bots trundling along beside.

>   Bots, for God's sake. Bots. A malfunction? Three little bots anticipating a cleaning job when this expedition got where it was going?

  It wasn't right. It wasn't at all right. Bots didn't just take to the middle of the street.

  He tapped keys, coded up his own maintenance manager, typed, I've got some anomalous bots, around 9th and Blunt. Look into activity. Report triple urgent.

  That query had to go from Outsider maintenance to station maintenance and back. And he still had Magdallen on the phone.

  "Suggestions?" he asked.

  "I don't have any," Magdallen said. "I'm just tagging along, seeing where they're going. Michaelangelo's, if I can hazard a guess."

  His screen flashed up an answer. No bots within half a block.

  "Shit," he said.