Simon, wrapped in an aged military greatcoat, was sitting on a bench at the grass’s verge benignly overlooking the show. Hatless-Mamere would have had words-with his thinning, graying hair making him look very much like some retired old man watching youngsters at play. Which Ivan supposed he was. Sort of. In some pig’s eye somewhere.
A uniformed ImpSec officer without a coat-a major, Ivan saw as he approached-was standing talking to Simon, looking back and forth from his former chief to the dance practice which was just getting rolling again. Bright music blared. Jewels were suddenly in motion, swaying, stomping, gesturing, rising and dipping. Jet, in a bravura moment, suddenly began a series of back-flips that ran in a straight diagonal all across the park, and ended with him balanced first on one hand, and then on one foot.
“That’s impressive,” the major said to Simon, as Ivan came up. The fellow’s eyes shifted from Jet to check out Ivan, in civvies because this was his day off dammit; his face cleared. “Captain Vorpatril, is it? Ops?”
Ivan granted him a nod, in lieu of a salute. “Yes, sir.”
“So you would know what all this is in aid of…?”
“A rather high-energy galactic dance troupe who have been cooped up on jumpships for too long, celebrating their reunion, is the tale I was told,” said Ivan easily. Did Simon smile, there, into his lack of a beard?
“I had never seriously watched dance,” Simon remarked to the major, “before my retirement. Lady Vorpatril has her own box at the Vorbarr Sultana Hall, you know. She has been kind enough to invite me to escort her there, many times since. It’s been a real artistic education. Of a style I’d never had time for, earlier in my life. Old dogs, new tricks, who knows where it could all end?”
“Hm. Well. If they’re with you, sir…” The major, with a restraint that practically seemed to break something-perhaps his heart-visibly kept himself from saluting his former chief, managing a mere curt farewell nod before turning away to dodge traffic across the street and slip back through the front gate.
Ivan slung himself down on the bench beside Simon, who had twisted a bit to watch the fellow retreat.
“That’s the fifth man who has come out so far to check this out,” Simon observed, turning back. “The ranks keep getting higher.”
“Have they,” said Ivan, neutrally.
Star, all slicked-back hair, green eyes, and long leggings, bopped out and moved the sparkly pom-poms again. The music started up once more, a slower beat this time. Jewels glittered, in an eye-grabbing and athletic whirl. Jet repeated the astonishing back-flip routine, on the park’s other diagonal.
“I had always considered,” Simon mused after a bit, “that for a building housing a cadre of men whose insignia”-he touched his civilian shirt collar, where no Eye-of-Horus pins now hung-“proclaimed to the Imperium, sees all, knows all, to have no damned windows allowing them to see out, to be some sort of cosmic irony.”
Ivan leaned forward slightly to glance around Simon at the looming facade. “I expect they were more worried at the time about windows being blown in.” The techno-eyes were mostly non-obvious, but for some antennae and reception dishes peeking over the crenellated roof edge. “They have electronic surveillance, surely.”
“Of a redundant redundancy. It was like working in a granite spaceship. Hermetically sealed.”
“So, um…” Ivan considered how to phrase this. “How far up does the rank have to go before someone in your parade of concerned officers comes out and says, What the hell, Simon? ”
“I wait with some fascination to find out.”
Star shifted markers. The four Jewels began to dance another pattern.
“Granted,” said Simon meditatively, “the half-dozen men that I’m sure would begin their inquiries in just those words either have the day off or are out of town. Which seems like cheating, but then, it was often much about cheating. On all sides.”
Ivan considered this. “What the hell, Simon?”
Simon flashed a thin slice of grin. “Make that seven. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Neither can they.” He glanced across the street. “No windows, y’see. I’m sure we still have some analysts in there somewhere who specialize in the arts, but they’re probably kept in a box in the basement, poor lads. Keep watching, then.”
The Jewels set up once more, for a longer pattern this time. Frowning, Ivan got up, pulled one of the pom-pom sticks out of the ground, and examined it. It wasn’t very heavy. The surface featured swirling candy-colored stripes. It had a metal ferrule; Ivan tilted it up to peer in the end, which was not solid, but which was dark. Star, frowning more fiercely, came up and twisted it back out of his hand, shook it vigorously, and reset it. “Don’t screw up our stage marks,” she chided him. “Someone might have an accident.” It was hard to tell, but Ivan suspected the stripes were not the same as before. He trod back to rejoin Simon.
The music this time seemed to mix a cheerful march with a winding wail, like women lamenting the departure of their city’s valiant militia. Jet produced another bravura set of flips. Again.
So…what was so different about Jet? He certainly wasn’t any more athletic than Rish or the others. Why weren’t they doing flips?
He said aloud, before he could stop himself, “Jet’s the heaviest.”
Simon glanced aside at him, that disturbing faint smile again turning his lips.
More music started up. Rish had portioned out the ankle bells Ivan had seen on her and Tej the other day among the three female Jewels. They began another dance, or dance section-they seemed to be practicing movements rather than whole compositions. This time the mood was merry, the timing-the frequency? — different yet again.
Jet began his run-up, and bounced over the ground in a quick succession of thumps.
Ivan blinked. And blurted, “Sonic mapping.”
Simon’s smile deepened. “You’re wasted in Ops, you know. I have increasingly thought so. If not, I admit”-some grimace of memory Ivan certainly wasn’t going to inquire after-“earlier in your career.”
“ I don’t think so. More to the point, Admiral Desplains doesn’t think so. I’m happy in Ops.”
“Well, there’s that. And your mother is happy to have you there”-another lip-pursing-“ relatively safe.”
“Nobody’s tried to blow up Ops for ages. They always went for you fellows, first.”
“One of ImpSec’s many unsung public services: human shields for Ops. But did Ops ever say thank you? ”
Ivan had no idea. Most Ops commentary on ImpSec reports that he’d heard was prefaced by swearing, but maybe that was just habit. “Has anyone tried to bomb Ops lately? Or ever? Since our new building went up after the last one was leveled in the Pretendership, that is.”
Simon huddled down in his coat. “I wouldn’t recall the details now. Nor the main points, in some cases.”
I can’t remember was Simon’s all-purpose response to any question he didn’t want to answer, Ivan had suspected for some time. It almost always daunted the hell out of the inquirer, who sheared off.
Except that Ivan was getting used to Illyan, in some strange domestic way. All those little tricks of expression, inflection, reminder, that he used to defend his dignity. It had been a horrifically beleaguered dignity, during the chip breakdown, in some ways Ivan had witnessed and didn’t wish to dwell on. Still-the Spook’s Spook had also been the Weasel’s Weasel. For all that Simon had forgotten, Ivan didn’t think he’d forgotten all of that.
Ivan scrambled back up the conversational diversion to the last knot. “Mapping. Underground mapping. What the hell, Simon? I would think you fellows would have had every cubic centimeter of underground Vorbarr Sultana mapped to the limit. Especially right around this place.” Underground, ugh.