"Really? By that name?"
"No."
"Ah. Well, then you do have me at a disadvantage."
Ariel cocked her eyebrows. "I've never known you to be at a disadvantage. I'll have to remember this. Especially where something you once personally owned shares in is involved. "
Chassik made a long show of assembling a plate of assorted delicacies, his lips pursed thoughtfully. "You're probing, Ariel. I don't think you know what it is you're looking for. You've heard a name, saw a bit of obsolete data, and you're jumping to conclusions. That got you in rather a lot of difficulty last year, didn't it?"
"In a way. Difficulties don't come from wrong conclusions. "
"Oh, they can, though. Depends on how they're wrong. This Nova Levis thing…rather arcane subject for the Calvin Institute liaison to concern herself with," Chassik said.
"Illicit traffic in positronics does concern me."
Chassik blinked, startled. "Accusations are beneath you, Ariel. "
"I'm not making any, Ambassador."
"Nova Levis has been a de facto independent colony for nearly thirty years. I believe Aurora has sponsored a few such colonies itself, and I'm sure if you looked the actual ownership of those worlds may still be a matter of doubt. Does Aurora meddle in the internal workings of these colonies?" He shrugged. "What the situation is on the ground rarely matches what you find on paper. If Solaria hasn't signed over anything, it's simply a clerical error."
"Was it a clerical error," Coren asked, "when you divested your personal holdings in Nova Levis? If I recall correctly, you did so at the same time as Rega Looms sold his shares. Oh, but I forgot, you never did business together. "
Ambassador Chassik's reaction moved through stages, from genuine bafflement to comprehension to an abrupt resumption of a professional mask.
"Ariel," he said drolly, "I rarely give advice, but in this case I think you need it. I admire and respect you, but you've shown truly questionable taste in paramours. You should be a little less reckless. " He smiled at Coren. "Please excuse me. "
Chassik sauntered away.
"What was that?" Ariel asked.
"Following your lead," Coren said. "Blind shooting. I turned up some interesting facts concerning that research lab you mentioned, Nova Levis. Your Ambassador Chassik was a primary shareholder. I wondered if maybe the two were related-the lab and the colony."
"Blind shooting. I'd love to see what you can do with your eyes open. " She shook her head. "You guessed wrong, though. I wasn't shooting blind. Solaria still holds title to Nova Levis-the colony. It wasn't called that when they owned it. "
"What was it called?"
"Cassus Thole."
A chime cut through the air like crystal.
"Dinner, " Ariel said. "I hope the rest of the evening is as interesting as the hors d'oeuvres." Coren left Ambassador Setaris's dinner gratefully. Through the excellent food and drink, the strain of trying to pay attention to everything gave him a mild headache.
Ariel wore a vague smile during the ride to the embassy lobby. Coren had expected to return to her apartment or office to talk, but when he began to mention it she shook her head distantly.
"Later, " she said.
In the lobby, Coren became impatient. He held his tongue in front of the Auroran security guards, though, and let Ariel take his arm and walk with him through the exit.
On the plaza fronting the embassy, she said, "Let's get a car. I haven't been outside the embassy in months. I want to go for a ride."
Bewildered, Coren ordered a cab.
Once in the passenger section of the automated transport, her vagueness evaporated.
"Paranoia is a requirement for the job," she said, and punched in a series of random destinations in the cab's datum.
"Who do you think is listening?"
"My own people, for one. Add Chassik to the list." She turned to face him as the cab moved off. "All right, tell me what you know about this lab. "
Coren recounted what he had discovered about Nova Levis Research. Ariel listened silently. When he finished she leaned her head back and gazed at the ceiling for a time.
"Alda Mikels and Gale Chassik together in the same investor's list makes sense," she said. "But Rega Looms?"
"Odd, I agree. But why would the colony be named for the lab?"
"You're sure it is? Could be coincidence."
"You could find out more about that than I could."
Ariel nodded. "I'll look into it."
"What did you mean about illicit positronics traffic?"
Ariel waved her hand. "Like you, blind shooting. I thought I might get a reaction. There has to be a reason Solaria never relinquished claim to Nova Levis. I thought perhaps they were using it as a transfer point for black market robotics. That could still be it, but I'm not sure Chassik knows anything about it."
"The entire Solarian government?" Coren asked dubiously.
"No, just factions. And he was right about the independence of those colonies. We lease the worlds, Settlers come in, after a time the colony charters its own government, and independence is a fact. There's never been a reason before for any kind of intervention. No precedent. I haven't checked yet, but maybe there's some old agreement that keeps Earth from demanding Solaria exercise rights of ownership. Or it could be that the fact has been lost in the name change. Even if there isn't, it may be that one department simply didn't know what the other was doing. 'Oh, that business of the deed? I thought you had taken care of that. Well, it isn't my responsibility:" She smiled at Coren's laugh. "Contrary to what you Terrans believe, we Spacers are not of one mind. On any subject."
"That's not something I ever believed."
She leaned forward. "Rega Looms had to have a reason to invest in a biotech lab. Did he have any other investments like that?"
"Not that I know. I'll check, but I don't think so."
"So if it was just the one investment, the one lab, it seems logical he'd have a good reason."
"I suppose. But-"
"Probably a personal reason?"
"Where are you going with this?"
"Did he have any other children besides Nyom?"
Coren hesitated. A few days earlier he would have stated emphatically not, but now, after hearing the remarks of both Looms and Wenithal, he was less certain.
Instead of answering, he said, "There's something else. My errand to Baltimor District. The reason I was late. The shipping container Nyom used was routed out of Petrabor. Shipping schedules had been rearranged to accommodate it. "
"Petrabor…"
"The reschedule came out of the ITE offices in Baltimor. I looked up an acquaintance from my Service days, a man named Brun Damik, who was in charge of the inspector's department of ITE, figuring that if anyone would know how to get in touch with the people who run the whole baley operation, he would. He led me to a retired cop named Wenithal. I found Rega's name in his old case logs, part of the same investigation that involved Nova Levis. According to the public record, no charges were filed against Nova Levis, but the attention from the investigation must've been enough to sink it. It was bought by the Kysler Group and dismantled. Tonight, when I went back to ask Damik about his connection to Wenithal, I found police there. He'd been murdered. Tortured and murdered. "
Ariel winced. "What was the case?"
"A kidnapping. It turned out to involve several orphanages and a couple of biotech labs, extending back several more years. Infants were being taken from orphanages, funneled through the labs, and shipped offplanet. A slave trade, of sorts."
"What did the labs have to do with it?"
''I don't know yet. But I found this-" he handed her the certificate he had taken from Damik's apartment "-hidden in Damik's office."
Ariel opened the sheet and studied it. "He was an orphan?"
"Interesting, isn't it? I never knew. We worked together and I never knew." He folded the document and put it back in his pocket. "Ree Wenithal sponsored him."
"Should you have known?"
Coren shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. You don't expect the people you work with to hide that kind of thing from you after you admit to them that you're an orphan. "