A haunted look comes into Alfeg’s face. “Aiah,” he whispers. “What was that?”
Aiah hesitates. “I’ll go into more detail later,” she says. “But what you should know is that Refiq is dead now—he no longer exists. The creature has him. And the creature will take others until we put a stop to it.”
Aiah can see a little muscle jumping in Alfeg’s cheek.
“Tell no one,” Aiah reminds. “I’ll talk to you and Khorsa later.”
After Alfeg leaves, Aiah calls Aratha, the mage-major of Karlo’s Brigade, and sets an appointment for 06:00 next day. Then she heads for the offices of the PED, looks into Dr. Romus’s office, and sees only the man who shares his office.
“Is Doctor Romus in?” she asks. “Do you know if he’s in the Palace?”
“I’m here,” says Romus. His upper body snakes out from behind his desk, gliding with a lithe purposefulness toward Aiah’s ankles, and Aiah takes an involuntary step backward.
“I was sleeping,” Romus says. His body flows into the center of the room, and his face lifts level with hers. “I’m not on duty till second shift tomorrow.”
Aiah tries to calm her startled heart. “Will you join me in my office, please?” she asks.
“Certainly.”
Aiah leads him to her office, trying not to hear the slithering sounds of his body sawing to and fro on the carpet as he follows. She enters the office, holds the door until Romus joins her, and then closes it behind him. She takes her seat, then a breath.
“It is time,” she says, “to move against the creature you saw that first shift in the secure room.”
Romus’s eyes go wide in what looks like fear. His little tongue licks his lips. “I see,” he says.
“We know where it is,” Aiah says, “and we know it’s vulnerable now, for the next few days. I intend to establish a task force—a very secret one—to destroy the creature. My question is, Will you join it?”
Romus hesitates, his head swinging left and right on his long neck. “I have no experience in this,” he says.
“None of us do.”
“Is the triumvir a part of this scheme?”
Aiah hesitates. “He has given me to understand,” she says, “that this action will meet with his approval.”
Romus’s cilia give an uneasy, boneless shiver. “That is, forgive me, an evasive answer.”
It’s also a lie, of course. Aiah reminds herself that she should be more sparing with them.
“The triumvir does not know of this action,” Aiah says finally. “No one does. You do not, and I do not, and the creature does not exist.”
Romus is patient. “That is not quite an answer, either.”
Aiah runs her hands through her ringlets, throws her hair over her shoulders. “If you join this group,” she says finally, “it will be as a favor to me, and at some risk to yourself, and you will be doing immeasurable good to the community. If you choose not to join…” She sighs, shrugs. “Nothing more will be said. I only implore you to keep this a complete secret, both for your sake and mine.”
Romus sways back and forth while the silence builds. Aiah turns away, her nerves crawling with the unnatural motion. Finally, in Romus’s reedy tones, the answer comes.
“I have lived a long while,” he says, “and I am now, long after my first century is past, inclined to wonder for what. I spent years in the half-worlds, hardly ever seeing the Shield, scheming to advance my security, aiding people who have now all been murdered. Even my title of doctor is less than honorary, more a nickname than a real title. Now I have a job, and half an office, and a meal ticket… more than I’ve ever had, I suppose, but it hardly seems worth a century of effort.” Something uncertain flickers in his dark eyes. “If that thing, that demon, kills me now, what will I have lost? Half an office… so why does this half an office seem so precious?”
Having nothing to offer him, no more words of persuasion or consolation, Aiah waits. Eventually Romus pauses in his swaying, looks down at her.
“Very well,” he says. “I will join.” “Thank you, Doctor,” Aiah says.
NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSE
FUND WITHDRAWAL IMMINENT
“COMPENSATED DEMOBILIZATION” CALLED “DEAD ISSUE”
Rohder blinks at Aiah with his pale blue eyes. “No,” he says.
She looks at him in surprise. Of all those she’d hoped to talk into destroying Taikoen, Rohder was the one she’d felt most sure of.
He lays his cigaret on the edge of the ashtray carefully, as if he were laying an artillery tube on an enemy objective, and gives a meditative frown.
“I have a number of objections,” he says. “What you propose is illegal, even under our current martial law. It is well outside our department’s authorization, and it violates the procedural and security standards which you yourself have established. And this action is highly dangerous for a group of untrained, inexperienced mages… What are you going to do if there are casualties? That creature—if it exists—could burn away the minds of half your people, and you still might not catch it.”
“If we work together,” Aiah says. “If we all know what we are doing…”
“You will not know what you are doing.” Rohder brushes cigaret ash from his shirtfront. “And I am far too old for this sort of thing,” he adds. “The last time I coped with a plasm emergency—the Bursary Street flamer, you remember, back in Jaspeer—I ended up in the hospital. I cannot expose my neurons to plasm of that strength, not any longer.”
“Well. I understand. If it’s a matter of your health…”
“No, it’s not,” says Rohder sharply. “Haven’t you been listening? It is not simply unhealthy—it is dangerous, it’s illegal, and…” He leans forward, a kind of cold anger in his blue eyes. “And this creature has a measure of political protection, does he not?”
Aiah finds herself paralyzed for a moment beneath the certainty of those watery eyes, beneath the intelligence that had just unraveled the secret she had been trying so desperately to preserve with lies she had thought so cunning.
“Yes,” she finally says. “But it’s unwilling protection. The person doesn’t want—”
Rohder nods thoughtfully to himself. “I knew when I read Constantine’s article: It was too outside his usual sphere… far too assured.” He nods as if confirming something to himself. “He found a use for the thing, then. I’d wondered how so many of the Keremaths had died, in the first minutes of the coup, in such a well-shielded building.”
“It’s haunting him,” Aiah says. “It can destroy everything he’s built. We’ve got to get rid of it.”
Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Then why is Constantine not leading the charge?” he says. “Why isn’t he putting a group of mages together—he can find more suitable ones than you can, I’m sure. Why isn’t Constantine solving his own problem?”
“He can’t. He’s too caught up in it. And—” There is an ache in her throat, because she doesn’t want to admit this of him, not this kind of weakness. It’s not, after all, a flaw of greatness; not a crime of excess, like those she’s got used to, a desire for women, or an uncontrollable appetite for conspiracy. A baffling subtlety of policy.
“Constantine is afraid of the thing,” she admits. “He’s known it for years, and—”
“If he’s afraid of it,” reasonably, “then perhaps it is with good reason. Perhaps you should be as afraid as he.”