"We're saying what happened."
"We're saying what happened. I don't think you want to know the whole string of contacts. ..."
"I don't. I want to know, dammit, is Warrick approachable?"
"He's been under stringent security for over a year. He has a son still back in Reseune. This is the pressure point."
"I remember the son. What's he like?"
"Nothing on him. A non-person as far as anything we've got, just an active PR CIT-number. Defense has a lot more on him. Doppelganger for papa, that's a given. But apparently either Warrick senior or junior has pressured Reseune enough to get a travel pass for the son. He's thirty-five years old. Reseune national. Reseune had so much security around him when he'd come into Planys you'd have thought he was the Chairman. There's an azi, too. An Alphayou remember the Abolitionist massacre over by Big Blue?"
"The Winfield case. I remember. Tied into Emory's murder. That was one of the points of contentionbetween Warrick and Emory."
"He's a foster son as far as Warrick is concerned. They don't let him out of Reseune. We can't get any data at all on him, except he is alive, he is living with the son, Warrick still regards him as part of the family. I can give you the whole dossier."
"Not to me! That stays at lower levels."
"Understood then."
"But you can get to Warrick."
"I think he's reached a state of maximum frustration with his situation. It's been, what, eighteen years? His projects are Defense; but Reseune keeps a very tight wall between him and them, absolutely no leak-through. The air-systems workerwe've had him foreighteen months, something like. What you have to understand, ser, Reseune's security is very, very tight. But also, it's no ordinary detainee they're dealing with. A psych operator. A clinician. Difficult matter, I should imagine, to find any guard immune to him. The question is whether we go now or wait-see. That's what Gruen wants me to ask you."
Corain gnawed at his lip. Two months from the end of the Defense election, with a bomb about to blow in that one
With Jacques likely to win the Defense seat away from Khalid and very likely to appoint Gorodin as Secretary.
But Jacques was weakening. Jacques was feeling heat from the hawks within Defenseand there were persistent rumors about Gorodin's healthand countercharges that Khalid, who had been linked to previous such rumorswas once more the source of them.
But Khalid could win: the Centrist party had as lief be shut of Khalid's brand of conservatismbut it could not discount the possibility in any planning. The Jacques as Councillor/Gorodin as Secretary compromise Corain had hammered out with Nye, Lynch, and the Expansionistswas the situation Corain had rather have, most of all, if rumors were true and Gorodin's health was failing, because Gorodin was the Expansionists' part of the bargain.
Waitand hope that a new hand at the helm of the military would enable them to work with Defense to get to Warrick in Planys; or go in on their own and trust to their own resources. And risk major scandal. That was the problem.
If Khalid won againKhalid would remember that his own party had collaborated in the challenge to his seat. Then he would owe no favors.
Then he could become a very dangerous man indeed.
"I think we'd better pursue the contact now," Corain said. "Just for God's sake be careful. I don't want any trails to the Bureau, hear?"
viii
"I didn't know I was going to do that," Justin said, and tossed a bit of bread to the koi. The gold one flashed to the surface and got it this time, while the white lurked under a lotus pad. "I had no idea. It justshe was going to find out about the tape, wasn't she? Someday. Better nowwhile she's naive enough to be shocked. God help usif it goes the other way."
"I feel much safer," Grant said, "when you decide these things."
"I don't, dammit, I had no right to do that without warningbut I was in a corner, it was the momentit was the only moment to make the other situation right. ..."
"Because of the tape?"
"You do understand it, then."
"I understand this is the most aggressive personality I've ever met. Not even Winfield and his peopleimpressed me to that extent. I'll tell you the truth: I've been afraid before. Winfield, for instance. Or the Security force that pulled me out of thereI thought that they might kill me, because those might be their orders. I've tried to analyze the flavor of this, and the flux was so extreme in me at that moment in the office doorwayI can't pin it down. I only know there was something soviolent in this girlthat it was very hard for me to respond without flux." Grant's voice was clinical, cool, soft and precise as it was when he was reasoning. "But thenthat perception may have to do with my own adrenaline leveland the fact the girl is a Supervisor. Perhaps I misread the level of what I was receiving."
"No. You're quite right. I've tried to build a profile on her . . . quietly. Same thing her predecessor did to me. The choices she makes in her model, the things she'd do if she were in the Gehenna scenarioshe's aggressive as hell, and self-protective. I've charted the behavior phasesmenstrual cycles, hormone shiftsbest I can guess, she's hormone-fluxed as hell right now; I always watch the charts with her. But that's never all of it." He broke off another bit of bread and tossed it, right where the spotted koi could get it. "Never all of it with her predecessor. That mind is brilliant. When it fluxes, the analog functions go wildly speculativeand the down-side of the flux integrates like hell. I've watched it. More, she originated the whole flux-matrix theory; you think she doesn't understand her own cycles? And use them? But young Ari made me understand something I should have seenwe deal with other people with such precision, and ourselves with such damnable lack of itAri is having difficulties with ego-definitions. A PR does, I should know; and it can only get worse for her. That's why I asked for the transfer."
"Fix her on us?"
He drew several long breaths. Blinked rapidly to clear away the elder Ari's face, the remembrance of her hands on him.
"She's vulnerable now," he said on a ragged breath. "She's looking for some sign of the human raceon whatever plane she lives on. That's the sense I gotthat maybe she was as open then as I wasthen. So I grabbed the moment's window. That's what I thought. That she's so damn self-protectivethere might only be that chancethenhi that two seconds." He shuddered, a little, involuntary twitch at the nape of the neck. "God, I hate real-time work."
"Just because you hated it," Grant said, "doesn't mean you weren't good at it. I'll tell you what this azi suspectsthat she would regret harm to one of us. I don't think that's true with a CIT. If she ever does take me up on my proposition No," Grant said as he took a breath to object; Grant held up a finger. "One: I don't think she will. Two: if she doestrust me to handle it. Trust me. All right?"
"It's not all right."
"No, but you'll stay back: do the puzzling thing, and trust me to do the same. I think you're quite right. The puzzling thing engages the intellectand I had far rather deal with her on a rational basis, I assure you. If you can commit us to your judgment in the one thingtrust me for mine and don't make me worry. I wouldn't have been in half the flux I was in, except I wasn't sure you weren't going to come back into the office and blow everything to hell, right there. I can't think and watch my flank when it's you involved. All right? Promise me that."