Cyteen

Or started to walk out. Catlin got as far as the hall, and found herself facing her partner's distressed, exasperated look.

So Catlin stopped, drew a large breath, and went back to stand beside sera's desk, doggedly determined that sera should notice.

She had, she thought, rather have run a field under fire.

"What is it?" sera said suddenly, breaking her concentration.

"Sera, �I need to talk to you. About the Planys thing. Florian said�I was the one who heard. So it's mine to say."

It took a moment, sometimes, for sera to come back when she was really thinking, and especially when she was mad, and she brought some of that temper back with her. Because she was so smart, Catlin thought, because she was thinking so hard she was almost deep-studying, except she was doing it from the inside.

But that was a keyword�Planys. That was precisely what sera was mad about; and sera came right back, instantly, and fixed on her.

"What about Planys?"

Catlin clenched her hands. You're best at explaining things, she had objected to Florian. But Florian had said: You're the one heard it, you should tell it.

Because Florian came to pieces when it came to a fight with sera.

And it could.

"This Paxer group in Novgorod," she began.

There had been another subway bombing in Novgorod. Twenty people killed, forty-eight injured.

"What's that to do with Planys airport?"

"In security. They're�" She never could go through things without detail. She never knew what to leave out with a CIT, even sera, so she decided to dive straight to the heart of it. "Sera, they're pretty sure there is some kind of contact. The Pax group�they're the violent part. But there's a group called the Committee for Justice�"

"I've heard about them."

"There's overlap. Security is saying that's definite. One is the other, in a major way. They're doing stickers in Novgorod, you understand�someone just walks through a subway car and puts one up. Most of them say Committee for Justice. Or Free Jordan Warrick. But a few of them say No Eugenics and Warrick Was Right."

Sera frowned.

"It's very serious," Catlin said. "Security is terribly worried."

"I understand how serious it is, dammit. �What does this have to do with Planys airport security?"

"It's complicated."

"Explain it. I'm listening. Give me all the details. What does Security know?"

"The Novgorod police know the Paxer explosives are homemade. That's first. There's probably just a handful of people�real Paxers�in Novgorod. The police are pretty sure they're a front for Rocher. But they can't find Rocher. So they're sure he's living on somebody else's card. That's not hard to do. Nothing's hard to do, when there are that many people all crowded up in one place. There's probably a lot of connection between the Committee and the Paxers and Rocher�everybody. So the Novgorod police got the Cyteen Bureau to get Union Internal Affairs on it, on the grounds it's a problem that crosses the boundaries between Reseune and�"

"I know Reseune Security is on the case. But tell it your way."

"�and Cyteen. Which lets the Justice Bureau call on us to help the Novgorod police. They can't do the kind of stuff we'd like to�Novgorod is just too big. The police are talking about card-accesses on every subway gate, but that just means they'll always have somebody else's keycard, and they'll kill people to get them. A lot of things they could do to stop the bombings are real expensive, and they'd slow everybody down and make them take hours getting to and from work. They say Cyteen Station is getting real nervous and they are doing keycard checks and print-locks and all of that. So they've decided the only real way to get the Paxers is to infiltrate them. So they have. You just send somebody inside and you get good IDs and you start searching the keycard systems on those markers and you start taking a few of them out, you aggravate whatever feuds you find�make them fight each other and keep increasing your penetrations until you can figure their net out. That's the way they're working it."

"You mean you know they're already doing it."

Catlin nodded. "I'm not supposed to know. But yes, sera, they are. And they know the airports are one of the places where some of the illegal stuff they get is getting through security, and that's how it's going to spread outside

Novgorod, which is what the rumor is. That there's going to be a hit somewhere else. That's what's going on out there."

"They're not grounding traffic, are they?"

"No, sera. People don't know it's going on. They don't need to know. But they're most worried about Planys and Novgorod. Novgorod because it's biggest and there's the shuttleport. And Planys because they think there's a problem there."

Sera closed the lid on the tank and laid the net down. "Go on. Take your time."

"They're terribly worried," Catlin said. "Sera, they're not talking about Jordan Warrick in the posters. It's against you. People are scared about the subways. That's the Paxers' job. People aren't being very smart. They have all these signs to tell them to watch about people leaving packages, and there's a rumor out that the police have installed this kind of electronics at the subway gates that'll blow any explosives up when it passes through that point, but that's not so. People are calling the city offices and asking about more ped-ways, but that's stupid�you can leave a package in a ped-tunnel that can kill just as many people. So all they can do is put up with it, but people are getting really upset, that's what they're saying, and when they're upset enough, the Committee comes out more and agitates with some lie they'll make up about you when they need it. They're not sure even this isn't something Khalid's behind, but that's just something Security wishes they could prove. But that's why they're doing all this stuff with the airports, and that's why Justin can't get a pass. And that's not the worst, sera. There is somebody who's getting stuff in and out of Planys. It's connected to Jordan Warrick. That's what's going on. That's why they're stopping Justin and Grant from going there."

Sera stayed very still a moment. Mad. Terribly mad and upset.

It was not hard to figure why sera partnered with Justin Warrick: Catlin knew the reasons in that the way she had known, after she had seen Florian attack a problem, that Florian was everything she needed in the world.

And when somebody was your partner, you felt connected to them, and you had rather anything than think they could fail you.

A long time sera stood there, and finally she sat down at her desk. "I don't think they know," sera said.

"Not unless there's somebody working inside Reseune, sera. And that's not likely. But not everybody at Planys is Reseune staff. That's where the hole is. And they're not going to plug it. They're going to see what's going on first. Jordan Warrick is linked to the Abolitionists. And maybe to respectable people. Nobody knows yet. They're trying to find out if those groups are doing this."

Sera's face had gone terribly white, terribly upset.

"Sera?" Catlin said, and sat down in the interview chair and put her hand on her sera's knee. "Florian and I will go on trying to find things out, if you don't tell Denys about us knowing. That's the best thing. That's what we need to do."

Sera's eyes seemed to focus. And looked at her. "There's not a damn thing Justin knows about it."

"They're going to let him talk to his father, sera. They're going to monitor that�very closely. They're going to give his father a lot of room, actually let up the security�"