“What are you going to do?” asked Wednesday.
“What does it look like?” Steffi put her gun down carefully on the desk beside her, next to something boxy. She picked it up.
“I don’t know,” Wednesday said cautiously. “What do you want?”
“Revenge. An audience.” Steffi’s cheek twitched. “Something puerile like that.”
Wednesday shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, you can answer a question.” Steffi held the box close to her and Wednesday saw that it was some kind of pocket data tablet, its surface glowing with virtual buttons. “How did you get here? Did they send you? Did she think giving me an extra key was a good idea?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.” Wednesday stared at her. “I ran away from them. The boss woman, Hurst or whatever she’s called — she had me and Frank and the diplomats in the station mayor’s office when something happened. She sent half her guards off to look for you and I, I—” She realized she was breathing too fast, but she couldn’t stop. There were flashing lights at the corners of her vision. BING. Mail from — Wednesday killed her message interface. “She forced me to give her the papers. But it was in the police station, and last time I was there I ransacked the arms locker, so I grabbed a riot bomb and when she told me to give her the papers I grabbed the key and dropped a foam ball in front of her.” She finished in a breathless gabble, watching Steffi’s face.
“Oh, very good!” Steffi grinned humorlessly. “So you just happened to be running down here with a key to the defense network?”
“Yes,” Wednesday said simply.
“And one of those bombers is running on one of their worlds.” Steffi shook her head. “Idiots!” she murmured. There was a musical chime from the console next to her. “Ah, about time.” She raised her voice as she tapped a button. “Yes, who am I speaking to?”
“It’s Rachel,” said Wednesday.
“Steffi, is that you?” Rachel said simultaneously over the conference circuit.
“Yes, it’s me.” Steffi closed her eyes but kept her hand on the gadget.
“You got rid of the ship, didn’t you? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, it won’t go far. They were planning on using it: undocking was the easiest way to stop them. As it is, you’ve got bandwidth here — you can call for help and someone will come and pick you up. And the other passengers.”
“She has keys,” Wednesday called, motivated by an impulse halfway between guilt and malice. “They’re in the console now.”
“You little—” Steffi stopped, glared at her. “Yes, I’ve got three keys,” she told the speakerphone. “They’re all locked and loaded into the TALIGENT terminal.” She relaxed slightly. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” Rachel said tensely.
“Good. Just so we understand each other.”
“How’s Wednesday?” asked Rachel.
Steffi nodded to her.
“I’m fine,” she called. “Just a bit, uh, confused. Are you calling on behalf of the corpsefucker?”
Rachel sounded weary. “She’s dead, Wednesday. You can’t breathe riot foam. You let her have it right in the face.” For an instant Wednesday felt nothing but exultation. Then a moment later she wondered: What’s happening to me?
“That’s very good,” Steffi said approvingly.
“She had it coming,” Wednesday mumbled.
“Yes, I daresay she did,” Rachel replied — clearly the open mike was very sensitive. “That’s why I’m calling. It looks like we won. The ReMastered can’t get to the ship, Hoechst is dead, half of them are missing, the rest are doing what U. Franz tells them — and he wants to defect. You’ve got the keys, Frank is right now filing an exclusive report that blows the lid off their operations in Moscow and New Dresden, and it’s all over.” She paused for a moment. “So why have you locked yourselves in?”
Wednesday glanced at Steffi in surprise.
“Because you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do,” Steffi said, her tone deceptively casual. Her face was wan, but she hung on to the box in her right hand. “I’ve got perimeter surveillance systems on all surfaces in here. The TALIGENT terminal is armed and on the same subnet as this tablet. Wednesday can tell you I’m not bluffing.” She swallowed. “Fun things you can do with a tablet.” Her hand tightened on it. “If I take my thumb off this screen, it’ll send a message to the terminal. I think you can guess what it will say.”
Wednesday stared at her. “It sends an irrevocable go code? How did you figure out how to do that?”
Steffi sighed. “How did I get the keys in the first place?” She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have gone to that embassy reception, kid. You could have been hurt.”
Rachel cleared her throat. “Hoechst was certain Svengali was the assassin. And she had his paymaster’s records.”
“What made you think Sven worked alone?” Steffi winked at Wednesday, a horribly knowing look that made her try to burrow into her chair to avoid it. She felt unclean.
“You set off that bomb—”
“No, that was someone else,” Steffi said thoughtfully. “One of Hoechst’s little surprises. I think she was trying to kill me. I just nailed a couple of others in the comfort of their own diplomatic residences. And relieved them of certain items from their personal safes, by way of insurance.” She held up the tablet: “Which brings me to the subject at hand.” She looked at Wednesday. “Can either of you give me a good reason not to transmit the irrevocable go code?”
Wednesday licked her lips. “They killed my parents and brother. They destroyed my home, in case you hadn’t noticed. They did — things — to Frank. And you want me to tell you not to kill ’em all?”
Steffi looked amused. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she called in the direction of the mike. “What’s your offer, Rachel?”
“Let me get back to you in a minute.” Rachel sounded very tense. “You’re not helping, Wednesday: remember, only one of the R-bombs is heading for a Re-Mastered world. The rest are still running on New Dresden. Think about that before you open your mouth again.”
“I’ll give you five minutes to talk to your boss,” said Steffi. “You might consider my pecuniary motives while you’re at it.” Then she flicked a switch on the console next to her and raised an eyebrow at Wednesday. “Do you really want me to kill everyone on two planets?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” Wednesday looked out of the picture window pensively. A huge whorl of violet-red gas, spokes of blue running radially through it, drifted across a black velvet backdrop iced with the unblinking pinpricks of a million stars. Frank is alive, she thought. Hoechst is dead, though. Will they prosecute me? I could claim self-defense against hijackers. The celestial smoke ring swung slowly past outside, a brilliant graveyard marker that would last a million years or more. And Frank hates them, too. But then she thought about New Dresden and the people she’d passed through like a ghost that had outlived the destruction of her planet. Jostling kids in a perfectly ordinary city. Blue skies and tall buildings. “I think I’m too insignificant to make that kind of decision,” she said slowly. “I don’t know who could.” She shivered as a thought struck her. “I’m glad the murderer’s dead. But to blame everyone behind them, their whole civilization…”
She stopped as she saw a shadow of a frown cross Steffi’s face, and forced herself to shrug, miming disinterest. Suddenly her heart was pounding and her palms sweating. She slowly stood up and, when Steffi said nothing, walked toward one side of the window. As she did so, she waited for the solar nebula to vanish from the view, leaving nothing but a scattering of stars across the blackness. Then she twisted a control tab in one jacket pocket. It stiffened around her, waistband tightening and sealing against her pressure leggings under the lacy trousers. Black against a black background, she thought, taking deep breaths. She ran a hand through her hair and surreptitiously popped the seal that held her hood closed inside the collar of her jacket. Then she turned to face Steffi. “What do you want?” she asked as casually as she could manage.