She grinned and bit into a slice of the bread. Melted butter dribbled down her chin. “Thank you for not denying it.”
Stig nearly protested, but that would have been churlish. “How did you find me? More importantly, how did you get my address code?”
“I have a good monitor program. A very good one.”
“Ah. It was you who released it into the city net.”
Mellanie stopped chewing to give him a surprised look. “You knew it was there?” She dabbed a paper napkin to her chin.
“We knew something was there. It’s very elusive.”
“Okay, well, don’t worry. It’s not hostile.”
“I doubt the Institute would agree with you.”
“Their troopers had drawn weapons. They were going to take me and Dudley for interrogation. We’d probably be turned into Starflyer agents.”
Stig was silent for a moment while he reviewed what she said. “Very likely. Do you mind telling me what you know about such things? Frankly, I’ve never met anyone other than a Guardian who believed in the Starflyer.”
“I discovered my old boss was one, Alessandra Baron. She sabotaged an investigation I…” Mellanie stiffened, turning abruptly. Stig saw a dense, intricate pattern of silver lines flicker into existence on her cheeks and around her eyes. “What the hell are you?” she blurted.
He looked over his shoulder to see Dr. Friland glide out from the back of the restaurant. A faint purple nimbus had replaced the usual shadow inside his hood. It died away. When Stig glanced back at Mellanie, her complicated OCtattoos had vanished from view.
“Shall we call that an honorable stalemate?” Dr. Friland asked in his mellow, echoing voice.
“Sure,” Mellanie said guardedly.
“I am glad. As to your original question—”
“You’re a Barsoomian.”
“Correct. My name is Dr. Justin Friland. I’m pleased to meet you, Mellanie Rescorai.”
Mellanie pointed a finger, and switched it between Stig and the tall robed figure. “You guys working together?”
“We do on occasion,” Dr. Friland said. “And this is one of them.”
“Right.” Mellanie took a sip of her beer, still not looking away from the Barsoomian.
“All right,” Stig said. “We’re not shooting at each other, and we agree the Starflyer is our enemy. So what did you want to talk to the Guardians about, Mellanie?”
She gave him a moderately flustered look. “I came to ask what I should do.”
“You want our advice?” Stig found it hard to believe anyone as ballsy as this girl would need to turn to anybody else for help. She was smart, determined, and resourceful; she could also clearly look after herself. He’d never seen wetwiring so sophisticated. So who’s she working with?
“Like you said, nobody in the Commonwealth believes in the Starflyer. I need to know what you’re doing to bring it down. I need to know if I can help. I’ve got some very strong allies.”
“Oh, fine, one moment while I go fetch copies of our plans, and hand over the names and addresses of everyone we have working in the Commonwealth.”
“Stop being a prat. We both know what’s got to happen here. You give me a onetime unisphere address, I’ll go back to the Commonwealth and make contact. That way we get to negotiate and find some middle ground where we both help each other.”
“That’s you,” Stig said. “What about your partner here?”
Dudley barely looked up from his water. He looked thoroughly miserable to the point of being disinterested.
“What about Dudley?” Mellanie asked.
“He kicked this whole thing off.”
“You stupid, ignorant, little man,” Dudley snapped waspishly. “Have you no sense of perspective? No one person began this; no one person will end it. Least of all me.”
Stig thought he did well to hold his temper in check. “Without you, the Second Chance would not have flown. Without you, millions of people would still be alive.”
“I died out there, you shit!” Dudley said. “They caught me, and they took me prisoner, and they…they…”
Mellanie’s arm went around him. “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay, Dudley. Sit back now.” Her hand was rubbing along his spine. “Dudley was used by the Starflyer,” she said to Stig. “If you don’t believe me, ask Bradley Johansson; he spoke to Dudley’s ex-wife. He knows all about the astronomy fraud.”
Stig didn’t know what to do. The simplest thing would be to give her a onetime code as she asked; hand the whole problem over to Johansson and Elvin. But right now, sitting across a table from an obviously unstable Dudley Bose, Stig felt as if he was being manipulated into that very position. His instinct had it that anyone as beguiling as Mellanie couldn’t possibly be duplicitous. Rationally, he suspected she was about ten times as lethal as any veteran clan warrior. Yet she seemed so earnest, so open.
“May I ask what you will do if the Guardians don’t provide you with any assistance?” Dr. Friland asked.
“Carry on as best I can,” Mellanie said. “Gather as much evidence as I can against Baron, use it to expose her to the authorities, and hopefully penetrate whatever agent network she’s a part of.”
“She will be one of only three people. That’s the classic model of spy cells, and with today’s encrypted communications she may not even know the other members.”
“I’ll find the others,” Mellanie said grimly. “No matter how secure she thinks her communications are, I can hack them.”
“Of course, you said you had allies. And we witnessed a small fraction of its ability today, did we not? Are you sure it is trustworthy, Mellanie?”
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t.”
“Yes. I suppose that does generate a respectable level of personal confidence. All I ask, Mellanie, is that you continue to question. You are a reporter, are you not? A good reporter, despite your circumstances and the unseen help you have received.”
“It doesn’t matter how much help you get,” she said. “There has to be talent there to start with.”
Dr. Friland laughed. “Not to mention self-belief. So, Mellanie, all I ask is that you don’t throw away that reporter’s instinct. Keep questioning. Don’t stop asking yourself about your great ally’s motivation. It is, after all, not human. It is not even flesh and blood. Ultimately, its evolutionary destiny cannot be the same as ours.”
“I…Yes. All right,” Mellanie said.
“Treachery is always closer than you expect. Ask Caesar.”
“Who?”
Stig frowned. She’s joking. Right?
“An old politician,” Dudley said wearily. “An emperor who was betrayed by those closest to him. For the greater good, of course.”
“It’s always for the greater good,” Dr. Friland said. His voice sounded like someone very young, a boy who felt sadness strong enough for it to be grief.
“I won’t make that mistake,” Mellanie said. She deliberately looked away from the Barsoomian, and took another drink of her beer.
Stig told his e-butler to prepare a file with one of his fallback unisphere contact addresses in it. “Here’s your address,” he told Mellanie as the file transferred into her holding folder. “I hope you’re on the level with me.”
“I know,” she said. “If I’m not, you’ll track me down, blah blah blah.”
“You. Your memorycell. Your secure store.”
“Nice try. If we don’t defeat the Starflyer, neither of us will be around to duke it out. If I had been a Starflyer agent, you and everybody at Halkin Ironmongery would already be dead.”
The casual way she dropped their secure base of operations into the conversation made Stig want to scowl at her. Instead he felt a touch of admiration. She really is quite something. So why Dudley?
She gave him a pert grin, knowing she’d won that round. “The wormhole opens in another seventy minutes. We’d better get going. Dudley and I are booked on the next Carbon Goose flight under different names. That should be enough.”