“Thank the gods,” breathed Addie.
“Is he awake?”
She nodded. Bracknell pushed past her to the injured man’s bedside. Toshikazu’s eyes were open, but they looked unfocused, dazed from the analgesics Addie had been pumping into him.
“I’ve got to know,” Bracknell said, bending over him. “What did those church people want from you? What did you do for them?”
“Gobblers,” Toshikazu whispered.
Bracknell heard Addie, behind him, draw in her breath. She knew what gobblers were. Nanomachines that disassembled molecules, tore them apart atom by atom. Gobblers had been used as murder weapons, ripping apart protein molecules.
“To break up the buckyball fibers of the skytower?” Bracknell asked urgently.
Toshikazu nodded and closed his eyes.
“Gobblers are illegal,” said Addie. “Even in Selene…”
“But you made them, didn’t you?” Bracknell said to Toshikazu.
He understood it all now. Gobblers tore apart the skytower’s structure at the geostationary level. That’s why the lower half of the tower collapsed while the upper half went spinning off into deep space. And the evidence was at the bottom of the Atlantic’s midocean ridge, being melted away by the hot magma boiling into the ocean water.
“I made … gobblers… for them,” Toshikazu admitted, his eyes still closed.
“You made the gobblers for the Flower Dragon people?” Bracknell asked. “Or for the New Morality?”
With a weary shake of his head, Toshikazu replied, “Neither. They were … merely the agents… for…”
“For who?”
“Yamagata.”
Bracknell gaped at the dying man. Yamagata Corporation. Of course! It would take a powerful interplanetary corporation to plan and execute the destruction of the skytower.
“Yamagata,” Toshikazu repeated. “I was the last… the last one to know…”
Addie looked up at Bracknell. “Now we know.”
“No!” said Toshikazu. “I’ve told you … nothing. Nothing. I died … without telling you … anything. If they thought you knew…”
His eyes closed. His head slumped to one side.
And Bracknell said, “Yamagata.”
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Bracknell was still in the infirmary with Addie and the unconscious Toshikazu when the rescue team from Hiryu came in, led by Captain Farad. The elderly Japanese man was accompanied by two young muscular types, also Asian, who gently lifted Toshikazu onto a stretcher and carried him away.
The old man stayed and asked Addie for Toshikazu’s medical file. She popped the chip from the computer storage and handed it to him.
With a sibilant hiss of thanks, the old man pushed his long hair back away from his face and asked her, “Does this chip include audio data, perhaps?”
“Audio data?” asked Addie.
“You must have spoken to him extensively while he was under your care,” said the old man. “Are your conversations included in this chip?”
She glanced at Bracknell, who said, “He was unconscious most of the time. When he did talk, it was mostly rambling, incomprehensible.”
“I see.” The old man looked from Bracknell’s face to Addie’s and then back again. “I see,” he repeated.
Captain Farad, impatient as usual, asked, “Is there anything else you need?”
The old man stroked his chin for a moment, as though thinking it over. “No,” he said at last. “I believe I have everything I need.”
He left with the captain.
Addie broke into a pleased smile. “I think we saved his life, Mance.”
“Maybe,” Bracknell said, still gazing at the open hatch where the captain and the Japanese elder had left.
“There’s nothing more to do here,” said Addie. “I’m going to my quarters and take a good long shower.”
Bracknell nodded.
“Will you walk me home?” she asked, smiling up at him.
Her quarters were down the passageway; his own a dozen meters farther. When they got to her door, Addie clutched at his arm and tugged him into her compartment.
He began to protest, “Your father—”
“—Is busy seeing off the rescue team,” Addie interrupted. “And there are no cameras in my quarters; I’ve made certain of that.”
“But I shouldn’t be in here alone with you.”
“Are you afraid?” She grinned impishly.
“Damned right!”
The compartment was much like his own quarters: a bunk, a built-in desk and dresser, accordion-pleat doors for the closet and lavatory.
Addie touched the control panel on the wall and the overhead lights turned off, leaving only the lamp on the bedside table.
“Addie, this is wrong.” But he heard the blood pulsing through his body, felt his heart pounding.
She stood before him, smiling knowingly. “Don’t you like me, Mance? Not even a little?”
“It’s not that—”
“Today is my seventeenth birthday, Mance. I am legally an adult now. And rather wealthy, you know. I can control my own dowry now. I can make my own decisions.”
She reached up to the tab at the throat of her coveralls and slid the zipper all the way down to her crotch. She wasn’t wearing a bra, he saw. Her body was young and full and beckoning.
“I love you, Mance,” Addie murmured, stepping up to him and sliding her arms around his neck.
He clutched her and pulled her close and kissed her upturned face.
And heard the door behind him burst open with a furious roar from Captain Farad. Before Bracknell could turn to face her father, he felt the searing pain of a stun wand at full charge and blacked out as he slumped to the floor.
Aboard Hiryu the elderly Japanese assassin composed a final message to Nobuhiko Yamagata. He encrypted the video himself, a task which took no little time, even with the aid of the ship’s computer:
“Most illustrious master: The last individual is now in our care. He will be treated as required. Unfortunately, he has probably contaminated the vessel in which we found him. Therefore that vessel will be dealt with. This will be my last transmission to you or anyone in this life. Sayonara.”
When Bracknell came back to consciousness he was already in a hardshell suit, its helmet sealed to the neck ring. The captain was glaring at him, his eyes raging with fury.
“I told you to keep away from her!” he screamed at Bracknell, loud enough to penetrate the helmet’s thick insulation. “I warned you!”
“Where is she? What have you done—”
“She’s in her quarters, crying. She’ll get over it. I’ll have to marry her off sooner than I planned, but it’ll be better than having her throw herself at scum like you.”
Bracknell felt himself being hauled to his feet and realized there were at least two other crewmen behind him. His legs wouldn’t function properly; the stun wand’s charge was still scrambling his nervous system.
“Drag him down to the auxiliary airlock,” the captain snarled. “That goddamn Hiryu is still connected to the main lock.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” Bracknell protested.
“The hell you didn’t!”
Like a sack of limp laundry Bracknell was hauled along the passageway and into the airlock. The captain clipped a tether to the waist of his spacesuit and handed him the loose end.
“You can find a cleat for yourself and clip onto it. Otherwise you can float out to infinity, for all I care.”
Bracknell tottered uncertainly in the hard-shell suit. His legs tingled as if they’d been asleep. He’s going to kill me! he thought. I’m going to die out there! There’s no way I can survive in a suit all the way out to the Belt. Even if he sends out more air and food how can I—