“I will assume another identify on Aries! I will invest heavily in their defense industries; I will rise in their ranks till I am once more privy to secret information!”
“You will not,” the Hothri contradicted. “Your record will not bear scrutiny. No, dear Chairman, I am afraid you can be of no further use to us. Farewell.”
The screen filled with multi-colored snow. The chairman spun away from the screen with a curse.
And saw Alice’s arm pointing at him.
The gun was in his hand before she knew it; the flat, sharp crack filled the room before she could cry out. The tearing pain seared through her chest; but, as consciousness dimmed for good, she saw a rectangle of fire behind the chairman, saw him whirl as the door fell to ashes, and saw a familiar form filling the doorway with flame jolting from his hand.
The chairman recognized Pepe, and his teeth writhed back in a snarl. The pistol in his hand cracked again, and Papa rocked as the bullet slapped into his armor—but he fired a moment later, and the chairman slammed back against the wall.
Men began firing behind Pepe, and bullet after bullet slapped into the chairman, jolting the body—but Papa was no longer there to see. He had spun aside to kneel by Alice’s chair, knife slitting her bonds. His heart turned over at the sight of the bruise next to her ear, then turned to ice as he saw the red stain around the hole in her chest. He grappled her out of the chair and touched her neck, feeling for the jugular for a pulse . . .
“He’s very dead.” The Intelligence man came up behind Papa. “Must have known we were onto him. But he didn’t guess how quickly we’d picked up his transmission, or recognized it as Hothri encoding.”
Papa didn’t answer.
“Sorry we doubted.” The other Intelligence man came up behind the first. “You were right to make us keep a radio watch on this . . .”
Then he saw Alice, and stopped.
The first Intelligence man reached down to touch Alice’s arm. “She has a camera in there, you know. It’s still on.”
“You can turn it off now,” Papa said.
The Intelligence man reached down to press the switchpoint. “He wasn’t ready for us. He couldn’t guess that we could trace his transmission and find him so fast.”
“Not fast enough,” Papa said.
The Intelligence man frowned at something in Papa’s voice, and looked more closely. When he saw the tears in Papa’s eyes, he shut up. Finally,
“Ms. Biedermann was buried with full military honors. “
The screen showed Alice’s coffin, draped with a flag, framed by the honor guard firing their salute.
The midday patrons shut up, staring at the screen in mute respect.
“Her heroism in recording the final proof of the chairman’s guilt cannot be overstated.”The picture dissolved into the chairman’s profile, seen from the back, lit by the screen in front of him with its image of the Hothri operator. “Here, again, is the evidence for which she gave her life, evidence of the treachery that cost so many lives.”
The sound came up, and once again Papa heard the damning words, already burned into his brain, but all of which told him, again and again, that he had come too late.
The bartender took one look at his face and lowered the volume. A patron or two looked up to protest, caught the bartender’s tight shake of the head, and turned back to watch the screen, sobered.
The door wheezed open, clicked shut, and the general stepped up to Papa’s table. He stood, staring down at the bulky man hunched over his glass with a half-full bottle by his elbow. Finally, the general said, “Can I sit?”
Papa lifted his head slowly, frowning, then waved toward a chair. “Sure. Why not? It’s a public place.”
The general sat slowly, laying his hat on the table. He waited until Papa looked up at him again, then said, “The Senate met right after the broadcast last night. They talked nonstop till dawn.”
Papa’s mouth quirked into a bitter line. “Talk!”
“They decided not to nationalize the defense industries,” the general said. “It was close, though.”
“I don’t really care,” Papa told him.
“They did decide that all industry would have to be run by very tight government controls,” the general said. “Very tight. They voted to establish a Board of Industry to oversee everything about them, Colonel Stuart. Everything.”
“A little late, don’t you think?”
“They want you to resign your commission,” the general said.
Papa looked up, his mouth a hard, bitter line.
“They want you to head the Industry Board,” the general explained.
For a long, long minute, Papa just sat there, staring. Then, slowly, he relaxed, hunching over the glass again.
“That’s great,” he muttered. “Just great.”
And he took another drink.