The big Achilles tang came sweeping past, black, orange‑detailed, and elegant, acanthurus achilles.The jawfish dived into their burrows, and the Achilles, ominous shadow, went on to terrify the rabbitfish, who dreaded everything.
Small wars. Small problems. Everlasting, between species that had been conducting their same business and having the same quarrels since the last ice flowed on Earth.
The more intelligent of old Earth’s species weren’t doing much better, locally.
A small commotion drew Theo and Jory to the front door, and they admitted Amy and Maddy, Tommy with a stack of pizza containers, and the rest of the gang.
“Are we doing anything yet?” Amy asked in the same cheerful tone she’d used on pranks and schemes against Denys, not so many years ago. It was incongruous. It filled her with an irrational sense of capability. Are we doing anything yet?
But they weren’t within striking distance of this problem. Just Yanni was. And it was a two‑way strike potential.
“Yanni’s going. I cleared Reseune One to fuel. He’ll probably go tonight.”
“He will, sera,” Florian said. “He’s called for a car. Ten of ReseuneSec’s higher officers are going with him.”
“Backgrounds,” she said. “Tell Rafael do it.”
“Yes, sera,” Florian said, and went off to the foyer to do it quietly.
Meanwhile Tommy was laying out the pizza containers on available tables, and Mischa opened them one after the other. The smell wafted through the living room.
“Catlin,” she said, “tell kitchen we’d like some wine.” She’d have one. She’d earned it. But no other, not tonight. “Call Justin. Tell him and Grant come across. We’re having an election party.”
“But Jacques didn’t name Bigelow,” Amy said.
“That’s why Yanni’s on his way to Novgorod,” she said, and shopped among pizzas, finding her favorite, bacon and basil. She took a slice in her fingers. “Jacques has weasled.”
“Is that a word?”
“An old word for a slinky little mammal. He’s weasled. We don’t know if somebody’s gotten to him, or if he’s just waiting for Yanni to show up in person and ask him nicely. If he does something like name Khalid–he’s been gotten to.”
“Somebody can file on him in two months,” Tommy said. Tommy had probably looked it up.
“They can,” Ari said, “and somebody’s bound to, Bigelow on one side, and Khalid on the other, and we go another seven months trying to get somebody elected who’s competent. Don’t talk to me about Khalid. I’m eating.”
Wine showed up from the hallway, at one end. And Justin and Grant showed up at the door, at the other.
“Pizza,” she said. “Drinks. Call for what you want.”
Justin didn’t ask a question, but he looked a little cautious. So did Grant.
“It wasn’t all good,” Amy said under her breath. “Jacques was supposed to name Admiral Bigelow Proxy, and didn’t, and Yanni’s going to Novgorod.”
Justin had looked Amy’s way.
“It’s not totally good,” Ari said. “But we’ve still got Jacques, and Yanni’s going there, with a guard we hope he can rely on, to call in a non‑military guard, I hope, to keep Jacques safe. Choose your pizza. It’s still warm. We’re not celebrating yet, but we’re not panicking. Spurlin was murdered.”
Justin had been picking up a piece of pizza, sausage and cheese. He let it lie.
“Have your pizza,” she said. “Just letting you know it’s dangerous out there.”
“Had that idea,” he said, and took the pizza anyway. Haze offered him a tray, white wine and red. He chose red, and had the pizza in one hand and the drink in the other. Grant had gone for cheese on cheese, and white, and settled on a settee near the fish wall, his long legs a little tucked, given the height of the seat.
“I called you here,” Ari said to Justin, “because you’re on the inside, same as everybody else. Because if I pull Hicks out of his job, and I may, I may put youin as head of ReseuneSec.”
“Don’t even joke about it,” he said, the wineglass in one hand, the pizza, frozen, in the other. “No. Lock me up, but keep me out of thatjob.”
“I think you’d actually be good at it.”
“Realtime work, remember?”
“You just arrest them. You don’t cure them.”
“I don’t want to arrest anybody,” Justin said. “Ari, you’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m joking,” she said, but she wasn’t–she had a short, short list of candidates she’d trust for the time it took to fill the job permanently. “Your other choice is Yanni’s job.”
“No,” he said, fast.
“If anything should happen,” she said. “But it won’t, if I can help it. That’s why you’re here. You’d do it, wouldn’t you, a week or two, if you really had to?”
He stood looking at her with the ridiculous pizza and the wineglass, and finally went and laid the pizza piece back with the nearest pizza.
“Ari, if you’re anywhere close to serious, I’m asking you, pick just about anybody else in Reseune. Amy, over there, damned near ranReseune for the duration of the last–”
“I trust you,” she said, “beyond most people over the age of eighteen. And if things go wrong, I’ll owe you and Grant a very, very big apology for all of it, because things will go to absolute hell and you’re going to get swept up in the fallout. Right now. Base One recognizes Yanni as my guardian if I should die. He’s responsible for getting me back. And Base One recognizes you as second in line to run Reseune and to do exactly that.”
“No,” he said earnestly. “Ari, no. I’m not remotely qualified.”
“Who is?” she asked. “Who has a thorough knowledge of the system when it’s going badly, and when it’s going right? I could appoint Wojkowski, or Peterson, or Edwards, but they’re none of them up to saying no to the right people.”
“I’m not outstandingly good at saying no, either. Look at how far it’s got me. I spent more time being arrested than anybody else in Reseune.”
“That’s not your sole qualification. You’re qualified to bring meup if you had to. You’d be qualified to bring up Giraudif anything happens to Yanni in the next few weeks–at least long enough to find somebody to be as non‑fit as the first Giraud’s mother. Tell me you will. Or tell me who’s going to do the job. You’d have Amy, you’d have Maddy–she does a lot more than look nice and run a dress shop: believe that. You’d have Sam. He’s hands‑on, but he’s brilliant at what he does. Florian, Catlin–you’d take care of them. You’d see they were safe…they’d see you were…”
He opened his left arm of a sudden, wrapped it around her gently and hugged her against his shoulder. He smelled good. He was warm, he was stronger than you’d ever think, and he held her the way nobody ever had who was older, nobody but Ollie, a long, long time ago. She didn’t cry, though if she weren’t so hyped to fight, she might have, and he didn’t make a scene of it, he just walked her aside from everybody else, over toward the garden‑glass of the dining room, and let her go, and said, facing her, “If I’m all, Ari. If I’m absolutely all there is, I’ll do it. I wouldn’t be near good at it. I’d be looking for advice, wherever it came from. But I’d keep your people safe, with everything I could put together, and I wouldn’t waste any time getting your next edition into the tank and going, fast as I could. My father–my father I know is a question. But he wouldn’t be, in this. If it came down to it–I’d be there, long as it took for your own people to get their feet on the ground.”
“We don’t knowthings about history, Justin. We don’t know how things happened. We just know where things are now.”