“Carris?” she asked.
“Not been seen.”
The frown staved. Lao had the pen in her fingers, and lost it. He steadied it.
“Can’t see the damn line.”
“Here.” He showed her where. “Just sign it, Kate. Just sign it.”
She signed, carefully, most of her ordinary signature before it trailed off.
“I can fill in the blank,” he said. “Who do you want for proxy? Recorder’s running. Say it, and I’ll fill it in.”
“Ariane Emory,” she said.
“Kate, it’s 2424. Kate?”
She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t hearing anything. The lines on the machines had all stopped.
“White Rabbit,” Yanni said, on com, the car speeding back through the streets, and when he heard Mikhail’s voice. “White Rabbit, how’s it going?”
“Affirmative. Affirmative. We’ve got him. Come ahead.”
The call cut out. Fast. His heart did a little flutter.
He looked at Frank. “They got him,” he said. Meaning Edgerton. Chavez of Finance had told Harogo of Internal Affairs that he knew where Edgerton was, and they’d just made contact…which meant they might not need to file that questionable paper. Edgerton was going to show in the Council chambers for about five minutes, which was what they needed. Lao had appointed a dead woman to take Edgerton’s place, but they’d, thank God, located Edgerton’s hidey‑hole somewhere in the city, Chavez had just worked a miracle, and Yanni told the driver, “Council Hall.”
The ear veered. The airport bus, caught by surprise, caught up with them three intersections on, and trailed both escort cars.
They crossed the river on Council Bridge, and the administrative tower, closest to the river of all the various bureau office towers, loomed up closer and closer.
The portico showed ominously vacant, compared to the usual press of media vans and reporters. Nobody was there but one lonely media stakeout with her cameraman, them and a small number of Council aides, with another car giving up its occupants as a third car and the airport bus came squealing up the drive, and more security bailed out.
Guns came out. “Easy,” Yanni said. The other car was Mamud Chavez, and Yanni went to meet him, and go with him through the doors. “Mamud.” He offered his hand as they passed the doors and came under the scrutiny of Council security. Chavez, ordinarily not his ally, took the handshake with uncommon sincerity.
“Good to see you,” Chavez said, the statement itself an earthquake in Council relations. “Corain went to the back entry.”
‘”Good,” he said. He stayed worried as they reached the lift, and gathered their bodyguard in, both of them. It shot them up to the Council level, and let them out into a vacant hallway.
Frank opened the door for them. Yanni and Chavez walked into the Hall of the Nine itself, and immediately he saw Corain and Tien, of Industry. That was four of the five they needed for a simple quorum, four of the eight they needed for the vote they intended.
“Harogo’s on his way up,” Corain said. “Harad’s coming.”
Five. And six. Harad. State, had been a cliffhanger: he’d been an ally of Gorodin’s, in Defense; and it hadn’t been certain where he came down–he hadn’t liked Jacques or Spurlin.
They tended toward their seats. Took them, in the arc that constituted an official seating. There was no Council clerk. They passed a sheet of paper down, signed their names, and fed it into the automated slot that immortalized it, irretrievable, a statement of their presence here, on this day, to do Council business.
Five more minutes. Harogo came in, Internal Affairs, frail, and surrounded by his own security, from Fargone Station. Two more minutes, and they had word from Corain’s watch at the back entry that Harad was in the building, and then Ludmilla deFranco arrived downstairs.
One more needed. Yanni looked at the clock. Seventeen minutes. The longer they sat, the more vulnerable they became.
Eight. Harad came in, walked to the fore of the desk.
“He didn’t make his appointment,” Harad said, as agitated as Yanni ever remembered him. “I have no word.”
He. Meaning Edgerton.
“Damn,” Corain said. “Damn it.”
“It’s not safe to stay here,” Chavez said. “We risk getting pinned here.”
“Five more minutes,” Yanni said.
Harad came up to his seat. DeFranco came in, conferred quietly with Harad, took her seat. And they waited.
Frank talked on com with someone, probably downstairs. Frank walked over to him, leaned near his chair. “There’s a military presence at the hotel. And another squad at Councillor Lynch’s condominium.”
“We can’t do this,” Harogo said. Harogo sat next to him. “We need to move. We’ve failed the quorum.”
“We can get the eight we need,” Yanni said. “Lao’s dead. But she named another proxy.” He got up and slipped the paper into the slot. “Ariane Emory.”
No restriction on the ability of a Councillor to appoint a Proxy. No restriction even of age. None of bureau registration. In the wild early days of chancey transport, anybodywith credentials could carry a vote into the Council on behalf of an absent Councillor.
“Irregular!” Harogo said.
“Legal,” Corain said.
“We can’t vote here without our eighth,” Yanni said. “I call Council. Reseune Administrative Territories, on the twelfth of September.”
“Second that,” Corain said.
“Those opposed?” Harogo said, and then wrote on the screen under his hands, and filed it. “Each of us has declared a Proxy. In case.”
“Go,” Yanni said, and got up from his seat. He alone couldn’tfile a Proxy; only Lynch, Councillor for Science, could do that, and Lynch was holed up in his residence, too old and too timid for what was afoot. He couldn’t lay all the blame for their situation to Edgerton’s lack of nerve: for all he knew, there was trouble hot on Edgerton’s trail. Or Edgerton was dead.
He gathered up Frank, then caught Mikhail Corain at the side of the door. “Thanks.”
“Done as much as I can,” Corain said, and in the lowest possible tones. “ Didshe sign it?”
“I’ve got the recording,” Yanni said. “Or Frank has it. It’s legal. Stay low and stay safe.”
Out the door then, downstairs as fast as they could gather a lift‑load of Councillors, aides, and security. In the lower hall they separated, headed for the north doors and the south portico.
ReseuneSec held the doors.
BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xviii
AUGUST 20, 2424
1438H
Nearly a week since the broadcast, and Ari had long since taken pity on the reporters camped out at the airport and physically cut off from their news organizations, their families, their means of being elsewhere–she comped meals, laundry service, delivered unlimited vid entertainment, and ordered the restaurant there to vary its menu daily and be open twenty‑four hours, the little airport bar to open at 2000h and stay til 2400h nightly.
She’d also sent down two ReseuneSec agents to help out at the bar, and to gather up any tidbits of information and rumor that came in by various links that didn’t belong to Reseune.
There were rumors down there, no question. Broadcast news continually said Lao was alive. Rumor at the bar said she was artificially sustained for legal reasons. The broadcast news said Council had met but Khalid had not shown up, nor had the Proxy for Information, and Council had adjourned quickly. Rumor said Edgerton was in hiding somewhere in the city and that he and Council were under direct threat of the military.
On August 20, Amy called–finally, and reported that Yanni had taken over the hotel he was in, that Corain was living there, too, and that she and Quentin had moved in for safety, because her hotel had been used for a barracks. She also said that yesterday there’d been a breakdown in the subway that added to problems in the city. People said it was Paxer activity, but mostly it was just rumors–anything that broke was automatically Paxers.
Meanwhile, Amy said, Khalid was threatening to put the city under martial law; but without the Council he knew he couldn’t do that, so he was trying to locate Council members, and that military had been searching hotels, including her former one, and trying to bully Councillors into showing up when hecalled Council. It was certain Khalid knew where Yanni and Corain were, but hadn’t made a move on them or searched their hotel. He hadn’t found enough of the other Councillors to get eight of the Nine–and without them, he couldn’t declare martial law, couldn’t convene the Council of Worlds, and couldn’t do a lot of things, legally, so there was no point in his raiding the hotel where two Councillors definitely and publicly were.