“This stranger,” Jim said, “must not go near the comp”
“Understandss. Comp centre: many-machine. Sssafe.”
Pol’s eyes hooded. “You’ve killed us all. Morn won’t hesitate at wiping out this whole house. Do you understand that?”
“I understand it very well. We’reonly azi.”
Perhaps Pol caught that sarcasm. He gave him a long and penetrating look. “It’s Raen’s mind-set,” he said. “Male, she’s no different.”
Jim swallowed at the sickness in his throat. Calm, calm,an old tape kept insisting somewhere. And: Distraction is argument that needs no logic,another advised him, Kontrin. Pol was skilled in the tactic. Jim painted a smile on his face and tucked a corner of the blanket about him against a tendency to chill, reckoning that what happened would at least be quick, unless Pol or Morn directly laid hands on him. “The staff,” he said, “will make you comfortable, ser. But you’ll stay away from the computer.”
“You realise a direct strike could wipe this house out That with the stakes I fear she’s playing-the Family may not care that betas or a Kontrin die in the process.” Pol’s mouth twisted as though the words choked him. “I don’t care for a few betas or a houseful of azi and majat But she’sanother matter with me. You hear me. I’ll not be taken down by a houseful of azi.”
“There are majat.”
The Kontrin went stone-faced.
“The staff,” Jim repeated, “will make you comfortable in this room. But you’ll not leave it.”
Pol folded big arms.
“She’ll come back,” Jim said.
Pol shook his head. “I doubt that she can, azi. The shuttle was never meant for landing elsewhere. She’ll die, if she’s not dead already.”
It undermined his confidence of things. He could not keep that from his face.
“You know,” Pol said reasonably, “that she admitted me here herself. She’d never have let an enemy that close to her. You have her mind. You know that better than anyone would. She wouldn’t have let me in the door to see the lay of things, if she didn’t know that I wasn’t the enemy.”
“I don’t try to think as she does.” Jim hugged the blanket about him, stared bleakly at the Hald. “I don’t know enough. I only know what she told me, which was to stay and hold this house. You can say what you wish, ser. It may entertain you. It won’t make any difference.”
Pol cursed him, and Warrior stirred in the doorway.
“Green-hive,” Warrior moaned.
“That is another reason,” Jim said. “We simply wait for her. Maybe she’ll tell me then that I was wrong.”
“She’s never going to have the chance.”
Jim shrugged, tucked his feet up, cross-legged on the bed. “How shall we pass the time, ser? I am passably skilled at Sej.”
v
The queasiness of docking upset the child. Wes Itavvy hugged her against him, looked at his wife, mute, full of things he should have said. They held Meris between them, clasping her hands, saying nothing. The shuttle made this run nearly empty: they three, a family of five from Upcoast, whose faces were no less worried. The port had been a-bristle with police. ID’s were checked, and Itavvy had endured that in terror, expecting at any moment there would be someone who knew his face, who could detect the false numbers, the lies behind the precious tickets.
They had gone through. They had taken almost nothing in baggage, in their haste. There was disaster at their backs. It was palpable, throughout the city, through the subways, where armoured police patrolled, with rifles levelled, in shops closed, in newslines censored, broadcasts cancelled.
They had made it through. Station let them dock. The procedure completed itself and the crew unsealed the hatches.
“Come on,” he said, feeling his pocket for the authorisations. There was a freighter…the tickets advised so…it was the best place to go now, no lingering on station. They carried their own baggage off, jostling the Upcoast family in their haste.
Police.
And not police. Armoured men with a serpent for an emblem, levelling rifles at them.
“Papers,” one said.
Itavvy produced them. For a brief, agonising moment he thought that they would then be waved on; but the man kept them, checked those likewise of the Upcoast group.
“Both for the Phoenix,” he said into his com-unit.
“Faces check?” a voice came back.
“No likeness.”
Itavvy reached, to have the papers. The faceless man held them, and the others, motioned at them with the rifle. “Waiting room,” he said.
“We’ll miss our boarding,” a youth from Upcoast protested.
“Nothing’s leaving,” the armoured man said.
Azi, Itavvy realised in indignation. No Kontrin, but an azi force was holding them. He opened his mouth to protest: the rifles gestured, and he closed it. Meris started to cry; his wife gathered her up, and he took the burden from her, went after the Upcoasters into the designated waiting area.
DOCK 6, BERTH 9, he could see on the signs outside the clear doors as they were ushered through. Berth 11 was their ship, safety.
From here, past azi guns, there was no reaching it. He looked at the Upcoasters, at his wife, hugged Meris to him. A guard deposited their baggage inside the door and unmasked to search through it, disarranging one and proceeding to the next, putting nothing back.
vi
“Nothing,” the azi reported, and Morn scowled, folded his arms.
“No more flights,” he said, looking at the ISPAK president. “Nothing moves out, no more come up.”
“Kont’ Morn,” the beta breathed, appalled.
He cared little for that. He had no trust at all for ITAK, and believed in ISPAK’s loyalty only while guns were on them and in the command centre.
And from Pol there was yet no word. Pol was down in Newhope; that much was certain; his ship pulsed out a steady flow of status information, but there were only azi aboard.
The Meth-maren had weapons enough at her disposal if she had linked into ITAK. She had still the resources of the Family with which to buy beta loyalties. And to take those privileges needed Council.
Except by one procedure.
“She’s dead,” Morn said suddenly, bewildering the beta. “I’ll enter in the banks that the Meth-maren’s dead. And ISPAK will witness it. Then it’ll be true, by the law—do you agree, ser?”
“Yes, Kont’ Morn,” the man said; as it had been yes, Kont’ Pol, and Kont’ Raen before that.
“All Kontrin and a world’s corporations are sufficient witness.” He glared at the beta to see the reaction to this, and the beta simply looked frightened. He motioned to the console. “Get ITAK in link. Use your persuasion.”
The man sat down and keyed a message through, the while Morn leaned above him, one hand on his chair, one on the panel’s rim; and often the man’s hands trembled over a letter, but he made no errors. ITAK protested; NO CHOICE, the ISPAK beta returned. It was untidy; it fed into intercomp, to be examined and made permanent record. Morn scowled and let it. The records were only as dangerous as Council chose to regard them, and Council—was as Council went. Risks had to be taken.
ITAK complied, under threat, registering protest. Brave little betas, Morn thought, with respect for the Meth-maren’s hold on them. It amused him. He watched the ISPAK beta trembling with psych-set guilt and that amused him the more. “Move over,” he said, thrust the man out of the way, glared until the man moved far away, by the door. Then he set his own fingers to the keys, with both ITAK and ISPAK signatories, coded in his own number…and Pol’s: for that he had gained long ago, committed it to memory: he had taken that precaution, as he tolerated nothing near him he could not control—save Pol. All a world’s Kontrin and the corporations: the latter, K-codes could forge; but only on Istra did it come down to so small a body of the Family.