Muffled, "It's unlocked."
He eased the door open, spied the shredded corpse, the demolished furniture. He went in slowly.
He found himself facing a cutter.
"It is you."
"I think so."
"You took long enough."
"I was in the High City keeping Blessed from getting killed by your Others."
"Blessed too?"
"All of us. They tried me this morning."
"A clean sweep."
"Except for T.W. Come down to my office. They don't know they didn't get you, either."
"Of course they do. Two got away when I did that." She indicated the corpse.
"Those two are all right. They came straight down to let me know you were in trouble. If they'd been on the other side there would have been another try."
"Unless I'm not Valerena Prime."
"I'll know about that after I get you to my office."
T.W. got through so quick her call had to have been expected. "T.W. Trice!" the Simon Other boomed. "How the hell are you? I haven't seen your ugly puss since..."
"Can it. I'm not in the mood. Lupo got himself killed this morning." She had been Provik's lover once and was well known as his designated heir.
"Killed? Lupo Provik?"
"Lupo. I know. It sounds unlikely. Since Valerena took over, I've had orders to get with you if anything happens to him. Can you come down?"
"Why don't you come up? More private here."
"I can't. Somebody tried to burn Blessed and got the bad side of his bodyguards. I'm riding monitor on the cleanup."
Pause. "I'll be right down."
"Use the freight lift. I'm back in the big office." She secured. "That good enough, Lupo?'"
"Perfect. He'll be foaming at the mouth, worrying."
Two came in. "Blessed is on his way. He brought the Ku instead of Shike."
"He knows we wouldn't let him in armed."
Blessed arrived moments before the guest of honor. There was no time to brief him. The Simon Other came out of the freight lift booming, "T.W! Where the hell are you, woman?"
"In here."
The bell came sailing in. "What's this shit about somebody trying to... Hell."
T.W. said, "I'll leave now, Lupo."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"Go ahead." Provik faced the bell. "You and Simon wondered how it would come out if we went head to head. Now you know. You were clumsy, hasty, sloppy, overconfident, and your communications and reserves were inadequate. You defeated yourself. I didn't see it coming."
"I had one throw of the dice. I took it. And you know damned well victory don't always go to him with the most resources. I don't have any regrets. Do what you have to do."
Lupo allowed time for Valerena or Blessed to comment. Neither spoke. He wished he could read the Ku. The alien seemed amused.
"You've overlooked your value to the House. Or maybe you didn't. Maybe you were counting on it."
The Simon Other did not respond.
"You're the Chair, Valerena. What do we do with him?"
"What do you think we should do?"
"You're the Chair. It's your job to decide. Mine is to carry out your decisions. I never let Simon duck responsibility for the unpleasant things we did, and I won't let you, either."
"You're a bastard."
"I know." He watched Blessed obliquely. The boy remained a cypher. "But this does have to be resolved."
"Can we deal with the Outsiders without him?"
"Probably. It may take longer."
"I don't need the aggravation of always having to watch for a next time."
Lupo smiled thinly. How often had she tried to get to her father? "Blessed. You have an opinion?"
"No."
Just here. Just watching. Just learning what it meant to be a Tregesser. "Go home, then. My people will come clean up. Don't relax. There could be a few severed limbs of this thing flopping around still."
Blessed left without a word, his alien drifting behind him.
"What was that thing?" Valerena asked.
"A Ku warrior. His bodyguard. Ready to talk about your Others?"
"Yes. But I have a problem with it."
"What?"
"After what happened in my office I realized there're several of them I can't account for."
"That'll be my next project. After we dispose of this body and equipment."
Two had shut the Simon Other down while Blessed was leaving, before it could leave a legacy of distrust by mentioning its suspicions about the circumstances of Simon Tregesser's death.
— 83 —
It took four days to clean up the station. Haget put together a long-winded report and entrusted it to the Horigawa Hauler. Then he ordered the Traveler on to M. Shrilica.
"He didn't even mention how well you handled the station, Jo," AnyKaat said.
"He's busy."
"Stop making excuses. You know what he's busy doing? Using that station as a median point to develop a descriptive probability from which to predict which other stations might have been infiltrated."
"It has to be done."
"At Starbase. We got a job. Catch the runaways."
Jo did not want to argue. Especially since AnyKaat was saying what she was thinking.
Haget was having trouble handling an ongoing relationship. He was evading by burying himself in work.
They visited M. Shrilica station. They made the locals nervous for two days. But the more sure Jo, Degas, and Vadja became that there was something worth finding there, the more perfunctory became Haget's attitude. Fifty-three hours in he decided to go after the phantom phantom.
Five strands anchored on M. Shrilica. One led toward Starbase, one back to the station already policed. Haget presented a search program moving outward from the next anchors of the remaining strands.
"He's screwed up royal," Degas said. "Why doesn't the Deified jump him?"
Jo could not defend Haget.
Vadja said, "Not to worry, Jo. We scavenged every bit of information except what's locked up inside human minds. He'll come back. When he does, we'll know what questions to ask."
Vadja launched a record pod that would lie dormant till a Guardship broke off the Web.
Jo worried for Haget. Everybody thought his decision stupid. The Deified probably did, too. But he exercised no opinion. He never spoke. He just watched. It was easy to forget he was there.
Eight months. The Horigawa Traveler visited a hundred systems, finding no sign of a Lost Child or phantom, catching only an occasional whiff of a methane breather long gone.
The venture was not a waste. It established with certainty a sinister rot spreading throughout that end of Canon space. Which scared Jo.
They had stumbled onto something big.
Haget assembled Jo, Vadja, and the Chief. "This search was a mistake. You've rubbed it in, never saying a word, making me wallow in it, good little soldiers carrying out every order. Waiting for me to run out of ways to save face. All right. I'm out. I fucked up. I made a dumb decision and compounded it by not backing down." He gutted himself.
"Let's get back in stride. Any suggestions?"
Vadja said, "Back to M. Shrilica, sir. Between the phantom's visit and ours, only two ships stopped there. One was VII Gemina. Data from the abandoned in-system station suggests the phantom did approach station close enough to have docked briefly."
"So?"
"Six days later Canon's only agent there, tolerated because he was an honorary, was killed in a freak accident. Following his death there was a twenty percent rise in shuttle traffic between Tregesser Xylag and station. That increase was noted by the old station but not by the new. No personnel transfers are noted officially, but new names begin appearing in official reports and old ones are not seen again."