“‘Recruited’?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Caine. It’s more than just an aversion to publicity that still had you sitting on the full story of what happened at Dee Pee Three and dishing out ‘no comments’ like they were party favors. After which you and a bunch of world-class movers and shakers disappeared into thin interstellar air for about a month. And now here you are on Barney Deucy, but not a hint of your high-profile pals. So I’ve got to wonder, what were you all doing, light-years away from where you belong?”
Caine didn’t change his expression, couldn’t afford to. She may not have been told about the Convocation, but she’s on the scent. Careful, now.
Heather leaned forward. “I know you’re not alone in this, Caine, that you’re not an independent actor. You’re covering for someone. But I’ll disappear—right now, forever—if you just tell me who they are.”
Damn, she was a manipulative monster, but she was good. Caine raised one eyebrow, “‘They’?” he echoed. “There is no ‘they.’ I’m just a researcher doing my job.”
“And I’m the Tsarina of all the Russias. Look, even if you can’t tell me what’s really going on, don’t insult me with that ‘I’m just a researcher’ bullshit.” Heather seemed genuinely frustrated, now. Her Northern New Jersey accent and diction were starting to bleed through. “Honey, they yanked you out of an icebox that you never agreed to enter, sent you on a top-secret research assignment almost twenty light-years from Earth, and then put you up as the main attraction at the Parthenon Dialogues—all achieved despite numerous attempts to kill you. And you want me to believe that you’re still just a ‘researcher,’ no permanent strings attached? Horseshit.”
Caine smiled. “You were ever the charmer, Heather.”
“And you, Caine, still don’t know who your real friends are.”
His smiled widened. “You mean, ‘friends’ like you?”
“You could at least show me a little gratitude. I did rescue you from those underemployed hacks back at the maglev station.”
“Rescue me? From those ambulance chasers who you fed an ‘anonymous tip’ so that they’d accost me as soon as I emerged from The Pearl? So that I’d feel some subconscious gratitude, and be more pliable, when you serendipitously ‘came to my rescue’? Nice try. Better luck next time.”
“Knowing you, probably not.” Heather leaned forward. “But I’m not depending on luck. I have facts. For instance, fact: you had twenty-four/seven access to both Nolan Corcoran and Arvid Tarasenko.”
“So, having a close professional association with those two men automatically makes me—what? Their devoted servitor?”
“I’m not sure what it makes you, Caine. But you’re more than just a researcher when your employers start hiding your work behind some pretty dark curtains of secrecy.”
“Well, that’s hardly surprising, Heather. After what I discovered on Delta Pavonis, they had to give me pretty high security clearances. At least until Parthenon was over.”
Heather smiled. “No, that’s what you’d like me to believe. But you’re telling the tale a little bit backward, aren’t you, Caine?” She leaned forward. “They had to give you those clearances and bring you into their shadowy world before sending you to Dee Pee Three. You needed access to classified files, rank equivalents, and actual authority to get the job done there. All of which indicates that you were some kind of operative for them. And you’re still working for whoever is in charge now.” Heather frowned, thinking. “I’d bet a week’s salary that Tarasenko’s primary successor is Richard Downing. Some say he was the one who summoned that group of VIPs to Mars, where he just happened to be attending Nolan Corcoran’s memorial service. Coincidence?”
“Why don’t you ask Downing?”
“I would have, except, by the time I arrived, he’d been on a preaccelerating Earth-bound shift-carrier for two weeks, the one that finally shifted out a few days ago. But here’s what I don’t understand, Caine. Why should you be so loyal to them—to Downing, Corcoran, Tarasenko, whoever—given what they’ve done to you? And taken from you?”
A faint vibration started ascending through Caine’s feet, buttocks, abdomen as a gentle down-spinning hum arose and the arrival tone chimed. Saved by the bell. He smiled at Heather. “Our stop? So soon?”
Heather was frowning down at her palmcomp’s control screen. “Faster than I intended, actually.”
Caine’s smile did not change. “Thanks for the ride, Heather.” He rose, noticed a sudden bloom of red light beyond the window at the rear of the car. The track warning light had flashed for a moment, then died suddenly. The green light—signaling a clear track—did not replace it.
“If you leave now, Caine, you leave me no choice but to contact your friends.”
“Heather,” said Caine, watching for the green—or red—light to reappear, “the track signals are malfunctioning and we’re at the dead-end of this spur. You need to get out of this car. Now.”
“I think you’ve got the situation reversed, Caine. I don’t have to leave, you have to stay. Assuming you want your friends to remain safe.”
Neither track status light had reilluminated, and Caine felt a faint, growing tremor rising up through the center of the floor, where the car had settled on the rail.
One quick look at Heather’s stubbornly rigid jaw told him she wouldn’t listen to reason in time. He turned toward the door, spotted the emergency exit panel. He smashed it with his elbow and hit the red panic-release button.
As the door was rammed back into its recess by the sudden discharge of a compressed-air cell, Heather reared up. “What the hell are you doing, Caine?”
“We have to go, Heather,” he shouted, grabbing toward her. “Right now!”
Heather’s reflexes were extremely swift but perfectly wrong. As Caine closed with her, she swung back, bringing up her legs and kicking, hard.
With his focus entirely upon getting her out of the car, Caine didn’t realize what Heather was doing until her spiked heels jabbed sharply into his abdomen like a double-barreled nail-gun. With a grunt, he found himself stumbling backward, falling as his heel caught on the rim of the exit. He landed half in the car, half out the open door—
—and discovered a palmcom shoved into his face, red recording light on, a bizarre tableau around him. He had fallen out at the feet of yet another crowd of shouting protestors. Each brandished a placard emblazoned with a crucifix being menaced by “little-green-man” aliens, who had also sprouted satanic red horns and black tails.
The girlish reporter who was leaning over him stuck her palmcom down so energetically that it bumped his lips. As she began her oblivious mantra—“Mr. Riordan, Mr. Riordan. Janel Bisacquino, Reuters Interstellar”—Caine scrambled to get his legs back under him, to get back into the car, to get Heather out—
But the reporter grabbed his shoulder as he rose, causing him to stumble farther away from the maglev car as she chattered into his ear, “Is it true that you were abducted by aliens on Delta Pavonis Three?”
“Heretic!” one of the protesters yowled over her shoulder from the lee of a long kiosk that paralleled the platform.
Caine shook off the reporter’s hand, spun toward the open doorway of the car—beyond which Heather stood, her features softening into uncertainty—
With an up-dopplering screech, another maglev car shot out of the transport tube and rammed into Heather’s half-size rental—just as Caine grabbed the reporter and dove for the ground.