"Because whatever he intended to do with the demon—research or anything else—would have taken some time to accomplish," Ravagin told her. "That points to someone official, either a Courier or someone on staff at one of the way houses."
"Assuming you're right, what sort of numbers are we talking about?" Hart asked. "Ten possibilities?
A thousand?"
Ravagin shrugged. "We're probably starting with something on the order of six or seven hundred altogether. We should be able to drastically narrow that down, though, by checking experience records."
"And med/psych records," Danae put in.
Ravagin frowned at her. "What do you mean?"
She gave him a tight smile. "Don't you remember, Ravagin?—my official reason for going into the Hidden Worlds was to study their psychological effects on Couriers."
"Oh, right." He grimaced. "We seem to have lost that thread somewhere along the way."
"Yeah; but before we did I collected a fair amount of impressions on the subject. Particularly on how excessive spirit contact seems to affect the personality."
Ravagin studied the end of his fork, mentally leafing through his list of friends and acquaintances who'd spent time on Karyx. "Are you implying," he said slowly, "that it isn't so much absolute time on Karyx that matters, but how much contact you've had with the spirits there?"
"It seems to be a combination of the two." She hesitated. "And there isn't just one reaction to consider. For example... the emotional burnout you had seems to have been a direct result of not giving in to spirit influence. As if—"
"As if they couldn't control me, so they were working on driving me out?" Ravagin growled with a sudden flash of insight. "Why, those bastards. That is what they were doing, isn't it? Those ethereal little bastards."
"It's just a theory—"
"But it sure as hell sounds reasonable." Ravagin jabbed his fork viciously into his dessert, trying to imagine a demon's face there. It seemed to help. "Okay; it sounds like a good approach," he told her.
"The only catch in it is that med/psych records are on the restricted access list. I don't know any of the appropriate passkeys to get in."
"Can I phone into the computer from outside the Crosspoint Building?" Hart asked.
"No. It's a sealed system."
"How close is your phone to your terminal?"
"Oh—" Ravagin measured out half a meter between his hands. "About that far."
Hart nodded. "Then it can be done. I'll get you the appropriate gadget later this evening. You'll have to sneak it in and get it set up, I'm afraid, but it's a simple procedure and I'll include a set of instructions."
"What about the passkeys? Getting into the computer won't get you those."
Danae snorted. "That's the least of our worries," she said. "The system doesn't exist that Hart can't perk. I should know—he's been tracking me down through perk-proof systems for the past four years." She shot him a lopsided smile. "Funny how I never appreciated that talent before."
"My only real talent in such things lies in searching out the proper experts," Hart shrugged.
"Fortunately, there are several such experts on Threshold."
"Whom you've already made contact with?" Danae suggested.
"Of course," he said equably. "Part of my job."
Chapter 43
Hart's "gadget" turned out to be something that looked like a standard computer record cube linked by a wide cable to a phone message disk. It arrived via special messenger at Ravagin's house at eleven in the evening, about an hour after he'd returned home from Danae's hotel suite and the continuation there of their council of war. Smuggling it into the Crosspoint Building was nerveracking but otherwise uneventful, and just before midnight he called back to the hotel from his desk to report that the interface was in place.
The initial list of suspects came to eight hundred and sixty-four. Eliminating those who'd never been to Karyx dropped it to six hundred twenty-one; weeding out those whose last trip there had been over a year ago brought it to just under four hundred.
Sometime about three-thirty in the morning Hart's unnamed associate cracked the med/psych passkey, and while Ravagin dozed at his desk they copied all the relevant files over for Danae to study. By five o'clock, when Hart woke him up to remind him about disconnecting the interface before anyone else came in and caught him with it, she had the list down to fifteen.
By the time he'd packed up the interface, left the building, and driven to Gateway City and their hotel, it was down to one.
"Omaranjo Saban," Ravagin read out loud, settling tiredly into a chair and scanning the hard copy Danae had made of the man's files. Master of the way house in Feymar Protectorate, barely eightyfive kilometers from the Shamsheer/Karyx Tunnel for the past ten months; previous post had been four years at the way house in Citadel on Karyx. Personality profile...
"You know him?" Danae interrupted his reading from the chair where she was slumped, gazing blankly out the window at the reddening sky.
Ravagin shook his head. "Met him once in Karyx, I think, but our group didn't stay long and I don't remember anything about him. Four years—that's a long time to be on Karyx."
"About the same as Melentha," Hart spoke up from another corner of the room. "According to his file, he kept his post the same way she did, by simply requesting extensions of the original appointment."
Ravagin nodded grimly. "That's one of the things we're going to have to change about the way people are assigned. Danae, you really think he's the one?"
"I don't think there's any doubt," she said wearily, rubbing her eyes with her fists. "His personality changes are almost a parallel to Melentha's, and no one else even comes close."
"Hart?"
"I don't know anything about Ms. mal ce Taeger's psych study," the other said with a shrug. "But from a pure right place/right time analysis he certainly fits. Though I'd feel better if we could come up with a reasonable motive for him."
"Insanity," Danae murmured. "Too much time with demons on the brain and poof—" She spread her hands, sunburst fashion. "Instant psychological lobotomy."
"It may be even easier to explain than that," Ravagin said, skimming a part of the psych report.
Saban's frustration level... "Anyway, it doesn't really matter. What matters now is stopping him and putting the cork back in the bottle."
"Yeah." Danae took a deep breath. "Okay. When do we start?"
Ravagin looked at Hart. "Can any of your specialized contacts get a pass for Danae to get into the Hidden Worlds?"
"No need," the other said. "I've already taken care of it."
"You have? When?"
"While I was on the computer, of course. It's all been filed and even properly approved. Though in all honesty the faster you get us in, the less chance there'll be of someone spotting it and making embarrassing inquiries."
Ravagin gritted his teeth. Speed was indeed imperative... and yet, on the other hand, the farther away he got from the council of war and the plan they'd hatched during it, the more the second and third thoughts were beginning to crowd into his mind. "I've been thinking," he said slowly, "that maybe we've hammered this scheme out a little too quickly. For starters, maybe I should be the one to go into Karyx—"
"And leave Hart and me to confront Saban and his pet demon?" Danae asked, closing her eyes.
"Come on, Ravagin—we hashed all the stuffing out of this earlier."
"You'll excuse me if I don't like the thought of sending you into danger again," Ravagin snapped.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was going to snap back at him. The way she had when they first headed into the Hidden Worlds, when his chief concern was whether they'd still be on speaking terms by the time they got back to Threshold.
But those days were gone forever. "If it comes to that," she told him quietly, "I don't like the thought of you going into danger, either. And don't try to kid me; you'll be in at least as much of it in Shamsheer as I will be in Karyx. Believe me, I am not overly enthusiastic about going in there again