He returned it. “General Shijie has made arrangements to travel to New York City next week, to testify.”
“When I will be there.”
“And the chief executive officer of Unitek.”
“Tobias Hardy, surprise witness? That is an interesting piece of intelligence, Premier. I suppose it would be useless of me to ask how you happened to come by it?”
Xiong coughed against the back of his hand. “Through official channels.”
Oh. Meaning that somebody in the Chinese government tipped somebody at the UN that he ought to be called as a witness. “You're asking me to put a good deal of faith in your channels, Premier. Without a complete understanding of why your government is so eager to offer assistance to mine.”
“You'll be even more confused when I tell you that I have information that your Opposition will be moving for new elections after the hearings.”
“Forgive my suspicion, Premier, but that would tend to indicate that you expect the hearings to come out rather well for PanChina. And you do not seem to be a man given to gloating over the corpses of your enemies.”
“How little you know me.” But his eyebrows had climbed another quarter-inch up his unlined forehead.
Riel glanced up as a rap announced the imminent opening of her door. She caught a glimpse of a red Mountie's jacket outside the doorway as her secretary came in with the coffee, and privacied the hologram over her desk. Premier Xiong could still see her and the office, and she could hear him through her ear clip, but the image over her interface plate dissolved into a wash of soothing blues and greens.
He stayed silent. Once she had her coffee, Riel returned the interface to view mode. She wasn't fond of talking to images projected on her contact. “My apologies, Premier.”
“Not at all.”
“You were explaining to me how it is that you know more about the doings of my government than I do.”
“Simple,” he said. “It's in my very strong interest to be apprised of the ‘doings' of Minister of War Shijie Shu. And his ‘doings' are more or less closely linked to the machinations of your enemies within Canada. I'll be sending you more details by secure packet. I trust you have people who can manufacture a provenance for them, so you may have them ready when the time comes to expose the duplicity of your opposition?”
Fred, she said, and allowed herself a small, tight, bitter smile over the irony that, after all of it, he was the one she trusted to watch her back. What was the word he'd used to describe Casey, way back when?
Oh, yeah.
Patriot.
“Yes,” she said, and pulled the coffee tray toward her, not caring that the felt dragged on the crystal of the interface plate. What the hell. This is as secure a line as I can get. “If you can get me documents that prove that Hardy and Frye and their friends are in collusion with your General Shijie, then I can provide the scandal you need to prove that last year's attack against Canada was fostered by insurgent elements in your government, and we can shake hands and part friends.”
“Well. If we're speaking as plainly as that, let me stipulate: once the Huang Di and her crew are returned to PanChinese control, and we've come to an agreement regarding the partition of the world at HD 210277.”
“Technically speaking, it's a moon, not a world. And we're assuming it's habitable.”
“I have to assume it's habitable, Constance. I have ten thousand colonists underway to it on generation ships, and I can't allow them to arrive at a destination that's entirely under Canadian control. I think you are a reasonable woman. I think we can come to an agreement. One that will reflect well on Canada's international reputation for generosity and humanitarianism.”
I'm not sure we have one of those anymore, Riel thought, but she smiled. “Wen-xian, will you attend the UN hearings?”
He didn't answer, but his silent smile was confirmation.
The first thing that happens when we enter the planet's telesphere is that my damned hip unit warbles in my ear clip, warning me of saved messages. Of course, it's not as though I haven't checked my e-mail from the Montreal, through the microwave relays, but apparently somebody thought he had something hush-hush enough to say that he wouldn't risk his mail being forwarded to a military server.
I remember the good old days, when the recipient got to decide where her fucking e-mail went. Some of it's flagged spam, but one piece is an unnamed message that has a good-friends filter override code on it that only Gabe and a few other people have. And most of those people are dead.
It's probably a virus.
I click on it anyway.
And don't notice I've stopped breathing until I'm dizzy enough that I have to grab the back of the acceleration couch I so recently claimed as my bed. Because the broad-cheeked, black-eyed, steel-toothed face that grins at me knocks the breath out of me like a punch in the solar plexus.
Razorface.
He was in Metro Toronto when the rock hit. I know he was, because I tried to get him to go the hell home to Connecticut, and he stayed around to try to coerce some sort of cooperation out of a Unitek vice president named Alberta Holmes, who was holding Fred's leash at the time.
I can't even begin to justify the idea that he might have made it out.
And then I calm down enough to inspect the e-mail before I trigger it, and I see the date stamp. It's December 22, 2062. I have to bite my lip until I taste metal and salt and sit down and roll my head back against the rest on the acceleration couch and breathe. Long and slow and rhythmically. Breathe, Jenny. Breathe. Even though you're hurtling toward Malaysia, braking at something less than a G, and about to open an e-mail from somebody who died almost a year ago.
It's a message from the grave. From the ghost of a kid who might as well have been my own. If my own were a gangster, a killer, and a petty warlord.
But blood's thicker than water, right? And I shed a little for Razorface. And Face shed a little for me, once upon a time.
I extricate my tongue from in between my teeth, the tweed of the capsule seat catching on the ass of my uniform pants, and I key the mail open.
And find myself staring not into Razorface's dark brown eyes while his mobile lips shape words around the sibilants that hiss between his pointed teeth, but at a series of images of documents, obviously snapped hastily, probably — judging by the distortion — through somebody's contact optic. There might be a dozen of them. I don't have time to examine them the way I'd like to, and whatever they are, they don't make a lick of sense to me, because every last one of the damned things is in Chinese or something that looks just like it.
These weren't Face's. Because as many times as I offered to teach him, Razorface never learned to read. In any language.
The images have to come from my enemy, my ally, the niece of my long-dead lover, Indigo Xu. And they've been here, lying in the Net, waiting for me. Waiting nearly a year, for me to set foot on Earth again.
Face's recorded voice calls me by a name I haven't heard in a year. “Maker,” he says. “We grabbed that Holmes chick. We're gonna hole up until we decide what to do with her. But Indigo found these on her when we grabbed her, and she says you need to see this. It's Chinese but she can't read it. She says it's coded, but I figure with the friends you got you can crack it.
“One other thing. Holmes looked like she was about to skip town when we snagged her. She had a suitcase and a wad of cash chits, a lot even for a rich bitch like her. You be careful up there, all right?” And then he grins at me, showing me all that serrated silver, and cocks his head arrogantly, cock of the walk. “You be careful up there, girl.”