Forge of Heaven (12 page)

Fortunately the governor had a sense of how things on Blunt worked, too, and had given him as clear a signal as he could send without coming out and saying so, that he intended to divert attention away from Blunt.

“I don’t want it unraveled, either,” Brazis said. “The business with the old network has been delicate for years. What agency sent this Mr. Gide?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find out. I just ask your cooperation for a few days.”

“You certainly have that. Just leave the police work and the surveillance to us. You won’t see my agents. But I assure you they’ll be out there, in contact in ways you don’t have, and they are efficient.” He already knew one man he wanted to talk to personally, one of Apex Council’s little gifts, operating there currently completely independent of his office. But the existence of an Apex operative delving into whatever he was into, down in the Trend, needn’t concern Reaux’s office. “I’ll fix it.”

“Has Kekellen queried you?”

“Yes.”

“How did you answer?”

“I said
Earth ship. Not Outsider
.”

“Tossing the ball into my court.” Reaux said with a little com-pression of the lips. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

“Absolutely. It
is
your ship inbound.”

“A good idea to confer and compare, your experts and mine, if we get any stir out of the
ondat.
At least until this ship leaves.”

“But not to coordinate answers. He’d know. I’m quite sure he’d know.” Their resident
ondat
sent random inquiries, when he, she, or it was disturbed, and might ask a plumber on three deck what he thought of this inbound ship, if Kekellen took the notion. Con-

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 7 5

tacts with other tiers of society might completely violate Outsider and Inner Worlds notions of security, but if Kekellen specifically queried a plumber on three-deck, he wanted an answer. University experts might get involved helping that plumber answer the letter, and there was a hotline to help such individuals, but that man had to answer in his own name, or Kekellen went on sending, jamming the system, to the detriment of all station business.

That was another kind of
ondat
trouble, one he was sure their governor didn’t need demonstrated in front of the incoming ship.

“That’s a point,” Reaux said. “That is a point. But I hope you’ll consult with us. At least cross-check what’s being said. Or asked.”

“And shall we cross-check what’s being said back and forth with this inbound ship?” Brazis asked.

“I’m sure you’ll know.”

“Oh, make it easy on us.”

Reaux heaved a visible, a desperate sigh. “Our offices have a good relationship. In all honesty, Antonio, I don’t know why this is happening. But if trouble does turn up, yes, I will communicate with you. I hope it’s reciprocal. If you hear anything.”

He leaned his arms on the chair. Considered the question. “All right. Let’s have a valiant try at honesty. I have a situation I’m keeping a particular eye on, down on Blunt. You’ll only mess things up if you send anybody down there to check up on it. If I identify a troublemaker, he’ll be off the street for a few days on a warrant for spitting on the street. Our police are extremely efficient. Keep your people out, and I’ll tell you what I find out. Do me another favor.

You
feed Kekellen enough basic information to keep him from querying our personnel and asking us questions we can’t answer.”

“Oh, now—”

“Nothing detrimental and nothing to do with that ship. We’re busy just now. We have a developing situation down on the planet.”

“Of interest?”

“Not political. Geological. We’re about to have a new sea, give or take a few decades. Or maybe sooner. Maybe much sooner. I’m getting alarms from the geologists. I’ve sent a briefing to your staff.

I’ll send it to your office if you’re curious.”

“I’ll query them. I’m sure it’ll be in a briefing.” Reaux made 7 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

those small movements, fussing with items on the desk, that began to say that new seas a decade removed were farther from his personal interest than that inbound ship or some fool of an activist down on Blunt. Given his doubtless full schedule, geology was likely very far from his interest. And the interview was over. “As for your person on Blunt, no difficulty, if you say so. I will appreciate your honesty.”

“We’ll exchange information as it becomes available.”

“Excellent.”

“A pleasure.” Brazis stood up and the governor stood up, mutual courtesy. They didn’t shake hands. “Visit
my
office when this is over.”

The governor of Concord never visited him in his own territory.

The protocols—and certainly that residual Earthborn fear—kept Reaux from accepting Outsider hospitality. It was an ages-old official situation.

Reaux just smiled, as generations of governors had smiled benignly, and gave vague promises for a visit someday.

The bubble they lived in had its set of balances, its food chain, and until a high-level Earth ship showed up, the governor’s office was largely preoccupied with the internal business of its own society. The Earth governor never gave up a shred of his dignity, thin as it sometimes was, and never admitted that his power didn’t effectively extend to the fifth level of the station he ran. The Outsider Chairman never gave up a shred of his power, which was vested, in his case, not only in a population vastly outnumbering the Earther veneer on his station, but in an office that could impose martial law on this station and forbid that inbound ship a docking, no matter their objections—if he wanted to use it.

He didn’t. He bowed to the governor, walked out, exchanging pleasant words with Ernst, and picked up his highly modded security escort on the way out.

He swept down the hall, back through the ambush of competing news agencies. His frown was sincere, and annoyed, his answers terse.

“Consultation,” he said. “A frank exchange. No further comment.” It was politic, for the news, that an Outsider Chairman not be seen smiling and happy after a visit to a governor.

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 7 7

His own lift-car was waiting at the nearest station, with another of his security team aboard, holding that car private, making sure it wasn’t diverted or switched, it went without saying. He escaped the swarm of reporters and cameras, got in and sat down as the door shut, his two bodyguards standing. He heaved a sigh, as the car set into motion.

And still didn’t smile.

He didn’t have to tell the governor that Blunt Street was a potential problem. But the wide universe, of which he was well aware, in his capacity as local Chairman, had stresses and strains of far more import than the opinions of some young local idiot who’d read a political tract.

That didn’t mean some eloquent young idiot inspired by a random occurrence like this ship-call couldn’t light a dangerous fire, and he knew it and Reaux knew it.

More to the point, and the current thorn in his side, the Chairman General at Apex had sent one of his observers to Concord to carry on a very deep investigation of affairs on Blunt Street, two years ago . . . covertly inserting his agent, as the CG tended to move. Not covert enough to prevent him finding it out: whether that lapse was intentional or not, Brazis had no idea, but he viewed the CG’s ongoing investigation as a potential problem and an inquiry from Earth as no help at all, if the two crossed.

Magdallen was the agent’s name—or at least the name he was going by on this mission.

Time to talk to the Council’s deeply lodged ferret. No question of it.

He tapped in and contacted Dianne. “The Council’s man,” he said. “Down on Blunt. I want to talk to him immediately, in my office.”

“Yes, sir,” Dianne said.

He’d never talked to Magdallen. It had seemed politic to keep his distance and pretend he was unaware of Magdallen’s activities, considering that the investigation might run under official doors as well as down on Blunt, and that they might even hope—the CG’s personal, long-held hope—to find that he wasn’t handling that dual office with complete efficiency. Just let the man rummage quietly about for the CG and leave without a word, he’d thought, pre-

7 8 • C . J . C h e r r y h

viously. He’d had no intention of talking directly to Magdallen, less of appearing to put pressure on him to suppress whatever findings he might make.

The ship’s arrival changed things. If Earth was investigating at such great trouble and expense, it was time to ask questions of the Council agent and give certain clear directions. Missed communication had done harm enough in human affairs.

A R DAT H WA S N ’ T O N Procyon’s personal tap—she couldn’t be, since the nanoceles in his body were government issue and classified, so classified they’d demolished the output communications tap he’d gotten in his Freethinker days, in those few months of breaking away from family influence and doing stupid teenaged things. Nowadays he couldn’t explain his lack of ordinary personal communication to the universe at large—well, at least he couldn’t give the real story on it. Certain friends suspected him of going tapless out of respect for his parents’ religion; even his sister had accused him of lying about having a tap and just not wanting to hear from her, the family black sheep.

Oh, he’d gotten one, he’d admitted to her finally, but it had broken down when he went to work for the government. There was a government reason he didn’t get another one. He didn’t want to talk about it. It was upsetting to him.

If
that
didn’t tell her the government had wiped the output portion, he’d thought when he said it, she was deaf to hints.

Then she’d started worrying about him. Then she’d understood just a little of the constraint he was under, and forgave him. She could contact
him
if she needed.

And as things had gotten to be, even without the output tap most people had, he could still usually find her, because Ardath was by no means a quiet presence on the street.

He hadn’t made it to the desserts at La Lune Noir yet. He’d decided, after taking her name in vain on the gift card, that it was a good idea to let his sister know about it, on the exceedingly remote chance Ardath, née Arden, had uncharacteristically intended a filial moment, a gift of her own for the occasion. They all lived their little fantasy of family, peaceful so long as Arden believed what she Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 7 9

believed, that he was a cog in the bureaucracy, so long as the parents believed what they believed, that they’d brought up good, ordinary children and that Arden would come around to their view of the universe the way her brother had. The way it didn’t do at all to have the parents see beneath the scenery, it didn’t at all do to have Ardath’s lively curiosity or her sense of indignation engaged on his case.

So he went through the usual dance of
not
looking for her, just happening into and out of her usual places—at this hour it was cocktails and dinner, indisputably, and he let slip he was meeting her, dropping the word in three different high-priced restaurants.

“
Pro
-cyon?”

Isis. He stopped, among the evening traffic of minor Fashionables. He cut a fine enough, though quiet, figure. But this was one of the Style, whose glittering gold bodysuit used a drifting glow to trick the eye into believing it saw skin. Green-eyed Isis hailed him on the common street, merely brushing his arm as she melted aside into the neon of the Astral Plane. Her music was her own. Her body moved to it, hips swaying, a liquid vision in retreat.

“Procyon.” Sweetly. It was Spider at his elbow, then, one of Ardath’s intimates. Originally male, Spider. Now even his lovers weren’t sure. “Are you looking for Ardath?”

“Maybe.”

Spider, whose naturally black skin glistened with sparks of color, likewise brushed by him and touched his sleeve. “A message?”

“Oh, a visit with my sister.
Family
business.”

Spider, beautiful dark eminence, nodding with plumes, gave a flourish toward the Plane. Wait for her inside, that meant, and Procyon walked casually into the not-quite-door of the place—a set of reflective columns, light dimming progressively to eye-teasing shades of magenta and blue and deep shadow. The floor disappeared into black and reappeared in blue around a turn. Rhythmic vibrations flooded from the flooring up to the bones—enticing a customer to switch his commercial tap on and get the music from the local relay. The vibrations quivered against the skin, little dis-charges from the pillars. And from overhead, puffs of air teased and caressed.

He didn’t tap in. He didn’t hear the subliminal commercials or 8 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h

the music. He went to the bar, ordered wine, slipped his hand into the reader that debited his account twice the price of anywhere else on Grozny, and scanned the establishment.

The clientele ranged from Fashionables to bankers, elaborate elegants with fiery tracings on bare skin, and the occasional Earther in a gray pin-striped suit, zipped close and collared in sober black.

There were living plumes, lately: that was the new chic, replacing hair. There were skin-shadings, finger-caps, and exotic hair-mods.

A bony young man with magenta hair drew cold stares with a pair of green glowing-soled boots that left lime green tracks where he walked—not a happy sight, that boy’s style, tragedy waiting to happen, if certain Stylists met him, but it was also his choice to be here, and one wondered if he knew the notice he gained was so highly unfavorable.

The wine arrived. He’d ordered a middling Outer Worlds Sauvi-gnon, twenty a glass. It was, indeed, middling quality on his own scale, but in the Plane the average customer paid such prices un-questioningly, not for the wine, but for the spectacle of the elegants and the Fashionables, the walking adverts of various upscale emporia—not to mention the grotesques, whose choice was body-sculpting and augmentation of a risky but trend-setting sort. Spider verged on that class. Many successful Stylists did—the difference between Stylist and grotesque being the individual’s sense of where that tasteful line was—and the general response of the Trend to the whole. Spider set trends for his admirers. So did Isis. Eyes fixed on them when they crossed the room, and people who wondered what shop sold what they wore needed only scan the fashion news of the week, and wonder if they dared. Shops thrived on Spider’s patronage, and happily claimed to be the origin of certain unique items.