Forge of Heaven (15 page)

“Don’t parse missing negatives with me, Agent Magdallen. You may have come in here with the High Council’s blessing and a kiss on the cheek from the Chairman General himself, but I assure you the Council won’t appreciate a foul-up here, and if that ship and you or your business here have any remote causal relationship that’s going to touch me in either of my offices, I want to know it before I set my local security into motion. Let’s not treat Earth authority to the spectacle of two Outsider investigations tangled in each other’s operations, shall we not?”

9 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“I remind you you have no binding authority over me.”

“No binding authority. But a preventative authority—that I do have, and you’re within a hair’s breadth of discovering it. You may be the Chairman General’s personal valet for all I care, but you’re a damned nuisance to the Project Director in this moment of crisis, and if you’re determined not to cooperate with our needs, you’re about to annoy me in ways that won’t possibly benefit your career in the future—trust me. I want to know definitively what you’re nosing about in on Blunt, I want to know why you have at least two apartments and two alternate identities down there. I want to know the gist of that investigation and what it’s turned up, and especially I want to judge for myself whether Earth might have launched an investigatory mission bearing some remote relationship to what you’re doing.

My clearance is higher than yours. In my capacity as Project Director, I want to know. It’s moved beyond your orders from Apex and into a crisis on my desk. Is that a clear enough request for you?”

The business about the alternate identities was a little secret Magdallen hadn’t expected to have laid in front of him, Brazis bet on that. There had been just a little change of expression.

“Someone else
should
know,” Magdallen said slowly, as if he’d reached a decision. “The Chairman General said you were capable in a need-to-know situation.”

“I’m incredibly flattered. Compliments to the CG’s foresight in telling you so. I assure you this is that situation. Talk. What the hell are you doing messing with the Freethinkers?”

“I don’t know what this ship is. I hear the word
ambassador
. I think that’s cover. I think this intrusion is more inquisitory than representative. I’m not sure what agency might have sent this person and given him this cover.”

“And the Freethinkers?”

“Rumors run the little channels, among the petty smugglers.

There’s been a whisper of illicits that Earth’s detected at Orb. It’s possible that’s brought an inquiry in.”

“Smuggling.” It was too ordinary. Brazis didn’t buy it. He hadn’t liked Magdallen before, and he liked him less for hedging after promising him the truth. But in truth, there was one kind of smuggling that would involve Earth in two seconds. “Are you talking about biostuffs?”

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 9 5

A hesitation. “Yes.”

That actually
could
explain it. It wasn’t, however, the only conceivable answer, even for Magdallen’s presence, and he wished he hadn’t steered Magdallen so conveniently into suggesting it was the obvious—and maybe misleading—problem. “All right. So I’ll play along with this theory. But it’s a theory, not ascending to fact.

What else do you know?”

“Nothing, at this point. I must point out, sir, your bringing me in like this jeopardizes my several identities and makes it less likely I’ll find out anything.”

“I’m sure you’ll recover handily. Know nothing, do you, after all this time ferreting about in our understructure?”

“Nothing solid, I regret to say. I’m pursuing the theory I named.”

Brazis saw he wasn’t going to get cooperation, and would probably get a cover story if he pressed. He hesitated to divert Magdallen’s energies by giving him one more falsehood to manufacture and maintain. And if he gave the man space, and let him know he was allowing him that, he might get more from the man in future. “All right. Chase your private theories. Do your job—whatever it is. But hear this. I want information from you in return for my patience. And if you make any policy-threatening move without telling me, I’ll send my own message to the CG, and it won’t be understanding of your difficulties. I’ll warn you now, I’m doing a quiet crackdown on the street. You’re hearing this advisory a quarter hour before I send the pick-them-up message—an hour, if you’d answered my original summons. If the pickup is likely to disrupt your operations, you’d better identify those operations to me before I give that order, and I’ll make a few careful exceptions.”

“Go light on MacDougal’s, between 10th and 11th. I have operations there.”

“Noted. I know it well. Here’s a reciprocal bit of advice. The governor’s a friendly. We don’t want to lose him. If you think to the contrary, say so now, and we’ll talk about it fully and frankly.”

“I don’t contradict that opinion.”

“Good. Now let me give you some information.
Earth
may well want to lose this governor, but I assure you
we
don’t. His fall from 9 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

grace would generate all sorts of difficulties. Not insurmountable ones, but damned inconvenient, and apt to have repercussions.

He’s upset local power games, made some factions very angry, had a major falling-out when he entered the financial games that were the eternal rule here, and powerfully annoyed the clique that runs the banks. In the process, he’s done a great deal to put the brakes on the graft that’s gone on here for generations. Consequently he has enemies, none from Earth that we know about, and I doubt Earth cares that much what he does; but there are locals with strong motives, shall we say, to make him look bad while that ship is pursuing whatever business it came to pursue.
Not
an advantageous result for your career, Agent Magdallen, if you should knock over that stack of breakables. So stay out of the way of my operations, if you don’t have anything to do with this ship. See to it that whatever you value down on Blunt stays invisible and inactive for the duration. That’s the long and the short of it. Your opposite number among the local Earthers is just as likely to go after suspects on his own list, given a little free rein by the governor. Be discreet.”

“Dortland”—that was to say, Reaux’s chief of security—“seems to have no idea I’m here.”

That was worth a long, cold stare. “In my local experience, Agent Magdallen, saying someone has no idea is a very dangerous presumption. An equally dangerous presumption’s that you know all my agents. Or the governor’s. Or even Dortland’s, who may be a separate operation from us or the governor. I’ve long suspected that. Do you think I’m a fool, Agent Magdallen?”

“No, sir.” More subdued, a far more cautious answer.

“I’m not a fool, Agent Magdallen.”

“I assure you of the same, sir.”

“Good.
Good.
So what’s my ultimate answer, from you, as to why petty smuggling would bring an answer clear from Earth?”

“Smuggling of biostuffs, and maybe not petty. That’s not theory, Mr. Chairman. It is going on. I know that. Earth is upset, but not panic-stricken. Nothing got through their barriers. Nothing was ever directed at them. I can at least assure you this has nothing to do with your governor. And I’m somewhat doubtful the ship’s visit offers him any personal threat.”

“If you learn any differently about their business here, I want Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 9 7

word. I don’t insist you come here, but I want word, and I want it within the hour you learn it.”

“I trust—in your own expertise, sir—you know that’s not always operationally possible.”

“Call it a moral goal, Agent Magdallen. Attempt to achieve it.

I’m sure you have unguessed capabilities.”

A little nod, a kind of bow. “I’ll keep in touch, sir.”

“Good.” Brazis picked up the watering can off the slate-surfaced cabinet. “Thirty minutes, Agent Magdallen, and certain people will start disappearing off the streets for the duration of this visit, or longer. I trust your scattered people and interests will respond to the warning I’m giving you. Do we agree?”

A little nod from Magdallen. “I can manage that. I’ll trust if I do say release someone—someone will somehow escape.”

Brazis looked at the man. This wasn’t a fool, or a man who’d push him—now. As well have an agreement with him, whatever he thought his powers were. “I think we can manage that. Contact me at need. Perhaps we can manage a much closer working relationship hereafter, Agent Magdallen. Since I can safely assume your target isn’t me, you can somewhat reliably assume mine isn’t you.”

A little bow, not a word of answer, no love lost.

But there existed now, for mutual reasons, a cooperative agreement.

3

A D E C E N T T I P TO T H E WA I T R E S S , including the price of the gratis dessert, and so help him, if Ardath ever projected her pricey presence onto La Lune and ruined this place in some misguided sense of charity toward her brother’s favorite restaurant, Procyon swore he’d go into mourning.

Not that the staff would be sorry for a rise in tips. Maybe crashing dishes and no music in restaurants would be the new fashion statement. Maybe there’d be a new chic, for the slightly distressed environment.

But Procyon doubted it. Any new ownership would fire the staff for breaking the crockery, and they’d install that damned Rhyth-mique apparatus, grim thought, to pound rhythm into the floor.

Then they’d triple the prices of the food, advertise up and down the street, and it just wouldn’t be La Lune anymore.

Damn, damn, and damn. He should call Ardath and absolutely threaten her life if . . .

“Staff alert.

“We have an Earth ship inbound for docking. You may have noticed.”

That was loud. Impossible to ignore, blasting through the tap.

He’d stopped dead on the walk, as if he’d been hit with a stun, and recovered, trying not to be conspicuous.

Brazis himself. The voice always sounded different coming over a tap, the way people didn’t naturally know what their own voices sounded like outside their heads; but it was Brazis, from the inside, Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 9 9

Brazis, talking to the whole staff, no matter where they were, and Procyon looked stupidly toward the ceiling of the corridor and its bright lights. He hadn’t known there were secure tap relays all the way to the bag end of Grozny.

But of course there would be, now that he thought of it.

Brazis had his agents working in all sorts of places where trouble might hang out. They had to have some way to report in, off the common tap. There might even be secure relays on other levels of the station, for all he knew, wherever Brazis might have interests.

“Be discreet. Stay out of questionable places.”

Did La Lune fit that description? Intrigue wasn’t his forte.

“Best if you could all stay in your residences the next few days. Take
this very seriously.”

The old man seemed actually worried. An Earth ship was coming into dock, and they were supposed to go home, pull the lid on, and stay there.

All right. That was a clear and sobering order. He started walking. Home it was. No show. Eating in and living in for a few days, he could do that. He could stop by the store and pick up a few items, and he’d be fine. He certainly didn’t want any trouble with admin or the old man, and reality had just jolted into his path, with an advisement that had to include police and everybody associated with the Project, a regular take-cover, as if there were something going on that threatened all of them.

But insatiable curiosity was his profession. He wondered what unprecedented thing was going on, involving this ship from Earth, that produced this kind of order.

He dipped into the common tap for the moment, wondering if there was any sort of news bulletin he hadn’t picked up. But all he heard was talk about a garden show, and a new music shop opening on second tier. He shut it down and cast an eye to the running newsboards as he walked Grozny toward home.

The Earth ship was coming into dock in the slow way ships did.

Whatever it was, it would be here by morning.

The rich dessert wasn’t resting quite as easily on his stomach.

His world was running so very well. Change wasn’t good. Any change at all in things as they were wasn’t good. He didn’t want 1 0 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h

any Earth ship bringing emergencies and take-covers without any rumor what was going on.

Cheese. He was out of cheese and pasta makings, his standard recipe for domestic survival, in a fancy kitchen synthesizer woe-fully basic in patterns, since he’d never really used it for more than caff and breakfast.

Maybe he’d stop by the store and get one of those frozen cakes the store sold, from its own kitchen. That would fortify his spirits in his hours locked away. And it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t hear things: he’d gotten news the rest of the station hadn’t. The Project would keep him informed. He’d hear something more, surely, when he went back on duty tomorrow morning.

But he was in confinement, otherwise. If there was a parental potluck, he was assuredly going to miss it. That was a plus.

He shouldn’t answer any calls. And his mother would, of course, call, and then worry that she couldn’t get to him.

He should send her a note—his religious mother not, of course, having a tap—he should send something casual, like a card, to forestall her questions. He could send a courier note from the grocery.

Short and sweet:
Dear Mum and Dad, extra work at the office. I’m
on mandatory overtime, a computer blowup.

So they wouldn’t possibly connect it with the inbound ship.

Wish I could be there. Congrats. Love, Jeremy.

Damned good thing he’d sent the crystal egg.

H O M E . T H A N K G O D, Reaux thought, home past the cameras and the media hounds with a well-rehearsed statement—
we have an ambassadorial visitor, and expect a brief visit and consultation
—then safely, solitarily, home. The smell of Judy’s grilled fish permeated the rooms as he hung his day coat in the closet. He hoped for scal-loped potatoes. He hadn’t had potatoes in forever.