Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: The Author's Cut (29 page)

She sat there for a little while more, sipping the water occasionally, and finally got up again and strolled slowly down the length of the room. At Gelert’s door, still open, she looked in, and Saw that his walls, too, were glass. Away on the far side of his suite, near his own bathroom door, a bored-looking Alfen sat watching him as well, glancing up as he saw Lee in the doorway. Lee smiled, as if at Gelert, and went on down toward the terrace.

She brushed past the forcefield there and stood out on the terrace, as if looking at the “mountains.” 
They
 
really were a wonderful illusion
, she thought, seeing that here the “glass” revealed yet more offices. They were empty, though. No one was watching the terrace, which was simply a space jutting into one of those offices. 
And why would they be?
 Lee thought suddenly. 
Gelert’s asleep: there’s nothing to
 
eavesdrop on. I doubt anyone thinks I’m going to stand here talking to myself. And as for any
 
movements I might make, if all I see is the illusion, then what am I going to do, walk off the “terrace” and go straight down five stories?

But they don’t know that I can see something else—

The moment decided her. Lee leaned sideways against the terrace railing, glancing casually back down the length of the sitting area, as if contemplating coming back in; then turned her regard halfway outward again, as if in the direction of the mountains. She had just enough peripheral vision of the “glass” at the other end of the room to see the Alfen watching her give her a glance, evaluating, and then move away out of sight, not believing she was likely to do anything much at the moment.

Lee swung one leg over the terrace railing, feeling under her. 
Floor. It’s real, all right
. She swung the other leg over, and stood there on what should have been empty air, but was actually rather prosaic office carpeting, dull blue in color.

Now what?
 she thought.

Well… first, don’t get caught!
Lee brought her implant up, made sure it was recording, and turned right around once to take quick stock of her surroundings. The place might have been any open-plan office between here and LA—doors in the far wall, and between those and Lee, numerous partitions, much off-the-rack office furniture, various freestanding commwalls and in-desk displays. 
Which tell me
 
nothing in particular—

The implant was starting to make the same annoying buzzing it had made in the hotel in Ys. 
Oh, not now,
 
of all the times for it to start malfunctioning again—
 Lee moved to get herself out of direct line of sight of the terrace, moving over to her right and crouching behind a desk-carrel in case someone should come in from outside the room. The buzzing was scaling up, and behind it Lee could just catch a quiet mutter of voices. Her first thought was to hold still for a few minutes and run one of its in-system diagnostics. 
But I may not have a few minutes, or even a few moments. If that Elf who saw me
 
go out doesn’t see me come in pretty soon, someone may look harder at that terrace, and find me
 
gone. I need to move right now, and find out what I can.

She looked out cautiously from behind the desk carrel. There was still no sign of anyone, but she could still hear voices down the implant. 
And besides… am I so sure this is a malfunction? Or is
Alfheim 
the problem? The implant hasn’t behaved this way anywhere but here.

Lee cautiously skirted rightwards around the edge of the room, going from desk to file stack to desk again, using the cover; but no one came. The room had two sets of opaque doors, and near the rightmost one she thought that perhaps the sound of voices was a little louder. 
All right
, she thought, and moved to slip along the wall, closer to the door.

It slid silently open. Lee froze, just beyond where the door’s slide-track stopped, and listened. The voices were slightly clearer, tantalizingly close to being understandable.

Slowly she leaned forward and around the door, looking through it. A hallway. Lee held still and listened for as long as she dared, as afraid of being too cautious as of not being cautious enough. But it was curiosity driving her more than fear, now. She put her head out into the hall, looked up and down.

Nothing. Blue carpet, beige walls, concealed light fixtures casting a subdued late-night glow over everything. And the voices, definitely down the hall to the right

Nowhere to hide if someone comes along, now
, she thought. There were no doors between here and where this hallway ended, about twenty meters down to the right, in a T-junction.

Lee swallowed and went down the hall, softly but quickly, keeping to the right hand wall. The voices got a little louder. Just shy of the T-junction, Lee stopped, closed her eyes, listened. 
Which way’s louder?

“—the UN won’t—” More muttering. “—committee, it’s just terrible timing—”

“—won’t help them anyway, and they were crazy to think it would. Everything’s too well hidden—”

To the left
, Lee thought. She went down the hall in that direction. It had few other doorways, and ended in another T-junction; but about twenty meters down to the left, she saw another corridor she could duck into in a hurry if she had to. 
Even if I get caught right this minute
, Lee thought, 
I’ve got something
 
interesting to show the UN when I get home. That the investigative committee was told they were
 
being placed in secure ‘diplomatic’ housing, and instead were shoved into the middle of an Alfen
 
government building and kept under extremely invasive surveillance the whole time. That their
 
hosts claimed to be cooperating and telling them the truth, while actually lying to them most
 
comprehensively, at every level including that of mere physical reality—

She went down the left side of the hallway, softly, but as quickly as she could, listening hard. “—matter to us,” said one of the voices, male. “Their own intelligence services are in it as deep as the supranationals are. Not that they’ve been able to find out much that helps them. ExAff’s been busy enough in that regard.”

“Possibly the only good thing about this mess. It should be a long time before any Alfen with half a brain agrees to become a double agent.”

“It’s the ones without brains that I’m concerned about. The ‘loyal’ ones; or the ones with what the ephemerals have brainwashed them into thinking is a social conscience—”

Something occurred to Lee forcefully enough to make her stand still for a second. 
How is it I can
 
understand these people?
 she thought. 
If they’re Alfen, why are they speaking English?

Suddenly the sound faded to a mutter again. 
Did they move?
 Lee thought, frustrated. 
I want to hear!

“—wasting their time at the moment,” said the second voice, a lighter one. The clarity of sound continued to increase, as if Lee was turning up the volume on her commwall at home. 
Will
, she thought. 
Will is
 
enough. But
why
is it enough?

“—though their presidential race is turning out to be a welcome complication. Milelgua has told ExTel he’ll sit still and do nothing, come the ‘revolution,’ if they help him now.”

“Assuming even an ephemeral electorate is stupid enough to give him the job.”

“It seems likely. But it doesn’t matter. ExTel has paid him off, just as they’ve paid off all the other candidates—not that poor Milelgua knows. For our part, now we know clearly where he stands as regards our world interest—so we can start investigating the best way to get rid of him if he’s elected.” A dry chuckle. “And meantime, the multis and supras are doing what they like to do best—spending money to get their way, and planning their ‘hostile takeover’ of the Land. If that distracts them from discovering how completely we’ve infiltrated their operations, so much the better. They won’t have a hint of what’s going on until it’s much too late for them, their little pocket armies, and their shareholders. We’ll have plenty of time to sabotage them if they actually start moving on their plans. But we have much worse problems elsewhere.”

“Yes. Where is he?”

“Huichtilopochtli. He’s not rushing back; he knows his orders have been obeyed for the moment.”

“It must have been an annoyance for you…”

Lee started to feel that she’d been standing in one place too long. She began to head up toward the T-junction. “Oh, not one I can’t weather,” said the lighter voice, sounding a little closer, a little stronger. “I’ve waited a long time. I can wait a little longer.”

“Assuming he lets you. He’s always been too unpredictable. That’s what’s caused all this trouble to begin with. If he was dead—”

There was a silence. “It’s an attractive idea, but not one we can entertain right now. It’s always disastrous when the 
Lauvrnhad
 passes without the appropriate formalities being observed—”

Lee came to the junction, looked cautiously left and right. This corridor was darker, and looked as if it might bridge a space between this building and an older one; down to the left, the end of the corridor was a stone wall instead of plasterboard, and its lighting looked different. “If he’s not dealt with according to the rules,” said the second voice, “all the planning we’ve done will come to nothing.”

Lee turned left and began quietly to slip down toward the end of the corridor, where the light was dimmer. The voices continued to get stronger. “Are you sure you’re not being too careful?” the first one said. “Everything we are will be lost if he manages the madness he’s planning. The nukes and invading armies he’s contemplating would damage us less than what 
he
 wants to let loose.”

“The care is necessary, Kil. Here we do have to be careful; the world makes the rules.”

“The rules! I’d have thought your sensibilities would have rebelled at what ‘the rules,’ 
his
 reading of them anyway, made you do the other evening.”

Laughter rang down the hallway, beautiful, silken, and bitter, and seeming so close that Lee stopped short—the sound seemed to come from just a couple of doors down. “I won’t have to do him many more services of that kind, or any other. Soon enough he won’t be an issue. And after that I’ll be too busy with work to care about my last fifty years in the ‘wilderness.’ We’ll be able to move against the multinationals and the allied nations before they can mobilize any serious attack.” Satisfaction filled that voice as Lee started to move again, more cautiously now, approaching the end of the hall, which she could see was an L-shaped intersection with another corridor in the older building. “It’ll be our purpose they serve, not their own, in the end.”

Lee took a long breath, kept on walking toward the end of the hall. “They’re dangerous tools…”

“Oh, Kil, please! They’re just ephemerals, and they’re way out of their depth, for all their armies and bombs. They don’t understand what a weapon a world can be, inside its own boundaries. But when they try to move against us, they’ll find out. After that there’ll be a lot of noise in the UN, but the pragmatists there will shut it up soon enough. The ephemerals know what they need to keep their civilization running, they know where it comes from, and they know who they have to deal with to get it. Everything will once again be as it was… except that our dear young amateur gardener will be out of his misery, assuming that’s the world’s pleasure. Which seems entirely likely.”

Lee’s eyebrows went up as she came to the end of the hall and peered around the corner, rightwards, toward the source of the voices. They had to be very close now. “When does he come back?”

“Two days from now. No one else knows: he notified my office privately this morning. He’s expecting to catch dil’Hereth and his crowd at ExAff by surprise. I’ve no problem with him doing that; it leaves our people one less thing to worry about, at no cost to us. But immediately afterward, he deals with 
me
.”

The other voice now sounded alarmed. “You’ll wait until the committee’s gone, surely!”

“Why should I? What can they see or hear that we don’t allow? No, as I said, the timing’s too good to throw away. It’ll happen right over their heads, and they’ll never know. And those two pathetic keyhole-peepers they smuggled onto the committee—whether they’ve noticed anything or not, they’ll go when the others do.”

“Good riddance to all of them,” the other voice said. “I heard from Tin this morning; she said the accounting team went off in an absolute fury, trying to be polite, and muttering about needing more time.” He laughed.

Lee’s eyes narrowed in anger. 
Careful
, she thought then, and clenched her fist on the stone in her pocket, turning it over and over to give her something to do besides be annoyed. “Oh, they can have it,” said the woman’s voice. “A few days’ worth, at the very least. But then, regretfully, we send them home when it becomes plain that the circumstances require it, when the change of leadership comes. The obvious need to recall and reinstruct our ambassador to the UN, to renegotiate all present agreements, we’re so sorry but we’re sure the Security Council will understand—” She chuckled too. “How I’ll enjoy dismantling the fool’s work he’s been about.”

Lee stood there trying to contain her anger, and turning and kneading the stone in her fingers, the way she kneaded pasta when she made it from scratch, to give her something to do while she was considering a problem. 
Do I go forward, or back? What I’ve got on the implant right now is enough to make a
 
lot of trouble for these people. But if I—

In her fingers, the stone went soft, and squished like dough.

Lee gasped in terror and astonishment, and would have dropped it right on the floor if it had been out of her pocket. Even now she had to force herself to hold on to the stone; the feeling of what it was doing in her hand was bizarre. It was moving a little, squirming against her hand as if it was alive. 
I wish it would
 
cut that out—