Webster waved one hand, as if he were uncomfortable with Carmichael's explanation.
"Maybe," he said, then shook himself. "Speaking of the Peeps, how do you feel about this summit meeting Pritchart's proposed?"
"I was surprised," Carmichael admitted, accepting the change of subject. "It's a very unusual departure, especially for the Havenites. In fact, it's so unusual, I'm inclined to think she really must be serious."
"God, that would be an enormous relief," Webster said frankly. "I don't like this Talbott business. There's more going on than we think. I'm sure of it. I just can't put my finger on what it is. But it's there, and I can't shake the feeling that in the long run, it may be even more dangerous to us than the Peeps are."
Carmichael sat back in his chair, even his trained diplomat's face showing surprise, and Webster barked a harsh laugh.
"I haven't lost my mind, Lyman. And I'm not blind to the current military situation-trust me on that one. But the Republic of Haven is small beer compared to the Solarian League, and if Mesa-and you know as well as I do that Terekhov is right about Mesa's involvement-can maneuver Frontier Security into doing its dirty work, the situation will be a thousand times worse. And the Sollies are arrogant enough that a lot of their so-called political leaders wouldn't even care."
"You're probably right," Carmichael said, forced to concede the point, however much he disliked doing so. "But you seriously think there's more to what's going on in Talbott than Mesa's traditional efforts to keep us as far away from them as possible?"
"Look at the scale of their effort," Webster said. "We're talking billions-lots of billions-of dollars worth of battlecruisers. Somebody ponied up the cash to pay for them, not to mention obviously orchestrating the efforts of OFS, local terrorists, and an entire star nation as a proxy. That's a huge effort, and it's also more direct then Mesa or Manpower have been in the last couple of centuries. Hell, since Edward Saganami!"
"But couldn't that simply be because of how threatening they find our proximity and because they know how distracted by Haven we are? I mean, they know we don't have a lot of resources to commit against them."
"I'm convinced that's an element in their thinking," Webster agreed, "but they're still coming further out of the shadows-not just with us; with the Sollies, as well. They're running the risk of coming to the surface, and they've always been bottom feeders before." He shook his head. "No. There's a whole new flavor to this one, and that makes me nervous."
"Now you're making me nervous," Carmichael complained. "Can't we just deal with one crisis at a time?" he added rather plaintively.
"I wish." Webster drummed on his desk for a moment, then shrugged. "Actually, I suppose we are, assuming this summit idea produces something. And in the meantime, I'm afraid it also means we have to make nice with the Peep ambassador and his people, at least in public."
"Well, we'll have the opportunity tonight," Carmichael said philosophically.
"I know," Webster said glumly. "And I hate the opera, too."
"Are we ready?"
"Yes." Roderick Tallman thought of himself as a "facilitator," and he was good at his job. Despite the fact that he was required to maintain an extremely low profile because of the nature of the things he "facilitated," there was always work waiting for him, and he knew without any sense of false modesty that he was indispensable.
"The money's in place?"
"Yes," Tallman said, managing not to sound wearily patient. He did know how to do his job, after all. "The credit transfers have been made and backdated, and I handled the computer side myself." He smiled and shook his head. "The Havenites really ought to hire a good Solarian firm to update their systems security. It shouldn't have been this easy to hack."
"Count your blessings," his current employer said sourly. "Their accounting software may be vulnerable, but we've tried about four times to break into their other secured files without much luck. Actually, I suspect you got into their banking programs from the Solly end, didn't you?"
"Well, yes," Tallman admitted. "I invaded their interface with their banks."
"That's what I thought." His employer shook her head. "Don't take this personally, but a lot of Sollies make some rather unjustified assumptions about their technological superiority. One of these days, that may turn around and bite all of you on the ass. Hard."
"I suppose anything's possible." Tallman shrugged. It wasn't as if anyone could threaten the League, after all. The very idea was preposterous.
"Well," his employer said, "if that's all taken care of, I suppose you'd appreciate your fee."
"You suppose correctly," Tallman told her.
"The most important thing of all," she said, not hurrying to hand over the untraceable hard copy bearer bond certificate, "is that this particular manipulation be completely untraceable. The only place it can lead is back to the Havenites."
"I understood that from the beginning." Tallman leaned back slightly in his chair. "You know my reputation. That's why you came to me in the first place, because my work is guaranteed and I've never had a client burned. Trust me, if they track this one back, they'll even be able to identify the terminal in the Embassy where the transactions were supposed to have been entered."
"Good!" She smiled. "That's exactly what I needed to hear. And now, for your fee."
She reached into her smartly tailored jacket, and Tallman let his chair come back fully upright, reaching out his hand-then froze in shock.
"Wh-?" he began, but he never finished the question, for the pulser in her hand snarled. The burst of darts hit him at the base of the throat and tracked upwards across his neck and the left side of his face, with predictably gruesome results.
His employer grimaced with distaste, but she'd been careful to sit further back than usual. She was outside the splatter pattern, and she dropped the pulser on the desk, straightened her jacket fastidiously, and let herself out of the office. She walked down the hallway and took the lift to the parking garage, where she climbed into her air car and flew calmly off. Five minutes later, she landed several miles away from the late, lamented Tallman's office building.
This parking garage was in a much less desirable part of town. Most of the vehicles parked here were old, battered. The sort of things youth gangs looking for a quick credit would turn up their noses at.
She parked her own new-model, expensive sports vehicle in a stall beside one such battered, grimy air car, and climbed out into the shadows. She looked around carefully, then took a small handset from her pocket and pressed a button. Her face seemed to ripple and shudder indescribably, and her complexion-not just on her face, but everywhere-shifted abruptly, darkening and coarsening, as the nanotech which had coated every millimeter of her body turned itself off. The invisibly tiny machines released their holds, drifting away on the morning breeze, and in place of the rather tall, blonde woman who had murdered Roderick Tallman, there stood a dark-faced man, slightly below the average in height, with a wiry, muscular build and a bosom.