Grace paused. What he wanted was technically illegal. Dangerous, to let someone with Rafe’s skills delve into the headquarters phone system. And yet—what choice did she have? Leaving aside her feelings for Mac, he was a longtime Spaceforce operative with secrets no one outside Spaceforce should know. His implant had an interrogation protocol, but if he’d been drugged, would it work? “Use your disguise. Call for an appointment with me concerning… let me think… your contract to fix the ansibles and my agreement that your work is satisfactory so far. I’ll tell my assistant you called me, that he should squeeze you in.”
“Two hours,” Rafe said. “It takes that long to put all the pads in and be able to clear the scanners. I’ll brief Teague and get him on his way—”
“Not to get caught, I hope.”
“He’s slippery,” Rafe said. “Later.”
Grace explained the need to squeeze Ser Bancroft in for an appointment in two hours—“ISC business, apparently. Something to do with the ansible work he and his associate have done.” She dealt with the other appointments, all of them things people could have figured out for themselves if they’d been thinking. Then Rafe arrived, and came in still talking over his shoulder to her assistant, in a voice that was his, and yet not him.
“And that’s the choice I’ve been authorized to give the Rector—a full-service contract, or onsite training for— Oh, good afternoon, Rector. I was just saying—”
“Do come in, Ser Bancroft. I’m afraid I don’t have that long, but I understand you’ve a message from ISC headquarters?”
She shut the door behind him and let him take her seat at her desk. His briefcase, full of an array of instruments, opened at a touch.
“Yes, Rector,” he went on. He picked up her desk com, tipped it upside down, and loosened screws as he talked. “There’s a new policy on maintenance, as I suspected there might be, and it saved a trip back here to wait and see… as you know, your local repair of your system ansible was sufficient for it to work, but not at 100 percent speed and efficiency, because your local technicians did not understand the finer points of its construction.” He went on talking what sounded like a typical sales presentation as he took the outer case off, disemboweled the innards, and spread them on the desktop. Tiny pincers attached here and there to various bits, with leads back into his case.
Without a change in his voice—in the same prissy Cascadian accent—Rafe went on even as he glanced up and winked, his hands moving confidently among the instruments. “My assistant, Ser Teague, has been looking for a suitable site, and suppliers, in anticipation that your government may choose the onsite education option. You may not know that he is a certified technical instructor for ISC, as am I, and either one of us might be assigned here for the instructional period—” He nodded to her, pointed a finger. Your turn.
Grace took up the conversation smoothly. “Ser Bancroft, you surely know that as Rector of Defense I cannot speak for the entire government—” She winked.
He took over again, another spate of glib verbiage, and they continued to exchange speaker and listener roles until he mentioned “system security” and that provided an excuse for her to turn her privacy cylinder to full.
They grinned at each other.
“I’m reading your system and your system’s call record,” Rafe said, in his normal voice. “Thank you for getting that call-time for me before I arrived. Your assistant said there was static—that can be artificially induced, of course. Ah. That call did not match any satellite record, so if it was at a distance, it was through local wireless or landline. There’s a local wireless call—”
“You’re sucking all the phone records?”
“Luckily for me, Slotter Key’s communications are ninety-nine percent government-owned. A hundred percent here in Port Major. I’m into your system; I’m into everything. Let’s see. Comparison… two matches. Wireless; transfer nexus number 84—that’s Bolt and Fifty-Seventh. The other is a landline, both to this office within a few seconds of each other. Landline… 15 Bolt Street, commercial account, Malines Shipping and Handling.”
“I was only told of one.”
“Right. The landline call came in first.”
“Where’s Teague?”
“Somewhere in the warehouse district. Do you know that area?”
“Malines is organized crime,” Grace said. “They own several blocks, and control an area larger than that.”
“I’ll contact Teague. Just let me reconstruct this; won’t take long.” Rafe’s fingers seemed to flicker in Grace’s gaze as he pulled connections, replaced components, reassembled her desk com. “Thing is, your assistant’s bent. How long have you had him?”
“Quarter year, a little more. Olwen’s husband got a job at Dalmouth—it’s only about seventy kilometers, but she has children in school and didn’t want the long commute.”
“Around the time of Ky’s arrival?”
“No, about—let me think—ninety days or so after the crash. You think there’s a connection?”
“No reason you should. Who did her husband get a job with, and does Malines have enough influence to sway an employer without her husband knowing?”
“Probably. He’s not street-smart, nor was Olwen. But Derek—he’s done a good job until now.”
“A good job keeping an eye on you. All right. The topic is a possible maintenance contract. Kill the privacy.”
Grace reached for the cylinder, starting to talk before she turned it off. “That’s my opinion, Ser Bancroft [click] but I can’t promise that the Council or the President will have the same.” Slick as wet seals, she thought, as she and Rafe finished up what would seem like the same conversation, eventually passing the question of which imaginary maintenance scheme to choose off to another branch of government, and finishing with polite social comments.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Teague eased his way along the crowded streets of the shopping district, eastward toward the port area. The shopping district extended a tongue of attractive gentility all the way to the waterfront, providing reasonable access for a tourist while taking him within a short distance of warehouses, transport depots, and eventually the working docks. Occasional whiffs of fish and spoilage eddied along the pretty sidewalks with their cafés and shops. He had been here before; he was certain some of the people would recognize him. His transformation had matured; he felt comfortable now with the different length of leg and arm, with the color of his skin, the texture of his hair, how he looked in the mirror, and how he felt moving around.
Lines had formed at street vendor carts; he opted for the quick-serve window of a café tucked into the side of a street so narrow it might have been an alley. “Whitefish wrap,” he said, just like the man ahead of him, and he had the correct change ready for the hand that reached for it. His wrap, fish and vegetables in a spicy sauce wrapped in a flatbread, matched half the food pedestrians were carrying. Instead of turning back to the street he’d left, he moved on, not hurrying but not loitering, either.
He’d been told, two tendays ago, that down here was “Malines’ place,” a rough quarter to stay away from if he didn’t want trouble. He’d walked down that other street once, straight to the end, briskly, as if he had business at the docks at the end. He had in fact gone into a wholesale hardware dealer, inquiring about a possible job. Now he headed in a different direction, one block over, his electronic kit active, feeding data into his implant, and in his hand a black business folder with an ISC logo on the front. Inside were instructions from a “Region IV Maintenance Education Upgrade Center” directing him to find potential locations for training local technicians to ansible work at ISC’s standards, including the requirements by square meters, electrical service, environmental quality, and so on.