“Do as he says,” Jon said. Vittorio’s face was the color of paste.
“Go? Like that?”
“You’re safe,” Jon said. “You’re precious well safe… safer than you’d be here, not when it comes to what it’s coming to. Your papers, your card, your key. Give them to him. Go on Swan’s Eye with one of the deliveries. Just don’t look guilty and don’t get off. It’s easy enough.”
Vittorio simply stared at him.
“You’re safe, I assure you,” the stranger said. “You go out there, sit, wait. Act as liaison with our operations.”
“Our.”
“I’m told you understand me.”
Vittorio reached to his pocket, handed over all his papers. There was a numb terror on his face. “Comp number,” the other prompted; Vittorio wrote it down for him on the desk-pad.
“You’re all right,” Jon said. “I’m telling you you’re better off there than here.”
“That’s what you told Dayin.”
“Dayin Jacoby is quite well,” the stranger said.
“Don’t foul it up,” Jon said. “Get your wits together. You foul it up out there and we’ll all be in for Adjustment You read me clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Vittorio said faintly. Jon gave him a nod toward the door, dismissal. Vittorio tentatively held out a hand toward him. He took it perfunctorily — could not, even now, like this son of his. Came closest in this moment, perhaps, that Vittorio proved of some real service to him.
“I appreciate it,” he muttered, feeling some courtesy would salve wounds. Vittorio nodded.
“This dock,” the stranger said, sorting through Vittorio’s papers. “Berth two. And hurry about it.”
Vittorio left. The stranger slipped the papers and the comp number into his own pocket.
“Use of the number periodically should satisfy comp,” the man said.
“Who are you?”
“Jessad will do,” the man replied. “Vittorio Lukas, I suppose, when it comes to comp. What’s his residence?”
“Lives with me,” Jon said, wishing otherwise.
“Anyone else? Any woman, close friends who’ll not be sympathetic…?
“The two of us.”
“Jacoby indicated as much. Residence with you… very convenient. Will it excite comment if I walk there in this clothing?”
Jon sat down on the edge of his desk, mopped his face with his hand.
“No need to be distressed, Mr. Lukas.”
“They — the Union Fleet — they’re moving in?”
“I’m to arrange certain things. I’m a consultant, Mr. Lukas. That would be an apt term. Expendable. A man, a ship or two… small risk against the gain. But I do want to live, you understand, and I propose not to be expended… without satisfaction for it. Just so you don’t suffer a change of heart, Mr. Lukas.”
“They’ve sent you in here… with no backing — ”
“Backing in plenty when it comes. We’ll talk tonight, in residence. I’m quite in your hands. I understand there’s no strong bond between yourself and your son.”
Heat flushed his face. “No business of yours, Mr. Jessad.”
“No?” Jessad looked him slowly up and down. “It’s coming, you can be sure of that. You’ve bid to be on the winning side. To do certain services… in return for position. I’ll be evaluating you. Very businesslike. You take my meaning. But you’ll do well to take my orders, to do nothing without my advice. I have a certain expertise in this situation. I’m advised that you don’t permit domestic monitoring; that Pell is very adamant on this point; that there’s no apparatus.”
“There isn’t,” Jon said, swallowing heavily. “It’s very much against the law.”
“Convenient. I’d hate to walk in under camera. The clothes, Mr. Lukas. Acceptable in your corridors?”
Jon turned, searched his desk, found the appropriate form, his heart pounding all the while. If the man should be stopped, if there were suspicion, his signature on the document… but it was already too late. If Swan’s Eye were boarded and searched, if someone noticed that Vittorio failed to leave it before it undocked… “Here,” he said, tearing off the pass. “This isn’t to show anyone unless you’re stopped by security.” He pushed the com buttom and leaned over the mike. “Bran Hale still out there? Get him in here. Alone.”
“Mr. Lukas,” Jessad said, “we don’t need other parties to this.”
“You asked advice about the corridors. Take it. If you’re stopped, your story is that you’re a merchanter whose papers were stolen. You’re on your way to talk to administration about it, and Kale’s your escort. Give me Vittorio’s papers. I can carry them. You daren’t be caught with them, with that story. I’ll straighten it all out when I get to the apartment this evening.”
Jessad handed them over in return for the pass. “And what do they do with merchanters whose papers get stolen?”
“They call in their whole ship’s family and it’s a very great deal of commotion. You could end up in detention and Adjustment if things go that far, Mr. Jessad. But stolen papers are known here, and it’s a better cover than your plan. If it happens, go along with everything and trust my judgment. I have ships. I can arrange something. Claim you’re off Sheba. I know the family.”
The door opened. Bran Hale stood there, and Jessad shut his mouth on whatever he would have said.
“Trust me,” Jon repeated, relishing his discomfiture. “Bran, you’re useful already. Walk this man to my apartment.” He fished in his pocket after the manual guest key.
“See him there and inside and sit with my guest until I come, will you? Could be a long while. Make yourself free in the place. And if you get stopped, he has a different story. You just follow his cue, all right?”
Hale’s eyes took in Jessad, flicked back to him. Intelligent man, Hale. He nodded, without asking questions.
“Mr. Jessad,” Jon murmured, “you can trust this man to see you there.”
Jessad smiled tautly, offered his hand. Jon took it, a dry grip of a man of no normal nerves. Hale showed him out and Jon stood by his desk, watching both of them depart. The staff in the outer office were all like Hale, Lukas people, administrative level and trustworthy. Men and women he had chosen… and not one of them was likely to be doubling on the Konstantin payrolclass="underline" he had always seen to that. He was still anxious. He turned from the view of the door to the sideboard, poured himself a drink, for however unruffled Jessad was, his own hands were shaking from the encounter and the possibilities in it. A Unionist agent. It was farce, a too elaborate result of his intrigue with Jacoby. He had sent out a tentative feeler and someone had raised the stakes in the game to a ridiculous level.
Union ships were coming. Were very close, that they would take the enormous chance of sending in someone like Jessad. He resumed his seat at his desk, holding the drink, sipped at it, trying to pull his thoughts into coherency. The proposed deception of comp could not go on. He reckoned the life of the Jessad/Vittorio charade in days, and if something went wrong he would be the one quickest caught, not Jessad, who was not in comp. Jessad was expendable in Union plans, perhaps, but he was more so.
He drank, trying to think.
Seized up paper with sudden inspiration, more forms, started the call-up procedure for a short-hauler. There were crews in Lukas employ who would not talk, like Sheba, men who would take a ship out and carry a ghost aboard, falsify manifests, falsify crew or passenger listings… the tracing of the black market routes had turned up all manner of interesting data that some captains did not want known. So this afternoon another ship would go out to the mines, and Vittorio’s comp number could be changed into the station log.