Interviewing Li-Tsan again didn’t take any longer than expected; the woman was still paranoid and abusive and wrapped up in her victimhood. She didn’t answer any questions. But her reactions, when I told her what I knew, proved interesting indeed. As did Nils D’Onofrio’s, when I spoke to him. He was just as embittered and almost as defensive.
Robin Fish was lost, distant, and filled with a sadness that might have overwhelmed me had I been any more receptive to pity. She actually wept. But I expected that. She’d already established herself as maudlin and sloppy. She was also relieved to get the truth out in the open. She gave me more names, some of whom gave up the truth at once, some of whom I had to threaten, and some of whom I just didn’t bother speaking to at all, because by then the picture was clear and I was able to infer the continuation of the pattern from their individual files.
It all comprised one hell of a large domino.
Now all I had to do was topple it onto the next one.
Before I went I composed another coded message to Artis Bringen. It could have been the longest; part of me wanted to start with an essay, explaining why I wanted to know or conceding that I might have been wrong. But everything I added to the question kept distorting its intent. Eventually I just went with what I needed to know, and fired off the shortest dispatch I’d ever sent him. It was a question that could translate as, Are you my enemy, or not? The words were different, but the meaning was the same.
I did not know whether I’d have the guts to send it.
When I emerged from the transport into the brighter but no more cheerful light of the hangar, I found that the mood among Gibb’s delegation had degenerated further since the events of the previous night. The same people who had shown determination and defiance during the evacuation had now enjoyed a full day of inactivity and gathering tension. Many sat around outside the sleepcubes, lost in conversations ranging from grim to ribald.
Some glanced at me and muttered comments to friends: no doubt the fortieth or fiftieth distorted conversation about my insane, suicidal behavior on the skimmer. A snatch of laughter attracted my attention and turned out to be a number of indentures indulging in buzzpops. I saw a deeply inebriated Cif Negelein, looking like he’d rubbed himself in every patch of organic matter between here and New London, pulling the woman with purple hair into a sloppy kiss. But the numbers were off. Whenever I passed an open sleepcube, there were indentures lying asleep, indentures sitting on the edge of cots with their heads in their hands, indentures who looked as if they expected the very deck beneath their feet to open up and swallow them at any moment.
Peyrin Lastogne sat with two men and one woman beside a storage crate drafted into service as a table, playing a game involving little silver spheres, golden pyramids, and a tiny holographic hoop that revolved around the center of the table, flashing red whenever it faced one of the players. I didn’t know the rules, but the body language of the players was enough to establish Lastogne himself as the runaway winner.
His mood rose a notch the instant he saw me. “Counselor. You’ve had quite an adventurous day, haven’t you?”
He made the word adventurous sound like a curse. “Interesting. And you?”
“Anything but. My duties at the moment seem limited to cheerleading. I have enjoyed watching that steady stream of people, going in and out of that transport, and trying to guess just what you’ve determined.”
The three indentures at the table all joined him in waiting expectantly for my answer.
“Would you like to discuss it?” I asked.
“Alone?”
“Of course.”
“All right.” He stood, deactivated the game, apologized to the others, and escorted me to a sleepcube a short distance away. The practically narcoleptic Cartsac was already sleeping in there, but when he saw who needed the space he pulled himself upright and shuffled out the door, wearing the expression of a man who only wanted another place to lie down. Lastogne sealed the flap, sat on one of the cube’s two cots, gestured at the other, and said, “I know what you’re thinking. Is all this intoxication wise?”
I didn’t sit. “I was about to say.”
He shrugged. “Trust me, they’ve recovered from worse. They’ll hop to attention if we need them to.”
I just nodded. “It is all about down-time, isn’t it?”
The silence that followed was not broken when I activated the hiss screen.
Every external indication marked Lastogne as a calm, measured professional, determined to avoid the appearance of any reaction, either good or bad. But on this one point, at least, there were no secrets between us. “It’s a little outside the stated goals of your investigation, isn’t it, Counselor? I wouldn’t have considered you the type to indulge in that kind of silly witch-hunt.”
“It’s not silly,” I said, “but you’re right. It is beneath my notice.”
“Then why go so far out of your way to ruin a man?”
“Why risk your own career by protecting him?” When he failed to answer, I lowered my voice in pretend-conspiracy. “I know it’s not respect. You’ve already indicated what you think of him. So what is it? What hold does he have on you?”
He surprised me by laughing out loud: a rich, hearty laugh filled with affection for both Gibb and myself. “Is that what you think, Counselor? That he pulls my strings? I’m sorry, but you’re way off. I could leave this station tomorrow and forget his name by the middle of next week.”
“Then why protect him?”
“Because he’s a mediocrity. And I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for mediocrities.”
Li-Tsan had intimated as much, just yesterday. “Come on—”
“No, no, no, I’m serious. Do you have any idea how unbearable life would be if everybody excelled? If everybody was noble, perceptive, courageous, and selfless? If everybody had open eyes and saw the forces that really ran things? It would be a madhouse. You need a few empty-calorie people like Gibb just to dilute the mix.”
The man actually seemed to be serious. “In my experience, mediocrity in life-or-death situations gets people killed.”
He looked knowing. “Read your history. Greatness kills more.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
He shrugged. “So I take care of Gibb, like a pet. As long as the work gets done, or as close to done as the circumstances here allow him to accomplish, and nobody gets hurt by any moments of actual incompetence, I see no harm in just letting him have his way.”
“Except that’s the whole point,” I said. “People have been hurt.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, come now. You can’t seriously blame what happened to Warmuth and Santiago on Gibb’s stupidity.”
“I’m not. His actions may have contributed, but I wasn’t referring to them.”
“Who, then?”
“To start with: Robin Fish.”
For the first time he averted his eyes from me, focusing instead on his hands, which closed into fists before opening again, just as empty as they’d been before: “She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great things. Give the Dip Corps credit for knowing what she was. They wanted to tuck her away in a cozy little nowhere post, where she could serve out her time without ever being subjected to any challenges beyond her capabilities. She could have stayed there and been just as unhappy as she is now, but at least then she would have been able to comfort herself by blaming everybody else for not giving her a chance. Here, she has no such illusions.”