“Who’s after you?” Svengali asked, clearly puzzled.
“I was sure.” Frank looked frustrated. “The, the security alert. They canceled my interviews. In fact, that was the only public appearance the Ambassador put in while we were groundside. And did you notice the way she didn’t go outside? Didn’t even move outside of that podium with the reactive armor? But they left the windows and doors open. And there were cops everywhere on the grounds as soon as that bomb went off. Didn’t she look padded—”
“The Ambassador was miming the speech,” said Wednesday.
“What?” Svengali looked surprised. “What do you mean she was miming?”
“I saw her,” Wednesday said. “I was right in the front row. It was the way she spoke — and she was wearing an earbud. From where I was sitting I could see it. Wearing body armor, too, I guess. You know what? I think they expected something to happen. Only not what did, if you follow me.”
“An assassination attempt. The wrong assassination attempt.” Frank sounded almost dreamy. “On the wrong target. Not you, Wednesday.” He gave her arm a light squeeze. “A different assassin. One who didn’t play ball. Sven, what were you doing down there?”
“I was hired to do a fucking floor show after dinner!” he snapped tensely. “What do you think? This isn’t a vacation for me, laughing boy.”
“That’s okay,” said Frank. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
“Sorry,” Svengali grumbled.
“This would be for the house you’re planning on buying when you retire,” prompted Wednesday, a cold sweat prickling in the small of her back.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Svengali agreed, sounding almost grateful.
“I hope you get there,” she said in a small voice.
“I hope they find the fucking assholes who crashed the party,” Frank said, sounding distantly angry. Wednesday stroked his knuckles, soothing him into silence, then leaned against his shoulder.
The rest of the trip back to orbit passed uneventfully.
INTERLUDE 3
Several new passengers had joined the Romanov at New Dresden. One of them had taken an imperial suite with the nobs on A deck while the rest were accommodated variously in business- and tourist-class staterooms, but all of them had these things in common: they had booked rooms on the liner at short notice roughly a day after a private yacht, the Heidegger, had briefly called at Dresden station, and they were all traveling under false passports.
The luxury suite was not an extravagance, but a necessity. As was the way Lars swept it regularly for transmitters and the various species of insect that might creep into a room aboard a luxury liner that had been booked by an arms merchant from Hut Breasil. Portia wanted the cubic volume for conferencing and a base of operations, and the cover identity excused some of the rather more alarming contents of her personal luggage. Which was why Mathilde, answering the invitation to visit the imperial suite, was startled to find the door being held open for her by an armed bodyguard and the room’s occupant seated on a chaise longue in front of an open crate of self-propelled gun launchers.
“U. Mathilde Todt. Come in.” Hoechst inclined her head. “You look confused,” she said.
“Ah. I was expecting—”
Hoechst beamed at her. “An austerity regime?” She rose. “Yes, well, cover identities must be maintained. And why would a rich arms dealer travel in cabbage class?”
Marx let the door close behind the woman. She stepped forward, as if sleepwalking. “It’s been too long.”
Hoechst nodded. “Consider yourself under direction again.”
Mathilde rubbed her face. “You’re my new control? Out here in person?” A note of gratified surprise crept into her voice.
“Unlike U. Scott, I don’t believe in letting things slide,” Hoechst said drily. “I’ve been running around for the past two months, tying ligatures around leaks. Now it’s your turn. Tell me how it’s going.”
“It’s—” Mathilde licked her lips — “I’ve got everything in place for both the scenarios I was given, the abduction or the other one. Everything except the primary strike team. We’ve scoped out all the critical points, and the necessary equipment is on board. We had to suborn three baggage loaders and one bellboy to get it in place, but it’s done, and they swallowed the cover story — there was no need to get technical with them.” Getting technical was a euphemism for sinking a tree of nanoelectrodes into their brain stems and turning them into moppets — meat puppets. What it left behind afterward wasn’t much use for anything except uploading and forwarding to the Propagators. “Peter is my number two in charge of line ops, and Mark is ready with the astrogation side of things. In fact, we’re ready to go whenever you give the word.”
“Good.” Hoechst was no longer smiling. “Now tell me what’s gone wrong. I want to know everything.”
“With the plan? Nothing’s—”
“No, I mean everything. Every little thing that might have drawn attention to you.”
“Uh, well, um. We’re not used to working undercover or in feral conditions, and I think we made one or two mistakes in the early days. Luckily our ops cover is just about perfect; because they know we’re ReMastered, they make allowances for our being odd. It’s astonishing how willing they are to believe that we’re harmless passengers. Nobody even questioned that we were a youth leadership group! I thought it was absurd—”
Portia cleared her throat pointedly. Mathilde nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Let’s get something straight.” Hoechst’s gaze drilled into the young task group leader. “If you’ve done your job right, you have nothing to fear. If you’ve made honest but noncritical mistakes, and admit them and help remedy the situation, you have nothing to fear. What you should be afraid of is the consequences of covering up. Do I make myself clear? So cut the nervous chatter and tell me. What went wrong? What should I be aware of?”
“Oh.” Mathilde stared at her for a moment as if she’d sprouted a second head. Then her shoulders slumped very slightly. “Hans made a scene with one of the passengers on our first night aboard ship. We were all in one of the social areas — a bar, I believe they call them — when one of the ferals attempted to poison him with some sort of intoxicant. Nobody hurt, though. There is a small but vociferous group of passengers who appear to dislike us for some reason. But apart from that, not much has happened that I would classify as untoward. Hans I disciplined, and I consider the matter closed. The others—” She shrugged. “I cannot control what feral humans think of our program. I was uncertain I should even draw it to your attention…”
“I understand completely.” Hoechst bent her head over the cargo case, inspecting the boxy black plastic contents within. “The, ah, excesses of some of our predecessors have cast ReMastery in a very poor light, I’m afraid, and our overall goal of extending its benefits to everyone can only make them more suspicious.” She brooded for a moment. “I don’t intend to aggravate the situation.” She looked up, catching Mathilde’s gaze: “There will be no reports of atrocities or excesses arising from this intervention. One way or another.”
Mathilde smiled slowly.
Wednesday ran through abandoned hab spaces in the high-gee rings of an ancient station. Doorways gaped like empty eye sockets to either side of her; the floor sucked at her heels like molasses, dragging her backward. Something unseen ran behind her, dogging her footsteps like a nightmare — the skitter of claws, the clack of boots. She knew it was sharpening knives for her, but she couldn’t remember why — everything behind her was blank. Ahead of her was bad, too. Something hidden, something waiting. The pursuer was catching up, and when it caught her a fountain of red pulp splattered across her face. She was in the entrance to a toilet block on the admin deck, and there was a body and when she tugged at it, saying, “Come on, Dad,” it looked round and it wasn’t her father, blue-faced with asphyxia; it was Sven the clown, and he was smiling.