“Did you like her?”
“Odd question.”
“Did you likeher, Yanni?”
“I did, actually. She was what she was, and she did good in her life, on the average. And let me say right now that if you want me to step down tonight, I will, but I hope you’ll reconsider a move like that.”
“Why?”
“Because, for one thing, we can get quite a bit of yardage for Reseune’s programs if we don’t let Corain know you’re coming into power sooner than most people think–and I think you are. They’ll deal, right now, because they’re scared to death of you. Corain is shocked by what happened to Patil–but he’s still on board with the Eversnow deal. So are the others. Secondly, we haven’t seen the outcome in the Defense election, and maintaining a bit of our flexibility in the face of that outcome is a good thing. Polls have been wrong before.”
“And meanwhile there’s somebody running around Reseune leaving cards from somebody who’s supposed to be under strictest security weeks before she was murdered? And it had Planys markers, Yanni. What’s the theory on that, officially?”
“Authenticity,” Yanni said with a shrug. “Whoever did it wanted it to smell like Planys, as authentic as possible, and whoever did it went to a small bit of trouble to do that–probably to rattle the walls and see if they could provoke some action. Or maybe it’s real and Jordan lied. Maybe an old man with a failing memory and a few weeks to live really wanted some personal acknowledgment from somebody about to take over his life’s work. It’s Planys paper. It may have been printed almost anywhere buton Reseune office machinery–there’s that security feature: micro‑ID in the typeface, if your security hasn’t told you. Which still leaves, as a source, the town, various neighboring towns, and passing rivercraft, not to mention the airport. The card has all kinds of issues attached, nofinger‑traces of any kind except the people that we well know handled it–super‑clean.”
“So it was real. Or it was somebody knew about the markers and knew to be careful about the microprint. Did you search Jordan’s apartment?”
“While he was at supper with you, yes. We did. Found nothing, of course.”
“Did you tell him you searched it?”
“No. Nor left any traces he could find, if Hicks was entirely up to his job.”
“Yanni, I want you to back off Jordan. Don’t make him mad. Give him work to do. Real work.”
“There’s a small problem with that.”
A pose, a quizzical tilt of the head. “You mean you don’t trust him?”
“I trust he’ll do something. He’ll sabotage something just to make us find it. And we’re busy.”
“Send the results to me. It’s good exercise. I’ll check them.”
“You have enough to do, yourself. Just keep going with your lessons.”
“Do it, Yanni.”
“He’ll burst a blood vessel.”
“Probably, but I’ll check what he does. Who’s Clavery?”
Yanni blinked, then shrugged. “Clavery is a name not in the computers. Ergo a nonperson, a construct, a codeword, or an alias.”
“Possibly someone she knew by sight.”
“We’re running checks on everybody who was ever in contact with her. But just occasionally, in Novgorod, there are places where you aren’t being logged, and people can make contact off the record. Restrooms. Subways. Standing on a street. At the theater. If she was ever accosted by somebody named Clavery it wouldn’t be in her apartment building–not until that night.”
“A hollow man?”
Yanni drew a deep breath. And gazed at her directly. “I’m not even asking where you learned that term. Myself, I’m strongly betting on Paxer involvement in the murders, but I’m not a hundred percent certain.”
“I’m worried about people running around the halls of Reseune putting cards in people’s pockets. And no camera caught them, either?”
“We’re working on it. Just say we’re working on it. Jordan favors very crowded, dark little restaurants where the chairs are jammed up together and people are moving all over the place. We don’t have good imaging. Right now we’re investigating a lot of people.”
“Jordan’s a magnet for blame. You never thought Jordan killed the first Ari, did you?”
Yanni shook his head. Took a drink of wine. “For one thing, he was in the hall when the electronics went out, and the system was very selective with what went dead at that point. –Are we going to starve?”
“Sorry.” She silently cued Haze, and said, “Yanni, will you support me if I do take over?”
“I’d support you, yes.”
“What if I’d asked you to drop the Eversnow project? Would you do that?”
“I wouldn’t be at all happy about it.”
“But would you do it if I asked it?”
“Actually,” Yanni said, “I’d probably go full ahead until the hour you nuked my accesses, because I believe in it. And I think you’d be quite wrong. So I’d fight you on that.”
“Good. I like it when somebody tells me the truth. Why do you think I’m wrong?”
“Because Eversnow solves the employment problem on Fargone.”
“Doesn’t help Pan‑Paris at all.”
“It still solves one critical unemployment problem and makes Pan‑Paris less critical. No, it doesn’t help Pan‑Paris and they’ll be mad about it and we’ll have to find something to give them pretty fast.”
“Not on this year’s budget.”
“We’ll let Pan‑Paris stew and protest and get jealous of Fargone, and then we’ll agree to do something. That makes it evident we’re listening.”
“You’re a total cynic.”
He shrugged. “Works. We’ve got worse potential problems on the horizon. We have an important alliance on this bilclass="underline" us, Citizens, Defense. We can get Information and Trade in on it, and that’s our majority. But Defense is in mid‑election and Corain’s getting old. He could see himself challenged for the seat in Citizens, and believe me, a lot worse could come out of that huge electorate than Corain. It’s diverse. It may be true that if there hadn’t been a Corain to hold Citizens together, we’d have to invent one, but in any given year, we could see something nasty develop there. Another reason– anotherreason to pursue a major population burst at Fargone. Population in an area farthest removed from Alliance Space…most of them will end up voting in Citizens, supporting, we hope, moderates like Corain.”
“All right, let’s discuss it. You think that Eversnow is still an asset. I frankly see it having serious problems.”
“I think it’s a safety factor. If there’s another war, Alliance will think twice. If we toss their merchanters out of that route, we can enforce a ban, and we can protect it. It’s a very narrow corridor.”
“No great abundance of jump points in the region?”
“Scarce. Just about what we’re developing as destinations, places we’ll be able to defend. That’s the word from Defense.”
That was certainly a point in favor. “How soon is your population burst at Fargone?”
“All right. This is getting to be in your need‑to‑know, one more reason why it’s not good for you and me to have a contest for power this year. There’s a station onworld, already. That’s all military and classified to the hilt: it’s been black‑budgeted for decades, since your predecessor’s time. We’ve kept its secrecy because we use its facilities pretty freely, but there’ve been some issues over the years, too.”
“That’s how you got the samples! It wasn’t a robot. You lied on that, too.”
“Well, it was a robot, but we have people down there, as we speak. Very cold, very lonely people, in company with a lot of cold, lonely Defense people, and not an azi in the lot. Defense has been damned worried we’d tamper–so they haven’t allowed azi down there. Just a nice little born‑man society.”