“That’s not hard,” he said. “Just you watch yourself, young lady. Trust the old wolf to watch his own back.”
“Love you, Yanni.”
“Love you, too,” he said, and thumbed the connection dead.
“Is it all right?” Frank asked anxiously.
He looked over at Frank, very sure the girl had been into his files, very sure Base One could do it; and she now knew something only he and the first Ari had known for well over a century. Frank was AF‑997. Nearly an original, off the same genetic tree as her Florian, not at all far removed. And that wasn’tthe number Frank had in every other record in Reseune. Damned sure it would be hard for anybody to get to Frank without knowing his real name, and that said something about how detailed young Ari had gotten about her research. He felt a little exposed, knowing she knew that secret.
But at least he wasn’t scheduled for a long semi‑retirement out at Strassenberg, and she’d just made him an exception in the revision of Reseune authority.
Him, and Frank. When a whole lot else hadn’tbeen what it was supposed to be– he’dlet something major get past him, and he was beyond upset, and embarrassed about the fact: he felt sick at his stomach, felt the years reel back and saw a dozen scenes replay, with a certain different knowledge about a certain azi. He stared out the window at the sandstone and concrete towers of Novgorod, at the gray mirror of the polluted harbor, and the barges that connected Novgorod to the upriver–so, so much that had grown up since the War. So much that had changed.
Kyle? Kyle was oldhistory. Kyle had been there for nearly–God–he’d come on staff in ‘62 in the last century and lived twenty‑four more years this side of the century mark, most of it with Giraud. Six decades. Six decades with Giraud, and then Hicks, leaking God knew what to whoever was running him.
Military agent. Giraud had kept him answering questions on military operations for a few years after his return from service in Defense. He remembered a supper meeting in ‘62, Giraud saying he was finally going to run the axe code, reclaim Kyle to active service.
Giraud had done that. He remembered Giraud saying it had gone pretty much as he expected, that Kyle hadn’t lost any memory or didn’t think he had. No conflicts. No problems. Just like the thirty‑odd other alphas they’d recovered from Defense after the War ended…most of them specialists, technicals who didn’t mentally visit the here and now often enough to be a real problem to re‑Contract. Some had died.
But Kyle. Kyle had been a psych operator, a military interrogator. Kyle had been on Admiral Azov’s staff, first.
Azov. Damn him. The bastard chiefly responsible for the mess on Gehenna. Azov had, later on, conspired with Jordan–had worked against Reseune, in those days. The first Ari had stung him, stung him badly. Azov and Ari hadn’t been friendly once certain things started coming to light, particularly the handling of azi in the armed forces, and Azov hadn’t lived to find out what else Ari had done to him, at Gehenna.
Meanwhile Gorodin had come, friendly to Science, supposedly a whole new post‑War age in the relations of Science and Defense.
But Gorodin had never thrown the off‑switch on Kyle or let Ari in on their nasty little secret. Secretary Lu, who’d served as Proxy Councillor for Gorodin, had never told them. Friend of theirs. Close friend of Giraud’s, most of the time.
And the military had still been collecting information hand over fist–learning everything that crossed Giraud’s desk.
They must have known the first Ari’s business, as much of it as she’d trusted Giraud with–which would easily be the whole psychogenesis project, most likely everything involving the feud with Jordan: and, oh, Defense had been able to snag Jordan, hadn’t they, just at the right time? Nice piece of psychology, that. Offer Jordan the out he wanted, the transfer to Fargone, right when the relationship had gotten desperate–and then when Ari’d gone for Justin–
That had been a delicious piece of news. And they’d used it. Defense had been all eager to talk to Jordan. If Ari had everquestioned Kyle herself, ever gotten into Giraud’s records, everdone that–oh, but Ari had been fully occupied with Jordan as the center of her problems in that last year of her life. She didn’t regard Giraud’s psych abilities all that highly, but she knew he was loyal and good at what he did.
And then she’d died.
And after Gorodin? If Kyle had still belonged to Defense and still been reporting to them, he’d been, oh, likely highly active during Khalid’s short term.
His inside information hadn’t saved Khalid from walking right into it with young Ari. Maybe Khalid had ignored the intelligence he’d gotten, hadn’t believed the kid was what she was. He’d found it out–in public, on national vid networks.
Darker thought, still, had Khalid ever really turned loose of Kyle once he’d begun to receive information from him?
Intelligence, for God’s sake. Khalid had been chief of Intelligence before he ever ran for the Council seat.
He’d been managing Kyle’s sort–oh, from way back. Possibly–
Possibly Kyle hadn’t ever reported to Gorodin at all. Maybe not even to Azov. They might not have known what Khalid’s source was, except that Khalid had good information. Azov had died of old age. Lu had. Then Gorodin. Defense had been nominally the ally of Science, most of the time, except the brief stint under Khalid. Jacques–Science had urged Jacques into office to succeed Khalid, when Gorodin had gone into rejuv failure; they’d managed to sway Spurlin…now assassinated.
Along with two people connected to the Eversnow project; them, and the Defense candidate who’d agreed to support it and who’d urged Jacques to vote for it.
Watch out, Ari said, for his own life, at present, in Novgorod.
Khalid. Chief of Intelligence, from the darkest years of the War, a young and ambitious officer in those days, not so old now, when most of that generation were dead. And it was entirely conceivable that his sudden rise in Defense had been precisely because of the quality of the information he had on the inner workings of Science.
“Kyle’s not ours,” Yanni said quietly to Frank, and turned from that gray, misty vista. “He never has been. Kyle’s still Defense. Did you ever see that coming?”
Frank looked at him, just stared in shock. “He never gave a hint. He’d honestly paired with Hicks. It felt that way. It always did, from way back.”
“Could that part be real, even if he was Defense?”
“Could be,” Frank said.
“It’s going to hit Hicks in the gut,” Yanni said. “He said Kyle was like a brother. Relied on him. Trusted him for years.”
“I can’t imagine,” Frank said. “It’s got to have torn Kyle up, too. He was different, around Hicks. He cared. Cared about the people in his command. That’s bad, if that’s true. That’s real bad.”
“Defense must have kept getting reports from him. He can’t have liked it.” A thought occurred to him. Giraud’s office. Hicks’. Access to files. Dossiers. A lot of things. Ari had died, and Giraud had taken the Directorship and increasingly turned ReseuneSec over to Hicks.
That was where Kyle had transferred over, and Kyle had attached to Hicks in a way he never quite had to Giraud. Hicks relied on Kyle as a personal aide, in a way he’d never served with Giraud, who’d had Abban. Giraud had let Hicks handle Kyle, let him have Kyle’s Contract finally even finagled a provisional alpha certificate for Hicks explicitly to allow him to work with Kyle, because the pairing had seemed to work so well.