Well, therewas an answer. And he hadn’t gone to Ari. He hadn’t admitted failure. He might not have recognize it. Faced with dealing with an alpha, he hadn’t opened up his files and Denys’ to Ari’s close scrutiny, especially counting that Denys’ certificate was a damned lie. His secrecy would have been compromised if he’d let Ari into the manuals he had. Open one, all might have been of interest. Wasn’t that like Giraud, too?
“Note for Giraud Two: dealing with failure. Tell Base One. Dammit.”
“Recorded.”
She thought a few beats, while the printout flipped into the tray. “Base One, did Ari ever successfully deal with a Defense Bureau block in an alpha subject?”
“ Yes.”
“Print case file.”
“Printing. Transcript is three hundred and two pages.”
“Is that the same file currently printing?”
“Yes.”
Damned stupid computer. “Cancel second print. Continue.”
Same case. At least there were only three hundred two pages to read before she slept.
Catherine Lao was in the hospital with a coronary, a real one, and diminishing liver function. It was likely the tail end of rejuv. Nobody could locate her Proxy, who was either dead in Swigert Bay or hiding out under an assumed name, trying not to be dead, and it was getting chancy whether Yanni could muster the usual closely knit bloc of Reseune‑friendly vote’s on Council. Yanni could call the Council of Worlds into session–but that got into regional fights and vote trading between stations and Bureaus and it was just a whole either headache. They didn’t want to go to that, and get Pan‑Paris at odds again with Fargone… God, no. Yanni had done his job. Catherine Lao was asking Yanni to come to the hospital, and Ari’d told Yanni no, don’t go, just come home, but was he going to listen?
She couldn’t swear to it–because it Yanni wasgoing to call a Council of Worlds, it was more politic to do it from Novgorod; and because Jacques hadn’t gotten right onto the evening news and made Tanya Bigelow his Proxy Councillor…
God, it was a mess. And she, meanwhile, was wasting time trying to figure out who’d been responsible for killing her predecessor twenty years ago, which wasn’t relevant, and trying to make sure Yanni had good information, which was; and most of all trying to find out if Kyle AK had gotten some signal for some other kind of mayhem, beyond murdering her…which could relate to what he’d been into twenty years ago, when somebody, maybe the same people that wanted Khalid in office, had been politicking behind closed doors in the Defense Bureau, dealing with Jordan with one hand and arranging her predecessor’s murder with the other.
She took a headache remedy. She wasn’t supposed to. She’d do better going to the hospital herself, or just asking Wes to look her over, but her pupils looked the same size in the mirror, and she didn’t want to upset Florian by admitting he’d cracked her head that hard. So she just took the headache remedy and then threw up, and took another, with less water, which staved down.
It might not be smart. But it was what she had to do. Scan the files she had to absorb, make sure they were safe, and then have a long stint with deepstudy.
BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xii
AUG 2, 2424
0548H
Breakfast on a sunny morning in Novgorod…they’d been down to granola bars and coffee they made themselves, things from random vending machines, since they’d stopped trusting the hotel kitchens.
But after days of short commons, Quentin AQ, the Carnath girl’s Quentin, had showed up with a case of dried fruit, another of oatmeal, four cases of bottled water, five kilos of ground coffee, a case of orange drink, a commercial carton of real eggs, fifteen loaves of bread, a case of precooked bacon, five bottles of vodka, and a large carton of irradiated sandwiches that wouldn’t go bad for the next decade. Thatlot was a gift for which Yanni and Frank marked Amy Carnath down for future brilliance. They’d sent ReseuneSec down to the hotel kitchens to confiscate a portable grill, a room refrigerator, plates, silverware, and detergent, and ran their own kitchens in the diplomatic suite. A man named Bert BB‑7 and his partner took instruction from Frank on elementary cooking, managed not to overcook the eggs, which the Carnath girl had offered to resupply on call; and they’d three times hosted Jacques, damn him, who showed up with two aides and a lengthening list of concerns, the last over a supper meeting of grilled sandwiches, salted chips, and wine Jacques brought, while he and his staff stuck to the vodka.
In the first three meetings it had gone moderately welclass="underline" Jacques wasn’t sure of Bigelow and said there was some concern because the station Defense people weren’t happy with her, and they wanted to propose another candidate, a Tommy Kwesi, who’d been out at Beta…who would be here in a week.
“We can’t have this dragging on another week,” Yanni had objected, and then alter two days of arguing for him, Jacques revealed that Khalid was landing within the hour in Novgorod, and that Khalid absolutely refused to accept either Bigelow or Kwesi.
“He didn’t winthe election,” Yanni had said to that, and Jacques had ducked his direct gaze, and said they had to have consensus within the Bureau, because without it there were some officers who were going to take the matter to the judiciary, and the rest of Defense didn’t want that precedent.
Then the stinger, from Jacques: “There’s a contingent pushing Albert Dean.”
He’d said, “Dean’s a damned fool.” Dean was the one who’d consistently voted with Khalid’s allies on appropriations, trying to get increased military spending at Mariner and Pan‑Paris, which played well politically on the stations that wanted the construction, but infringed on treaties in more ways than they could count. “He’s playing politics, he’s been playing politics, while we’ve spent the last thirty years trying to build trust on that border–the only damn border we’ve got, and he wants to go turning up the heat on it! You want to see two years of absolute stalemate in Council–no. We can’t work with him.”
“I don’t think, in the long run, that what Science can work with is the ultimate criterion for the Proxy I choose.”
“No,” he’d said flatly, “it isn’t. It is, however, what the rest of Council can work with. Dean may play well with the Council of Worlds, but they don’t originate the budget, and you can’t get a majority to back his program.”
“So he’s safe,” Jacques said with a shrug. “Dean talks. He makes his listeners happy. Nothing of his program ever gets done.”
“And your Bureau goes on with its internal business, stirring the pot constantly.”
“Some say Science is far too monolithic. Far too one‑sided.”
“It has advantages, having some sort of consensus. We don’t live in a friendly universe, but nothing’s helped by provoking our trade partners–and talk provokes, even if the program doesn’t pass. It keepsus from progress in negotiations.”
“Their trade goes on their ships through our territory. So does ours.”
“That’s the way State wrote the Treaty. If you want to change it, debate it in Council. Don’t set up a program guaranteed to rip the peace apart by degrees, dammit, Councillor. Khalid didn’t win the election, not by a long shot. You have no needto accommodate him.”
Jacques had had another wine. He had another vodka. They’d settled it down. But he didn’t think the last meeting with Jacques had gone at all well. Dean wasn’t much better than Khalid, except that Dean was so damned abrasive he’d alienated half those who might have been his allies. And Khalid back on the planet was not good news.