“We can get the eight we need,” Yanni said. “Lao’s dead. But she named another proxy.” He got up and slipped the paper into the slot. “Ariane Emory.”
No restriction on the ability of a Councillor to appoint a Proxy. No restriction even of age. None of bureau registration. In the wild early days of chancey transport, anybodywith credentials could carry a vote into the Council on behalf of an absent Councillor.
“Irregular!” Harogo said.
“Legal,” Corain said.
“We can’t vote here without our eighth,” Yanni said. “I call Council. Reseune Administrative Territories, on the twelfth of September.”
“Second that,” Corain said.
“Those opposed?” Harogo said, and then wrote on the screen under his hands, and filed it. “Each of us has declared a Proxy. In case.”
“Go,” Yanni said, and got up from his seat. He alone couldn’tfile a Proxy; only Lynch, Councillor for Science, could do that, and Lynch was holed up in his residence, too old and too timid for what was afoot. He couldn’t lay all the blame for their situation to Edgerton’s lack of nerve: for all he knew, there was trouble hot on Edgerton’s trail. Or Edgerton was dead.
He gathered up Frank, then caught Mikhail Corain at the side of the door. “Thanks.”
“Done as much as I can,” Corain said, and in the lowest possible tones. “ Didshe sign it?”
“I’ve got the recording,” Yanni said. “Or Frank has it. It’s legal. Stay low and stay safe.”
Out the door then, downstairs as fast as they could gather a lift‑load of Councillors, aides, and security. In the lower hall they separated, headed for the north doors and the south portico.
ReseuneSec held the doors.
BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xviii
AUGUST 20, 2424
1438H
Nearly a week since the broadcast, and Ari had long since taken pity on the reporters camped out at the airport and physically cut off from their news organizations, their families, their means of being elsewhere–she comped meals, laundry service, delivered unlimited vid entertainment, and ordered the restaurant there to vary its menu daily and be open twenty‑four hours, the little airport bar to open at 2000h and stay til 2400h nightly.
She’d also sent down two ReseuneSec agents to help out at the bar, and to gather up any tidbits of information and rumor that came in by various links that didn’t belong to Reseune.
There were rumors down there, no question. Broadcast news continually said Lao was alive. Rumor at the bar said she was artificially sustained for legal reasons. The broadcast news said Council had met but Khalid had not shown up, nor had the Proxy for Information, and Council had adjourned quickly. Rumor said Edgerton was in hiding somewhere in the city and that he and Council were under direct threat of the military.
On August 20, Amy called–finally, and reported that Yanni had taken over the hotel he was in, that Corain was living there, too, and that she and Quentin had moved in for safety, because her hotel had been used for a barracks. She also said that yesterday there’d been a breakdown in the subway that added to problems in the city. People said it was Paxer activity, but mostly it was just rumors–anything that broke was automatically Paxers.
Meanwhile, Amy said, Khalid was threatening to put the city under martial law; but without the Council he knew he couldn’t do that, so he was trying to locate Council members, and that military had been searching hotels, including her former one, and trying to bully Councillors into showing up when hecalled Council. It was certain Khalid knew where Yanni and Corain were, but hadn’t made a move on them or searched their hotel. He hadn’t found enough of the other Councillors to get eight of the Nine–and without them, he couldn’t declare martial law, couldn’t convene the Council of Worlds, and couldn’t do a lot of things, legally, so there was no point in his raiding the hotel where two Councillors definitely and publicly were.
That was the sum of Amy’s report, except to ask how they were, and Ari said they were all fine.
But late on August 23, a barge came up from Moreyville, and fourteen people got off at Reseune docks, fourteen very tired, dirty, and hungry people, among them Ludmilla deFranco, far less than the immaculate person she ordinarily was. Her blonde hair was dyed dark, her customary couturier dress traded for a dockworker’s blues.
All the same, a spark of triumph glistened in deFranco’s eyes when Ari came down to the docks to meet her.
“A pleasure,” deFranco said, and startled her and Florian with an unexpected embrace. “God, you look like her, don’t you?”
“I should,” Ari said, but she didn’t actually mind the hug, she was just startled by it. “I’m glad you’re safe. Did you come up all the way by barge?”
“To Moreyville by plane,” DeFranco said. “Then the barge.” DeFranco had to be past her hundreds, and it was still a long, hard pull, deFranco and this crowd of people, some of whom must be younger relatives. “Has Yanni been in touch? You’re Lao’s Proxy.”
“How?” she asked.
“Filed and legal,” deFranco said, and sank onto a convenient counter edge. “Yanni got it from Lao in person. Filed it in chambers, all of us to witness. You’re the new Proxy for Information. Council’s to meet here on the twelfth of September.”
“Here. On the twelfth. Why are they waiting that long?”
“There’s preparation to make. Contacts. People to be felt out…some of them inside Defense. Those still there are working that angle, making contacts as best they can, pulling every string they’ve got–of which I don’t have enough left to matter. I’m getting too old for this, nearly as old as Lao, and she’s dead. We’re in a war, sera. We’re in an outright war for control of the government. Khalid can’t call Council to get a declaration of martial law; he needs eight Councillors, and I, my dear, and now you, are sitting here preventing that from happening, no matter how he threatens us. He can haul in every Councillor left in Novgorod and without us, he won’t have sufficient votes either to get seated or to declare martial law.”
“And if he comes here?”
“There’s a practical limit to what he can order the military at large to do. Individual units, individual arrests, yes, he’s got his people. But he can’t move divisions. Not what it would take to get in here. Some things he doesn’t dare order, because he isn’tseated.”
Yet, Ari thought, chilled by the thought. What Khalid would and wouldn’t dare once he had enough power and legitimacy was another matter–but she didn’t say that. DeFranco, an old ally of her predecessor, deserved accommodation in Wing One, too, along with her relatives or staff or whoever they were. “I’m very sorry we’re so tight on space,” she said. “It’s not adequate. But we can settle you up the hill. Close to Mikhail Corain’s family.”
“It will be absolutely adequate,” deFranco said, “if we can all get warm showers and beds that don’t bob up and down. Beds with sheets. That would be wonderful.”
“Come with me,” she said, and gave? orders and personally took them all back up the hill on the bus, giving other orders via Florian and Catlin on com. “We’re going to have visitors,” she said, “the whole Council, eventually, maybe their families and relations. More worrisome, we may have the military making a move on us. Tell Wes to go down to the green barracks. He’s going to be liaison down there for the next few days. Tell ReseuneSec to put the bots on a hair trigger. Tell Tommy–hell, tell Tommy do something about the logistics in Wing One. We can’t put part of these people in luxury and part of them in rooms with scaffolding. They’re Councillors. They need beds, sheets, towels, ID, and a charge tab for the restaurants, everything you can think of.”