Josif got up from his terminal and she followed him to the corridor, where Josif spoke softly.
We should have guessed it immediately. It's a scam, Kyaren. They're paying those pensions to somebody, but not to these people. Because they're dead.
Kyaren leaned against the wall. Do you know how much money that is?
Josif was not impressed. Come on, he said.
Where?
Out of this building, immediately.
He started pulling her along. She came willingly enough, but completely confused. Where are we going?
He wouldn't answer. They did not go to either of their rooms. Instead they headed for the airport, which was on the eastern edge of the complex. This isn't the time for a weekend in Mexico, she said.
Just punch in sick. They stood before the ticket terminal and she did as he said, using her office code. Then he stood to the terminal and punched out two tickets for himself, charging them to his own account.
I can pay for my own, she said.
He didn't answer. He just took the tickets and they boarded the flit headed for Maraketch. It was when they were in flight that he finally began explaining.
It isn't Just your office, Kyaren, he said. It's mine, too. This thing has to involve a lot of people, in Death, in Disbursements, in Pensions, who knows where else. If they caught you on a simple query, they surely have a program to notice that you just queried the names of three people whose deaths were registered today, and that immediately afterward I queried the same names. The computer knows that somebody knows there is a discrepancy. And I don't know how long we'd live if we stayed there.
They wouldn't do anything violent, would they? Kyaren asked.
Josif only kissed her and said, Wherever you grew up, Kyaren, must be paradise.
Where are we going? she asked again.
To report it, of course. Let the police handle it. Let Babylon do it. They have the power to freeze everything and everyone there while they investigate. We don't have any power at all.
What if we're wrong?
Then we go looking for jobs about a billion lights away from here.
They told their story to five different officials before they finally found someone who was willing to take responsibility for a decision. The man was not introduced to them. But he was the first to listen to them without fidgeting, without looking uncomfortable or worried or distrustful
Only three names? he finally asked, when Josif and Kyaren had explained everything.
They nodded. We didn't think it was safe to wait around looking for more.
Absolutely right, the man said. He nodded, as if in imitation of their nods a moment before. Yes, it warrants an investigation. And they watched as he picked up a phone, stroked in a code, and started giving orders in a jargon that they couldn't understand.
His face fascinated Kyaren, though she was not sure why. He looked unremarkable enough-not a large man, not particularly handsome, but not unusually ugly, either. His hair medium length, his eyes medium brown, his expression medium pleasant. Kyaren was aware of a constant change, not so much in his face as in her perception of his face; like an optical illusion, his face kept switching back and forth between absolute trustworthiness and cold menace. No one had told them his title or even his name- he was just the one they passed a knotty problem to, and he didn't seem to mind.
Finally he was through with his call and turned his attention back to Josif and Kyaren. Very good work, he said.
Then he began to talk to them, very quietly, about themselves. He told Kyaren things about Josif that Josif had never mentioned: how Josif had attempted suicide twice after Bant left him; how Josif failed four classes at his university in his last term, yet turned in a dissertation that the faculty had no choice but to vote unanimously to accept; how the faculty thereupon booted him out of the school with the worst possible recommendation letters so that it was impossible for him to get work in his field.
You don't get along well with authority, do you, Josif? the man asked. Josif shook his head.
The man promptly started in on Kyaren, talking about her upbringing in the Songhouse, her failure to meet even the most minimal standards, her flight from that place where she was known to be inferior, her refusal to even mention the Songhouse to anyone else since then. You are determined not to let anyone see you fail, aren't you, Kya-Kya? he asked. Kyaren nodded.
She was acutely conscious of the fact that there was so much that Josif hadn't told her about himself-important things, if she was to understand him. And yet it came more as a relief than as a letdown. Because now he also knew the things she had been deliberately hiding from him; they had no secrets of any importance now.
Was that what the man had been trying to do? Or was he merely being nasty, pointing out to them that their friendship wasn't all they had thought it was? It hardly mattered. She looked at Josif furtively, saw that he also was avoiding her gaze. That would not do. So she stared at him until the very intensity of her gaze forced him to look back at her. And then she smiled. Hi, stranger, she said, and he smiled back.
The man cleared his throat. You two are a little better than the average. You've been artificially, for various stupid reasons, kept in places where you couldn't accomplish all that you are capable of. So I'm giving you an opportunity. Try to use it intelligently.
They would have asked for explanation, but he left mem without another word. It was the Chief of Planetary Security who finally told them what was happening to them. You've been fired from your previous jobs, he said, looking as serene as only a man with a great deal of power can look. And given new ones.
Josif found himself assistant to the minister of education, with special authority over funds for research. Kyaren was made special assistant to the manager of Earth, where she could get her hands into anything on the planet. Not imperial offices, but about as high as novices could hope to get-work that would give them connections for future advances and all the opportunities they would need to show just what kind of work they were capable of doing.
In a stroke, they had been given a chance to make careers for themselves.
Who is he, an angel? God? Josif asked the Chief.
The Chief laughed. Most people put him at the opposite end of things. The Devil. The Angel of Death. But he's nothing like that at all. He's just Ferret. The emperor's ferret, you see. He makes people and he unmakes them, and answers only to the emperor.
They knew how well he could make people. The unmaking they saw when, a few weeks later, they were watching the vids in their apartment. The day in Babylon had been hot and rainy, until at sunset they had stood on their balcony watching the light glisten on waterdrops clinging to a billion blades of grass, with the long shadows of trees interrupting the lush savannah at random yet perfect intervals. An elephant moved lazily through the tall grass. A herd of gazelles bounded north in the distance. Kyaren and Josif felt utterly exhausted from the day's work, utterly at peace from the evening's beauty, a delicious mood of languor. They knew the conviction of the plotters would be cast from Tegucigalpa tonight, and they felt an obligation to watch.
As moments from the trials were presented, with the faces of their former co-workers again and again in the dock, Kyaren began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Not because she had turned them in-but because she had felt no qualms about doing so. Would she have been so eager to denounce them if they had not so openly excluded her? She imagined what it might have been like if she had come into the Office of Pensions more humbly, not preceded by remarkable tests, not clothed in her perpetual reserve. Would they then have befriended her, gradually admitted her to the plot? Would she then have denounced them?