After a moment, Duncan nodded. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
After all that melodrama, the capture itself was ludicrously easy. Everything went like a good opening night, just enough adrenalin to keep you in top form and no surprises you couldn’t cope with. There were hidden gas-jets in the hallway—but p-suits made them irrelevant. The laser-hole by Tokugawa’s door was the perfect gauge for Rand’s hose. She had a p-suit of her own stashed in her office, and managed to reach it—but passed out before she got its hood over her head. Once they had access to her terminal, Jay and Duncan were able between them to coax the system back up and on-line in a matter of minutes. As the main lights came on, they could almost feel the cheer reverberating around the Shimizu. Then, ignoring the hundreds of incoming calls, they put in an SOS to the Space Command, and soon found themselves talking to an Admiral Cox, an old warhorse who was most interested in—and totally unfazed by—an attempted overthrow of the planetary government. With a minimum of words, he extracted from them every scrap of useful information they could give him, then put them on hold.
Despite a mild sense of anticlimax, Jay felt himself grinning. “We did it, guys,” he said.
“Hell of a note,” Rand said. “I started the day a respectable artist—and now I’m running a goddam hotel.”
Jay giggled. “You may be going out there just a star, kid… but you’re coming back a waitress.”
“You know,” Duncan said, “I always thought I could run this dump better than that asshole.” He gestured at the sleeping Tokugawa, and all three of them broke up. She did look silly. In the absence of gravity, simply binding a person’s wrists and ankles does not immobilize her effectively enough; instead you tape each wrist to its related bicep, each ankle to its thigh, then tape elbows and knees together. The result looked remarkably like a Buddhist in the midst of prostrating herself.
But their laughter chopped off short when they noticed that she was no longer breathing.
“… and about half an hour later, Commander Panter showed up with six Marines in full armor—and here we are,” Jay finished. He glanced at his watchfinger. “I’d say she died about two hours ago. That’s everything we know, Admiral.”
He and Rand and Duncan were in a place any small boy would have killed to visit: the command center of the Citadel, the UN Space Command’s principal fortress in space. It looked just like it did in the movies. The only person with them now was Admiral Cox himself, a grizzled old centenarian with a startlingly warm smile—but Jay knew perfectly well that every word he’d just said had been heard by literally hundreds of people on and off Earth. It was beginning to make him distinctly uneasy too. Cox was treating them as vip guests—but Jay was beginning to suspect how long it might be before he slept in his own bed again.
Cox sucked coffee from a battered military-issue bulb, and nodded sadly. “Post mortem shows a fatal allergy to sedation. Iatrogenic, of course. Her superiors didn’t even give her an option. They wanted her interrogation-proof. Interesting people.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral. We should have thought—should have given her antidote right away—”
Cox shook his head emphatically. “There was no other way to take her; you’d have thrown your lives away trying. And it was too late for antidote the moment she lost consciousness. More coffee, gentlemen?”
Jay had been too busy talking to consciously taste his; he queried his tongue and learned that the brew had come from the Atherton tablelands of Queensland. “Yes, please, Admiral.” The others accepted as well, and a servobot much uglier and clumsier than anything in the Shimizu brought them fresh bulbs.
There was a short silence while they all drank. Rand broke it. “We screwed up,” he said hollowly—and Jay felt himself nodding in agreement.
“On the contrary!” Cox said. “You walked among the lions today, son, and all your blood is still on the right side of your skin. Are you sure none of you has had military training?” All three shook their heads. “If you were my cadets, I’d be sewing stripes on all three of you right now.”
“But we don’t know shit,” Rand insisted.
“We know a lot more than we would if you three had gotten yourselves dead trying to take her cowboy-style! I’d be sitting here right now, listening to Kate Tokugawa tell me the emergency was over and thanks, but they didn’t need any assistance. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone at Top Step to try and call Humphrey, and get a no-such-guest-in-house? Now we’ve got everything you learned, days before they thought we would—and five low-level thugs we were able to take alive, we can sweat them—”
“—and it all adds up to doodah,” Jay said. “If the Security goons know anything useful, they’ll be allergic to interrogation. And what we know just doesn’t make any goddam sense.”
“Not by itself, no. But it may tie in with other things… tell me, would you gentlemen consent to hypnointerrogation? You may know things you don’t know you know.”
“On one condition,” Rand said.
“State it.”
“Admiral, this is high-level stuff. I’m a civilian. I want your personal word that when you put this all together, you’ll share it with me. I’ll take any kind of secrecy oath you want—trigger me up like a courier if you want, so I can’t talk—but I have to know. Not what the cronkites get told, but the truth.”
“The same goes for me,” Jay said.
“Me too, Admiral,” Duncan said.
Cox did not answer right away, and they did not hurry him. He met each of their eyes in turn. Finally he said, “I agree to that, whether you consent to hypno or not. You’ve earned it. For a start, I will tell you that yours wasn’t the only kidnapping. Data are still coming in, but there have been at least two others in space, and more than a dozen dirtside—beautifully coordinated, assorted methods but one hundred percent success rate. I am not aware of any other military engagement in modern history accomplished with such elegance and efficiency. Billions were spent. Well spent.”
“What kind of people were taken?” Jay asked.
“Saints.”
“What?”
“Holy men and women. Spiritually enlightened people. Like Reb and Meiya—and Fat Humphrey too, in his way. Several different faiths, and two whose religion has no brand name at all, but they’re all what Reb would call bodhisattvas. Mother Theresas, if you’re old enough to get the reference. You know: saints.”
“You mean like the Pope?” Duncan asked.
“I didn’t say religious leaders. I said spiritually enlightened people. One of them seems to be an Aboriginal witch woman. Another is a Pakistani musician who only plays hospitals.”
“Of course,” Rand said, slapping his forehead. “What’s wrong with me? You want to overthrow the UN, naturally you kidnap saints, musicians and fat maitre-d’s.”
“It just keeps getting worse,” Duncan said. “More than a dozen perfect military operations, carried out by wealthy morons.”
“Admiral, is there anything the captives have in common besides… well, besides holiness?” Jay asked.
Cox lifted one bald eyebrow respectfully. “You do keep surprising me, Sasaki-sama. Yes. One and only one overt connection between them. They are all known to be on especially intimate terms with the Starmind.”
Rand’s eyes showed a gleam of excitement. “Some sort of hostage deal—” he began.