Patrizia pushed away from the rope and deftly retrieved the thing, returning with a well-aimed rebound. She examined it, frowning, then passed it to Carla.
The cylinder was made of wood. It had a thin hollow core that reached almost its full length, but stopped just short of the far end. Carla had seen something similar before, used as a sheath for a needle.
“They must have injected him with something,” she said. She handed the object back to Patrizia.
“Who would have access to a drug like that?” Patrizia asked. “A pharmacist? A doctor? A biologist? Maybe that hunter who helped him catch the arborines?”
Carla said, “Anyone could have stolen it.”
“But those supplies would be monitored closely,” Patrizia replied. “We could check with all the groups who use that kind of thing.”
“Starting with Tosco’s?” Carla knew she meant well, but begging people to audit their drug inventories would be pointless. “Whoever it is, they’ll be asking him about the tapes,” she said. “The recordings of the arborine mating.”
“If that’s all they want, surely he’ll just tell them where they are,” Patrizia suggested hopefully. “Why would he be stubborn about it?”
“But that’s the problem,” Carla said. “If he gives up the tapes too easily, they’ll understand that they don’t really matter: he can always make another recording. He can always do the whole thing again.”
Patrizia said, “So you’re afraid they’ll realize that, and try to kill off all the arborines?”
“That’s one possibility. Or maybe they’d think one step beyond that, and understand that sooner or later someone would volunteer to take the arborines’ place.”
“So if the tapes don’t matter, and the arborines don’t matter…?” Patrizia struggled to grasp her point.
“If he doesn’t fight for the tapes,” Carla said, “they’ll understand that the only way to end this is to kill him.”
“No, no, no.” Patrizia reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t say that! If they’re so quick to grasp the futility of destroying the tapes and the animals, they should understand one more thing: even if they did kill Carlo—and Macaria and Amanda—it would only take a year or two for someone else to reinvent all the same techniques. Everyone in the mountain understands what’s possible now. That can’t be undone.”
Carla said, “Maybe. But from what I’ve read of history, lost causes have cost as many lives as any other kind.”
Patrizia had no answer to that. She said, “We should go to the Council chambers. They might not let us into the meeting, but at least we can be the first to hear what they decide.”
Carla could hear raised voices coming from the chamber, but the words remained indistinct. Why couldn’t Carlo have taken his discovery to the Council, before anyone else had had a chance to find out what he’d done? Whether they’d have shut down his research or allowed it to continue, at least the responsibility would have fallen on them.
The meeting stretched on interminably. After half a bell, Macario arrived to join the vigil.
“Any news?” Carla asked him. She barely knew the man, but it was painful to see his haunted demeanor.
“Not yet,” he said. “But if Tosco knows where they are, I’ll beat it out of him.”
“I don’t think he’s behind this,” Carla said. “However angry he was at being kept in the dark, he still had authority over the project. There was a lot more he could have done, legitimately—”
Macario interrupted her. “He told Carlo to put a stop to this, but Carlo ignored him. What ‘authority’ is that?”
Carla didn’t want to have this argument. “Did you send out a report on Macaria?” she asked.
“Of course. And my friends are heading out to search the farms.”
“The farms?”
“Where else can you hide someone?”
That did make sense; cries for help would be heard from any apartment or storeroom, and even the noisiest pump room received too many visits from maintenance workers to make a good jail. Tamara’s kidnappers had shown the way—and if they’d also made the choice a bit too obvious, their successors might well have reasoned that the other advantages outweighed that.
Carla thought about joining the search party; it seemed Macario had only left his friends to come chasing after Tosco. But first she needed to hear what the Council decided. If they banned the research that might be enough to mollify the kidnappers—in which case it would probably be safer for Carlo if she just waited for news of the decision to spread.
“I think the meeting’s breaking up,” Patrizia announced.
Carla said, “Your hearing’s better than mine.”
The Councilors began emerging from the chamber. She searched for Amanda, but Silvano appeared first.
Carla approached him. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“There’s going to be a vote,” he said. “To determine whether the experiments can proceed.”
“Going to be? Why haven’t you taken one already?”
“The vote will be for everyone,” Silvano explained. “That’s what we decided. This wasn’t an issue when we were elected to the Council, so we agreed that we have no mandate to set a policy. Two stints from now, every adult will be able to cast a vote on the matter.”
“Two stints?” Carla stared at him angrily. “A lot of things weren’t issues when you were elected; that’s never stopped you making decisions about them.”
“Carla, this is—”
“And how are people going to vote on this, when they don’t even know what it’s about?” she protested. “Half of them think Carlo built a magical light player that can make women give birth from afar!”
Silvano said, “There’ll be information meetings every day until the vote, with Amanda and Tosco setting out the facts.”
“Tosco?” Carla was about to object that Tosco had already shown himself to be wildly partisan, but then she understood that there was no point arguing about any of this. The vote would go ahead; nothing she said was going to change that. So let Tosco denounce the project, let people believe any rumors they liked: a plague of fission that spread faster than wheat blight, with every woman giving birth to six arborines. If there had to be a vote, what she needed was a foregone conclusion: a certain loss for Carlo’s side, so the kidnappers would have no reason to harm him.
Macario had cornered Tosco and was shouting in his face. Carla looked on as Tosco protested his innocence. “Someone left a note in my office,” he said. “I have no idea who it was.”
Silvano said, “The Council’s authorized a search of the Peerless. We’ve diverted two dozen people from the fire-watch roster to carry it out, but I’ll show you and Macario the names and you can ask for replacements if you believe anyone has a conflict of interest.”
“All right.”
“And you’re welcome to accompany them on the search, as an observer,” Silvano added.
“Thank you.” Carla felt a little less hopeless; the Council hadn’t abandoned the abductees entirely.
But the kidnappers would be expecting a search; they’d be prepared to shuffle Carlo and Macaria from one site to another. However large the team that scoured the mountain, they couldn’t look everywhere at once. Two dozen searchers were better than nothing, but the real power still lay with the voters.
If she wanted to see Carlo alive again, what she needed most of all was a way to turn everyone on the Peerless against him.