“No,” she said, with a tinge of regret. “We had to separate, during our time as fugitives. I don’t know where he went. Otherwise I’d have gone to him already.”
In Confederate custody, this woman would have been interrogated for the rest of her life, by grim men ill-inclined to take no for an answer. Even those inclined to believe her, as I found I did, would have pressed the question forever, using techniques that approached and exceeded all possible definitions of torture. There would have been no choice. He was Mankind’s single greatest bogeyman, and we all lived in paranoid fear of his return, this time armed with something that made the Fugue look like a stuffy nose.
I did not have the time or the authority to do what so many of my colleagues would have done, but I couldn’t accept a simple no, either. “Do you have any reason to believe he’s still alive?”
“Yes,” she said. “Faith.”
“Do you have any reason to believe the Bettelhines are in contact with him?”
Monday Brown shifted in his chair, looking as unhappy as any child receiving a sweater as his only gift for Specday. “That’s a bit much, Counselor.”
I whirled on him with something like a snarl. “You’re the bastards putting his old slaves to work. I’d say it’s absolutely fucking called for.” Then turned my attention back to Mrs. Pearlman. “Answer the question.”
Her lips pursed, hiding the smile that had threatened to form when I’d snapped at Brown. “Why would they want anything to do with him? They make their riches from human beings at war with one another. Human beings who can’t interact at all are useless to them.”
“The Fugue ravages any civilization it touches. That’s a pretty powerful prize for a munitions empire.”
“Not really,” she said, with the slightest shade of boredom. “It’s useless as a weapon of conquest. In any battle between nations confined to a single planet, the first country using it is unable to avoid being infected in the process.”
Skye said, “Fear of Mutual Assured Destruction has never prevented the development of doomsday weapons.”
“A good point. But, unlike most devices of that kind, the Fugue is not the kind of tech martial cultures can be persuaded to covet. Dying at the same time as your enemies has such a romantic cache that any population can be persuaded to crave it. But damning yourself and everyone you know to a state you perceive as a living death is a different prospect entirely.”
“And in any battle between worlds, separated by space but capable of bombing each other into oblivion?”
Mrs. Pearlman sniffed. “Please. There are less of those than the action-adventure neurecs, so beloved by the common man, would have you think. But again, even if that scenario happened more often than it does, the Fugue’s the last thing you would ever want to drop on an enemy. If you’re fighting for territory, you do not salt the earth you covet and render the land useless to yourself. And if you just wish to destroy the other civilization out of sheer malice, there are other ways to do it, bombs and mass-drivers and the like, that will eliminate their ability to fight back and therefore don’t leave the power for full, automated retaliation still in the hands of vengeful commanders unable to consider regard for your civilian populations even as a distant, nagging abstraction.” She licked her lips, establishing with her slight smile that she found the very image delicious. It took her a moment of dwelling on it, finding pleasure in the very idea, before she was able to continue, fresh scarlet blushing her plump cheeks. “No, Counselor, I’d have to say that the only people who would want to use the Fugue are those agreeing with its philosophical point. The Bettelhines may present some useful opportunities for a woman with my skill set, but they haven’t demonstrated that kind of elevated consciousness. Believe me, I know. I believe in the Fugue. I propose mass-producing it every six months, Mercantile, and the decision-makers here have always given their most emphatic no.”
Thank Juje for small favors. “And that would be who, in your case?”
“First the late Kurt Bettelhine, then his eldest son Hans. Soon, if I live long enough, Philip. He’s been seeing to my needs for three or four years now.”
“Just Philip?”
“I’ve met Jason and Jelaine before. They know about my work, and have required my aid on a couple of past occasions. But no, they did not know of my past connection to Magrison. That, I’ve been encouraged to keep secret.”
So she was not some black project, initiated by some overzealous company man without the knowledge of his superiors. All the Bettelhines knew about her, even if they didn’t all know where she came from. I said, “And that ridiculous situation-comedy personality you put on, earlier?”
“A means of camouflage I’ve developed, over the years. It comes in handy when I must deal with outsiders like yourself.”
I would have some harsh words for her illustrious host Hans, if we ever did manage to stand on the same planetary surface at the same time. “How did you come to work for them?”
“I arrived in my personal transport and sent a message from the outer system. Docking at Layabout would have been easier, you understand, but in those days it was dangerous for Magrison followers to approach armed worlds except under a flag of truce.”
Skye muttered something I did not hear but, doubtless, would have agreed with. I said, “Did you identify yourself?”
“Yes. I gave my resume and offered my services in exchange for protection.”
“Who did you speak to?”
“It went up the chain of command until I found myself speaking to Kurt. He was still in charge, back then.”
“And he just authorized your approach, knowing what you might be carrying?”
“No. He directed me to meet his fleet at Spyraeth, an uninhabited moon in the outer system. They quarantined me there, subject to regular searches and interrogations for almost a year, until they determined that I had no samples of the Fugue, anywhere aboard.”
“And then?”
“Kurt Bettelhine spoke to me again and asked me why he shouldn’t just surrender me to your Confederacy, as a gesture of good faith. He said that cooperating with your authorities on this manner would be a fine way to approve relations between the two powers. I told him that I had a number of ideas he could find profitable, more conservative uses of the techniques that had gone into the creation of the Fugue. After some research, I presented him with additional weaponry capable of managing the behavior of entire enemy populations. Later, I produced more focused uses of the same technology—”
Thinking of Bocai, I had gone rigid at the phrase additional weaponry capable of managing the behavior of entire enemy populations. “Has that…ever been used, Mrs. Pearlman?”
“Not my department,” she said.
And Monday Brown looked irritated again. “Counselor, may I please point out that these questions exist outside your license for exploring corporate secrets? The Khaajiir wasn’t killed with a virus. Nor was he killed from a distance. He was killed close up, with a Claw of God. A weapon that, I should add, existed many millennia before this woman was even born.”
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to beat her until she confessed that the capabilities she’d boasted about had been used on Bocai. But he had a point, damn him. Much as I wanted to know what horrors this woman had produced, on behalf of our hosts, getting those details could take weeks I didn’t have, and an authority I could not claim. “What happened when Kurt Bettelhine agreed to take you on?”
“He installed me in the isolated island facility where I still work today, with a small but dedicated staff of qualified experts in the field.”