Текст книги "Forge of Heaven "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

In an inner, mostly numb spot, Reaux began to be afraid as well as outraged, while he tried to keep his expression neutral and his mind on track. This was a dangerous, intelligent man. Tranked as he was, unkempt as a drugout in a gutter on Blunt, he still tracked, still reasoned…still mounted a terrifying threat. What did it take to knock this man out? “I’ll make initial arrangements for office space, if you like. I understand your injuries will let you out of here in fairly short order.”

“I expect it.”

“I’ll relay your requests to Mr. Dortland.” He was scrambling, mentally, to find a pocket to drop Mr. Gide into—preferably a deep, dark one. And hit on a reassuring objection. “There is an operational precedent for cooperative administrative operations, in the Medical Authority itself, limited by the Treaty on this particular station, but having absolute powers in its sphere. And there is the PO. There’s always the PO, on Concord.” And my relations with it, he thought, doggedly, which weren’t going to change. “And the ondat,who have their own voice. Not to mention the planet itself. All of which I’m charged to keep in equilibrium. The Treaty Board has its powers, but, I’m constrained to point out, sir, the Treaty Board’s authority regulates Treaty compliance, not the planet, orthe PO, and certainly not the ondat,so I must dispute your interpretation of equal standing.”

“You have no authority over my office.”

“You propose to open an office to make yet one moreauthority on Concord, which only makes one of half a dozen, Mr. Gide, and you do notoutrank the Earth Authority, which appointed me, or the Apex Council, which appointed the local Chairman, nor yet, I assure you, the ondatauthority, in whose territory, let me recall to you, we actually sit. You don’t even outrank the Medical Authority, which I assure you is very potent within its own sphere. As governor, it’s my job to keep all these jurisdictions in balance and keep relations with the ondatand Apex in good order. Your investigation of any breach of containment crosses all these jurisdictions, but most of them are foreign, and that boils down to the fact that you can’t order these other jurisdictions to act, you can only request. Close cooperation, sir, close cooperation between your office and mine is essential, and I assure you that, whatever your credentials, you and your office cannot superimpose any authority over mine. On any other station, perhaps. But try to get me replaced, and discover that you’ll disturb all the alliances and working agreements extant here, in a way very disagreeable to Earth itself. You may be the advocate for the Treaty, but you exist in a constellation of authorities on this station, and you will exist cooperatively within that framework, or you will not function with any power at all. Now let me not be rude. Let me assure you you’ll receive very good cooperation from my office. But not obedience. You likewise need Brazis’s cooperation, to make headway in his sphere. I suggest diplomacy, Mr. Ambassador.”

It was the best speech of his life. It was absolutely his most eloquent, and after he’d delivered it he found he’d scared hell out of himself, but he meant it. And the one witness to his moment was the victim of an adrenaline load clearly running out, apparent in the droop of eyelids, the lines of pain and anger in a pasty-pale face. “Meanwhile my would-be assassin is loose on your well-run station, Governor, and you’ve conveniently misplaced Stafford.”

“We’ll find both, at high priority, I assure you. Meanwhile—” Reaux started foolishly to reach for a pocket and couldn’t, through the isolation suit. “Meanwhile the hospital staff can reach my office at any moment. Call me if you recall any further details, anything you may have noted and failed to state in the report.”

“Quite a blank at the moment,” Gide said muzzily. He reached for a water glass on the table. It escaped his hands. It fell, spilling its contents.

A cleaner-bot zipped out of its housing in the baseboard and sucked up glass and water both.

“Do you want me to call the nurse?” Reaux asked. “I’ll get you some more water.”

“The hell with it. I’m tired.”

“I’ll be in contact,” Reaux said. “Rest.”

Gide, falling back, shut his eyes, looking like a corpse.

Reaux walked out, earnestly wishing Gide were one.

9

DOWN ON BLUNT…down in a maze he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten into—Procyon walked somewhere among the warehouses that supplied the fancy shops on Grozny, somewhere near a bar he thought he recognized.

But that would mean he’d been going the wrong way.

He’d lost his coat somewhere. Stupid of him. He couldn’t remember how. He knew he was in trouble with Brazis, and he’d folded on his assignment, and the man from Earth wasn’t dead, but good as, with the suit breached. The explosion came back to him. The situation began to reassemble itself, in shattered bits, like glass, each one containing an image, and all out of order.

He did know he shouldn’t be where he was. It was a bad neighborhood. He’d thought sure he was headed right, and after a blank, he turned up here, disoriented, not even sure of the cross street. Bars and frontages changed on Blunt. They moved, sometimes color-shifted overnight without warning, and sometimes the owners just stripped the facade and glued it up somewhere else down the block, which wasn’t guaranteed to be at all where you remembered it being. Cops hated the zone. He wasn’t fond of it, himself, at the moment. He wanted to get home, was all, and he made repeated attempts to tap into the office directly from where he was, that only gave him headache.

He tried again. “Sir?”

Blood shunt and pain behind the eyes.

Bad pain. Really bad pain, right to the roots of his teeth.

“Procyon.”

The tap came crystal clear for a second.

It was a woman’s voice. Downworld accent. He figured it must be somebody really senior in the offices, somebody senior like Drusus, a tap so used to dealing with the Old Ones it just crept into ordinary speech.

“Where are you, Procyon?”

Pain ebbed. He could think. “In public, ma’am. Can you ease back? You’re coming through very high. It’s painful.” Tears blurred his eyes. But the tap was working. He wasn’t cut off. He didn’t care about the pain. It was all relief. “Tell Brazis I’m sorry…”

“What are they doing? What is Brazis doing?”

Then, sharply: “This is Luz. Answer me.”

It so confused him he stopped cold, out of breath and leaning against a building frontage, ducking slightly into a nook between frontages. He tried to form an answer. A coherent thought.

Luz? There was only one Luz that could be reaching him on that tap.

And she was downworld. Was he hallucinating?

“Answer, Procyon.”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“What happened?”

“Something exploded. Something blew up when I was talking to the ambassador. I think—I think I couldn’t hear for a while. I think the tap is damaged. My ears are still ringing. Tell Brazis.”

“Where are you?”

“On the street. I’m confused. I think I’m on Blunt. But I don’t know for sure where I am.”

“Are you badly injured?”

He looked down at himself. Except for losing his coat, except for the dizziness and the memory lapse, he didn’t look hurt. A little dust. He thought he might be bleeding here and there, but it was a dark shirt. “I don’t see anything physical. I’m just shaky. My ears hurt. I can still hardly hear the street. Like everything’s down a deep pipe. Can you help me reach the Chairman?”

“What blew up?”

“I think somebody shot through the door. I tried to help the ambassador. His machine was over on its side, but I don’t think he’s dead. Somebody needs to get to him…” The pain in his head ebbed a little. Someone in charge of the taps had detected something way out of parameters…he didn’t know: he didn’t understand all that went on in Central. He only used what he was given. Discreetly. Which this wasn’t, standing here, leaning on a frontage like a drunk. He was in deep trouble with Brazis, who wouldn’t like him talking here in public. And Luz was involved. God help him. “Can somebody please get me to the office? I’m a little dizzy.”

Sharp stab of pain. “Marak is concerned,”another voice said, likewise female, and in old, old downworld accents. “Now we know you’re alive. Good. Ignore Brazis’s orders. Marak demands your attention. He trusts everyone in this affair less than he needs do, until he hears from you, and he refuses common sense. Speak to him! Do you hear us, boy?”

Female. He didn’t know who. But he had a sudden, dire suspicion who it was, besides Luz, and shivered, whispering, “Yes, ma’am.”

A third female voice interposed: “Ila, he’s not permitted.”Station accent. Maybe one of the taps.

“But we are permitted,”that second voice said, autocratic and absolute. And he tried to shut it out and not to answer, but an off signal didn’t work. Nothing he did worked to protect him from that contact, loud as it wanted to be, as nothing he had done had summoned it. He leaned against the wall, unable to control the tremor in his hands, unable to see anything but black, now, and flashes of light in his eyes that tried to form patterns. And he kept thinking what that voice had said, that Marak needed to hear from him, but he couldn’t tap through.

“ Where have you been?”the female voice demanded of him. “Some Earth lord arrives, expecting to gain satisfaction from our servants? And local authority permits this? Brazis is mistaken in that estimation of protocols and priorities, let me assure you.”

Silence. Silence so deep and so sudden after that storm in the tap that he felt deaf and blind in its departure. His heart pounded as if he had run the length of the Trend.

Vision returned, hazily so. The lights had stopped flashing.

He tried to reach Brazis. Tried to tap into the system, but pain shot through his skull, his pulse raced, and his control was gone. Passersby on the street surreptitiously stared at him, pretending to continue their own business, but noticing, some sizing him up. Perhaps he had gotten bad news in a tap message. Perhaps he had become ill. In this neighborhood, no one asked. Nobody would intervene—except the predators.

Flash of light. Gentler, this time.

Quieter voice. “Procyon.”

“Sir.” Brazis.With ineffable relief, he turned his face toward the cold wall—not that people on the street weren’t accustomed to drunk people talking to their disembodied taps, or singing or dancing to them, but he had his wits about him now enough to remember some people read lips. “Sir, somebody shot the ambassador.”

“I know.”

“Downworld just tapped in.”

“The Ila, piggybacking on Luz. We know that, too.”

“She can do that?”

“She’s done it before, which you unfortunately now know, and we don’t know what else she’s gotten her hands on. Don’t discuss that where you are. Just listen. Where are you?”

“Don’t know, sir. On Blunt, somewhere. On Blunt. A Brant’s Drug. Across the street.” He leaned against the wall and craned to see the adjacent frontage. “Mullan’s Delivery.”

“Drusus is coming to get you. Physically coming to get you. Stay off the tap right now, if you can. I know everything that’s happened. The ambassador is not dead. We need you back in the office. Immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” He leaned back, shivering. Relieved at that news, though the tap had given him a horrid headache that shot from ears to eyes, blinding light, right at the seat of his personal universe. He tried to think past it, tried to remember all that Brazis had just said. And what Luz and the Ila had said about Marak, which alarmed him.

Brazis opposing Luz and the Ila. That wasn’t good. If Brazis was taking a course contrary to Luz, it wasn’t good, and the Ila herself was saying Marak was in trouble.

Drususwas coming to get him? Drusus was supposed to be with Marak, wasn’t he? Or was he wrong about the time of day?

Don’t use the tap, Brazis said. Don’t use the tap.

He walked a few steps, then tried to remember whether Brazis had said stay put, or whether he should try to get out to Grozny, where he was easier to see. Method wasn’t clear to him. He didn’t know where Drusus was.

Flash of light. Blinding. Roar in his ears. He found himself sitting down on the street, conspicuous, not remembering the last few minutes, and tried shakily to get up, dusting himself off.

A knee-high cleaner-bot had come out of the adjacent service nook to see about him, mistaking him for refuse. A half dome, it hummed and flashed across its surface with, he imagined, reproach.

“Come,” it said.

He thought it was Drusus who was supposed to find him. And here he was hearing voices from a cleaner-bot.

“Come.” It butted him in the ankle. Hard. And moved off.

What was he supposed to do? Was this thing under someone’s personal control? He tried hard to tap in.

Senses exploded, a flare of light that hit his aching head right behind the eyes, sound that buzzed in his ears. He crouched down on the street, making himself a human ball, trying to shut it out. He pressed his hands hard against his eyes, trying to stop the flashes, trying to order his blood flow past the headache to send a clear signal on the tap, before his head exploded.

Cleaner-bots were all around him. If a man went down the bots were supposed to call the hospital. But these seized on him, gripped his clothing, gripped his arms painfully, and extruded lift-arms under him.

“Let me go!” he cried. But they dragged him away into the adjacent service nook, rapidly, rapidly. He couldn’t kick, he couldn’t move his arms. A clicking of wheels on tiles marked their passage, and tugs at his limbs indicated a certain AI randomness in their movement—autonomous units cooperating, robots deaf to his protests.

He was swept up with the damn garbage, was what. He couldn’t break free. He yelled for help, and no one on Blunt gave it.

A low metal gate gaped ahead, affording scant clearance for the machines dragging at his limbs. It was dark inside. He tried desperately to free a hand or bend a knee and catch the edge of the opening, but with a concerted whirr and a buzzing of wheels, they dragged him painfully past the gate.

They were in a cleaning chute. He was headed straight for disposal.

“Help!” he yelled, in total darkness, and the tap got only wild signal, flashes of white shock.

“Help!”

Down and down. He didn’t know whether they combusted the trash or chopped it to bits or compacted it before they did any of that. He fought, he yelled, he tried to kick. He felt joints in the metal passage as they dragged him along, faster and faster. His skull banged over the seams until the small impacts began to distract him, a misery unto themselves.

They took a turn, and another turn, clattering along in absolute dark, where bots obeyed impulses that had nothing at all to do with sight or human senses, and the only measure of it was the seams in the chute. He yelled. He fought as hard as he could in the narrow chute, until the pain in his skull overpowered his coordination.

Then they were free of the chute, wide enough to bend his knees, to try to roll over. The air was choked with ammonia. His eyes began to water with it, and he made out a dim green light, illusory, like phosphor glow. He tried to tear free and turn and get a knee or a foot on the surface.

Something dark and insubstantial wisped over his face, a horrid contact. The robots froze, holding him in their unbreakable grip as that presence loomed over him.

Something spidery and soft and alive touched his face. He heard a sound, muttering, clicking.

“Let me go!” he yelled. Reason began to tell him where he was, what he felt, was real. That he had met the ondat. “Let me go. Human. Let go. Let go!”

It muttered and clicked. That wispy touch pressed down on his skull, on his forehead, with increasing force.

Pain, then. Sharp pain. He yelled at it to make it let him go, before his skull broke.

He couldn’t breathe. His skull was bursting. He couldn’t yell any longer. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t ask it to let him go. It just did. Finally.

It said something. He didn’t know what. Something huge drifted past the source of the glow, something that moved, away from him, and blotted out all light, all sound.

MAGDALLEN HAD REACTED to that unexpected intrusion in the tap system—Magdallen had been talking to Dianne, in fact, and fallen quite ill in the outer office. Dianne had gotten him a cup of water and a shot of vasodilator. Luz’s call and the Ila’s pirating of the contact had blasted through the entire system like a nuclear device.

Brazis hadn’t personally felt the attack. He’d had channels opened up all over the station trying to make contact with Procyon, and left them open for Drusus. That had possibly widened the disaster. Hewasn’t regularly on that channel, but the Project taps who happened to be on the system were all affected. One of the Ila’s senior taps had suffered a stroke, and was in medical right now, at risk of her life and future health—

Not that the Ila gave an effective damn.

Luzhad started it—Luz had had a long and uneasy relationship with Concord, being inclined to push a situation and push it hard. Ian was the reasonable voice. But then the Ila had gotten into it, and hadgotten Procyon’s attention—the one benefit: so had he, though without being able to pinpoint Procyon’s whereabouts.

But now he couldn’t get Drusus, who would have been wide open to that blast through the tap system, if he had been trying to contact Procyon. Drusus could be lying unconscious on the street, for all he knew. Could have gone down like the Ila’s tap.

He’d called Council into emergency session, under the vice chairman, while he stayed in his office. He’d just sent agents out looking for Drusus…and now he wanted to see Magdallen, as soon as Magdallen got out of the restroom.

Meanwhile he tended his orchids, which had received an inordinate amount of care in the last couple of days. He let his mind concentrate utterly on the gloss of the common phalaenopsis and its new growth: its bloom stem had yellowed, and he had soon to take the critical step of separating the parent and the offshoot on that yellowing stem. Those two lovely leaves were doomed. It was about to suffer stress, and those leaves, too, would yellow, as new growth appeared. Depend on it, he had far rather think about that than about Magdallen—or the Council at Apex, which, yes, he now knew, and not too remarkably so, had kept alive its own store of the highly classified nanisms, the biological base of the downworld taps, that never should have left Concord, nanoceles that were supposed to be confined to the Project from the making of the Treaty onward. Magdallenhad been affected by the Ila’s intrusion. Therefore Apex had inserted Project nanoceles into one of its agents and sent him here to spy on the Project—a plan more than a year in the making, since learning to interpret the taps was not instantaneous.

So if Concord should be taken out, if some utter disaster should happen here, some hiccup of the sun or some hostile action that destroyed the station, yes, it was only prudent, he conceded it, that the Council at Apex keep the Project nanoceles secretly in reserve, a means to reconstitute this last spaceborne link to Movement technology and the downworld team of Ian and Luz. The Project tap wasMovement technology, all told.

And that highly classified knowledge had always worried Earth.

Was it MagdallenEarth had heard about? Had it sent its ill-timed investigation in to find an illicit use of Project technology?

That Apex had let someone carrying that technology loose on Concord, to eavesdrop on official taps without telling him…that, as far as he knew, was unprecedented. That he had only now found it out, when a burst through the system had dropped their previously covert agent on his ass along with the rest of the taps, made him madder than hell. Gidemight be from the Treaty Board, and they were likely stuck with him, a situation that also made him madder than hell. That was a problem they would have to handle. And Gidewas convinced they had unregulated First Movement operating on the station, which he had denied, while someone tried to blow up Mr. Gide.

So now, in this very hour, they had had the Ila walking roughshod over their security systems, a flaming advertisement to all who could possibly touch those systems that First Movement tech wasn’t always under control. Marak was refusing to abandon his chase after their transportation, was refusing just to go straight down to be picked up, had his own plan, which he was following to the edge of perdition, and now Luz and the Ila were irate about the disturbance that had pulled Marak’s taps out of sequence and so irritated himthat he wasn’t taking their advice. Luz was angry with Ian, the Ila was angry and broke into the system he’d left wide open…

And it all happened with an Earth ship to witness, while the ambassador was lying in hospital. The whole damned fiasco sent him incandescent, and he would soon have to explain it all to involved parties, including the ondat.

To cap it all, Marak himself might have been affected by the latest outburst, since he had been in contact with Auguste, as best he gathered, who was in his own apartment’s lavatory puking his guts out.

He wanted answers. He wanted them now.

“Magdallen is mostly recovered at this moment,”Dianne reported, “but pleads intense headache. He wishes to go back to his apartment.”

“The hell he will,” he said. Damned right Magdallen had suddenly changed his mind about wanting to see him. Likely Magdallen never wanted to visit his office again, and wished he were safe back on Apex. But it was far too late for Magdallen to pretend he didn’t have that tap. “Send him in,” he told Dianne. Hell, he supposed he could tap in and callthe damned snoop in, if he knew his tap code.

Which he didn’t. Which he meant to get forthwith, and not have to hunt noisily through the system.

With a careful fingertip, he wiped a fleck of shed plant matter from the spotless lighted shelf, then stalked to his desk and sat down behind that solid fortification before the door opened and Magdallen walked in.

White-faced, Magdallen dropped into the interview chair.

“Feeling better?” he asked Magdallen.

“Yes, sir. A little indigestion.”

“There’s a damper in place to cut the top off the spike, or I can guarantee your indigestion would have been much worse.” Brazis made up his mind to level with Magdallen to a certain degree: truthers could only get so much. He hoped to shake the truth out of an already-shaken man. “We moved a particular agent off the tap, and Luzis mildly annoyed. More, the Ilais annoyed. Marak, who is out there in a situation, short of his mission goal, I’m sure is beyond annoyed at this point, if not injured, and his sole remaining tap is, at this very moment, in his own bathroom, trying to get back on duty and communicate with him despite the shock to his nervous system. Gide is in hospital, madder than hell, and we know his opinion of all of us before this even started. I’ve carefully explained to Ian that there’s an Earth envoy up here, and Ian said that theyweren’t pleased about having this ambassador talk to Marak’s tap, but he did agree that we’ve done as well as we could under the circumstances. Patently we don’t have Luz on our side in this business, however, and a little two-person cabal we’ve had concern us before may have just re-created itself: two women I assure you it isn’t good to argue with have now formed a society of mutual reinforcement. The Ila and Luz are irritated extremely at Earth’s interference, and probably at me. So, bluntly asked, Agent Magdallen, what was Apex intending to do? Why in hell are you on my station? What lunacylet loose someone who can eavesdrop on the Project and involve himself with Marak’s World without clearance from me, and why do you just happen to coincide with Mr. Gide’s arriving from the other end of space? And while we’re at it, give me your tap code. I won’t have taps wandering around the station without their codes in my system.”

Sweat stood on Magdallen’s face. “You forgot the cracking of the Southern Wall, to lay to my account.”

He ordinarily admired humor under fire. Not at this precise moment. He fixed Magdallen with a cold stare.

“I assure you,” Magdallen said, “that’s far beyond my abilities.”

“Nothing else seems to be. Your hidden tap code. If you please.”

“Three space two-one-four.”

He wrote it down. The deliberate act calmed him, let him think twice about simply tapping in and blasting hell out of the man.

“Thank you, Agent Magdallen.”

“Yes, sir.” Much more meekly.

“So spill it. Why are you here? The truth this time. I can tell you if the Ila thinks she’sbeen spied on, or that you’re responsible for her being spied on, you may be dead before next shift. Or worse. Her on-shift tap’s in hospital, fried. She may never recover. Do you understand me? In fact—you may have gotten her andLuz on your neck, in which case you won’t be safe again, waking or sleeping.”

Magdallen stared at him, absorbing that information.

In silence.

Brazis’s carefully cultivated patience ran out. “Talk, damn you.”

“I assure you we’re on the same side in this affair, Mr. Chairman.”

“Then you’d better figure from here on to cooperate with me, to hell with your orders. The situation is mutating by the hour. You can’t communicate with Apex fast enough, so start communicating with me. I amprotecting you from the Ila. I have all the taps damped down, way down, to the detriment of our supporting Marak, who’s currently in a nasty situation. I’m not sure how long our damp-down is going to resist a skilled hack from downworld. So for starters, I’d suggest you tap completely out.”

“I have.”

“So what brought Gide here? What have you got to do with it? And why am Ihaving to get my information from an Earthborn governor, who seems far more informed on this business than anybody else?”

A frown knit Magdallen’s brows. “The information can put you and me both in jeopardy with Council.”

“Right now, let me tell you, the Council is in dire jeopardy with me.And I willspill what I know to Ian and Luz and let them use their judgment how far to take it to the Ila and to Marak, because right now, this could look like an attempt by Earth to get their hands on one of Marak’s taps for no friendly purposes, and they may still be trying. I’ll tell you another tidbit of information. We don’t have readout from Marak at the moment. He’s either shut down to protect himself or he’s lying unconscious or dead somewhere in chancy terrain. Hati, thank our lucky stars, had lost patience with us and tapped out well before this happened. But in the general damp-down, we can’t get to her to find out. We daren’t reestablish contact until we know what Luz and the Ila have gotten up to and until we’re assured they’re not going to blast through again. So the Council’s displeasure looms small in my path, Agent Magdallen. Talk, and talk in depth and detail.”

“All right, all right, sir. The theory is, there is First Movement on the station. That’s why I think Earth’s come in. They theorize—they theorize the Ila has been passing tech up here via one or more of the taps. The Treaty Board on Earth contacted Apex, advising Apex they were sending a mission here. Apex sent me. I was under orders to burrow deep in advance and not to say what I know.”

“Did you attack the ambassador?”

“No. I didn’t.”

Truthers still greenlighted on the desk rim said that was the truth. But a little yellow also flickered there. Magdallen was hedging, or nervous about that question.

“You know who did hit him?”

“I don’t. By all evidence and circumstances, it could have been the black market.”

“The smugglers? That would be a damned fool thing, way too much public notice.”

“On one level, yes. But creating confusion, government hearings, a lot of finger-pointing…we go into hysterics, so does Earth, the politicians are busy creating greater security, and they cover their tracks and explore whatever protective system we devise to detect them.”

“If they were that bright, they’d be running the station.”

“That’s the point, sir. They may have very good direction. They may have tap communications they shouldn’t have, not downworld, but at least office-level.”

“The system has safeguards.”

“You didn’t find me before I blew my own cover out there in the outer office. You didn’t find the Ila until she blew through like a solar flare. Your alarms aren’t working, sir, have you figured that?”

The burglary alarm hacked. Undetected. A leaden cold settled in Brazis’s gut—and a sense of profound embarrassment chased after it.

Not that Magdallen seemed to be enjoying his moment: sweat still glistened on his face.

“All right, Agent Magdallen. Points to your side. So you damn well knewwe hadn’t picked you up in the system. You were operating in that shadow. It would have been civilized and prudent to warn us there was a problem with our alarm system.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you hadn’t detected the breach, or whether you’d consented to it. I wasn’t sure, sir, that you weren’t in collusion.”

Infuriating on the surface. But logical. He had to ask the next question. “Have you reason to be sure now, that I’m not in collusion, as is?”

“I think I know who hacked the system. The Ila did, no telling how long ago. I believe you didn’t know. Whether she knows about me at this moment is another matter. If she finds out—she may try to kill me. And I’m not that confident your systems can take the top off the spike if she decides to take the taps out entirely.”

“Go on.”

“There is a lab on Orb working on a medical illicit of a very worrisome nature, that may be an advanced tap, or at least something complex. Apex is extremely concerned. But nothing is going to leave Orb. Someone will see to that. There may have been a fire at that lab already. When there is, there will be arson arrests—on the lab staff.”

“And Earth is aware this is going on?”

“I believe so. Gide wasn’t discreet, coming in here. I can only hope if Earth’s agents have come in at Orb, that they’ll be quieter, or we’ll see our operation there blown. I hoped Gide’s protection would be stiffer. It wasn’t.”