CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
There were four restaurants and ten tavernos Selene and I liked to visit on the rare occasions when we were on Popinjay.
The place we were seated in today wasn’t any of those. It wasn’t even on our acceptable alternatives list.
Which was the point, of course. Whatever bits and pieces Kinneman’s data divers were busily pulling from years of financial, travel, and culinary records, the Cock ’n’ Bull pub would be conspicuous by its complete absence.
I could only hope it wasn’t somewhere on our dining companion’s list.
“He’s not happy with you, I can tell you that,” my father said, gazing into his iced tea as he carefully stirred his lemon sweetener into it. “First was an APB to all Commonwealth EarthGuard and law-enforcement agencies, followed by an ISLE locate-and-detain bulletin. He’s supposedly trying to get EarthGuard Intelligence involved, too, but he’s hitting a bit of resistance from the senior officers there.”
“Thank heaven for small favors,” I said, giving Selene a sideways look. Her pupils showed no hint that he was lying, exaggerating, or otherwise slanting his report on Kinneman’s response to our mysterious disappearance from Nexus Six. “Does he have any ideas or preconceptions as to where we might have gone?”
“Interesting you should ask,” my father said, lifting his eyes from his glass to give me a piercing look. “At first he seemed to have gotten the idea that you’d headed straight back to Juniper the minute McKell’s back was turned. But then the Ruth disappeared from Xathru, so he shifted the bulk of his focus there.”
“It could have been stolen,” I pointed out.
“Could have,” my father said, nodding agreements. “Wasn’t. Friend of yours pick it up?”
I felt my throat tighten. “Not sure we have any friends at the moment.”
“Certainly not many who would admit to it,” my father agreed. “Afraid I can’t be one of them, either. The general still needs my help to smooth ruffled feathers among various Commonwealth officials, and I can’t afford to lose that position. For the good of everyone involved.”
“Plus the fact that it pays well?” I suggested.
He shrugged. “The good of everyone does include my own good. As I always say, Never join a noble cause unless large payments or self-preservation are included.”
“Right,” I said. “I forgot that one. So did you get paid in advance?”
“Adequately so.” He cocked his head slightly. “So why exactly did you ask me to come all this way and meet you? You surely didn’t need me to tell you that Kinneman’s full-court press is alive and well.”
“No, we get hints of that at every fuel stop we make,” I said. “There were just a couple of other points I wanted to discuss that couldn’t be safely done over a StarrComm call.”
My father settled back in his seat. “I’m listening.”
“First, I wanted to see how far you were into Kinneman’s confidences,” I said. “I also wanted to find out how deeply into the Icarus Group itself your fingers went.”
“The Alien Portal Agency,” he corrected. “Reasonably far, and reasonably deep. And, yes, for a reasonably long time, at least unofficially.” He raised his eyebrows. “Which isn’t to say I’m free to just hand you information whenever you want it. Sorry.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” I said. “Because that brings me to my second point.”
“Which is?”
I hesitated. But there really wasn’t any diplomatic way to phrase this. “I wanted to know how long you’ve been feeding classified information to the Patth.”
He snorted. “Really, Gregory. Why in the world would you even suggest such a thing?”
“Mostly your history,” I said. “You spent way too much of your life playing various sides against each other, usually for their ultimate benefit, always for yours. In this specific case, I believe you’re the one who gave them Admiral Graym-Barker’s balloon technique for blocking access to portals.”
My father shook his head. “Really, Gregory.”
“Yes, we’ve established that,” I said. “But it’s clear that someone deep in the organization told them. Huginn all but admitted it.”
“Huginn might have been lying or deflecting,” he pointed out. “Regardless, why pick on me?”
“Because of something Huginn said at my last meeting with Sub-Director Nask.” I paused, eyeing him. “You don’t seem surprised that I even had such a meeting.”
He shrugged. “My face does what I tell it.”
“I’m sure it does,” I said. “Unfortunately for you, the same can’t be said of your scent. Selene?”
“He wasn’t surprised,” she confirmed quietly. “Nor was he surprised or upset by your charge of treason.”
My father actually winced. “Treason is such a harsh word,” he protested. “As you said, what I do is always for everyone’s benefit. And really, isn’t that your own philosophy? Go with whatever benefits you and Selene, and after that do what’s best for the universe at large?”
“That is what I said, and thanks for remembering,” I said. “But I find it hard to see how giving away trade secrets benefits anyone except the recipient.”
“Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the big picture,” he said. “Would your trick with Pax have worked if the Patth were using multiple small balloons to block the receiver module instead of a single larger one? Because that is what they were doing before I happened to accidentally drop a hint.”
“No, that change was handy,” I had to admit. “But there’s no way you could have known at the time how we’d be able to take advantage of it.”
“Not the details, no,” he agreed, the studied lightness in his manner fading into something more serious. “But I know how clever you are, and I know that information about an opponent’s equipment and procedures nearly always pays off somewhere. As I always say, Sometimes the best way to know the other guy’s plans is to give them to him.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I doubt Kinneman would be impressed by such subtleties. If he caught us, you know, and made us talk.”
My father raised his eyebrows politely. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”
“Blackmail is such a harsh word,” I said. “But not an inaccurate one.”
“I see.” He took a sip of his tea, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m listening. What do you want?”
“We’ll start with information,” I told him. “Like you just said, everything about your opponent eventually pays off. I want to know what Kinneman is up to, what his intel people pull up on the Ammei, the Patth, and the portals—I know he’ll be digging into all of that—and anything else we might be able to use.”
“That’s all?” My father smiled. “Really, Gregory. I never said I wasn’t your friend. I only said I was one of those who couldn’t admit to it.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a data stick. “Granted that I don’t have full access to everything, this should be enough to at least give you hints as to the directions Kinneman’s going. There’s also a very private StarrComm number where you can contact me, which I strongly suggest you use sparingly. Needless to say, all your normal contacts and numbers are being monitored, so we’ll have to figure out how I can safely get information to you.”
I looked at Selene, noting that her pupils hadn’t changed. Apparently, my father really was serious about helping us.
Whether or not he was himself being played by Kinneman, of course, was another question entirely. “Not a problem,” I said, taking his data stick and handing him one of my own. “New StarrComm contact number. I suggest you memorize it and then destroy the data stick.”
He nodded and pulled out his info pad. He plugged in the stick, and for a moment gazed at the StarrComm number that came up on the display. He nodded, removed the stick, and handed it back to me. “No point wasting a good data stick,” he said. “Plus, as I always say, Even information you destroyed tells the other guy that there was something there worth destroying.”
“True,” I said, dropping the stick back into my pocket. “Well. I guess that’s it. Thanks for coming, and we’ll be in touch.”
“That’s not quite it,” he said, making no move to stand up. “Two points. First, what did Huginn say at that meeting that pointed you in my direction?”
“Something subtle enough that no one else would have caught it,” I said. “He commented the best way to hide a needle was to put it in a bathtub of other needles.”
“Not exactly a revelation from on high,” my father pointed out.
“The concept, no,” I agreed. “But the wording?” I shook my head. “Everyone else hides needles in stacks or piles. You’re the only one I’ve ever heard hide them in bathtubs.”
“Seems to me you stretched the logic a little far on that one,” my father warned. “Still, as I always say, You can argue with success, but it usually comes off looking like sour grapes. Which leads me to my second point. As of six days ago, Jordan McKell and Ixil T’adee are no longer part of the Alien Portal Agency.”
I felt my mouth drop open a couple of millimeters. “Kinneman fired them?”
My father nodded. “He apparently felt they were a little too friendly with the two of you, which in his eyes meant they weren’t sufficiently friendly with the Agency.”
I snorted. “Now that was just stupid.”
“Or perhaps manipulated,” Selene said.
I frowned at her. The look in her pupils…“No,” I said, looking back at my father. “You? You got them fired?”
“I may have nudged Kinneman in that direction,” he said calmly. “But it was mostly him.”
“You got them fired?” I repeated, feeling anger and guilt welling up inside me. I’d begged and cajoled both Ixil and McKell for help, and they’d come through when I needed them. And this was their reward? “Damn it, Dad—”
“They were too good for Kinneman,” he interrupted. “The agency didn’t deserve their services and abilities.”
I stared at him…and then, slowly, I got it. “But Selene and I do?”
“There’s little to be gained by creating bureaucratic openings, Gregory,” he said quietly. “But there’s a great deal to be gained by creating allies.”
He held out his hands like a stage performer inviting applause. “You’re welcome.”
* * *
I half expected to find Kinneman and a trap waiting for us somewhere between the Cock ’n’ Bull and the Ruth, probably without my father’s knowledge, certainly without his assistance. But the seasoned manipulator who was Sir Nicholas Roarke was himself not easy to manipulate. We reached the ship, got off Popinjay, and escaped into hyperspace without anyone so much as raising their voice at us.
Selene was waiting in the dayroom when I came back from the bridge. “They’re here,” she announced, looking up from her info pad. “Private contact numbers for McKell and Ixil.”
“You weren’t expecting them to be?” I asked, snagging a caff cola and snack bar from the pantry and dropping into the chair across the table from her.
“From the way your father talked, I wasn’t sure whether his description of them as allies was current or merely a vague future.”
“With my father, a little skepticism is a very healthy thing,” I agreed. “Still, under the circumstances, I’ll take any flavor of allies we can get.”
“Kinneman will be watching them, of course.”
“Without a doubt,” I said, watching her closely. “I certainly would if I were him. Was there anything else you wanted to tell me about the Ammei?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her pupils going wary.
“A long time ago you told me that someone had once used Kadolians as bounty hunters and assassins,” I said. “Were those someones the Ammei?”
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “Maybe. Is it important?”
“It could be,” I said. “I’m thinking of the glimpse we got of their internal politics, particularly between Nexus and Juniper. If they were nasty enough back then for various Ammei factions to hire you to attack each other, they could be just as nasty now. Internal conflicts can offer outsiders like us a tool we can use against them.”
“Unless one of them decides they want me on their side,” Selene warned.
“In which case we’ll have two tools to use. And no, you won’t have to actually do anything,” I added hastily. “We’d just use the idea itself as a lever. And only if we absolutely have to.”
“All right,” she said. “If we have to.”
I winced at the look in her pupils. She didn’t like the idea. Not a single bit.
But she also knew the odds that were stacked against us. As my father used to say, Underdog stories make great star-thrillers, but in real life it’s the biggest and baddest who usually win the day.
“We’ll make it work, Selene,” I said, trying to exude quiet confidence. “First of Three doesn’t know we’re still on the job. Even if he did, he’d never consider us a real threat.”
“I suppose not.” She paused. “Are you going to tell me about the book?”
I sighed. Of course she would have figured it out. She’d naturally smelled the Imistio Book’s scent on me when we first met after my excursion into the Grove of Reflection, and would know I’d handled it there. But the scent hadn’t faded with time, which would tell her that something from it was still with me. “I didn’t know what the book was,” I said, pushing back my left sleeve and opening the arm’s secret compartment. “But whatever it was, I figured it would be a good idea to give ourselves a bargaining chip.” I pulled out the folded sheets of metallic paper, smoothed them out, and handed them to her. “So I helped myself to a couple of the middle pages. Can you read any of it?”
She frowned down at the pages, her eyelashes working rhythmically. “The script is similar to ours,” she said. “Some of the words seem familiar, too. Most of it seems to be—” She broke off, staring at me with stricken pupils. “It’s part of the procedure,” she breathed. “First of Three doesn’t have the complete serum.”
“No,” I agreed. “I figured that if we get boxed in—”
“What if he doesn’t realize it?” she cut me off. “What if they make it and try it on someone?”
I winced at the horror in her voice. “They’ll figure it out,” I assured her hastily. “They’ll see the torn pages, or otherwise realize they’re missing a step.”
“What if they don’t?” Selene asked, her pupils suddenly haunted. “What if they use it on someone?” Her pupils darkened. “What if they use it on Tirano?”
I swallowed hard. I really hadn’t thought that far ahead. “They’ll figure it out,” I repeated. Even in my own ears the words sounded lame. “If they don’t…well, we’ll just have to make sure they’re told.”
For maybe half a minute we just sat there, each of us following our own thoughts. Finally, reluctantly, Selene seemed to bring herself back. “Yes,” she said. “We will.” She paused again. “What’s our first move?”
“We’ll check out the other four Ammei enclaves,” I said. “See where they are, try to get a feel for the local conditions and politics, locate their ends of the Nexus Six Gemini portals. Maybe give me a chance to learn more about their expressions and body language, and you a better baseline for their scents. Once we’ve done all we can there, we’ll head back to Juniper.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Good,” I said. Her tone was still neutral, but I could tell that she’d put the serum behind her for the moment and was ready to focus on the more immediate problems. “One other thing. Back on Nexus you said there was a full-range portal on Juniper. Do you know that for sure, or were you just throwing out a name?”
“Mostly the latter,” she admitted. “But I’d met First Dominant Yiuliob and had a feel for his relationship with Second of Three. It seemed like Juniper was more important than the rest of the enclaves, and Ammei importance seems to be tied up with portals.”
“That seems to be their pattern, yes,” I murmured, thinking back to the rest of that conversation. “And the fact that no one challenged you strongly suggests you were right.”
“Only I don’t think any of them knows where on the planet it is.”
“Which gives us a third tool we can use on them,” I said. “Especially since I hinted that we do know.”
“Maybe.” She hesitated. “It occurs to me, Gregory, that all three of the tools you mention are mostly of the what-if variety. It would be nice if we could find something more solid.”
“I agree,” I said. “That’s part of what our tour of the enclaves is for. Hopefully, we can dig up something there.”
Because as my father used to say, Once you take all the options, probabilities, and possible consequences into account, the rest is still just a crapshoot.
The dice were bouncing across the table. From here on, there was no turning back.
I could only hope we lived long enough to see if the gamble paid off.
The End