Flight of the Vajra (59 page)

Angharad pushed aside some of my hair and put her lips
to my forehead. It should have burned, but it didn’t; it was cool and gentle, and
it convinced me that whenever she spoke of love it was the real thing. I
thought of what I might do next and told myself, no, you shouldn’t, it isn’t
what either of you deserve; but all the same I went ahead and pressed my mouth
against hers, which was already so close.

We lingered there, together—at least, that was how
it seemed across all the other times I gazed back at that moment—and we eased away
from each other at the same time, too. Impossible to remember something like
that except through a beautiful haze that you’re not sure is just the way you
remember it or because that moment really was suffused with that feeling.

Angharad spoke first, her voice quiet and husky
with more exhaustion than anything like desire. “You and I must both rest.”

“You especially,” I said. “Another full day
tomorrow.” I sounded as throttled as she did.

We stood up from the ottoman and walked blindly
through the foyer to our respective rooms. Now that I’d gone and done that, I
kept bracing for the self-recrimination that I was sure would have followed.
Way to go; way to mess everything up; way to put both feet and at least one
hand right in it . . . But nothing of the kind boiled out of me, and
by the time I’d slid back into bed and pulled the sheet up to my neck I
realized it just wasn’t going to happen. She believes in you, I thought, and
you believe in her right back. If someone else despises you for it, let them; that’s
their feeling, not yours. Look at yourself: the only feelings you have right
now is that of being loved, of accepting that love, and of knowing you gave it
in return.

And, without hesitating, I took that with me down
into sleep.

—Kallhander, you there?
I CLed, moments
after opening my eyes to see morning light on the far wall.

—
I am. Were you briefed on what happened last
night?

—Angharad gave me her version of the briefing;
I was going to ask for yours.

Kallhander delivered a room-tap copy of the
conversation Angharad had with Arsèni, plus some other bits and pieces he’d
unearthed since they’d started sweeping up what was left of the workshop. The one
thing that mattered most from Angharad’s little talk had been Arsèni saying
If
I told you, even you wouldn’t want to protect me.
Arsèni’s words sent
Kallhander and a few other agents scrambling for more clues in the mess left
behind, and doubling their research efforts on the drive module—which so far
hadn’t turned up anything.

—
The module itself doesn’t seem to be
remarkable,
Kallhander CLed.
It just appears to be the same sort of
resonance chamber used for triangulation by any entanglement engine.

—Have they tried plugging it into an actual
ship and seeing what it does?

—They’re fitting a ship for just such a test
right now. I’ve been warned that I shouldn’t expect anything conclusive for at
least a local day, possibly two. Also, I strongly suspect there was at least
one third-party module in the ship, possibly his own customization, which
self-destructed immediately before he was arrested. There’s a file containing a
dump of the salvaged code from the protomics we found there, but there isn’t
much to work with.

—You know that’s only going to encourage me,
Kallhander.

—I imagined it would; that’s why I mentioned it.
By the way: we’re waiting on word from higher authorities about the possibility
of having Angharad attempt to debrief Arsèni again. The results were surprisingly
encouraging.

—
I think she surprised all of us with that one.
Herself included. Thing is, that’s not going to happen until at least talks
break up for the day; will they want to wait that long?

—That’s what we’re waiting to find out. Among
other things.

—Also, before I went to sleep last night, I
made a few more incremental discoveries. Before I share them, though—are you
positive
there’s no more salvaged data we could use? I think I’ve gone as far as I can
go without more to work with.

—There’s a good deal more, but none of it is
likely to be useful—

—Send it over anyway. I’ve got enough goodwill
built up with your people by now for them to do me at least that much, right?

—Sent, and good luck. Normally, it might be
best to let IPS HQ continue where you’ve left off.

—Right, but we’re not anywhere near IPS
Central—that’s days from here, isn’t it? And if the way my funnybone is
tingling about this is right, whatever’s going on is not going to wait for us
on that kind of timescale.

I wasn’t dressed yet, but I was already sick
enough of CLing that I walked across the hall to Kallhander’s room and
continued the conversation out loud. “So when did you find out about IPS making
this their top priority?” I said.

Kallhander was adjusting the front seam of his
uniform, letting it meld and part several times in a row as he spoke. “I only
received word of it in the last half-hour, local time. Anything related to the
Cytheria uprising was considered directly connected to the welfare of the Kathaya,
but after yesterday’s events it’s become critical. A great many agents are
being reassigned for this.”

The front seam on Kallhander’s uniform tried to
close again, but it was still wrinkling and puckering like wilted flower petals.

“I think you need to reset the motion telemetry on
that thing,” I said, and stepped in front of him. “The reason it’s getting all
crinkly on you is because it has too much cached micromovement data. Do you
have the cache settings set to something large? You generally don’t need more
than two days’ body telemetry.”

Kallhander looked down at himself and gave the
front of his uniform a tug. “I had it raised, yes. I left it that way for quite
a while; it never gave me problems before.”

“That’s because the cache probably started filling
up with stuff you were unconsciously tagging as ‘do not delete’. The software
layer in most of these uniforms doesn’t take into account an exceptionally
large body-telemetry cache.” I smiled right at Ioné as she entered from the
adjoining suite. “Put it this way: Don’t second-guess someone else’s work
unless you can replace
all
of it.” The seam flattened out on its own as
I watched, and began remolding itself nice and flat.

“It sounds as if you resent the idea of having
your
work replaced, Mr. Sim,” Ioné said.

“Not as such. I just . . . ” I faced
her. “I just want to make sure whatever I share with you doesn’t go down a
one-way street and never comes back, you know? Plus, the whole reason you
strolled into my life in the first place was because you thought I had a
perspective on all this you couldn’t find anywhere else. So if it turns out we
just need to feed the whole thing to IPS’s big boys and wait, I’m going to feel
about as useful as a second navel.” The fact that I knew people who had implemented
just such a cosmetic enhancement didn’t make invoking the uselessness of such a
thing any less pointed.

“I doubt that will replace any of the work you’ve
done,” Kallhander said. “It’s only meant to expand on it. It wouldn’t be
possible without you.”

“You fear having the distinction of having
accomplished something taken away from you,” Ioné said.

“You bet I do! I’ve had it done to me before, and
I’ve been stupid enough to do it to myself. Never again.”

“Still, it’s almost inevitable that in a lifetime
you’ll have your work surpassed by someone else.”

“Well, if someone
does
leapfrog over me,
then I have a sacred duty to try and leap them right back.”

“And if you can’t?” Kallhander asked.

“Then . . . I’ve got a great story for
my grandkids.”

Neither of them said anything about who I might be
siring those grandkids with, if anyone at all. I spoke up again before either
of them had the chance to.

“By the way,” I said, “it looks like a lot more
people than I realized are invited to the party later today. That or they
decided to expand the invites to just about everyone who landed here in the
last couple of days.”

“You also mentioned knowing the host.”

“Mylène Astatke? I knew her back when she was Senior
Officer of Information Perimeter Management for Exoluft’s Therin-Thalya
shipyard. Now she’s
Chief
Officer of Information Perimeter Management
for, well, this place.”

“You knew her well?”

“We knew each other, thought highly of each
other’s work. She had oversight across a great many divisions, mine included.
Not in the sense that she had veto power over our budgets or anything, but she needed
a wider scope of access than most other people, for the sake of her job. I’m
not surprised she ended up here. She had that kind of talent, that kind of
ambition, and . . . that kind of mind-set.”

“’That’ kind of mind-set is rather vague,” Ioné
said.

“An apostate of the Old Way. I met her right when
she was first leaving. She was from an Old Way world that had pretty reasonable
restrictions, all things considered—”

Kallhander and Ioné headed for the door while I
was still talking. I was used to this by now: on worlds where CL was pervasive,
it wasn’t considered rude to walk out of the room in the middle of a
conversation when you could just link up via CL and continue where you left
off.

— . . .
and even those had been too
much stricture for her
(I went on)
. She resented the idea that she had
to worry about whether or not her children would die before she would—or
whether or not she would die before she “hit all of the things she was aiming
for”, as she put it. She wanted all the good things that went with being
Highend, and I didn’t blame her. But one time I said to her, “So when
is
it okay to die?” and she quoted Amanika at me: “It’s okay to die when I’m good
and ready for it.” I left it at that, because I remembered Lucahazy’s comeback
to Amanika: “No one is ever ‘good and ready’ for it.” With her it wasn’t up for
discussion.

Ioné:
—Your working relationship seemed
positive.

—When we did deal with each other, yes. She
never sassed me about being Old Way, even if I was also in one of the more
liberal Old Way branches. She left her position long before my family died—in
fact, she moved on about a solar year after I was married.

Kallhander: —
Did she remain antithetical to the
Old Way?

—Remain? By the time she left, she’d already
snubbed going to a Lantern Cycle for one of her co-managers. I heard about it
through back channels. After that point, I think they were glad she was moving
on.

They thanked me and unplugged so they could escort
Angharad to the conference center.

I put myself under some running water, then while
drying off let my thoughts go back to the two I’d quoted before: Lulliki
Amanika and Teven Lucahazy. You didn’t get more polarized than those two. The
former, a Highender; a colony-founder, propagandist (and proud to be called
one), gender-mutable, one of those people you had to fight with yourself to
like but who it was easier to be liked by than you imagined. The latter, an Old
Way theologian and lecturer; soft of voice, easy in his words, even easier to
be fooled by because he was so quiet. He saved his words for when they
mattered, and when Amanika had given his defense of why cheating death at all
costs was such a good idea, he’d responded with a few lacerating words that had
become stock arguments for both sides of that debate.

I wasn’t even thinking about Angharad’s kiss
anymore. I was proud of myself.

I always underestimate my capacity to be surprised.
I came out of my room, my protomic duds on (I was saving the “real” suit for
later), entered the common area, and almost banged my knee against Cioran’s
polylute. He had been waving it around in the vicinity of the doorway. Next to
him, tensing and flexing through one slow pose after another, was Enid doing
her morning workout.

“Cessation of hostilities?” I said.

“From where I sit,” Cioran said, “there were never
any ‘hostilities’ to begin with.”

Enid shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m
still mad. Hopping, flaming mad. I’m just trying to be
nice
about it for
a change.”

“And I’ve been trying to figure out what else on
my part, aside from grounding myself and being CL-capped, would help put the
right sort of balm on her wounds.”

“And I don’t even really know what that would be!”
She did a high kick, five times in a row, at the exact same little volume of
air in front of her nose. “But I’m all ears, I really am.”

“I’ve done my best to convince her that our
collaboration remains most decidedly alive and well, as long as she will have
it. Her response—”

“I said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ And I am thinking
about it, and until I finish thinking about it, that’s the only answer you’re
going to get, so knock it off already.”

“From what I can tell,” I said, “the fact she’s
even letting you be in the same room with her is a step in the right
direction.”

“Oh, sure. It’s a
step
.” She put her leg
down. “I still wanna twist his hollow little head off, but at least I don’t
wanna beat it in afterwards.”

“You know, my wife and I used to say the same
thing about each other: ‘I can’t count the number of times we’ve fought, but I
do know we’ve made up for every single one of them.’
 
”

Enid blew out long breaths and did knee bends.

“Was that what
you
said, or what
she
said?” Cioran said. “I imagine it would be worded rather differently between
the two of you.”

“Neither of us could remember who started saying
it. Before I knew it, we both were.”

Enid straightened up and walked out between us,
presumably to get cleaned up. As soon as I heard the door to her room shut,
Cioran’s tone changed. He wasn’t making cheery conversation anymore; he was
digging for answers.

“Maybe now you can tell
me
something,” he
said, in CL-space. “What was it exactly that motivated you to let Enid follow
me right into what you had to assume was the lion’s mouth?”

I decided being polite was not worth the effort.
“Oh, Cioran, don’t even
try
to pin that on me. I said before, she was
all for doing it herself. She
begged
us to have the chance to help out
by doing that. I was against it. I should have stayed against it. But she
wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

“It’s rather funny, isn’t it? You blame me for
being two-faced and conniving, and now you and her ganged up on me to be just
as bad, if not worse.”

“Only because you couldn’t be bothered to tell us
the whole truth about what you were looking for and why.”

“Why should I? So something of that magnitude
could fall into the hands of the IPS?”

“As opposed to what? Have Ulli’s pet science
project collective get their hands on it? Or some lone-wolf like Arsèni? Why do
you trust her word over just about anyone else’s, anyway? What has Ulli ever
done for you except put your spindly ass on the end of a string and jerk it
around?”

“She has—” It wasn’t the first time he’d hesitated
that badly in the middle of a sentence, but it was the most telling such
instance I’d seen so far, especially for a man who had a speech ready for
anything. “—an understanding of me, what I am trying to do, what I want from
this universe . . . she has it far better than anyone else does or
did.”