Flight of the Vajra (66 page)

—
I disconnected before I felt like I would be
prying,
I CLed to Enid while she was still trudging towards us.

—
It’s OK. He started apologizing up a storm
after he kissed me, so I let him feel embarrassed about it. It turned out to be
a good way to get him to back off.

—Seems like you didn’t mind
that
much,
though.

—Hey. If we weren’t all in the middle of
something else up to our necks, I think the two of us would have done a lot
more than smooch.

—
At least until Mylène broke up
your
party for the sake of
hers
.

—You know, for all of her talk about Marius
being his own this and his own that, she’s sure big on who he spends more than
five minutes with.

—And I get the impression that isn’t just
because of the guests or festivities.

—
And
I
get the impression Marius really
hates having someone leaning over his shoulder like that.

Enid stepped out from the tall grass and brushed
grass husks from her sleeve. She didn’t look disheveled or flushed, and I had
to remind myself of all the times I’d seen her exhibit far more poise (and not
just the physical sort) than many people my age.

—See if you can’t get back into his personal
space after she’s introduced him to everyone,
I CLed to her
. It sounded
like he was leading up to something when he was talking to you.

—I’m
sure
he was going somewhere with
all that! Listen, give my ear a pull. Good and hard.

—W
hat?! Why?

—
The more it looks like you and Mylène are
doing your damndest to “keep us apart”, the easier it’ll make it to get him to
talk. Go on, do it. I’ve been thinking this up for a while now.

I reached out as soon as Enid cleared the last of
the grass and gave her ear a get-your-ass-over-here yank. “Don’t you ever,
ever
unplug and
walk off on me like that again,” I said, letting my lips
curl a bit for good measure. “
Especially
not in the middle of something
this crucial.”

“Yes,
sir
,” Enid sulked right back. She
swatted my hand away and broke into a run, heading back towards the path
between the trees to the pool.

Mylène paused at the back door to the house,
having sent Marius inside, and gave me a dismayed look. “She’s an armful
despite that brain of hers, isn’t she?”

I shook my head. “She’s an armful
because
of it. Then again, they all are, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes, they are.”

—Hope I didn’t overdo it,
I CLed to Enid.

—
You did fine. Let’s just not try another stunt
like that for at least a few days, okay? Although, from the way Marius was
looking at me, I think it more than did the job.

—You handle the kid. I’ve got a certain pontiff-slash-diplomat
to get caught up with.

I was expecting Angharad to look a lot more
worn-down around the edges when she stepped out of the ground car. Nothing of
the kind: she looked as confident and radiant, serene even, as the first time
I’d knelt on a cushion in front of her. Even the red of the setting sun didn’t so
much cast a pall over her as it just lit a splendid new kind of fire over her.

“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” I said. “Busy day?”

“Unimaginably so.”

Her closed its doors and began working its way
back up the other side of the driveway. There were at least ten other cars
behind her preparing to do the same thing, so I touched her shoulder and led
her off the gravel and onto the grass. Behind and in front of us, a dozen other
folks in dress too rich to be anything but fellow diplomats were disembarking.

“I hope you have your ‘hat with you,” I said next
to her ear, “because you and I need to talk, and we’ll probably have to do it
while pretending to be social with everyone else.”

“I imagined you would want to discuss what
happened. I came prepared.” —
Although, I admit am still unpracticed in the
art of holding more than one conversation at once.

Had it on under her wimple, I thought. And I was
the idiot for not attempting to connect first. —
Good. First, let’s go inside
and say hello to our host.

Some part of me wondered if Mylène’s living room,
garnished as it was with her protomic laminate, had expanded to fit the
twenty-plus people now milling about inside it. The vast majority of her guests
sported the sleek, perfected Highend look, from the crystalline bilateral
symmetry of their facial features to the creases in their clothes hard enough
to cut something open on. Most were there in the flesh, but a few were
CL-projected; I suspected despite Mylène’s invite and insistence, they felt
safer back in their villas and apartments. I did have the usual obvious visual
cues as to who was real and who was virtual, but that didn’t stop me from
flinching at air or stubbing my toes every so often.

And apart from Ioné, I hadn’t seen a single other
IPS officer anywhere, but looks did deceive. They hardly needed to show their
faces when they could plug into every sensory surface in the whole area.

The divider to the kitchen was down and a buffet
spread—with many things I’d eat and a lot more I wouldn’t—was drawing
everyone’s attention. Mylène had ensconced herself in the center of the couch
we’d all been sitting on before, surrounded on both sides by functionaries I
didn’t know offhand but whose allegiances and other biographical data all
published themselves to me as we stepped closer. The center table had been
pulled out a bit, and in the space thus cleared Diamond lay limp with her stomach
in the air. The delegate from Formynx—
Farhouad Tjelma
, his CL told me—had
reached down and rubbing with one black-gloved hand at just below the cat’s
throat.

“Fellow cosmopolitans,” Mylène said, gesturing out
and away at us, “here’s someone who should need no introduction. Two someones,
actually. One of whom I’m sure you already met.” By that she meant Angharad.

“I have, in a sense,” said Farhouad. He had the
same tall, lanky build as Cioran, but none of Cioran’s self-conscious clowning,
and a face with heavy-lined features that barely seemed to move no matter what
was being expressed. It allowed him to look noble even with his fingers under
Diamond’s chin. “When you hear someone speaking on the other side of a room and
then speak to them in turn, you can hardly consider that a form of having ‘met’
them. But I know I haven’t met you, Mister Sim.” He offered his free hand; I
shook it. “I understand this summit has already been quite eventful for you.”

When you know people are holding back far more
than they’re actually saying, it’s hard to tell if they’re being genuinely
sympathetic or just plain condescending. I decided I’d withhold judgment on
that score and said out loud, “It was eventful long before I landed. It’s nothing
I’m not already used to, trust me!”

“I understand a certain former denizen of ours is
in your party, too.” That clinched it: condescending. “And one of the reasons
why things have been so eventful.”

I kept my dander smoothed down. “If you’re talking
about the incident with Cioran and the antique protomics dealer, from
everything I’ve seen, nobody considers that Cioran’s fault.”

“I hope you’ll forgive me asking Your Grace such a
prying question,” Farhouad said, turning his attention to Angharad, “but is
Cioran in private as much like his public persona? Even I have to admire the
energy involved in maintaining such consistently scandalous behavior.”

You say that like he’s faking it, I thought, and
then remembered how big a germ of truth there was to thinking such a thing.

“Cioran has never been less than sincere with me
about his motives or his behavior,” Angharad said. “That sincerity can be
exhilarating, and it can be enervating. But it is never boring, and he would
not want it any other way. And it has taught me a great deal about how to learn
what is most valuable in a person, even things one would—”

“Forgive me again, Your Grace,” Farhouad said,
sounding like he didn’t care if forgiveness came or not, “but isn’t there some
irony in seeking
value
in a . . . a consummate profligate?
Unless your idea of ‘value’ is unlike what we have in mind. An Old Way idea of
value, perhaps? Something a good deal more sentimental?”

“You could always ask him yourself,” I said, and
pointed across the room towards the rear door, where a general uproar seemed to
be getting underway. I’d been warned moments earlier that the man himself was
about to enter the party—on Ulli’s arm, no less—and watched Farhouad’s face to
see if those stony features of his changed. The most he did was draw his hand
back from Diamond’s chest and stand up.

“Then I might well do just that.” he told both of
us. “But first I’m going to see for myself about our host’s legendary kitchen.
I’ve heard at least as much about that since I came here, as I have about
Cioran!”

I met Angharad’s gaze as Farhouad sidled out past
me.

—
Listen,
I CLed her
. Going back and
getting Arsèni talking wasn’t a half-bad idea. I just wish it had actually
worked.

—It was tempting to believe my mere presence
could weigh heavily enough on him to make a difference.

—It did the first time. It was enough to tempt
you to try again, it seems.

—It was a mistake all the same.

—Then again, it’s the kind of mistake only you
could make. I don’t think anyone else would have been bold enough to step up
and say “Let me talk to him.” Or bold enough to tell Ulli that if she didn’t
think the universe would trust her with what she learned, she could always turn
it over to you. —Hm, do I say “bold” or do I say “crazy”?

—Are you one of those who believes the two are
oft mistaken for each other?

—Sometimes I wish I
was
that naïve. But
you’re not crazy, and I know it. You know exactly what you’re doing, and you’re
not scared of being laughed out of the room for it. When I first met you, I thought
you were only as bold as you were because you had the weight of the whole Achitraka
behind you. Then you started talking about how you were preparing to let all
that go anyway . . .

—I am no longer sure there was ever a time when
such a thought was far from my mind.

I didn’t have time to feel as shaken by those
words as I ought to have been before Mylène spoke.

“Cioran’s a touchy subject, isn’t he?” She didn’t
seem perturbed, but I was learning not to believe in her calm running that
deeply.

—
We’ll continue this later,
Angharad CLed,
then said out loud, “Is it Cioran himself that is volatile, or the reactions he
produces in others?”

“There’s not much practical difference between the
two, is there? —Diamond,
quit
that.” Angharad drew her foot back;
Diamond had been attempting to gnaw on her arch.

Unruffled, Angharad knelt down and began to run
both hands back and forth across Diamond’s flank. “From what can be seen here
and now, Cioran scarcely appears to be ‘volatile’. In fact, I think he draws a
rather positive field of attention around him.”

I looked; it was hard to argue with what was in
front of us. Cioran had been making slow progress through the crowd—shaking a
hand here, bowing there, laughing vigorously to the other, with Ulli all the
while doing the same and beaming a bright grin in all directions. Farhouad
himself stepped sideways between one body and another (despite some of them being
CL-projected; well, there were still certain rules of etiquette about such
thing), and on introducing himself to the man, garnered from him a long, slow
nod of recognition and what looked at that distance like words of solemn charm.
It was the first time since we’d come planetside that I’d seen Cioran among so
many people who were not of our party, and he was on more than his best
behavior.

“So, consider,” Angharad went on. “Are you
reacting to the man himself, or simply what others have repeated back about
him, when they themselves are only passing along hearsay? I allowed him an
opportunity to convince me of his value, and he made good on it. Will you not
allow him to do the same for you in person?”

“Well, I did send him an invitation.” Mylène
gestured towards the “him” in question with her inhalerette. “And I admit, part
of why was to see what he’d do.”

“Then you and I see more eye-to-eye that might be
believed.”

—
Hey, there, heart-of-the-party
, I CLed to
Cioran.
What brings you back out of your cave? Apart from an engraved
invitation, which I wasn’t sure if you were going to honor or not? I thought
you were on self-imposed lockdown.

—Let’s just say I was tempted back out by this
close friend of mine next to me. She argued that I’d do more for myself and
everyone around me by not being shacked up. Besides, I imagine you wouldn’t
mind as long as you, and your faithful guard-lady, had me on a local leash. Then
again, it’s not like they won’t know what I’m up to as long as this CL tap is
in place. Which it still is.

—What if Enid still wants to slap you one? If
you should be worried about punitive measures from anyone, worry about it from
her.

—From all I’ve seen she’s a little preoccupied
with the son of our host to do that.

He sent me a view of the pool. Over in one corner,
drinks and plates next to them, Enid and Marius had yanked off their footwear and
were dangling their toes in the water. Whatever the conversation was, it had
both of them fired up. Enid’s hands waved about like she was conjuring
something; Marius waited for his laughter to die down before placing a forkful
of something green and fluffy in his mouth.