Palace (62 page)

‘And have Vida’s fiance see it?’

For a brief moment Vida thought Rico might be drunk, just from the defiant way he was smiling, staring at Jak - staring Jak down, she realized, as the Garang shrugged and looked away.

‘A good point,’ Jak said, his voice utterly mild. ‘No doubt you know best when it comes to arranging these,’ he hesitated briefly, ‘arrangements. Se Vida, I shall be in the eatery.’

‘When you’re done eating, just go to bed.’

Jak nodded in bland complicity. As soon as he’d left the room, Rico took three long steps toward her and gathered her into his arms. She clung to him for a long moment, luxuriating in the feel of his chest beneath her cheek, before she could lift her head and let him kiss her.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘But isn’t it dangerous?’

‘I don’t know.’ He was smiling at her. ‘Do you think Wan would care?’

‘Probably not. It’s the ratings I’m worried about.’

‘Damn the ratings!’ Rico let go of her and strode across the room.

‘I can’t damn them.’

Rico stood in front of the undraped windows, looked out, and said nothing.

‘You don’t know what it’s like, having to depend on the opinions of other people. You’ll always be Cyberguild. You’ll always be somebody here. I won’t unless I work at it.’

He shrugged and continued staring out at the night. Vida caught herself yawning, walked over to join him, risked laying a hand on his shoulder.

‘Let’s not fight? Let’s not waste the time.’

Rico turned to her at last.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. We’re both exhausted, aren’t we? But I want to hold you. I just want to lie down and hold you. I want to stop thinking about all the stuff I’ve seen today.’

‘You know something? So do I.’ She leaned into his embrace. ‘If you weren’t here I’d be crying.’

* * *

A few minutes past dawn Molos showed up in the Cyberguild suite. Hi had set his neural alarm to respond to Molos’ ID code at the door. The moment it flashed he woke and rose, telling the door to open, then grabbing clothes from the floor. Half-dressed, he met Molos in the gather.

‘Was this Kata’s work?’ Hi said.

‘Whose else would it be? Besides, explosives are a specialty of his.’ Molos sounded exhausted, and his yellow eyes were laced with purple capillaries. ‘I’ve been up all night, following down those leads we found two days ago. I can no longer think, and so I came over to ask you to pick up where I was forced to leave off

‘You bet. Come into my office.’

While Hi powered up the Mapstation, Molos sank into the visitor’s chair and levered up the back rest to support his head. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheaf of notes, written on paper.

‘I didn’t dare trust this to a Map file,’ the Lep said.

‘All right.’ Hi took the sheaf and glanced through it, saw a string of Map addresses, and swore. ‘Riva’s been using the old Citizen Assist net.’

‘Some of it. Only some of it, but somehow she managed to commandeer those resources and reserve them for her exclusive use.’ Molos paused for effect. ‘That’s where her revenant originates.’

‘Then we can shut it down. It won’t stop her, but it’ll do some damage.’

‘Ah, but shouldn’t we let her stay in a place where we can trap her?’

‘You’re right, I’m wrong. We’ll have to figure out a way to monitor without her knowing it. Not easy, but we can try, and this time, the whole damned guild won’t be hearing about it. What was the tip that led you there?’

‘Some of the data the Calios revenant gave you. He knew the parameters of the old net. Most of it was accounted for by later use, but not this one healthy slice. Oddly enough, I left examining it till last night. It seemed too obvious.

‘Riva may be getting a little arrogant and a little careless. Good.’ Hi glanced up. ‘Say, speaking of Calios, there’s something I want to ask you before I forget again. Why did you enter Vida in the L’Var clan’s roster?’

‘You
are
clever, Hivel. Did Vida tell you about my um intervention?’

‘No, Rico figured it out. Look.’ Hi held one hand up flat. ‘I don’t want to know who her mother is. Let her keep her secret, okay? I just want to know why you entered Veelivar on the clan genealogy.’

‘Because I admired Orin L’Var more than any man I’ve ever met, Lep or human. When he was murdered - and that’s what it was, murder, as far as I’m concerned - I couldn’t bear thinking that his line of descent had ended forever. So I put his daughter in her rightful place. All those files were legally locked, and I figured that no-one would ever see her name there. I had no idea that listings for those old families were cross-linked to Citizen Assist at a level no lock could affect.’ Molos suddenly hissed. ‘Do you think that’s where Riva learned of her?’

Hi went cold all over.

‘I think your sentimental notion backfired, yeah,’ Hi said at last. ‘But I’m not blaming you.’

‘I’m blaming myself more than you ever could.’ Molos shook, and his hands dug at the formfit. ‘I’ll have to take steps to right this wrong. At the very least I should grovel at her feet.’

‘With your bad leg?’

‘Hivel! I know your motives are sound, but please don’t try to joke me out of it. I have an obligation to Vida now, and that’s all there is to say about that.’

‘All right. Before you go, get me up to speed here. Your analysis of the autogate failure looks like a good place to start.’

‘Yes, indeed. When you jack into the Map, go straight to the document listing the day’s activity at that gate. That fellow who was thrown to his death that day? His demise gave me a positive time to work with. About three minutes afterwards, one of the autogates recorded a strange pulse from some sort of photonic token. While the signal wasn’t strong enough to scramble the gate, it may have activated some function. I was just starting to analyse the raw data when I realized that I was so tired I was making apprentice-level mistakes.’

‘I’ll pick up there, then. Your brother’s always had a tendency to leave corpses lying around the landscape. This one just might come back from the grave to haunt him.’

* * *

After a couple of hours of sleep, Karlo returned to the emergency command centre that Pero had set up the night before in the First Citizen’s public office. Tables and Map terminals covered the long expanse of beige carpet; in the brightened lighting the hologram of Palace on the far wall showed dull and faint. At the terminals military personnel sat working, talking back and forth in Helane while a couple of officers wandered from desk to desk, relaying orders. Pero himself stood beside the massive icelight desk, watching readout on the Map terminal set into the desktop. When Karlo walked in, everyone paused, saluted, and went right back to work.

‘Morning, Se,’ Pero said. ‘Things are well under control.’

‘Good. How long will we need this centre?’

‘Another twelve hours, no more. Here’s what we will need: a routing station to make sure the right medical personnel go where they’re needed most and then an intelligence liaison. From what I’ve seen, it would be best if the First Citizen functioned as a link between the Protectors’ Guild, the intelligence wing of the Military Guild, and our people. They all hate each other. I can give you more details.’

‘That’s fine for now. Okay. Work up a procedure for disbanding this office, choose an officer to put in charge of the medical station, and do some research on the liaison idea. You should bring Dukayn into that.’

Karlo sat down in his usual chair just as saccule servants trotted in with trays of food. Karlo grabbed a sandwich and a cup of grain drink as they went by and settled in to read reports. During the night even the Military Intelligence people had found nothing, since the original explosion had destroyed its own evidence. They were in the process of questioning the security guards who’d been on duty there over the past week - the ones who’d survived, that is. Dukayn appeared some twenty minutes later, bringing with him another problem, this one merely irritating rather than dangerous.

‘It’s about your son’s contract ceremony,’ Dukayn said. ‘Se Vida wants to postpone it out of respect for the dead and their families.’

‘Of course,’ Karlo said. ‘So?’

‘Tarick Avon of Pansect Media is throwing shit around. He stands to lose money if the coverage doesn’t hit the grids as announced.’

‘Screw the man! What’s he going to do? Sue her?’

‘Yes. And Wan, too.’

Karlo relieved his feelings with a string of oaths in Helane and Gen both.

‘Get him on the comm, and - no, wait. Get him over here. If he’s going to act like an asshole, he can waste his time doing it in person. Set up a meeting between him, me, and Vida. If you can find Wan easily, do it. Otherwise, don’t worry about him.’

Karlo spent the rest of that day organizing the liaison procedures and reviewing reports of the hunting of Vi-Kata as they came in. Military Intelligence had managed to collect sightings of a Lep that could only be the Outcast, but they all dated from before the bombing. The Lep community had turned suddenly cooperative, Karlo was pleased to note. Since a police force that rarely saw fatal violence was dealing with a highly-skilled professional, the Protectors’

reports generally fell into the category of useless.’ They did, however, discover that a young Lep found dead in South Canal had worked for D&B Janitorial. He’d been at the Floating Amphitheatre on the night before the disaster. A witness, or maybe a confederate - it didn’t much matter, Karlo supposed, since he was unable to tell anyone anything. At the fifteens Dukayn arrived with Tarick Avon and the news that Se Vida was on her way. For the occasion Avon wore the guild robes of a full master, but to Karlo the multi-coloured stripes of Media Guild made the man look like a clown. He took him into the small private office behind the hologram, sat him down in a formfit, and stayed standing, walking back and forth with his hands stuffed into his pockets. Avon wasted no time.

‘First Citizen, I know you’re thinking that I’m a money-grubbing little bastard. You don’t understand just how much lost revenue’s at stake. Pansect’s had to pay an indemnity to the carrying grid. We’ll forfeit if we can’t provide the promised feature.’

‘Oh? How much?’

‘A million credits. That’s only the indemnity. Lost time, rescheduling, kill fees to the holders of the spin-off rights - there’s another four hundred thousand.’

Karlo opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘That’s a lot of money,’ Avon said. ‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘More than I expected, yes. But still, we’ve got an issue of basic decency here. Over two thousand people are dead, more may still die, the injuries of most of the remaining victims are major.’ Out of the corner of his eye Karlo saw the office door opening. ‘What kind of audience do you think you’re going to get, anyway, for something as frivolous as a contract ceremony?’

‘An enormous one. People get sick of the horrifying, you know. They want something to lift them up, a happy distraction. After four days of those ghastly holos and all the morbid commentary, I’ll bet every vidscreen on Palace gets tuned to Vida and Wan’s ceremony. Here, you’re a soldier. We’re talking about the public morale.’

Vida stepped into the office. Right behind her came Jak, who shut the door behind them. She wore black pants with a modest black shirt, and she’d bound her flamboyant hair back in a single braid. At the sight of her Avon flinched. Jak took up a position behind him, crossed his arms over his chest, and scowled at the intake’s bald scalp.

‘Tarick,’ Vida said. ‘You’re really being loath. I can’t believe you’d threaten to sue me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Avon was close to stammering. ‘It’s the grid indemnity money.’

‘How much money will you lose if I have my factor put your outfit on my "no access" list?

There’s an awful lot of society people who’ll do the same thing just because I did. I won’t even have to ask.’

Avon swore under his breath. Karlo perched on the edge of the desk and left him to Vida.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I might consent to the ceremony going on like we planned - I might, I said, only might - if you make me a promise right now. You won’t repeat anything you hear in this room until I tell you it’s okay.’

As he scented big news breaking beyond his reach, Avon’s wide blue eyes rolled in agony. Vida waited in silence.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I promise.’

‘Good.’ Vida glanced at Karlo. ‘He’s right about the morale, Se. I know that I can’t stand to see any more of that video. All those poor people!’

‘I hadn’t thought of that, yeah,’ Karlo said. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ve been thinking. You’re pretty sure it’s Vi-Kata who made the bomb, aren’t you?’

‘Everything points to him, yes.’

‘And from what Se Hivel’s been telling me, he could hide out in Palace forever, and the police will only find him if they’re really lucky.’

‘I hate to say it, but Jons is probably right. This city is enormous, and Kata knows what he’s doing. Military Intelligence can give him a run for his money, but it’s not going to be easy, digging him out of his hole.’

‘I don’t understand that,’ Avon broke in. ‘No-one else does, either. It’s a question that the First Citizen might want to address on the public vids, in fact.’

‘The police can’t find him because he’s utterly unpredictable,’ Karlo said. ‘All terrorists are, at least in the beginning. They strike out of nowhere, and no-one has any idea of what their target will be until they’ve hit. Think about it. If someone’s selling illegal drugs, the police can figure out where his customers are likely to be and wait for him there. I don’t know where Kata’s getting his explosives, but if he has more, he could blow up any building anywhere. How can any of the police forces involved predict the next one?’

‘I can see that,’ Avon said. ‘But the people deserve to know this, too. It’ll put them on their guard. You’ve got millions of pairs of eyes and ears out there, First Citizen. Use them.’

Karlo caught himself on the edge of a dismissive remark.

‘You’re right, aren’t you? All right. You can quote me on that after all.
If
I see the quote in advance.’