Torch of Freedom

Late 1921 and 1922 Post-Diaspora.

(4023 and 4024, Christian Era)

Leonard Detweiler, the CEO and majority stockholder of the Detweiler Consortium, a Beowulf-based pharmaceutical and biosciences corporation, found himself with a great deal of money and not a great deal of sympathy with the Beowulf bioethics code which had emerged following Old Earth's Final War and Beowulf's leading role in repairs to the brutally ravaged mother world. Almost five hundred years had passed since that war, and Detweiler believed it was long past time that mankind got over its "Frankenstein fear" (as he described it) of genetic modification of human beings. It simply made sense, he believed, to impose reason, logic, and long-term planning on the random chaos and wastefulness of natural evolutionary selection. And, as he pointed out, for almost fifteen hundred years, mankind's Diaspora to the stars had already been taking the human genotype into environments which were naturally mutagenic on a scale which had never been imagined on pre-space Old Earth. In effect, he argued, simply transporting human beings into such radically different environments was going to induce significant genetic variation, so there was no point in worshiping some semi-mythic "pure human genotype."

Since all that was true, Detweiler further argued, it only made sense to genetically modify colonists for the environments which were going to cause their descendants to mutate anyway. And it was only a small step further to argue that if it made sense to genetically modify human beings for environments in which they would have to live, it also made sense to genetically modify them to better suit them to the environments in which they would have to work.

Chapter Sixty-One

November, 1921

Queen Berry looked a little bewildered by the flag bridge of the Chao Kung Ming. The Spartacus, rather, as the government of Torch had decided to rename her.

"Let me get this straight. You manage battles from here?"

"I can assure you, Your Majesty, that after you've spent some time in one of these"—Admiral Rozsak swept his hand around—"all of this actually makes sense, instead of seeming like a gazillion flashing lights and weird-looking icons. With experience, for instance, this"—here he pointed to the tactical plot—"is a most handy gadget. And quite easy to interpret, believe it or not."

Berry study the gadget in question, very dubiously. "It looks like a vid I saw once. A documentary about deep-sea luminous fish, looking really bizarre and moving around completely at random, so far as I could tell."

He chuckled. "I know it's a bit much, at first sight. I was nineteen years old the first time I came onto a flag bridge—that was the old Prince Igor—and I almost walked into the tactical plot, I was so confused. One of the worst ass-reamings I ever got followed, if you'll parson the crude expression."

Berry smiled, but the smile faded away soon.

"You're sure about this, Luiz?"

She spoke informally because in the weeks since what had come to be called the Battle of Torch, a quiet but profound sea change had swept through the small number of Torch's leaders who knew the truth about the Stein assassination and the events that had followed on The Wages of Sin and elsewhere. A change in the way they looked at Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak.

Before the battle, they'd considered Rozsak an ally, true enough. But it had been purely an alliance of convenience and not one of them had personally trusted the admiral. No farther than I could throw him—when I was a toddler, was the way Jeremy had put it. Indeed, not only had they not trusted Rozsak, they'd been deeply suspicious of him.

Today, it was still unlikely (to say the least) that anyone was going to confuse the admiral with a saint. But it was impossible to match the previous assessment of Rozsak as a man driven solely, entirely and exclusively by his own ambition with the admiral who'd led the defense of Torch at such an incredible cost to his own forces and risk to his own life.

A man driven by a fierce ambition, yes. Solely by ambition, however . . . No. That, it was no longer possible to believe.

At that, the growing warmth of Torch's inner circle toward the admiral was a candle, however, compared to the enthusiastic embrace with which Torch's population had greeted the Mayan survivors of the battle. Any officer or enlisted person in the fleet who went down to the planet—and there none who didn't, except for those still too badly injured to make the trip—swore then and thereafter that there was not, never had been, and never would be a shore leave better than the one they enjoyed on Torch in the weeks that followed the battle.

No one on Torch doubted that those Mayan fighting men and women had saved the planet's population from complete destruction. Not once the State Sec officers who survived the battle and the ones who surrendered afterward started talking.

And they started talking very quickly, and they talked and talked and talked. Their immediate fear had been that Torch would hand them over to the Republic of Haven. Then Jeremy X and Saburo started interrogating, and within two days it was the profound hope of every State Sec officer that they would be turned over to the Haven navy.

Jeremy X's notions concerning "the laws of war" and the proper rules governing the treatment of POWs would have met with the approval of Attila the Hun. And while Berry Zilwicki might have squelched Jeremy, she wasn't going to squelch Saburo.

He started every interrogation by placing a holopic between himself and the person being interrogated. "Her name was Lara. And her ghost really, really, really wants you to tell me everything you know. Or her ghost is going to get really, really, really peeved."

So, within a few days, they knew everything—at least, everything that had been known by Santander Konidis and the other surviving officers. But that was enough to know the three critical items.

First, that Manpower had surely been behind the whole plot. Second, that the Mesa System Nay had played a major part in providing training and logistical support. And, third, and beyone any faintest shadow of a doubt, that Manpower had planned and ordered a complete violation of the Eridani Edict.

Thereafter, however—quite to the surprise of Konidis and his subordinates—all threats and mistreatment had stopped. Within a month, all of the State Sec survivors had been relocated onto an island and provided with the wherewithal to set up reasonably comfortable if austere living quarters, along with a sufficient food supply brought in once a week under heavy guard.

The armed forces of Torch placed no guards on the island itself, and didn't even maintain a naval patrol beyond a small number of vessels. But the more adventurous of the State Sec forces who experimented with the possibility of trying to escape by sea soon gave it up. It turned out that the lifeforms in Torch's warm oceans were every bit as exuberant as the ones in its tropical rain forests. Especially the predator that looked like a ten-meter long cross between a lobster and a manta ray, and whose dietary preferences seemed to exclude rocks but absolutely nothing else.

That measure had been taken at Rozsak's request.

"I'd really be much happier if I knew that none of those survivors was in a position to tell anyone—and that includes Haven—exactly what happened here and what weaponry I possessed and what tactics I used."

"Certainly, Admiral," Web Du Havel had said. "But . . . ah . . . that still leaves the population of Torch itself. Which, at last count, numbers a little over four and a quarter million people and grows—this is immigration alone—by almost fifteen thousand people every T-week."

Rozsak had shrugged. "It's not a perfect world. But the State Sec survivors would have an incentive to talk—spill their guts, rather, once Haven gets hold of them—and your people don't. In fact, from what I've heard, you've launched a very effective public campaign to establish and maintain tight security."

"Yes, we have," Hugh had said.

Berry had glanced at him, smiled—and then made a face. "I still think 'loose lips sink ships' is a corny slogan."

"It is. It also works." There were some subjects concerning which Hugh Arai had no shame whatsoever. "How long do you want us to hold them, Admiral?"

"To be honest, I don't know. There are still too many variables involved in the equation for us to know yet what'll be happening. If it's a financial strain to maintain the prisoners, I can talk to Governor Barregos and see if—"

Du Havel had waved that aside. "Don't worry about it. The one thing Torch is not, is poor or strapped for funds, even with having to provide initial support for most immigrants, who usually arrive with nothing much more than the clothes they're wearing. But the support doesn't normally last long, because the job market is booming. Plenty of pharmaceutical companies have been quite happy to come here and replace Manpower's operations with their own."

Web had exchanged looks with Jeremy and Berry and Thandi Palane.

"Consider it done, Admiral," Palane had said then, with one of her simultaneously dazzling and ferocious smiles. "We'll keep 'em on ice for as long as you want."

"Are you sure, Luiz?" Berry repeated now. "You paid a terrible price for this ship, and the others."

For a moment, Rozsak's face looked a bit drawn. "Yes, we did. But there are some very good reasons why it'd be better if the surviving State Sec ships were pressed into Torch service rather than Mayan service."

"Such as?" Berry asked.

He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged.

"Trust me, it's not a case of misplaced gallantry on my part, Your Majesty!" He snorted in obvious amusement, then sobered. "The truth is, that they'd be white elephants as far as we're concerned. There are . . . reasons we'd just as soon not have anyone from Old Earth poking around in Maya, Berry, and if we start taking ex-Havenite ships into service, someone's likely to do just that.

"And they're not likely to when word of the battle gets there? Or were you thinking you could get away with just not mentioning it?" Berry knew she looked skeptical. "We're willing to keep our mouths shut, Luiz, but don't foget all of those pharmaceutical companies. I imagine we're going to have newsies out here from the League sometime real soon now, and there's no way we're going to be able to keep the fact that there was a battle here in the system under wraps whan that happens! Weapons and actual losses are one thing, but . . ."

She gave a little shrug, and he nodded.

"Understood. But we're going to tell the galaxy it was the Erewhon Navy that did the real fighting. Our ships were limited to the flotilla everyone knows about, watching the planet against any missiles that might have come your way. And we don't plan on advertising how heavy our losses were, either." It was his turn to shrug, with a flicker of pain in his eyes. "We can't keep the rest of the galaxy from knowing we lost some people out here, but all our official reports are going to indicate that the people we lost were acting as cadre to help fill out the Erewhonese crews. The only people who could tell anyone different on stuck on your island, and no newsie—or League flunky—is going to get to them there, now are they?"

"No, they're not," Berry agreed with a certain flat steeliness. Then she drew a breah tna nodded.

"Okay, then. If you're sure." When she looked around the flag bridge this time, she seemed a little less bewildered. "I still can't figure out most of what's happening here. But I know Thandi's happy about getting this ship—it's a heavy cruiser, right?—and the rest of them."

She smiled. "Well . . . 'happy' isn't quite the right term. 'Ecstatic' might be better. Or 'beside herself with joy.' Or 'delirious.' "

Rozsak smiled also. "I'm hardly surprised. She'll have a fleet that goes almost overnight from having a frigate as its flagship to—yes, it's a heavy cruiser, Your Majesty."

"Please, Luiz. Call me Berry."

She returned from the Spartacus in a pensive mood. Visiting that ship had driven something home to her in a way that the inconvenience of living in what amounted to a bunker had not. Life—even with prolong—was simply too damn short to dilly-dally around the fundamentals.

So, when she returned to the palace, her first words were to Saburo.

"You're promoted, starting immediately. Now please leave Hugh and me alone, for a bit."

Saburo nodded, and left the room.

Hugh's face had no expression at all. As the months had gone by, Berry had learned that he was very good at that. It was one of the things she planned to change.

"Have I displeased you, Your Majesty?"

"Not hardly. I just can't deal with this any longer. I want your resignation. Now."

Hugh didn't hesitate for more than perhaps a second. "As you wish, Your Majesty. I resign as your chief of security."

"Don't call me that. My name is Berry and you damn well don't have any excuse any longer not to use it."

He bowed, slightly, and then extended his elbow. "All right, Berry. In that case, may I escort you to J. Quesenberry's?"

The smile that came to her face then was the same gleaming smile that had captivated Hugh Arai since the first time he'd seen it. But it was as if a star had become a supernova.

"Ice cream would be nice. Later. Right now, I'd be much happier if you'd take me to bed."

Chapter Sixty-Two

December 1921

"So you've finished your analysis?" Albrecht Detweiler asked after his son had settled—still a bit cautiously—into the indicated chair.

"Such as it is, and what there is of it," Collin Detweiler replied, easing his left arm. "There are still a lot of holes, you understand, Father." He shrugged. "There's no way we're ever going to close all of them."

"Nobody with a working brain would expect otherwise," Collin's brother, Benjamin, put in. "I've been pointing that out to you for—What? Two or three weeks, now?"

"Something like that," Collin acknowledged with a smile that mingled humor, resignation, and lingering discomfort.

"And did your brother also point out to you—as, now that I think about it, I believe your father has—that you could have delegated more of this? You damned near died Collin, and regen"—Albrecht looked pointedly at his son's still distinctly undersized left arm—"takes time. And it also, in case you hadn't noticed, is just a teeny-tiny bit hard on the system."

"Touché, Father. Touché!" Collin replied after a moment. "And, yes, Ben did make both of those points to me, as well. It's just . . . well . . ."

Albrecht regarded his son with fond exasperation. All of his "sons" were overachievers, and none of them really ever wanted to take time off. He practically had to stand over them with a stick to make them, in fact. That attitude seemed to be hardwired into the Detweiler genotype, and it was a good thing, in a lot of ways. But as he'd just pointed out to Collin (with massive understatement), the regeneration therapies placed enormous demands upon the body. Even with the quality of medical care a Detweiler could expect and the natural resiliency of an alpha-line's enhanced constitution, simply regrowing an entire arm would have been a massive drain on Collin's energy. When that "minor" requirement was added to all of the other physical repairs Collin had required, some of his physicians had been genuinely concerned about how hard he'd been pushing himself.

Albrecht had seriously considered ordering him to hand the investigation over to someone else, but he'd decided against it in the end. Partly that was because he knew how important it was to Collin on a personal level, for a lot of reasons. Partly it was because even operating in pain and a chronic state of fatigue, Collin—with Benjamin's assistance—was still better at this sort of thing than almost anyone else Albrecht could have thought of. And partly—even mostly, if he was going to be honest—it was because the chaos and confusion left in the wake of the massive destruction hadn't left anyone else he could both have handed the task over to and trusted completely.

"All right," he said out loud now, half-smiling and half-glowering at Collin. "You couldn't hand it over to someone else because you're too OCD to stand letting someone else do it. We all understand that. I think it's a family trait." He heard Benjamin snort, and his smile broadened. Then it faded just a bit. "And we all understand this hit pretty damned close to home for you, Collin, in a lot of ways. I won't pretend I really like how hard you've been driving yourself, but—"

He shrugged, and Collin nodded in understanding.

"Well, that said," his father went on, "I take it you've decided Jack McBryde really was a traitor?"

"Yes," Colin sighed. "I have to admit, part of me resisted that conclusion. But I'm afraid it's almost certain that he was."

"Only 'almost'?" Benjamin asked with a sort of gentle skepticism. Collin looked at him, and Benjamin arched one eyebrow.

"Only almost," Collin repeated with a rather firmer emphasis. "Given the complete loss of so many of our records and the fragmentary—and contradictory, sometimes—nature of what survived, almost any conclusion we could possibly reach is going to be tentative, and especially where motivations are concerned. But I take your point, Ben, and I won't pretend it was an easy conclusion for me to accept."

"But you do accept it now?" his father asked quietly.

"Yes." Collin rubbed his face briefly with his good hand. "Despite the scattered records we found that would seem to indicate Jack was making a desperate, last-minute effort to thwart some kind of conspiracy, there's simply not any way to account for those recordings Irvine made at the diner except to assume he was guilty. Certainly not once we confirmed that the waiter he was meeting with was Anton Zilwicki. And then there's this."

He drew a personal memo pad from his pocket, laid it on the corner of his father's desk so he could manipulate it one-handed, and keyed the power button.

"I'm afraid the visual quality isn't what we'd like, given the limits of the original recording," he half-apologized. "The only reason we've got this much is because the owners of the Buenaventura Tower didn't want seccy squatters moving in. But it's enough for our purposes."

He touched a key, and a small holographic image appeared above the pad. It showed a passageway of some sort. The lighting was quite dim, but after a moment, three people came into view, crossing hurriedly toward a door some distance away.

"We ran this recording through every cross check," Collins said. "The man on the left is definitely Anton Zilwicki, within a ninety-nine-point-nine percent probability. Outside the world of statistics, that means 'for damned sure and certain.' There's simply no question about it. That phenotype of his is obviously hard to disguise, and everything else matches. Not the face, of course . . . although it does match the face of the waiter in Irvine's recording."

"And the other man is . . . ?"

"Yes, Father." Collin nodded. "It's Victor Cachat. To be precise, it's Victor Cachat within an eighty-seven-point-five percent probability. We don't have anywhere near as much imagery on him as we had on Zilwicki, thanks to that documentary the Manties did on him a while back. That gave us a lot smaller comparison sample for Cachat, so the analysts' confidence level is considerably lower. I think they're just throwing out sheet anchors, though. For myself, I'm entirely confident its Cachat."

"The woman?" Benjamin asked, and this time Collin shook his head.

"As far as her specific identity is concerned, we don't know, and it's almost certain that we never will. But her general identity is clear enough—ninety-nine-point-five percent probable, anyway. She's a Scrag, presumably one of that group of female Scrags who defected to Torch."

"She'd be a minor player, then."

"Yes. Zilwicki and Cachat were the critical ones."

"And you're certain they are dead?" Albrecht was frowning at the image, which was rerunning in a continuous loop. "No chance that recording was faked?"

"We don't see how it could have been, Father. Mind you, in this line of work we never deal in dead—you should pardon the expression—certainties. But at this point, the practical distinction between 'certain' and 'extremely probable' gets thin enough you just have to take it as a given. Nobody would ever get anything done if we insisted on one hundred percent verification of every single fact."

He settled back in his chair again, easing his regrowing arm once more, and crossed his legs.

"We ran those images through every comparative program we've got. What I can tell you, as a result, is that these are genuine images of genuine people in exactly the place they seem to be. The analyses we've run compare movements to background on an almost microscopic level. That's one reason it took so long. Those people"—he pointed at the still replaying imagery—"actually did exactly what it looks like they're doing against exactly the background we're seeing."

"So this is definitely a recording of these people going through that passageway?" Benjamin asked.

"Right."

"But I notice you didn't say anything about when they did it," Albrecht pointed out.

"No, I didn't. That's where the 'never deal in dead certainties' I mentioned above comes in. There's a possibility—a very tiny possibility—that they could have recorded this ahead of time and then substituted that recording for the live imagery from the tower's owners' security system. But given the security protocols which would have to be circumvented, pulling it off—and especially pulling it off without getting caught at it—would be . . . extremely difficult, shall we say."

Albrecht rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

"By all accounts, Zilwicki is very good at that sort of thing," he pointed out.

"Yes, and the accounts are accurate, too. But pulling off something like your suggesting would have meant meant getting into that bizarre virtual world where hackers have been jousting for over two thousand T-years." Collin made a "brushing away" gesture with his working hand. "Any security protocols can be circumvented, Father . . . and any program to circumvent security protocols can be detected. Then that detection can be circumvented, but the circumvention can be detected, and so on. It goes on literally forever. In the end, it comes down to the simple question of 'Are our cyberneticists as good as their cyberneticists?' "

Collin shrugged.

"I can't rule out the possibility that Zilwicki is—was—better at this than any—or, for that, matter all of—our people are. Frankly, it seems vanishingly unlikely that one man, no matter how good he may be, is going to be better than an entire planet's worth of competing cyberneticists. Still, I'll grant the possibility. But no matter how good he may have been, he was still playing in our front yard. If we'd been playing on his territory, I'd feel a lot less comfortable with our conclusions, but could Anton Zilwicki, using only the equipment and software he was able to smuggle onto Mesa—or obtain on the black market once he got here—get around the best protocols we've ever been able to create, with all the advantages of operating on our own home planet, and do it so seamlessly that we can't find a single trace of it?"

He shook his head.

"Yes, it's theoretically possible, but, in the real world, I really don't think it's likely at all." He pointed at the tiny, moving figures of the recorded imagery once more. "I think we're looking at what really happened and when it happened. Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat and an unknown female were passing through the parking facilities of what used to be the Benaventura Tower when someone set off a two-point-five kiloton nuclear device. The center of the explosion was about thirty meters from what you're seeing right this minute."

"Which, of course, explains the absence of any DNA traces." Benjamin made a face. "They were simply vaporized."

"Oh, there were plenty of DNA traces in the area." Collin chuckled harshly. "Even in that location, and even at that time on a Saturday morning, there had to be somebody around. Benaventura's been standing empty long enough, and it's far enough out into that industrial belt between the city proper and the spaceport, that traffic was thankfully light. In fact, that's almost certainly the reason Zilwicki and Cachat had chosen that particular route for their escape. Despite that, our best estimate from our pattern analysis of all of the tower's security recordings from the last couple of months or so is that there were probably at least thirty or forty people in the immediate vicinity. We've recovered over twenty complete and partial bodies, some of them pretty well incinerated, but we're positive there are quite a few we'll never know about.

"But the truth is that even if they hadn't been, for all practical purposes, right at the center of the fireball, we still wouldn't have gotten much from DNA analysis. Cachat is—was—a Havenite, born in Nouveau Paris itself, and StateSec did a pretty fanatical job of eliminating any medical records that might ever have existed when Saint-Just tapped him for special duties. No way we could get our hands on a sample we knew was his DNA. We'd have a better chance of getting a sample of Zilwicki's DNA, but he was from Gryphon. Nouveau Paris' population is an incredible stew, from everywhere, and Gryphon's population's genetic makeup isn't particularly distinct, either, so we couldn't even narrow an otherwise unidentified trace to either planet. We might have had a chance of identifying the Scrag—generically, at least—but even then only if she'd been a lot farther from the hypocenter. Ground zero, I should say. Technically, 'hypocenter' applies only to air bursts."

"All right," said Albrecht. "I'm persuaded . . . mostly." It was obvious to both his sons that the qualifier was pure spinal reflex on his part. "Now the question is: who set off the bomb?" Albrecht nodded at the hologram. "None of these people look to me like they were planning on committing suicide." He shook his head. "They were obviously going somewhere, and they were obviously in a hurry, even if they weren't exactly fleeing for their lives in panic. If they'd meant to kill themselves, then why go anywhere? And if they'd had even a clue a nuclear charge was about to go off less than fifty meters away, then I'd think they would have been going elsewhere a hell of a lot faster than they actually were!"

"We don't think they did it, Father. The possibility can't be ruled out, but we can't see any motivate they might've had to suicide. And as you say"—he nodded at the hologram himself—"that's definitely not the body language of people about to kill themselves, either."

"If not them, then who?" Benjamin asked.

"I doubt if we'll ever know, for sure," Collin replied. "Our best guess, after chewing on it for quite some time, is that Jack killed them."

"McBryde?" Albrecht frowned. "But why . . . Oh. You think he thought—correctly or otherwise—that Cachat and Zilwicki had doublecrossed him?"

"That's one explanation, yes—and the one that's favored by most of my team. This scenario is that Jack was trying to defect with Simões but the negotiations broke down. Probably because Cachayt and Zilwicki decided they'd already gotten enough from him to make leaving Mesa worthwhile and that smuggling him and Simões off-planet wasn't worth the risk."

"And McBryde suspected they might try that, and had laid that device ahead of time. And used a nuclear device—talk about overkill!—because he figured it would help eliminate anything that might be traced back to him." Again, Albrecht rubbed his jaw. "But how would he get them to be there at the right time?"

"Who knows? Keep in mind that he didn't have to finagle them into being there at any specific, preset time. Someone with Jack's training and experience could easily have set up a method of remote detonation, and there are several ways he could have known what escape route they'd be taking, even if he couldn't predict ahead of time when they'd be going through it. So he could have set the charge purely as an insurance policy. Then, once he knew he was going to execute Scorched Earth, he could have linked that detonation to the one in the tower. They happened almost simultaneously, after all."

"In other words, he took his revenge before he checked out himself."

"Or at the same time, you could say." Collin raised his right hand. "Father, the truth is that, given the havoc Jack wreaked on our computer systems and records, and the fact that Lajos Irvine is the only one of the central players who survived, we'll never know all of what happened, or exactly the reason why. All I can give you is the best assessment my people could come up with after a very long, thorough, exhaustive analysis."

He leaned forward and switched off the memo pad.

"What we think most likely happened is that two separate sequences of events crossed each other. Jack, trying to defect with Simões, decided he was being doublecrossed. So, he planned to destroy Cachat and Zilwicki in a manner that would eliminate any trace of them, any evidence that could connect him to them. He'd figure we'd assume the Buenaventura explosion was an act of terrorism by the Audubon ballroom. Don't forget, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation for being in Gamma Center that day, with Simões. It had been on his calendar for at least two weeks. In fact, he'd specifically memoed Isabel about it."

"And the surviving Gamma Center records confirm that's where the two of them were?" Benjamin's tone made the question a statement, and Collin nodded.

"Exactly. And, before you ask, Father, no, I can't be absolutely certain that the records which show Simões was there also weren't somehow faked. It wouldn't have been as hard for Jack to successfully fake those records as it would've been for Zilwicki to do the same thing at the Buenaventura, but why should he have? There's no way he himself wasn't present when he destroyed the Gamma Center. That much we know for certain, because Scorched Earth had to be triggered by someone inside the facility. It can't—couldn't—be done by remote control."

He scowled.

"In fact, it wasn't supposed to be possible for Scorched Earth to be triggered by any single person, either, no matter where they were. Trust me, some people have already . . . heard from me about that one. Jack figured out a way to circumvent the two-man protocols, and nobody was supposed to be able to do that."

"So you're assuming McBryde didn't find out about the doublecross until he and Simões had already met in his office," Albert said.

"Yes, and that's where the second sequence of events comes into play. What Jack overlooked—probably because he'd been out of the field long enough for his fieldcraft to get rusty—was the possibility that Irvine might have set up his own surveillance equipment and spotted him meeting Zilwicki. Irvine didn't recognize Zilwicki as Zilwicki because we hadn't spread that information far enough down the chain for him to have any idea what Zilwicki actually looked like. But he did understand that something fishy was going on, so he alerted Isabel. He got through to her on the same morning Jack's negotiations with Zilwicki and Cachat collapsed, and she went down to the Gamma Center to find out just what the hell Jack was up to."

"In other words, it was just really bad timing from McBryde's point of view," Albert mused. "He'd probably have gotten away with killing Cachat and Zilwicki, and he must've had plans for dealing with Simões, too, in the event that his defection fell through. But then Isabel showed up out of the blue, and he realized the wheels had come completely off. There was no way he was going to get away with it, and he knew what the penalty would be, so he committed suicide and took out Cachat and Zilwicki at the same time."

"That's the consensus," Collin confirmed. But Benjamin, who'd been studying his brother closely through the previous explanation, cocked his head.

"Why do I get the feeling you don't agree with that consensus, Collin? Or not fully, at least?"

"Hard to keep secrets between us, isn't it?" Collin gave him a wry smile. "You get that feeling because it's true. I think there's another explanation, one that's more likely, given the principals. But I'll also add that no one else on my team agrees with me, and it's possible I'm being sentimental."

His father had been studying him carefully, as well. Now Albrecht leaned forward slightly, propping one elbow on his desk.

"You think McBryde had a last-minute change of heart," he said softly.

"Not . . . exactly." Collin frowned. "The thing is, I knew Jack McBryde. We worked together for years, and one of Jack's best qualities was that he wasn't vindictive in the least. In fact, probably less vindictive than almost anyone I can imagine. That's one of the reasons he was so popular with his subordinates. Jack would discipline people, when it was necessary. Sometimes even harshly. But never more harshly than was necessary, and never out of anger. I've seen him mad, plenty of times, but it never came out in the way he treated other people. On the other hand . . ."

"He was squeamish."

"Yes, Father." Collin sighed. "It was his biggest weakness, frankly. In fact, it was the reason I had him assigned to Gamma Center originally. Or, rather, the reason I had his permanent file quietly tagged 'not for field ops' and moved him over to the security side in the first place."

"I don't see where you're going with this," Benjamin said with a slight frown.

"I do," Albrecht said. "Why would an overly softhearted person with no history of vindictiveness or vengefulness kill—how many people was it, Collin?"

"As I say, we're figuring a minimum of thirty or forty for the Buenaventura explosion. Personally, I think it was probably close to twice that many, if you count the unregistered seccies who were probably caught in it, as well. We can add another sixty for the Gamma Center—even on a Saturday—even before we count Isabel, her team, and Jack itself."

"But that's not really the point," his father said, looking back at Benjamin. "The people inside the Center were unavoidable collateral damage once he decided on Scorched Earth. But we're talking about a minimum of more than three dozen people—quite possibly a lot more—in a separate explosion he didn't have to set off." Albrecht raised an eyebrow. "Now do you see? Some compulsion had to drive McBryde to overcome his scruples. And if it wasn't vengeance, what was it? What Collin is suggesting is that once it became clear to McBryde that his plans to defect had been aborted and he was going to die, he saw to it that Zilwicki and Cachat died also—and before they got off-planet with whatever he might have given them. As a last act of . . . what would you call it, Collin? Patriotism seems a little silly."

"More like . . . atonement, I think. Keep in mind that I can't prove any of this, Father. It's just my gut feeling. And, as I said, no one else on my team agrees with me."

"Practically speaking, though, it doesn't really matter which explanation actually applies, does it?" Albrecht asked gently, almost compassionately.

"No, Sir. It doesn't," Collin agreed a bit softly.

"And the Park explosion?"

"That one's still something of a puzzle," Collin confessed, and his eyes darkened once more. "I don't like admitting that, either, given how many of my neighbors were killed. The current casualty total for that one is around eight thousand, though, and I'm damned sure Jack McBryde didn't have anything to do with that! At the same time, I don't think I believe somebody would just 'coincidentally' pick that particular day to set off a nuclear charge in a completely separate, spontaneous terrorist incident."

"So you think they're related?"

"Father, I'm sure they have to be related somehow. We just don't know how. And we don't know—and will never know—who actually detonated the damned thing. We've got the feed transmitted from those two cops' HD cams, but neither camera ever had a good angle on the driver's face, so there's no way we can tell if whoever it was was ever in our files. Or, perhaps, I should say in our surviving files." His smile could have curdled milk. "It's possible—even probable—he was Ballroom affiliated, but we can't prove that. I'm inclined to think he was a seccy, not a slave, but that's really as far as I am prepared to go."

He shrugged, much more lightly—obviously—than he actually felt.

"What I don't understand, even assuming he was Ballroom connected, is why. I'm assuming that, with Zilwicki's own Ballroom connections, he was receiving support from assets of theirs here on Mesa, as well. We keep them prunded far enough back that they don't have a truly effective presence—or we think we do, at any rate; what happened with Jack could prove we've been a little over sanguine in that respect. But even pruned back, they've always had some contacts among the seccies, and I think we have to take it for a given that Zilwicki had tapped into them for assistance once he got here. So my first hypotheses was that this was intended as a diversion for his and Cachat's escape. And," his eyes hardened and his voice went grim, "it would have made one hell of a diversion. Eight thousand dead and another sixty-three hundred badly injured?" He shook his head. "It had every emergency responder in the city—and from Mendel, too, for that matter!—racing in one direction, and you couldn't have asked for a better diversion than that.

"But when I really considered it, I realized it wasn't Zilwicki's style. He could have achieved the same diversionary effect with an explosion that wouldn't have killed a fraction of as many people as this bomb killed. Not only that, but we know from his record that he had a soft spot a kilometer-wide where kids were concerned. Just look at the two be carted home with him from Old Chicago!" Collin shook his head again, harder. "No way would that man have signed off on detonating a nuke in the middle of a frigging park on a Saturday morning. Cachat, now—he was cold enough he could have done it if he decided he had no choice, but I don't see even him going along with something like this purely for the sake of a diversion."

"Do you have any theory at all that might explain it?"

"The best one I've been able to come up with, and it's no more than my own personal hypothesis, you understand, is that some Ballroom associate or sympathizer here on Mesa who was at least peripherally aware of Zilwicki and Cachat's presence, did it on his own. Given the fact that we know from Irvine that they clearly had an emergency fallback plan—the one that, unfortunately for them, took them too close to Jack's little surprise at Buenaventura—I think they may have intended for the Park Valley nuke to go off somewhere else, somewhere with a lot less people around. Somewhere it would have made a diversion but not killed so many people. But once Jack took them out at Buenaventura, whoever was in charge . . . changed his mind. In other words, the charge itself probably was part of Zilwicki and Cachat's escape plan, but I doubt very much that its location was."

Albrecht leaned back in his chair folded his hands across his chest, and spent the next several minutes looking out the window at white beaches and dark blue water while he thought it all through.

"Well," he said finally, grimacing a little. "I'd be happier if there weren't so many loose ends. But"—he brought his eyes back to his two sons—"the bottom line is that the one thing that does seem to be definitely established is that all four of the really dangerous people involved are dead. McBryde himself, Simões, Cachat, and Zilwicki. And, of course," his eyes hardened slightly, "the one ultimately responsible for this debacle."

Collin faced his father squarely.

"I assume you mean the Isabel," he said. His father gave a small nod, and Collin grimaced. "I think that's an unfair assessment, Father. Quite unfair, in fact. I don't think anyone could have foreseen that Jack McBryde was going to turn traitor. I can tell you that I didn't finally accept the truth for almost two full days, and I had the advantage of a lot of data Isabel never got a chance to see. She reacted as quickly as anyone could have asked when she found out he was behaving . . . erratically. And, in my opinion, she acted appropriately, given what she could havve known or understood at the time. There'd been absolutely no earlier indication that Jack, of all people, could have become a security risk. And don't forget, we didn't identify Zilwicki from Irvine's bugs' imagery until after the smoke had cleared. There's no evidence that Isabel imagined for one moment that Jack had been talking to Anton Zilwicki. Or that she had any reason to suspect anything of the sort, for that matter! All she knew at that point was that one of our most senior security officers, with a faultless record, in charge of one of the three most important installations on Mesa itself, had apparently decided to follow up Irvine's reports on his own.

"After the fact, knowing what we know now, it's obvious to us that she should've ordered his immediate arrest and launched a full bore investigation. But that's being wise after the fact, Father. No, it didn't immediately cross her mind that he was planning on betraying the entire Alignment, and maybe it should have. But given what she knew, she reacted immediately, and, frankly, she did exactly what I would have done in her place.

"The truth is, Father, that if Isabel were still alive and you were proposing to punish her, I'd be pointing out that by any logic and reason, you ought to be punishing me at the same time."

For a moment, father and son locked gazes. Then Albrecht looked away. A little smile came to his face, and he might have murmured, "Like father, like son," but neither Collin nor Benjamin knew for sure.

When his gaze came back, though, it was still hard, still purposeful.

"Am I right in assuming that you don't propose to punish McBryde's family?" he asked.

"No. We have no reason to think any of them were involved. None. Oh, we've questioned them, of course, thoroughly, and it's obvious they're deeply distraught and grieving. Defensive, too. I think they're in denial, to some extent, but I also think that's inevitable. What I haven't seen is any evidence that any of them knew a thing about Jack's plans. And, frankly, I'm positive Jack would never have involved them. Not in something like this, whatever his own motives may have been, he'd never have put his parents, Zachariah, or his sisters at risk. Not in a million years."

"Lathorous?"

"Steve doesn't seem to have been involved either, except by accident. And even then, only tangentially. It's true he was Jack's friend, but so are a lot of people." Collin grimaced. "Hell, Father, I liked Jack McBryde—a lot. Most people did."

"So you propose no punishment?"

"I'll give him a reprimand of some sort. But even that won't be very severe. Enough to make him walk on eggshells for a couple of years, but not enough to wreck his career."

"And Irvine?"

"You know, Father," Collin smiled crookedly, "he's actually the one bright spot in all this. He was completely loyal, start to finish, he was smart enough to realize something was happening that shouldn't have been, even if he didn't have a clue what that 'something' really was, and he's the only one involved who did his job properly."

"So your thoughts are—?"

"Well, he wants a field assignment, but, frankly, I don't think that's going to be possible any time soon." Collin shook his head. "He knows too much about what happened—especially now, after all the interrogations. We can't put him out, use him for a deep-penetration agent, with all of that rattling around inside his head. By the same token, his genotype doesn't really lend itself well to any other assignment. So, what I've been thinking, is that we might bring him all the way inside."

"All the way?" Albrecht's surprise was obvious, and Collin shrugged.

"I think it makes sense, Father. We can run him through the standard briefing program, see how he reacts. He's already halfway inside the onion, and as I just said, he's demonstrated loyalty and intelligence—and initiative, for that. If he can handle what's really going on, I think he could be very useful to us in Darius now that we're in the final runup to Prometheus."

"Um." Albrecht considered for several moments, then nodded. "All right, I can see that. Go ahead."

"Of course. And now," Collin pushed himself up out of his chair, "if you'll excuse me, there's a memorial being planned for all the people killed at Pine Valley Park. They'll be unveiling the sketch for it in a public meeting where the Children's Pavilion used to be this afternoon, and"—His face tightened with something that had absolutely no relationship to the physical discomfort of his still healing body—"I promised the kids we'd go."

Chapter Sixty-Three

April, 1922

Brice brought the cab to a halt at the very apex of Andrew's Curve. "Well, here we are."

Nancy Becker got up from the seat and went to stand with her face almost pressed against the observation window. That wasn't as foolish as it seemed, because that was a real window, not a vid screen. Allowing for the various protective shields, she was looking at the vista beyond with her own eyes, not something relayed electronically.

Brice had thought she'd like that. He'd timed the trip so that they'd be in shade when they arrived. Ameta, along with its various moons (the smallest and certainly the most recent of which was Parmley Station), revolved around an F5 subgiant star, which was half again as massive as Old Earth's sun, had twice the diameter, and was almost eight times more luminous. Had the roller coaster cab been perched in direct sunlight, Brice would have had no choice but to use the vid screens. Even with the protective shields—which were cut-rate quality, forget state of the art—it would have been too risky to look at the vista directly.

But they'd be able to do so for at least two hours before the station's revolution around Ameta brought this portion of it back out of the shade.

Brice came to stand next to her. Ameta was on full display, with all of its cloud bands and rings. There seemed to be every shade of blue and green there, along with enough white bands to set them off perfectly. As a bonus—this was rather unusual—the moon Hainuwele was just peeking around the curve of the giant planet below. Most of the time, Brice wasn't fond of the moon. It was close enough to Ameta to be subject to pronounced tidal heating, and its blotchy red, yellow and orange surface was usually sick-looking. In its current location, however, it was far enough away for the ugly details to be unnoticeable. At that distance, its bright colors made a striking contrast to the much cooler shades of its mother planet.

Even Yamato's Nebula was on its best behavior at the moment. It was as if the entire sidereal universe had decided to give its full support to Brice's bold and risky endeavor. He knew that was a fantasy, of course. But it ought to be true.

"It's beautiful," Nancy said softly.

"Told you," said Brice. Then, spent a minute or so silently berating himself for being less suave than any human male since the extinction of Homo erectus.

But he did not concede defeat. Quaked, but did not lose heart. He'd been planning this campaign for months, and had warned himself over and over that there would be setbacks. Most of them, caused by his clumsy tongue.

This was the first time the two of them had ever been alone, since they met on the tarmac of the spaceport. The months they'd spent since their escape from Mesa drifting on the Hali Sowle had been the equivalent of months spent in the most densely populated apartment in creation. You'd think that a freighter massing slightly over a million tons would have enormous empty reaches, but . . . it didn't. Or, rather, it did . . . but it was a working commercial vessel, nothing more. Despite the cpaciousness of its huge cargo holds, the living quarters were small and Spartan. Neither Ganny nor Uncle Andrew would have reacted kindly if Brice had proposed that time be taken from the repair work needed to get the ship's drive working again to turn some of the freight compartments into additional living quarters so that he might have a chance to spend some time alone with Nancy, either. It was best not to even think how Zilwicki or Cachat would have reacted to that suggestion, and, just to complete the unfairness of the universe, there'd been the minor fact that every square meter of every cargo hold was covered by the bridge security and monitoring cameras. So even though there were all those vast stretches of space, Brice had been gloomily certain that any effort on his part to inveigle Nancy out into them would have been instantly discovered. Even if it would never have happened to anyone else, it would definitely—inevitably!—have happened to him. At which point his supposed best friends and the loving members of his family, with that dubious quality which supposedly served them—ha!—as a sense of humor would have made his life a living hell.

To be sure, had Brice and Nancy already established a clear relationship, they could have figured out a thousand ways to elude the informal chaperonage provided by Ganny and Nancy's mother . . . and those damned cameras! But that was precisely the task at hand. And while there were undoubtedly some fifteen-year old boys somewhere in the galaxy who'd have the sheer nerve to try to start a romance by immediately proposing that the two of them disappear somewhere so they could . . .

Well. Brice was not one of them. His isolated upbringing as a member of the Butre clan had made him very self-confident in some situations, but very shy in others.

This was one of the others.

Nancy's head turned, her attention drawn by the sight of a shuttle heading toward the Hali Sowle.

"How soon are they going to be leaving, do you know?"

Brice shook his head. "I haven't heard anything definite yet. Uncle Andrew says they're still waiting for the proper replacement parts to arrive." He laughed suddenly. "I think he's a bit pissed off that they don't trust his repairs to get them there, but I sure don't blame them. 'Course part of the reason he's pissed is because he already had all the parts he needed, before we dumped 'em out to squeeze you and your Mom in. Way he sees it, it was all their fault to start with, so they don't have any business turning their noses up at his custom-built parts."

Nancy returned his grin, and he shrugged.

"Anyway, the guys on the Custis"—EMS Custis was the Erewhonese repair ship which had been at the station as part of the ongoing work to turn Parmley Station into something that still looked like a decrepit and mostly-abandoned amusement park but was actually quite a powerful fortress—"agreed to make a quick hope to get replacements for us. I think their skipper probably works for the people we got Hali Sowle from in the first place. Anyway, he obviously thinks we should use real parts to fix the hyper generator."

"How about us? How soon will we be going to Beowulf?" Nancy asked.

"I'm not sure about that either. I know Ganny wants us to go as soon as possible. Well, given the space available and where we are in the rotation."

That had been part of the deal. Every member of the clan still young enough was being transported to Beowulf in order to begin prolong treatments. The order in which they'd go was determined by their age. Those like Sarah Armstrong and Michael Alsobrook who were getting close to the limit would be sent first, of course. Brice and Ed and James were not at the top of the list, but he figured they'd be going pretty soon.

Best of all, Nancy would be going with them. It was too late for her mother Steph to undergo prolong, but not for Nancy herself.

Zilwicki had been as good as his word. Better, actually. The expense of paying for a complete suite of prolong treatments for her daughter was going to be at least as high as the expense of setting up Steph Turner in a new restaurant. But Anton hadn't blinked. "I'll cover the cost if Beowulf gets sticky about it."

From something Cachat had said, though, Brice thought Beowulf would probably just handle Nancy's treatments as part of the general arrangement they'd made with Ganny. When Brice had once expressed his concern over the issue to Victor, the Havenite had gotten a very cold smile on his face.

"I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, Brice. It's going to be a while yet—there are some other people we have to talk to first, for several reasons—but unless I miss my guess, you're going to see the rage of Beowulf unleashed in the universe sometime pretty damned soon now. They're not going to quibble over the cost of an extra prolong treatment while they're sinking a fortune into forging the weapons to finally take down Grendel. Which they surely will, once they learn the monster has a mother after all."

The last part of that hadn't meant anything to Brice, but the gist of it was clear enough.

Nancy went back to looking at Ameta. "It's so beautiful."

The moment had come. He was sure of it. Months of planning—he'd even practiced in a mirror—enabled him to slide his arm around Nancy's waist with no more clumsiness than a walrus calf taking its first waddle across the ice.

He held his breath, waiting for an explosion.

But she said nothing. Just continued to look at Ameta's glory, with a smile on her face. And about a minute later, nestled her head onto his shoulder.

Brice was utterly thrilled. This was, for sure and certain, the greatest exploit in this life. The greatest thus far, rather—in a life that would now last for centuries.

"I'm going to Torch, Andrew," Steph Turner said. "That's just the way it is." She leaned back from the table in the clan's mess hall on the station, setting her shoulders stubbornly. "And quit trying to claim you're doing anything but guessing. Me, I don't see any way this place is ever going to sustain enough of a clientele to keep a restaurant going."

His own shoulders were set almost as stubbornly as hers. Not quite.

"I don't know if I can get any work on Torch," he whined.

"Are you kidding? It won't be all that long, you numbskull, before the whole damn galaxy knows that Andrew Artlett is the mechanical wizard—the jackleg mechanic of all time—who got the Hali Sowle through on its desperate mission. Your problem won't be finding work, it'll be dodging Mesan assassination squads."

She got that twisted little smile on her face that Andrew found just as hard to resist now as he had the first time he'd seen it, less than a day after the Hali Sowle left orbit from Mesa. "And what better place to stay safe from those bastards than a Ballroom planet?"

"Well . . ."

"Make up your mind. I'm going to Torch. Are you coming with me or not?"

"I guess."

"I think the Republic owes us a stipend too, Victor. 'Course, I don't expect one as big as Beowulf's, much less as big as the one I figure I'll be squeezing out of the Star Kingdom." Elfride Margarete Butre gave Victor Cachat a twisted smile of her own. "I realize you Havenites are the poor cousins in this part of the galaxy."

"I told you, you're just wasting your time. Sure, I'll put in a word for you. Be glad to. But after that, it'll work its way up the ladder until—don't hold your breath—it finally reaches Those Who Decide Such Things." Cachat shrugged. "After that . . . ? You've been around a lot longer than I have, Ganny. You know what bureaucrats are like."

She said nothing for a few seconds. Just studied him with an intensity Victor didn't understand and even found a little disturbing.

Then she said: "I forget sometimes, the way you're still a babe in the woods when it comes to certain things."

"What does that mean?"

"Victor Cachat, your days of being on the bottom rungs of the ladder—or of the totem pole, if that means anything to you—are coming to an end. In about as spectacular a manner as you could imagine. A few weeks from now—sure as hell, a few months from now—a 'word put in' by Victor Cachat will be putting fleets into motion. Or whatever the flamboyantly notorious galactic super secret agent equivalent of that is, anyway. So I figure you're good for the stipend—to which I will point out that you just agreed."

After a while, the frown on Victor's face faded. But by then, his complexion was beginning to get pale.

Ganny chuckled. "Didn't think of that,did you? I found out yesterday from one of the BSC people that Anton Zilwicki appeared in a widely broadcast vid documentary a while back. So you've got some catching up to do. And since he's already nailed down the monicker of 'Cap'n Zilwicki, Scourge of the Spaceways,' you'll need to come up with something different. For the documentaries they'll be doing about you, I mean. My own recommendation would be either 'Black Victor' or 'Cachat, Slaver's Bane.' "

"I'm a spy."

Ganny shook her head sympathetically. "No, Victor Cachat. You were a spy."