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"Ali, isn't there a fiber headpoint at the outer end of these sluices? Ali!"
The ziphead turned away from his inspection of the ceiling's undulation. "Yes, yes. We needed careful coordination when we brought down the ice."
He waved Marli into the sluiceway. "It's okay. This will work fine." One by one, they slipped through the narrow entrance. Around them, the bottom of the bubble broke free of the ground. Now there was half a meter of water covering the ground, and it was rising. Tung and Ali Lin came through in a shower of water. Ciret dived through last, and slammed the hatch shut behind them. A few dozen liters of undine came in too, now just a mess of spilled water. But on the other side of the hatch, they could hear the sea piling deep.
Nau turned to Marli, who was shining his comm laser as a diffuse light. "Let's hike up to the headpoint, Corporal. Ali Lin is going to help me make a phone call."
Pham Nuwen had come close to wi
General Smith retired from the speaker's perch. The information on Tim Downing's cards had been distributed to the Elected, and now five hundred heads were thinking over the deal. Hrunkner U
Smith stepped back until she was even with him. "Come with me, Sergeant. I saw someone I've been wanting to talk to for a long time." There would be a vote called later in the day. Before that there could well be follow-up questions for the General. There was plenty of time for political maneuver. He and Downing followed the General to the far end of the proscenium, blocking the exit. A scruffy cobber in extravagant leggings was coming toward them. Pedure. The years had not been kind to her—or maybe the stories about the attempted assassinations were true. She made to sidle around Victory Smith, but the General stepped into her path.
Smith smiled at her. "Hello, Cobblie Killer. So nice to meet you in person."
The other hissed. "Yes. And if you don't move from my path, I will be very pleased to kill you." The words were heavily accented, but the tiny knife on her hand was clear enough.
Smith stretched her arms sideways, an extravagant shrug that would catch notice all across the hall. "In front of all these people, Honored Pedure? I don't think so. You're—"
Smith hesitated, raised a pair of hands to her head, and seemed to listen. To her telephone?
Pedure just stared, her entire aspect full of suspicion. Pedure was a small female with galled chitin, and gestures that were just a bit too quick. A totally untrustworthy picture. She must be so used to killing from afar that personal charm and facility with language were long-discarded talents. She was out of her element here, managing things directly. It made U
Something buzzed in Pedure's jacket. Her little knife disappeared and she grabbed her phone. For a moment, the two spy chiefs looked like old friends, communing with their memories.
"No!"Pedure spasmed; her voice was a scream. She grabbed the phone with her eating hands, all but stuffed it into her maw. "Not here! Not now!" The fact that they were a sudden spectacle did not seem to matter to her.
General Smith turned toward U
Villains and good guys, U
U
U
FIFTY-FIVE
Belga Underville was senior in the Command and Control Center. That really didn't count for much; Underville was Domestic Intelligence. What happened here could change her job forever, but she was out of this chain of command, just a link to civil defense and the King's household forces. Belga watched Elno Coldhaven, the shiny new Director of External Intelligence, the acting CO of the center. Coldhaven knew the firestorm of failures that had ended the career of his predecessor. He knew that Rachner Thract was no dummy and probably no traitor. And now Elno had the same job, and the chief was out of the country. He was operating very much without a safety net. More than once in last few days he had taken Underville aside and earnestly asked her advice. She suspected that this had been the chief's reason for having her stay down here rather than return to Princeton.
The CCC was more than a mile inside the promontory headrock of Lands Command, beneath the old Royal Deepness. A decade ago, the Center had been a huge thing, dozens of intelligence techs with the fu
The center screen showed the chief being introduced to Parliament. It was the same commercial feed that the rest of the world saw—External Intelligence had decided not to try to sneak special video into Parliament Hall. One of the techs was working with freeze-frames from the video. He popped up a composite of a dozen snippets, fiddled with the lighting. A scruffy-looking character appeared on the screen, the details of her dark clothing vague. Beside Belga, General Coldhaven said softly, "Good. That's a positive identification. Ol' Pedure herself....She can't very well act when her own head is on the line."