Spinneret

"I see. And the prospective settlers will come predominantly from North America, I expect."

"You expect wrong. We want mostly poor and dispossessed from the Third World countries."

For just a second Saleh's impassive expression cracked with surprise before settling into place again. "The people you speak of are mostly farmers," he pointed out. "What would they do here?"

"Work their butts off, for starters. Don't misunderstand me— I don't want Bangladesh or whoever dumping its street bums and criminals on us. We want people who haven't got much chance where they are but still have the ambition and hope to grab a new opportunity when it presents itself." He leveled a finger at Saleh. "That'll be your job: to make sure this offer gets to those people and to provide information to us for screening purposes. Miss Olivero has a file with all the details."

Beside him, Carmen pulled a cassette from her shoulder pouch and handed it over.

Saleh hesitated a fraction of a second before taking it. He fingered it for a moment, frowning as if he suspected it might explode. "I … appreciate what I believe you're trying to do," he said at last, looking up at Meredith. "But do you think you can truly give vast numbers of people a better life here?"

"No—but most of them won't actually be here for long. Once their education and training are completed they'll be sent out to the neighboring empires to monitor the installation and use of Spi

Saleh frowned. "They'll what?"

"Don't look so surprised. One of the major worries we've had all along has been the ease with which the cables can be applied to warfare. I don't want the stuff used that way, and neither do any of the races I've talked to—or at least that's what they say. So okay; from now on each cable is going to be accompanied by a small group of monitors, who'll go with it to the installation site and certify it winds up doing what it was supposed to. Other teams will routinely look at old installations, both to make sure the cable hasn't been moved and to perform long-term studies of strength degradation and such. Sure, there won't be all that much to do for now, but it'll take a while to train the monitors anyway. And we do plan to sell lots of cables."

Slowly, Saleh nodded. "It may work—for a limited number, at least. Very well; you may count on my complete cooperation in this project." He hesitated. "In fact, you would have had my help even without resorting to threats. It appears your vision for Astra is not so different from mine, after all."

"Glad to hear it." Goal two; check. "Then there's just one more thing." Meredith let his gaze harden. "Do you know how your commandos died?"

Saleh grimaced slightly. "I understand they were electrocuted by your Gorgon's Head machines in the Spi

"Major Barner didn't do a thing. One of the commandos, keying in what he thought was the sequence for authorizing new supervisors, actually typed something that translates roughly as 'supervisor in danger.' The rest followed automatically." He paused, but Saleh remained silent. "I'm sure you see what that means, but I'll spell it out anyway. With the best transmission equipment and most elaborate scramblers the Ctencri could provide your spies, we still could not only monitor their communication with Msuya, but could even inject our own information into their data transfers. That first of all means you can't trust anything Ermakov and company gave you; and it second of all means you'll be wasting your time if you try this sort of trick again. Clear?"

"Clear." Saleh's voice was calm. "Will the scientists be executed?"

"I'm tempted; but no. Instead, I'll trade them to you for Dr. Loretta Williams's two children, whom you've got in protective custody somewhere. Dr. Williams is staying with us, and it would be nice if her family could be here with her."

A dozen questions flickered across Saleh's face, but he merely nodded. "They'll be brought here as soon as possible."

"Good. Well, then, I think that wraps things up for now." Meredith rose and extended his hand. "Read Miss Olivero's proposals carefully and contact us with any questions or comments."

Saleh reached across the table to grip Meredith's hand. "I'll do so … and whether you believe it or not, Colonel, I look forward to working on this with you." He nodded gravely to Carmen, then turned and opened the outside door. There was a brief gust of icy air, and then he was gone.

"Goal three and game," Meredith muttered, feeling the tension draining out of him. If Saleh was even half as sincere as he'd seemed, the whole thing might just work. Taking a deep breath, he looked at Carmen. "Well. I don't know about you, but I still have a mountain of work waiting for me back at Unie. Shall we go?"

Carmen snorted as they headed for the door leading to the rest of Martello Base.

"You make it sound like I have nothing to do."

"It's got to be easier than it was before all the campaign rhetoric started cooling down." He glanced at her as he opened the door for them. "You're still troubled about something, aren't you?"

She nodded. "Loretta Williams. How are you so sure she's really on our side now?

If it's not a secret, that is."

"No secret—I just never got around to telling all of you on our little excursion.

You know how we tapped the spy comm net, don't you?"

"Major Barner said you installed Rooshrike gadgets in the radios that let you receive the signals before they went through the scramblers."

"Right. And since the Orspham could give us copies of the corresponding scrambled conversations, we could break the scrambler code itself, which is why we were able to substitute our own computer sequence at this end when Udani tried to send the supervisor data."

"If you knew they were spies, though, why didn't you arrest them right away?"

"Because we still needed their help to decipher the Spi

Meredith smiled. "Besides which, it was handy to have Msuya thinking he knew more about the Spi

Carmen seemed to digest that. "I take it, then, that Loretta's reports to us were complete?"

"Better than that, actually. After Dunlop's move she started shaving data going the other direction. Msuya never knew the lifeboat's full size, for example, and the location she gave him was down an entirely different tu

"Odd she never mentioned that."

"Not really. As far as she knew, it would be an improvable and all-too-convenientsounding excuse."

They'd reached the door that looked out over Martello's docks now. Glancing out the small windows as they pulled their coats from the nearby rack, Meredith saw that it was begi

It wasn't until they were out in the open water that Carmen spoke again. "It won't work, you know. I've run the numbers, and there's no way this cable monitor program can absorb enough people to do any real good. Even with the teachers and community setup people we'll need to support the whole thing, we're not going to be able to give genuine jobs to more than a couple hundred thousand people at the most. Even the embassies we'll be setting up everywhere in sight won't absorb that many more." She shook her head tiredly. "There are more than a hundred thousand unemployed beggars in Calcutta alone."