Forge of Heaven

And increasingly he wondered, now, whether he would find Kathy before something disastrous happened…before he got a call from some hospital…or before she became a pawn in this covert maneuvering of powers Kathy had no idea of.

To add to his troubles, that phone call from Judy. She threatened to go down to the streets and look for Kathy herself—the very last thing that would help the situation, and she had cried when he told her so. Judy was furious about the police outside the apartment. She was furious that he hadn’t dropped everything and come home to be with her at supper. She was doubly furious that he’d had all her calls routed to Ernst. “Not even to you,” she’d cried, when he had, in desperation and compassion, talked to her. And at a screaming pitch: “How dare you?”

Well, he dared do it, as other things, because he had no damned choice. What he prayed for was a peaceable end to this situation, one that involved Stafford somehow turning up safely where he belonged, so they didn’t have a blowup with Brazis.

And he prayed for a solution that didn’t involve Andreas Gide setting up what Gide would try to expand into a shadow government on his station. But in the darkness of the hour, it didn’t seem likely that he could prevent Gide trying it, and, despite his speech to Gide, he wasn’t utterly confident he could keep power out of Gide’s hands.

He wanted his former relationship with Brazis back, uncomplicated by Brazis’s confidences. He wanted things the way they had been. Until he had better information, he wasn’t sure he could trust anybody in the universe, even Ernst.

He rather thought of sending Dortland to Gide’s new office, tied up with a bow, with recommendations of employment, once this was all over and that ship left. But with Dortland wearing his right colors, he’d still have to ask himself constantly which ministers, which councillors were in Gide’s pocket—and those pockets, with every a

He could tell Gide privately that Dortland had engineered the attack. That might be interesting.

The lizard snapped his jaws in threat. The anoles never won. The gnats collectively never lost. System in perfect balance, as long as light came into the sphere and the temperature stayed moderate.

So had Concord been in perfect balance, for long, long ages. And did Earth or the Treaty Board itself think it was going to win something new if it came in here disrupting what worked just because some politician on the homeworld had a theory?

He saw the heart of the situation now: distrust had found a way onto his station, distrust of Brazis had moved Earth to send an agent here, Apex had sent an agent for the same reason, and to create their new trustable system—Earth now corrupted his agents, his office, his peaceful situation. No foreign assassins. None from Brazis’s office. He was absolutely convinced now that Gide’s arrival was a ploy, an elaborate, sacrificial ploy, unknown even to Gide, to land a Treaty Board office on his station and create yet one more power, one they hoped could override him and create trouble for Brazis.

And if Gide hadn’t had a clue what they meant to do to him, Dortland being behind the attack made an unwelcome sort of sense. The mobile unit was slagged, to tell them nothing. Gide was only slightly injured. There’d been a launcher in the garden, yes, and yes, there’d been a projectile from outside, but had it killed Gide? No. Could it have killed Gide? Unknown, without examining the machine before the damage its own security systems had done to it. But he doubted it would have. Everything added up to Dortland, who would have killed two of his own men. And that meant Brazis was telling him the truth, that Dortland was working to bring him down.

He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to deal with it. He’d never wanted to play life-and-death politics. But all sorts of desperate thoughts had nudged their way from the nether side of his brain, where they now established a well-defined architecture and a set of co

If Gide had mistakenly died in the attack, Earth would bluster and moan and threaten, and ultimately do nothing about it, since, public face, Earth well knew the hazards of truly ham-handed interference in the Outside, and most specifically at Concord, of all places.

But if someone on the Treaty Board was reckless enough to insinuate an office onto Concord, it was clearly in hopes that their pretense of hysterics and self-protection would dissuade Apex and the ondatfrom objecting too much to a fracture of the very Treaty they allegedly watchdogged.

And if things had shifted this much in the Treaty Board, that body had a great deal to learn about Apex. It was very possible, if Apex decided to counter this move, that Gide would be dead within the year, Dortland with him, accidentally, of course, neatly folding the new office, an u

If he let it all play out that way, he could be in for a rough ride. But the alternative was dire. He could well see Earth, under the aegis of what began to look like a newly partisan Treaty Board, begin to play a dangerous third side in ondat-human politics, or thinking to do so—possibly getting a presence onto more than one station, creating yet other offices to trouble governors all over Outsider space. If the Treaty Board had gotten actively into politics, no one on Earth stopping them, it meant Earth now didn’t trust the governors they themselves had put in office over unwilling populations in the Outside.

Apex had already spoken, via Brazis, a clear warning, hard, clear words.

Worse, they were undoubtedly going to hear from Kekellen once a report about this new office filtered through the translators.

God, maybe Kekellenwould nix the idea.

Now therewas a thought.

Apex would object to Gide setting up here—but Earth, who’d take anything Apex objected to as a very good idea, would think very differently if Kekellenrose up suddenly and objected. Earth had to count on Kekellen taking ages to understand something had changed. It notoriously took decades to negotiate any change of procedure with the ondat,in the delicacies and difficulties of translation, and while Kekellen usually ignored Earth’s small shifts in policy—this—

This might prove different, if Kekellen understood that what they did marked a change in Earth’s representation out here.

He was incredibly tempted to send his own message to Kekellen, now, before that ship left dock, both to pour oil on those dangerous waters personally and to urge Kekellen to protest before worse happened.

A dangerous, provocative move, to send a message to Kekellen without going through the experts. But his experts were, he had to recall, licensedby the Treaty Board.

Oh, that was nice. His translators were about to come under Gide’sjurisdiction, and operate at his say-so.

Notan acceptable situation.

What he contemplated, however—God, it was dangerous. The ondatcould take exception, take action, not even limited to Concord…

But it might be the most important act of his governorship—to protect Kekellen and the Treaty itself from what looked more and more like his overthrow and the establishment of a new Earth authority out here, at an outpost that meant the difference between peace and war.

What would he say to Kekellen, if he dared? What could he say to Kekellen, without overmuch abstraction, if he could gather the personal courage to risk his comfort, risk his life—risk his station’s existence, for that matter? He had a wife and daughter to think of. They had their home, their comforts. He would have the illusion of power lifelong, if he kept his mouth shut and minimized his interference with Mr. Gide, and Brazis, and all the likely agents in a prolonged power game. Or if he strung things along in a series of compromises…lose a little, gain a little, playing a tight and narrow game, surrounded by Earth-staffed agencies he could no longer trust…he might survive and keep everybody alive, if he used his head. It was a terrible risk, to take direct action. To talk to the ondat—