Forge of Heaven

But he had the official translation lexicon, among the books behind his desk. His computer could arrange acceptable syntax, and it routinely did that, when he needed to skim an incoming message. If he just picked the words cautiously and kept to solid concepts…not going into the network to tip off the experts as to what he was doing…

The rest of the sandwich lay untouched. He stared at the bubble world, chasing thoughts through this and that maze of official protocols, and threat, and weighing not only the possibility of detection after the fact—but before it.

He could do it. He mightpull it off.

He could at least see if he could compose anything reasonable.

He surfaced his keyboard on the desk and made a cautious initial effort.

Reaux to Kekellen. Gide comes from Earth ship. Someone attacks Gide. Reaux thinks the attack is a trick. Gide wants power on Concord. Reaux asks Gide to leave, but Gide won’t go. Gide’s office on Concord will be rival Earth office. Concord needs your help to stop Gide.

The computer worked for a second or two with that input and came up with ondatscript, and a corresponding translation: Reaux to Kekellen. Gide comes from Earth ship. Attack on Gide unknown origins. Reaux says subterfuge. Reaux says Gide wants govern Concord. Reaux says Gide go. Gide says Gide not go. Gide makes hostile Earth office on Concord. Reaux says Concord wants Kekellen help, wants Kekellen stop Gide.

A little further editing. Get that word hostileout of there.

The computer digested it and spat up something he halfway dared put his name on.

Something that could absolutely ruin him if it got to the wrong hands.

God, could he even trust Ernst?

He ate an antacid. One of the twelve-hour kind. He didn’t rate himself reckless or stupid, and on one level, sending this message was beyond stupid, it was criminal. It put him and his family at terrible risk. It put the whole station, the whole situation with the ondat,at risk. Their weapons had taken out a planet. A space station, in their territory, was negligible. The end of everything.

But on another—what happened once Gide settled in? Could he even stay in office, once every enemy he had, Lyle Nazrani leading the pack, immediately threw their support to Gide and manufactured charges to bring him down and raise Gide to more and more prominence? He had organized enemies. He could see a challenge not just to him, but to the governorship, leading to the Treaty Board office de facto taking over, with Nazrani and crew power-grabbing all the way.

Which meant Apex would get involved, and then things would get dicey with Kekellen, just the same. With the same result, more slowly, more inexorably, with no way to claim it was a single mistake.

He had this one chance to nip the whole situation in the bud, a short, sharp action that didn’t let Gide’s organization, like contamination itself, spread through his whole establishment and create more Dortlands.

He had some confidence he knewKekellen’s reaction. If he could get the message through, and do it quietly. If it went bad—if it went bad, he could put himself on the line, say it was his mistake. His and only his.

What he sent certainly couldn’t go through the compromised phone system, wide open to that ship. They could stop his message cold.

For secure communication resources, he had Dortland. He had Ernst. He had a handful of hired guards who didn’t know the systems.

And he had Jewel. He had Jewel Sanduski, and he had Brazis. He couldget the message out, right under the Earth ship’s nose.

“Ernst?” He used the intercom. “Is Mr. Dortland available?”

“He left a written report, sir, and said he’d be back in an hour.”

One down. One out of the way.

“Bring his report in. And bring Jewel with you.”

“Yes, sir,” Ernst said, and broke off to do that.

Less than a minute and Ernst brought Jewel, and simultaneously laid Dortland’s report on his desk, for his eyes.

It said: Your daughter is reported to have changed her appearance radically. The bearer of her card was arrested within the last quarter hour but proved to be a female petty thief, who claims to have picked it up, dropped on the street.

The antacid wasn’t at all sufficient.

In the other matter, we have analyzed the shell fragments. The launcher is a simple tube, locally procured out of Concord Industries. The shell is more exotic, likely out of Orb, where several such attacks have been directed at law enforcement. It was imported. We are checking customs records.

Did he believe that? He believed Dortland already knew damned well where that shell came from.

We have recovered Stafford’s coat,the note said further. It shows residue of blood and explosion. We are checking the origin and integrity of the blood. We have six witnesses who put Stafford on Blunt Street traveling toward Grozny, and have agents in that area, but several locals have manufactured misleading sightings. This is common practice in that district when authorities seem to be tracing an individual. We discount these reports. The sightings we do trust are around 12th and Lebeau.

We have interviewed Stafford’s mother, who claims not to have heard from her son, and his father, who says as far as he knows young Stafford is in the Outsider office complex. We discount his report as ignorance of the situation, but have sent an official inquiry to Brazis. Other relatives claim no knowledge and assume Stafford is at work. The sister alone remains elusive. We have received massive disinformation as to her whereabouts and threats have been issued against our agents.

We have agents on guard in Ambassador Gide’s vicinity. He is reported asleep.

Also, one Gifford Ainsford Ames, aged 54, approached theSouthern Cross ramp claiming to have information about irregularities in the arena design selection as motive for the attack on Gide and asking for protection from pursuit, claiming your office has persecuted him. Medical records indicate he has evaded treatment for a mental condition for the last two weeks. Arresting officers have taken him to the hospital, and we have assigned an agent on that case for a concluding report.

Damn. He knew about Ames. An architect, and a cyclic depressive with a penchant for drink. His arena design hadn’t been accepted, and he’d thrown a screaming fit in the offices.

One part of his madly racing brain said damn, he didn’t want the word arenamentioned in Earth’s agents’ hearing; and another said fine, so let a lunatic pitch his fit on that topic on Earth’s threshold. Nazrani’s complaints, recorded with that ship, would lose credibility in consequence.

And Dortland stopped him. Which meant Dortland didn’t want that on record, either. So where was truth?

But at a certain remove—he didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn. He had had all the doubts his mind could hold. He had laid his course.

He looked up at Jewel, feeling himself inexplicably short of breath, about to do something he never could have envisioned doing. At a certain stage of his life he might have considered Judy and Kathy, but they had both distanced themselves from him—deserted him, if he consulted his gut. And fixing this mess was up to him.

To get his necessary moves past Dortland, whose agents could intercept and stifle a message from his communication system, just like that ship, he counted on one conduit, his opposite number in the Outsider government—the very man he should be most nervous about trusting…and the one whose physical lines were the most immune to that ship out there, and to Dortland. Everyone considered that Outsider communications flowed almost universally by tap, immune to anything but physical eavesdropping on the sender. But there were internal office nets, well shielded. And a few shielded outside lines, which Outsiders guarded jealously, absolutely licensed to protect themselves and their communications from that ship and from Dortland, by force of arms if need be.