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It was not a time to try to see, or hear, or do anything but hold fast, breathe only through the weave of the aai’fad, venture no skin exposed, no more than they had to. Fabric would abrade, skin would gall, eyes would be blinded if they faced such a wind.
Like one of the old storms, it was, except this sand blast had an edge of melting sleet, except this presaged a lasting change in the world, no simple march of dunes, but upheaval of the climate itself.
He hugged Hati’s face against him, and they breathed in the hollow their shoulders made. His other hand clenched the rope that he had made fast about the spire itself, in the chance the wind should try to sweep them off the ledge, and well he had, he thought. Very well he had.
“ANTONIO.”
Brazis reached spasmodically for the desktop control and physically knocked the amp way down on the tap. It was Ian.
“Ian, what in hell’sgoing on down there?”
“An outlaw tap, the Ila confirms it. She denies all responsibility, and says look to those who want war in her name.”
“What’s she talking about?”
“Movement, apparently. Third Movement, on Concord.”
At least he was ahead of the game on one thing. “ ThirdMovement, is it? I already have a report to that effect on my desk, but I’d profoundly hoped not to hear that word from you.”
“The Ila expresses extreme indignation, insisting she has no relation to these persons, whoever they are.”
He’d believe thatwhen the sun burned blue. “I’m pursuing this illicit tap with all resources. Which are now very scant, Ian. Her blowing through here has put a significant number of taps on the sick list or in hospital. Some may not recover. Her own will not recover. This doesn’t fill me with great confidence about her intentions. Be careful.” He didn’t mention the ondat.
“We’ll take precautions.”
“What about Marak?”
“Marak is well out of this.”
“Is he safe?”
“Safe as a man can be with a sea rushing through the gap. Madder than hell about his tap being taken without his consent. That wasnot approved, Antonio.”
“I would have been pushing it, to explain the background of the situation without breaching security. I couldn’t gain his consent without explaining more than he wants to know.”
“Maybe you can convince him of that. I marginally suspect he knew the Ila was doing something illicit, and that’s why he took this crazy notion to ride out and watch the west coast slide into the sea. Maybe he wanted to get out of the Ila’s reach, but that’s nothing I can prove.”
Incredible theory. But one never said incredible, in Refuge history. “Can he have any concept of this Third Movement business?”
“He has his sources. At least for what touches us.”
Memnanan. The Ila’s longtime head of staff. Those two had passed warnings before. He’d bet on Memnanan having said something, if anyone.
“Are we going to have a feud between them, next?”
“He’s not angry at her. But a
Not angry at her for provoking the governments aloft, yet mad about a personal inconvenience.
Or maybe about what he considered a security lapse and a threat to their safety. He had never thought of Marak as keeping secrets of that nature from his office.
Maybe he was just very good at keeping his secrets.
“A doomed enterprise, in the Ila’s case? Do you dismiss it with that?”
“I’m sure the Ila herself thought so from the begi
“I’ll accept we’re being spied on,” he said to Ian, “and I don’t know if you know more than you’re saying, or if you say what you’re saying now with her full knowledge…but I have an immediate need for facts up here, Ian. This is all going to hell on us. I do know of one unauthorized tap on station, sent here from Apex, who may be what she’s complaining of with this illicit-tap business, but I’m not betting that answers the whole question, not considering what we’re dealing with. Has anyone contacted youat all, that I don’t know about?”
“No.”
“Can you make it clear to the Ila in some reasonable way that trouble is proliferating up here, that people have died needlessly, and if she knows anything, or if she’s in contact with any illicit tap in our area, she should tell us and give us identities. This Third Movement group has taken her name as their cause, if what you suspect is true, Earth’s heard about it, and they’re trying to insinuate its own investigation onto the station. They’ve subverted the governor’s security, and the ondatmay be making some move, and if they haven’t yet, they’re likely to. Doesn’t anything in that set of facts catch her notice? It had damned well better, Ian, or I don’t know what comes next up here.”
“I’ll inform her of all that. And I’m trying to prevent another such outburst on the system. As you point out, Marak is likely going to throw the next hell-fit. He’s cold, it’s raining, he thought he had the beshti, but they took out to another terrace, just out of his reach, while he was incapacitated with that tap-spike, and his area is becoming more and more hazardous. He’s well out of patience.”
“I can’t help him. He’s put himself where we haven’t even got good overhead image and we can’t get through to him reliably. If we start trying to direct him up that maze and then lose contact, he could be worse off than he is. Best he uses his own instincts.”
“He wants the boy back, Antonio. If you could just do that, you could do a great deal toward getting communication calmed down all round.”
“I assure you I’m trying to get him back. Ask the Ila, while you’re at it. Is there something else she hasn’t told us? Has she been passing notes to this illicit tap source, or has she been fighting it? I’d estimate she hasn’t been fighting it, if the whole system hasn’t blown up. I need to know if that illicit tap is her doing.”
“I’ll try to get your answer. It all depends on the Ila’s goodwill, which may be extremely ruffled at the moment. In any case, I’ll be back as soon as I have any information.”
“Thanks, Ian.”
What else could he say? An honest answer depended on the Ila’s personal comfort and how far she thought she could a
And what could they do with her if she’d violated quarantine? Isolate her? She was already isolated. They’d bet everything they held dear that she was isolated.
Now she’d found a way to evolve her tap and God knew what other nanotech into something they hadn’t detected until she did it with someone who wasn’t even on the planet. His technicians said the thing had hopped frequencies. They’d never seen the like.
And if she was passing notes to conspirators up here—
If there was a cell here, if she’d found her way into the common taps, or if a rogue tap in the Project had helped her—she could have communicated all sorts of technology elsewhere. Her frequency-hopping nanocele, this recent i