Forge of Heaven

“I expect reports from you.”

“I’ll be glad to oblige, when I learn anything new. Is there anything you’d like me to relay to your ship?”

“Nothing.” Glumly. Dejectedly. “I’ll think about this other hospital.”

“Rest assured we’re taking every precaution for your protection.”

Gide said nothing.

Reaux walked out, cleared main quarantine, and stripped the suit. “Get Gide’s doctor,” he said to his bodyguard when he emerged from the robing room, quite steady and serene. His hair wasn’t even ruffled from the hood.

His hands, however, had begun to shake. A thought of Kathy had intruded, the danger she was in, the action that was proceeding on hisstation. Illicits. Rogue nanoceles. Someone who didn’t hesitate to attack a high official. Who might not stick at all at fifteen-year-old girls with high-placed parents.

“Governor?” The doctor in charge showed up.

“Dr. Le

“I have no idea, with a thing like this. Hours, maybe. But I have no objections, medically or otherwise. They’re equipped for this. We’re not.”

“A technical question. C anthey completely wash this out of him?”

“To our knowledge, not entirely, not a nanocele, if that’s what it is. Dr. Kantorin, down there, is an honest man. I’d trust him—professionally speaking, at least. They might be able to limit its effects. There’s been some suggestion that’s possible.”

Trust him, the doctor said. Trust the Outsider government…not to take an unethical notion.

“God, what a mess.” Even when he looked at his bodyguard, he saw low-level people he’d had to use to avoid the traitor who was supposed to oversee his safety.

The ones he’d stationed outside his house, the ones watching Judy, were Dortland’s men.

And did he dare call Dortland on the carpet at this point, tell him outright what he knew and see if Dortland had any bright suggestions at this point what to do? Dortland wasn’t a monster. He had an agenda, which right now was going dangerously wrong.

Calling Dortland in might be the best thing to do. It might be the best thing for his own career, before he delivered Gide down to an Outsider hospital, under that ship’s witness. He could challenge Dortland face-to-face and see if there were any remaining truths that no one had told him. He didn’t think Brazis expected complete collaboration of him. Only a reasonable accommodation, which he might yet achieve, reclaiming certain resources.

He walked. He used his phone, that he hadn’t dared use.

“Ernst,” he said, and got an answer. “Ernst, call Mr. Dortland, and tell him I want him in my office in ten minutes. Tell him I don’t care what I interrupt. This is priority.”

MAGDALLENcalled—on the phone: that was what they were down to. Brazis grabbed the instrument off his desk and parked on the edge, one foot on the floor. “What news?”

“News, Mr. Chairman? News is your boy is walking down the middle of Blunt at the moment with that ondatmark on his forehead, in company with his sister and a collection of the Trend’s elite.”

Two motions of the heart. Relief and desperation in quick succession. “Good loving God. His sister?”

“Your boy, a fair representation of the practicing Stylists, two little cleaner-bots and one repair bot, all moving right down the center of Blunt. People not involved are not interfering with them. I’ll admit I’m not inclined to touch them, either.”

The phone was compromised all the way from the governor’s office to the ship at dock, but what was happening down on Blunt wasn’t exactly secret from the station at large.

Dead middle of the street, and an ondatmark on his forehead. If it was gang revenge that had been perpetrated on Procyon Stafford, it was extravagant and stupid, someone anxious either to turn a young man into a pariah or to provoke absolute catastrophe in politics, not giving a damn if the ondatblew up.

But he had this terrible, uneasy feeling, given the intrusion into the taps, and all else that had gone on, that there was some co

“Which way is he going?”

“Straight up to Blunt at 9th, away from Grozny.”

“Are you watching him now?”

“From across the street.” A picture flashed to his phone, zoomed in on a coatless young man in a black shirt, a young man who didn’t seem to feel the ordinary chill of the street. The view zoomed closer, to a shocked, weary face that, yes, Brazis recognized, and a lime green mark that shimmered faintly gold underneath the fringe of disheveled hair as they passed between neon lights.

The zoom backed off again, giving him the entire disturbing picture.

Procyon, no question. With his sister. With a man called Spider. Isis. And three ankle-high bots trundling along beside.

Bots, for God’s sake. Bots.A malfunction? Three little bots anticipating a cleaning job when this expedition got where it was going?

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t at all right. Bots didn’t just take to the middle of the street.

He tapped keys, coded up his own maintenance manager, typed, I’ve got some anomalous bots, around 9th and Blunt. Look into activity. Report triple urgent.

That query had to go from Outsider maintenance to station maintenance and back. And he still had Magdallen on the phone.

“Suggestions?” he asked.

“I don’t have any,” Magdallen said. “I’m just tagging along, seeing where they’re going. Michaelangelo’s, if I can hazard a guess.”

His screen flashed up an answer. No bots within half a block.

“Shit,” he said.

“Sir?”

Sweep Procyon up now? It was possible Procyon might even go with Magdallen if accosted, if Magdallen let him talk to his office on the phone.

But that ondatmark gave him pause. He’dcontacted Kekellen. Reaux had asked Kekellen’s help, hadn’t he? He’d passed the damned message along, without knowing what Reaux had been doing with the ondat.

And that mark, shimmering like the highest-priced cosmetics in the intervals of shadow, didn’t look cheap or ragged, or bear any of the other hallmarks of illicits that gangs might handle. It didn’t look like gang vengeance.

Neither did three bots that didn’t show on the maintenance schematics.

“Watch him,” he said to Magdallen. “That’s all, watch him. Don’t stop him.”

“Understood,”Magdallen said.

Brazis stored the image series Magdallen sent, an absentminded press of his thumb. Self-protection. His mind was on another cha

He came around the side of his desk, sat down in his chair and hand-keyed a fast draft of a message.

Brazis to Kekellen. I see Kekellen mark on man. Yes no? What cause?

He sent it with an entirely uneasy feeling, a second message without consulting his experts.

He drafted a rapid written order to his security department. Immediately and with all courtesy contact Jeremy Stafford Sr.Never mind the damn address. Today, they knew it by heart. Inquire what he knows about his son’s current situation and offer him the PO’s assistance. Likewise contact the mother, at work or at the residence. Report any findings with all speed.

That inquiry had a snowflake’s chance of turning up anything useful. The parents weren’t street people. They wouldn’t have a clue what was going on at this moment with their son and their daughter.