Forge of Heaven

He appended another note:

Also check the phone system stat. See whether any call’s gone out on Procyon Stafford’s card.

The tap system being shut down, Procyon might have gone low-tech. He might have contacted his mother or father with some sort of explanation, might have called one of his friends.

Like hell they were that lucky.

So what now? What in hell did they do?

DORTLAND WAS IN THE OUTER OFFICE, quietly so, with Ernst, when Reaux walked in.

“Inside,” Reaux said, not even stopping. He entered his office and held the door for Dortland, who had an apprehensive look.

“Sir.”

Reaux let the door shut, sealing them in. “Mr. Dortland, the ambassador has a tap. What do you think of that?”

Honest dismay. He saw that register on Dortland’s face. He walked past Dortland to the desk, flung himself down in the chair, leaned back and scowled.

“Where’s my daughter, Mr. Dortland? Any ideas?”

“Actually, sir, yes.” Dortland drew a deep breath, set his feet. “In a particularly difficult situation, at the moment, in a Freethinker den on Blunt.”

Shot for shot. Dortland was trying to unsettle his stomach. And succeeded in making him very, very angry.

“Are you only observing, then, Mr. Dortland? Or do you intend to do something about her situation?”

“Governor, the place is suspect in the attack on Mr. Gide.”

“Don’t hand me that,” Reaux snapped. “I know who attacked Mr. Gide. Is the tap he’s got yourinstallation, or have enemies gotten to him? The doctors think it’s a nanocele.”

Dortland’s face rarely registered anything. Now it registered worry.

“I think the same,” Reaux said, “and I’m not amused, Mr. Dortland. Neither is Mr. Gide. Was it his own agency that pla

Dortland didn’t say a thing for a moment. He walked over to the life-globe, gave it a cursory look, and looked back. “Your daughter, Governor, has fallen into the company of one Algol, a Freethinker, a grotesque, a pere

Not a word on the Gide matter. A diversion. A diversion very much on topic.

“And you are doing…what, about the situation?”

“I hesitate to say I’ve been called off the case, sir. I’d like to get back down there.”

“And Mr. Gide. The matter of Mr. Gide. An honest answer. Who set him up?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”

“Your own authority, then. You’d answer me, if you could blame some other chain of command than your own.”

“Governor—”

“Mr. Dortland, you’re not in good favor with me, at the moment, and not with Mr. Gide, either. Did you implant a tap in him?”

“No. No,Governor, I assuredly did not.”

“Were you first to the scene?”

“No. The civil police were first, on record. Someone else—”

“Someone else knew you were pla

“It’s not at all likely. But that someone got to him in hospital…that’s possible. I’d look to the very people he’s here investigating.”

“And whydid your superiors set him up? To involve the Treaty Board permanently at Concord, to forcethem to establish an office here against their better inclinations?”

One of Dortland’s patented blank looks. A shake of his head. “I have absolutely no knowledge of any such thing.”

“You only got your orders, did you? Are you that low in the stack?”

“I admit to nothing, sir.”

“But you don’t deny it,” Reaux said with a bitter taste in his mouth. “Did you set up my daughter as a diversion?”

“Your daughter’s ru

“This boy she’s with. One of them? Or one of yours?”

Dortland shook his head. “A fool. Useless in life. But these people have now contacted her,Governor.”

“Before or after she ran?”

“That, I don’t know. But once she was there, she was not discreet in her identity. She used your card all up and down Blunt. They had no trouble finding her.”

His own bright idea, encouraging use of that card. He found himself short of breath, short of accusations. “If you want me to solve this mess with Gide, if you want me to show any forbearance with you, Mr. Dortland, achieve a success on Blunt.”

A small, taut silence. “I’d better get back down there.”

“Mr. Dortland.”

Dortland stopped on his way to the door.

“Awkwardly for us both, at this moment, you can’t possibly board that ship to leave this station: being from Earth, it doesn’t take on passengers. Gide knows what you are, and he knows what happened, and he will recover. Having a culpable look when one branch of government sandbags a watchdog agency is not, I repeat, nota comfortable position to be in.”

“No, sir, it can’t be.”

“I don’t want you transferred. I don’t know what they’d replace you with. So become faithful to me, Mr. Dortland, and you may find Concord is your one place of safety. Even Mr. Gide may forgive you.”

“Brazis’s boy is walking down Blunt with an ondatkeepaway on his forehead and a handful of common service bots following him, and I don’t know why.” Dortland’s face at this precise instant had an uncharacteristic vulnerability. “You should know that. And it’s in the vicinity of the place where these people are holding your daughter.”

“An ondatkeepaway.” Reaux sat frozen at his desk, remembering his message to that entity.

“An ondatkeepaway, apparently tattooed onto Procyon Stafford, Marak’s tap. The ondatvenerate Marak above all else, don’t they? Looks to me as if they’ve made a statement about Mr. Gide’s actions.”

The memory of Gide’s face flashed into memory, the pale face, the red flush of fever spreading from the ear to the jaw. He was looking, however, at Dortland, at a traitor only half reclaimed.

“I wouldn’t advise you get too close to Mr. Gide, now, sir,” Dortland said, “just in case.”

He hadn’t liked Dortland that much before this. The man’s bid to retain power was evocative of a good many reasons not to snuggle close to him. Worse, he’d lay any sum of money on the bet that Dortland’s agency had aimed to get inside Gide’s, aided and abetted by that ship out there.

“Get my daughter out,” he said to Dortland. “Do it. Fast.”

“REPLY FROM KEKELLEN,” Dia

Brazis punched the button. It said, with Kekellen’s script above and the autotranslation below: Procyon Kekellen. Kekellen send. Kekellen mark.”

And: “Kekellen hear Procyon.”

Gooseflesh crept up Brazis’s arms. He reflexively sipped the hot caff he had on his desk.

So the mark was real.

And, Kekellen hearProcyon?

Hearwasn’t a common verb in ondatcontext, was it? Not one he’d ever run into.

He’d shut the tap system down, and no other taps had gone to hospital since. But he couldn’t risk keeping it shut down forever. Hand trembling over the buttons, once and twice hesitating, he called System Control, encoded an order with a furious set of taps, first to warn the techs and then to order them to bring the local system back up. The downlink to the planet only awaited his order.

A graph showed on his screen.

Red to yellow.

Yellow to green. Local was coming on-line.

“Procyon,” he said, tapping in quickly, laying himself wide open to whatever was amiss with the tap. “Procyon, do you hear me?”

Flash of light. Pain. The system moderated it, fast.

“What in hell’s going on?”he heard from downworld. Never mind his initiating the downlink: the uplink was in Ian’s hands, and Ian had come through on it, instantaneously, and loud.