"Ask Grant."

"Whatever Justin says," Grant said.

vii

"We've got a contact," Wagner said, on the walk over to State from the Library, "in Planys maintenance. Money, not conscience."

"I don't want to hear that," Corain said. "I don't want you to have heard it. Let's keep this clean."

"I didn't hear it and you didn't," Wagner agreed. A stocky woman with almond eyes and black ringleted hair, Assistant Chief of Legal Affairs in the Bureau of Citizens, complete with briefcase and conservative suit. A little walk over from Library, where both of them happened to meet—by arrangement. "Say our man's working the labs area. Say he talks with Warrick. Shows him pictures of the kids—you know. So Warrick opens up."

"We're saying what happened."

"We're saying what happened. I don't think you want to know the whole string of contacts. ..."

"I don't. I want to know, dammit, is Warrick approachable?"

"He's been under stringent security for over a year. He has a son still back in Reseune. This is the pressure point."

"I remember the son. What's he like?"

"Nothing on him. A non-person as far as anything we've got, just an active PR CIT-number. Defense has a lot more on him. Doppelganger for papa, that's a given. But apparently either Warrick senior or junior has pressured Reseune enough to get a travel pass for the son. He's thirty-five years old. Reseune national. Reseune had so much security around him when he'd come into Planys you'd have thought he was the Chairman. There's an azi, too. An Alpha—you remember the Abolitionist massacre over by Big Blue?"

"The Winfield case. I remember. Tied into Emory's murder. That was one of the points of contention—between Warrick and Emory."

"He's a foster son as far as Warrick is concerned. They don't let him out of Reseune. We can't get any data at all on him, except he is alive, he is living with the son, Warrick still regards him as part of the family. I can give you the whole dossier."

"Not to me! That stays at lower levels."

"Understood then."

"But you can get to Warrick."

"I think he's reached a state of maximum frustration with his situation. It's been, what, eighteen years? His projects are Defense; but Reseune keeps a very tight wall between him and them, absolutely no leak-through. The air-systems worker—we've had him for—eighteen months, something like. What you have to understand, ser, Reseune's security is very, very tight. But also, it's no ordinary detainee they're dealing with. A psych operator. A clinician. Difficult matter, I should imagine, to find any guard immune to him. The question is whether we go now or wait-see. That's what Gruen wants me to ask you."

Corain gnawed at his lip. Two months from the end of the Defense election, with a bomb about to blow in that one—

With Jacques likely to win the Defense seat away from Khalid and very likely to appoint Gorodin as Secretary.

But Jacques was weakening. Jacques was feeling heat from the hawks within Defense—and there were persistent rumors about Gorodin's health—and countercharges that Khalid, who had been linked to previous such rumors—was once more the source of them.

But Khalid couldwin: the Centrist party had as lief be shut of Khalid's brand of conservatism—but it could not discount the possibility in any planning. The Jacques as Councillor/Gorodin as Secretary compromise Corain had hammered out with Nye, Lynch, and the Expansionists—was the situation Corain had rather have, most of all, if rumors were true and Gorodin's health was failing, because Gorodin was the Expansionists'part of the bargain.

Wait—and hope that a new hand at the helm of the military would enable them to work withDefense to get to Warrick in Planys; or go in on their own and trust to their own resources. And risk major scandal. That was the problem.

If Khalid won again—Khalid would remember that his own party had collaborated in the challenge to his seat. Then he would owe no favors.

Then he could become a very dangerous man indeed.

"I think we'd better pursue the contact now," Corain said. "Just for God's sake be careful. I don't want any trails to the Bureau, hear?"

viii

"I didn't know I was going to do that," Justin said, and tossed a bit of bread to the koi. The gold one flashed to the surface and got it this time, while the white lurked under a lotus pad. "I had no idea. It just—she was going to find out about the tape, wasn't she? Someday. Better now—while she's naive enough to be shocked. God help us—if it goes the other way."

"I feel much safer," Grant said, "when you decide these things."

"Idon't, dammit, I had no right to do that without warning—but I was in a corner, it was the moment—it was the only moment to make the other situation right. ..."

"Because of the tape?"

"You do understand it, then."

"I understand this is the most aggressive personality I've ever met. Not even Winfield and his people—impressed me to that extent. I'll tell you the truth: I've been afraid before. Winfield, for instance. Or the Security force that pulled me out of there—I thought that they might kill me, because those might be their orders. I've tried to analyze the flavor of this, and the flux was so extreme in me at that moment in the office doorway—I can't pin it down. I only know there was something so—violent in this girl—that it was very hard for me to respond without flux." Grant's voice was clinical, cool, soft and precise as it was when he was reasoning. "But then—that perception may have to do with my own adrenaline level—and the fact the girl isa Supervisor. Perhaps I misread the level of what I was receiving."

"No. You're quite right. I've tried to build a profile on her . . . quietly. Same thing her predecessor did to me. The choices she makes in her model, the things she'd do if she were in the Gehenna scenario—she's aggressive as hell, and self-protective. I've charted the behavior phases—menstrual cycles, hormone shifts—best I can guess, she's hormone-fluxed as hell right now; I alwayswatch the charts with her. But that's never all of it." He broke off another bit of bread and tossed it, right where the spotted koi could get it. "Neverall of it with her predecessor. That mind is brilliant. When it fluxes, the analog functions go wildly speculative—and the down-side of the flux integrates like hell. I've watched it. More, she originatedthe whole flux-matrix theory; you think she doesn't understand her own cycles? Anduse them? But youngAri made me understand something I should have seen—we deal with other people with such precision, and ourselves with such damnable lack of it—Ari is having difficulties with ego-definitions. A PR does, I should know; and it can only get worse for her. That's why I asked for the transfer."

"Fix her on us?"

He drew several long breaths. Blinked rapidly to clear away the elder Ari's face, the remembrance of her hands on him.

"She's vulnerable now," he said on a ragged breath. "She's looking for some sign of the human race—on whatever plane she lives on. That's the sense I got—that maybe she was as open then as I was—then. So I grabbed the moment's window. That's what I thought. That she's so damn self-protective—there might only be that chance—then—hi that two seconds." He shuddered, a little, involuntary twitch at the nape of the neck. "God, I hate real-time work."