Century Rain Part 6

"An odd thing for a tourist to carry around with them," Floyd said.

"I asked her about it, and all she would say was that she was practising her touch-typing, so that she wouldn't be out of form when she returned home."

"You're right to mention it," Floyd said. "It's probably not important, but every bit helps."

"Perhaps we should look at the typewriter," Custine said.

"That's the point," Blanchard replied. "It doesn't exist any more. The typewriter was found smashed to pieces on the pavement, next to Mademoiselle White."

FOUR.

"h.e.l.lo, Verity," said Auger's ex-husband. "Excuse me for dropping by, but our mutual friends were beginning to wonder if you were still alive."

Peter Auger was tanned and muscular, like a man who had just returned from a long and relaxing holiday rather than a gruelling diplomatic tour of the Federation of Polities. He wore a very expensive olive-green suit, offset with a scarlet satin neckerchief and the tasteful gold pin of the diplomatic corps. His bright-green eyes glittered like cut emeralds, twinkling with permanent amused fascination at everything and everyone around him.

"Of course I'm still alive," Auger said grumpily. "It's called house arrest. It makes socialising something of a challenge."

"You know what I mean. You haven't been answering the phone or p-mail." To ill.u.s.trate his point, Peter indicated the acc.u.mulating heap of message cylinders cluttering the in-bound hopper of Auger's pneumatic tube.

"I've been getting my head together."

"You can't go on like this. When they do come calling you need to be strong, not some gibbering wreck. I heard that the preliminary hearing was scheduled for later this morning."

"You heard right."

"You seem remarkably relaxed about it."

"It's just a formality, a chance for both sides to stare each other out. It's the full disciplinary tribunal that's keeping me awake at night."

Peter sat down, crossing one long leg over the other. For a moment, he studied the picture window, admiring the view of Earth and-superimposed on the brilliant white disc-a nearby precinct of Tanglewood. "They change their plans," he said. "You need to be ready for surprises, especially now. They like to throw the odd curveball, especially when they're dealing with someone like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Someone who's never gone out of their way to suck up to authority. To put it mildly. I hear you even managed to p.i.s.s off Caliskan last year. Now that takes some doing."

"All I did was refuse to put his name on a paper he played no part in preparing. If he had a problem with that, he could have taken it to tribunal."

"Caliskan pays your salary."

"He still needs to get his hands dirty if he expects academic credit." Auger sat down with her back to the picture window, facing Peter across a rough-hewn wooden coffee table. It supported a lopsided black vase containing a dozen dead flowers. "I didn't set out to aggravate him. I got on fine with DeForrest. It's not as if I have some automatic aversion to authority."

"Maybe Caliskan's had other things on his plate," Peter said in that quiet, knowing way of his that she had always found as maddening as it was appealing. Charm was what he excelled at. If anyone sensed his underlying shallowness, they usually mistook it for well-hidden great depth of character, like misinterpreting a radar bounce.

"How would you know, Peter?"

"I'm just saying that making enemies isn't the only way to get ahead in a career."

"I don't make enemies," she said. "I just don't like people getting in the way of my research interests."

"It was Paula's birthday last week."

"I know, I'm sorry. It's just with all this-"

"Her birthday was a couple of days before any of that nastiness in Paris. 'All this' had nothing to do with

it." Peter, as always, sounded calm and sympathetic even when he was rebuking her. "Have you any idea how much that kind of thing means to a nine-year-old?"

"I'm sorry, all right? I'll send her a message, if that will make you happier."

"It's not about making me happier. It's about your daughter."

Suddenly she felt pathetic and shameful. "I know. f.u.c.k, I'm useless. She doesn't deserve me as a mother, just as you didn't deserve me as a wife."

"Please-not the self-pity thing. I didn't come to tick you off about Paula. She's a kid, she'll get over it.

I just thought a gentle reminder might be in order."

Auger buried her face in her hands. From nowhere, after five days of stolid defiance, she had finally broken into tears. Was she sorry for her daughter, or for herself? She did not particularly care to know.

"Why did you come, then?" she mumbled through her hands.

"To see how you're holding up."

She glared at him through sore, red eyes. "Absolutely f.u.c.king splendidly, as you can see."

There was a whoosh and a pop as another message tube slid into the hopper, clanging against those

already languishing in it. Auger didn't even glance at it. Like all the others that had arrived in the last day, she was certain it was from an anonymous taunter. Why else send her maps of Paris, if not to rub her nose in what had happened?

"The other reason I've come," Peter said, after a dignified pause, "is to see if I can offer any help. I can arrange for strings to be pulled."

"With your new friends in high places?"

"Political connections aren't something to be ashamed of," Peter replied, with the a.s.surance of a man

who actually believed it.

Her own voice sounded frail and distant. "How was it?"

"Quite a trip."

"I'm almost envious."

Peter's diplomatic work had often taken him into the Polity-controlled territories on the edge of the solar

system. But his last mission had taken him much further: deep into the galaxy, via the hyperweb.

"You'd have enjoyed it," Peter said. "Of course, bits of it were absolutely terrifying...but worth it, I think."

"I hope you showed appropriate awe and humility," Auger said.

"It wasn't like that at all. They seemed genuinely delighted to have someone else to show all this stuff

to."

"Look," she said, "I could be less sceptical about all this if I thought our co-operation was what they were really interested in."

"And you don't believe they are?"

"You know what the small print says. We get access to the hyperweb-on their very strict and limiting

terms, I need hardly add-and in return they get access to Earth-also on their terms, funnily enough." "That's not quite how I read it. Why shouldn't they get something in return? They're offering us the entire galaxy, for pity's sake. Earth-a frozen, dangerous, uninhabitable Earth-seems a small price to pay for that. And it's not as if we're talking about handing them the entire planet on a plate."

"Give them an inch, they'll take a mile."

Peter kneaded his forehead, as if trying to make a headache go away. "At least we'd have secured

something for ourselves. One thing we need to understand-now more than ever-is that the Slashers don't const.i.tute a single political bloc, however much it might suit our own ends to view them that way.

It's certainly not the way they see the Federation. They view it as a loose, shifting alliance of various progressive interests, each with their own take on the best way to deal with Earth. It's no secret that there are factions amongst the Polities that favour a more aggressive policy."

A small chill shivered through Auger. "Such as?"

"Use your imagination. They want Earth very badly, especially now that they can see a clear strategy for ousting the furies and initiating terraforming. All that's standing in the way, in all honesty, is us and our more moderate allies amongst the Slashers. The pragmatist in me says that we should do a deal with the moderates while a deal is still on the table."

"For 'pragmatist' read 'cold-hearted cynic,'" Auger said, and then immediately felt ashamed of it, because she knew it was unfair. "Look, sorry. I know you mean well, Peter, and some of what you say probably makes a kind of twisted sense, but that doesn't mean I have to like any of it."

"Like it or not, co-operation with the Polities is the only way forward."

"Maybe," Auger replied, "but they'll set foot on Earth over my dead body."

Peter gave her that infuriating smile. "Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when that tribunal rolls around you're going to be facing an extremely competent prosecution witness. That's why I'm anxious to offer any help I can."

"What do you mean? What prosecution witness?"

"The girl-Ca.s.sandra?"

Auger studied Peter intensely, through slitted eyes. "What don't I know about her?"

"She's a Polity citizen. She may look like a girl, but she's a fully grown adult, with an adult's faculties and an adult's ruthlessness."

Auger shook her head. "No. Not possible." But then she recalled the girl's odd reaction after the incident in Paris and the agile, p.r.i.c.kly way she had defended collaboration with the Slashers. Then she remembered the sleek cobalt-blue form of the Slasher s.p.a.cecraft docked inside Antiquities.

"It's true," Peter said. He started picking through the dead flowers in the vase, frowning as he sought some final rearrangement of the shrivel-headed stems.

"Then how in h.e.l.l did she slip through our security?"

"She didn't. Her presence on your field trip was officially sanctioned."

"And no one thought to tell me?"

"Her presence was a very sensitive matter. If things hadn't gone so wrong, no one would have known

about it."

"And now they're going to blow it all out into the open in a tribunal?"

"They've decided that having Ca.s.sandra testify will be exactly the right gesture to consolidate ties with

moderate Slashers. It will show that we trust them to play an active part in our judicial processes."

"Even if that means hanging me out to dry?"