Carnival-SA (42 page)

This was Vincent’s job, this negotiation. She didn’t have the faintest idea of where to begin. And Julian deserved praise and a hug. One he wasn’t too grown up, today, to return. She watched the discussion closely, however, and she quickly got the impression that Kii actually wasn’t opposed to helping them. That it might in fact be inclined to do so, but a sense of duty was stopping it. And so, when she interjected, she only had one point to make; Vincent had covered the rest.

“Kii,” she said, when Vincent had taken two deep breaths of frustration and curled his fingers into his palms, “sometimes the status quo
needs
rearranging. No matter how safe it is.”

“The Consent would not agree,” Kii said, its eyes filming white for a moment and then clearing, sun-brilliant again.

“The Consent aren’t here to ask, are they?”

Its feathers smoothed, and it stared at her.

“Kii,” she said, “what do
you
think?”

“I think the Consent is too conservative,” it said. “I think the diversity of your species should be protected. I think preserving a small local population when there is a…menagerie…no, a panoply of you to experience is foolish.” It settled, and furled its wings. “You’re all so
different,
” it said plaintively. “And I’ve only gotten to meet a few of you.”

“Take you to Earth,” Michelangelo said. “If you make me a promise about the Governors, Kii. If you’ll take them apart.”

Kii recoiled, wings fanning. And Lesa dropped her hand to the butt of her weapon and took a single slow, deep breath. If she died today, it didn’t matter. Either the plan to subvert the Governors would work, and there would be no war—or she would have to have faith in her mother’s ability to discredit Austin and Singapore.

And there was Vincent’s promise. One way or another, Julian would be okay.

“Decide quickly,” she said. And when they turned to her, she shrugged, her lips pulled tight across her teeth to keep them from trembling. “We have to leave within the hour if we’re going to meet Claude and her seconds before noon.”

Ninety minutes later, Vincent, Lesa, and Michelangelo met Claude, Maiju, and another woman at the challenge square. It was otherwise empty, and Claude and her people had beaten them there and stood, waiting, not far from the center of the open court. Saide Austin was nowhere in sight, and Michelangelo couldn’t decide if he found that expected or surprising. New Amazonian dueling apparently didn’t bow to such niceties as seconds; other than the men she dueled for, Lesa went alone. She limped in stiff boots that were the next best thing to braces, and she had refused Michelangelo’s offer of an analgesic. “I’d rather suffer than be slow.”

She’d gotten Agnes to cut the trigger guard off an old weapon for her, and wrapped the grip in cloth so that if her palm seeped through the sealant it wouldn’t slick the gun. Michelangelo wished he thought it would be enough.

Even across the intervening distance, he saw Claude’s chin go up when Lesa rose, wobbling, out of the groundcar. Michelangelo offered his arm, but she brushed past with stubborn pride. Claude didn’t say a word, although the glance she exchanged with her wife said everything. Michelangelo squeezed Lesa’s shoulder before he let her stagger forward alone. She flashed him an ashen grin and went, trying to stride but hobbling, and Claude’s retinue withdrew. The duelists would meet at the center of the square. Alone. They would pace off ten steps, turn, and fire. One shot only.

Which explained why more New Amazonian women didn’t die over a point of honor. Of course, most of them probably wouldn’t bother prosecuting a case as thickheaded as this one unless they had an ulterior motive—like Claude’s.

Michelangelo didn’t react or step back when Vincent laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder and squeezed. The least he could do was refuse to look down.

Lesa was halfway across the square when Antonia Kyoto stepped from an open doorway, flanked by Shafaqat Delhi and two other uniformed security agents, and called out her name. Lesa dragged to a halt, turning slowly, as if it took a moment for the cry to penetrate her awareness. And then Kyoto came toward her, the women fanning out on either side, and Lesa spread her hands wide. Michelangelo started forward, but Vincent’s hand was still on his shoulder, unrelenting now, holding him in place. He could have broken the grip, but he would have had to hurt Vincent to do it, so he shuffled his feet and stayed where he was.

Lesa never even reached for her weapon. She let Kyoto take her elbow and lean close to speak into her ear. And whatever Kyoto said, Lesa responded first by shaking her head and then drawing back, startled, and glancing at Claude.

Claude, faced by two security agents herself, did drop her hand to her weapon. If she ever actually intended to shoot, the gesture came too late, because Shafaqat grabbed her arm and dragged it behind her, and the next time Michelangelo paused to think, he was moving, and Vincent had him by the elbow and wasn’t trying to slow him down.

Lesa and Kyoto reached Claude before they did, about the same time as Maiju and the other woman were intercepted by more uniformed women. Hands were waved and voices raised, though Michelangelo didn’t hear all the conversation. That muttering grew louder when Claude’s gestures and Kyoto’s determined head shaking grew more vehement, and cracked into silence when Lesa turned and gestured Michelangelo over.

He came to her, hiding his limp, Vincent still at his side. “Yes?”

“Claude,” Lesa said without looking at him, “would like to know if you’re willing to accept a vaccine for the virus in return for keeping the existence of the laboratory secret.”

He hid his shock with the old reflexive skill, but couldn’t resist a glance at Kyoto. She winked, but not so Claude would see it, and from Vincent’s sudden tension the answer must be in her face, but Michelangelo couldn’t read it.

He could act, though. He dropped his gaze from Kyoto’s to the pavement in front of his toes and made a show of thinking about it, and then he smiled, looked Claude in the eye, and lightly shook his head.

“Don’t think so.”

He almost felt bad for enjoying it so much until Lesa’s hand snuck out and squeezed his own.

“It was good work,” Elena said, and Lesa smiled under the praise despite herself. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a victory party, but she, Vincent and Michelangelo—whom she could no longer think of as the Coalition agents—Antonia and Elena were seated comfortably around the demolished remains of a very good supper, and even Michelangelo looked halfway relaxed. Very relaxed, for a man going to his execution.

But Lesa wasn’t going to think about that tonight. “So,” she said, when Antonia finally pushed her dessert plate away, “how did you find the lab?”

Elena enjoyed playing hostess. She was already filling a coffee cup, which Antonia accepted gratefully.

“Old-fashioned investigative work,” she said. “We pulled House’s records of everywhere Saide Austin had been for the past six weeks, and found out that she’d checked out a rifle and taken a three-day hike right before Carnival. We sent out tracking teams, located where the aircar met her, and used satellite imagery to track it to the base. We actually knew last night, but it was more fun to arrest Claude in her moment of triumph.”

Lesa caught herself shaking her head in annoyed admiration and had to force herself to stop. Vincent snorted, and sat forward enough to pick up a dessert plate before reclining back on the floor. He leaned against Michelangelo and sighed. “Are you sure you’re not a Liar, Antonia?”

“Just an old warrior,” she answered, and blew across her coffee cup, but her eyes twinkled over it.

“There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to hold Claude for any length of time, of course—or Saide either. They have enough political resources to weasel out of it, I’m afraid—though the scandal should at least clear them out of Parliament.”

Elena coughed lightly. “You might want to search Austin’s studio,” she said with a casual smile. “While you have probable cause and might stand a chance of getting a warrant.”

Antonia blinked at Elena while Lesa bit her lip, watching her mother the way a khir kit watches a fexa.

“Oh?” Antonia said.

“You never know,” Elena said. “You might find contraband.”

Saide Austin’s public shock when the stolen statue was discovered concealed under a tarpaulin, among her waste marble, might have been convincing under other circumstances. But given the furor already surrounding her links to the genetic engineering scandal, even her reputation was not enough to weather the storm unscathed.

Her eventual jail sentence, however, was somewhat lighter than Claude Singapore’s. When it came down to it, it wasn’t the New Amazonian’s virus that was the problem. It was Kii. Getting it to Earth and with it, its promise to eradicate the Governors.

Those on
Kaiwo Maru
were easy. The ones on Earth, and the Coalition worlds, and infesting the starships that traveled between them were another issue entirely. As was ensuring that Kii got to Earth intact and protected.

Michelangelo had never had a fight with Vincent that
began
to match that one. Vincent began adamant: Michelangelo was to go AWOL, go native on New Amazonia. With Antonia Kyoto as the heir apparent to the prime minister’s chair—once, of course, the unpleasant business of Claude Singapore’s impeachment and prosecution had gone forward—he would be safe there, even a valued member of Kyoto’s team. And with the remnants of the Right Hand still eluding sweeps in the jungle, he would have no trouble keeping busy. Meanwhile, Vincent would hand-carry Kii’s data bomb back to Earth. It was a beautiful plan, and completely unworkable. So Michelangelo had kissed him, and called him a fool. “My patron can see to it that I get a show trial to end all show trials,” Michelangelo said. “A hearing before the Cabinet. They’ll download my watch, Vincent, and the details of this mission will be presented as part of the evidence.”

Purged of such details as the fact that Michelangelo had not been acting alone, of course. His patron would see to that, too.

And the evidence would be shared among the Governors, forwarded via shipping and mail packets to the farthest outposts of the Coalition, so that the Governors could return a consensus regarding whether they would carry out the Assessment. It would take about four months out and four months back for the verdict to be returned.

An inevitable verdict. But the forms would be observed. And the Governors would swallow the poison pill of Kii’s virus with the evidence upon which they would return Michelangelo’s sentence. Which would be Assessment. That, he already knew.

And that, moreover, was the poetry that had convinced Kii, finally, to do as Michelangelo said.

“It’s a death sentence,” Vincent said.

“Yes,” Kii said. “But it is elegant.”

Michelangelo nodded, at peace and whole in his heart. That was, after all, the plan. The only pain came in hurting Vincent. But Vincent would recover. He had always been the stronger one.

“It’s nothing I can’t do as well, with a better chance of surviving.”

“Vincent,” Michelangelo said patiently, “you’re
Katherinessen
. Won’t put you before the Governors. They’ll ship you home with a discharge and pretend you never left Ur.”

“Angelo—”

Vincent’s voice cracked. Michelangelo couldn’t stand it. He shook his head. “Let me be the fucking hero just once, you son of a bitch,” he said, and kissed him on the mouth. And Vincent, eyes closed, kissed him back, and murmured, “Kill or be killed,” against his lips. Michelangelo repeated the same words, and if they meant martyrdom rather than bravado now, they were still a benediction, of sorts.

That first leg of the journey was a little less than two months, and Vincent was both grateful and grieved that Michelangelo did not spend
this
trip in cryo. They had that, at least, and it had a kind of end-of-the-world sweetness that alternately tore and honeyed him.

The results of the New Amazonian election caught up with them at Cristalia, via a fast packet bot, and they weren’t surprised to hear that the new head of the security directorate was Lesa Pretoria. Between her and Prime Minister Kyoto, Vincent doubted if he’d ever have to make good on his promise to take Julian back to Ur.

At Cristalia, Vincent and Angelo parted ways.

Vincent tendered his resignation through the mail packet that would reach Old Earth on the same ship that Angelo would and boarded the
Pequod
toward Ur. Michelangelo’s ship was named the
Argo
. They didn’t laugh about it.

Vincent’s family was surprised to see him, except for his mother, who was pleased. Captain Katherine Lexasdaughter was finally showing her age, her hair thinning now, and bright silver in its careful coif, but the steely resolve hadn’t left her. She was even more pleased to hear that the revolution could go forward.

But not as scheduled.

Vincent suggested she wait, eight months or ten, to see if it would even be necessary to start a war. And she listened.

Katherine always listened. And she made other people listen, too. So it happened that once the Governors ceased issuing their dictums, there was no need to bring revolution to Old Earth. Old Earth managed very well on its own.

Vincent had never tracked incoming ships before, but now he did, waiting for any scrap of news, though the trial received only moderate coverage—and none at all once the fighting started and the Cabinet was dissolved. The Governors would never return Angelo’s sentence. They’d be gone before the mail could get back to Old Earth.

That didn’t matter: it would be obvious to anyone with a calendar and a brain where the virus had originated. Vincent knew the Coalition.

Someone would do the work himself.

Vincent was consumed—possessed—by the need to know the date, the exact time of Michelangelo’s execution. As if in knowing, he could fix the sun in the sky, control the death, contain it, crystallize it. As if he could
own
it.

Ridiculous, when he didn’t even stand under the same sun.

He knew how it would be. He would observe the anniversary. He would grieve. Every year at first, and then perhaps after the fifth iteration or the tenth, he would forget, skip a year—and then it would be once a decade, a period of ten years frivolously chosen because his species had ten fingers for counting on, with no more cosmic significance than an astrological unit. A convenient meter, a king’s foot. An arbitrary standard, where Kii would count by eights.