Damage Control - ARC (17 page)

"And that idiot boyfriend of hers had the
good taste to send Geonily a wedding invitation," Brooks added. "To
her, that's proof enough that her mother's dead."

"Perhaps I'm not familiar enough with your
customs," said Gyze. "Geonily's boyfriend wishes to marry her?"

"Jade's! Jade's boyfriend," Becky corrected
him, with a force that was almost worthy of being called
Chuzekk.

Brooks explained, "My aunt is upset because
Jade's boyfriend Diego didn't want to wait for her. A week after
she was captured he started seeing someone else, and now they're
getting married. I say good riddance, have a nice life."

Gyze felt a thrill start in his toes and flow
up to the top ridges of his head. He hadn't expected such good
news. Now Jade would have no reason to reject him. But many years
of intelligence training kept him from betraying even a hint of
emotion. He asked in the same calm tone he'd been using since he'd
landed, "Diego has invited Geonily to his wedding, and that has
upset her even more than before?"

"That's about it," Becky answered. "If you
could arrange a phone call, even a note, it would make a huge
difference to that little girl."

Gyze shook his head. “My commander will not
allow Jade to communicate with Earth. She has requested many times
that he change this order. He refuses.”

No one spoke after that. The Humans were
deeply disappointed. Ellison continued her purring.

Brooks turned his back to Gyze and opened a
door in the wall. There were shelves behind it, full of Earth-style
drinking vessels, stacked up so precariously that some of them
seemed in danger of falling. Brooks extricated an opaque blue one
with a pattern on it, set it on the desk in front of himself and
filled it with coffee. He turned to Gyze. “Coffee, Gyze?” he said,
looking at his eyes. Pain, fear and calculation still showed in his
face.

“Yes, please.”

Becky was behind Gyze, standing next to the
biggest box in the room—the cold box that had been the source of
Brooks’s green lumps. The box had two doors, an upper and a lower
one. Brooks had used the upper one to get his green lumps. Becky
now opened the lower one. “What would you like to put in it?” she
asked. “I have half-and-half, milk, non-dairy French vaniller…sugah
rin the cubbad.”

Gyze concentrated to understand her. ‘French’
he understood. ‘Vaniller’ he had never heard of. The last phrase,
he realized after a moment, was “sugar in the cupboard.”

“No,” Gyze replied, “Just coffee. Thank
you.”

“You like it black, then,” said Becky

Brooks put the mug on the desk near Gyze—not
right in front of him, Gyze noticed, only somewhat close. The Human
was afraid to risk touching him, then, or perhaps to risk offending
him. He waited respectfully until Brooks had pulled his hand back,
then picked up the vessel. The coffee inside wasn’t black: it was
dark brown, like the coffee on the keev-ship.

Brooks removed an orange vessel from the
crowded shelf and filled it with the hot liquid. He added two
little shovelfuls of sugar and poured in some half-and-half. It was
almost the way Jade prepared her coffee, only slightly less
sugary.

“Cup,” said Gyze, looking at the vessel and
recalling its Aberikekk name. Some of its markings vaguely
resembled the hair-like vegetable that covered the soil in front of
the house. “What is this?” he asked, holding up the cup and
indicating the markings with his claw.

“Grass,” Becky answered, but Brooks said,
“firing glaze.”

In the pod on the way back to the keev-ship,
Gyze monitored his instruments carefully. He was a competent pilot
and a better gunner, but he knew there was no substitute for
preparation and alert observation. And the Humans had found a way
to detect even pods now, although their equipment needed to be
aimed just right to be effective.

He reached an altitude of nearly 1,728 units
without incident, then the pod’s sensors detected a flare on the
surface, probably a weapon launch. A moment later, the weapon
itself showed up on the sensors. He got it in the targeting sites,
but the angle was wrong. If he shot it now, he’d hit whatever was
below it on the planet, too. Somehow, he had to get the thing to
come up beside him, and that wouldn’t be easy, since it probably
had him targeted, too.

He did his best to fly in a complex pattern.
That was a challenge because his expertise was in guessing emotions
from unconscious physiologic signs, not in stunt flying. His first
task was to stay away from the weapon—chances were slim that it
wouldn’t kill him if it hit. Pods were built to withstand attack to
some extent, but by now the Humans knew what kind of weapon was
needed to penetrate their armor, and even they weren’t disorganized
enough to waste resources on ineffective projectiles. His second
task was to lure the weapon to fly higher, then take his own pod
into a dip that would put it and the weapon at roughly the same
altitude.

Heart pounding, senses and reflexes quickened
by his instinct to survive, his hands flew over the interior
surfaces of the craft. Immediate course changes, frequent and
sudden, bought him precious moments of life. Meanwhile, he also
mapped out a route that should put the weapon where he needed it,
assuming he could get it to cooperate.

Finally, the thing was at nearly his own
altitude, chasing him as he flew in a sub-orbital arc. This was his
chance, but he needed to seize it quickly—it was gaining on him,
fast. With one clawstroke, he released the two waiting torpedoes
and hoped.

C
hegg's right office
door swung open just as he was reaching to open it, and it took a
strong act of will to keep himself from jumping. A male chiroje
walked in.

Normally, Chegg wouldn't have worried. The
visitor had no way of knowing what Chegg was about to do, and Chegg
knew how to keep his nervousness from showing. You don't become a
Counter-Intelligence keev without learning how to maintain your
composure even in the most extreme circumstances.

But this visitor was different. Even Chegg
didn't know exactly how how far Gyze Quejj's interrogation skills
went. He reminded him of himself at that age.

They grasped arms.

"Keev."

"Gyze."

"Do you have three or four minutes?" Gyze
asked, "or should I make an appointment?"

"I have three minutes," Chegg replied, still
standing by the door and leaving Gyze in the open doorway. "Even I
don't like to keep a health plan administrator waiting."

"The most powerful cheejes in the
Organization," Gyze agreed, quoting a popular saying. "I checked on
Jade Massilon's daughter. According to her relatives, she is safe
and healthy, and I believe they are telling the truth. But Jade's
mate Diego has given up and found another mate."

"I'm aware of that," said Chegg, even though
it was obvious.

"With your permission, I'll go to Jade's
quarters now and make her aware of it." Chegg inferred from Gyze’s
tone that he considered the request a formality, and Chegg’s
permission a sure thing.

Chegg shook his head. "No. She is to remain
in isolation until the planet is secure."

Gyze's eyebrows flicked up and pulled
together. His mouth tensed, and the sound of his breath changed as
the muscles in his stomach and throat tensed as well. It was an
adrenalin response: although he chose to remain silent and
respectful, Gyze was angry.

Chegg had no time or patience for
explanations, and wouldn’t have bothered with them in any case. "If
you have no more questions,” he told the chiroje, “I'll go to my
meeting now."

“No more questions, Keev.” Gyze waited an
uncomfortable second for Chegg’s nod of dismissal, then turned and
hurried down the hallway.

Chegg followed at a slightly slower pace, and
walked to his quarters to wait for the health plan
administrator.

She was an air woman with a habit of stealing
frequent glances at her boots.

"Keev."

"Piall."

They remained standing. Piall opened her
Personal Device and began typing. "Your parastomach function
continues to decline. We may need to cut out insect powder from
your diet altogether if this trend continues.”

"We are alone," said Chegg.

Piall nodded, turned off her Personal Device
and put it away.

Chegg closed the short distance between them
so that they stood close together, almost touching, and spoke in a
low tone. “Give me the disease report first.”

The air woman stared through the ceiling for
three seconds before speaking. “The Humans have had no more cases
of what they are calling ‘streptococcoid syndrome’ since our last
meeting. One hundred forty-three other diseases of Chuzekk origin
test positive in the environment, including the common bone itch,
but Human medical professionals haven't discovered them yet.”

“How many individuals have died from these
diseases?”

“I gave the order not to count the deaths. My
investigators encountered unexpected obstacles to performing
autopsies because of Human death rituals. I decided that the
measures necessary to gain access to the bodies would have
constituted too great a risk of exposure.”

Chegg nodded. “Have the alien abduction
stories gained any credibility in mainstream Human culture now that
we have shown ourselves?”

“Yes, but they don't seem to have made the
connection to disease control because they’re still looking for a
complicated conspiracy of evil. Our plants are encouraging that, of
course. I think we're safe, at least for now.

Chegg walked to a nearby desk, reached under
it and turned on the artificial rain by pressing a clumsy
mechanical switch he had installed himself. Security concerns were
no reason to give up the simple comforts of home, after all. He
watched the drops form on the ceiling and fall to his face, then
breathed them in. “Go on,” he said.

“Sanitation,” Piall continued, making no
indication that she even noticed the rain. “My workers continue to
repair sewage systems and other sanitation infrastructure damaged
by the war. It’s still too early to say whether our attempts to
prevent sanitation-related epidemics have been successful or
not.

“Water and food. Our strategy of delivering
water and food using Chuzekk technology while giving credit to
known Human charity groups seems to be working. No one seems to
suspect that the charity groups did not do the work—not even the
charity groups themselves.

“Drugging the Human population is proving
beneficial. So far the people in general are much more docile than
our projections show they would normally be. The military leaders
are much harder to handle, of course, but we have managed to make
some of them lose their focus and patience, resulting in hasty
decisions that worked to our advantage.”

When she finished, Chegg said nothing for a
minute or so, just stood and let the rain fall on him while
everything sunk in. When he brought his mind back to where he was
again, he realized that he had been staring at Piall’s boots. “What
do you think are the chances that the Humans will discover our
drugs in their environment?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Probably very slim. We have
had to use drugs they have no tests for, which is part of the
challenge.”

“Then I think we may have grounds for
cautious optimism. My contacts have found no indications so far
that either the Bdasekks or the Asirekks are aware of our treaty
violations on this pesky little planet. Of course, we cannot rule
out the possibility that they are fully aware of our activities,
and also of who our spies are. All we can do is continue to monitor
through multiple avenues, but as of now it actually seems possible
that we may be spared an inter-empire war.”

Piall’s shoulders stiffened. “I have one more
item to report.”

Something in the tone of her voice made
Chegg’s stomach contract. He caught his breath and just looked at
her.

“Someone is interfering with our work.”

“A sabateur?”

“We don’t know yet whether they are
committing intentional sabotage, or just working toward their own
goals and getting in our way. We do know it is not the Aberikekk
military, not the Russian government and not the Chinese
government. Whoever they are, they’re quickly becoming an
unacccounted variable in most of our calculations. Intentional
sabateurs or not, they could be—“ She cut herself off suddenly,
bowed her head and darted a glance at Chegg past her
eye-ridges.

“You’re right,” he said. “Unless we can
identify and control this variable, it could plunge half the galaxy
into a war like we haven’t had in twelve generations.”

J
ade stripped by her
bed, balled up her uniform and dropped her faltoopp on top of it.
There were no sensors in the faltoopp, Fletcher had said. She
walked naked to the shower room, turned it on and stepped
inside.