Dreamfall (30 page)

I wondered if the Lady had already left the planet or if she
just didn’t choose to be associated this closely with Tau’s problems. Keiretsu
didn’t apply simply to the relationship between a combine and its individual citizens.
The same invisible code of duty and obligation bound entire interstellar cartel
“families” like Draco itself, with its hundreds of subsidiary combine states.

Its allegiance gave a vassal state tike Tau access to the
near-limitless support system of Draco’s entire net. But in return Draco
expected absolute loyalty. If a situation like the one Tau was in now went critical,
if their damage control failed and the FTA instituted sanctions, any heads that
rolled weren’t going to belong to members of Draco’s Board. Tau would be the
hand cut off to save the body.

And if Tau couldn’t, or wouldr’t, make the sacrifice willingly,
then Draco would make it for them, whatever it took to keep Draco’s own
perverted honor intact.

I glanced at Sand again. I wondered whether his being here
was a good sign or a bad one.

We crossed the unnervingly open space to the meeting area. I
had the sense that there was no one else in the entire tower. We reached the
table, and Perrymeade made the usual obeisances for himself and excuses for me
to everyone there. I realtzed only then that half the people at the table weren’t
actually here. The Board Members were only virtual, images; their realtime
bodies were somewhere else. I’d have known that the minute I arrived if my psi
had been functioning. I could barely be certain now as I took a seat beside one
of them. There was a shimmer to him as he turned to look at me, his expression
as wary as mine even though he was probably half a planet away. I’d heard that
the visual effect was generally undetectable to human eyes.

A flower affangement sat on the table near my arm. I thought
it was only a decoration until I saw Sand pick a flower and eat it. The unreal
occupant of the seat next to me drank from a squat glass that wasn’t in my
reality.

“We are here, of course, to discuss the Hydran problem, and
how Tau intends to deal with it,” Sand said, opening the meeting without being
gentle about it. It .surprised me to see that he took control instead of
Kensoe, but maybe it shouldn’t have.

“Then what is he doing here?” the vip I remembered as Sithan
demanded, gesturing at me.

“He’s involved with the Hydran terrorists,” Borosage said,
his voice grating, ‘Just like I said in my report to you.”

I swore under my breath.

Sand gave Borosage a look that cut him off. “Update your database,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board. Cat is working for me. I took the
initiative, since Tau needed a contact the terrorists would talk to. They seem
... leery of your government agents and extremely hostile toward Coryorate
Security. And since District Administrator Borosage has no genuine leads in the
kidnapping ...” He let his insinuations finish speaking for themselves. “I
believe last night Cat made real progress. Last night—?” he prompted, pinning
me with his mirrored stare when I didn’t respond.

I kept my face expressionless as I struggled to make logic
out of where I’d been and what I’d learned last night,
when Miya ... before
she’d
—I dragged my mind away from her memory. If Sand already knew
everything, I’d be in Borosage’s lockup, not here at this meeting.

I tried to think about Joby:
Joby was the whole point of
this.
But in the light of a new day, I realized I couldn’t be certain of
anything—who I’d be helping, who I’d be hurting, if I opened my mouth. “Someone
from HARM contacted us—”

“How did they know where to find you?” Borosage demanded.

I glanced up, frowning. I was sitting directly across from
him, putting as much table surface as I could between us but still giving
myself a clear view of his hands. “Well, I don’t know,” I said, staring at my
tiny, distorted reflection in the metal skullcap around his eye. “I suppose
they read my mind.”

“You don’t think it had anything to do with your visit to
the
oyasin?
”
Sand asked, too casually. Borosage’s eyes ate holes
in me.

“No,” I said, remembering not to be surprised, remembering
that as long as I wore a databand I couldn’t even take a piss in a public
toilet without somebody knowing it. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She’s
just an old woman.”

Borosage grunted in disgust; the ghost vips stared. “Then
what were you doing down by the river in the middle of the night?”

“I wasn’t doing anything. I couldn’t sleep.” I glanced at
Per-rymeade, remembering why.

“There was Some—dissension among the team members ... about
the constant intemrptions of their field work,” Perrymeade munnured. His
expression tried too hard as he looked from face to face.

I followed his gaze around the circle of faces, registering
everything from suspicion to total incomprehension. “Doesn’t anybody on this
planet ever have trouble sleeping? Do you put drugs in the water supply—‘t”

Frowns, real and virtual. “Perhaps it’s because we all have
clear consciences,” Kensoe said.

“Then I don’t know what we’re doing here.” I picked a blue
flower from the dish on the table. I put it in my mouth. Its petals dissolved
on my tongue with a faint taste of mint. I swallowed, wondering if every color
had a separate flavor. I picked another one.

“Cat,” Perrymeade murmured, “what about Joby? Anythrflg—?’t

I forced myself to ease off and keep my attention on him. “It
was Miya who contacted me.”

“Miya—?” he said, turning in his seat to face me. “You actually
met with her?”

I nodded. ‘And I saw Joby.”

He stopped breathing. “She brought him to you?”

“She brought me to him. Somewhere in Freaktown.”

“Where?” Sand demanded. “Can you locate it on & map—?’r

“No.” I shook my head. “We teleported.”

“I thought you were brain-damaged. I thought you couldn’t do
any of that.”

“I can’t ... / didn’t have to,” I said, slowly and
carefully, like he was “un’tthe one with brain damage. ‘Anyho% even if I could
locate their safehouse on a map, it wouldn’t do you any good. They said they
wouldn’t be there in the morning. Do you want me to tell you what happened last
night, or not?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Then butt out.”

“We’re all here to listen,” Perrymeade said, his voice
straining. “Please, tell us.___”

I took a deep breath, and nodded. “Joby’s all right. Miya’s
taking care of him. I don’t think she’ll let anything happen to him.”

A film of relief formed on his face as thin as monomole. “Then
she is with HARM?” he munnured. I could barely make out the words.

I nodded again. His face went gray—the face of someone hearing
his own death sentence. I glanced at the other faces around the table, reading
their expressions as they looked at him. I realized then why he looked the way
he did: He hadn’t merely handed over his own nephew to kidnappers by trusting a
Hydran. He’d also ruined his career—which meant his entire life. I felt a sick
pity for him, a sudden helpless resentment toward the Hydrans and toward Miya
... felt my doubts and my loyalties eddying like oil in water.

I met Perrymeade’s gaze again, and there was only one thing
I was sure of now: I
couldn’t trust him anymore.
Because even he didn’t
know how far he’d go to save his own place in the keiretsu.

“How many other HARM members did you meet?” Sand asked,
getting impatient when I didn’t go on.

I shrugged, shaking off Perrymeade’s stare. “Maybe half a
dozen.”

“Did you get a sense of how many there are altogether? Did
you learn any identities? Would you know them if you saw them again?”

“No,” I said, knowing his bioware could read my galvanic responses
like a truthtester, but knowing from experience that I had enough control over
my life signs to keep him from reading the truth. “It doesn’t matter anyway.
You can’t find them. They don’t have databands.” I watched him frown.

Borosage shifted in his seat, rubbing his thick, scalred
hands together. I studied him, trying not to make it obvious; watched him
watching me, hating me.

I shifted in my own seat until I didn’t have to look at him
anymore. I glanced out the window, needing to clear my head. The scene had
changed, subtly. I realized that the room we were in was rotating almost
imperceptibly through a full 360-degree view of the city and the land beyond
it. I wondered who had designed this complex and the Aerie canting out over the
edge of Riverton’s neat little world like a bird ready to take flight. I
wondered what had been on the mind of whoever had done it. I looked down at the
tabletop in front of me again, feeling queasy.

Looking back at Sand didn’t make me feel better. I knew in
my gut that nothing I could say would reach the Tau Board Members, any more
than I could reach across the table and touch them. Per-rymeade was a desperate
man, and Borosage didn’t even qualify as human. The only person in this room
who might actually listen to what I had to say was Sand. I wished like hell
that I could get a glimpse of what was going on inside his head right now;
wished he even had eyes that I could look into. “The== uh, HARM members told me
that they’d only return the boy if the FTA investiga’ tors come to Freaktown to
meet with them. They want the Feds to witness firsthand the things they claim
need changing. They want the FTA to support their demands; they want more
rights ... and more help, from Tau.”

Kensoe snorted. ‘After kidnapping a crippled child, they
want more freedom, and more aid from us?”

“The same tired set of complaints we’ve been receiving from
the Hydran Council ever since Landfall,” another Board Member, one I hadn’t
met, said. He frowned at the view, or at some view.

“The Hydran Council has no real influence, even with their
own people. It can’t even control these terrorisfs—” Kensoe said.

“Maybe that’s why HARM feels it has to make demands,” I
said. “Because when they say
please,
you don’t listen.” Per-rymeade’s
eyes were begging me to stop; I looked away. “They want the Feds to make an
impartial report.”

“The FTA, imparttal?” Sithan muttered. “That’s an oxymoron.”

“I saw the kind of things the Hydrans want to changs—”

“You saw what HARM wanted you to see.”

“Freaktown’s medical center is a joke,” I said. ‘And there
ate addicts hooked on drugs they could only be getting from this side of the
river. If you want to make a profit off of them, why don’t you sell them
medical technology, not street drugs—”

“That is absolutely not true,” Borosage said, opening his
mouth for the first time.

“Maybe you aren’t the best one to give an opinion on that.”
I glanced away at the ring of faces, back at Borosage. “They get hooked on the
drugs you use on them in jail. Where do they get their supply—are you selling
it to them?”

He pushed up out of his seat, like he actually intended to
come after me. Sand stopped him with a look. Perrymeade put a hand on my arm,
the fingers closing over my flesh so hard it hurt. “Cat,” he murmured. “For God’s
gake—”

“Kindly keep your naive political opinions to yourself,”
Ken-soe said. “You’ve caused enough trouble.” His empty gaze looked right
through me. He looked past me at Sand, dead eyes meeting dead eyes, before I
could even close my mouth. “Of course, acquiescing to their demands is out of
the questior,” he said. “Ours is the position of strength. The cost-benefit
ratio of any conciliatory action would be completely unacceptable.”

“Am I to understand, then, that you feel any contact Cat has
achieved with HARM is essentially useless?” Sand asked. “That any attempts to
regain control of the situation through negotiations will fail?”

“It has never been our policy to tolerute Hydran dissidence,”
Kensoe said. He gave Sand a sidelong look, as if he was trying to guess what
really lay behind Sand’s question. Corporate politics was a mind game, a
minefield where judgments so subtle even a psion might miss them could mean
life and death for an entire Board. “We can’t be soft on this sort of thing—you
know where that leads. Administrator Borosage has made it clear enough: Terrorism
must be rooted out, or it spreads.” He checked Sand’s expression again,
surreptitiously.

Sand didn’t say anythiog, just went on listening,
noncommittal, as other vips muttered agreement around the table. Nobody suggested
any alternatives. No one even asked a question.

I swore under my breath. “What about Joby?” I said.

“Who?” someone asked.

“The boy they kidnapped—!” I broke off. There was no use arguing
fairness or justice with these people. Compassion probably didn’t mean anything
to them either.

“You said yourself that you didn’t think they’d harm him,”
Kensoe said. ‘Aren’t those people supposed to be nonviolent?” He looked at
Sand; Sand shrugged. ‘After the FTA’s representatives are gone, they’ll have no
reason to keep him. They’ll let him gQ.”

“What if they don’t?” I said. I looked at Perrymeade. “What
if they don’t ... ?” He sat motionless, ftozen, not meeting my eyes at all now.

“That would be unfortunate,” Kensoe said. He took a sip of
water, as if having to express any emotion, even as a lie, was enough to choke
him. “But the child was defective, wasn’t he? Perhaps his family would even be
relieved without that burden. They’re relatives of yours, aren’t they, Perrymeade?
What do you think about that?”

Perrymeade stirred beside me. “Yes, sir,” he said thickly. “Perhaps
so.”

I turned in my seat to look at him. The urge to shout out
what kind of a bastard and a coward I thought he was filled my throat until I
couldn’t speak. Everything Miya had told me must be true: about why Joby had
been born with genetic damage; about why his parents would never have another
child ... about why Tau’s Board might even prefer it if they never got him
back. Suddenly I wanted to be out of this room more than anything I could think
of, except never to have set foot on this world at all.