Juggler of Worlds (17 page)

And finally, to Nessus’ surprise, new orders had arrived. The task of monitoring Pelton and Shaeffer, together with responsibility for Nessus’ agents in Sol system, had all been reassigned to Achilles. As for Nessus…
he
was recalled home—

To lead the training of a cadre of human scouts.

SIGMUND BROODED in his darkened living room, eyes shut, immersed in the Mozart Requiem mass. Half a world (and a transfer booth) away waited all the desperate would-be parents of Alaska.

They would be there still for his next shift, and the next, and the next.…

“We’re not flat phobes. We can leave Earth. Leave Sol system,” Feather shouted over the music. And start a family, she didn’t bother to articulate. There was no need.

“Not together.” Sigmund sighed. “It wouldn’t be allowed. We know too much.” He opened his eyes. “Medusa, music off. Raise lighting to fifty percent.

“Feather, you know how things work. Suppose we somehow managed to get away and meet up on another world. For the rest of our lives we’d be looking over our shoulders for someone just like us to appear.” And when, not if, the ARM found us? Then who would raise our children?

“Tanj it, Sigmund,” she snarled. “I can’t spend my life on mother hunts. I won’t. I only wish I had the guts to risk pregnancy myself.”

What could he say? That their latest request for reassignment back to Alien Affairs had been rejected. She knew that. That joining the ARM was a one-way trip? Given how he’d become an ARM, saying so would be an accusation. Anyway, she knew that, too. “Let’s go out onto the balcony.”

The fronds of his potted palms rustled in the evening breeze. He and Feather stood side by side, hands on the railing, watching the city lights far below.

Everything looked normal; perhaps that was the point. The Puppeteers were long gone—apparently even Nessus. The economy, though not recovered, was finally improving. Shaeffer was somewhere far away.

Pelton, for all his secretive machination, had harmed no one. Possibly he had found his schemes too fraught with complications. Possibly Max Addeo was right all along and Pelton
had
no nefarious plans. Either explanation accounted for the absence of trouble from Pelton.

How pleasant it would be to believe such fairy tales.

“Oh, well,” Feather finally said. “Eventually there’s bound to be a riot, or a suicidal renegade Kzin, or some other diversion from mother hunts.”

Sigmund patted her hand. “Ever the optimist.”

“You’ll think of something. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Hardly,” he said. “That’s got to be Carlos Wu.”

Wu! Lately, Sigmund couldn’t get Carlos out of his thoughts. The explosion at the galactic core had been the first of so many dominoes to topple. Every physicist with whom Sigmund had consulted swore to the integrity of the instrument readings Shaeffer brought back on the
Long Shot
. And every physicist also considered Carlos to be the very brightest of their fraternity.

In his mind’s eye, Sigmund teetered at the edge of an abyss.

“Feather,” he whispered. “What if Carlos Wu fabricated the core-explosion data?”

Sigmund sipped his coffee, half-awake. A news digest shimmered over the breakfast table. Color-coded by topic, brightened or dimmed according to Medusa’s sense of immediacy, inset windows scrolling… it would be a challenge to absorb even after the caffeine kicked in. His glance flitted about the projection, steered by Medusa’s cues. Little of the information registered. Feather sat across the table, feigning interest in soccer-match highlights, no more prepared than he to speak.

“Stupid Cavaliers,” she finally managed, minutes later. Her complaint was directed at the holo, or the coach, or the universe. Not him. She turned up the audio when he looked her way.

Another big mother hunt was imminent—not just regional harassment, for appearances, but a big global push. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t excuse her. He couldn’t protect her if anyone else detected her interference.

He couldn’t bear her misery.

A green face, crowned with hissing, coiling snakes, popped up over a corner of his news digest. “Turquoise alert,” Medusa said softly.

Sigmund pulled his chair closer, instantly alert. “Display.” A new window opened, within it an oblique view of a transfer booth. He watched four men emerge and take up positions around the booth. Moments later, Calista Melenkamp appeared. The bodyguards, faces expressionless, swept the Secretary-General up the broad granite stairs into her New York club.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to take care of something.”

Feather looked away from the game. “What?”

He stood. “We’ll talk later.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not doing something stupid, are you?”

The jury was still out on that. “Me?” Dialing his destination, he had a moment to appreciate that Feather still cared.

Manhattan was overcast and blustery. As Sigmund climbed the stairs of Melenkamp’s private club, the doorman made no move to open the door.

Sigmund halted two stairs from the top. “I have an urgent message for
the Secretary-General,” he said. It didn’t surprise him to find he was unwelcome. Whatever unseen security system had ID’d him was as modern as everything within was antique. That, or the doorman had a very good memory for faces. Either way, Sigmund was impressed.

“I am sorry, sir. Only members and escorted guests are permitted inside.”

“I understand.” Sigmund took an envelope from his coat pocket. The day’s gloom made the melodramatic bloodred drop of sealing wax all the starker. He had carried the missive for weeks awaiting just this opportunity. Melenkamp (at Gregory Pelton’s urging?) had seen to it that Sigmund could only communicate with her through channels. The information in his hand must go only, and directly, to the S-G. “It’s a matter of global importance.
Solar
importance.”

The doorman palmed the sheaf of thousand-sol bills beneath the envelope. “I’ll see what I can do, sir. Please wait here.” He left Sigmund on the narrow porch.

Ten minutes later, two of Melenkamp’s bodyguards appeared to escort him inside.

“LEAVE US,” Melenkamp told her guards. They hesitated just long enough to convey disapproval before backing from the room, closing the massive oaken door behind them. She gestured at a fragile-looking chair. “Sit.”

Sigmund sat. The pages of his letter rested, side by side, on the otherwise bare table before her. “I hoped you would be curious.”

“How could I not?” She bit off each word. “How long have you been following me, Agent Ausfaller?”

Sigmund had surrounded this establishment with almost invisibly small ARM sensors. No good could come of admitting that. “I’ve followed money, not people.”

“Evasion noted.” She poured a cup of coffee from the carafe on the sideboard, then sat at the table by his letter. “Talk about the money you followed.”

So he did: Of the almost unimaginable fortune General Products must have earned in Sol system, much of it still untraced. Of the wealth that remained behind after the Puppeteer Exodus five years earlier. Of funds from what ought, logically, to be dormant accounts, still seeping away. Of circuitously routed transfers, passing through conduits as anonymous and untraceable as modern financial engineers could construct. Of—

She exhaled sharply. “Puppeteers were secretive when they were here en masse. So now, with their presence reduced to one lonely Puppeteer in hiding, of
course
they’re indirect. I remember the name Nessus, and that he remained behind to settle outstanding obligations. I did read the reports from your task force, Mr. Ausfaller—when you
had
a task force.”

He was losing her. He couldn’t allow that! He should have begun at the end of the tortuous money trail, not the beginning. At an off-world bank haven in the Belt. “And if a hidden Puppeteer is putting money into a numbered account controlled by one of your deputies?”

“Damn it, Ausfaller, of course I care! That’s why you’re here, however briefly. That’s why you aren’t in custody for a years-long rogue investigation. Not yet. I
will
confirm the substance of your accusation—if that’s possible. For now, I’ll assume you are neither so foolish nor so mad as to stalk me in order to lie to me.”

Or Melenkamp meant to find out how much he knew about her, before having him arrested. No, Sigmund lectured himself. You couldn’t trace any GP money to her. You have to trust her now. “You
should
check everything out—discreetly. A deposit happens by the tenth of every month. Your man checks his balance between the eleventh and the thirteenth.”

Her cheek twitched. “Belter banks will confirm this? In my experience, neither they nor the goldskins are so cooperative.”

Belter cops wore yellow vacuum suits; the familiar mention was no accident. Melenkamp’s UN career began in the attorney’s office. She had prosecuted her share of interworld money-laundering cases. She had surely had her share of run-ins with the goldskins about jurisdiction and sharing evidence.

Admitting to further infractions risked nothing. Either he convinced her he acted for a higher cause or he went, soon enough, into the organ banks. “Some will cooperate,” Sigmund said. “It depends who is beholden to whom.”

And that, in a nutshell, was why it had taken so long to get here. Five years of offering more information to Belter authorities than was revealed to him. Five years of running interference for naïve Belter tourists, of making behind-the-scenes interventions. “Enough goldskins owe me favors now.”

One folded sheet of paper remained in Sigmund’s coat; he removed it now. “This is a list of financial analysts in the Office of the Secretariat who probably aren’t getting trickle-down payoffs. I suggest you send at least two to the Prague branch of Bank of Ceres.”

“Two? Ah, to watch each other.” Sighing, she accepted the folded paper from his hand. “You live in a devious world, Ausfaller.”

He sensed the stirrings of belief in her response. “Respectfully, the matter we should be addressing is: What next?”

She stared. “Arrest, certainly. Confiscation of every cent of every bribe. Into the organ banks with him, as quickly as it can be arranged.”

“No.” In Sigmund’s mind, the dissent continued: As happy as that would make me. “I’ve traced some of the money. Some of the downstream recipients. There’s so much we
don’t
know. I’m skeptical even Max Addeo can tell us everything—knowingly.”

Slowly, she smiled. “So for now you’ll watch Max.”

Sigmund nodded. “As you will. Puppeteers bought access to the innermost circles of the UN for some still-hidden reason. I doubt they would reveal their purposes to Addeo.

“With your influence over what Max sees, reads, and hears in the office hallways, I hope to scare whoever controls General Products’ wealth into showing himself.”

FEATHER GRUNTED at Sigmund’s approach, more an acknowledgment than a greeting. Her attention remained on her workstation.

“Feather,” he said.

She heard something in his voice, and finally looked up. “Big crunch, Sigmund, especially since I was covering for
your
unexplained absence.”

“Sorry.” He touched her arm lightly. “Five minutes. Come with me.”

The skies had opened in Fairbanks, and cold rain fell in torrents. Sigmund dialed Sky Meadows State Park in Virginia. The mid-Atlantic region was sunny and fair, and the venue seemed apt. He led her off a meandering trail into the shade of a solitary and stately pine. Rolling meadow and wooded hills stretched to the horizon.

“Five minutes, huh?” Feather finally said. She ignored him for the spectacular view. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already?”

Sigmund bent to retrieve an old fallen pinecone. Evergreens. Verdant fields. The seed in his hands. It all symbolized newfound hope. “Feather, I’m going back to New York. UN Headquarters. I want you there with me.”

Her head swiveled round. “Headquarters! Why?”

“Officially, a new special-investigations unit, reporting directly to the S-G. Unofficially…”

“Unofficially, what?” she snapped. “Not coordinating futzing mother hunts. I refuse to take
more
responsibility for those.”