Mission of Honor-ARC (84 page)

"I'm very sorry to disturb you, Madam President," he said, rather more formally than he normally addressed her when the others weren't present, "but I thought about it very carefully, first. Technically, there's no reason I
had
to screen you right this moment, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you'd never forgive me if I waited till morning."

"I beg your pardon?" Pritchart's topaz eyes had narrowed intently.

"You may remember that we've all been concerned about a certain intelligence operative who'd dropped out of sight?"

He paused, and the eyes which had just narrowed flared wide.

"Yes," she said rather more slowly, "as a matter of fact, I
do
remember. Why?"

"Because he's just reappeared," LePic said. "And he has a friend with him. And the two of them have a new friend—one I think you're going to want to talk to yourself."

"And is Sheila going to be willing to let me into the same room with this 'new friend' of his?"

"As a matter of fact, I think she's likely to pitch five kinds of fit at the mere prospect," LePic said a bit wryly. "But since I'm quite positive Kevin is going to want to be there, as well—not to mention Tom, Wilhelm, and Linda Trenis—I feel fairly confident about your security."

"I see." Pritchart gazed at him for several seconds, her her mind accelerating to full speed as it brushed off the remnants of sleep. "Tell me," she said, "did our friend find his new friend where we thought he might?"

"Oh, I think you could say that, Madam President. Not only that, but he's a very
impressive
new friend. I've only managed to skim the report our wandering lad finally got around to delivering, but based just on what I've seen so far, I think I can safely you're about to discover that just about everything we thought we knew we don't. Know, I mean."

Pritchart inhaled deeply as LePic's expression finally penetrated fully. What she'd mistaken for humor, possibly even amusement at having awakened her, was something else entirely. A mask. Or perhaps not so much a
mask
as a thin surface veneer of calm, a fragile shield for the shocked echoes of a universe turned upside down still rumbling around somewhere deep inside him.

"Well, in that case," she heard her own voice saying calmly, "I think you'd better go ahead and start waking up a few other people."

* * *

"So, our is wandering boy returns, I see," Eloise Pritchart murmured, an hour later, as Victor Cachat, a troll-like man who looked suspiciously like the officially deceased Anton Zilwicki, and a sandy-haired, hazel-eyed man were escorted into the Octagon briefing room. "Welcome home, Officer Cachat. We'd been wondering why you hadn't written."

Somewhat to her surprise, Cachat actually colored with what looked a lot like embarrassment. It probably wasn't, she told herself—that would be too much to hope for, although she couldn't think of anything else it might have been—and turned her attention to the young man's companions."And this, I take it, is the redoubtable Captain Zilwicki?"

If Cachat might have looked a little embarrassed—or harried, at least—Zilwicki, despite the fact that (as a Manticoran) he was in the very presence of his enemies, didn't. In fact, he didn't really look like a troll, either, she admitted. He actually looked more like a granite boulder, or perhaps an artist's model for a mountain dwarf. The grim,
dangerous
sort of mountain dwarf. If he felt any emotion at this moment, it was probably amusement, she decided. Well, that and something else. An odd fusion of emotions that were almost like grim triumph coupled with singing anxiety, all under the control of iron self-discipline. It was the first time she'd ever actually laid eyes on the Manticoran, and he was even more impressive in person than she'd expected. No wonder he and Cachat made such a formidable combination.

"I'm afraid the galaxy at large thinks you're, well,
dead
, Captain Ziliwicki," she said. "I'm pleased to see the reports were in error. Although I'm sure quite a few people in Manticore are going to be just as curious to know where you've been for the last several months as we are about Officer Cachat's whereabouts."

"I'm sure there are, too, Madam President." Zilwicki's voice was exactly the deep, rolling one she would have expected out of his physique. "Unfortunately, we had a little, um, engine trouble on the way home. It took us several months to make repairs." He grimaced. "We played a lot of cards," he added.

"I imagine so." The president cocked her head. "And I imagine you've also discovered there have been a few developments since whatever happened—and I do trust you're going to tell us what it was that
did
happen—in Green Pines?"

"I'm sure that will be covered, Ma'am," Zilwicki said, and there was more than a trace of grimness in his tone. "It wasn't much like the 'official version' I've heard, but it was bad enough."

Pritchart gazed at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. So, he and Cachat had been involved, at least peripherally. Of course, when it turned out he was still alive, it was going to be a nasty blow to
Mesa's
version of events. She found that notion appealing.

"But I don't believe I know who
this
gentleman is," she continued, looking at the third member of the ill-assorted trio her security detail was watching like a bevy of particularly ill-tempered hawks.

The stranger's expression was the most interesting of the three, actually, she thought. He was obviously nervous as a cat at a dog show, and not just because of the way Shiela Thiessen and her cohorts were watching him. Yet there was something else, as well . . . something that seemed to mingle determination as grim and purposful as Anton Zilwicki's with something very like . . . guilt?

"No, Madam President, you don't—yet." If Cachat had, in fact, felt anything approaching embarrassment, there was no sign of it in his reply. "This is Dr.Herlander Simões. Of the planet Mesa."

Pritchart felt her eyes narrowing again. She, Theisman, LePic, Linda Trenis, and Victor Lewis sat side by side across a conference table from the three chairs waiting for Cachat, Zilwicki, and Simões. Of them all, only LePic had had the opportunity to even skim Cachat's preliminary report, however, and the fact that the attorney general hadn't even wasted any time personally debriefing Cachat and his companions before bringing them straight to her said a great deal about how
he'd
reacted to whatever it was they'd discovered.

Or
thought
they'd discovered, at least, she reminded herself.

"I see." She gazed speculatively at the Mesan, then cocked her head. "May I assume Dr. Simões is the reason you've been . . . out of touch, let's say, for the last, oh, six or seven T-months?" she asked after a moment.

"He's
one
of the reasons, Ma'am," Cachat replied.

"Then, by all means, be seated," she invited, waving a hand at the empty chairs, "and let's hear what you—and Dr. Simões, of course—have to tell us."

* * *

"My God," a visibly shaken Eloise Pritchart said several hours later. "My dear sweet God, Tom. Do you think this could possibly be
true
?"

Thomas Theisman hadn't seen the president's face that pale since Genevieve Chin and her battered survivors crawled home from the Battle of Manticore. In fact, he hadn't seen her this close to being literally stunned since he'd personally brought her the news of Javier Giscard's death. Not that he blamed her, since he was fairly certain his own expression was pretty much an exact mirror of hers.

"I . . . don't know," he admitted slowly, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head. "I don't know. But—"

He paused and closed his eyes for a moment, his mind running back over Dr. Simões' incredible rolling barrage of revelations. And the even more incredible—and maddeningly incomplete—hints of still more of them which a Mesan named Jack McBryde had doled out to prove the value of allowing him to defect to the Republic. At the time, he'd been able to do little more than sit there and listen, just trying to absorb the devastating series of blows to his understanding of how the galaxy was organized. Of course it couldn't possibly be true! And yet . . . .

"As a matter of fact," he said, opening his eyes and bringing his chair back fully upright again, "I think it could be. True, I mean."

"It's got to be some kind of organized disinformation operation, Madam President," Linda Trenis argued. Yet even as she spoke, her tone said that, like Theisman, she thought it might just possibly be true. That it was her job to be skeptical, and so she would, even though, deep down inside, where instinct took over from trained intellect . . . .

"I think Admiral Theisman may be right, Linda," Victor Lewis disagreed. "In fact, I think I actually believe it."

The CO of Operational Research sounded as if he were surprised to hear himself saying it, but his expression was probably closer to normal than that of anyone else in the president's office. Where the others' faces still looked rather like Pritchart had always assumed a poleaxed steer must look, his was intensely thoughtful.

"But—" Pritchart began.

"Think about it, Eloise," Theisman interrupted. She looked at him, and he shrugged. "Think about what Simões said—and what Cachat and Zilwicki both agree this McBryde had to say, as well. Crazy as it all sounds, it all hangs together, too."

Pritchart started to protest again, then made herself stop. Insane as it all seemed, Theisman was right. It
did
hang together. Of course, if Trenis was right about its being some sort of disinformation effort, it
would
hang together. On the other hand, she thought, there probably wouldn't be quite so many gaps in their information, either. If someone had wanted to sell the Republic a bill of goods, they would have come up with plausible excuses and lies to plug more of those holes.

And they would have known Zilwicki was alive, since they needed him to get the disinformation home. So they'd hardly have announced he was dead! Except, of course, that according to McBryde's story, the system government in Mesa doesn't even realize how riddled it is with agents of this 'Alignment,' so the government might've put the Green Pines story together without any orders from its . . . puppet masters.

Oh, lord! Did I really just think all that?
She shook her head.
My brain hurts already, and it's not even dawn yet.

"I agree with Admiral Theisman," Lewis said quietly but firmly. "And, no offense, Linda, but if it's a case of disinformation, I don't see what the hell—pardon me, Madam President—it's supposed to be disinforming us
about
! Try as I might, I can't think of any conceivable reason for anyone on Mesa to try to convince the Republic of Haven we're on some centuries-long interstellar hit list right along with the Manties. Can anyone else in this office come up with a reason any Mesan would be doing anything that could so radically shake up our relations with the Star Empire? Something which might convince us we actually have an enemy in
common
and point both of us directly at
them?
"

"Admiral Lewis has a point there, Madam President," Denis LePic agreed, his own eyes narrowing in thought. "And there's another point, too. Cachat and Zilwicki independently confirmed the explosion that took out this 'Gamma Center' of Simões'. While I'm willing to concede that a good disinformation operation requires enough capital investment to make it convincing, somehow I find it a bit difficult to believe that even someone like Manpower would set off a high-kiloton-range nuke right on top of one of their own top management's bedroom communities just to sell us on it."

"And assuming McBryde knew what he was talking about, it makes at least a little sense out of the fact that Manpower—or this 'Mesan Alignment,' at least—has been acting so much like a belligerent star nation," Theisman pointed out. "It
is
a belligerent star nation; it's just that no one else realized it."

"Oh, how I
wish
they'd been able to get McBryde out, too," Pritchard said with soft, terrible passion, then waved both hands contritely when Theisman gave her a speaking glance.

"I know—I know!" she said. "
If
this is true, we're incredibly lucky to have even a clue of it, much less Simões. I'm sure he's going to turn out to be incredibly valuable—if this is true—in the long run, but he's a tech geek." Theisman's lips twitched at the president's choice of noun, and she shook a finger at him. "Don't you dare smile at that, Tom Theisman! Instead, think of him as Shannon Foraker." Theisman's nascent smile disappeared, and she nodded. "Right. That's
exactly
the kinds of holes we're going to have in any political or strategic military information he can give us, no matter how good the debrief is."

"And assuming there's any way to verify that what he's telling us is the truth," Trenis observed. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. "All our critical naval personnel are supplied with anti-interrogation protection. It's effective against every drug therapy we know about, but we've always recognized there are likely to be therapies we
don't
know about. I think we have to assume the Mesans are at least as aware of that as we are—I mean, let's remember where all their traditional expertise is focused. And given anyone as ruthless as McBryde and Simões have described, and anyone whose security's been good enough to keep all of this black literally for centuries, I have to think they've probably included some kind of suicide protocol to keep anyone from pumping someone as critical as Simões sounds like being."

"Or, for that matter, if McBryde was telling the truth about this new nanotech of theirs, God only knows what he might be programmed to do under, um, rigorous interrogation," LePic said.

"Well, so far, at least, they don't appear to have installed anything to keep him from
voluntarily
spilling the beans when he's not under duress," Lewis pointed out. "If we sit him down with our own hyper physicists and let them start going over what he can tell them about this 'streak drive' of theirs, we should at least be able to tell whether or not the math holds together. Which would tend to verify—or disprove—one large chunk of what he's already told us."