Palace (46 page)

‘Of course, Your Eminence,’ the burly monk said. ‘Se Vida, your bodyguard can wait out here with me.’

‘No.’ Jak crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I would prefer to accompany Se Vida.’

Imposing in his new green uniform, Jak glared down at Dav, who despite his muscles stood a head shorter than the Garang. Vida glanced at the cardinal, standing in the doorway to his inner room.

‘Jak is really trustworthy, Your Eminence,’ she said. ‘He won’t repeat anything he hears.’

‘Very well, then,’ Roha said. ‘Both of you come in.’

‘Thank you, we will.’

With a scowling Dav holding the door for her, Vida walked into Roha’s private office. She glanced around at the small, white room, bare except for a desk, a vidscreen, and against the far wall a hologram of the night sky. Roha sat in a hard-looking chair, though a black formfit stood nearby. Jak shut the door, then took up his usual position with his back to it.

‘Do sit down, Vida,’ Roha said. ‘I’m so glad our factors could finally arrange this little meeting.’

‘So am I, Your Eminence.’ Vida sat, smoothing her modest green dress under her. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.’

‘Oh, I understand. Getting established here in Government House is quite a job. Have you been enjoying the experience?’

‘Enjoying it? I don’t know if I’d call it that. It’s been exciting, maybe, but not exactly fun.’

‘I see you’ve inherited your father’s bluntness.’ Roha seemed genuinely pleased. ‘He had the same direct way of putting things.’

‘Well, the woman who raised me never wasted any words, either, when she had something to say.’

‘No doubt, but genes will tell, Vida; our genes will always tell. At any rate, I asked you to come here to discuss several important points. The first is the matter of your suit to regain control of the L’Var properties from the Makeesa. I see that Samante has engaged a very good lawyer, and the first reports I’ve heard are quite encouraging.’

‘They are, yes. Since the courts have been holding the property in trust, anyway, it mostly seems to be a question of transferring the executorship to someone new. I can’t control it myself until I’m thirty-five, of course.’

‘Of course. Which brings us to the matter of your seat on the Council. You’ll be a Not-child very soon, and the First Citizen and I are planning our campaign to invoke the emergency law. We don’t want you waiting all those years to claim your vote.’

‘Thank you, Your Eminence. May I ask you something? I can’t help thinking that the lawsuits would go a lot faster if I had that Council seat. And they’d be more likely to go in my favour, too.’

‘Ah, you’re learning about Government House, I see.’ Roha smiled briefly. ‘Yes, indeed. No doubt they would.’

‘I’m glad you think I’m learning, Your Eminence. I’ve been trying.’

‘Good, good. You know, Vida, one very important thing to learn is how to make the right sort of friends. There should always be room in our lives for a real friendship, such as I had with your father. Real friends demand nothing from us but a decent delight in their presence, and yet we feel like offering them a great deal.’

‘Well, yeah, I can see that.’

‘Good. But then we can also, if we’re not careful, make the wrong sort of friend, someone who will lead us astray on the pretence of friendship. Such people are traps and snares.’

Vida hesitated, caught by a sudden flash of anger. If he meant Rico, he could save this sermon for the cathedral! Roha leaned back in his chair and arched his hands with the fingertips together.

‘Your father was a very open-minded man,’ Roha said absently. ‘Have you listened to any of his Council speeches? Everything that happens in Council is recorded and stored.’

‘Yes, I have, Your Eminence.’

‘Perhaps you have seen him speaking just before the Lep War? There was a period when it seemed that conflict might be averted, and he spoke several times in favour of seeking negotiation from Souk’

‘I did see those, yeah. I thought he was splendid.’

‘Oh yes. He was also wrong.’ Roha peered at her over the arch of his fingers. ‘I do not for a moment think that Orin was a traitor. I’m certain that he was unfairly accused and unjustly convicted. I said so then and I’d say so now if anyone should ask me. But his kind words about the Ty Onar Lep came back to haunt him during the trial. Enemy sympathizer. That’s what his enemies - that’s what Vanna Makeesa - called him.’

‘Well, they were lying.’

‘Oh yes, but the jury believed them. Why? Because he was known to consort with Leps. One must be very careful about the company one keeps here in Government House.’

Vida stared, puzzled, more than a little uneasy. Roha leaned forward, his long bony face all earnestness.

‘Ri Tal Molos is not fit company for you, Vida,’ the cardinal said. ‘I’m distressed to hear reports that you receive him socially.’

‘But Molos is a friend of my guardian’s, Your Eminence. He’s been nothing but kind to me.’

‘No doubt. You have a great deal to offer such as him, while he, of course, has nothing to offer in return.’

Vida felt as if her mouth had gone numb, leaving her speechless. After a moment the cardinal sighed and leaned back in his chair.

‘A word to the wise, my dear,’ Roha said. ‘That’s all. Just a word to the wise.’

‘Well, thank you, Your Eminence, but -’ Roha held up a thin hand for silence.

‘Let us not discuss it further at the moment,’ he said. ‘I wish us to be friends, and a friendship should never start with a quarrel.’

‘All right, of course.’

Roha smiled, nodding, glancing away. Vida felt like an utter coward for not defending Molos, but Roha was, after all, the cardinal of Palace and she, only a child and a newcomer. While she groped for something to say, the silence grew poisoned.

‘Um, well,’ Vida said at last. ‘Samante’s negotiating the wedding date with Wan’s factor. Had you heard that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Roha looked back her way and smiled. ‘Will it be soon?’

‘Real soon, Your Eminence. Karlo wanted it to be on the tenth, but I’m trying to get it put off till some time in Timber. We’ll probably end up compromising on Twenty Gust.’

He laughed, a good facsimile of a kindly chuckle.

‘Putting it
off?
You look very nervous, my dear. Tell me, are you regretting your decision to marry Wan?’

‘What? No, of course not.’

The cardinal raised one eyebrow.

‘Well, it’s not like I can get out of it now, anyway.’

‘Perhaps not, no. I doubt very much if we can seat you early on the Council if for some reason we should lose the support of the First Citizen. And if we can’t, well, I can’t speak for the courts, but your properties might be in danger.’ Roha’s smile gleamed like a knife. ‘You do need to remember that, my dear.’

‘I will.’ Vida laid a hand at her throat. ‘I kind of thought that might be the case.’

* * *

Although Rico was expecting that he and his uncle would go out for dinner, Hi had a meal sent in. Once the various dishes were laid onto the table in the eating area of their suite, Hi tipped the saccule servants and sent them off. Jevon was dining elsewhere, but Nju helped himself from various plastofoam containers, then started to carry his plate out to the gather.

‘Oh, Nju?’ Hi said. ‘Don’t let anyone in without warning me first. No-one. I don’t care if the place is on fire.’

‘Very well, Se Hivel. I shall ensure it.’

After Nju left, Hi laid the blackbox card down on the table, then sat and watched Rico eat.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Rico said at last. ‘This pseudomeat is really good.’

‘No thanks. I had a late lunch.’ Hi got up and walked across the room, then walked back.

‘How did Caliostro check out?’

‘Weirdest thing.’ Rico swallowed hastily. ‘That schematic I found? There has to be a more recent one.’

‘Yeah? Why?’

‘Well, it charted one area as damaged that wasn’t. It’s been repaired, I mean.’

‘Oh. Go on eating, kid.’ Hi flopped into his chair. ‘If that schematic isn’t current, your report can wait. Sorry about the wasted errand, though.’

‘It was worth the trip, just getting to see Caliostro. Now that’s a
box.’

‘Yeah, it sure is. Wait a minute. Did you find any report of that repair?’

‘None, no.’ Again Rico had to gulp down a moudtful. ‘That’s what’s weird. It was an internal repair, using a daemon to re-install some damaged code. It wasn’t a lot of work and all it did was bring a side-route cage back online, but the tech still should have filed a report.’

‘Damn right. Caliostro is what keeps the towers running and the rest of Government House, too. Anyone who touches his systems had better log in.’ Hi picked up a roll and took an absent-minded bite while he thought something over. ‘If the photonics diagrams date from only fifty years ago, I should know the person who made them. What’s the name on the report?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘What?’

‘Well, maybe I just didn’t notice.’

While Rico hurriedly shovelled in the rest of his meal, Hi scrolled through the entire schedplate. By the end of it he was swearing under his breath. Rico washed down the last bite with a gulp of water.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re right, that’s what,’ Hi said. ‘There’s no name, no code ID number, no guild ranking, no nothing. I never noticed it when I transferred the data to this plate. What about that schematic you found? Any name on that?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘Let’s check it out.’

As soon as Rico brought the schematic up on his Mapscreen, they could see the utterly blank header where all the tech’s personal data belonged.

‘I found these reports right where they should have been,’ Rico said. ‘Right in the repair log directories. There’s some old utilities in there, too: diagnostics, a compare and clean daemon, that kind of thing, and then a bunch of old logs.’

‘We must be looking at backup copies,’ Hi’s voice sounded uncertain. ‘But why they survived and not the final registers is beyond me.’

‘But I thought you said that there hasn’t even been any vandalism on the Caliostro system. That all the damage is old stuff.’

‘Damn! You’re right. Unless wiping off the originals of these documents is the first bit of vandalism we’ve caught.’

‘Why would someone do that and not wipe off the backups, too?’

‘Beats me.’

For a moment they stared at each other, then turned back to the screen.

‘I’ve got an idea, a real strange idea,’ Hi said after a moment. ‘It’s based on something Arno told me, right before - well. Anyway, it’s possible that we’ve got an ally on the Map, someone who tipped Arno off to danger, and maybe for all I know someone who’s doing a little repair work in secret.’

‘But why wouldn’t they tell you who they are?’

‘That’s a good question, kid, a very good question. I don’t have a clue. But tomorrow, first thing, we’re going to jack in, both of us, and we’re going to work in tandem to match this schematic to Caliostro’s Map. If nothing else, we’ll both know him real well by the time we’re done.’

‘All right, Se. It sounds like a good place to start.’

‘Yeah. I’ll tell Jevon to cancel any appointments.’ Hi glanced round. ‘Oh, right. She asked for the evening off. Well, remind me to ask her in the morning.’

* * *

In some ways working in Government House made attending meetings easier, Jevon supposed. She certainly had a shorter distance to travel now that she lived within the blueglass walls of the precinct. On the other hand, because she was becoming well-known there as guildmaster Jons’s factor, she also risked running across someone who recognized her. Since this particular night hung cold with fog, she wore a heavy sweater with a cowl that she pulled up around her face, a perfectly reasonable garment for the weather, and walked briskly. The few other sapients she saw out and about also seemed in a hurry to get inside and warm. Still, every noise behind her sounded like a stalking footstep, a Protector or security guard who might suddenly demand her reasons for being out at night alone. She kept turning round, but no-one ever followed. By the time she reached the Cathedral of the Eye, she was shivering from fear more than the fog. She’d also walked so fast that she was in danger of reaching the meeting far too early.

As always the doors stood open to all who would enter, promising warmth and a place to sit down. Jevon ducked inside and felt her breath returning, her fear ebb. All around the rim of the Gaze stood tiny side-chapels, set aside for meditation and prayer, each dominated by a floor-to-ceiling holo of a particular work from God’s hand - a nebula, glowing in subde calories, or a giant planet, striped and speckled, surrounded with rings, or some other such glory of Creation.

Jevon wandered into the Chapel of the Home Planet and sat down on the little wooden bench to gaze at the image hanging in a floor to ceiling niche across the tiny room. Against a stylized backdrop of stars hung a blue world, slowly turning to display green and brown landmasses, roughly triangular, and white icecaps at either pole. Somewhere back toward Galactic Centre, farther away even than the Rim, this planet circled a small yellow star. Its children out on the richer worlds of the Rim kept it as a shrine and a wilderness preserve - or at least, they’d been doing so two thousand years ago, and they still did as far as any one knew. Once every Standard year, each priest of the Eye out here in the Pinch preached a sermon about the Home Planet, a remembrance of the humble origins of something so grand as the human race.

Which, Jevon reminded herself, she’d sworn to serve. She got up and glanced out the chapel door. Although no-one was out in the Gaze, still she lingered, wondering as she always wondered if she were doing the right thing. When she’d first been recruited to join UJU, it had been exciting, a secret that she could treasure during the dull routine of organizing Se Hivel’s life. Just because she could organize events and lives so well, she’d moved up in the hierarchy almost without realizing how. At times like this, gazing at the serenity of the Cathedral, she wondered if the God wbo had created humanity would really approve of UJU. If she stayed here wondering much longer, she’d be late. She shook the feeling off and hurried out. They held meetings in a small upstairs room of a library belonging to the Power Guild - the sort of place that no-one would ever suspect of harbouring something interesting. Jevon walked through the big reading room past ranks of Map terminals where sleepy apprentices stared at screens full of engineering diagrams. A lift booth took her up to the top floor and the plain grey room, dominated by a vidscreen-sized Mapscreen. Of the three members of the Second Step, Wilso or UJU-Quinze had already arrived and sat on one of the chairs arranged in front of the screen. He wore an ordinary pair of grey slacks and a blue shirt; beside him lay a shabby jacket.