“Put the caller through, audio only.”
“Anna?” In that one word I placed the voice, the whining nasal tones of Dr Michael Collins, the number one of Training Section. “What’s wrong with your visual?”
“One of the wires is cold—teething troubles with the new ship.” I lied. “It isn’t like you to call me up. What’s the occasion?”
“Grave news, I’m afraid. One of our relations has taken ill.”
Zenni hissed inside my skull, knowing, as I did, what the coded message really meant. Someone was in deep trouble.
“How unfortunate,” I said woodenly. “Who?”
“Our great-aunt Lucy.”
That could only mean one person, the woman I worked for, Chandroutie Marteen. “Oh dear. Is she very unwell?”
“Unfortunately it’s serious. Can you come home at once?”
“Of course. I’ll be there as soon as humanly possible.”
“Thank you, Anna.” Collins cut the link.
“Very mysterious!” Jeb squeezed my shoulders and kneaded both sides of my neck with his thumbs. “Proper spy-stuff—harmless code-phrases used over a public line. What was it all about?”
“We’re recalled to base on a matter of utmost urgency.” Zenni explained.
“Wrong, partner. I’m recalled and you’re staying here to let Jeb make a start on straightening out the kinks in your programs.”
The Zenith let out a breathy sigh. “Ooh, isn’t she masterful!”
“You said it, brainbox.” Jeb hugged me close. “Sometimes I think she’s too much woman for even the both of us to keep under control!”
I wriggled around in his arms like an eel, turning to face him. Wiping the grease from his cheek with a fingertip, I kissed the skin beneath. “Don’t disable my computer, you hear? I might need Zenni and Brimstone in a hurry if Michael’s got a mission lined up for us.”
“If you have to leave Earth, I could come with you.” Mischief glittered in his grey eyes. “I could reprogram at leisure then, among other things.”
“You know what the answer is, tech-wiz. This is business, and when EI’s wrapped up in it, it’s dangerous, secret and usually dirty. I don’t want to get you involved.”
“Now you know why I worry when you play with this shit.”
“I don’t need protecting—you know that too. Sort out the glitch in Zenni and that’ll be all the help I need.” I kissed him again, skilfully avoiding all attempts to sidetrack me further. “Must go now. Back soon.”
***
I could have teleported directly to Collins’s location, but the man had upset me and I wanted to keep him waiting, so I skipped instead to my apartment at Lindsay. I traded my cosy casual wear for something more formal, and wasted some more time winding my hair up into a pleat and adding a shimmer of colour to my face, before arriving quietly at the gates of the Delany Computer Corporation.
Seventy years ago, in the slump at the tail-end of the last century, my grandfather had bought this site to build his tiny factory. Back then Lindsay was only a small township, its spirit broken by the loss of two major industries and its once-immaculate streets tainted by the rot of increasing poverty. Terra’s economy was in a downswing, eaten away by the cheap imports and sweatshop labour of the nearer colonies, and it was a far from ideal time to set up in business, especially in the overcrowded field of computer hardware, but Sean Delany, like most of his ancestors and both of his descendants, was too stubborn to heed all the bad omens. Delany and Dane Thinking Machines Inc started life in a pair of corrugated-iron shacks on an ex-rubbish tip and, contrary to the predictions of all its critics, it prospered and grew. Now Delany Corp was one of the giants, having outlived and outclassed most of its rivals. The site at Lindsay was the heart of our empire on Earth, a manicured expanse of rolling parkland broken only by clusters of elegant and quietly affluent buildings. From an eyesore at the edge of town, Delany had grown into a showpiece and the rest of Lindsay had thrived, basking in the Corporation’s wealth.
I walked in at the main gate, waving cheerfully to the security post. The men on duty waved back, not at all surprised at my unannounced arrival on foot, no doubt assuming that I’d strolled down from the family mansion on the hill. I made my way across the park, receiving greetings from everyone I met. As the emperor’s daughter I had merited only grudging respect, but now that I was in nominal control all of the staff felt obliged to defer to me. Some of the ‘good mornings’ and ‘nice days’ were sincere and I preferred those over the more elaborate attempts at fawning. I reached Building Ten, the covert headquarters of EI’s Training Section, and once again the guards allowed me to pass without question. I did, however, make the small concession of calling at the reception desk.
“Is Dr Collins in his office?”
“Yes, Miss Delany.” The woman stretched a fake smile over her thin face. “Floor ten, room 394. I believe he’s expecting you.”
I hadn’t needed a reminder of where to go, as I knew it well enough. Michael had taken over the office of his predecessor, the late Professor Erik Jansen, although in my eyes the present incumbent was scant improvement on the last. One of Collins’s pretty female aides hustled me through into the holy presence as soon as I arrived. The room had been revamped to suit the taste of its latest occupant, its walls repainted in shades of honey and beige, and its floor buried under a carpet with ankle-deep pile the colour of baked earth. The resulting sterility had been leavened by the addition of minimalist decoration in the shape of three large pictures, bright and strident, pale canvases spotted with black, gold and lurid red, the latter looking unnervingly like blood.
The man has questionable taste, Zenni said. That artwork is meaningless—just random splashes of colour.
You don’t like abstract art?
I prefer images that look like something, portraits or landscapes, little vignettes of reality that tell a story or express an emotion.
“Anna!” Michael stood to greet me, smiling expansively. He waved me into a chair at the solid black desk, which was naked except for a monitor screen and a single ornament, a rough casting in brass of a lion. Seeing my gaze settle on the thing, his smile twisted wider. “Ah, yes, my one indulgence. Do you like it? It’s reputed to be a Pre-Dark artifact, if the word of the fellow I bought it from can be trusted.”
I picked the statue up, feeling the weight of it and studying its mosaic of tarnish. It was no masterpiece—some of the proportions of the great cat were suspect, with neck too short and hind legs too thin—but as I held it I had a distant, fleeting impression of tired, crooked hands polishing it by touch alone and of blind eyes smiling at the memory of a treasured gift. I shivered and set the lion down. “You weren’t cheated. It is very old.”
Collins merely nodded, leaning back in his sumptuous armchair. He had a glow of contentment, like a cat that’s just displaced someone from its favourite seat, and my suspicions over who had planted the creche-device in Zenni’s innards were instantly confirmed. “Will you have some coffee?”
“The last time I drank coffee with you it was laced with a truth drug,” I said sourly. “I don’t care to repeat the experience.”
“My dear, you’re being needlessly cruel!” He complained. “That was over three years ago and the situation was a little different. Then you were a potential enemy—now you’re a valuable member of our staff. After all, you and 4013 are our prime-pair, and you prove our confidence in you time and time again with every mission we put your way. EI are fortunate indeed to have both of you.”
Whatever it is he wants from us, he wants it bad. Zenni observed.
I sent my agreement back through the link. Flattery from Michael was way out of character, an about-turn in his absolute dislike of us in spite of our solid-gold record. He could never forget that my partnership with Zenni had been born in secrecy, followed by my theft of the Zenith from this very complex, a crime answered by EI’s vicious pursuit. The memory of that was carved deep into my psyche, in company
with the emotional scars left there by Jansen’s three attempts on my life. I was grateful that we didn’t have to work for Collins, as that would have been impossible to bear. Zenni and I were under the command of EI’s Operations Section, ruled by Chandre’s velvet touch. “Compliments, Mikey-dear? Are you running a fever or do you need us to do something for you?”
Michael’s face hardened, annoyance that I had snubbed his effort to be pleasant lacing his emotional aura with grey. I still tend to see moods as a play of colour; empathy is an inexact barometer and it’s less wearing to watch your subject’s aura than to have a direct line into their raw emotions. “I have a mission for you,” he admitted.
“I don’t recall being demoted back into Training’s tender care, but then I have been on leave for the past two days. I’ve nineteen more days due to me before I go back on the duty roster.” I reminded, in no mood to pander to him. “I take my orders only from Chandre. What gives you the right to haul me back from vacation on the pretext of an urgent code and try to lay a mission on me?”
“My, my, Anna! Whose bed did we get out of on the wrong side this morning?”
I didn’t rise to the bait. “Not your business, Michael.”
“Something’s certainly soured that sweet tongue of yours, my dear. Has that long-haired, ex-musician fellow of yours run off with a younger and prettier model? Now what was his name? Wasn’t it Lucas, or something like that?” Viciousness crept into his eyes as he aired his knowledge of my private life, but the weapon was useless, as I was fully aware of the limits of EI’s data on me.
He’s fishing, Zenni muttered. He has nothing to link Jeb with you. All he knows is Jeb’s name and the fact that you’ve been seen at dinner with him on one or two occasions.
“Unless you can give me a damn good reason to stay and hear you out in the next thirty seconds, I’m leaving.” I meant the threat.
“You can’t teleport out of here—the Williamson shield is up.”
“I’m aware of that.” I could feel the fuzzy purple haze of energy around the building. It was meant to block all psionic trickery, but it didn’t work on us. “Ten seconds.”
“Okay, lady!” Collins spread his hands wide in defeat. “So you can play just as dirty as the rest of us. You force me to level with you—we have two sticky problems on our plate.”
I settled back into the chair. “Go on.”
“The first and major issue concerns Chandre. We’ve reason to believe she’s in trouble.”
“I thought she was on vacation off-planet. Tambouret, wasn’t it?” I knew of the world, famed as an idyllic, unspoilt resort, but had never visited it.
“We know that she reached the place five days ago. She sent a signal to her office at Merope to confirm her arrival. This morning we got an urgent report from one of our people in a neighbouring system, who’d picked up a call for help in our current code. According to the message-squawk, Chandre has vanished without trace. The sender identified himself as ‘Lyall’ and although our agent tried to obtain more information, she was unable to raise a reply. I know it isn’t much to go on, but we believe that the lead is genuine enough to follow up.”
“I’d be inclined to agree.”
Collins frowned. “Who is this Lyall? Do you know him?”
I hadn’t realised until now how skilfully my boss-lady had concealed the details of her own private life from Michael’s spies, so I grinned obscurely. “If you don’t know, I’m not about to tell you. Ask Chandre.”
“Is he that bodyguard-cum-shadow of hers, the true telepath? Tallish, fairish and average-looking—and in her bed at least three times a week?” He grimaced. “I think it’s disgusting, mixing sex and psi! Is that what you do with your erstwhile drummer-boy, fuck with his mind?”
In the backwater of my brain Zenni snarled, but I gave Michael my best deadpan stare. “Such an imagination! Go take a cold shower, Mikey-dear. I’ll wait.”
He scowled. “It isn’t important who this Lyall person is. The crux of the matter is that the agent who intercepted his squeal for help has no means of reaching Tambouret and no combat-training. The next closest back-up unit is an agent-pair five systems away. We could send them in, but they wouldn’t arrive for six days and I’m loath to leave Chandre to her own devices for that long. I had my experts run the problem through the database to find a unit who could reach Tambouret quicker and one random answer it threw up was you. It identified you as a wild-card, able to outperform all standard parameters. Personally I think that the machine’s had a brainstorm, but its masters assure me that it can’t be wrong, so I took a chance and called you. Can you make the trip in less time?”
“Yes.” For Collins I wasn’t prepared to lift my little finger, but Chandre was a different matter. “About the best I can manage and still be operational at the other end is twelve hours.”
His composure almost cracked. “How the devil could you go that far that fast? Teleport yourself and your Zenith clear across eighty light-years of space?”
“Got it in one.” I thought it unwise to add that I’d take Brimstone along for the ride.
“That’s insane! Nobody can do that!”
Can we? I felt Zenni’s doubt. The scope and range of your abilities have swelled a thousandfold if you can work a trick like that.
I can try. I’m not sure I’ll succeed, but I’m not admitting that to him. I glared at Collins and began to rise from my chair. “Then nobody can help Chandre. I pray that she’s still alive when your pair gets to Tambouret in six days’ time.”
It took a gigantic effort, but he swallowed his pride and afterwards looked noticeably paler under his bio-faked tan. “All right, Anna, I’m sorry! Sit down again, please. I won’t ask how you do it or why you can—I’ll just ask you to take this mission. Will you find Chandre for us, as quickly and quietly as possible?”
“I’ll go.” I didn’t tell him that I would have rushed to Chandre’s aid, mission or not. The lady was a friend and I had every intention of keeping her skin intact if it was within my power to do so. “You said we had two problems. Is the other as world-shattering?”
“It could be. Do you follow the stock-market, Anna?”
“I pay the family broker to do that for me.”
“Of course!” He kept most of the sneer from his face but a little leaked out. “I’m no expert in high finance, but this warning comes from someone on the staff who is. Delany Corp stock is fairly typical of most of the multi-world giants—the bulk of its shares are pretty static and a small percentage change hands rapidly.” He paused, more to refresh his memory than for effect. “Over the past few months there have been more Delany shares than usual coming onto the market. My expert suspects that an unknown party is scaring up trade and creaming off any Corporation stock that comes up for sale, perhaps in an attempt to gain a voting-block and snatch some measure of control. Rumour has it that there might be a take-over bid in the offing and the name linked with that is Transyst-Interworld.”
“Aren’t they based on Ovambos, a free-colonial outfit with no agencies on Terra or any of the nearer systems?” Zenni fed me more data. “That sector has more than its share of political upheaval at the moment, with a lacing of civil unrest and public opinion swaying towards a split with Earth and our benign trade-empire.”
“It never fails to unnerve me when one of you starts spouting information in your Zenith tone of voice.” Michael shuddered. “Your link ought to be inactive by the way, because of the psionic shield. You’ve summed it up in a nutshell, 4013. Transyst seem to be nudging into position to make a bid for Delany, probably egged on by a rebel government or two. Our enemies have long suspected that Delany is tied into EI, and taking over the Corporation would be a near-fatal blow to us. We could retreat from the complex and remove or destroy all of our records, but without Delany’s resources we could never maintain the Zenith series. In time all of our agent-pairs would be useless, without access to the facilities on this site. We’d regress at least twenty years
in the espionage business, if not more.”
“What are the chances of Transyst gaining enough stock to make a successful bid?” I asked, grim-faced. The vision of the Zenith series wasting away was a nightmare I didn’t care to think about.
“While you hold the vote, they haven’t a hope.” Collins gazed at me shrewdly. “If you don’t mind me asking, who would gain control of the Corporation if you were to die?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. Most of my worldly goods were easy to dispose of and were willed to friends, but I’d never decided what to do with the Delany stock. Lewis had given it to me in preference to my half-brother, so I didn’t feel that it could go to Stuart. It had to remain in one block, so the choice came down to my father’s best friend, Tom Greville, or Chandre or Jeb. I hoped to outlive Tom, since he had forty years start in the mortality stakes, Chandre had enough on her plate without being burdened with the Corporation, and I knew that all the far-flung distant cousins of the Delany clan would contest the will with the viciousness of rabid jackals if I left such a bounty to a stranger like Jeb Lucas. I hit the ball back into Michael’s court. “Do you think Transyst would try to take me out of the game?”
“I’d say it was highly likely. For EI’s sake, I urge you to ensure that Delany Corp would be in safe hands in the unhappy circumstances of your untimely demise.” He had the grace to look suitably solemn throughout his speech.
“EI couldn’t kill me, despite Jansen’s best efforts.” I enjoyed the grimace that provoked. “Transyst are amateurs.”
“It would be worth their while to hire a pro.” Collins reminded. “You may be very fast and very good, Anna, but there are poisons faster and master-assassins better than you, even with the advantages bestowed on you by your pairing to 4013.”
“All right, Michael, you’ve got it. I’ll take on both missions. Whatever predicament Chandre’s got herself into on Tambouret, I’ll get her out and back to Earth in one piece, and I’ll also make sure that Delany Corp stays independent, regardless of whether I’m dead or alive.” This time he made no protest as I stood up. “Just don’t complain about my methods, that’s all.”
The Beauty of Our Weapons Page 2
