Strings

by Dave Duncan

  The Grundy man was an older version of Kroeger Dwayne. He looked just as mean. He had his long fangs bared again, as he waited for Cheung and Gran to complete their calculations.

  The big man sighed and straightened.

  “You may be right. It will certainly be close. But not all those you have bought will stay bought, and a quick adjournment—”

  “No adjournment,” Agnes said firmly.

  “Then dissolution and a general elec—”

  “No dissolution.”

  For a long moment Cheung studied her with a face as unreadable as pulped newspaper. When he spoke, his voice had sunk even lower, an unbelievable bass. “Your coalition is unstable, ma’am. It will not hold together for long. And even if I have to go into hiding for a month or so, until the new representatives take their seats—”

  “Fool!” Grundy shouted. “Dolt! Huu will control those elections! You thought you were only up against that senile old coot, Hastings. I warned you he would call for help from this—this pestilent witch!”

  Dwayne had enjoyed blaming others, too.

  Cheung continued to ignore his companion. He and Hubbard Agnes studied each other once more, as though each were waiting for the other to make the first move. If so, then she won, and for the first time the big man showed traces of anger.

  “I would be naive to say you fight unfairly, Dr. Hubbard, but you have introduced a whole new factor into the game now. You have been wielding a new threat—but I am not at all sure you can sustain that particular blackmail for very long. You fight with children! Where are they? What have you done with them?”

  Cedric tore his eyes off Grundy, an unpleasant reflection of the odious Dwayne. What was that about children?

  Gran’s cold glare had become colder yet. “I did not start that, Dr. Cheung. Besides, are they children? Technically they are referred to as COC’s.”

  Cedric broke her rules to ask, “What’s that stand for?”

  She flashed him a glare of warning. “Cultured Organ Complex.”

  Cheung sighed very deeply. “You will not believe this, for of course I have no evidence.” He glanced at Cedric, including him in the negotiations for the first time. “I admit I have a clone which goes…who goes…by the name of Wong Gavin. He was a rash decision on my part, one I now regret. I have long since vowed that I shall not molest him. When he reaches adulthood I shall give him his liberty and let him find his own way in the world.”

  “You think so?” Grundy jeered. “You think so now! Wait until the chest pains start, or the jaundice. Every drowning man breathes water in the end.”

  “You may be right.” Cheung turned back to Gran. “The point is that I now no longer have the choice, do I? Certain unwritten rules have been breached, and the consequences are incalculable. What will you do with them, Director? Dump them in a refugee camp, or sell them back to their owners? Put them out of their misery? You can’t go public with them, because you have used them to buy votes, haven’t you? Will you kill them all?”

  “I bought votes with them, but return of goods was never included, only confidentiality.”

  “Hah!” Grundy shouted. He jabbed a finger to emphasize his words, and that had been a Dwayne trick, too. “She’s been threatening to expose, but she can’t expose some without blowing the whole organage business! Then her big stick is broken—call her bluff, Ollie!”

  “At the moment I am more concerned with finding out why the rules were changed.”

  “I repeat—I did not start that, Dr. Cheung.”

  “That’s utterly irrelevant—” Grundy began.

  Cheung’s dark voice cut him off. “Explain, please?”

  Gran indicated Cedric with a casual wave of her hand. “Cedr—Morris—my grandson was raised in Meadowdale. On Tuesday I sent him credit for a ticket and told him to come to HQ, in Nauc. I deliberately gave him a day in hand and more credit than he needed. Of course he set off to explore—but he headed straight to the Norristown sector—and BEST.”

  Cedric was about to tell them how Cheaver Ben had suggested Norristown to him. He didn’t, because they all seemed to be waiting for something—waiting, he saw at last, for Dr. Grundy to call it a coincidence. But Grundy did not speak, either.

  “Three BEST agents tailed him,” Gran said.

  “And how many 4-I agents?” Grundy growled.

  “I had set a bodyguard to watch over him, naturally. I knew he would break cover at the first possible moment, so I had a bull standing by. What’s your excuse?”

  Grundy’s eyes held a look that Cedric had sometimes seen in Kroeger Dwayne’s. It had usually meant pain coming to someone. “If there were any BEST employees in the area, Director, then I’m sure their purposes were quite innocent. As you murdered them, we can’t ask them what they were doing, can we?”

  “My agent was outnumbered, and perhaps a little overzealous.”

  “As in the President Lincoln Hotel?”

  Hubbard Agnes made a faint impatient noise, as though that remark was too ridiculous to answer.

  “Tell me about the President Lincoln Hotel, too,” Cheung said in cellar tones.

  “The boy took a room there. My agent went to guard him, and BEST’s goons opened an unprovoked military campaign. At least twenty noncombatants were killed or part-fried.”

  “Overzealous?” Grundy suggested. He yawned and stretched, glancing around the hangar at the little clumps of guards still watching from the distance, in hair-trigger silence.

  Gran turned a glance of deadly contempt on him but spoke to Cheung. “His dogs certainly overreacted. The main reason, I think, was that they had lost their quarry. They’d been watching the exits—the lev stations and airfields and so on. They hadn’t realized that Cedric didn’t even know his danger. They were tired, and frightened by the likely results of their own incompetence. BEST has a bad reputation for trimming its pension obligations.”

  “I thought this one was Morris?” Grundy sneered.

  “How did they get on to him again, then?” Cheung asked.

  Cedric found his grandmother’s eyes throwing the question to him, with an amused sort of disdain.

  The hangar was very, very cold. “I called Meadowdale?”

  She nodded. “And Cheaver reported your call to his employers. They back-trailed it.” She turned to Cheung. “So I was not the one to breach sanctuary.”

  “I heard about the affair at the President Lincoln. I did not know the details.”

  “Of course, that was all a farrago of lies,” Grundy said, “but before I denounce it, I have a question—a hypothetical question. When your bull broke into the kid’s room, the first thing he did was deactivate the snoopers, all of them.”

  “Standard practice?” Cheung murmured, deep as a sleepy organ.

  “But what did he get up to then, mmm? My men—if this were true, of course—my men had a long wait. Man and boy in a bedroom for three hours? Did you have fun, lad?”

  Cedric felt sick. Just the voice was enough—the tone, the baiting—and the gloating smile. He could almost smell that barn again, and remember his terror when they hauled his pants off. He had butted Greg in the face and jammed a lucky elbow in Dwayne’s groin, and then run screaming all the way back to Madge’s kitchen, much more frightened of the UV on his bare little ass than of whatever Greg and Dwayne had wanted to do. He must have been about twelve, maybe. And a couple of years later how glad he had been when those two had left Meadowdale! Oh, God!

  Cheung dismissed the matter with a faint shrug and turned to Gran. “One of the representatives from Greater Levant, the Honorable Levi Mohammed—he has put forward some interesting proposals.”

  Cedric sensed a sudden tension and forgot Grundy and Dwayne and the President Lincoln.

  “I am aware of their main points, I think,” Gran said.

  “And what might they be?” Grundy snarled, but quietly.

  Cheung waited, letting Gran fill the gap.

  “The Chamber replaces the Assembly, w
ith a two-year phase-in,” she said. “The Institute’s charter is ratified by the Chamber and its present structure continued. Stellar Power begins remitting taxes to the Chamber, gradually, as it assumes responsibility for U.N. programs. All U.N. personnel receive job continuation or a generous settlement. It would be a peaceable transfer of power.”

  Cedric might have been an ignoramus in politics, but even he could grasp the significance of that! Important meeting? This was historic, epochal! No more United Nations?

  Color had drained from Grundy’s horsey face, leaving the brown blotches like patches of decay. “And your lover, Hastings? When do we got him in the dock?”

  “He’s old,” Gran said sadly. “And frightened. He no longer has any stomach for the game. I’ve promised him sanctuary here. As long as Cainsville stands, he will be safe.”

  “That should be about a week!” Grundy snapped, rather shrilly.

  Gran chuckled, sharing a joke with Cheung. “I offered Will the position of deputy director for Media Relations, which has just come open. He said he’d consider it.”

  He could hardly do worse than the previous incumbent, Cedric thought. But that little chuckle had been a signal. Peace had broken out.

  Cheung’s round face relaxed into a smile almost as wide as Gavin’s. “With fewer great powers, the world ought to become more stable. Too often we have had you threatening to pull the plug, and Julian, here, threatening to hit the bricks. Hastings and I have twisted the political ropes too long, and the media play us off against each other. Please tell Will I bear him no grudge. Whatever sins he has committed in the past, I expect I shall match in future.”

  “Representative Huu is planning a speech on Thursday, supporting Levi’s initiatives,” Gran remarked. She straightened and rubbed her back, as if she were weary and anxious to be gone.

  “I am willing to make one on those lines this afternoon, when I welcome the Chinese declaration,” Cheung said quietly.

  “Will and I will applaud.”

  Those quiet words marked agreement, Cedric thought. History had just been made. The U.N. was gone—but the Institute would remain.

  “Well, well!” Grundy was pallid with fury, and it made him look much more like Dwayne, his younger clone—his dead clone, of course. Cedric wondered if Gran knew about that one and if he should mention it, but then he remembered what had happened to Eccles Pandora. Better not!

  “The Treaty of Cainsville, is it?” Grundy sprang to his feet. “So you, Hubbard, betray Hastings. And Cheung—you betray me? What happens to our agreement, the brave words we shared yesterday?”

  “Sit down!” Cheung snapped. “Or the goons will start burning things.”

  Grundy sat down reluctantly, fangs still bared.

  “I’ll tell you what happens, I think,” Gran said softly. Something about the tone sent shivers through Cedric. “We have the matter of the President Lincoln Hotel. We also have the matter of a clone, reared and harvested.”

  “What has that to do with you?” Grundy was blotchier than ever, leaning forward on his chair, almost hissing his words. “Are you a self-appointed avenging angel, running around handing out retribution for dead clones?”

  Gran, having paid him very little attention since she arrived, gave him a cold and contemptuous appraisal. “No, I do not run around looking for such people, but if one ever gets in my way, then I give that person no more consideration than the clone received. I value such a person’s life as that person values life.”

  Cedric shivered again. If I wanted to kill one of them during his visit…He had thought she was bragging to the bull. It was impossible, surely? All four of them had been searched for every possible concealed weapon known to man. There were hundreds of armed guards standing in a great circle, all watching. They could be there in seconds. The result might be a shootout that would kill everyone. She was bluffing—obviously.

  “A clone,” she murmured. “Did you know him, Cedric?”

  Cedric could only nod. His throat felt as though an unseen hand was strangling him.

  Gran glanced at Cheung. “Mostly still in storage, I understand. Only some teeth have been used so far. And the genitals, of course.”

  Cheung seemed to ponder for a moment. Then he nodded faintly and curled his lip in a sign of distaste—but it might also have been a sign of agreement, of acquiescence. A new partnership had been forged, and must be tested.

  Grundy’s eyes flashed a look of fury at him and went back to glaring at Gran. “You murdered Eccles Pandora,” he said. “Show me the moral high ground in that?”

  Gran’s face was as inscrutable as Cheung’s, her voice flat. “Eccles Pandora is doubtless alive and reasonably well, and Devlin Grant likewise. They deserve each other. That brings us to another matter. While we have never met with success at retrieving broken strings in the past, we shall certainly try to contact Nile again on the thirteenth. It is not impossible that we may succeed, and bring back the unfortunate castaways.”

  Grundy looked startled. He glanced at Cedric, who suddenly knew why he was there—to prove that the broken string had been a fake.

  “Including the genuine Cedric?” Grundy demanded. “Or is he Morris? Including that ranger? Our System came up with a very curious identification of the ranger.”

  “Only Devlin concerns me now,” Gran said. “I suspect that he would be willing to testify against his accomplice in the murder case—in return for some mitigation of his sentence.”

  “Testify?”

  She sighed. “No, I suppose I am just an overage idealist. I keep remembering the formal courtroom justice of my youth. And we don’t need Devlin’s evidence anyway—do we?”

  She was asking Cheung, who was frowning. Grundy seemed on the verge of losing control; even his clenched fists were trembling. And Cedric did not think his grandmother was as calm as she was trying to seem. Was she trying to provoke an attack? Was that her plan? She had told Cedric he was to be there as a bodyguard, and he had not believed her. If Grundy sprang at her, then she expected Cedric to intervene. He did not think he was in Cheung’s weight class, but surely he could handle that Grundy one for a few minutes, unless his bulls opened fire. Then other bulls would retaliate. Sweat prickled on his skin, in spite of the cold.

  “Explain, please,” Cheung requested in his sepulchral bass.

  “It was not the first case,” she said, watching Grundy closely. “He has killed others before with his meddling. He duped Devlin completely. If BEST could unionize the Institute, then Devlin was to be appointed director, or so Devlin was led to believe. It was Devlin who slipped the cuthionamine aboard the skiv.”

  “Where did he put it?” Cedric was surprised to realize that the eagerly querying voice was his own.

  Apparently Gran did not mind. “It was in a tiny spring-loaded capsule, something like a clamshell. Devlin hid it in among Chollak’s spare clothes. The day Chollak reached for that pair of socks, it flew open.”

  Grundy laughed unconvincingly. “And what was Devlin’s purpose? What could he possibly gain from murdering three people, two of them his own subordinates? And so exotically, too?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “That was why he panicked when he realized what had happened. What he had expected we don’t know—just van Schoening, probably. Chollak was a powerful man. Had he been the only one affected, most likely he would have killed van Schoening. One insanity, leading to one murder and one rape—Devlin did not expect three deaths. It was a sloppy plan, but maybe that was part of its strength. Had it failed, there was no loss.”

  “And?” Cedric asked, fascinated and terrified at the same time.

  “The Moscow faculty is officially open shop. van Schoening was a secret member of BEST. The plan was Grundy’s.”

  “He wanted a casus belli?” Cheung asked.

  Before Cedric could ask, his grandmother nodded. “Yes, an excuse to declare war, to provoke a showdown. With one of BEST’s members dead, he would have claimed foul play, or that Institute’
s safety procedures were inadequate. Nile is a fungoid, high-pressure world. He might have tried to show that the cuthionamine was a contamination—certainly he would have demanded access to Cainsville to investigate. Ultimately he was going to call a worldwide technical strike to force unionization of the Institute.”

  Grundy spat out an obscenity. “Absurd,” he added.

  “No. We have seen the proclamations you had already prepared. You provided the poison. Unlike Devlin, you must have known that there was enough there to contaminate the whole skiv. You wanted to create the maximum possible scandal. You’d promised Devlin the directorship, of course—and you’d already double-crossed him, because three deaths made his hopes very shaky. He was deputy for Operations, and therefore responsible for safety. He knew that!”

  Silence fell.

  Everyone looked at Cheung.

  “What evidence can you provide?” he asked softly.

  Again Gran rubbed her back, but Cedric saw that her shift of position masked a quick glance around the dome. Was she checking out the guards? Was she seriously expecting violence?

  They would all die in the crossfire.

  “In the matter of the Nile murders, I have very little evidence against Grundy himself,” she said, “unless we recall Devlin. In the matter of the clone, I have ample. In the matter of the President Lincoln Hotel—the final orders may not have been Grundy’s, but he must have launched the program in the first place, knowing that it might lead to violence; indeed, planning violence upon my grandson. And there are other matters—like Italy, for example.”

  There was a long pause then, while Cheung made his decision. Then he nodded. “The Italian affair was disgraceful. What do you propose?”

  Again Grundy sprang to his feet. His fists were clenched, eyes staring. “So!” he shouted, and he was slavering. “The brave new alliance is to be sealed in blood, is it? My blood? Well, I won’t stand for it. You’ll have no mikes for your precious speech, Cheung. You, bitch, will find that the power you pump into the space grid has nowhere to go, because there will be no one to accept it. It is time for Brain Power! It is time that the people who make the world run were allowed to run it. It is time—”