Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  I nodded. In the distance I could make out half a dozen of the lights I thought I’d seen from back on the quay. I wondered how many more there were, and why they were out there. I glanced at Mikah. He was seeing restricted gaming holes, exclusive whorehouses, private estates. I looked back the way we’d come, saw the Deep End glowing through the murk like an emerald. Everything looks better from the outside. I looked ahead again. We were closing with one of the lights now. I began to see its real form, a shining sphere drifting over the sea floor, shifted slowly and constantly by the motion of the tides. I took a deep breath; still surprised when I did that I didn’t drown.

  “You ever met this Governor?”

  Mikah shook his head. “Not yet. I made this deal through channels. You got Ichiba curious too.” Ichiba headed his Family.

  “Do they know about me—that I’m a psion?”

  Mikah shrugged. “The Governor knows all about you. He takes the Morning Report, too.”

  The sub nosed in under the looming wall of the sphere, was sucked up into a narrowing funnel, into the heart of the Governor’s very private estate. The heavy transparent inner hatch blinked green and swung open, but the lock hadn’t drained. The quiet, normal-looking blue-green room that I could see beyond it was full of water. At the far end of the room a spiral of stairway disappeared upward.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Mikah said.

  “This’s a hell of a time to ask me that,” I muttered, feeling my stomach drop into my boots. I realized suddenly that I was here claiming I spoke for one of the biggest combines in the galaxy, about to face somebody who could say stop and go for the underworld of this entire planet, maybe even for the whole solar system. And there was nobody I could blame for it but myself. But then a sudden dark rush of excitement filled me, making me feel strong, eager, ready—like something was riding me that didn’t know what fear meant.… I reached up with a shaky hand; couldn’t touch the drug patch through the membranes of my suit.

  We pushed off from the edge of the lock into the room, probably looking just as clumsy as we felt, and floundered toward the air fountain billowing upward at its center. Furniture was laid out in small intimate arcs on the blue and white tiles around the bubble sculpture. The furniture was made of plastic but it could have been carved from ice, cool and clear. I glanced at the readouts inside my helmet; the water here in the house was as warm as blood.

  As we stopped moving and waited, I felt someone come silently down the steps at the other end of the room. I looked up, watched him come one step at a time, moving as naturally as if the room was filled with air and not water.

  “Good evening,” the Governor said. No bubbles came out of his smiling mouth. Somehow I actually heard him speak. It took a minute to realize he was using a bonebox and my suit was registering it. You couldn’t see the wariness just beneath the surface of his skin, but it was there as he looked at me. I felt the sudden hot surge of Mikah’s interest as the Governor glanced his way. The Governor wasn’t young, but he looked young, and the muscles of his long body moved like an athlete’s under the formfitting jumpsuit he had on. His long hair flowed around his head like seaweed; the warm brown of it matched his skin and eyes. He was barefoot; his fingers and toes were all a joint too long, with thin membranes between them.

  Mikah held up his hands, palms out, and signed, “Ichiba says hullo.”

  The Governor’s smile got a little friendlier. “My regards to your Family,” he signed back. He nodded and stepped down into the room. I wondered where he hid the ballast that let him move that normally. Maybe his suit was doing it. He wasn’t breathing; he had gills behind his ears. But the rooms up above us were air-filled, and I could sense other people up there, observing, guarding, leading normal lives. He’d had himself made totally amphibian.

  Mikah was still standing beside me. The Governor glanced at him again, a little curious. “You’re staying?”

  Mikah nodded.

  “I don’t think I have to tell you that you run the risk of hearing more than is good for you.”

  Mikah glanced at me. “Go,” I said. He shook his head. “Too late,” he said to the Governor. He made the sign for Family.

  The Governor watched us, not saying anything, but watching us now with different eyes. “Sit down,” he said finally. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” He shrugged. Security.

  I made it to the nearest group of seats, moving slowly so that I didn’t look any worse than I had to. I settled on one of the benches, pretending like we were supposed to that everything was perfectly normal. Mikah settled down on another bench, his eyes still wandering back to the Governor, nervous and admiring.

  The Governor’s long-fingered hands touched the wide, trailing ends of the drape he wore around his neck. It came alive like a port; that was what it was. He was direct-accessing. There was a remote truth-tester on the system; the water gave it a good feed. “So,” he said to me, letting his hands slowly fall and clasp in front of him, “I understand that you represent the taMings.” There was curiosity and a lot of incredulity inside him.

  I held onto the edge of my seat. “Not exactly,” I said, finally. “Centauri’s Corporate Security.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And why would they send you to us?” Emphasis on the you and the us.

  “I’m their catspaw,” I said.

  He actually laughed, as the meaning registered. “That seems to be true…” Meaning he’d checked it. “It fits the baroque xenophobia of the corporate mentality well enough. But what legitimate business could they have that requires a meeting like this one?” His smile was full of amusement and irony.

  “I think you know,” I said.

  He folded his arms. “Suppose you tell me, anyway, since I am not a mindreader.”

  And I was. He must know that it would be hard to hide things from me in a face meeting. Maybe that meant his clients were interested in negotiating. Probably it just meant that it was easier to kill me this way if the meeting turned out bad. “They want to know why you’re trying to kill Daric taMing.”

  He looked vague for a second. At first I thought it was surprise, but then I realized his mind was listening to something—to someone, through a remote link. Everybody who had an interest in this was probably observing through his port, at a safe, anonymous distance from me, and from each other.

  “Tell me why they believe that anyone at all wants to kill Gentleman Daric taMing? I understood that it was Lady Elnear you personally saved from assassination. Aren’t you working as her bodyguard?”

  Mikah was right; they did know all about me. Except for what I knew about them. “Yeah … except whoever tried to take out Daric didn’t know one thing: nobody was really trying to kill Lady Elnear. It was part of a plot by Centauri to keep control over her and her holdings in ChemEnGen. So when the Market ran that hit on Daric, trying to make it look like it was meant for her, it crashed. It let Centauri know somebody else was the real target.”

  The Governor looked down at his feet, to hide the fact that he wasn’t seeing us again while he got feedback from his listeners. I felt Mikah staring at him, at me, with interest, excitement, fear making neuron soup in his brain.

  Finally the Governor said, “Very interesting.” As close as he’d come out loud to admitting I’d just surprised the hell out of a whole lot of Marketeers. “Someone apparently took a wrong turn in the labyrinthine halls of a combine powerplay.… But why is Centauri so sure Daric taMing was the target?”

  I took a deep breath and stepped over the edge. “I told them.”

  “Shit…” Mikah whispered, so softly that I barely heard him.

  The Governor’s head jerked up. He sent a sharp glance at Mikah, back at me; his attention flickered out for a second again. I felt Mikah’s sudden tension like a pinched nerve. “How did you find out?” The Governor’s voice turned cold.

  I forced myself to smile. “I’m a telepath. Finding things out is what I’m good at.” I hoped the bluff woul
d be good enough to satisfy his truthtester, to keep him from pushing, from making me tell them who’d helped me do it. “I know you’re trying to kill him, but I don’t know why. The Corpses want me to find out.”

  The hard line of his mouth curved a little. “Why bother to come to me?”

  I shrugged. “It’s easier.”

  He laughed again; bubbles came out of his nose. The laughter stopped. “You must be smart enough to realize that you knew too much to come here safely. But you’ve come anyway, so I’m assuming you carry the keys to something you haven’t shown me yet.”

  Mikah glanced at me again, hoping he was right. I hoped so too.

  “Suppose we offer an exchange of data. I will tell you why we want Daric taMing … and then you tell me what you want.”

  I nodded.

  The Governor wrapped his long fingers over the glowing ends of his drape, making sure of his facts. “Gentleman Daric taMing has for some years had a significant drug account with the Market. He uses heavily himself, and also deals for us to other combine vips who want to indulge their bad habits, but lack his contacts. We have granted him a degree of trust and privilege that is rather extraordinary for someone who comes to us from the Other Side. Gentleman Daric is not your typical Assembly member, obviously.… But these privileges were extended with the understanding that they would only last as long as he never betrayed our trust or interfered in our business in any way—that, in fact, he would keep our interests in mind when he voted on certain drug-related issues.…”

  Now I knew one more way that Daric had found to fuck over his family. And suddenly I saw what had gone wrong. “The pentryptine deregulation vote,” I said.

  The Governor lifted his head slightly; his hair brushed his shoulders like a soft wing. “Yes—”

  “If deregulation passes, it cuts out your profit.” I leaned forward. “And he’s been supporting it, supporting Stryger’s push to get pentryptine deregged. He has to, because it’s too important to his family, he can’t go against them.” Daric might be crazy, but he wasn’t that crazy. “That’s why you want him out. Right—?”

  “Precisely,” the Governor said, his voice a little strained. His hand went to his head, touched it, fell away.

  “Why not just cut off his drugs? Why kill him? You want to make an example of him, or is somebody just that pissed?”

  “Neither.” He looked relieved that I was only asking questions again, not answering them. “Gentlemen Daric is considered to be too volatile a personality to be trusted, under the circumstances. If we cut off his access to drugs, he has the influence to cause considerable trouble for us with the Fed Corpsec. But he has violated his pact with us, and we can’t allow that. It’s bad for … business.”

  I leaned back again, swaying with the motion of the water around me, watching the fountain weave alien landscapes out of pearls of air and light, watching them mutate and change, like data beings moving through a separate reality. Daric didn’t know the Market was after his head; they’d wanted to keep it that way. You couldn’t kill a Gentleman of the Board and Assembly like you squashed a flea. By finding out, and telling Centauri’s Security, I’d made it a lot harder for them to finish what they’d started. They’d finish it anyway, whatever it took, unless I gave them a damn good reason why they shouldn’t. And if I couldn’t, I’d be dead before Daric was.

  “Your turn,” the Governor said, his voice nudging me gently. Right then I couldn’t remember ever seeing an expression more frightening than his smile.

  I wondered whether I was having trouble breathing because of my suit, or just because of the way he was looking at me. “I’m here to work a trade.” Until that moment I hadn’t been sure what would come out of my mouth. But as I heard the words I realized that I’d held the solution in my hands ever since I’d left Elnear’s office today. Even while I’d been sleeping my brain had been fitting together pieces. And now, what I’d just heard had pushed the last of them into place. Suddenly everything I had to do stood out clear and sharp—as sharp as a knifepoint pricking my throat. I didn’t have any choice. I just hoped I could make the Market believe they didn’t have any choice either, without telling them too much.

  The Governor was still watching me, waiting, his body shifting faintly with the slow motion of the water. “Well?” he said.

  “Centauri wants Daric alive.…” Stalling, trying to pull my thoughts together. So does Argentyne. I told myself that what I thought about it didn’t matter; this was business, just like Braedee had said.

  “Unfortunate for them,” the Governor murmured. “Because we never go back on a promise.”

  “But the final vote on deregulation hasn’t happened yet.”

  He nodded. “But deregulation is certain to be approved, in spite of our efforts. Sojourner Stryger is able to keep a much higher profile than we can.”

  “He’s a combine puppet anyway,” I said. “That’s where he gets his major motion. But he wants the Council slot Lady Elnear is up for, and he’ll get that too if the deregulation passes. And then he’ll stop being a puppet and start playing god for real.”

  The Governor frowned slightly, his eyes going out of focus as he listened to other voices. “Interesting. But hardly our concern.”

  “You’re not—” My voice broke suddenly. I swallowed, and tried again. “You’re not gonna like the way he plays. He wants to use deregulation and the power he gets to crush people like you and me. The Feds mostly leave you alone now. But once he’s on the Council, what if he has the same kind of effect on them that he has on everybody else? Even Centauri’s Security Chief thinks he’s more than they bargained for.”

  The Governor frowned.

  I pushed on, feeling his doubt stir. “I think there might still be a way to stop Stryger, and make the deregulation move fail. To make Stryger look bad enough to change some votes.” I saw the sudden interest in his eyes. “But Daric has to stay alive or it can’t happen.”

  “‘Can’t’ happen?” the Governor asked. “Not ‘won’t’—‘can’t’?”

  I nodded.

  “What makes you believe Stryger can be brought down so easily—especially if what you say is true, and he isn’t even his own man?”

  My hands made fists. “Because he’s human.”

  The Governor looked down at his webbed feet. “Explain further.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t … I don’t know all of it exactly myself, yet. But Daric is Centauri’s liaison with Stryger. He has to do his part or it can’t work.”

  “Centauri is backing this?” he asked, looking at me again. “Why, when they stand to make a substantial profit if this deregulation goes through?”

  “If Daric dies they’ll lose more—they could lose an Assembly seat to some other combine. And the taMings lose a board member. Gentleman Charon wants his son alive more than he wants more profits.” I wondered if he’d still feel that way if he knew what Daric really was.

  The Governor was silent, staring at the fountain now but not really seeing it. His face worked, while his mind held half a dozen one-sided conversations. “No…” he said at last, turning back again, speaking to me. “Unless you can provide me with something more concrete—that isn’t enough to lift the Silence on Daric taMing.”

  I hung onto the edge of the bench with all my strength, trying not to let him feel my desperation. If I told him everything, he’d probably think I was crazy. I wasn’t sure he’d be wrong. But I knew—I realized I’d known all along—that there was nothing Centauri could offer the Market that would get Daric off its hook. And no way Daric could escape forever, even if they made him into a nonperson.

  But if the Market let him live, they could still get what they wanted—and I could get what I wanted, too: Stryger. If I just had the guts to make it all work.… “Look,” I said, “can’t you hold off just until after the vote? Isn’t it worth that much to you, at least, to hold off a few days? If he cooperates, if he does his part and deregulation fails—then he’s cancele
d his debt to you, and maybe you don’t have to kill him.… Killing him without anybody noticing has just gotten a lot harder for you. And if he dies before the vote, then there’s no hope in hell of stopping deregulation, and it’s your loss. What’s a few days, against that—?”

  The Governor stood, swaying gently, too many eyes watching me through his own.

  “And if deregulation still passes…?” he said at last.

  “Then you can … silence him.” I pushed up from the bench, controlling every movement because I couldn’t afford to look stupid now.

  “Oh, we will,’ he said. “Be sure of that. Tell him I said so.” He hesitated. “In fact, we may even be forced by events to look into the continued health of Sojourner Stryger.…”

  I felt the blood sing in my ears. But all I said was, “Then we’ve got a deal.” Not making it a question, because I was already certain. All the voices clamoring through the circuits in his head had finally said the same thing. I moved forward, held up my gloved hand.

  He slapped it; a strange slithering like the touch of wings. “Deal.”

  Mikah came up beside me. The Governor looked at him. “My regards to Ichiba,” he signed. “Tell him he’s got a good man. I respect loyalty to a friend.” Mikah nodded, not quite letting himself crack a smile. The Governor looked at me again. “I’m glad you came. It’s been illuminating. I’m also glad that we were able to find some common ground. I hope that what has been agreed to comes to pass. It will be a considerable hardship for all concerned, if it doesn’t.…” He looked down, up at me again. “If it does, perhaps you would consider doing some work for me, someday.”

  If I survived. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  He smiled. “Then I hope to see both of you again. Good night, gentlemen.” He turned and started back up the stairs, one step at a time. When he was gone the lock finally began to cycle, across the room.

  We floundered to the exit and through the hatch. Mikah sighed once—relief, or maybe regret—looking back as the sub carried us toward the city. Then he turned to look at me. “You got more guts than good sense, brother. But you made it run.”