The Elysium Commission

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  18

  Knowledge is not understanding: that's why so many pedants are idiots.

  Most of my body was sore when I woke on Domen morn­ing. That was despite a hot shower and autotherapy in the villa's medcenter the night before. High-gee maneuvers against RPFs did have a price for the pilot. Another hot shower helped—some.

  I ate breakfast in the sheltered garden corner of the courtyard, watching the holoscans of news and items Max thought would interest me. The only news that really in­trigued me was one particular blurb, accompanying a talk­ing head.

  "... last night three surveillance vehicles suffered major systems malfunctions and crashed north of the Somme on forest lands owned and managed by Roth­schild Thierry. RT explained that the fires had been con­trolled and that those responsible had already indemnified RT..."

  That was all.

  Just what was going on at Time's End? I only had a tenu­ous and rumored connection between Legaar Eloi and Judeon Maraniss, and nothing at all that would link them to something called Elysium. I didn't even know what Ely­sium might be, except a guess that it was a project of some sort being undertaken by Classic Research requiring more energy than a handful of deep-space battie cruisers and that

  Maraniss had some special expertise necessary for the suc­cess of the project.

  Then there were the complications from both Sephaniah and Tony diVeau. I'd neglected following up on them to see what connections they might have with Legaar. Their at­tempts to snoop and crash my systems hadn't happened un­til I'd gotten involved with Seigniora Reynarda's Elysium commission. I've never been a believer in coincidences. I still wasn't.

  The "transfer" business from the limo to the reservoir also still nagged at me. If Legaar or Maraniss had done it, why hadn't they used it against the nightflitter? If they hadn't, who had? And why?

  I was also still stiff and sore. The soreness would have made it somewhat easier to keep my vow not to get con­sumed with pending projects—until early afternoon, per­haps. But I didn't get that choice. I'd only finished handwriting a polite but warm note to Odilia and arranged for Max to send it by courier when the system alerted me.

  Incoming from Lemel Jerome.

  Have him wait one. I'll be right there. I swallowed the last of the earlgrey and stood, trying not to wince. Then I crossed the courtyard to the study.

  I'm a creature of habit. I prefer to handle business in the proper setting.

  Once in the study, I pulsed Max. Link.

  Lemmy appeared before me. His black hair was plas­tered back. He was grinning. His brown eyes still looked flat. "You did it, Blaine. The conveyer of carnality is em­ploying my patents, and I've got proof."

  "You got all that from the detector?" I knew Lemmy was bright, but applied science bright? "And you backlinked a burst transmitter direct to you?"

  "How else would I find out?"

  Lemmy might be science bright, legal bright, maybe even gadget bright. He wasn't survival bright. "Legaar could track that back to you, unless you used remotes, with drop filters."

  "So? Why would he bother? He can pay the royalties.

  He's got a massive jump-generator there, or something so close to it that it makes no difference."

  "Lemmy ... you can't operate a jump-generator on a planetary surface. Not without—"

  Oversurgel reported Max.

  The link was gone. So was a good chunk of system over­load protectors, but that was what they were for. I also had a strong feeling that poor Lemmy was also past tense, cour­tesy of Legaar Eloi. I had a stronger feeling that I had best be very careful. Lemmy's detector needed to be thoroughly insulated—and then some. Immediately.

  Max, status of Lemel Jerome's detector?

  Isolated and damped, as you ordered, sir.

  I thought I'd done that, but I needed to make sure. Moni­tor all news sources for breaking information on Lemel Jerome. Inform me immediately.

  I tried a relink to Lemmy. All I got was a stiff talking head that stated, "The link locale you have contacted is not responding."

  I knew that. My system would have reconnected auto­matically if it had been possible. Whatever had knocked Lemmy out of link—and probably worse—had to have come from Legaar. Legaar was doing something connected to Lemmy's patents. Lemmy had said that Legaar had a jumpship generator at Time's End, but jumpship generators couldn't operate in a gravity well—or even near one. Not without the power of a Hawking system. If Legaar did have a Hawking system, it would have registered on the nightflit-ter's systems.

  Still... it made me nervous. Very nervous, because if someone had actually operated a jumpship generator in a gravity well, particularly a planetary gravity well, powered with a Hawking field, the result would have been instant obliteration, for the planet and a goodly chunk of space around it. Not obliteration, exacdy, just the transformation of all matter into energy. That equated to obliteration for entities nearby. That included me and Krij and the Civitas Sorores.

  That had been the fate of Salem. The Vishni Confederacy hadn't bothered with sending conventional warships against the rebel Christos Republic. They'd just assembled a Hawk­ing system on the back side of an inner planet, linked it to two jumpship generators, and triggered both generators. In­stant flare-nova, along with the destruction of the inner planet. That was the reason why the Assembly used EDI de­tectors to scan continually all its inhabited planetary sys­tems. Hawking systems could be built anywhere in space, although they were too large and too unstable for continued jumpship usage, and the energy concentrations necessary for full operation took days to build before the system was stable and usable.

  I knew the Assembly IS was continually monitoring for such a possibility. That knowledge didn't make me any happier.

  Telling the Garda—even Colonel Shannon—about what Legaar Eloi had on his estate wasn't an option. They couldn't do anything because what Legaar had done, so far, wasn't illegal. Even informing them anonymously wouldn't be either anonymous or safe, because Shannon and Javerr would know I was the informer. They'd try to pin the de­struction of the RPFs on me. Or Javerr would, and he'd in­form Legaar. I already had enough trouble on my hands as it was without even greater interest and animosity from the Eloi group.

  There was another option. It would take time, but I needed to use it.

  I leaned forward and took out the stylus. Nothing was go­ing into my system, anywhere, until the delays and blind links were set up. I had to call on old memories and near-forgotten codes. They'd be outdated, but that alone would create some attention.

  In the end, the message was simple.

  CODE RED OMEGA TWO

  Modified jumpship generator located within confines of Time's End on Devanta. Coordinates follow. Area guarded by military-level RPFs and surveillance systems. Massive power-generation system also in place. Currently exhibiting less power than a Hawking system. AUTHENTICATE: ΣΩΠ-74

  It went enrypt/unencrypt/re-encrypt through four blind links, two erase-delays to a temporarily co-opted burst sender belonging to a small commerce bank. From there, it went to the regional Assembly SpecOps HQ. Behind it, the tracks of its passage erased themselves.

  For a moment, I leaned back in the chair and looked out the east windows.

  I still had more work to do on the D'Azouza and Stella Strong commissions, as well as on the Tozzi case—and a great deal more on the Elysium contract, if I could only fig­ure out what else to do that wouldn't make me even more of a target.

  I also needed to increase the security levels around the villa and in the comm system.

  19

  What one knows and what one thinks one knows are the same only for a fool.

  By the time midmorning on Senen arrived, I'd tried several more times to reach Lemmy. I got the same response. Since I'd never known his physical locale, I couldn't go around to investigate, either. I worried, though.

  I had also spent well into the evening on Domen trying to dig up more on the mysterious Stella Stro
ng/Maureen Gonne and on Theresa McGerrie. I'd found little enough more on either, except several old-style text mysteries pub­lished under the name of Terrence McGerrie, one of which was entitled Coeur Rouge. I'd even paid for copies of the books and then scanned them. The bio was short.

  Terrence McGerrie is the pseudonym of a professional whose work has much to do with the subjects portrayed in those novels but nothing to do with those for whom and with whom McGerrie works. McGerrie admits to living in the area of Thurene, but to little else.

  There was no picture.

  I read the novel—scan-quick. It seemed to be rather dark and obscure, requiring illumination and something more to bind it together. Then, that just might have been my view. I tend to like works—operas, dramas, books—where there's a bit more than a mere shred of hope at the end. As for its subject... so far as I could determine, it was about a man trapped in the intricacies of his work as an advocate for the

  Civitas Sorores. When he recognized this and that he had done nothing of real value in his life, he looked around and saw that his nephew was about to do the same. He took all his savings and sent the nephew on a grand tour of the Gal­lian sector, hoping to open the eyes of the younger man. Yet the young man returned, politely thanked his uncle, and be­came an advocate in the same specialty as his uncle.

  Depressing. It was meant to be, but I wasn't about to read another one. The others had the same author bio. I couldn't help but wonder if Terrence had switched genders to become Terry, and if D'Azouza had been his lover before the switch. For a samer to transex certainly wasn't unheard of. For some it made sense because they weren't really samers, but physio-psychically the "wrong" sex. For the others, such a switch merely compounded their difficulties.

  I put in a vidlink to the Authors' Centrality, but on an end-day, I got what I expected, a talking head that only re­ferred me to the same bio I'd already read. I'd have to get back to the Centrality when I had a chance to reach real people.

  Both commissions bothered me, if for different reasons. Each involved elaborate game-playing, and there was more behind each game.

  Why had "Nancy" tasked me to find Stella/Maureen with­out a report back to her? There were more than a few possi­bilities. She could be worried that, if she attempted to find Stella, adverse consequences might befall her. She might feel guilty but simply be so well-off she didn't want to bother tracking down Stella. She might somehow be setting me up. Or setting up Stella. Or she might not have the ability and re­sources to track down Stella. The last one was the simplest and most logical. I doubted it was the right one. No matter what they say, few people do the simple and logical.

  Donacyr D'Azouza's commission was even more im­probable. Just find a woman and make sure that she was all right? If D'Azouza didn't happen to be a sex-change-jilted lover, then the situation sounded like McGerrie wasn't all right, not in the slightest. I'd end up entangled in a web I wouldn't have wanted to be in. Yet both clients had paid well in advance. That didn't fit, either. Not unless a great deal more was at stake than I'd been told.

  That was all too often the case.

  But what?

  I put in another two hours on Senen morning trying even more offbeat searches. I found nothing.

  Then I began searches on Antonio di Veau and the woman called Sephaniah. I didn't even know her last name. With Odilia's references to her translations, especially the musty Wolfe Lictor work, I discovered that she was Sephaniah Dylan-Zimmer. She was also a classics professor at Sur-malle Universite, just northeast of Thurene. I used the university link and got a virtie image. It was hers—or that of the Sephaniah who had accosted me at the opera. Unlike her state of near undress of that evening, the virtie image showed her attired in gray jacket and trousers far more decorous than she had worn at the opera. Before the talking head even delivered a spiel, I cut off the image. That could come later. I now knew where to find her.

  I'd known that Tony diVeau was the vice director of en­tertainment and leisure lending at Banque de L'Ouest from a previous commission. He'd occasionally linked, once to of­fer me a line of credit at the bank. I'd declined, but politely. Krij's contact at Trapeze Zaphir—Rennos Zaphiropoulos— had been far too good to me to leave for a glad-hander like Tony. Besides, I trusted the old Greek. I did even more now that it appeared that Tony was even more closely linked to the "entertainment" industry. I ran a search on Antonio diVeau ... and on Banque de L'Ouest. I didn't finish reading it all by the time I needed to leave for Krij's, but I was more than ready to leave all my pending commissions behind, if temporarily.

  I took my own groundcar. It was armored and shielded, but not armed. I couldn't have afforded the indemnity coverages—nor to do without them. Cuarta Calle was nearly without traffic, and even Le Boulevard had only a scattering of vehicles. I began to run into bicycles once I neared the

  Narrows. They'd made a comeback among the nature exer­cise types who lived there. I wouldn't have been totally sur­prised to learn that Krij had bought one.

  She didn't have a villa, but a comparatively narrow town house in the older section of Thurene on the hill to the west of the Narrows. All the dwellings there dated back three centuries or more. Their walls did, anyway. The interiors had been changed often.

  Krij lived just a block down from the historical Doherty Torcasde on VanGelder Way, more of a lane or an alley. It was so narrow that it could only take a single groundcar— one-way only. There was barely enough space to squeeze the groundcar into the single space before her old-style garage. I couldn't even open the door fully and had to ease out and along the side of the vehicle to the street-level land­ing. The steps up to the main level were brick that had been coated with some sort of permatex that matched both the color and texture of the original finish. Except it wouldn't wear out.

  The sunlight flickered as I started up the steps, dimming slightly. The solar screens had adjusted again.

  Krij met me at the door. She wore a scoop-necked blouse of green velvet that matched her eyes—and black trousers and boots. A gold chain around her neck held a gold pen­dant with a large pear-shaped emerald—synth, of course, but striking.

  She gave me a snule and warm hug, one that I returned. "I asked a few others here. I hope you don't mind."

  "How many eligible women?"

  She smiled, not quite in a superior fashion. "I knew you'd ask that. They're all eligible, but they're with someone else." There was a hint of mischief in both her smile and her eyes. "Andrea won't be here, either. She's with her father."

  Krij had always been like that with me. Behind the pro­fessional demeanor was a quietly playful sense of humor.

  "Besides," she went on, "you value your freedom too much. As the old saying goes, 'The most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty.'" She led me from the foyer to the archway into the parlor. A selection of natural wines was set on the sideboard. I could hear voices from the library-study beyond.

  "You're cruel, sister dear."

  "Accuracy often is." She laughed, far from cruelly.

  "At least, let us agree to a short armistice with truth." Be­fore she could say more, I asked, "Do you know what the connection might be between Judeon Maraniss and Legaar Eloi?"

  Krij shook her head. "I don't know of one." She smiled wryly. 'That could be because I've never heard of Maraniss until you mentioned him. I do know that I wouldn't want to deal with either Eloi. Legaar's worse than Simeon, but there's littie to choose between the two of them."

  "What about the Elysium Project?"

  "What's that?"

  "I don't know. I think it's a project of Legaar's. He's us­ing Classic Research to fund and develop it. It's taken a lot of creds and even more power." Those were guesses on my part.

  "They have a lot of credits."

  "Gotten in ways I can't say I admire."

  "You don't admire many in Thurene, Blaine." She grinned. "What other contracts are you pursuing where I might be of more help?"

  'The rumor of sordidit
y and fortune hunting involving a well-known physician and two separate cases of missing people. One's an heiress named Stella Strong or Maureen Gonne or who knows what else. The other's name I don't even know, not for real. He or she used the pseudonym McGerrie years ago. The client's convinced she's a she, but I'm wondering if she used to be he."

  "Gonne? As in Maud Gonne—the old Earth mythical heroine?"

  'The same."

  "I don't think I can help with either missing soul. What about the sordid business?" Krij steered me toward the side­board.

  "Seldara Tozzi fears that a Dr. Guillaume Richard Dyorr is not what he seems and is after her daughter's inheritance."

  "Seems like a perfect match. They're both doctors, both respected, both friendly, and neither shows much passion beyond medicine."

  "How do you know so much?"

  "We have the research account for the Medical College of the Institute," Krij replied dryly.

  "Do you have all the important accounts in Thurene?"

  "We have a few—just the ones that require some techni­cal understanding for the accounts to make sense."

  "What about Dyorr?"

  "He's brilliant, and from what we see, as honest as the sun isn't. I don't know more than that. I've never met him, just audited his accounts. They're meticulous."

  "And Tozzi?"

  "She's a former korfball star who's as bright as she was athletic. All the beauty credits and genes can provide, and the same drive as her great-grandmother. Pleasant and cool. I've met her twice. I'd want her as a surgeon, but not as a friend."

  "Any reason why?"

  "Nothing I could put a finger on. Siendra has better judg­ment about people than I do, and she agrees. Marie Annette would never do anything illegal, though, or anything close to it. Not with that family and background." Krij pointed. "I think you ought to try the primitiva grigio."