Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I'm flattered." Reaux could hardly be entirely flattered to hear he was greatly valued by the other side of this ageless d‚tente. Small smile. "But don't tell them that."

  "By no means. I'll swear you're a son of a bitch and I detest negotiating with you. I'll exit past the media swarm frowning and angry. Do you have any clue what this portends?"

  "Nothing," Reaux said-which Brazis doubted. "Do you?"

  "Nothing." His own dance on the brink of the truth.

  "It may be some political hiccup on Earth itself. Such things are difficult to foresee. We can only make sure Concord is secure, from whatever internal sources disturbance might come. I ask again: you've heard nothing."

  Maybe it was time for a little half-truth. "The Council at Apex has absolutely nothing to gain from disruptions at Concord. This is the important point, it's always been true, it continues to be true, and you can assure Earth of this. The local Outsider Council, disregarding all the little trade questions we discuss with your Council, has an overriding interest in continuing stability here. We like our governor very well."

  A small tight smile, a little nod. "As we like our local Chairman."

  "If what's arrived is Earth's own problem trying to stir up something for home political value, it assuredly doesn't need to involve us. This ambassador-"

  "Gide is his name. Andreas Gide."

  "Mr. Gide should do his business, ask a few questions, take a physical tour, I suppose, to say he looked or advised. And then go home. They do this, don't they, every time they need to shore up their own political capital? `We have a mission to Concord, we've investigated subversive activity.' I've seen one before this, in my predecessor's time."

  "What did they do?"

  "They ask a few questions, take a physical tour. And go home. It scares hell out of Earth's internal factions, is my theory. Just meddling around out here near the ondat diverts attention from whatever they're up to at home, and it's far enough away nobody can possibly prove a thing. The game's always the same."

  Deep breath. "My records indicate some sort of Outsider trouble."

  "Did they actually say that?"

  "The word they used for the reason for their trip was consultations. I looked it up. They always say that precise word when they're investigating Outsider trouble."

  Certainly information worth logging. "I can assure you their excuses are one thing; their intentions are likely for domestic capital. This is the last place either your people or mine want controversy."

  "Antonio. I want Blunt Street quiet. Very quiet. Bottom line, I want no trouble they can point to."

  "Earth demonstrating its god-given authority does provoke a certain natural sentiment on Blunt."

  "I want it astonishingly quiet. I know you can do it. I can't stress enough how important it is that you do it."

  Clearly this was why Reaux had called him here: keep it quiet and we stay friends. Reaux was worried, whether on specific information or because it was the man's nature to worry extravagantly.

  "I advise you," Brazis said, "with the friendliest of intentions-keep your secret police off Blunt."

  "Then you need to have your own police thick down there. Quietly. Discreetly. Without our visitors noticing it. Without stirring up Kekellen's questions, God help us. You know me, Antonio. You know I mean it in the friendliest way, about trouble down there. My predecessor let Blunt get way out of hand, as was. They'll remember that. It's in your interest as well as ours not to let the old Blunt Street situation make any visible resurgence. We've made a great deal of progress in our two administrations. I don't want it all unraveled because now Earth gets some notion to find fault with your government over something that's no longer an issue here." tacts with other tiers of society might completely violate Outsider and Inner Worlds notions of security, but if Kekellen specifically queried a plumber on three-deck, he wanted an answer. University experts might get involved helping that plumber answer the letter, and there was a hotline to help such individuals, but that man had to answer in his own name, or Kekellen went on sending, jamming the system, to the detriment of all station business.

  That was another kind of ondat trouble, one he was sure their governor didn't need demonstrated in front of the incoming ship.

  "That's a point," Reaux said. "That is a point. But I hope you'll consult with us. At least cross-check what's being said. Or asked."

  "And shall we cross-check what's being said back and forth with this inbound ship?" Brazis asked.

  "I'm sure you'll know."

  "Oh, make it easy on us."

  Reaux heaved a visible, a desperate sigh. "Our offices have a good relationship. In all honesty, Antonio, I don't know why this is happening. But if trouble does turn up, yes, I will communicate with you. I hope it's reciprocal. If you hear anything."

  He leaned his arms on the chair. Considered the question. "All right. Let's have a valiant try at honesty. I have a situation I'm keeping a particular eye on, down on Blunt. You'll only mess things up if you send anybody down there to check up on it. If I identify a troublemaker, he'll be off the street for a few days on a warrant for spitting on the street. Our police are extremely efficient. Keep your people out, and I'll tell you what I find out. Do me another favor. You feed Kekellen enough basic information to keep him from querying our personnel and asking us questions we can't answer."

  "Oh, now-"

  "Nothing detrimental and nothing to do with that ship. We're busy just now. We have a developing situation down on the planet."

  "Of interest?"

  "Not political. Geological. We're about to have a new sea, give or take a few decades. Or maybe sooner. Maybe much sooner. I'm getting alarms from the geologists. I've sent a briefing to your staff. I'll send it to your office if you're curious."

  "I'll query them. I'm sure it'll be in a briefing." Reaux made those small movements, fussing with items on the desk, that began to say that new seas a decade removed were farther from his personal interest than that inbound ship or some fool of an activist down on Blunt. Given his doubtless full schedule, geology was likely very far from his interest. And the interview was over. "As for your person on Blunt, no difficulty, if you say so. I will appreciate your honesty."

  "We'll exchange information as it becomes available."

  "Excellent."

  "A pleasure." Brazis stood up and the governor stood up, mutual courtesy. They didn't shake hands. "Visit my office when this is over."

  The governor of Concord never visited him in his own territory. The protocols-and certainly that residual Earthborn fear-kept Reaux from accepting Outsider hospitality. It was an ages-old official situation.

  Reaux just smiled, as generations of governors had smiled benignly, and gave vague promises for a visit someday.

  The bubble they lived in had its set of balances, its food chain, and until a high-level Earth ship showed up, the governor's office was largely preoccupied with the internal business of its own society. The Earth governor never gave up a shred of his dignity, thin as it sometimes was, and never admitted that his power didn't effectively extend to the fifth level of the station he ran. The Outsider Chairman never gave up a shred of his power, which was vested, in his case, not only in a population vastly outnumbering the Earther veneer on his station, but in an office that could impose martial law on this station and forbid that inbound ship a docking, no matter their objections-if he wanted to use it.

  He didn't. He bowed to the governor, walked out, exchanging pleasant words with Ernst, and picked up his highly modded security escort on the way out.

  He swept down the hall, back through the ambush of competing news agencies. His frown was sincere, and annoyed, his answers terse.

  "Consultation," he said. "A frank exchange. No further comment." It was politic, for the news, that an Outsider Chairman not be seen smiling and happy after a visit to a governor.

  His own lift-car was waiting at the nearest station, with another of his security team aboard, holding that
car private, making sure it wasn't diverted or switched, it went without saying. He escaped the swarm of reporters and cameras, got in and sat down as the door shut, his two bodyguards standing. He heaved a sigh, as the car set into motion.

  And still didn't smile.

  He didn't have to tell the governor that Blunt Street was a potential problem. But the wide universe, of which he was well aware, in his capacity as local Chairman, had stresses and strains of far more import than the opinions of some young local idiot who'd read a political tract.

  That didn't mean some eloquent young idiot inspired by a random occurrence like this ship-call couldn't light a dangerous fire, and he knew it and Reaux knew it.

  More to the point, and the current thorn in his side, the Chairman General at Apex had sent one of his observers to Concord to carry on a very deep investigation of affairs on Blunt Street, two years ago. covertly inserting his agent, as the CG tended to move. Not covert enough to prevent him finding it out: whether that lapse was intentional or not, Brazis had no idea, but he viewed the CG's ongoing investigation as a potential problem and an inquiry from Earth as no help at all, if the two crossed.

  Magdallen was the agent's name-or at least the name he was going by on this mission.

  Time to talk to the Council's deeply lodged ferret. No question of it.

  He tapped in and contacted Dianne. "The Council's man," he said. "Down on Blunt. I want to talk to him immediately, in my office."

  "Yes, sir," Dianne said.

  He'd never talked to Magdallen. It had seemed politic to keep his distance and pretend he was unaware of Magdallen's activities, considering that the investigation might run under official doors as well as down on Blunt, and that they might even hope-the CG's personal, long-held hope-to find that he wasn't handling that dual office with complete efficiency. Just let the man rummage quietly about for the CG and leave without a word, he'd thought, previously. He'd had no intention of talking directly to Magdallen, less of appearing to put pressure on him to suppress whatever findings he might make.

  The ship's arrival changed things. If Earth was investigating at such great trouble and expense, it was time to ask questions of the Council agent and give certain clear directions. Missed communication had done harm enough in human affairs.

  Ardath wasn't on Procyon's personal tap-she couldn't be, since the nanoceles in his body were government issue and classified, so classified they'd demolished the output communications tap he'd gotten in his Freethinker days, in those few months of breaking away from family influence and doing stupid teenaged things. Nowadays he couldn't explain his lack of ordinary personal communication to the universe at large-well, at least he couldn't give the real story on it. Certain friends suspected him of going tapless out of respect for his parents' religion; even his sister had accused him of lying about having a tap and just not wanting to hear from her, the family black sheep.

  Oh, he'd gotten one, he'd admitted to her finally, but it had broken down when he went to work for the government. There was a government reason he didn't get another one. He didn't want to talk about it. It was upsetting to him.

  If that didn't tell her the government had wiped the output portion, he'd thought when he said it, she was deaf to hints.

  Then she'd started worrying about him. Then she'd understood just a little of the constraint he was under, and forgave him. She could contact him if she needed.

  And as things had gotten to be, even without the output tap most people had, he could still usually find her, because Ardath was by no means a quiet presence on the street.

  He hadn't made it to the desserts at La Lune Noir yet. He'd decided, after taking her name in vain on the gift card, that it was a good idea to let his sister know about it, on the exceedingly remote chance Ardath, nee Arden, had uncharacteristically intended a filial moment, a gift of her own for the occasion. They all lived their little fantasy of family, peaceful so long as Arden believed what she believed, that he was a cog in the bureaucracy, so long as the parents believed what they believed, that they'd brought up good, ordinary children and that Arden would come around to their view of the universe the way her brother had. The way it didn't do at all to have the parents see beneath the scenery, it didn't at all do to have Ardath's lively curiosity or her sense of indignation engaged on his case.

  So he went through the usual dance of not looking for her, just happening into and out of her usual places-at this hour it was cocktails and dinner, indisputably, and he let slip he was meeting her, dropping the word in three different high-priced restaurants.

  "Procyon?"

  Isis. He stopped, among the evening traffic of minor Fashionables. He cut a fine enough, though quiet, figure. But this was one of the Style, whose glittering gold bodysuit used a drifting glow to trick the eye into believing it saw skin. Green-eyed Isis hailed him on the common street, merely brushing his arm as she melted aside into the neon of the Astral Plane. Her music was her own. Her body moved to it, hips swaying, a liquid vision in retreat.

  "Procyon." Sweetly. It was Spider at his elbow, then, one of Ardath's intimates. Originally male, Spider. Now even his lovers weren't sure. "Are you looking for Ardath?"

  "Maybe."

  Spider, whose naturally black skin glistened with sparks of color, likewise brushed by him and touched his sleeve. "A message?"

  "Oh, a visit with my sister. Family business."

  Spider, beautiful dark eminence, nodding with plumes, gave a flourish toward the Plane. Wait for her inside, that meant, and Procyon walked casually into the not-quite-door of the place-a set of reflective columns, light dimming progressively to eye-teasing shades of magenta and blue and deep shadow. The floor disappeared into black and reappeared in blue around a turn. Rhythmic vibrations flooded from the flooring up to the bones-enticing a customer to switch his commercial tap on and get the music from the local relay. The vibrations quivered against the skin, little discharges from the pillars. And from overhead, puffs of air teased and caressed.

  He didn't tap in. He didn't hear the subliminal commercials or the music. He went to the bar, ordered wine, slipped his hand into the reader that debited his account twice the price of anywhere else on Grozny, and scanned the establishment.

  The clientele ranged from Fashionables to bankers, elaborate elegants with fiery tracings on bare skin, and the occasional Earther in a gray pin-striped suit, zipped close and collared in sober black. There were living plumes, lately: that was the new chic, replacing hair. There were skin-shadings, finger-caps, and exotic hair-mods. A bony young man with magenta hair drew cold stares with a pair of green glowing-soled boots that left lime green tracks where he walked-not a happy sight, that boy's style, tragedy waiting to happen, if certain Stylists met him, but it was also his choice to be here, and one wondered if he knew the notice he gained was so highly unfavorable.

  The wine arrived. He'd ordered a middling Outer Worlds Sauvignon, twenty a glass. It was, indeed, middling quality on his own scale, but in the Plane the average customer paid such prices un-questioningly, not for the wine, but for the spectacle of the elegants and the Fashionables, the walking adverts of various upscale emporia-not to mention the grotesques, whose choice was body-sculpting and augmentation of a risky but trend-setting sort. Spider verged on that class. Many successful Stylists did-the difference between Stylist and grotesque being the individual's sense of where that tasteful line was-and the general response of the Trend to the whole. Spider set trends for his admirers. So did Isis. Eyes fixed on them when they crossed the room, and people who wondered what shop sold what they wore needed only scan the fashion news of the week, and wonder if they dared. Shops thrived on Spider's patronage, and happily claimed to be the origin of certain unique items.

  A stir attended a new arrival into the Plane. Heads turned. His turned more slowly.

  Ardath was amazing. The plain black suit might have graced a corporate Earth auditor, except it glossed like satin and had an open throat. To answer their mother's
question, yes, she was modified: patterns came and went on her skin, a delicate surface glow of flickering pale violet and gold. Her hair had the texture of straight silk thread, skeins of shining black silk done up in twists of lavender and blue and gold. Her eyes, with augmentation that didn't, at the moment, show, saw him plainly in dimmest light, no question. She rippled her surface glow, a little shiver of pale color, as she glanced at him and recognized his presence.

  But then the cat-suited owner of the establishment intercepted her. She let the owner take her hand, and walked about with him, being shown a table set and waiting for her, with a low centerpiece of crystal and exotic blooms. She touched the chair, smiled in acceptance, caressed the owner's arm, and made, perhaps, a request.

  Wine arrived for her, not, he could be sure, the middling one. A handsome young waiter brought it, and Ardath sat and sipped it, listening to the owner's passionate monologue as he sat opposite at the table.