Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  Nasty line of thought. He wasn't going to let himself make that fatal mistake. Wasn't going to associate with anybody outside the walls. Wasn't going to get fired. No way. No relationships outside the Project. If you were going to be a tap, you had to come in young and full of hormones, that was one thing, and that fact gave the Project trouble. He'd applied just for a job, his hope when he made the try: just a job and a good salary, in computers. But his application kept getting shunted through to other departments. When his application had gotten up as high as it could get, and when he'd found out he was under consideration for the Project, he'd been stunned; when he'd learned he might become one of the taps, he'd been scared as hell.

  But attracted by the pay scale. Give it that. Attracted by the security. So attracted he'd been like every other tap that had come in from beyond the security wall: he'd been seeing the glamor and ignoring the other facts of his proposed life.

  But when he was actually about to get the tap, Brazis himself had had a sobering talk with him about Rule 12. He'd been bone-ignorant, but still ambitious. Having seen his parents trying to make ends meet on two salaries, and seeing what he could make if he went that track, he was blinded by the prospect. He'd sworn on a stack of mission statements that he'd remain faithful and true to the department, avoiding all outside entanglements forever and ever, amen.

  They'd run a further battery of drug, health, and psych tests and opted him in, seeing something in him, he supposed, that he never could figure, and completely ignoring the Freethinker business, which he'd thought would be a deal-breaker. He'd been eclectic in his studies, unable to settle, except for the certificate in computers. He'd hoped for employment in the technical wing and ended up opted in behind the security wall as that most rarefied of Project entities, a tap.

  Then, Marak having made his pick, contrary to all Project hopes, Brazis had had a quiet fit and called him in for another interview, asked him excruciatingly pointed and personal questions for an hour and stared at him for another few minutes as though he were something under a microscope. He'd tried hard, since then, not to have another interview with Brazis until he'd put a few successful years behind him in the job he'd risen to. Maybe a successful paper or two. Maybe a geological memo going somewhere. He wanted something extravagantly positive in his record, to justify Brazis's signing off on his assignment.

  He knew he was bright. He knew he was incredibly lucky. He knew that an eclectic academic background was one of the assets that had gotten notice from the Project, but utterly outrageous chance had landed him in the assignment he had. He personally liked Marak. if you could like somebody on his scale. he more than liked him: he found in that strange, calm personality a stability that he'd never had, a matching curiosity that opened his mind to question after question, an insatiable hunger for knowledge he'd never known could be accessible. But now that he'd found his place in life, he absolutely dreaded anything that could threaten that good fortune. Meetings with old friends and his extended family always left him anxious, remembering what he'd been, where he'd been headed, where he was now, and how fragile the whole structure was.

  Crystal eggs, parental expectations, and the cold, impenetrable wall behind which the PO worked. He didn't want the PO raking through his immediate relations. or making trouble for Ardath.

  Damn, he wished he hadn't had to tap out on Marak today when he had. He hoped there'd be a perfectly functioning new camera waiting for him tomorrow. He could imagine those vistas, the red river gorge, the long steep fall to the pans on the other side, and the trembling knife-edge of the arcing ridge between. He could imagine the slow movement of tectonic plates that had created the place, the flow of lava in geologic ages before plates became locked in place, before the hammerfall had set them free again.

  "I always see you alone," his waitress said, picking up the remnant of his dinner. "Are they friends of yours?" With a nod at the other table.

  "Old acquaintances."

  The young woman lingered hopefully, stayed to talk, and Procyon, at first irritated, not wanting any closer communication to spoil his nonrelationship with his favorite waitress, still fell into her game. There was no departmental rule against sociability, and he liked her well enough-played at her little flirtation, but only just, and, mindful of Ardath and her kindness to the hopefuls, he didn't give her any real encouragement to escalate the game. She was maybe twenty. Bright. She got good tips. She'd find whoever she was looking for. Someday.

  She offered him dessert, gratis. As if he were Ardath. He didn't know what to do about that. He hoped he hadn't encouraged her too much-that she didn't have further plans.

  He made his selection, a burnt cream. "I don't think my patronage is going to bring in floods of Fashionables."

  "No," she said with a wink. "But you know people that will."

  Damn. Damn and double-damn. It wasn't his personal attractiveness. It was Ardath the girl was courting.

  Tag, Ardath would say, long-distance, you're it.

  No sealed globe. A light panel and rows of orchids. Forgiving plants-they survived drought long enough to live when business was routine, and they survived being overwatered and overtended when a crisis came. That meant they survived in Brazis's office. Nothing else could.

  A crisis had arrived, and he watered his plants, one and all, distracted into the hope of a bud stem emerging. The new cattaleya had proven amazingly cooperative, even luxuriant. The oncidium had produced a new plant, and rested, and now that trouble showed up, and a temporary glut of water, he was sure a number of the rest of the collection would soon think about blooming.

  He fed his darlings. He carefully removed an old leaf. He discarded the detritus and wiped down the lighted shelves himself. Housekeeping, fearing for their lives, refused to touch them. He refused to have cleaner-bots anywhere in the office.

  Agent Magdallen had been busy when he called on him to come in. Busy, Magdallen had had the temerity to inform him.

  Agent Magdallen might have been extremely busy, Brazis began to think, ever since that inbound ship made the news.

  But his plainclothesmen had nabbed the man and outright laid down an ultimatum: come in, or spend the next ten days in confinement.

  "Agent Magdallen is here," Dianne informed him sweetly-his dragon at the gate, Dianne, who would also have assured that Magdallen entered the secure offices inconspicuously, on some other office's summons, and without untidy items in his possession, or she'd break his fingers.

  What happened inside this set of offices, Governor Reaux's security couldn't penetrate, often and earnestly as it tried.

  The door opened. A weary-looking older Fashionable in a black coat came in-stood for a moment observing the orchid-tending.

  "You needed me?" One shoulder straightened. The other did. Magdallen stood a little taller. Brazis watched the reflection in an aptly placed mirror strip, and saw hawk-nosed Magdallen grow subtly younger and slimmer by the moment. The long hair slowly lost its white streaks in favor of healthy black.

  Needed him. Hell. Magdallen had never been on his needed list, among gifts the CG had sent him, but he was stuck with him. Talent came in from the Chairman General and a local chairman dealt with the offering until it decided to go away and spy elsewhere.

  "This ship," Brazis said, sparing a sidelong glance. A very sharp glance. "Do you know why this ship is coming in?"

  "No."

  Short and sweet. "Not our local business?"

  "I'm sure I don't know. I can't examine its origins. Or its passenger lists."

  Magdallen was here on a ghost hunt, and was surely powerful, but not as powerful as Magdallen thought, that was the point Brazis meant to make.

  "Tell me. Does `sir' ever pass your lips?"

  "Sir."

  The tone did it. It finally did it. Brazis put down the watering pitcher on the edge of the credenza and brushed off his hands, facing the subject squarely.

  "Agent Magdallen."

  "Sir."

  One
suspected sarcasm. Magdallen might be used to local authorities running scared of him and his backers. Brazis didn't personally run scared of man or devil. As head of the PO, technically entitled to a seat on the High Council, he didn't flinch at an inquisitive auditor, not in any particular. Nor did he worry too much who was currently sitting behind the Chairman General's desk at Apex. CGs came and went, and might fall from office. So might a local chairman; but from his position as Project Director, only Ian and Luz acting together could remove him, so long as he lived.

  "Don't parse missing negatives with me, Agent Magdallen. You may have come in here with the High Council's blessing and a kiss on the cheek from the Chairman General himself, but I assure you the Council won't appreciate a foul-up here, and if that ship and you or your business here have any remote causal relationship that's going to touch me in either of my offices, I want to know it before I set my local security into motion. Let's not treat Earth authority to the spectacle of two Outsider investigations tangled in each other's operations, shall we not?"

  "I remind you you have no binding authority over me."

  "No binding authority. But a preventative authority-that I do have, and you're within a hair's breadth of discovering it. You may be the Chairman General's personal valet for all I care, but you're a damned nuisance to the Project Director in this moment of crisis, and if you're determined not to cooperate with our needs, you're about to annoy me in ways that won't possibly benefit your career in the future-trust me. I want to know definitively what you're nosing about in on Blunt, I want to know why you have at least two apartments and two alternate identities down there. I want to know the gist of that investigation and what it's turned up, and especially I want to judge for myself whether Earth might have launched an investigatory mission bearing some remote relationship to what you're doing. My clearance is higher than yours. In my capacity as Project Director, I want to know. It's moved beyond your orders from Apex and into a crisis on my desk. Is that a clear enough request for you?"

  The business about the alternate identities was a little secret Magdallen hadn't expected to have laid in front of him, Brazis bet on that. There had been just a little change of expression.

  "Someone else should know," Magdallen said slowly, as if he'd reached a decision. "The Chairman General said you were capable in a need-to-know situation."

  "I'm incredibly flattered. Compliments to the CG's foresight in telling you so. I assure you this is that situation. Talk. What the hell are you doing messing with the Freethinkers?"

  "I don't know what this ship is. I hear the word ambassador. I think that's cover. I think this intrusion is more inquisitory than representative. I'm not sure what agency might have sent this person and given him this cover."

  "And the Freethinkers?"

  "Rumors run the little channels, among the petty smugglers. There's been a whisper of illicits that Earth's detected at Orb. It's possible that's brought an inquiry in."

  "Smuggling." It was too ordinary. Brazis didn't buy it. He hadn't liked Magdallen before, and he liked him less for hedging after promising him the truth. But in truth, there was one kind of smuggling that would involve Earth in two seconds. "Are you talking about biostuffs?"

  A hesitation. "Yes."

  That actually could explain it. It wasn't, however, the only conceivable answer, even for Magdallen's presence, and he wished he hadn't steered Magdallen so conveniently into suggesting it was the obvious-and maybe misleading-problem. "All right. So I'll play along with this theory. But it's a theory, not ascending to fact. What else do you know?"

  "Nothing, at this point. I must point out, sir, your bringing me in like this jeopardizes my several identities and makes it less likely I'll find out anything."

  "I'm sure you'll recover handily. Know nothing, do you, after all this time ferreting about in our understructure?"

  "Nothing solid, I regret to say. I'm pursuing the theory I named."

  Brazis saw he wasn't going to get cooperation, and would probably get a cover story if he pressed. He hesitated to divert Magdallen's energies by giving him one more falsehood to manufacture and maintain. And if he gave the man space, and let him know he was allowing him that, he might get more from the man in future. "All right. Chase your private theories. Do your job-whatever it is. But hear this. I want information from you in return for my patience. And if you make any policy-threatening move without telling me, I'll send my own message to the CG, and it won't be understanding of your difficulties. I'll warn you now, I'm doing a quiet crackdown on the street. You're hearing this advisory a quarter hour before I send the pick-them-up message-an hour, if you'd answered my original summons. If the pickup is likely to disrupt your operations, you'd better identify those operations to me before I give that order, and I'll make a few careful exceptions."

  "Go light on MacDougal's, between 10th and 11th. I have operations there."

  "Noted. I know it well. Here's a reciprocal bit of advice. The governor's a friendly. We don't want to lose him. If you think to the contrary, say so now, and we'll talk about it fully and frankly."

  "I don't contradict that opinion."

  "Good. Now let me give you some information. Earth may well want to lose this governor, but I assure you we don't. His fall from grace would generate all sorts of difficulties. Not insurmountable ones, but damned inconvenient, and apt to have repercussions. He's upset local power games, made some factions very angry, had a major falling-out when he entered the financial games that were the eternal rule here, and powerfully annoyed the clique that runs the banks. In the process, he's done a great deal to put the brakes on the graft that's gone on here for generations. Consequently he has enemies, none from Earth that we know about, and I doubt Earth cares that much what he does; but there are locals with strong motives, shall we say, to make him look bad while that ship is pursuing whatever business it came to pursue. Not an advantageous result for your career, Agent Magdallen, if you should knock over that stack of breakables. So stay out of the way of my operations, if you don't have anything to do with this ship. See to it that whatever you value down on Blunt stays invisible and inactive for the duration. That's the long and the short of it. Your opposite number among the local Earthers is just as likely to go after suspects on his own list, given a little free rein by the governor. Be discreet."

  "Dortland"-that was to say, Reaux's chief of security-"seems to have no idea I'm here."

  That was worth a long, cold stare. "In my local experience, Agent Magdallen, saying someone has no idea is a very dangerous presumption. An equally dangerous presumption's that you know all my agents. Or the governor's. Or even Dortland's, who may be a separate operation from us or the governor. I've long suspected that. Do you think I'm a fool, Agent Magdallen?"

  "No, sir." More subdued, a far more cautious answer.

  "I'm not a fool, Agent Magdallen."

  "I assure you of the same, sir."

  "Good. Good. So what's my ultimate answer, from you, as to why petty smuggling would bring an answer clear from Earth?"

  "Smuggling of biostuffs, and maybe not petty. That's not theory, Mr. Chairman. It is going on. I know that. Earth is upset, but not panic-stricken. Nothing got through their barriers. Nothing was ever directed at them. I can at least assure you this has nothing to do with your governor. And I'm somewhat doubtful the ship's visit offers him any personal threat."

  "If you learn any differently about their business here, I want word. I don't insist you come here, but I want word, and I want it within the hour you learn it."

  "I trust-in your own expertise, sir-you know that's not always operationally possible."

  "Call it a moral goal, Agent Magdallen. Attempt to achieve it. I'm sure you have unguessed capabilities."

  A little nod, a kind of bow. "I'll keep in touch, sir."

  "Good." Brazis picked up the watering can off the slate-surfaced cabinet. "Thirty minutes, Agent Magdallen, and certain people will start disappearing off the streets for the dur
ation of this visit, or longer. I trust your scattered people and interests will respond to the warning I'm giving you. Do we agree?"

  A little nod from Magdallen. "I can manage that. I'll trust if I do say release someone-someone will somehow escape."

  Brazis looked at the man. This wasn't a fool, or a man who'd push him-now. As well have an agreement with him, whatever he thought his powers were. "I think we can manage that. Contact me at need. Perhaps we can manage a much closer working relationship hereafter, Agent Magdallen. Since I can safely assume your target isn't me, you can somewhat reliably assume mine isn't you."