Emissaries from the Dead

hostage. That I recognize as disgusting, and that erases any possibility that I might show you a little understanding.

“Still, sir, that’s not your crime.

“Your crime,” I said, making the word explosive, “was the embezzlement of time- debt owed to the Dip Corps. That belonged to all humanity. You misappropriated it and spent it extravagantly, for your own pleasure, overpaying for the services being provided.”

I held the next thought as long as I could, letting it take shape in the air between us.

His mouth jerked without sound, forming protests that wouldn’t have done him much good.

I said, “Unless I cancel a certain dispatch already in the hytex net, and set to be transmitted to the Dip Corps tomorrow, New London’s going to want all of that time repaid. Now, they could just apply it back to the contracts of all the women involved, but I’ll make sure they realize that this presents a tremendous bookkeeping headache and a source of all sorts of potential legal arguments involving the best way to distinguish your unauthorized little incentives from any legitimate time-bonuses the indentures involved might genuinely deserve. I’ll also point out that going after everybody involved would just create the kind of scandal better off avoided, without providing sufficient deterrent to other administrators capable of selling out their responsibilities to satisfy their hormones.

“No,” I concluded, “once I’m done presenting the case, they’ll probably just add all that stolen time to your own contract. Years. Probably decades, by the time the punitive fines, and any evidence of similar misbehavior at your prior postings, are properly tallied. Possibly more than you can ever live to pay back with the normal kind of assignment, even with regular rejuvenation. The Dip Corps will want every minute of that value returned, so they’ll select some unpleasant high-risk/low-prestige assignment nobody else wants, someplace much worse than One One One, and force you to pay back as many as those wasted years as you can earning hardship and hazard bonuses. Break your back and your health and you might be able to return to someplace offering the comforts of civilization in as little as ten to twenty years Mercantile. Personally, I don’t think you’re likely to make it that far, unless you’re lucky enough to find yourself working for a horny administrator, male, female, or neut, who finds you attractive enough for extra credit. Depending on the awfulness of the environment where you find yourself working, you might find yourself volunteering for services far removed from your own personal preferences. I don’t think you’ll be finicky.”

Gibb had become dangerously calm. “You’re a vindictive little bitch, aren’t you?”

“I’m surprised you have to ask.”

The non-ambassador was now just a vessel holding a massive potential explosion, held inside him by the thinnest layers of skin and civilization. A little more prodding and he might have assaulted me, even tried to throw me off the bridge. But he was a diplomat, well versed in the science of subtle nuance; and he’d caught the escape route I’d mentioned in passing. “You said ‘Unless.’”

“Correct. Your career’s over in any event, but I’m still willing to contain this. You can forgo the disgrace and move on to a nice quiet retirement on the world of your choice.”

He growled. “What do you want?”

“You can start with everything you know about Peyrin Lastogne.”

He stared at me for the longest time, as if hoping for a more difficult assignment. And then he slumped. “Long before you got here, I tried to figure him out and failed.”

“He’s no legal advocate. If he was he’d be listed in the Dip Corps files.”

Gibb didn’t look at me again. “That’s right. He would be. But there’s no background for him at all. I can’t even find anybody who’ll confess to cutting his orders.”

“What is he, then?”

There was no bitterness in his laugh, but no joy, either—just contempt at my pretense of naivete.

“Come on, Counselor. This can’t be your first embassy.”

***

I left him there, the sole remaining inhabitant of the installation he had commanded, surrounded by nothing but darkness and uncertainty and the vain hope that I’d reward his cooperation with mercy. He didn’t call after me as I descended the net, or as I made my way alone across the network of bridges.

Leaving Gibb alone with the possible wreckage of his career, his reputation, and his life, could be seen as the moral equivalent of murder. After all, the vast abyss below Hammocktown had always offered the easiest of all possible exits. Between now and dawn it wouldn’t take much more than a single dark impulse to drive him toward the easy out. It would take a lot more to make him reject that option in favor of an unpromising dawn.

Some might say I’d acted irresponsibly, by leaving him here to face the consequences alone. But I had left him with that ounce of hope, and a man capable of doing the things he had done was a man too full of himself to believe he could be betrayed by that ounce of hope. In the next few hours he’d plot exit strategies, denials, defenses, and deals he could broker with everybody capable of testifying against him. He’d persuade himself a thousand times that he had it all in hand and he’d tell himself a thousand and one times that he did not.

His long night journeying between hope and despair would not be an easy one. He’d spend it with nothing but recriminations and rationalizations for company.

I didn’t believe he’d jump.

But he did deserve to come damn close.

A voice called up out of the darkness. “Ready, Andrea?”

“Whenever you are,” I said.

A telescoping ladder emerged from the darkness down below, entering the empty space that had been my tent, and offering me an escape from the empty nets of Hammocktown. I grabbed a rung with both hands and, planting a heel against each riser, slid down to the skimmer’s cargo platform.

Gibb had been right about one thing: I was getting better at this kind of maneuver. Not that I found it any more fun. Though my gait remained steady as I climbed over the rail and joined the Porrinyards forward, my hands were still shaking.

They said, “He didn’t take that at all well.”

“No, he didn’t.”

I’d asked them to monitor the questioning. On the off-chance Gibb had turned violent, or my friend the Heckler had made another attempt on my life, they would have been near enough to intercede. I can’t claim that having them down below, looking out for me, had made me feel any more secure. I had no problem believing them capable of protecting me against Gibb. I wasn’t nearly as complacent about their chances against the Heckler. But returning to their side came as a relief anyway. I was beginning to need them.

“Where to?” they asked.

“Circle. I’ll figure out where we’re going in a minute.”

I don’t know how long we wandered in darkness. It could not have been more than a few minutes. But my mind pored over the same ground from so many different angles that I would not have been surprised to open my eyes on a new world, millennia hence, where all my problems had entered the realm of history.

In the meantime I thought of Lastogne.

I was pretty sure I knew what he was. That, I’d suspected for some time. I’d dealt with people like him many times before. They were spawned by the very nature of the human animal. And Gibb’s grudging testimony had only confirmed my own educated guesses. But what kind of spy advertises his place in the order of things? A saboteur from some faction inside the Confederacy would have equipped himself with an exhaustively forged identity or risked being expelled back to New London by now. Was he some kind of political officer? Or had the sabotage itself been part of his assignment?

Gibb had provided me with what little he could. New London keeps telling me he’s authorized to be here, but they refuse to give me any particulars. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s dangerous.

There was something else that bothered me. One of the little personal credos I’d shared with Gibb: Do you know what murder investigators call a man like you who upon questioning fails to mention his sexual relationship with a murder victim? The most likely suspect.

Gibb had thrown it back in my face, with that bombshell about a relationship between Warmuth and Lastogne.

Lastogne hadn’t said a damned thing. He’d criticized Warmuth’s idealism, said she’d had an excessive hunger for novelty, even expressed dismay when told of her relationship with D’Onofrio…but when asked what he felt about