for his genome, I'd say he should be brought fully inside.'
'Are you suggesting probationer status for him?' Sandusky asked a bit sharply.
'I didn't say that, Jerome,' Anisimovna returned coolly. She and Sandusky had crossed swords entirely too often in the past, and she wasn't certain whether he really opposed the notion or secretly hoped she would suggest it and be supported over his opposition. It was always risky to nominate a normal for probationer status, and he might be hoping this one would blow up, as others had, with the egg landing on her face this time.
'If this operation succeeds, and if he's as integral to its success as I expect him to be,' she continued after a brief pause, 'then it might be time for the Council to consider whether or not he should be offered that status. I don't personally know the man well enough to predict how he would react. But he does have a reputation for effectiveness, and he could be even more effective for us as a probationer brought more fully into the real picture.'
'We'll cross that bridge when-and if-we come to it,' Detweiler decreed. 'In the meantime, you and Isabel undoubtedly have a lot of details to take care of before you depart. I'll be meeting with both of you-and with some of the rest of you-privately over the next few days. For now, though, I believe we're done, and dinner is waiting.'
He started to push back from the desk, but Bardasano raised one hand in a respectful attention-requesting gesture. She was, by almost any conventional standard, the most junior individual in the room, but her professional competence-and ruthlessness-made her lack of conventional seniority meaningless, and Detweiler settled back.
'Yes, Isabel? You had a question?'
'Not about the Cluster,' she said. 'I do have one question concerning Rat Poison, however, and I thought I'd raise it while we were all here, since it may affect Jerome's planning, as well.'
'And that question is?'
'As you know, most of our current scenarios for Rat Poison are built around the use of the new nanotech. We've run several test operations to be sure it works-the most prominent was the Hofschulte business on New Potsdam. As you also know,' she didn't so much as glance at Sandusky, who had been responsible for that particular 'test operation,' 'I had my doubts about the advisability of using the new technology in an assassination attempt which was bound to attract as much attention and comment as that one did. In this instance, it appears my concerns were misplaced, however, since there's no evidence anyone as much as suspects what really happened.
'The question in my mind, however, is whether or not we want to consider making additional use of the same technique in the interim. I can foresee several possible sets of circumstances where it could be very useful. In particular, according to Jerome's reports, our primary contact in the Havenite Department of State is almost certainly going to require a completely untraceable weapon sometime in the next few weeks or months.'
'Well, this is an interesting change of mind,' Sandusky remarked astringently.
'It isn't really a change of mind at all, Jerome,' Bardasano said calmly. 'My concern at the time was that someone would figure out how it was done, but the Andies have run every test they could think of on Hofschulte-or, rather, his cadaver-without, apparently, turning up a thing. If they haven't found anything after looking this long and this hard, then the R&D types may actually have known what they were talking about this time. Which,' she added dryly, 'always comes as a pleasant and unanticipated surprise for us unfortunate field grunts.'
Several people, including Renzo Kyprianou, whose bio weapon research teams had developed the technology in question, laughed.
'If this technique works as well as it did in our tests, and really is this close to impossible to detect,' she continued more seriously, 'then it might be time for us to begin making judicious use of it in special cases.' She shrugged. 'Even if they figure out someone is deliberately triggering the attacks, there's not much they can do about it. Not, at least, without security arrangements which would effectively hamstring their own operations. And I can think of several prominent individuals in both Manticore and Haven whose sudden and possibly spectacular demises could be quite beneficial to us. Especially if we can convince both sides that the other one, not some third party, is responsible.'
'I'll have to think about that,' Detweiler said, after a moment. 'I felt your original arguments for restraint had considerable merit. But what you've just suggested also has merit. Keeping something like this in reserve, as a total surprise, is always tempting. But if you keep it in reserve too long, then you never use it at all.'
He pursed his lips for several seconds, then shrugged.
'Jerome, you and I will have to discuss this. Give some thought to the pros and cons and sit down with Isabel before she leaves. Work out a list of potential targets-not a big one, I don't want to flash this capability around any more obviously then we have to, however unlikely it is that someone will figure out how it works. At the very least, though, we can put the groundwork in place and have Renzo's people begin looking for the best... vehicles.'
'Of course, Albrecht.'
'Good!' Detweiler smacked both palms on his desktop and stood. 'And on that note, let's get out of here. Evelina's brought in a brand new chef, and I think all of you are going to be amazed at what he can do with Old Earth rock lobster!'
Chapter Three
The interior of Protector's Cathedral was like some huge, living jewel box.
Honor sat in the Stranger's Aisle to the left of the nave, immediately adjacent to the sanctuary. She, her parents and siblings, James MacGuiness, Nimitz, and Willard Neufsteiler, all of them in Harrington green, shared the Aisle's first pew with the Manticoran and Andermani ambassadors and consuls from each of the other members of the Manticoran Alliance. The two rows of pews behind them were solidly packed with officers in the uniform of the Protector's Own: Aldredo Yu, Warner Caslet, Cynthia Gonsalves, Harriet Benson-Dessouix and her husband Henri, Susan Phillips, and dozens of others who had escaped from the prison planet Hades with Honor. Their uniforms and the diplomats' off-world formal attire, in the styles of more than half a dozen different worlds, stood out sharply, but each of them also wore the dark, violet-black armbands or veils of Grayson-style mourning, as well.
That touch of darkness ran through the cathedral like a thread of sorrow, all the more obvious beside the rich, jewel-toned colors of formal Grayson attire, and Honor tasted its echo in the emotions surging about her. The emotional overtones of the Church of Humanity Unchained were always like some deep, satisfying well of renewal and faith, one she could physically experience thanks to her empathic link to Nimitz. But today there was that strand of sadness, flowing from every corner of the vast cathedral.
Brilliant pools of dense, colored sunlight poured down through the huge stained-glass windows of the eastern wall, and more spilled down like some chromatic waterfall through the enormous stained-glass skylight above the sanctuary. She tasted the grief reaching out from those deep, still pools of light and from the drifting, light-struck tendrils of incense on quiet feet of organ music. It came in different shapes and gradations, from people who had been personally touched by Howard Clinkscales to people who had known him only as a distant figure, yet it was also touched with a sense of celebration. A swelling faith that the man whose death they had come to mourn, and whose life they had come to celebrate, had met the Test of his life in triumph.
She gazed at the coffin, draped in both the planetary flag of Grayson and the steading flag of Harrington. The silver staff of Clinkscales' office as Harrington's regent and the sheathed sword he had carried as the commanding general of Planetary Security before the Mayhew Restoration lay crossed atop the flags, gleaming in the spill of light. So many years of service, she thought. So much capacity for growth and change. So much ability to give and so much kindness, hidden behind that crusty, curmudgeonly exterior he'd cultivated so assiduously. So much to miss.
The organ music swelled, then stopped, and a quiet stir ran through the cathedral as old-fashioned mechanical latches clacked loudly and its ancient, bas-relief doors swung ponderously open. For a moment there was complete and total silence, and then the organ reawoke in a surge of majestic power and the massed voices of the Protector's Cathedral Choir burst into soaring song.
The Cathedral Choir was universally regarded as the finest choir of the entire planet. That was saying quite a lot for a world which took its sacred music so seriously, but as its glorious voices rose in a hymn not of sorrow but of triumph, it demonstrated how amply it deserved its reputation. The torrent of music and trained voices poured over Honor in a magnificent tide which seemed to simultaneously focus and amplify the upwelling cyclone of the
