“Lord,” said Lysette, and she was silent, too.
“We’ve done what we can to locate him,” which came to absolutely nothing, “and we’re still doing what we can. But it doesn’t look hopeful.”
Bernadette had clasped her flowered shawl so tightly around her shoulders that the pin had broken and was hanging loose. She was not aware of it.
“The best thing you can do now,” said Hartley, “is not to interrupt me in my task. Understand?”
“But … but what are you doing?” asked Lysette, whose mind had an unfortunate tendency to go to the root of a problem. “What can you do? Haven’t all shuttles been forbidden to leave for downhill?”
“Miss Verdigris, at the risk of being rude, I would remind you that you have no actual right to be here. I’ve already told you more than I should. In return, I would ask that you leave now and let me work.”
The two women looked at each other. They didn’t move from their chairs.
Hartley said quietly, “Do you really want me to call the EPs to take you out? They wouldn’t be pleasant.”
They looked at each other again, and finally Lysette nodded. She stood up. Bernadette walked slowly toward the door, still clutching her shawl. Lysette turned and said, “I can’t promise we won’t be back, Deacon Quince.”
“Actually it’s Officer Quince,” he said mildly. “My other rank is higher and takes precedence.”
She followed Will’s sister out.
Hartley saw to it that his door was locked, then went to his desk and sat back in his chair to try to relax. He’d been far more upset by this than he cared to show, mostly because he was powerless in this situation and he knew it. He tried to manage all situations so that he was never powerless, under any circumstances—it was absolutely necessary that the options always be his—but in this case, there was nothing he could do. He wanted to get Willie back, but the bar-singer was right; the shuttles were off- limit, and that restriction was not going to be lifted because Hartley Quince wanted to find a Sangaree sergeant. Whatever he could talk Amo into, he couldn’t talk him into that, not yet, and he himself didn’t have the power— not yet.
Nor would the Ecclesiastical Council look kindly on any request from the person whose assignment it had been to find the Sawyer Crown before the Diamond got it. Opal could and would deny that the Crown was there, but everyone knew perfectly well that it was. And that Adrian Mercati had it.
A double screwup. Hart tapped his fingers on his desk, feeling that sense, that thing he hadn’t felt in years, crawling through him; that thing that said they could do what they wanted to him and there was nothing he could do about it.
He put up a mental wall. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it would hold until he could take action on it. There were drugs from Baret Station that he kept in a floor-box under the expensive carpet beneath his feet, although he preferred not to take them unless no other idea presented itself. A better move would be to call in one of his direct-reports and convince him that he’d done a rotten job on something he hadn’t done a rotten job on. Maybe later, when his need was more sharp.
He walked over to one of the pictures on his wall, a picture of Old Earth. Willie, where are you now? Hartley was aware that one of the more mercenary members of the ecclesiastical police might have been a better choice as his agent; but it was so much more fun to have Willie, who tried so hard. You put a wall here and one there and watched him skitter around. Besides, you could never be sure of people who operated only on the money principle—there were always others around to offer them more, and they might not stay bought. Whereas Willie’s efforts to do the right thing were absolutely reliable.
Besides, he was the only person Hartley’d known well when he was young who was still alive.
“Shit,” he said softly in Sangaree.
A line of new tech-applicants spilled out of the ship at Diamond Transport. They were herded into a bunch by the side of the bay and left to mingle while the interviewing process began. None of the Diamond supervisors wanted to interview job seekers at Baret Station any more—this close to Blackout, leaving the City made a lot of people nervous, brought on a touch of the Panic. They shipped all the applicants over to the Diamond now, and shipped back the ones who didn’t measure up. A fair number were Baret Two refugees, and their qualifications were carefully examined, for the Station was charging a transport fee for every accepted candidate who’d been lifted from the planet.
Bay Green’s supervisor walked over to the milling group and reached in his hand and pulled out a tech-applicant in a blue shirt that hung awkwardly on bony shoulders. “What’s this?” he yelled out. “We don’t hire aliens.”
The One Newly Awakened stood nervously, feeling the human’s tight grip on his upper arm. The man’s accent was less troubling than that of the stationers who had picked him up, but it was still unfamiliar; nevertheless, his thoughts were clear. His aura was one of annoyance and his current ruling mental configuration was that of Disrupted Procedure, one of the three hundred and six ruling configurations shared by humans, Curosa, and Curosa-derived.
It would be best not to annoy him further. The One waited, hoping that the human in authority who brought him here would intervene.
The human did so, no doubt moved by selfjustification. His ruling configuration was in turmoil. “He says he knows all about Transport programming, and Empire and Republic models. If it’s true, he’s invaluable.”
The One had studied his interviewer’s configuration, and given answers that molded it into the necessary shape.
“He doesn’t look like he knows a talmic switch from a
