Van winced. What Cicero was saying was that Arturo couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see what was happening and was accepting or even buying into it.
Margaret remains as sensitive as always, but is supportive of Arturo and Despina in all they do. Despina has become a truly beautiful young woman, and shares Almaviva’s love of music. Her voice is developing well, and he says she is naturally unforced and open…
After Van read the missive—twice—he leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking about Bannon and the new Revenant temple there, and the growth of converts to the Christos Revivos, and he wondered what would happen next.
Finally, he pulled up his analyses and the scheduling requests that had come with the latest message torp. The newly opened IIS office on Korvel had requested a visit by a director—for advice—and Trystin had passed that on to Van, since Korvel system was a much shorter jump from Winokur than from wherever Trystin was—he hadn’t said, as he usually didn’t, only that he was working on the power transmission technology project.
The IIS planetary director on Islyn had requested a director to help him interview and select his potential replacement. Van checked the files. Camryn Rezi—the IIS PD on Islyn—was only sixty. Islyn was an affiliate Hyndji system, meaning that Islyn was independent but tied to the Hyndji financial and trade structure and procured its space defense vessels and support equipment from the same sources as did the Hyndji Defense Force.
Van called up a colored dimensional holo projection, trying to refresh his memory of where exactly Islyn was. The position confirmed it. While Islyn was closer to Hyndji systems, it nestled in an almost empty area of the Arm, and the area between it and Pyshwan, the nearest Hyndji system, was a turbulent area with paradimensional tensions that precluded direct jumps. The closest direct jump was actually from Colsiti, one of the more recently planoformed Revenant systems. The other system power that was close was Keltyr.
Knowing where Islyn was, he turned to the next item. There had been no reports from the one-person IIS office on Beldora for almost six months. Nor had there been any fund transfers for three. Beldora was even more isolated than Islyn, another independent system farther out-Arm from the Revenants and Keltyr, where direct access was blocked by the same unique configuration of turbulence and paradimensional tensions as Islyn, except that they were on opposite sides.
He decided to make the courtesy call on Korvel first, because it was almost on the way to the two problem systems. Both jumps would require more power than he liked; but he didn’t like the feel of either situation, and, left to themselves, matters that felt bad always got worse.
Chapter 51
At 13:28 Van walked into the Korvel Mercantile Tower, then took the lift to the third floor. From there, he made his way along the southern corridor to the open door beside the IIS spelled out in silvered letters on the taupe plaster wall. He stepped inside.
A young man looked up from the console. “Ser?”
“I’m Director Van Albert. I had a—”
“Oh, ser, you caught me off guard.” The young man rose quickly. “Director Myller told me to expect you. She’s waiting for you.” He took three steps to his left and peered into the office. “Director Myller, Director Albert is here.”
“Thank you.” Van smiled stepped through the open door, closing it behind him.
Tall and thin, not quite angular, Sherren Myller glanced at Van from where she stood beside her console. “It’s good of you to respond so quickly. I hadn’t expected…”
“You’d thought that Director Desoll would be here, I imagine,” Van replied. “Under many circumstances he would be. But Korvel was closer for me, and it might have been a while before Director Desoll could have made it.”
She gestured to the two upholstered chairs before the console.
Van took one, setting the small case he carried on the floor beside the chair and waiting for Myller to seat herself.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
“Long. They all are.” Van smiled. “Korvel seems to be a pleasant place. Very friendly.”
“We think so. The few out-system travelers I’ve met all agree with you.” Myller offered a rueful expression. “I don’t have the experience to make a comparison.”
“According to the news and what I could pick up on business indicators, matters seem to be going fairly well.” Van had noticed that price indices had increased more than expected for the past year, but hadn’t had the time to look into that. “Your message was carefully worded, but it suggested that you have a problem.”
Myller’s lips twisted into an ironic smile. “We do. It’s not one that any of us anticipated, and it’s not something that’s a major problem. Not yet, anyway…but Director Desoll suggested that I should let IIS headquarters know if something came up that seemed out of the ordinary. This isn’t…but it is.”
Van waited. He wanted to hear the problem in her own words.
“It’s…excessive liquidity. Interest rates here are effectively at less than one percent. That’s down from three percent a year ago, and five percent two years ago. Most times, when you see that kind of drop in interest rates, it means an economic slowdown of some sort, but all the indices are up, everything, especially the price indices. Classically, that means an influx of capital…but so far as we can determine, there’s been no increase in the personal savings rate. There’s been no increase in reported multilateral profits. There’s been no reduction in taxes, and we can’t track any kind of other windfall—except total deposits in financial institutions.”
“That means a transfer of credits from somewhere outside the system, a fairly large flow of funds,” Van speculated, “if it’s had that kind of impact on the system economies. Do you know the source?”
“Not officially,” Myller replied.
“Unofficially?”
“Almost all the fund transfers have come in through Argenti and
