but he was firm, and promised them there’d be lots more tomorrow. They kissed and hugged him good night, and dispersed to their own rooms.
Sitting alone in the playroom with its tidal wave of toys and gloriously gaudy primary-color decoration, Nigel knew he needed to acquire a lot more information on Mellanie to solve the mystery she was tantalizing him with. He sighed reluctantly and made the call. Normally, anyone he called was surprised and flattered to receive any form of personal communication from the great Nigel Sheldon. Michelangelo simply said, “What the hell do you want?”
***
The Lucius skyscraper was eighty stories high, a ponderous conservative tower of gray stone and smoky brown glass. But then it did sit in the middle of Third Avenue; architecture in this part of town was never flamboyant.
The three large cars carrying Paula’s Senate Security arrest team wove through Manhattan’s midmorning traffic. As always the antics of the city’s yellow cabs drew a small frown on her forehead; whoever programmed their drive arrays did an appalling job. Her own car had to brake sharply several times as they cut in front.
When they arrived at the Lucius, their clearance codes opened the barrier guarding the ramp down into the multilevel underground parking garage. Two vans carrying the forensic staff and their equipment followed them in.
Up in the lobby, four of the arrest team immediately covered the stairwell exits. Paula led the remaining twelve into the elevator. Six of them wore force field skeletons under their ordinary dark suits; she wasn’t taking any chances.
The offices of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku took up six floors, from the forty-second to the forty-seventh. Their reception area was dominated by a broad curving desk, where three well-dressed and attractive human secretaries sat receiving calls, giving clients an exclusive personal touch that lesser law firms would use an array for. They were all busy trying to sort out the sudden communications glitch in their array, which Paula had embargoed from the cybersphere as soon as they arrived.
“I would like to see Ms. Daltra, Mr. Pomanskie, and Mr. Seaton, please,” Paula told the senior receptionist.
He gave her and the arrest team a nervous glance. “I’m sorry, they’re not in.”
“Do I need to show you my authority certificate?”
“No, of course not, Ms. Myo, I know who you are. But that’s the truth. This is the second day they haven’t shown up. It’s quite a talking point here. The senior partners aren’t happy.”
“Check their offices,” she told the arrest team.
The forensic staff was given the all clear to come up. Freeze programs were loaded into the company’s entire array network, and their data copied into high- density storage systems for analysis by an RI. All three offices of the missing associates were sealed off, and a detailed examination initiated.
Seaton lived closest to the office, an apartment in a luxurious block on Park Avenue, just past East Seventy-ninth Street. Paula took five of the arrest team with her, using their priority clearance to bounce through traffic, even sidelining the cabs.
As before, she embargoed the building’s cybersphere connection. The uniformed doorman let her and the team straight through the grandiose lobby and into the elevator.
Mrs. Geena Seaton came hurrying into the hallway as soon as the maid announced her notorious visitor. According to Paula’s file, the Seatons had been married for eighteen years. Neither of them came from a particularly well-to-do background, though they were clearly making up for that now. Raw ambition was powering them up toward the kind of wealth and professional status that would support their high-life aspirations.
Geena Seaton wore a prim floral-print silk dress, her face and hair perfectly made up, heels clicking on the polished floor, looking as if she were on her way to some career-making function of her husband’s. The perfect supportive wife for an ambitious associate in New York’s ruthless corporate society.
When asked about her husband’s unexplained absence, she said he was away at a legal convention. Somewhere in Texas, she wasn’t sure where, the office would have the address. He’d left with rather short notice, admittedly, but someone else from the firm had dropped out at the last minute. “Why do you need to know?” she demanded. “What is this about?” Her delicately mascaraed eyes scanned dismissively across the team standing behind Paula.
“There are some anomalies we believe your husband can help to clarify for us,” Paula said noncommittally. “Isn’t it unusual for him to be out of contact with you for this long?”
“Hardly. I expect he’s getting intimate with some female delegate and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Really, we have several clauses about nonexclusivity in our partnership contract. It benefits both of us.”
“I see. In that case we will require you to come with us for a medical forensic examination.”
“Impossible, I have a hundred things to do.”
“You will come with us now, either voluntarily or under arrest.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“Indeed it is.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that.” Paula wasn’t even sure if a neurological scan would be able to identify a Starflyer agent. All she had to go on was Bradley Johansson’s propaganda, that the alien somehow mentally enslaved humans. There might be unusual brain wave activity that the forensic neurologists could spot. It was a long shot, but everything else he had been claiming for the last hundred years was coming uncomfortably true.
“Am I under suspicion? What is this anomaly? Surely it’s not that tiresome undeclared payment to the Senate aide again. That was cleared up last year, you know.”
“We can discuss this at our headquarters.”
Geena Seaton glared at Paula. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Legally, I mean. My husband’s firm is not to be trifled with. I had to threaten that dreadful reporter girl with an antiharassment suit yesterday; and I certainly won’t hesitate to apply for one against you.”
“What reporter girl?”
“The cheap one who dresses like a hooker the whole time. I remember she did an invasion report for Alessandra Baron. Mellanie somebody.”
***
The express from EdenBurg delivered Renne back in Paris just after midday. She should have gone back to the office straightaway to file her report, but it had been a long frustrating trip. Her duty shift had lasted for nineteen straight hours so far, and as well as being irritable from lack of rest she was also ravenous. The little restaurant she and her colleagues often visited was only three hundred meters from the office, so she got the cab to drop her off there first. Fifteen minutes while she had a coffee and a burger wouldn’t make any difference. With any luck, Hogan and Tarlo wouldn’t be back from Mars yet. She was still mildly jealous she hadn’t been included.
It was cool and dark inside, with every table illuminated by its own cozy triple-wick candle. Fans spun slowly overhead, churning the humid city air around the room and blending in the cooking smells from the kitchen. There was a bar stretching along the entire back wall, a piece of antique wooden saloon furniture rescued from some ancient Left Bank cafe over two hundred years earlier. Its walnut veneer had been scuffed and repolished so many times down the centuries that the surface was almost completely black, with only the odd, even deeper sable swirl to show the original beautiful grain pattern.
Renne sat at a stool, hung her uniform jacket on a hook just below the counter, and gazed at the long shelves of exotic bottles from all over the Commonwealth. It was the restaurant’s boast that every planet was represented.
“A Rantoon green cherry fizz,” she told the barkeeper, knowing he wouldn’t have it. She was in that kind of mood.
A minute later she had to smile as he produced the tall frosted glass filled with a jade-colored liquid that was as sluggish as chilled vodka. “Salut.” She raised the glass to him. “Can I get a cheeseburger, with bacon, hold the mayonnaise, and fries, not a salad.”
“Certainly, Lieutenant.” He disappeared through a small door and called her order out to the chef. Some comment about the mayonnaise was shouted back in a stream of obscene French.
Renne spread her elbows wide on the bar, and took another sip. It felt wonderfully decadent, drinking something so strong in the middle of the day. She caught a movement in the tarnished mirrors behind the rows of bottles.
“Isn’t it a little early for that kind of drink?” Commander Hogan asked.
“Hi, Chief,” she said, deliberately not sitting up or even looking around. “I figured I can—I’m still in the middle of last night, timewise.”
Hogan’s face puckered into disapproval. He sat next to her, with a grinning Tarlo taking the next stool along.
“You two want to join me?” she asked.
“Mineral water,” Hogan told the barkeeper.
“Beer,” Tarlo said.
“So what was Mars like?”
“Fun,” Tarlo said. “I had a ball driving the transRover. And it’s a weird-looking place, the colors are strange. We saw all the old NASA ships as well. They were falling apart. Sheldon and the Admiral were getting all misty-eyed about them.”
“We found the Reynolds ground station,” Hogan said in a reproving voice.
“The forensic team downloaded every program in its arrays, and we impounded the transmitter equipment for analysis.”
“Impounded.” Renne just managed not to giggle. She had an image of Hogan imperiously waving a court order at a bunch of angry little green men, furious at the navy marching off with their planet’s property.
“Problem?” Hogan asked.
“No, Chief.”
“I understand you left the office while we were away,” he continued. “For most of the time, actually. Did you pick up any leads?”
“Nah! Not one. It was a completely wasted journey. Victor and Bernadette, Isabella’s parents, haven’t got a clue where she is, and frankly don’t show a lot of interest.” The two interviews rankled with her. Warren Yves Halgarth had acted as her escort again; without him she doubted she would even have got in to see Victor. Isabelle’s father wasn’t exactly pleased to see her; his new job as managing director of the Dynasty’s second largest manufacturing bureau was a high-pressure management role. They specialized in force field generators and other high-technology machinery, and as such were one of the thousands of organizations that had suddenly found themselves supplying components to the navy on a crash priority basis. The whole workforce was badly stressed, and it showed. Victor barely knew
