“Very well, Madam President.”
“Do we release the failure of our strike against Hell’s Gateway to the media?” Justine asked.
“No,” Patricia said immediately. “We don’t know what happened. People will fear the worst, and we won’t be able to offer any details to reassure them.”
“The news shows are expecting some kind of comment.”
“Tough. We simply say we are unsure of the outcome, and we’re waiting for the starships to return.”
“They’ll know something’s wrong,” Justine said. “If the strike had worked we’d be shouting it as hard as we could.”
“We have five days until we have to admit anything is wrong,” Patricia said. “That’s enough time for me to prepare the groundwork. This had got to be handled perfectly if we’re to prevent panic.”
Wilson couldn’t bring himself to look at Oscar as everyone except Rafael and Justine left the office. Dimitri had argued that the Primes would work out a counter to the Douvoir missiles because they already knew humans were capable of such an application. What if they were told, given exact details? I knew we’d been compromised, and I did nothing. All for fear of looking foolish.
“Just so both of you know,” he told Rafael and Justine, “I’m going to recommend we deploy the quantumbusters as Dimitri suggested.” And pray we maintained some kind of integrity with their development.
“That little shit,” Rafael grunted.
“He’s always been right,” Wilson said. “And he’s only doing his job. Damnit, if we’d listened to him and equipped the starships with quantumbusters to attack Hell’s Gateway we might not be in this position.”
“You can’t play what if, not at this level,” Rafael said. “We have to concentrate on the immediate threat.”
“There wouldn’t be an immediate threat if we’d used the quantumbusters.”
“We don’t even know that,” Rafael said. “Not for certain.”
“It wasn’t the technology which let us down, we suffered a failure of will. We’re too civilized to push the genocide button.”
“I’m glad,” Justine said. “That reluctance to exterminate any creature that might be a difficult problem defines us as a species. We don’t operate at their level. That’s got to be worth something.”
“Not when you’re dead, it isn’t,” Wilson snapped angrily. He knew that he was actually scared and trying to cover, which in itself was pathetic. But the failure to eliminate Hell’s Gateway was profoundly shocking; and the implications even worse. Dimitri was right, they now had to contemplate the unthinkable.
“Do you think Doi will authorize their use?” Justine said.
“Sheldon will,” Rafael said. “He’s a realist. And I know the Halgarth Dynasty will support him, as will most of the others. Nobody was expecting today’s attack to fail so completely. We’re all still reeling from that; but the implication will sink in soon enough, and not just with us.” He shook his head in reluctant acknowledgment. “Dimitri and his nerd think tank were right. We weren’t hardheaded enough; we didn’t want to recognize what we’re actually facing, it’s too frightening.”
Wilson nearly told him about the treachery on board the Second Chance, the existence of the Starflyer. But he retained enough of his political instinct to hold back. Coward, he taunted himself; but he needed Rafael’s whole-hearted support over the next few days; they simply had to work together. The human race couldn’t afford for them to make another mistake. The thought sent an evil shudder down his spine.
It took the War Cabinet fifteen minutes to make its vote. The unanimous decision was to allow the navy to arm all its starships with quantumbuster weapons in readiness for any subsequent attack by the Prime aliens.
CHAPTER NINE
On the day two hundred years ago when CST’s exploratory division opened a wormhole above Illuminatus, the sight that materialized shocked the entire Operations Center into silence. They thought they had stumbled across the ultimate high-technology civilization, one that had urbanized every square kilometer of land. Directly beyond the wormhole opening, the planet hung in the black of space, darkside on. Every continent glowed a lambent aquamarine from shore to shore, shimmering softly in long undulations as thin clouds wafted overhead. Only mountains and the polar caps were devoid of light.
The Operations Director extended a communications dish through the wormhole, and attempted to signal the occupants of the planetary city. Strangely, the electromagnetic bands remained silent apart from the warbled harmonies of the ionosphere as it was showered by solar wind. Then the full sensor returns began to build up, providing a provisional analysis. The light didn’t have a technological origin. It was purely biological.
Every time Adam Elvin visited Illuminatus he forgot to pack any decent short-sleeved linen shirts. It was his old city-boy mentality; he just never expected a climate quite so humid in an urban area. Nobody built cities in the middle of a jungle. It wasn’t civilized. Nor was it commercially viable, either. Except here.
Stepping out of the Hotel Conomela’s air-conditioned lobby was yet another unpleasant reminder of his bad choice of luggage. The heat and humidity on the street was already up to sauna levels, and that was with the hotel’s bright scarlet half-moon canopy overhead protecting him from direct sunlight. The semiorganic fiber of Adam’s white suit acquired a silver hue as it struggled to repel heat away from his body. He fanned at his face with his genuine Panama hat. A uniformed doorman gestured to a maroon Lincoln taxi that glided to a halt and popped its door. “Senor Duanro.” His white gloved hand touched the tip of his cap respectfully.
“Thanks.” Adam hurried into the cool dry interior, for once not pausing to consider, all men being equal, the market-enforced indignity of the doorman having to be servile. Today, anyone whose job it was to hasten him into cool comfort was okay by him.
He gave the drive array his destination, and the Lincoln pulled out aggressively into the flow of traffic. The street was jammed full of vehicles, half of them delivery vans and trucks parked on the curb so that angry cars, bikes, and buses were squeezed out into the few remaining lanes. His taxi rolled along at thirty kilometers an hour, its horn tooting about every thirty seconds as pedestrians, powerskaters, and cyclists dodged around it. It was always the same in Tridelta City; twenty-four million people crammed onto a patch of ground barely fifty kilometers across generated a serious amount of traffic pressure.
Eight kilometers and twenty-three minutes from the hotel, the taxi pulled up beside the Anau Tower, a cylindrical skyscraper two hundred fifty stories tall. Its broad metallic silver windows were arranged in a slight step pattern, looking as if the tower skin were twisted around the structural frame in a corkscrew spiral.
Adam took the elevator lift up to the hundred fiftieth floor, the airship docking level, then switched to a local elevator to get up to one-seven-eight. The Agent’s office suite was on the east side of the tower, three modest rooms decorated in cold black granite blocks. The receptionist was an essay in visual intimidation. Her simple charcoal-gray suit was stretched tight around her, illustrating the boosting she’d received, with several seams of muscle wrapped around her original frame. Adam suspected a host of wetwired weapons were lurking in among the dubious additional muscle cells and overstretched epidermal layer. Her neck was a smooth cone of flesh that blended directly into her cheeks. There was no chin, only an eerily attractive set of lips that had been glossed in dark cherry-red. They perked into a smile for Adam when he presented her desk array with his Silas Duanro identity.
“You can go straight in, Senor Duanro,” she trilled in a sweet high voice.
“He is expecting you.”
The Agent smiled in greeting from behind his granite desk. A tall man who kept thin by expending a lot of nervous energy, he had a beak of a nose that came down almost to his upper lip. For some reason he hadn’t modified his scalp follicles; a receding hairline was only partially disguised by a very close cut. “Senor Silas Duanro? Humm.” He smiled at his own humor. “You are allowed to use the same name with me, you know. After all these years, what have we got if not trust?”
“I’m sure.” Adam hadn’t visited Tridelta for several years; yet the Agent always managed to recognize him. Last time he’d looked very different, older and chubbier. Right now he’d morphed his face into that of a forty-year-old, with rounded cheeks, green eyes, and thick auburn hair. The skin was thick and slightly pocked as it finally began its protest at so many hurried cheap and unprofessional cellular reprofilings. He had to apply moisturizing cream every morning and evening now; even so it felt as if he were stretching scar tissue every time he spoke. His cheeks were always cold these days, the capillaries were in such a bad way from constant readjustment. There was a limit to how much reprofiling anyone could undergo, and Adam knew he was fast approaching the time when he’d have to quit.
But not yet.
Becoming Silas Duanro had also involved shedding a lot of fat, and receiving some extra muscle boosting. He hadn’t been this fit and strong for a while now, though it was taking some very sophisticated genoproteins to maintain his heart and other organs at a level where they could support the added muscle. He’d also had to correct his body for the onset of type two diabetes, which had developed over the last couple of years. But whenever the call came through to start the blockade- busting run he was assembling for Johansson, he was determined to be ready for it. No way was he going to see that from some backseat, shouting advice across the unisphere. He fully expected it to be his swan song.
“Drink?” the Agent asked. It was part of their ritual.
“What have you got?”
The Agent smiled and went over to the wall. A long block of granite swung out silently to reveal a brightly lit drinks cabinet. “Let’s see. We won’t bother with the Talotee wines, even though they’re all the rage. How about Impiricus-blue, a local copy, but in my humble opinion better than the original.”
“Hit me.”
The Agent made a show of pouring the thick purple liqueur into a chilled cut-crystal shot glass. “And one for me.” He returned to the desk and slid the shot glass over to Adam. “Salut.”
“Salut.” Adam drained it in a single gulp. A sensation like cold flame burned down his gullet. “Woho, boy,” he grunted, there were tears in his eyes. “Good stuff.” His voice was harsh, as if he’d come down with flu.
“I knew you’d like that. You have class, which most of my customers are sadly lacking. I deal with so many gangsters; bigger guns and nastier viruses are all they know. But you: I was most proud to see the names which came up in court after the attack on the Second Chance, knowing I had provided most of them. Now that was a truly stylish operation, conducted with verve. There are so few of those mounted these days.”
“The ship survived, though.”
