Part 6 (1/2)

'Yes. He's family now. We dispense with such modifiers.' Ken talking with outsiders,' I might have added.

She smiled, but her expression was still hard. 'William Pierce. He's doing BM-funded research on extremely low temperatures in copper, no?'

I nodded.

'Has he been successful?'

'Not yet,' I said.

'It's simple coincidence that his facilities are capable of preserving the heads?'

'I suppose so, yes. However, my sister probably would not have brought them to the Moon otherwise. But I think of it more as opportunity than coincidence.'

Fiona instructed the screens to bring up displays of lunar binding multiples who were pus.h.i.+ng for an investigation of the Sandoval corpsicle imports. They were platinum names indeed: the top four BMs, except for Sandoval, and fifteen others, s.p.a.ced around the Moon, including Nernst and Cailetet. 'Incidentally,' she said, 'You know about the furore on Earth.' 'I've heard,' I said.

'Did you know there's a ruckus starting on Mars now?' I did not.

'They want Earth's dead kept on Earth,' the president said. 'They think it's bad precedent to export corpsicles and make the outer planets responsible for the inner's problems. They think the Moon must be siding with Earth in some fas.h.i.+on to get rid of this problem.'

'It's not a problem,' I said, exasperated. n.o.body on Earth has made a fuss about this in decades.'

'So what's causing the fuss now?' she asked.

I tried to think my way through to a civil answer. 'We think Task-Felder is behind it,' I said.

'You accuse me of carrying my BM's interests into the council with me, despite my oath of office?'

'I'm not accusing anybody of anything,' I said. 'We have evidence that the representative, the ... the ... United States national a.s.sembly representative from Puerto Rico-' 'Congressional representative,' she corrected.

'Yes ... You know about that?'

'He's a Logologist. So is most of Puerto Rico. Are you accusing members of my religion of instigating this?' She spoke with such complete shock and indignation that I thought for a moment, Could we be wrong? Were our facts misleading, poorly a.n.a.lysed? Then I remembered Janis Granger and her tactics in our first interview. Fiona Task-Felder was no more gentle, no more polite. I was here at her invitation to be raked over the coals.

'Excuse me, Madam President,' I said. 'I'd like for you to get to your point.'

'The point is, Mickey, that you've agreed by coming here to testify before the full council and explain your actions, your intentions, everything about this mess, at the next meeting, which will be in three days.'

I smiled and shook my head, then brought up my slate. 'Auto counsellor,' I said.

Her smile grew harder, her blue eyes more intense.

'Is this some new law you've cooked up for the occasion?' I asked, trying for a tough and sophisticated manner.

'Not at all,' she said with an air of closing claws on the kill. 'You may think what you wish about Task-Felder BM, or about Logologists - about my people - but we do not play outside the rules. Ask your auto counsellor about courtesy briefings and formal council meetings. This is a courtesy briefing, Mickey, and I've logged it as such.'

My auto counsellor found the relevant council rules on courtesy briefings, and the particular rule pa.s.sed thirty years before, by the council, that mandated the council's right to hear just what the president heard, as testimony, under oath. A strange and parochial law, so seldom invoked that I had never heard of it. Until now.

'I'm ending this discussion,' I said, standing.

'Tell Thomas Sandoval-Rice that you and he should be at the next full council meeting. Under council agreements, you don't have any choice, Mickey.'

She did not smile. I left the office, walked quickly down the hall, avoided looking at anyone, especially the young women still moving files.

'She's snared her rabbit,' Thomas said as he poured me a beer.

He had been unusually quiet all evening, since I had announced myself at his door and made my anguished confession of gross inept.i.tude. Far worse than being blasted by his rage was facing his quiet disappointment. 'Don't blame yourself entirely, Micko.' He seemed somehow deflated, withdrawn, like an aquarium anemone touched by an uncaring finger. 'I should have guessed they'd try something like this.'

'I feel like an idiot.'

'That's the third time you've said that in the past ten minutes,' Thomas said. 'You have been an idiot, of course, but don't let that get you down.'

I shook my head; I was already down about as far as it was possible to fall.

Thomas lifted his beer, inspected the large bubbles, and said, 'If we don't testify, we're in much worse trouble. It will look as if we're ignoring the wishes of our fellow BMs, as if we've gone renegade. If we do testify, we'll have been manoeuvred into breaking the BMs' sacred right to keep business and research matters private ... and that will make us look like weaklings and fools. She's pushed us into a deep rille, Mickey. If you had refused to go in, and had claimed family privilege, she'd have tried something else ...

'At least now we can be sure what we're in store for. Isolation, recrimination, probable withdrawal of contracts, maybe even boycott of services. That's never happened before, Micko. We're going to make history this week, no doubt about it.'

'Is there anything I can do?'

Thomas finished his gla.s.s and wiped his lips. 'Another?' he asked, gesturing at the keg. I shook my head. 'No. Me neither. We need clear heads, Micko, and we need a full family meeting. We're going to have to build internal solidarity here; this has gone way beyond what the director and all the syndics can handle by themselves.'

I flew back from Port Yin, head cloudy with anguish. It seemed somehow I had been responsible for all of this. Thomas did not say as much, not this time; but he had hinted it before. I halfway hoped the shuffle would smear itself across the regolith; that the pilot would survive and I would not. Then, anguish began to be replaced by a grim and determined anger. I had been twisted around by experts; used by those who had no qualms about use and abuse. I had seen the enemy and underestimated the strength of their resolve, whatever their motivations, whatever their goals. These people were not following the lunar way; they were playing us all - all of the BMs, me, Rho, the Triple, the Western Hemispheric United States, the corpsicles - like fish on a fine, single-mindedly dedicated to one end.

The heads were just an excuse. They had no real importance; that much was obvious.

This was a power play. The Logologists were intent on dominating the Moon, perhaps the Earth. I hated them for their ambition, their evil presumption, for the way they had lowered me in the eyes of Thomas.

Having erred on the side of underestimation, I was now swinging in the opposite direction, equally in error; but I would not realize that for a few more days yet.

I came home, and knew for the first time how much the station meant to me.

I met a Cailetet man in the alley leading to the Ice Pit. 'You're Mickey, right?' he asked casually. He held a small silver case in front of him, dangling from one hand. He seemed happy. I looked at him as if he might utter words of absolute betrayal.

'We've just investigated one of your heads,' he said, only slightly put off by my expression. 'You've been shuttling, eh?'

I nodded. 'How's Rho?' I asked, somewhat irrelevantly; I hadn't spoken to anybody since my arrival.

'She's ecstatic, I think. We've done our work well.'

'You're sticking with us?' I asked suspiciously.

'Beg your pardon?'

'You haven't been recalled by your family syndics?'

'No,' he said, drawling the word dubiously. 'Not that I've heard.'