Part 18 (1/2)
Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the ad- ministrative a.s.sistant who'd first alerted Central Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands'
charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked ten years younger than the harried, overweight woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into the wards in the disguise of die alcoholic ”Qualia Ben- ton.”
”I can't express my thanks to you both,” she said, pus.h.i.+ng dark curly hair away from her round face, ”so I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sin- cerest apologies for the dangers you experienced.”
”Part of the job,” said Micaya.
”All the same, we should have been more alert. I should have had staff I could trust watching you at all times,” said Galena.
Micaya nodded without further comment. She was favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of the situation, even more impressed by the feet that the young woman had taken full responsibility for problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't203.
her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had left more and more power in the hands of Dr. Hezra- Fong, allowing the charity side to become disastrously understaffed and letting a deplorable lack of discipline infect the whole clinic.
”Clinic's problems weren't your fault, Thalmark,”
Micaya said at last, ”but they're about to be your prob- lem. The director must have been senile to let all this go on under his nose. High Families, of course, politi- cally unwise to fire him, but I've had one of my aides compose a nice letter of resignation for him. Want the spot? Can't guarantee it, you understand,” she added, ”but I've some influence at Central.”
Galena Thalmark flushed becomingly and mur- mured her thanks. ”Meanwhile,” she said, shuffling papers until she'd recovered her composure, ”I'm glad to report that Mr. Hopkirk is responding quite well to treatment. Dr. Hezra-Fong has supplied us with full details of the drugs used to keep him sedated. We're steadily lowering the dosage and watching him for seizures, but so far there have been no complications. He should be quite lucid and competent to make a deposi- tion on datahedron within the next forty-eight hours.”
”Good work!” Micaya exclaimed.
Galena Thalmark nodded. ”Whatever her other failings, Dr. Hezra-Fong is a brilliant biomedical re- searcher. I feel obliged to tell you that without her full cooperation and guidance, we would not have been able to reverse the effects of the treatment so rapidly.”
She looked up into Micaya's eyes. ”She requested that this feet be formally noted on her dossier.”
”It will be,” Micaya promised. ”But I doubt that it'll bear much weight against the rest of the record.”
Galena bit her lip. ”All those deaths,” she mur- mured. ”If only I'd seen what was going on from the first...” Micaya nodded in sympathy.
”Don't torture yourself,” she told the younger 204.
Aims McCaffrey fcf woman. ”You weren't even at Summerlands when she began. You had every reason to trust your superiors; it's to your credit that you suspected something as soon as you did and called in the proper authorities to put a stop to it Don't second-guess yourself!”
The last words were barked out in a parade-ground intonation that made Galena's head snap up.
”I mean it,” Micaya told her more gently. ”My dear, I've commanded soldiers in battle. I've seen brave men and women die because of orders I gave; and some- times those orders were wrong. You mourn the deaths, you do the best you can, and - you go on.
Otherwise, you cannot be of service.”
Galena Thalmark looked thoughtfully at the older woman, standing erect and composed in her plain green uniform. Some of her battle wounds were visible, the permalloy arm and leg. Others were buried in the surgical history that Galena had read: the inter- nal replacements for kidneys and liver, the hyperchip implant in one heart valve and the blood-filtering function. And as a doctor, Galena could a.s.sess just how many hours of painful surgery and retraining had gone into reconstructing Micaya's body after she sus- tained each of the original wounds.
””Vbu go on,” Micaya repeated softly, ”and... you serve as best you can. I believe that you will make an excellent director for Summerlands, Dr. Thalmark. Don't let regrets and hindsight cripple you; we need you here and now, not relivinga past that cannot be changed.”
”I can see why you're a general,” said Sev thought- fully as they boarded the flyer that was to transport them from Summerlands. ”If we'd had a commanding officer like you on Capella Four....”
General Questar-Benn's high cheekbones flushed a shade darker. ”Don't delude yourself. Making per- suasive speeches is only a small part of the art of war.”
”Oh? Seems to me I heard enough of them when I205.
served on Capella. There may have been more going on in the staff rooms, but I never rose high enough in the army to see the whole picture. That's what I like about EL work,” Sev added thoughtfully, ”now lam the whole picture. Or was.” He looked directly at Micaya. Til consider myself under your command for the rest of this operation.”
”The rest - but my a.s.signment's over,” protested Micaya.
”Is it?”
It has been a long time since a young man looked at her so intently - and back then, Micaya thought with an amus.e.m.e.nt that she did not allow her features to reflect, the last man to look at her like that had wanted something quite different. Ah, well. They always wanted something, didn't they?
”Fa.s.sa del Parma and Alpha bint Hezra-Fong came out to the Nyota system on the same transport,” Sev went on. ”So did Darnell Overton-Glaxely. They've all been helping each other get rich by the quickest and dirtiest means they could arrange. There were two others on that transport - Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and Polyon de Gras-Waldheim. Fa.s.sa's al- ready implicated Blaize - the one who was posted to Angalia. Don't you see? You're holding one thread into this tangle; I'm holding another one.”
”You think that together we could unravel it?”
Sev gave her a flas.h.i.+ng grin that was all but wasted on his present purpose. ”Or take Alexander's solution, and cut the Gordian knot. This corruption ought to be cut off,” he argued. ”Don't tell me it's just a small part of what 'everybody does.' I don't care. This is the part I can see, that I can do something about. I have to see this through!” He stopped, looking momentarily em- barra.s.sed by his own intensity. ”And I had hoped,” he went on in a somewhat quieter voice, ”I had hoped that you would want to join us. Lead us.”
206.
&? Margaret Bail The flyer skated to a perfect landing just outside Nantia's opened entry bay.
”Come with me?” Sev suggested.
”I've got a scheduled transport to Kailas. Back to my desk job.”
”You can change that,” he said confidently, and grinned at her as he would at a contemporary. ”Come on, Micl You don't really want to go back to shuffling papers on Kailas, do you?”
Micaya rubbed the back of her neck. She felt generations older than this intense young man: tired, and dirty from the corruption of Summerlands, and not very interested in anything except a long bath and a ma.s.sage. ”d.a.m.nit,” she said wearily. ”You'renotbad at persuasive speeches yourself, Bryley-Sorensen. I suppose you think I can get your brains.h.i.+p's orders changed so that we can go on to Angalia, instead of transporting del Parma straight back to Central?**
”It makes sense, doesn't it?”
”Sense,” said Micaya, ”has never been a compelling argument for any bureaucracy. All right. You win. ill see what I can do towards persuading Central to reas- sign both Nancia and me. I must admit, I'd like to see the end of this case.” Despite her weariness, she felt a smile beginning deep inside her. ”Besides, your s.h.i.+p's brawn owes me a rematch at tri-chess.”
”Caleb?”
”Forister,” Micaya corrected him. ”Nancia's been as- signed a replacement brawn, remember? Forister ArmontiUado-y-Medoc. We were working together on this Summerlands business, until Central pulled him off the case to brawn Nancia back to Central.” She stopped in the open landing bay. ”Wait a minute.
What did you say the other boy was called - the one who went to Angalia?”
Sev didn't have time to answer; a second flyer pounced down on the landing strip, and a messenger207.
in the white uniform of Summerlands came running toward them.
”Tried to raise you in the air,” he panted. ”Your driver's comm unit must have been defective.
Hopkirk's testified!”
”The devil he has! Already?”
”He seemed rather eager to do it. Dr. Thalmark thought it would do more harm to restrain him than to let him speak. His deposition's on datahedron - and there are a few honest men left on Bahati, Mr. Bryley; two of them are going to arrest Overton-Glaxely now.
Since he'll likely be sent back to Central for trial, they'd like a representative of Central to accompany them now, just to make sure everything's in order.”
”You mean, to make sure there's somebody else to blame if his family goes out for revenge,” Sev muttered.