“I need the name of the individual in Port Security you paid off to help you circumvent interior surveillance.”
Anesthetized by events, wholly preoccupied, he responded with a barely perceptible nod. That’s when he pulled the injector.
It was very small. Still, the peaceforcers who had brought him in should have found the medical device. Maybe they had, she thought, and Case had protested at having it confiscated. Or perhaps they had been preoccupied in the search for more overt weaponry. She would have to have a word with Security. Her serenity in the face of the device, loaded with chemicals of what potential deadliness she could not imagine, astonished her. It was possible she was too weary to be frightened.
She kept her hands in plain sight. A sharp word would raise a defensive screen between her desk and the rest of the office. Unfortunately, he was too close and inside the potential barrier. A different word would bring the waiting peaceforcers running from the outer office. That might, she reflected calmly, take too much time. She favored him with a mixture of sadness and pity.
“Are you going to shoot me with something, Seth? Here, in my office, in the heart of Administration? If you do, it had better be instantly lethal. Suppose you do? What happens afterward? You can’t just walk out of here. I’d first have to tell the officers waiting in the outer room that it’s okay for you to leave. Even if you could somehow con your way past them, then what? Where would you go? This is Fluva. You’d never be able to get off-world. Is that the existence you want to look forward to for the rest of your life, hiding out in the Viisiiviisii? Because you’d have to hide, you know. With the offer of a modest reward you’d have every Deyzara and Sakuntala on the planet looking for you.”