Sarda suddenly looked worried. “Then what else is there to do? We have to confront them right away with what we’ve got. Call in the fraud people.”
“And do what?” Kieran asked. “What have you got? No evidence. Sarda-One stays in hiding, and you’ve got nothing except a crazy story.”
Sarda colored. “I’ve got a hole in my bank account where five million used to be. Isn’t that enough?”
“So somebody smart figured out how to bust a security system,” Kieran said. “That’s happened before. Do you think that Crime Investigation is going to need a theory about walking duplicate people and suppressed memories to explain it?”
Sarda glanced appealingly at June, as if for support, then back at Kieran. “But . . . what else is there to do? You’ve just said, we have to move fast.”
Sarda was looking desperate now, but Kieran remained unruffled. His eyes twinkled with the light of something new that had occurred to him, which was proving irresistible. June saw the signs of one of his schemes about to be hatched. “The only ones who know what’s going on are Sarda-One, Elaine, and Balmer,” Kieran replied. “And the only way we have for finding out fast is getting them to tell us.”
Sarda shook his head, confused. “How in Hell are we supposed to do that?” he demanded.
“Do what they did and turn it around at them,” Kieran answered. “We use you to impersonate yourself, Leo. Have you ever been on the stage?”
Sarda shook his head. “No.” He looked nonplussed.
Kieran grinned in a way that radiated reassurance and seemed to promise that they were going to enjoy themselves. “Then let’s start your dramatic coaching right away,” he said.
15
Elaine lit a dreamer, inhaled, and waited while the first calming fingers began creeping from her lungs into the tissues of her body like water percolating through desert sand to find the roots of a thirsty plant. Then she crossed the living area of her home in Embarcadero to the veranda window and stood looking down at the canal and water gardens below, drawing in and exhaling several more times before feeling the full effect.
Having to try to act normally to keep up appearances had been bad enough during the regular day. Now, being on her own while Balmer met with a banking contact in town to arrange disposal of the proceeds, and Sarda lying low, she was finding it tougher. Step by step, she had felt herself being drawn into an entanglement that had progressed from trying to help someone who hadn’t deserved the bizarre situation he had gotten himself into, to collusion in embezzlement and fraud, and now outright theft on a major scale, with somebody she was no longer sure she wanted any part of at all. She wasn’t comfortable, but the feverish pace they were committed to allowed no time to extricate herself. All in all, she was very nervous.
She was no longer sure, even, where she planned to head for if they pulled it off. Earth had little appeal for her—fine if you moved among the privileged ranks of traditional social sets who lived above the rules, or the supporting castes of acolytes and technicians who engineered their comforts; but not for outsiders. Her misgivings about any kind of future with Sarda had grown worse by the day, and even with a third split of the cool billion that Balmer was hoping to net, she didn’t know enough about the ways of the Belt or the outer systems to feel anything but apprehension at the thought of trying to make it in places like that alone. Continuing any kind of partnership with Balmer wasn’t an option. She admitted to herself that it had been only ambition and an unseemly dose of career-consciousness on her part that had kept her with him this long; and after watching the prospect of big money drive him like a mania to concocting the scheme they were all now committed to, it would be all she could do to see it through to whatever end lay ahead. In odd moments she had even caught herself wondering if she—and Sarda, for that matter— could ever feel safe with Balmer out there in control of a third of a billion, knowing that they shared his secret. So what sort of paranoia was possessing her now?