From here, past azi guns, there was no reaching it. He looked at the Upcoasters, at his wife, hugged Meris to him. A guard deposited their baggage inside the door and unmasked to search through it, disarranging one and proceeding to the next, putting nothing back.
vi
“Nothing,” the azi reported, and Morn scowled, folded his arms.
“No more flights,” he said, looking at the ISPAK president. “Nothing moves out, no more come up.”
“Kont’ Morn,” the beta breathed, appalled.
He cared little for that. He had no trust at all for ITAK, and believed in ISPAK’s loyalty only while guns were on them and in the command centre.
And from Pol there was yet no word. Pol was down in Newhope; that much was certain; his ship pulsed out a steady flow of status information, but there were only azi aboard.
The Meth-maren had weapons enough at her disposal if she had linked into ITAK. She had still the resources of the Family with which to buy beta loyalties. And to take those privileges needed Council.
Except by one procedure.
“She’s dead,” Morn said suddenly, bewildering the beta. “I’ll enter in the banks that the Meth-maren’s dead. And ISPAK will witness it. Then it’ll be true, by the law—do you agree, ser?”
“Yes, Kont’ Morn,” the man said; as it had been yes, Kont’ Pol, and Kont’ Rean before that.
“All Kontrin and a world’s corporations are sufficient witness.” He glared at the beta to see the reaction to this, and the beta simply looked frightened. He motioned to the console. “Get ITAK in link. Use your persuasion.”
The man sat down and keyed a message through, the while Morn leaned above him, one hand on his chair, one on the panel’s rim; and often the man’s hands trembled over a letter, but he made no errors. ITAK protested; NO CHOICE, the ISPAK beta returned. It was untidy; it fed into intercomp, to be examined and made permanent record. Morn scowled and let it. The records were only as dangerous as Council chose to regard them, and Council—was as Council went. Risks had to be taken.
ITAK complied, under threat, registering protest. Brave little betas, Morn thought, with respect for the Meth-maren’s hold on them. It amused him. He watched the ISPAK beta trembling with psych-set guilt and that amused him the more.
“Move over,” he said, thrust the man out of the way, glared until the man moved far away, by the door. Then he set his own fingers to the keys, with both ITAK and ISPAK signatories, coded in his own number . . . and Pol’s: for that he had gained long ago, committed it to memory: he had taken that precaution, as he tolerated nothing near him he could not control—save Pol. All a world’s Kontrin and the corporations: the latter, K-codes could forge; but only on Istra did it come down to so small a body of the Family.
Worldcomp accepted it; it leaped to intercomp. Morn smiled, which he did rarely.
Officially dead, so far as Istra was concerned; universally dead in the eight to sixteen days it would take for the message to reach homeworld and fan out again in intercomp. She could not use her codes or her credit: they were wiped.
He pushed back from the console, rose, turned to the azi who waited. “Get the shuttle ready,” he said. “My own.”
One left. He turned to the ISPAK beta.
And suddenly the comp screens began to flash with alarm.
He was at the panel in an instant, keyed through a query.
No answer returned to him. He sat down and plied the keys, obtained only idiocy. Panic flashed into him. With all the speed he could manage he K-coded intercomp out-of link, separating it from the deadness that was Istra.
The cold reached his stomach. Worldbank was wiped. All records, all finance, null.
The Meth-maren’s death-notice.
It was keyed to that, and he had done it.
“Kill the power!” he shouted, rounding on the ISPAK beta. “Kill all the power on Istra. Dead, you understand me?”
There was silence. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before, the threat never carried out, the withdrawal of station power from a world