She called up the prepared program regarding contracts, and export quotas, the oft-denied permits.
GRANTED, she entered, to all of them.
In an hour the board would be jammed with queries, chaos, the deadlock broken. Cerdin would not know it for eight days.
She called up the city guest house, and drew a sleepy outsider out of bed. “Call Tallen,” she said, using her own image and direct voice, which she had not used on Istra.
Tallen appeared quickly, his person disordered, his face flushed. “Kont’ Raen,” he said.
“I’ve an azi,” she said, “who knows you. His name is Tom Mundy.”
Tallen started to speak, changed his mind. Whatever of sleep there was about him vanished.
“He’s not harmed,” she said. “Won’t be. But I want to know how long this has been going on, ser Tallen. I want an answer. How much and how many and how far?”
“I’ll meet with you.”
She shook her head. “Just a plain answer, ser. Monitored or not. How far has the net spread itself?”
“I have no desire to discuss this long-distance.”
“Shall I ask Mundy?”
Tallen’s face went stark. “You’ll do as you please, I imagine. The trade mission—”
“Is under Reach law, Kontrin law. I do as I please, yes. He’s safe for the moment. I’ll give him back to you, so you needn’t do anything rash. I merely advise you that you’ve done a very unwise thing, ser. Give me those numbers and I’ll do what I can to sort things out for you; you understand me. I can act where you can’t. I’m willing to do so . . . a matter of humanity. Give me the numbers”
Tallen broke contact.
She had feared so. She shook her head, swallowed down a stricture in her throat with a mouthful of cooling coffee, finally turned housecomp over to automatic.
She drank the rest of the coffee, grimacing at the taste, followed it with half a measure of liquor, and sat listening to the thunder.
“Sera,” Jim said, startling her. She glanced at the doorway.
“Go to bed,” she told him. “What about the azi downstairs? Settled?”
He nodded.
“Go on,” she said. “Go rest. You’ve done what you can.”
He was not willing to leave; he did so, and she listened as his footsteps went upstairs. She sat still a moment, listening to the hive-song, then rose and went downstairs, into the dark territory of the basement.
Majat-azi gathered about her. She bade them away, suffered with more patience the touch of Workers and Warriors. There was a door guarded by Warriors. She. opened it, and two guard-azi rose to their feet, from the chairs inside. The third huddled in the corner, on a mat of blankets.
“I’ve spoken with Tallen,” she said. “He’s very upset. Is there anything I can get for your comfort?”
A jerk of the head, refusal. He would not look at her face.
They had taken the cords off him. There was the double guard to restrain him.
“You were a transport guard. Were you sensible enough to understand that what you’re seeing on this world is not the usual, that things have gone vastly amiss?”
Still he would say nothing, which in his place, was the wiser course.
She sank down, rested her arms across her knees, stared at him. “I’ll hazard a guess, ser 113-489-6798, that all you’ve done has been a failure: that Tallen would have known me had it succeeded. You’ve scattered azi off this world, if at all, only to have the embargo stall them, if not here, on Pedra, on Jin. And do you know where they’ll be? In cases similar to your own. You entered that faculty when the depots were closed . . . about half a year ago. What do you think will become of those stalled there for years, as some are—two years already, for some? What do you think will come out of that? You think they’ll be sane? I doubt it. And how many azi have a to transmission of messages via intercomp? None, ser. You’ve thrown men away. Like yourself.”
Eyes fixed on hers, hollow, in a shaven skull. Thin hands clasped knees against his chest. Ire would never, she thought, be the man he would have been. Youth, cast away in such a venture. More than one of them. He might break. Most would, if majat asked the questions. But she much doubted that he knew anything beyond himself.