He stood before Humphries’s desk, sallow-faced, humorless.
“You are being blamed for the attempt on her life,” he said, his voice low and soft as a lullaby.
“Me?”
Grigor nodded wordlessly.
“I didn’t order her killed,” Humphries snapped. “If you freelanced this—”
“Not me,” said Grigor. “Nor anyone in my department.”
“Then who?”
Grigor shrugged.
“Find out,” Humphries commanded. “I want to know who tried to kill Pancho. Maybe I’ll give him a reward.”
“This is not funny, sir,” Grigor replied. “An order has gone out from Astro Corporation headquarters to arm Astro’s vessels in the Belt.”
Humphries could feel his cheeks flush with anger. “That damned greasemonkey! She wants a war, does she?”
“Apparently she believes that you want one.”
Humphries drummed his fingers on his desktop. “I don’t,” he said at last. “But if she wants to fight, by god I’ll flatten her! No matter what it costs!”
Long after Grigor had left his office, Humphries’s phone said in its synthesized voice, “Incoming call from Douglas Stavenger.”
Humphries glared at the phone’s blinking amber light. “Tell him I’m not available at present. Take his message.”
Humphries knew what Stavenger’s message would be. He wants to be the peacemaker again, just as he was eight years ago. But not this time, Humphries decided. Pancho wants to go to war, and I’m going to accommodate her. I’ll get rid of her and take control of Astro in one swoop.
What was it that German said, he wondered silently, the guy who wrote about war? Then he remembered: War is a continuation of politics by other means.
Other means. Humphries smiled, alone in his office, and told his phone to instruct Grigor to contact that mercenary, Dorik Harbin. He’s a one-man Mongol horde, Humphries remembered. A madman, when he’s high on drugs. Time to get him onto Pancho’s trail.
Amanda kept her eyes closed and her breathing deep and regular. Humphries lay beside her in their sumptuous bedroom, twitching slightly in his sleep. Nightmares again, she thought. He’s such a powerful and commanding person all day long, demanding and imperious, but when he sleeps he whimpers like a whipped little boy.
She couldn’t hate Martin Humphries. The man was driven by inner demons that he allowed no one to see, not even his wife. He was alone in his torments, and he kept a high wall of separation around the deepset fears that haunted his dreams. Even his sexual excesses were driven by a desperate need to prove himself master of his world. He says he does it to excite me, Amanda told herself, but we both know it’s really to control me, to make me obey him, to prove that he’s my master.
At least that’s ended, she thought. For the time being. He won’t do anything that might harm my baby.
If he knew it wasn’t his. If he knew this life growing inside me is Lars’s son, Martin would kill me and the child both. He mustn’t know! He mustn’t find out!
It had been simple enough to hack into Humphries’s medical records and replace his genetic profile with Lars’s. Amanda had done that herself, no accomplices, no chance of anyone revealing to her husband what she had done. To the doctors and medical technicians in Humphries’s employ the baby’s genetic profile seemed consistent with those of its parents. And it was.
Yet she knew it would be bad enough, once the baby was born. Humphries wanted a perfect child, healthy and intelligent. His six-year-old son was like that: bright, athletic, talented, strong.
The baby Amanda was carrying would not be so.
“It’s a rather minor defect,” the doctor had told her, after her examination at the Hell medical center. The somber expression on his face said it was worse than minor. “Thank god that the genetic screening revealed it. We can prepare for it and take steps to control his condition.”
A minor genetic defect. The baby would be born with a form of chronic anemia. “It can be controlled with proper medication,” said the doctor, trying to reassure Amanda. “Or we could replace the defective gene, if you choose to undergo the procedure.”
They could operate on the fetus while it’s in my womb, Amanda was told. But that would mean a major medical procedure and I’d never be able to keep that secret from Martin. Just getting the genetic screening tests done was difficult enough. If it weren’t for Doug Stavenger’s help I wouldn’t have been able to do it.