Cyteen: The Betrayal by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m supposed to blame.
    “This is all very elaborate,” she muttered. They had reached the intersection of the balcony and the hall to the Council offices, where she wanted to go. She stopped and faced the admiral. “Go on.”
    “We find this of military interest. A Reseune facility at Fargone poses security risks.”
    For a moment everything stopped. It was not from the direction she had expected. It was not sane. It was, if one was worried about merchanter contacts.
    “We’re not talking about labs, admiral.”
    “What are we talking about?”
    “Rubin’s going to be working there. Mostly it’ll be his lab.”
    “You have enormous faith in this young man.”
    Trap. My God, where is it? “He’s a very valuable young man.”
    “I’d like to discuss the security aspects of this. Before the vote this afternoon. Can we talk?”
    “Dammit, I’ve got a luncheon appointment.”
    “Dr. Emory, I honestly don’t want to send this to committee. I’m trying to be cooperative. But I feel this is going through much too fast. I have other concerns that I don’t think you want me to mention here.”
    Someone’s talked. He’s gotten to someone.
    But aloud, to Florian: “Tell Yanni I’m caught in a crisis.Tell him to sit in for me. I’ll get there when I can.” She looked at the admiral, calmer, reckoning that it sounded like bargaining, not a torpedo from the flank. “Your place or mine?”
     
    “Thank you,” Ariane said, taking the coffee from Florian, who knew how she liked it. It was her office, her conference room, and her bodyguards present, the military aides staying outside, the admiral’s own offer.
    Conciliation, perhaps.
    The admiral took his coffee black. Most did, who got a taste of it on special occasions. It was rare and real, imported all the way from Sol, Earth’s southern hemisphere. It was one of Ariane’s cultivated vices. And she took hers white. Real milk. A second extravagance.
    “AG is still working on this,” she said. “Someday.” Cyteen had been a silicate-polluted hell when they started agriculture in the lowlying valleys, where domes and the precipitators could create mini-climate.
    Another small flash: so much brown, so much blue-green on the hills. The lines spun above the valley like a webfly’s work. The big mirrors caught light from space and flung power down from the hills. And the weathermakers in orbit raked the land with storms, terrible storms-We’re safe, Ari, maman would say. It’s only noise. It’s weather, that’s all-Leonid Gorodin sipped his coffee with a tranquil look. And smiled. And said: “The rumor inside the Bureau is that this Rubin project is yours. Personally. There’s nothing you do that doesn’t change the balance between us and Alliance, us and Sol. I’ve talked to Lu. We have a lot of anxiety about this.”
    “We manage our own security. We’ve always managed it.”
    “Tell me this, Dr. Emory. Is the project you’re undertaking … going to have any strategic significance?”
    Trap. “Admiral, I suspect the development of a new toilet seat has strategic significance with some of your advisers.”
    Gorodin chuckled politely, and waited.
    “That’s fine,” she said calmly. “We’ll appreciate a vote of support from your Bureau. You want us to move the facility, we’ll move it, even to Cyteen Station. We’re very accommodating. We just don’t want to lose Rubin.”
    “That important?”
    “That important.”
    “I’ll make a proposition to you, Dr. Emory. You’ve got an agenda. You want it passed. You want these things to go through, you want them to go through with a clean bill from Finance, you certainly don’ t want any long delays. You want to get back to Reseune. I want to get back to my command. I’ve got business out there, and between you and me, I’m allergic as hell to something around here and I hate the socializing.”
    “I’m also anxious to get home,” she said. It was a dance. It would get where it was