Regenesis by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

truther aimed at the room, would run electronic surveillance to see if any signal went out from that briefcase, and God knew what other probes it brought to bear, trying to penetrate the secrets in it.
    Yanni didn’t sit down. Since there was no Spurlin as yet, he made himself at home. He drew Frank a cup of coffee, indicated a chair to the side, where Frank ensconced himself—they’d been together lifelong, he and Frank, close as brothers. He wasn’t comfortable outside Reseune when circumstances excluded Frank, was much more at ease in a room where Frank was, and he took himself and a second cup of coffee to a seat at the oversized conference table.
    Spurlin came in, a walking stormfront of a man, with uniformed aides, who dispensed papers, water, glasses, and old-fashioned pens and notepads, God knew what they were supposed to do with those.
    The aides settled primly around the edges. An ache hit the roots of Yanni’s teeth as Spurlin lowered his wide-shouldered, uniformed and be-medaled bulk into the head chair. A silencer had started running, to prevent any eavesdropping.
    “Admiral,” Yanni said with a dip of his head.
    “Ser,” Spurlin answered. It had a note of question.
    “Patil just agreed to terms,” Yanni said plainly. “No alterations worth mentioning, except a 2,000-kilo mass limit and freedom to publish after the cover’s lifted.” He eased back in his chair, a little less ramrod straight. “Well. So we’re all go.”
    “We’re go.”
    “We’ll handle communication with our own people at Fargone. There’s a freighter going out on the twenty-fourth.”
    “Skip the freighter. No Alliance transport.” Freighters were that, Alliance merchanters, plying the routes between Union stations. “We have a courier. It can leave after the vote tomorrow.”
    Low mass, big engines, faster by a classified number of days—especially if the courier was ready to launch. And no Alliance snoopery, though if they black-boxed it, there was no likelihood Alliance would snoop at all. Yanni nodded. “If speed is an issue. We have the appropriate orders ready. We can make your schedule.”
    “You were that convinced she’d do it,” Spurlin said.
    “I thought she would, yes,” Yanni said. “A research scientist, with a life’s-work project backed up on hold for decades? I was very sure she’d do it.”
    “Her Paxer constituency really isn’t going to like her taking a Reseune post. Domestic security had better take hold and look sharp when that news breaks.”
    The Paxers, the peace party, had fallen on hard times after the War. They weren’t the threat they had been. They’d had a spate of bombings. A certain number of their intellectuals showed up at Patil’s public lectures. So, shadier and more violent, did a few of the Rocher Party, the Abolitionists. But it was a public forum, the Franklin Lecture Series, sponsored by a Centrist-leaning agricultural processing consortium, and as much as Patil’s speeches usually generated web chatter, she didn’t participate in the fringe-element chat. She more or less politely dealt with everyone who actually showed up; but she had a sharp manner when asked a stupid question, and only the intellectuals tended to ask her questions, not the subway-bombing lunatic fringe—they probably lived in terror of her. So did the tea-sipping social set who’d attend any function on the library circuit.
    “ReseuneSec is going on alert when Patil’s acceptance of a post goes public,” Yanni said.
    “My office will be on it,” Spurlin said. Spurlin’s specific office was system defense. He was a post-war admiral, never in combat. Khalid had that advantage, that he had fought against the Mazianni, the former Earth Company Fleet. “But this is supposing it goes through. Corain’s not entirely a surety yet. It could all fall apart.”
    “I’m pretty confident he’ll go with us on this,” Yanni said. “Lao’s with us.” That was no news. Lao of Information was