Quiet Invasion (27 page)

This particular feeder sat in a wingback chair in a little parlorlike cluster of seats and tables. As Mari and Quai crossed the dampening field, the muted roar of the party fell away. Frezia Cheney was a fine-boned woman with pale copper skin and coffee-dark eyes. She was conservatively dressed for this party—loose gold trousers and a knee-length white tunic with gold embroidery around the collar and cuffs. A gold beaded cap covered her black hair, which had been pulled into a knot at the nape of her long neck.

“Frezia Cheney,” said Mari as the woman stood up. “This is Yan Quai. Quai, this is Frezia Cheney.”

“How do you do.” Quai shook Ms. Cheney’s hand. As he did, he noticed the clear plastic exoskeleton extending out of the woman’s tunic sleeve to cover her hand. Not only was Ms. Cheney a Lunar, she did not spend much time at all on Earth. If she did, her muscles would have been able to manage the gravity without help.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Yan.” Ms. Cheney withdrew her hand and sat back down a little hesitantly. The exoskeleton allowed her to move freely, but it could not disguise a Lunar’s mental discomfort with full gravity. “I am sorry about having to bring this to a social gathering. Would you prefer I made an appointment to meet you at your office?”

Two points for the appearance of consideration, anyway.
“No, this is fine,” Quai said, casting a significant look toward Mari. “I understand having a crowded schedule.”

Mari patted Quai’s shoulder as she left Quai sat in the second wingback chair, which was turned so he was almost knee-to-knee with Ms. Cheney.

“Something to drink?” asked Ms. Cheney.

“Scotch, thanks,” replied Quai, and Ms. Cheney sent the table scooting away with orders for two.

“Now.” Quai crossed his legs and pulled out his best businesslike voice. “What can I do for you, Ms. Cheney?”

Ms. Cheney smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Yan. I have no intention of asking you about your mother.”

Not yet, anyway,
thought Quai, but he kept his expression bland. “Well, that’s refreshing.”

Ms. Cheney gave him a knowing look. When he didn’t react, she just shook her head. “I’m much more interested in a little company called Biotech 24.”

“Biotech 24? And they are?”

“A little stream company that’s been giving money to various research projects out in the planets, including to a Dr. Meyer up on Venera Base so she can study what she thinks is microscopic life in the Venusian cloud banks.” The table returned, and Ms. Cheney handed Quai a short, stout glass.

“And why would you be interested in them?” Quai sipped his drink. One of the other things Mari did really well was catering. This was the pure stuff. No rapid distilleries for Mari’s patrons, no sir.

Ms. Cheney wrapped her fingers around her glass. Quai heard the minute hum as the servos tightened her grip for her. “Because a friend of a friend of ours wants to know if there’s separatist money behind it.”

“A friend of a friend of ours?” Quai felt his eyebrows rise. “Is there a name involved here?”

Ms. Cheney lifted the glass and cradled it in her augmented hands but did not drink. “Paul Mabrey.”

Quai whistled long and low. “Now there’s a memory. I thought he’d ceased to exist.” Quai had researched the Bradbury inquisitions thoroughly. He looked on it as a necessity. So many people popped their heads back up once every five years or so that you needed to know whether they were the real thing or whether they were on the yewner’s fishing teams. His mother’s colleague Mr. Hourani was particularly good at getting old revolutionaries to turn on the new separatist movements.

“There was a rumor he was gone.” Ms. Cheney’s face was guarded. “But he’s back, and he wants to help, or at least not do any harm.”

“I see.” No one had ever accused Paul Mabrey of actually cooperating with the yewners, that Quai had heard. There was, however, a kind of automatic suspicion attached to anyone who got out of Bradbury without having to go to trial. He’d have to check the stream, see if there was any gravitational attraction between Mabrey’s name and Hourani’s. “Is Mabrey the friend, or the friend of the friend?”

“He’s the friend.” Ms. Cheney still did not drink. Quai started to wonder why she’d bothered to send for a drink she didn’t want. Probably so she’d look companionable.

“And the friend of the friend?”

Ms. Cheney did not miss a beat. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Quai took another swallow of his own drink. She didn’t know what she was missing here. “Then I’m not at liberty to speak.”

They regarded each other for a long moment, weighing their private considerations and deciding how much they could give or how much they had to hold back.

“If Biotech 24 is working with you, then there’s a potential disaster brewing,” said Ms. Cheney. “The yewners are ordering an audit of Venera’s books. They won’t miss this.”

That caught Quai off guard. He let the silence stretch out too long before he was able to answer. “And were that to be any kind of a problem, Paul’s friend might be in a position to do something about this?”

“Yes.”

Which pretty much told Quai who the friend of a friend was. There was only one place where the organized separatists had been able to make any inroads on Venera. The Venerans were so ruthlessly apolitical that it wasn’t funny. Sometimes Quai wondered if it was part of the boarding oath. “We the undersigned agree not to have any opinions whatsoever.”

Well, well, Ben Godwin has decided to move from sympathizer to player. Dicey time to try it. I wonder what changed his mind?

I wonder what Paul Mabrey has been up to all these years? Maybe it’s time to dither.

“Listen, Ms. Cheney,” he began. “I’m only loosely jacked in to that end of—”

Ms. Cheney snorted and waved one hand. “If you don’t want to tell me, Mr. Yan, just say so. The only person who knows more than you about where the Terran separatist money comes from is our hostess.”

Quai smiled, just a little. “I’ve heard that one too. If it’s true, then Heaven help the separatists, because nobody knows what’s going on.”

Ms. Cheney studied him in silence for a minute. Then she said, “The game’s starting up again, Mr. Yan. This may be our last, best chance to break from Earth. The longer the yewners can be put off, the better for us.” She set her drink back down on the table, still untasted. “Now is not the time to be invisible. Now is the time to let them know we’re here.”

“There I do not agree with you.” Quai shook his head.

Ms. Cheney shrugged, a move that made her servos buzz angrily. “And there’s a lot of us on Luna who disagree with your disagreement. But that’s all right. Unless”—she turned her head so she regarded him out of one sinning eye—“that’s what’s keeping you from answering my questions?”

Quai took another sip of scotch and rolled it around in his mouth for a moment, considering the possibilities. He had to agree that having the yewners track down the origins of Biotech 24 would not be a good idea. However, at least as far as he was concerned, and he was the one being asked here, neither Paul Mabrey nor Ben Godwin were good risks. On the other hand, Mari trusted this woman, and Mari’s judgment was sound.

Also, it was worth a little payback to know that the Lunars were not willing to sit back and wait.

Of course, Ms. Cheney could not be speaking for all the Lunars, any more than he and Mari worked with all the Terran groups. There were knots and bunches of people who called themselves separatists, or procolonials, or planetary-rights representatives scattered all across four worlds, and in the L5 archipelagoes to boot. Some of them held summits together. Some of them actively hated each other. They had all been born out of the Bradbury Rebellion, but their principles divided them more than they united them.

Sometimes Quai wondered why the yewners considered them any kind of threat.

Still, if he gave Ms. Cheney what she was looking for, she might be able to give him an inroad to the Lunar separatists if he needed it later.

“Yes, there’s separatist money in Biotech 24,” he said at last. “No, it would not be a good thing if the yewners knew that.”

Ms. Cheney nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. Cheney.” Quai set his drink down on the table and stood. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Not at the moment.” She stood also and held out her hand. “But I may want to talk to you in the future.”

“And I may want to talk to you.” He shook her skeleton-encased hand, barely able to feel the flesh under the plastic cage.

“I look forward to it.”

They said good-bye and Quai walked away to find Mari. It wasn’t hard. She stood out like a scarlet exclamation point in a crowd of men and women in earth tones and gold. She spotted Quai and extricated herself from the group.

“I see you got yourself out.”

“Years of experience.” Quai leaned against the railing and looked down on the stages. A cirque performer was juggling now, a brilliant cascade of green glowing spheres. “Mari, did you know what that was going to be about?”

“Of course,” she answered simply.

Quai cocked an eye toward her. Her face was free of any suspicion or apology. “And you trust her all right?”

Now Mari frowned. “I wouldn’t have sent you in there if I didn’t, Quai; you know that.”

“I do.” Quai rubbed his hands together. “I just…I don’t know.”

Mari touched his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

He looked up at her. Her hand was warm and felt very pleasant where it was. A pretty woman, Mari, a good friend, and a savvy businessperson. They needed more people like her. “You ever wonder if we know what we’re doing? If we’re the right ones for the job?”

She laughed and patted his back. “Constantly. But we’re all there is.”

“I guess.”

“Come on.” She took his arm. “You’re not having fun, and that’ll be no good when I start pressing for account deductions. Let’s go watch the cirque troupe.”

“In a second, Mari.” Quai straightened up and gently extricated his arm from hers. “Can you get me a secure line? I’ve got to send out some mail.”

“Sure. Hang for a minute.” Mari threaded her way expertly through the crowd, heading for the offices in the back.

Quai hung. He watched the performers and the audiences, and the talkers and the drinkers. He wondered how many people here really believed that the colonists deserved better than they were getting and how many of them were just here because Mari knew they had deep pockets and wanted to pretend they were involved in daring underground politics.

How many of them had waived their right to kids in favor of long-life? How many of them wanted to have both the kids and as much immortality as money could buy and had already reserved a slot in some resort on the Moon or Mars where they could retreat once they reached age 120? That was the deal. You got long life, or kids, or you left Mother Earth behind.

And for the hundred-millionth time Quai told himself his activism was not about his father’s decision to take the waiver and leave him.

Mari came back with a minipad. She slotted it into the bar, hit a couple of command keys, and handed him the stylus. “It’s all encrypted under some of my best stuff, so don’t send anything they’ll want to trace. The yewners will think it’s me.”

“Never.” Quai took the stylus and considered the blank screen for a moment.

Finally, he wrote:
Old friends operating under alias in targeted area. Working toward mutual goal. With their efforts, we might get there sooner rather than later if we just sit back and let it happen. But maybe keep one eye on the Moon.

He addressed the message to an alias and sent it out. The contact code he sent the scrambled package to was a group box. Buyers and sellers of all kinds went in there to keep up on gossip, to give leads to friends, that kind of thing. All of it was scrupulously legal, of course, or, at least, all of it was so far unaudited.

Quai sat back and fingered the holotattoo on his neck. He could barely believe things were really happening. Ever since he’d thrown in with the separatists, he’d gotten used to the idea that it was going to be a long, hard slog. Ted Fuller rotted in an isolation cell. Mars was discovering easy economic benefits in lining up to serve the mines, the heavy industries, and the long-life resorts.

But now, now, he could see the end. He could almost touch it. Okay, not the end, but the beginning. The new beginning.

He’d never really believed he’d have this kind of help, or that the people they needed so badly would come around.

But he did and they had, and now it was a whole new game.

“Well, well,” murmured Alinda, pushing her heavy braid of hair back over her shoulder. “Don’t push the Send key yet, ladies and gentlemen.”

Grace looked up from her desk. “What are you mumbling about, Al?”

Alinda’s dark eyes sparkled and Grace groaned inwardly. There was nothing Alinda Noon loved more than a good rumor.

That is the biggest problem with v-babies,
thought Grace.
They all believe gossip is a social grace.

The three of them sat along the curving wall of Chemistry Lab Nine, their desks a small island on a sea of cluttered workbenches and metal-sided analyzers.

“Looks like reports of aliens on Venus were a bit premature,” Alinda went on.

Grace froze. “What?” she demanded.

“I win the pool.” Al called over her shoulder to Marty, who’d frozen his own simulation to listen. “I said the yewners would be crying fraud within a week of getting here.”

“What are you talking about?” Grace heaved herself to her feet.

Alinda blinked, startled. “Nothing catastrophic, Grace, really. The yewners are calling for an audit of base books and time logs. Only one reason for it. They think we’ve been playing games with time and money.”

Each word thudded hard against Grace’s mind. “But they don’t know?”

“Know we’ve been playing games?” Alinda’s brow creased.

“That the Discovery’s is a fake!”

“Of course not. Why? Should they?”

Alinda’s blank look, Marty’s stupid, stunned stare were suddenly more than Grace could stand. “Pay attention, little girl!” she roared. “That Discovery is saving your job and your precious base! If it gets taken away, this whole place is going into cold storage! There is nothing funny here!”