Melissa Scott - Mighty Good Road

After a moment’s pause, FitzGilbert shook her head silently.

“That’s because he, Slade, was responsible,” Heikki said. “I have proof.” She reached for the tapes she had made, but Max caught her wrist. Before she could protest, FitzGilbert said, “Why? It makes no sense….” Her tone was less convinced than her words, and Heikki struck at that uncertainty.

“Because Lo-Moth got its idea, and most of its plans for that crystal out of Tremoth’s back files, didn’t they?

It was just your technician’s bad luck he/she got the wrong set. Those plans were supposed to stay buried forever, lost in the system, because that was the crystal that destroyed EP1. But your techie found them, passed them along, and you grew a crystal, grew a matrix—a flawed matrix—before he even knew it was in the works. And by the time he did find out it was too late to stop you any other way except by destroying the matrix and then taking over and burying your research. You’d already set up a test facility for it, hadn’t you?”

FitzGilbert nodded, her expression very still. “Slade did this personally—killed my people?”

“He hired the men who did it,” Heikki answered.

FitzGilbert’s face was grey even in the link’s flattering reproduction. “So what do you want of me?”

“You may have information,” Max began, and Heikki said again, “Shut up, Max. Slade pulled me off the job you hired me to do before I had the chance to complete it, and did his best to ruin my professional reputation, just in case I happened to put the pieces together. And that’s nothing compared to what he did to you. I want his head, FitzGilbert. And so should you.”

There was a long silence, and then FitzGilbert said, in a sleepwalker’s voice, “Slade told me you had a brother who worked for Tremoth, that you were working with him to ruin the company.”

Heikki laughed. It was a harsh sound, without humor. “My brother used to work for Slade, yes. I hadn’t spoken to him for twenty years—I wouldn’t have spoken to him if Slade hadn’t tried to ruin me.”

“What do you want from me?” FitzGilbert said again.

“Anything you have,” Heikki answered.

There was another silence, this one longer than the first. Finally FitzGilbert said, “Yes—no, wait. There’s one thing you don’t know.”

Max stirred slightly, and Heikki flung out a hand to silence him. “Well?”

“Those crystals—the plans, I mean, for the matrix. It was Slade himself who gave the schematics to Research.”

“Why the hell would he do that?” Heikki said, almost to herself, and then stopped, appalled. Slade was a Retroceder, everyone had said so—he wore the party’s green badge openly even inside the corporation. If the Loop were destroyed—and the defective crystals would do that—he would be in a position to take up power in the Precincts, could probably have his choice of planets, backed by his fellow Retroceders. God knows, she thought, he may have become a Retroceder only to make use of their ideals, their politics, to make this entire maneuver possible. It would explain why the original data had never been destroyed. “He was going to use the crystals—sell them?”

FitzGilbert nodded, once, but then her face hardened. “Which I will deny, publically and in the courts.”

“Why—?” Heikki began, but FitzGilbert was talking on, staring now at Max.

“All right, Commissioner. Yes, I have information that would be of use to you, information that ought to help you convict that bastard, but I want guarantees first.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Max said, and FitzGilbert laughed harshly.

“Oh, you can promise this. You will, or you don’t get what I have.” She waited, and when Max made no further protest, went on, “Try him and welcome, but only for the latac. That’s enough, seven people dead, but leave EP1 out of it. Christ, do you know what would happen if it was known that somebody’d made a bad crystal that could get past all the tests? That was what caused EP1, and that somebody had tried to do it again? It wouldn’t just ruin Lo-Moth, and Tremoth, it’d destroy the Loop.” She paused then, searching their faces. “There are enough fringe groups that distrust the railroad, the Retroceders are just the loudest and the most organized. Give them a cause like this, and the whole system will go down. You give me that promise, Max, or you get nothing from me.”

There was another long silence, broken only by the faint hissing of the open communications channel. Heikki sat very still, staring at the trees beyond FitzGilbert’s window, and the bright reflection from the roof of a crystal shed. The Iadaran was right, there were entirely too many extremists who disliked the Railroad, some out of economic jealousy, some out of an irrational fear of the technology itself—which turned out not to be entirely irrational after all. She shook her head, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Max was nodding slowly.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “What about these flawed crystals? How’re you going to keep this from happening again?”

“I think something can be worked out,” Max said, with a cynical smile.

FitzGilbert’s lips twisted into an expression that might have been intended as a smile, but looked more like a grimace of pain. “I will see that the specifics of the design go to our heads of research, with an appropriate simulation of what might happen if such crystals were put into use. They can then compare all subsequent core crystals with that schematic—it can become a regular part of the inspection process. Will that suffice, Commissioner?”

No, Heikki wanted to say, it’s not good enough, damn it. Max was already nodding.

“I can accept that, Dam’ FitzGilbert. Now, about the data you said you had—”

“What about your promise?” FitzGilbert answered.

Max sighed. “I can give you my word that Ser Slade will only be charged with the deaths of the latac’s crew, and with attempted fraud in regard to Dam’ Heikki here, and her brother—and whatever else I can catch him on that does not reveal that the EP1 disaster was caused by these flawed crystals. Is that acceptable?”

There was a long pause, and then FitzGilbert sighed. “All right.” Her hands moved on a workboard in front of her, out of the cameras’ line of sight. “Are you ready to receive my data?”

Heikki did not answer, still overwhelmed by the turn of events, and Max reached impatiently over her shoulder to touch the necessary keys. “Ready to receive,” he said.

“Transmitting.” The machines squealed thinly, just at the edge of hearing. Heikki ducked her head in spite of herself, wincing, and then green lights flashed above the diskprinter.

“Transmission complete,” FitzGilbert said, in almost the same moment. She looked suddenly very grim. “But if you break your word, Commissioner, you’re going to find that that’s worse than useless. End contact.” Her image vanished in a flare of light. Heikki began to shut down the system, her hands moving almost without conscious volition.

“I hate it when people threaten me,” Max said quite placidly, to no one in particular, and reached over Heikki’s shoulder for the disks. He slipped them into the nearest workboard, tuned it to a private frequency, and began scanning pages through his data lens. Heikki released the last console from the local system and leaned back in her chair, watching as a smile spread over Max’s face.

“I assume it’s good news?” she asked.

“It’s what I was hoping for,” Max agreed. “This should be the last piece.” He looked at Alexieva, waiting all but forgotten in the doorway, Nkosi still hovering at her side. “Thank you for your help, Dam’ Alexieva.”