John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

On the way back to Trade, Soram had a thought about the press conference he planned to call the next morning, the one in which he declared that the Nidu were coming back to the trade table thanks to his intense lobbying. So he called Jim Heffer's office. Heffer wasn't back from his Asia trip—he was always somewhere else, wasn't he—so he talked to Ben Javna instead.

"Given your help in these discussions with the Nidu, I was wondering if you want anyone from State at the press conference tomorrow," Soram said.

"Mr. Secretary, I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about," Javna said.

"I'm holding a press conference to announce that the Nidu are coming back to the negotiating table," Soram said. "I just got back from talking with the Nidu ambassador. The note you sent me was key in getting them back. I thought you might want to have someone at the conference. I'm scheduling it for nine-fifteen; we'll get on all the noon shows from that. Come on, Ben! It'll be fun."

"Mr. Secretary," Javna said, in an oddly even tone of voice. "I haven't sent you any messages in the last week. I certainly haven't sent any messages to you regarding the Nidu, and if I had, I wouldn't have suggested you share them with the Nidu."

"Oh," Soram said.

"If I may ask, Mr. Secretary, what was in the message?"

"That you'd found the girl they were looking for," Soram said.

"And what did you tell the ambassador?" Javna asked.

"Well, I told him that we'd be happy to provide the girl to them. You've got her, right? Surely she's agreed to help us."

"Well, Mr. Secretary, no and no," Javna said. "As far as I know, we don't have the girl, and so clearly she can't have agreed to help us. You've just guaranteed something we might not be able to deliver to a nation that already has cause for grievance against us."

"Oh," Soram said again. He suddenly felt cold. "Oh, dear."

"Mr. Secretary, if I may make a suggestion," Ben Javna said.

"Yes, of course," Soram said.

"If I were you, I would put off that press conference. I would also send me that note you seem to think I have sent to you. I would also not talk to anyone else about your note, or your visit to the Nidu. Finally, Mr. Secretary, until and unless you hear from me, Secretary Heffer, or President Webster, I'd strongly suggest you not make any long-term plans involving your current office. With all due respect to your position, sir, you've just humped the bunk. If you're lucky, you'll only have to resign."

"What happens if I'm not lucky?" Soram asked.

"If you're not lucky, we'll all be using cigarettes for currency in me prison exercise yard," Javna said. "Of course, mat's assuming that after they conquer Earth, the Nidu let us live."

Javna got off the line with Soram and immediately made the call to Heffer and got Adam Zane, his scheduler, instead. Heffer was just starting his speech lauding the retiring head of the LA office and couldn't be dragged away for anything short of a full-out attack. Javna briefly considered whether Soram's stupidity and incompetence constituted a clear and present danger to the Earth, and then told Zane to have Heffer call him the instant he stopped speechifying.

As he disconnected, Javna's mail queue blinked; Soram's message had arrived. Javna popped it up and grimaced when he read the message. Whoever had put it together knew as much about the girl as he did, and that of course was very bad. Javna pulled up the routing information; he wasn't an expert on mailing protocols but he was reasonably sure the UNE State Department was not routing extremely sensitive mail through an anonymous remailer in Norway. Whoever dropped this into Soram's lap knew that he wasn't the sort of person who would perform due diligence on the provenance of the message before stampeding off to cover himself in glory and save his own ass. It was someone who knew Soram well, or at least well enough.

Javna had his suspicions, of course. Secretary Pope and his sock puppet Dave Phipps were almost certainly behind this; they had the means and motive to pace Creek step for step in his own investigations. Then there was Defense's perennially cozy relationship with Jean Schroeder and the American Institute for Colonization. Creek had dug up the connection between Schroeder and that damned fool Dirk Moeller; it was almost equally certain there was a direct connection between Schroeder and either Pope or Phipps, or both. Officially the AIC was in bad odor across the Webster administration, but unofficially people like Schroeder and groups like the AIC were like barnacles on the ship of state. You couldn't just scrape them off; they had to be blasted off with a fucking water cannon.

Regardless of whom, the question was why. Ideally, Creek would even now be convincing the Baker lady to help out, and State would find some way to have her play her role in the Nidu coronation ceremony so that she walked away from it with no undue trauma. In other words, whoever was playing Soram was only having him deliver a message State would hopefully have delivered a day later at most. If it was sabotage, it didn't make much sense.

Unless, Javna suddenly realized, whoever fed Soram his information knew that the girl couldn't be delivered.

Javna checked his watch. By this time, Harry and the Baker lady would be having their little date at the mall. He reached for his desk communicator to call Creek; as he did so his incoming service light went on and Barbara, his assistant, came over the speaker. "The Nidu ambassador is here to see you, Mr Javna," she said.

Fuck, Javna thought. Just like that, he was out of time.

"Send him in, please," he said, and then grabbed at his keyboard to bang out a note to Creek. Javna had the dread sense that Creek and the mysterious Miss Baker were about to find themselves in serious and possibly fatal danger. In the short run, until Javna could figure out who was stage-managing this interference and for what end, it was better and safer that Creek and the girl go away.

Javna had no doubt Creek could disappear; he just hoped he'd be able to find to him again when he needed him, which he figured would be all too soon.

Javna banged the "send" key just as the office door opened, and cursed inwardly even as he stood to receive Narf-win-Getag. Having Creek and Baker go to ground was just about the least convenient thing he could have them do at this particular moment in time. Its only advantage was that it was better than the both of them being dead.

Good luck, Harry, Javna thought as he plastered a welcoming smile on his face. Stay safe, wherever you are.

"Where the fuck is he?" Rod Acuna jammed himself through the door of the apartment, Takk following close behind, and stood over Archie at his computer. Archie stared agog at Acuna, who looked like he'd just run a gauntlet of large predators. Acuna whacked Archie hard upside the temple with his good hand. "Where the fuck is Creek?" he repeated.

The smack on the temple got Archie back into work mode. "He's on the Metro," Archie said. "I'm tracking him and the girl with the pen. I lose the signal here and there because of the tunnels, but it picks up again when they get near a stop."

"They're going to the State Department," Acuna said.

"I don't think so," Archie said, and punched up a map of the Metro system. "Look, here's the Foggy Bottom/GWU stop," he said, pointing. Then he pointed at the tracking window, which noted longitude and latitude, updated every second. "These coordinates are past that stop and are moving at speed consistent with a Metro train. They're still on the Metro."

"What are they saying to each other?" Acuna asked.

"I'm not picking up anything," Archie said. "She must have the pen in a purse or something." Archie looked around again. "Where's Ed?" he asked.