Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

Ariel wanted to protest, but held back. "I see. I'll stay with these people, then, and set them up at the embassy."

He nodded. His eyes shut briefly. "When I get there, I think I'd better sleep."

"You wouldn't want to tell me where you're going, would you?"

"Not now." He smiled wearily. "Deniability and all that. Besides, I really don't know just exactly where…" He shook his head. "Get them to the embassy and safe. I'll comm when I'm finished. "

He pushed away from the limo. The door closed. Ariel watched him walk wearily away. She felt a sharp reluctance to let him out of her sight. For a moment she wanted to get out of the limousine and go with him, trusting the limo and the guards to get her passengers to the embassy.

Not very responsible, she thought peevishly.

Coren rounded a distant comer, disappearing from sight. Ariel leaned back in the seat, wondering at her uneasy mix of emotions.

"Embassy," Ariel said. She glanced over her shoulder at Tresha and Wenithal, and wondered idly how much of a diplomatic mess she had just created. Only i/they complain, she thought.

"Yes, Ambassador," the car replied and rolled on.

"This is nonsense," Wenithal said.

"What's changed?" Ariel asked. "You were prepared to shoot whoever came through your door earlier."

He glowered, then let his head fall back. Within a couple of minutes his eyes closed and his breathing deepened. Ariel wondered just how much alcohol he had drunk before they had arrived. Then she wondered how often people had thought that about her.

Tresha glared at Ariel, straight-backed and on edge, hands pressed against her thighs. Her backpack lay on the seat between the guards.

"That looks heavy," Ariel said. "What do you have in there?"

"Why?"

"Just curious. "

Tresha frowned. "My chops. Code bummer, datum, decrypter. Some clothes."

Ariel waited to see if Tresha would volunteer more. When she remained silent, Ariel asked, "Why Nova Levis?"

"Time. There's a list and a schedule. Nova Levis had the earliest opening. Besides, you hear there's a lot of tech there."

"You do?"

"They say, sure."

"It was an agrarian colony, started up by the Church of Organic Sapiens."

Tresha blinked at her. "They changed, then." She shrugged. "So, do you believe Mr. Lanra? That I'm not who I say I am?"

"Does it matter? Either you are and you need our help, or you aren't and we need to keep you under guard. "

Tresha shook her head. "Meddling. Spacers are always meddling. Why is that? What's all this to you?"

Ariel considered giving Tresha a glib answer, predigested and politic. It's my job, I was ordered to help. True as far as it went, but Ariel had never done anything purely for surface reasons. In this case, she felt she would have been justified to tell Setaris no and let herself be rotated back to Aurora as she expected to be.

She understood Derec's motives-he wanted to get his hands on a positronics lab one more time. The ground mission's lab was denied him and, though he still retained Thales, he simply could not do the research he wanted. And he wanted to stay on Earth, a desire about which she had grown ambivalent in the last year.

She understood Coren Lanra's motives, though she suspected there was more than he had admitted.

Ariel even understood Sen Setaris and the policy under which she had delegated the assignment.

But her own motives for going along with it?

"Until two hours ago I didn't know," she said. "Then I saw the enemy. " When they arrived at the embassy, Ariel summoned an extra security team to escort Wenithal and Tresha to separate apartments. "I want someone watching them full-time, highest level surveillance."

She went directly to her own apartment, then.

"Any messages, Jennie?" Ariel asked.

"Thales requests that you check in as soon as possible. "

"Thank you, Jennie." She tapped a code for the embassy security office. "I want an ID run, please. There is a woman just installed in the secure apartments calling herself Jeta Fromm. Verify. Check against records for a woman named Tresha, last name unknown."

As she stepped into the corridor, she felt a brief wave of weariness. She had been going for too long a stretch without more than ten minutes' sleep. Ariel shrugged it off and headed to Derec's apartment.

"Thales, do you have something for me?" she asked as she entered Derec's workspace.

"A number of items, Ariel. I have completed the recovery from the subject. Derec and Hofton have already viewed the relevant memories."

Ariel's pulse quickened. She sat down. "Then show me."

Ariel watched the entire episode, from the point where Nyom Looms confronted the dockworker to the point when collapse occurred after the murders of all the baleys. She did not move when it was done, staring at the screen. She felt warm, and a distant anger she knew would only grow with time.

"Do you wish to review any part of the material, Ariel?" Thales finally asked.

"No. Where's Derec?"

"In custody. The TBI have intervened and assumed authority over the investigation on Kopernik."

Ariel stood. "Wait." She went to Derec's bathroom and found a container of stim pills. She swallowed two and returned to Thales. "All right, Thales, tell me what's happened. " She took the embassy shunt to Setaris's offices.

Unexpectedly, Ambassador Setaris was in.

"Come in, Ariel, come in," Setaris said as Ariel walked in. "My door is always open for interesting people, and you've been so very interesting lately. "

Setaris sat behind her desk, gazing at the subetheric. Ariel glanced at it and saw Jonis Taprin speaking to a reporter in a formal interview setting. The sound was off.

"Derec Avery is in custody," Setaris said. "The TBI have seized control of Kopernik security from Chief Sipha Palen and are making very loud noises about security leaks and subversion. I have a protest filed from Ambassador Chassik demanding you be censured and dismissed from all embassy duties, pending an investigation of your fitness for executive responsibilities." She gestured at the subetheric. "Senator Taprin has been making very obnoxious noises about the treaties concerning our embassy missions. What did you do to him, Ariel? He's been almost shrill about reviewing Spacer presence on Earth."

"Nothing recently."

Setaris smiled wanly. "It's been a very long day. You've been excessively diligent in your assignment."

"Why is Derec in custody?"

"The TBI said something about evidence tampering and hindering an investigation. It's the sort of charge they make when they don't know what really has them angry. You two have stirred up a lot of trouble."

"I don't see how. We haven't done all that much yet."

"Yes, but you've done it in all the right places. You two have the damnedest luck. Gale basically wants you to stop looking into Nova Levis." Setaris frowned. "You didn't know Derec Avery was under arrest?"

"I just got back in," Ariel said evasively.

"Then why did you come here? I expected a barrage of protest and a demand to have him released."

"Maybe later." She leaned on Setaris's desk. "Why are we hiding a Solarian national?"

Setaris frowned. "I'm sorry, would you repeat that?"

"Rotij Polifos."

Setaris nodded slowly. "What do you know about him?"

"Derec got suspicious of him. Neither of us knew much about him, except that he's been director of the lab on Kopernik for six, almost seven years. That's a long time for an Auroran to hold a post here. "

"I've been here nearly twelve years, Ariel."

"We're diplomats; we're different. For someone like Polifos, it's an eternity. When I checked, I discovered that he had never once requested rotation to another post. No one from any office has questioned his long residency on Kopernik. Nothing you'd expect to happen in his position has happened. His stipend hasn't even changed in six years. "