Burning Bright

“Thanks, Na Damian,” Roscha said, low-voiced, and Damian nodded.

“Get on back out there, and try to stay visible for the next eight or nine hours.”

Roscha nodded, visibly reassured, and backed out of the little office. Left to himself, Damian stared for few moments longer at the empty screens glowing in the desktop, then touched keys to summon his security files. Lioe and Ransome… On balance, it wasn’t very likely that Lioe was actually an agent for Republican Customs-and-Intelligence; she was too active a Gamer, and too busy a pilot, too, according to the records he’d obtained from the Pilots’ Union, to be employed by C-and-I as well. But she did know Desjourdy rather well, by everyone’s reckoning, and she had gone home this morning with Ransome. It wasn’t a risk he could afford to take.

He had more options in dealing with her than with Ransome. The imagist would have to be handled with care, because he himself couldn’t afford to antagonize Chauvelin— not yet, anyway, but if ji-Imbaoa does even half of what he’s promised… He made himself concentrate on the immediate problem. Ransome would have to be taken out of circulation temporarily, but couldn’t be killed, or even too badly damaged: that meant kidnapping, and then the question of where to keep him. Damian ran his fingers over the shadowscreen, slaving it temporarily to the household systems in Five Points. The palazze was closing down for the storm, topping up the batteries, workmen ordered to bring the shutters in over the massive windows; the summer house, out in the Barrier Hills behind the Five Points, was shut down completely, all systems on standby, doors and windows sealed against the storm. Damian considered it for a moment, then nodded. The house was reasonably well sheltered, tucked into the side of a hill well above the water, and clear of the stand of trees that topped the ridge. It had stood through worse storms: an ideal place to keep Ransome, he thought. And Lioe, too, I suppose. If nothing else, once the storm starts, they’ll be stuck there until it passes. He nodded to himself, and touched the shadowscreen, detaching himself from the house systems and recalling his security programs. He culled a picture of Ransome—a publicity photo, a recent one, that showed all the lines in the imagist’s thin face—from the main systems, and then used his C/B Cie. ID numbers to gain access to the union files. It was a little galling to think that Ransome could probably get the same information without codes, either netwalking or through one of his friends, but at least he could get Lioe’s photo. He dumped both of the images into a minidisk, the kind that would fit either a pocket system or an implanted reader, and after a moment’s thought added the security codes that would unlock the summer house. He tucked them into his pocket, and went looking for Almarin Ivie.

He found the security chief in his office, a big man who dwarfed his desk and the constantly changing displays on the walls behind him. The tiny space was dark, lit mainly by the blue-toned flicker of the displays, but Ivie touched controls as the door opened, focusing a faint halo of warmer light on the space before the door.

“Na Damian,” he said, and rose hastily to his feet. “What’s up?”

Damian waved for him to be seated again, found the guest’s chair, and spun it into position opposite the desk. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Whatever,” Ivie said, with a sincerity that Damian always found slightly unsettling. He killed that uncertainty—this was the time to appreciate his subordinates’ fervor—put the thought aside and slid the minidisk across the desk. Ivie caught it easily, the button of plastic disappearing in his thick fingers, and said, “For me?”

Damian nodded, and waited while Ivie slipped the disk into the reader tucked at the base of his left wrist spur. “I need these people taken out of circulation for a while,” he said. “The woman—her name’s Lioe, Quinn Lioe—I don’t really care how you do it as long as we’re not connected with it in any way. Ransome has to be handled with care: I don’t want him killed, or damaged too badly, but I want him out of circulation for at least the next half-week. The summer house is empty, and I’ve given you the system codes. Can you do it?”

Ivie looked almost offended for an instant, but the expression passed across his flat face almost as fast as it had appeared. His heavy hands moved over a shadowscreen with surprising delicacy, and he said, “It looks as though Ransome is up in Newfields now, talking to people. I don’t find the woman. At least not at first look.” His fingers danced over another set of controls, and he went on, “I’ve got a trace going through the Game nets—she’s the Gamer, right?”