Captain Vorpatril's alliance

His eye fell on Simon, watching this with his mouth gone wry. “And Simon. What the hell?” The Why was I blindsided? look was very clear in the emperor’s eye, which Ivan could only be grateful was not turned on him. Yet.

Simon gave him a beleaguered head tilt. “You know that long lunch appointment I made with you for tomorrow?”

“Yes…?”

“I should have made it for yesterday.”

Gregor accepted this with an extremely provisional nod. “We’ll discuss that. Later.”

Gregor’s gaze swept over the disrupted landscape. “General Allegre…” Allegre steeled himself. “Good work.” The general let out a pent breath as Gregor went on, “I’d like to have a personal word with your commander of engineers, if you please.”

Allegre went over to the command post and fetched the man, who’d been directing the platoon of engineers spread all over the site through the portable comconsoles there. Ivan recognized him; Colonel Otto, one of the top men in the Vorbarr Sultana local command. Like Galeni, he had a doctorate tucked away under his military rank. He, too, was in uniform‑sensible black fatigues under his greatcoat, with proper engineering mud splashed about, thick on his engineer’s boots. He accepted his emperor’s personal congratulations on his night’s work with a pleased but slightly distracted expression.

Released from the Imperial Attention, Otto took Ivan aside. “Vorpatril. What can you tell me about this so‑called Mycoborer shit we’re dealing with? That woman, Star, wasn’t too helpful.”

“It eats big holes right through dirt. Branching semi‑randomly. I think it turns the inorganics into its tunnel walls, but I’m not sure. You need to catch up with Lady ghem Estif, before noon by preference, and don’t let her snow you‑requisition a high‑powered biologist from the Imperial Science Institute when you go. She has more samples‑be sure to confiscate them and get them into the hands of the I.S.I. As a construction application, it could be worth millions.”

“As a tool? Or as a weapon?”

Ivan sighed. “As a tool‑it needs development. As a weapon‑it seems good to go. But you really need the I.S.I. boffins on it.”

Otto’s mouth twisted up in joyless understanding.

Allegre, his hand to his earbug, trod over to them. “Otto. There’s a Captain Roux at the security perimeter, one of your boys. Do you need him now?”

The new security perimeter, added due to Gregor’s, Ivan hoped temporary, complicating presence. Gregor was over having some possibly‑stern words with Simon and Lady Alys; Tej was listening intently, and putting in a brave gloss now and then.

“Yes, I do! Let him through,” said Otto.

If mud made the engineer, Roux had to be some sort of boy genius, Ivan thought, as the captain cruised up and quickly dismounted from a float bike. Otto looked merely artistically flecked, by comparison. The salutes exchanged between Roux and his superior were almost as perfunctory as those of ImpSec analysts, as they got down quickly to business. Gregor, noting this arrival, strolled near enough to eavesdrop, but not enough to force an interruption.

“We finally traced that damned storm sewer, Colonel,” Roux reported, slightly out of breath. “It empties into the river about a kilometer below the Star Bridge. It was blocked way the hell up; but it became unblocked in a hurry about an hour ago. We lost our remote probe‑swept out in the mudflow. Thank God we hadn’t sent any men in yet. We were estimating efflux at one to three cubic meters a second.”

Allegre, coming over in time to hear the tail end of this, said, “One to three cubic meters a minute are going to drain the water backup fairly quickly, yes?”

Roux glanced up, took in the eye‑pins and the general’s rank tabs, and managed a normal salute, courteously returned. “Not per minute, sir. Per second. And not rainwater. Mud. It’s like‑it’s like a mud cannon. The stream was still shooting straight out about ten meters before it arced into the river, when I left.”

Gregor, edging closer at this fascinating word‑picture, stopped and looked at something across the street, his head tilting slightly.

Allegre’s brow wrinkled. “So where is it all coming from?”

“That’s a good question, and we’ll address ourselves to it as soon as we’ve dealt with your last five urgent requests, General,” said Colonel Otto, looking harassed. “Now, if you’ll just let my people get on with their jobs…”

“Guy,” called Gregor, still staring. “Has ImpSec HQ always been sort of…tilted up on one side? Or is that an optical illusion?”

Allegre looked around; his gaze grew arrested.

Gregor went on, uncertainly, “I’d not seen it before from this angle of view. Maybe it’s just more of Dono Vorrutyer’s subtle disproportions devised from his cracked theories on the psychology of architecture.”

Ivan wheeled around as well. So did everyone else. Simon, Alys clutching his arm, and Tej came over to Ivan’s side.

Ivan blinked. He squinted. Gregor wasn’t wrong; the left side of ImpSec building did look slightly higher than the right. Or…the right side lower than the left…?