Carnival

This one, of necessity brief, must be sent when Vincent wasn’t present to record it. It was sealed eyes-only, quantum coded. When Kusanagi-Jones broke the seal on his own end of the code, a quantum entanglement triggered a wave-state collapse on the other end of the system, alerting his principal that a message was en route. The only man in the universe who could read the message was the one who held the other half of the key.

That man was Siddhartha Deucalion Hunyadi Lawson-Hrothgar. He was a senior member of the Earth Coalition Cabinet. And its contents, if they couldhave fallen into the wrong hands, would have meant surplusing and execution not only for Kusanagi-Jones, but for Lawson-Hrothgar as well.

Kusanagi-Jones understood Vincent’s position. The great-grandson of a Colonial Founder, the son of Captain Lexasdaughter—the most powerful head of state remaining under Coalition control—Vincent would work withinthe system, attempt to ease the Coalition’s stranglehold through diplomatic means.

Kusanagi-Jones, with the assistance of a revolutionary patron, had chosen another path.

Which was the thing Vincent could never be permitted to learn about New Earth, and the destruction of the starship named Skidbladnir,and why they had been separated: that it had happened so because Michelangelo had planned it that way.

“When you report,” Miss Ouagadougou said, as they stepped out into brilliant sunlight, “I’ll have something to add.”

Kusanagi-Jones wouldn’t show startlement. Instead, he stepped aside to give her a line of travel and fell into step behind. “Something about the plan I’d like to discuss. May I uplink the new version to your datacart?”

“Of course.” She pulled it out of her hip pack and flipped up the cover. “Password?”

He gave her one, and established a single-photon connection. The security detail hung back, just out of earshot if they spoke in level tones. New Amazonian courtesy. But there were some things you didn’t say out loud.

Green letters flashed across his vision and vanished. The director of security is a radical,Miss Ouagadougou said. Get her to enlist.

Kyoto?he asked. That old dragon?

She’s inclined pro-Coalition. A free-maler. Claude’s a loss. Saide Austin holds her purse strings, and Saide Austin…He glanced at her as the text scroll hesitated. She shrugged, a slow rise of her shoulders, a quick tilt of her head. He recognized the name from the gallery. Saide Austin.

More than an artist, apparently. You’re a Coalition agent.

Since before the war.

He wondered what they’d given her to buy her loyalty—money, access to Coalition art treasures—or if hers was an ideological treachery.

She put her hand on his arm. I’ve imbedded an information packet in your copy of the plan. She transmitted a code key, which he saved. “I’m starving,” she said. “It’s been hours since lunch.”

“Miss Ouagadougou?”

Kusanagi-Jones looked up. One of the agents had stepped forward. He might as well have been a shadow on the wall.

“Cathay.” Miss Ouagadougou smiled. “Problem?”

“Miss Pretoria requests you and Miss Kusanagi-Jones join her at Pretoria house.” Cathay—Kusanagi-Jones was uncertain if it was her first name or last—smiled. “A car is waiting.”

Miss Ouagadougou wet her lips, and Kusanagi-Jones’s pulse accelerated. Problem.

“My uplink,” he said. He’d been hoping, frankly, to get another look around the galleries and see if he could find whatever passed for a power conduit. Wherever they had the power plant hidden, there had to be wiring. Electricity didn’t transmit itself, and he’d seen no signs of microwave receivers. Room temperature superconductors, he’d guess.

“Do it in the car,” she said, fingers closing on his wrist.

Problem. Yes, indeed.

Kii touches the cold illation machines that populateKaiwo Maru ’s core. They are intelligent, in their own way, but Kii is not of interest to them. They process Kii, and ignore.

Kii contemplates, and the Consent observes. There is no determination yet, as Kii analyzes the Governors’ decision trees. The Governors are aware. They are adaptive. They are goal driven, and they are improvisational.