LAID BY SOME INVISIBLE SPIDER

1563 4D

The display panel rose from the floor of Arlen‘s chamber, emitting a jumble of voices before it stopped rising. “Arlen, you’ve overstepped yourself completely this time,” the enraged marmot sputtered from the panel, “And you’ll pay heavily for it.” Enrit, the regional governor.

Arlen, to gather himself, mentally dressed Enrit and the others in animal guises and waited as the four City officials, along with Durlow, Rhin and Uill, fumed at him, Enrit blustering, “You’ll be hearing from the prosecutor’s chamber and the arms regulators within one day.”

“Cutting the power off in Sobi is costing everyone, and it’s getting worse,” said Frintar, the City militia commandant, her voice grating. “We’ve got riots there. The relocations you and Durlow are supposed to be running are a shambles. The air — the zone has no air source now except the old shafts. And I’m stretched too thin to try to keep order. Even the sensi feeds are down. The Mothers’ Festival was in full swing when the lights went out and the air died, and now there are half a million infuriated people in there. I’ve sent to regional for regiment-level forces, and when I get them here, I’m going to be sure this doesn’t happen again. Gullinder is backing me this time.”

“That’s the only way you’ll get as much as a fart out of Tren Tarz,” Arlen snapped, his tension kicking up anger. They always ran to Gullinder, like children to a sly and brutal father. Gullinder ran the coordinating group that oversaw the operation of the regional governments, though ‘oversaw’ was too weak a term to use; the group ruled with quiet, potent authority, managing somehow to penetrate and compromise the autonomy of the corporations themselves. “The regional militia is a joke anyway.” Arlen gripped one arm of his chair. Time to settle down and play the game.

“You’ve messed up Poly Town and Rumchi as well,” Durlow put in. “It’s the same there as—“

“What I’ve done, you’ll thank me for, when you see what nearly happened.” Arlen turned his head slightly. “Trenzil?” Behind him, the tentacled sentry reached to the floor and brought into view a human being, a young man clothed in a brown coverall. The man’s head lolled from side to side, his eyes and mouth slack and open. Trenzil, its steel tentacles wrapped around the man’s torso, arms and thighs, brought him to a standing position.

“Is this a biopuppet demonstration, Arlen? If so, forget it.” Durlow.

“Not at all. He’ll answer your questions freely. He was captured during the fighting at the ore terminal a few days ago. Some reconstruction work was needed to rebuild his heart, but his mind is intact. Trenzil, sadeshti na.” The tentacles tightened, drawing the figure toward the sentry’s body. As the man’s head approached the spikes that protruded everywhere, arcs of electricity leaped from the spike tips, burrowing through the man’s coverall. Ozone gnawed at Arlen‘s nostrils. This man had been one of his own people, a secret liaison aide with the City militia, and a tiny chance existed that one or more of the gathered leaders might remember him. There hadn’t been time to get other evidence to justify the power cutoff. Arlen watched the man’s head jerk and fall back again, once, twice; the electricity stopped.

The young man raised his head. He looked around, then down at the steel whips holding him, then at Arlen, then at the panel and its display of faces. His long brown hair, curly and thick, fell over a dark olive-brown forehead coated with a light film of sweat. He worked his mouth, moistening his lips, and his dark brown eyes, scanning the others, jumped from face to face in a disciplined pattern. Coming to life, his long hands, looking too delicate for the heavy work of war, flexed and relaxed. When he had finished taking in his surroundings, he waited, resting in Trenzil‘s restraints.

Minister Talizirin spoke first to him. “Tell us who you are.”

“My name is Rion.”

“That tells us nothing about you. Who do you work for?”

“I work for myself, to feed and shelter myself and help the people I love.”

“And what people do you love?”

Silence. Arlen said, “He loves Cortevail. She’s an andro.” Rion stiffened, and Trenzil‘s tentacles tightened their grip. I’ve touched him, there. It’s like Progarnes said, names are magic words.

Talizirin persisted. “What were you doing when you were— detained?”

“I was retrieving medicines for friends of mine.” Rion glared at them. “Real medicines, not street drugs. There are many sick in the lower zones.”

“Who are your friends?” From Enrit.

“The street children.”

“The rats who strip corpses,” Arlen interjected. Nearly time to change tactics with this traitor.

“This is getting us nowhere,” complained Uill, “And the lights are still out in Sobi.”

Arlen said, “He doesn’t know the news about Cortevail, now,” and turned to Rion, “Do you?”

An enraged glare answered him.

“You don’t know how I handle renegade andros, do you? That they’re not protected under law? Oh, you must know that. And you know that you’re protected from many forms of experimentation, and she is not.”

Arlen turned back to the faces assembled on the viewing panel and said, his eyes lowered, “We owe much to such andros for the neurological knowledge they have helped us discover. That knowledge has saved and prolonged lives. Of course, these andros haven’t participated in these benefits — we consider their sacrifice a form of repayment for their… record of misdeeds.” He turned again to Rion and thrust the full cold force of his stare into the young man’s dark furious eyes. “You were found with a crate of weapons. What you say now can help your friends much more than this evasion and resistance.”

“Wait.” Durlow, damn him. “I know him. He works for you, Arlen. He was called Artir.” The faces all boiled up into a welter of words and expressions.

“Another trick!”

“Arlen, you’re incredible!”

Again, while the others hurled their words at him, Arlen waited. Rion, formerly Artir Surendar. Living proof that mutual suspicion served much better than trust in maintaining an organization. If Mentrius, on a random hunch, hadn’t had this man followed, he might still be funneling information out of ArCorp. And what had he let out—? Time enough for that later. The gabble subsided.

Arlen began with a gusty sigh. “You’re right. He is— was one of mine. I didn’t find out what else he was doing until the joint raid at the ore terminal. Frintar, you saw him there, didn’t you?”

The militia commandant lowered her head. “I did. Though I didn’t know he worked for you.”

Rhin, her whine penetrating like a drill, said, “Arlen, you can’t convince me that you, of all of us, didn’t know what was going on all along. I think he was your agent, and still is. And while we sit here, you’re doing exactly what you want in Sobi Zone and Poly Town.” Voices rose together, following like a flock of birds. New faces lighted up on Arlen‘s panel, Gullinder among them.

Gullinder scanned the group, looking disgusted, and raised a hand. Slowly the voices died away. “This time, Arlen‘s right,” he announced. “While you sit here, we have a war on, a war to protect the South Power Complex. Arlen‘s done the one thing I would have done.” Silence.

What was Gullinder up to? Arlen glanced at Rion. The young man stared sullenly at the viewing panel, at the square face and shoulders of the interagency advisor who had just spoken. A prickle of suspicion touched Arlen. They know each other. He turned back to the panel, and smiled blandly.

Gullinder wasted no time. “Arlen, you’re off the hook. And I’m sending a team for that young man you’re holding. We need his information. Security Law 408.”

Arlen relaxed, defeated. He had never been able to get anyone into Gullinder‘s organization, to find out what this bull of a man wanted and what he owned, where he was strong and where the holes gaped in his armor. Arlen‘s last security shakeup had netted four of the group’s agents, none of them in very important positions; Arlen suspected that Gullinder had known, through better-placed spies, of Arlen‘s plan to jump into this battle early. And now, Security Law 408, the unfailing hook that the group used to get its way in skirmishes like this. Which raised the question: Was Gullinder rescuing his man, this seemingly-delicate Rion?

“Arlen, have him taken out of there to wait for my team,” Gullinder ordered.

Arlen stifled a slow groan, and nodded. He would have enjoyed playing with this one, not as young as Frei, but more worldly, stronger. Now Gullinder would have him, unless— no. Arlen didn’t relish the idea of tampering with Gullinder‘s objects of attention. “Trenzil, sai shau‘ich na zaerel,” he muttered.

The sentry trundled Rion to a narrow door and vanished. Arlen turned his attention back to the display panel, noting Gullinder‘s orders to the others and to him. A topo of Sobi Zone and the South Power Complex glowed now in the air before the screen, a spatial weave of shades and planes and threads showing the zone domains, the boundaries and the understreets of the sectors under discussion.

As Gullinder spoke, a web of white lines wove itself around the overlapping volumes as if laid by some invisible spider around the paralyzed body of a fly. More faces filled Arlen‘s display panel, mostly militia officers, police, and corpsec heads, Mentrius among them. With mixed suspicion and satisfaction Arlen noted on the topo the large allocations of space and force Gullinder gave him, Arlen, in the assault. This man knew how to play. But Arlen would deal one or two others out and get their routes as well — he counted on it — and that would give him just the edge he needed to stake his claim in the Complex at the end. Even Gullinder would have to concede it.

Arlen tapped his long nails on the tabletop beside him. The aliens he had spoken to on the ship were expecting passage to their meeting-place in the City in less than a half day. What were they doing? Hours had passed since he had contacted their ship. He waited, impatient, until the briefing had finished, secured his systems, and switched to the old video circuit. It winked its little star of light, and lit up with the goggling faces of the alien ship’s crew.