Fire with Fire(63)
Opal looked over at him. “‘International bloc’?”
He nodded, answered in the short space between news items. “Five blocs. More important than nations, now.”
The same newscaster pressed on. “In interstellar news,—”
Her eyes widened. “Whoa.”
“—the sharp debates over the co-dominium of Delta Pavonis Three now seem to be abating. Observers attribute the restoration of normative relations between the planet’s Commonwealth and European union communities to the universal threat posed by the D-Pav virus, or ‘Pavirus’ as it has been dubbed by the WHO’s Office of Xenobiology and Epidemiology. Mounting pressure by megacorporations, particularly the Colonial Development Combine, to restore commercial access to Delta Pavonis have been denied. CoDevCo spokesperson Theresa Farkhan asserted that the bloc-imposed quarantine of Delta Pavonis Three was unnecessary and might be, quote, ‘Yet another ploy by nation-states to undermine the legitimate interests and rights of transnational corporations.’”
Opal frowned. “Those sound like fighting words.”
Caine just nodded and waited for the next item.
“In other business headlines, CoDevCo continues to deny allegations that hundreds of outsystem-worker deaths were caused by transport in unsafe or outdated cryocells. CoDevCo Public Affairs Director Robin Astor-Smath claimed that the Combine had not violated any of its contractual obligations, and that its semi-skilled outbound employees willingly accepted greater hazards in order to secure better pay. Astor-Smath went on to assert that the international blocs were to blame for the disproportionate risks borne by contract laborers from the Undeveloped World: ‘The blocs would not have green world colonies if it wasn’t for the inexpensive labor that we hire to extract needed resources from inhospitable worlds.’”
“And that—” Caine said, manually switching off the radio, “—is the end of the news.” The car had ceased moving. “Seems like we’ve hit a snag,” he observed. They were stopped before a yellow-and-black-striped roadblock sawhorse. Just beyond it, a woman in a hard hat was inspecting small silver disks embedded in the margins of the roadway.
“I’ll see what the problem is,” Opal volunteered, and fumbled at the door for a moment before remembering to unfasten her seat belt.
As he watched her exit the vehicle, he heard the air conditioning increase, felt the engine race to keep up with the sudden power drain. “Stop,” he instructed the car.
“This car is stopped.”
“Uh . . . ‘off.’”
“Shutting down.” The fuel-cell engine diminuendoed into a bass hum and then nothing.
Watching Opal saunter toward the road worker was a pleasant distraction. But after an exchange of smiles and nods, she seemed to hit a language snag. As her arm and head gestures became more expansive, the rest of her body exhibited a clipped sinuousness. She certainly did move like a woman who had worked around men—soldiers—almost all of her life. There were other signs of that background, too: she was capable and direct, but a little unsure of herself when it came to the subtler social banter of civilians.
Caine wondered what Downing had in mind for her: almost certainly something involving her military training. Her movements also suggested that if she had missed having the opportunity to learn the minuet, she hadn’t missed any of her martial arts classes. That, in conjunction with not being on any intelligence agency’s radar, were her greatest assets—at least right now. So what was she here for? To work as a bodyguard, maybe?
He considered her empty seat: a bodyguard . . . for me? Possible. And a bodyguard could also work as a watchdog, an informant. Caine frowned: that would certainly be Downing’s style, but it was hard to see Opal in such a role. Her dislike of Downing was genuine, palpable, and she seemed too socially awkward to be a very proficient actress or a reliable—
The door opened; Opal was almost in her seat by the time he turned. Reaching for the safety belt, she frowned and smiled at the same time. “You know how to drive this thing—I mean, the old-fashioned way?”
“I’ve had a few instructive misadventures trying to learn: why?”
She looked ahead, nodded at a road marker two hundred meters further on. “We’re going to have to take the ‘old road’ up to a different lookout. And from what I was just told—if I understood the Engreek correctly—the locals still call it the ‘goat path.’”
“Will we have to dodge the animals?”
She smiled. “Just a figure of speech, but a few parts are still single lane gravel. I got the whole sad story: seems they were in the process of modernizing it last year when the funding dried up.”