Playing God(11)

“What's going on?” asked Lynn.

“You mean aside from your three meetings, the advisory panel you're facilitating, and the t'Therian culture lecture you're giving?” asked R.J. brightly. He looked across at Trace and gave her a tight smile. “You lost, Trace. You go first.”

“Thank you,” Trace replied with a primness Lynn was almost certain was an act. “First the personnel-registration hardware is going to be delayed by at least a week.”

Lynn dropped her fork and groaned. David shot her a sympathetic glance.

“How'd that happen?” Lynn asked, wearily.

Trace looked down at her table screen. “Apparently when the project outline and payment scheme were rereviewed, somebody balked.”

“They're holding out for direct credit rather than a down payment and percentage,” chipped in R.J. “Seems our PR on this project is not as clean as some would like it.”

“How clean do they want it?” Lynn threw up her hands. “It's a big project. We're evacuating—”

“Ah-ah.” R.J. held up one finger. “Relocating, remember?”

“We're relocating,” Lynn started again sourly, “an entire population and cleaning up a planet that's five percent bigger than Earth. It's going to generate controversy.” Corporate enclaves ran on the goodwill of their contractors and subcontractors, and those, in turn, ran on the goodwill of their home enclaves, both the ones scattered up and down the Human Chain and the ones on Earth itself. The threads and knots of the info-web connected all the enclaves tightly together. If opinion on the web was bad, and the enclaves got nervous, the best contractors and subcontractors would turn the job down in favor of safer work, or would drive their prices up into the stratosphere. For a project like this, with ever-expanding needs across decades, too much of that could be disastrous.

“Well, I'm afraid Haberbuild is the main support of a small enclave, and they don't like controversy,” said Trace. “So, we're renegotiating.”

“Can you get me the downloads on that?” Lynn poked thoughtfully at her food. “Maybe I can help somewhere. I know some people in the enclave.” She paused and took a fortifying swallow of coffee. “You said that was first?”

“Second”—R.J. watched his stalking lions for a moment—“Commander Keale has put in an urgent request to see you before the final meetings start.”

Lynn choked on a swallow of coffee. Keale was the head of Bioverse Corporate Security, the people who were usually called the Marines. “What's Keale need to see me for?”

R.J. shrugged. “He isn't saying. But if you're going, you need to remember that we've got our first official meeting at ten.”

Lynn subvocalized “Time,” to her implant, and 9:32 flashed in front of her right eye.

“Nothing like cutting it close, is there?” she said in normal tones. “All right.” She glanced regretfully at David. “Pass the word I'm on my way.”

“Okay. See you in A12 when you're done.” R.J. cut the line, and his wall went blank.

“Call us if you need anything.” Trace's wall blanked out as well.

Lynn looked across the table at David. “Sorry.”

“It's okay.” He took her hand. “If I don't catch up with you in the room, I'll see you on the shuttle.”

Lynn stuffed a final piece of omelette in her mouth, followed it with a swig of orange juice, picked up the coffee bulb, kissed David quickly on the mouth, and retreated into the corridors.

Dedelphi Base 1 was designed for long stays, so the corridors were wide and frequently cut through arboretums or gardens with fishponds and lawns. Much of the interior paneling was flagstone or vat-grown wood rather than metal. The light was bright and full-spectrum.

Lynn followed the directions her implant displayed for her. Keale's office was just off an alcove that had been made into a Buddhist rock garden. A brownstone path ran up the middle so no one would have to disturb the sine-wave patterns in the sand.

The door was open, so Lynn stepped over the threshold. The office was a standard hexagon-shaped room with plain metal walls and a bare floor. Keale sat at a multiterminal comm station in the middle. The far end was taken up by a conference table, over which hung a view screen showing two schematics. The first was a globe of the Dedelphi's homeworld. The second was a blueprint of a city-ship like the ones the Dedelphi would be relocated to.

Lynn knocked on the doorframe, and Keale looked up. He was a broad-shouldered man in the spruce green uniform of the Bioverse security team. Multicolored ribbons decorated his chest, and he wore four pips on his high collar. He was not shaven. His thick hair was iron grey, and he'd never bothered to get the wrinkles smoothed out of his copper skin. His chiseled face said his ancestors came from Europe as well as any of a dozen equatorial islands.