“I’m not sure that’s exactly the sort of story I’d be willing to publish,” said Ms. Cheney after a while.
“I see.” Of course. The woman was a separatist. She would not be willing to cast any additional aspersions on the great Theodore Fuller. “Can I ask you to consider the implications that Edmund Waicek covered up his parents’ political leanings? It is one of the great media truths that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up, that makes news.”
Ms. Cheney pursed her mouth and nodded. “True. True. There may be something there.” Su could practically read her thoughts. For the mainstream, political cover-up. For the separatists, the loudest voice against colonial rights is the son of Fullerists. Yes, there was certainly something there.
“Why are you telling me this, Mrs. Yan?”
Su was ready for that one. “I deplore hypocrisy.”
“Surely that’s not the whole reason.”
“Surely it is.”
Ms. Cheney leaned back and nodded, an indication that she was prepared to be content with that for the moment. “I believe I can put together something that will return Edmund Waicek’s background to public conversation.”
“Very good.” Su stood, signaling the end of the conversation. “You’ll be contacted tomorrow about covering the blast site. Word will be left that you are—” Her phone spot’s chime cut off the rest of her words.
“Transmission from Ben Godwin to Yan Quai,” said the voice in her ear. “Private recording and decryption process go.”
Mother Creation, so soon? “I’m sorry,” Su forced her attention back to the reporter. “I’ve just received a message I must attend to.”
“About the Discovery?” asked Ms. Cheney, getting smoothly to her feet. “Or about more separatist activity?”
“I have no comment about it at this time,” said Su reflexively. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Ms. Yan.” She smiled. “Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you for yours,” returned Su.
Su left the feeder there. She had to get away from the cameras and their attendant ears. Her room at the embassy was as private as Sadiq could make it, so she headed there.
The room felt uncomfortably tiny to Su, but for Lunar quarters, it was quite luxurious. There was room for all the essentials—bed, desk, table, three chairs, without any of them having to be foldaways. The bathroom had a separate door and was hers alone.
Luna made some of its money off the tourist industry, but most of it off mining and industry, and the mining and industrial concerns were not interested in taking up room with living quarters.
When Su first had Sadiq Hourani tap Quai’s private mailboxes for her, she’d told herself it was a precaution. Quai dealt with some fringe characters and might find himself up to his neck before he knew it. He was just a boy.
But that was a comfortable fiction and she knew it. She’d asked for the tap because she wanted to know what was happening with the separatists. She wanted to keep an eye on them all so she could try to temper their activities, steer them away from the most damaging courses.
She wanted to control them.
The tap was a betrayal of her son’s trust. One day he’d find out, and she would pay. Even now, when they were on the same side, he would not forgive this intrusion into his privacy.
Even that stark realization, though, did not make her turn off the tap.
Su had already unplugged the desk and jacked her own case into the wall socket. She sat down in the desk chair and opened the screen. After a few typed commands and three passwords of increasing length, the decrypted stolen transmission printed out for her.
Su felt her eyes widen as she read. Her hands slipped from the command board and toppled into her lap.
Aliens. Aliens on Venus. Not some hole in the ground this time. Not overblown speculation and chancy photographs. Not even microscopic RNA particles. No. These were living beings with minds and wills of their own, and they had saved a scarab’s crew.
Su’s throat tightened. Implications, wondrous and terrible, poured through her mind too fast for her to take note of them all.
And here was Ben Godwin telling it all to her son, laying out how it could be used by the separatists for their cause. As predicted. But it was one thing to predict and another to see it happening. Some part of her had believed, had hoped, this day would not come even as she had laid down all her strategies for when it did.
One command at a time, Su wiped out the file. It would not do for anyone else to see this.
No, it would not do at all.
Chapter Twelve
T’SHA FLOATED IN THE research chamber of the New Home base, murmuring her worries to her personal cortex box and wishing painfully it was Ca’aed she spoke to. She and D’seun were now in the order of debate for the High Law Meet. A few of T’sha’s friends had quietly passed the word that they found it hard to support what she had done, considering that the consensus had been quite clear about the fact that she was to observe and report on the New People, not contact them, and that the New People’s own kind were already responding by the time T’sha had reached the accident site. One of those friends was Ambassador Z’eth.