Ms. Cheney wrapped her fingers around her glass. Quai heard the minute hum as the servos tightened her grip for her. “Because a friend of a friend of ours wants to know if there’s separatist money behind it.”
“A friend of a friend of ours?” Quai felt his eyebrows rise. “Is there a name involved here?”
Ms. Cheney lifted the glass and cradled it in her augmented hands but did not drink. “Paul Mabrey.”
Quai whistled long and low. “Now there’s a memory. I thought he’d ceased to exist.” Quai had researched the Bradbury inquisitions thoroughly. He looked on it as a necessity. So many people popped their heads back up once every five years or so that you needed to know whether they were the real thing or whether they were on the yewner’s fishing teams. His mother’s colleague Mr. Hourani was particularly good at getting old revolutionaries to turn on the new separatist movements.
“There was a rumor he was gone.” Ms. Cheney’s face was guarded. “But he’s back, and he wants to help, or at least not do any harm.”
“I see.” No one had ever accused Paul Mabrey of actually cooperating with the yewners, that Quai had heard. There was, however, a kind of automatic suspicion attached to anyone who got out of Bradbury without having to go to trial. He’d have to check the stream, see if there was any gravitational attraction between Mabrey’s name and Hourani’s. “Is Mabrey the friend, or the friend of the friend?”
“He’s the friend.” Ms. Cheney still did not drink. Quai started to wonder why she’d bothered to send for a drink she didn’t want. Probably so she’d look companionable.
“And the friend of the friend?”
Ms. Cheney did not miss a beat. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
Quai took another swallow of his own drink. She didn’t know what she was missing here. “Then I’m not at liberty to speak.”
They regarded each other for a long moment, weighing their private considerations and deciding how much they could give or how much they had to hold back.
“If Biotech 24 is working with you, then there’s a potential disaster brewing,” said Ms. Cheney. “The yewners are ordering an audit of Venera’s books. They won’t miss this.”
That caught Quai off guard. He let the silence stretch out too long before he was able to answer. “And were that to be any kind of a problem, Paul’s friend might be in a position to do something about this?”
“Yes.”
Which pretty much told Quai who the friend of a friend was. There was only one place where the organized separatists had been able to make any inroads on Venera. The Venerans were so ruthlessly apolitical that it wasn’t funny. Sometimes Quai wondered if it was part of the boarding oath. “We the undersigned agree not to have any opinions whatsoever.”
Well, well, Ben Godwin has decided to move from sympathizer to player. Dicey time to try it. I wonder what changed his mind?
I wonder what Paul Mabrey has been up to all these years? Maybe it’s time to dither.
“Listen, Ms. Cheney,” he began. “I’m only loosely jacked in to that end of—”
Ms. Cheney snorted and waved one hand. “If you don’t want to tell me, Mr. Yan, just say so. The only person who knows more than you about where the Terran separatist money comes from is our hostess.”
Quai smiled, just a little. “I’ve heard that one too. If it’s true, then Heaven help the separatists, because nobody knows what’s going on.”
Ms. Cheney studied him in silence for a minute. Then she said, “The game’s starting up again, Mr. Yan. This may be our last, best chance to break from Earth. The longer the yewners can be put off, the better for us.” She set her drink back down on the table, still untasted. “Now is not the time to be invisible. Now is the time to let them know we’re here.”
“There I do not agree with you.” Quai shook his head.
Ms. Cheney shrugged, a move that made her servos buzz angrily. “And there’s a lot of us on Luna who disagree with your disagreement. But that’s all right. Unless”—she turned her head so she regarded him out of one sinning eye—“that’s what’s keeping you from answering my questions?”
Quai took another sip of scotch and rolled it around in his mouth for a moment, considering the possibilities. He had to agree that having the yewners track down the origins of Biotech 24 would not be a good idea. However, at least as far as he was concerned, and he was the one being asked here, neither Paul Mabrey nor Ben Godwin were good risks. On the other hand, Mari trusted this woman, and Mari’s judgment was sound.