Mindflight

Chapter 2-2

As best she could, she outlined to the assembled department heads her contingency plans for restructuring the Leonean organization in the event Cheney did need replacing. In addition, she promised to report within two days on a completely detailed strategy for piercing the Leoneans’ shield of secrecy. Hakim Rajman pledged to have his staff work overtime to see if they could discover any clues about what might be happening there from previously known data.

The meeting dissolved as so many of them did, with no questions resolved, no actions decided. As Joby stood up to leave, Glazer tried to approach her. She brushed him off coldly with the excuse that she was expecting an important call and hurried back to her office.

“Has Morgan Dekker reported in yet?” she asked her secretary as she entered the spacious anteroom to her own suite of offices.

“No, ma’am.”

Damn, what’s keeping him? He’s more than two hours late! “Well, buzz him through to me the instant he does, and keep the lines clear for him.” She walked into her own office and closed the door against the world.

She tried to sit at her desk, but the combination of Glazer’s heckling and Dekker’s lateness made her too nervous. She lit up a drugrod, inhaling deep breaths and letting the effect flow into her. Within minutes, she could feel the muscles at the back of her neck and shoulders starting to unknot themselves, could feel the easing warmth as the drug slowly worked its way into her brain, relieving some of the crushing burden she was carrying. On impulse, she stood up and walked to the wall control, dimming the room’s lights to a minimum. With a twist of a second dial, she changed the scene on her office’s north wall from the gentle desert landscape it normally showed to a holographic map of the as-yet explored section of the Galaxy.

Earth’s solar system, naturally enough, was at the center of the map. Around it, forming an irregular globe, were the former colonies. And there, right up near the top of the map, was the small bit that was all men knew about the Dur-ill Empire.

“Empire.” She was hardly aware she’d said the word aloud. Earth had had an empire too, more than a century and a half ago. The dominion of Terra had extended all around the mother planet in a sphere roughly thirty parsecs in diameter, including colonies on sixty-three inhabitable worlds. Nowhere had Man found any challenge to his supremacy; the Universe seemed his for the taking.

Then, within the space of a single decade, that dream of manifest destiny was shattered forever. Exploratory teams from the colony of Renna encountered the outer limits of the Dur-ill Empire. Scholars since that time had argued long and loud whether the ensuing war between widely disparate cultures had been inevitable. To Joby’s mind, the argument was senseless; the war had happened, so of course it was inevitable.

Suddenly the dispersal of the human race throughout a vast volume of space became a liability rather than an asset. Earth’s leaders found themselves tangled in an impossible logistical situation. They simply did not have the resources to defend and supply the colonies and, at the same time, carry on the war as it had to be conducted. A decision of priorities was made, and defense of the colonies was dropped in favor of devoting more resources to the development of technology and the growth of Earth’s armed services.

The war raged on for eight years, and the government of Earth had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to keep itself going. With no intelligence about how the war was progressing for the Dur-ill, they were almost literally shooting in the dark at an enemy they hardly knew. Finally, when their resources were all but depleted, an armistice was reached whereby both humans and Dur-ill agreed never to violate the other’s space again. Peace came once more.

Peace, that is, between humans and Dur-ill. Terra’s former colonies were not overjoyed about the decision made eight years earlier to abandon them to their fate. In pure self-defense, they had formed an alliance of their own, and desperation had enabled them to battle the Dur-ill to a standstill. But with that war over, old relationships were dead. The human planets were not about to resume their former dependency on a world that had been all too eager to sacrifice them when the chips were down. Earth now found it had a handful of enemies to face instead of merely one.

Relations between Earth and the other human-occupied planets seesawed drastically over the hundred and fifty years since then. Fortunately, with the Dur-ill removed, the various colonies had little in common with one another except for their hatred of Earth; the defensive alliance they had formed during the war quickly evaporated, leaving a situation of many autonomous worlds in conflict and competition.

The Terran Intelligence Agency had been formed shortly after the end of the war. It was cobbled together from bits and pieces of the old colonial administration, with some shiny new departments added to fulfill more current needs. Its avowed purpose was several-fold: to promote the interests of Earth among the other planets; to keep Earth’s government apprised of affairs on the former colonies; and, if not possible to make the other worlds friendly towards Earth, then at least to promote disunity among them so they could never band together to form an effective alliance against the mother planet.

The Operations Department had always been the elite outfit within the Agency, since its inception. Other departments had more manpower, more funding; Operations had more glamor. It was the philosophy of Operations personnel that all the other departments were nothing but glorified computer programmers; it was the agents in Ops who gathered the classified information and who engaged in the field work that made everything else the Agency did possible.

Joby Karns had worked long and hard to win her position as chief of Operations. There had been years of sacrifice, of long hours, of moving her way skillfully across the chessboard of office politics, of guessing whom to favor and whom to dump, whom to sleep with and whom to scorn. The world of politics within the Agency was every bit as cutthroat as the world of espionage outside. One little slip, one small mistake could bring the entire structure tumbling down around her head.

She’d almost made such a slip this afternoon, when Glazer thought he’d spotted a trace of sentimentalism on her part for Alain Cheney. The mood of Earth’s government these days was strictly utilitarian. It was sentimentalism that had caused the downfall of Joby’s predecessor, Gunnar Tölling; Joby made a vow that the same fate would not befall her. She didn’t think she still had any residual feelings for Alain—but even if she did, no one would ever see them. She would not give Glazer a clear shot at her back.

She didn’t know how or why the fight had started, but Romney Glazer had hated her from the day she took over Ops. As head of Internal Security—in charge of making sure all regulations were obeyed and plugging any leaks within the Agency—he was a dangerous man to cross; his department was small, but it had authority disproportionately large for its size. She had tried being friendly, but Glazer had snubbed her—and, being gay, he was impervious to her physical charms. Joby had to treat him as a constant threat to her well-being—but at least he was a predictable one.

The intercom buzzed, startling Joby out of her reverie. “Morgan Dekker’s call, ma’am,” her secretary announced.

With a sigh of relief, Joby returned to her desk and punched the receiver button. “How did it go, Morgan?” she asked, hiding her anxiety behind a voice full of businesslike efficiency.

“Well enough. He was a few hours late getting off the ship, which is why I’m so late reporting. But once he showed up, things ran smoothly.”

“Any traces of—” There was the barest of hesitations. “—of what we’re looking for?”

“Hard to say. He seemed to be functioning well enough, but he was very quiet and reserved.”

“Alain always was the introspective sort, always well in control of himself. That’s why he’s been such a good agent. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow when he goes in for the examination. Do you think he suspected anything?”

On the screen before her, Dekker’s face grimaced slightly. “Again, hard to say. He showed no signs, and I was careful to keep my thoughts under control—but it’s always hard to know with a telepath. There was a mild flicker of something across his face when I told him you’d replaced Tölling. Would you know anything about that?”

Joby’s political instincts sensed danger lurking in that innocent question. She knew Dekker harbored an infatuation for her, which could lead to feelings of jealousy if he felt she had any special interest in Alain. She was of two minds about his feelings for her. On the one hand, she had long ago made a personal rule never to sleep with anyone of lesser importance than herself, so she could not allow anything to come of her relationship with her aide; on the other hand, she did nothing to discourage him, because his feelings for her would make him more loyal to her—and loyalty was a rare commodity in the Agency these days.

In an attempt to defuse his question, she shook her head. “No, not that I can think of. We did go through the Academy together; maybe he’s glad an old classmate has risen so high. Has he been installed properly?”

“When I got him to the hotel he went directly to his room, lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He’s either asleep or meditating. In any event, the room’s monitored, so we’ll know if he attempts anything unusual and he’ll be followed if he leaves. But frankly, I don’t think he’ll give us any trouble.”

That could almost be the story of Alain’s career, Joby reflected. In fourteen years with the Terran Intelligence Agency, Alain Cheney had been an exemplary agent. He’d never disobeyed an order, never failed an assignment, never performed at anything less than a level of supreme competence. He was a constant factor in life, an eternal verity. And just because he was one of the top telepathic agents in her stable, she might have to kill him tomorrow.

The Universe, she decided, can play very perverse tricks.

“Good,” she said aloud. “I’ve got enough troubles without having to worry about him.”

“Since he was an old friend of yours,” Dekker said, a little too rapidly, “I was wondering whether you might, er, want to come out here for the decision tomorrow.”

“I said an old classmate, not an old friend,” Joby clarified carefully. “And I’m really too swamped with work to make a trip all the way out there for something that trivial. I have confidence in you, Morgan; I’m sure you’ll handle the details just fine.” She gave him her Number Three smile: warm enough to make him feel a degree of solidarity with her, aloof enough not to make any rash promises. “Call me tomorrow when you learn the results of his tests.” Without any formal sign-off, she terminated the connection.

What she’d told Dekker about too much work was quite true. This latest crisis would mean double or triple overtime for everyone on her staff having any connection to activities on Leone. She doubted she’d have a chance to leave her office until the reorganization and strike plans were all formalized and presented to the Agency Council.

Leaning back momentarily in her chair, she looked up at her stellar map once again. There, near the very top, was the pink dot that represented the Class K star Leone circled. Leone, being one of the systems nearest the Dur-ill Empire, had suffered some of the worst damage of the war—and consequently, the greatest hatred of Earth. Relations between the two worlds were tranquil at the moment, with a fair amount of trade and unrestricted travel between them. But Leone was a world that could flare up as a trouble spot at any moment, which was why the better agents were usually assigned there.

Now, apparently, it had flared up—and her best agent was well on his way toward elimination.

She wondered whether the tests two years ago might have been mistaken, and whether Alain might still be all right for a while. But she recognized that for the wishful thinking it was. The tests were virtually foolproof. Alain Cheney either was suffering from telepause now or would be in the very near future. Which meant he had to die.

Damn! With a frustrated shrug, Joby turned off the map and restored the lights in her office. She had plans to arrange and reports to write, and all her thoughts about the soon-to-be-late Alain Cheney would not alter that in the slightest.