“Guildmistress Vienna is here to see you.”
Sparing one last approving look for the scene below, he headed to his office, where Raija Vienna was indeed waiting. She was wearing traditional Guild attire identical to his own, a flowing black robe that masked the outline of her body. Her naturally red hair was plaited into dozens of slender braids, which had been artfully woven around a complex headdress, the combination full of loops and whorls. It must have taken her hours to arrange. No, correction: it must have taken someone else hours to arrange. Her kaja was mainly yakimi, suggesting a love of speculation. Perhaps it was intended to honor the setting. “Mistress Vienna.” He nodded graciously and smiled. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I’ve come for the Harvester Festival, and thought I should pay my respects. This casino is lovely. Is it yours?”
“Co-owner. But I can’t take credit for the decorating, that was Desi.” Though I did insist that the mathematical proportions be pleasing. “Can I offer you a drink? Specialty of the house is a spiced pomegranate liqueur. Made with natural pomegranates, not the replicated kind. Fresh from Harmony’s own gardens.”
“Thank you.” She smiled pleasantly. “I’d love to try one.”
He flashed an order to his assistant, who sent him a confirmation icon in return. “Please, sit, relax.” He gestured to a plush autocouch. As she sat down it whirred softly, adapting its cushions to her body shape. He chose a matching chair that did likewise. “Things in Prosperity Node are going well, I hope?”
She laughed softly. “Challenging, as always. I’m more than ready for a vacation.”
“Then I’m glad we could offer you an excuse for one.” Even as he smiled the vacuous smile of a good host, he thought, Why are you really here? Guildmasters rarely did anything without deeper motive. Though he and Vienna were equal to one another in rank, and served the same vision—the Guild’s dream of a united humanity colonizing the galaxy—that very purpose made them rivals. Resources in the outworlds were limited, and Vienna’s node, like his own, had no nearby solar system to provide it with raw materials. Every element that their stations required must be shipped across vast distances, at great cost. Few investors were willing to commit to that, and any contract that Harmony won, other nodes would not win. Gain for one of them meant loss for the other.
Nature is red in tooth and claw, an ancient Terran poet had once proclaimed. It was no less true in Guild politics than it had been on the plains of Old Africa. And Vienna was a skilled player. He’d already lost one valuable corporate contract to her. Now she was here, on Harmony, “for a vacation.” Not damn likely.
“I’m so glad you decided to go ahead with the Festival,” she said. “Given recent events, I was worried you might have to cancel.”
He netted a query to his archivist, asking him to find out who she’d brought with her. “You mean the attack on the station?”
“Yes. How frightening. Aren’t you concerned there might be another assault during the Festival?”
Her delicately probing words scraped his nerves like fingernails on slate. “It’s been dealt with.”
An eyebrow lifted. “You know who was behind it?”
“He’s been dealt with.” Assuming Tridac is playing straight with me, he thought, and that they got the right man. If not, then whoever planned the attack was still out there and might well strike again. The thought of its happening during the Festival was unnerving, but what choice did he have? The damage to his reputation if he canceled celebrations this late in the game—and the cost to Harmony’s future—would be incalculable.
His assistant came in with two glasses of crimson liqueur and handed one to each of them. The glasses themselves were quite beautiful, with a delicate fractal pattern engraved around the lip. (Sixty segments: it was one of Dresden’s favorite numbers.) She held hers up to the light for a moment, admiring the workmanship, then tasted the liqueur. Conveniently, Dresden’s archivist chose that moment to deliver his research, so the Guildmaster had time to focus on the words that appeared in his field of vision.
RETINUE OF NINE, ALL GUILD: EXEC. SECY, P. ASSISTANT, ARCHIVIST, 4 DATA AQUISITIONS, 1 RANK UNIDENTIFIED. YOU WANT NAMES?
Data acquisitions. Those would be her hackers. His mind whirred, trying to piece the puzzle together quickly, so that she wouldn’t sense his distraction. Why bring hackers with her if this was just a vacation? Clearly it was more than that.
She looked up at him with a smile. “It’s delicious.”
Somehow he managed to keep his face from betraying his growing tension. Somehow he managed to smile back and say, “We’re very proud of it.” As if nothing else was going on. As if they didn’t both know that if anything went wrong this week, those investors who had shown interest in Harmony would surely turn their eyes to another node . . . perhaps her own. Was it possible she had come to sabotage the Festival? He remembered her question about canceling the event. Might she even be connected to the Dragonslayer incident? Another random explosion would be the perfect way to bring him down—
No, he thought. No Guild officer would ever orchestrate an attack on a station like that. Such a crime would be seen as betrayal of the Guild, and the last officer who had betrayed the Guild had been sealed in a pod and shot into the ainniq, to be devoured alive by the creatures that lived there. She wouldn’t risk that just to gain political advantage. But some more subtle gambit . . . that was very possible.
“I’m curious about your plan to alter the data protocols,” she said.
He was alert now. “What about it?”
“You don’t think that’s risky? Surely there are businesses who wouldn’t want their communications delayed. They might not take kindly to your interference.”
He put his glass down on a side table. “In a few days this station will be filled to the brim with visitors: tourists, reporters, scientists, vid producers, you name it. News agencies will livecast the arrival of the harvester fleet. Schools have requested realtime feed of it. So have observatories. Add to that the countless spectators who will want to stream the spectacle back home to their loved ones, and you’re talking about more data than the station can compress and transmit in a timely manner. I’m simply giving priority to outbound traffic. Opening the floodgates, as it were, so the tsunami can pass through unimpeded. Yes, inbound data will be slow for a few days—that’s unavoidable—but it’s a small price to pay to keep everything running smoothly.”
Is that what you came for, why you brought your hackers with you? To study the tsunami, perhaps to manipulate it? He would have to set his own team to watching her people, which pissed him off, because it meant he would have to pull them away from other important business. Maybe that was her plan—to nurture paranoia in him, so that he would start making mistakes. He had to work at keeping the smile on his face.