Although they ran into one another occasionally, they were hardly what one could have called boon companions. They belonged to many of the same professional organizations, and they often found themselves covering the same story—if from very different perspectives—given the corruption and graft which gathered like cesspool silt wherever the League's financial structure intersected with the permanent bureaucracies. For example, they'd both covered the Monica story, although Juppй had scarcely shared O'Hanrahan's take on the incident. Of course, he'd always been a vocal critic of the extent to which Manticore and its merchant marine had penetrated the League's economy, so it was probably inevitable that he'd be more skeptical of the Manticoran claims and evidence.

"Hi, Audrey!" he said brightly, and her frown deepened.

"To what do I owe the putative pleasure of this conversation?" she responded with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

"I'm hurt." He placed one hand on his chest, in the approximate region where most non-newsies kept their hearts, and concentrated on looking as innocent as he could. "In fact, I'm devastated! I can't believe you're that unhappy to see me when I come bearing gifts."

"Isn't there a proverb about being wary of newsies bearing gifts?"

"There probably is, except where you're concerned," he agreed cheerfully. "And if there isn't one, there ought to be. But in this case, I really thought you'd like to know."

"Know what?" she asked suspiciously.

"That I've finally gotten my hands on an independent account of what happened in New Tuscany," he replied, and his voice and expression alike were suddenly much more serious.

"You have?" O'Hanrahan sat up straighter in her chair, blue eyes narrowing with undisguised suspicion. "From where? From who? And why are you calling me about it?"

"You really are a muckraker, aren't you?" Juppй smiled crookedly. "It hasn't hit the public channels yet, and it probably won't for at least another day or so, but as you know, I've got plenty of contacts in the business community."

He paused, one eyebrow raised, until she nodded impatiently.

"Well," he continued then, "those sources include one of the VPs for Operations over at Brinks Fargo. And he just happened to mention to me that one of his dispatch boats, just in from Visigoth, had a somewhat different version of events in New Tuscany."

"From Visigoth?" she repeated, then grimaced. "You mean Mesa , don't you?"

"Well, yeah, in a way," he acknowledged. "Not in the way you mean, though."

"The way I mean?"

"In the 'the miserable minions of those wretched Mesan outlaw corporations' deliberately slanted and twisted' sort of way."

"I don't automatically discount every single news reports that comes out of Mesa, Baltasar."

"Maybe not automatically , but with remarkable consistency," he shot back.

"Which owes more to the self-serving, highly creative version of events the so-called Mesan journalistic community presents with such depressing frequency than it does to any inherent unreasonableness on my part."

"I notice you're not all over the Green Pines story, and there's independent corroboration of that one," Juppй pointed out a bit nastily, and her blue eyes narrowed.

"There's been corroboration of the explosions for months," she retorted, "and if you followed my stories, you'd know I covered them then. And, for that matter, I suggested at the time that it was likely there was Ballroom involvement. I still think that's probably the case. But I find it highly suspect—and convenient, for certain parties—that the Mesans' 'in-depth investigation' has revealed—surprise, surprise!—that a 'notorious' Manticoran operative was involved." She rolled her eyes. "Give me a break, Baltasar!"

"Well, Zilwicki may be from Manticore, but he's been in bed with the Ballroom for years—literally, since he took up with that looney-tune rabble-rouser Montaigne," Juppй riposted. "And don't forget, his daughter's 'Queen of Torch'! Plenty of room for him to've gone completely rogue there."

"Maybe, if he was a complete lunatic. Or just plain stupid enough to pull something like that," O'Hanrahan retorted. "I checked his available public bio, including that in-depth report what's-his-name—Underwood—did on him, as soon as Mesa's version hit the data channels. I'll admit the man's scary as hell if you go after someone he cares about, but he's no homicidal maniac. In fact, his more spectacular accomplishments all seem to've been defensive , not offensive. You come after him or his, and all bets are off; otherwise, he's not especially bloodthirsty. And he's for damned sure smart enough to know what nuking a public park full of kids would do to public support for his daughter's new kingdom. For that matter, the whole damned galaxy knows what he'll do if someone goes after one of his kids. You really think someone with that kind of resume would sign off on killing hundreds or thousands of someone else's kids?" She shook her head again. "Which am I supposed to believe? The public record of someone like Zilwicki? Or the kind of self-serving, fabricated, made-up-out-of-whole-cloth kind of 'independent journalism' that comes out of Mendel?"

From the look in her eye, it was evident which side of that contradiction she favored, even if a huge segment of the Solarian media had chosen the other one. While it was true the Solarian League's official position, as enunciated by Education and Information, refused to rush to judgment on the spectacular Mesan claims that Manticore—or, at least, Manticoran proxies—had been behind the Green Pines atrocity, "unnamed sources" within the League bureaucracy had been far less circumspect, and O'Hanrahan and Juppй both knew exactly who those "unnamed sources" were. So did the rest of the League's media, which had been obediently baying on the appropriate trail of Manticoran involvement from day one.

Which, as Juppй knew full well, had absolutely no bearing on O'Hanrahan's categorization of the original story.

"Much as I hate to admit it, given how much impact Mesa sometimes has on the business community here in the League," he said, "I can't really argue with that characterization of a lot of what comes out of their newsies. Mind you, I really am less convinced than you seem to be that Anton Zilwicki's such a choir boy that he wouldn't be involved in something like Green Pines. But that's beside the point, this time." He waved one hand in a brushing-aside gesture. "This story isn't from Mesa; it's straight from New Tuscany. It only came through Mesa because that was the shortest route to Old Terra that didn't go through Manty-controlled space."

O'Hanrahan cocked her head, her eyes boring into his.

"Are you seriously suggesting that whoever dispatched this mysterious story from New Tuscany was actually frightened of what the Manticorans might do if they found out about it?" she demanded in obvious disbelief.

"As to that, I'm not the best witness." Juppй shrugged. "I don't cover politics and the military and Frontier Security the way you do, except where they impinge on the financial markets. You and I both know a lot of the financial biggies are major players in OFS' private little preserves out in the Verge, but my personal focus is a lot more on banking and the stock exchange. So I don't really have the background to evaluate this whole thing. But I do know that according to my friend, and to the courier, they really, really wanted to avoid going through any Manty wormholes."

"Why?" Her eyes were narrower than ever, burning with intensity, and he shrugged again.

"Probably because this isn't really a story , at all. It's a dispatch from someone in the New Tuscan government to one of his contacts here on Old Terra. And it's not for public release—not immediately, at any rate."