There was one route safer than the rest, for somebody who looked this bad, duck out of public view down the service alley, beyond Caprice’s frontage. That was safe. That led back—wherever he had to go.

To his neighborhood, at least, eventually.

He had a splitting headache. He took his hair loose as he walked, hitting one elbow and then the other against the narrow walls of the service slot, but undoing the clip didn’t help his head.

He heard a buzzing on the tap, first sound he’d heard since…since he couldn’t remember. The office, he thought. He tried to tap in, but he couldn’t sustain the contact. He knew he’d done something wrong. That he shouldn’t be here. Whatever had hit him, he didn’t belong in the service alley.

Headache stabbed behind his eyes and made his nose run. He wiped his face, forgetful where he was going, at the moment, but he was sure if he kept walking he’d come out in familiar surroundings, and if he got home he could sit down, and if he could just sit down a minute, then he’d remember what he was supposed to do.

EARTH WOULDN’T BE AMUSED, Reaux well knew, to find out that the governor’s daughter was skipping from shop to shop in the Trend, growing less and less like Judy’s daughter in the process. He knew that she’d had lunch for two at La Lune Noir, where Dortland’s agents had just missed her—that fact had Reaux’s blood pressure already at max. Highest security in the universe, that at Concord, and a fifteen-year-old with a hot credit card gave Dortland’s best operatives the slip on a shopping binge.

And she’d, yes, been withsomeone, God help him. He hoped it was no worse than Denny Ord, who was only amateur trouble. At least she wasn’t alone.

But he couldn’t take time to stay with the succession of reports until they actually turned up something. He’d taken one anguished call from Judy in the hours since he’d gotten to the office, and since then claimed to be in a chain of meetings, when, in fact there was only one meeting the outcome of which he ached to know, that between Procyon Stafford and Mr. Andreas Gide.

So long as Gide’s ship was attached to the station, he had to assume his office phone was tapped. He’d asked Judy to keep off the phone with the family crisis, so Judy had wanted to go to her mother’s. That meant her mother would be on the phone, what time she wasn’t listening to Judy. And the media was still lurking.

No, he’d said. Stay put. If Kathy comes home, be there.

And did Judy do what he asked? No.

He’d told Ernst, long since: “If Kathy calls, put her through immediately.”

Dortland’s reports said at least two off-station interests and the local Freethinkers had attempted to hack the physical lines in the last twelve hours—but Gide’s ship had actually succeeded, and succeeded with more than the phones, delving into things Earth government had no business meddling with, before bumping up against the separate system that was the Outsider network.

There was, Dortland had reminded him, a Council agent on the station, who’d been reporting to Brazis, but who might be independent and without Brazis’s knowledge. Did they think now, with this ship here, that this presence was coincidence? Maybe that was what Gide was really after.

And Judy called him, crying that shewas suffering stress.

“Sir.” Ernst opened the door in person—rare he did that. His face was white. “Sir. The ambassador’s been attacked. Shot, along with the security team. Our two men are dead.”

Shot? My God.

While Ernst stood there awaiting a sane directive from him, and he didn’t have a clear thought, not for half a dozen heartbeats.

“Gide’s alive?”

“He’s alive, sir. Headed for Bonaventure Hospital, as the nearest. Mr. Dortland’s going up there right now.”

“I’m going.” It was the worst imaginable disaster. It was political, personal ruin. He couldn’t think straight. “Brazis’s man? Stafford. Where is he?”

“He wasn’t named in the report, sir. He may have been there at the time. Or not. That’s all I know.”

“Call Brazis. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him—hell. Tell him I’ll talk to him when I know something. Ask himwhere his man is. Get a search out for anybody out of district.”

“That’s under way, sir. I’ll call an escort for you.”

“Armed escort didn’t protect the ambassador, did it?” He was putting on his coat, and Ernst dived back to his desk, to call the security office. He was going to have his escort, like it or not.

If things were going to hell, rule one, the government had to stay functioning. He couldn’t abdicate the investigation to that ship out there or they’d start grabbing more and more power. The tripartite authority on Concord demanded that not happen, for the sake of the peace they maintained.

He walked through Ernst’s office, on his way out. “Call the advisory board into session. All police to duty.”

“Yes, sir,” Ernst said. “Escort is on the way, sir.”

“Call the Southern Cross. Advise them there’s been an unexplained incident, connect them to my handheld if they want to talk to me, personally, isolate the crime scene, and tell them we’re doing everything we can for the ambassador. Tell Dortland I’m coming. No. Cancel that last. Phone lines aren’t secure. Just call the ship. Get the translation staff all to duty: tell them prepare something, some explanation for Kekellen, fast, before he hears about this, do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

He fastened his coat and walked out through the outer foyer, not surprised when four plainclothes security agents turned up somewhat breathlessly in his path and fell in with him.

“Bonaventure Hospital,” he told them. “Get me a priority through the lifts.”

“All secure, sir,” the senior said.

It might be the only thing on Concord that was.

PROCYON WAS OFF visiting some lord and had not returned. Three quakes had shaken the rocks in the last short while and sent pebbles and sand-slips cascading off the plateau.

Auguste, meanwhile, reported a panorama Marak ached to see—the two streams spurting out of the Halfmoon cliffs had joined, ripping out rock, forming one great waterfall in the midst of the Southern Wall, and a deepening pool at the bottom. A cloud of spray obscured the lower view from the heavens. But Auguste said it was a great deal of water coming in…and when the rock above it failed, as it was likely to at any moment, it would be a sudden, cataclysmic flood.

So here they were, he and Hati, patiently negotiating the alternate descent of their terrace, with a sea forcing its fingers through a barrier to the west, threatening to become a waterfall of unimaginable proportions.

Right now their new sea, so Auguste assured them, was only a spreading line of damp going out from that pool, saturating sand dry for millions of years. The pans would soak up a great deal of salt water and battered sea life as that shallow pool spread. The volume of inflowing water had tripled in one day. It could magnify a thousand-fold without much warning, that was the worse problem, and if the worst happened, thenhow fast did they need to climb the terraces?

Auguste said he would get back to him with that answer.

The eyes in heaven had other, more pragmatic uses. The watchers on high had spotted their runaways down midway, stopped on what might be a plateau with no safe way further down. That might be good news. Topologists in the heavens were trying to plot a reliable route for them to reach that site, as well as mapping a safe path up, and meanwhile the beshti were busy eating the green growth down there. The young bull might try even an impossible slope, if he spooked; but he would delay to move the females, and the females, already run hard, would grow less and less inclined to move from lush graze and run again.

Their base camp, up on the spine, Auguste had reported, luxuriated in hot tea and a leisurely morning. Their radio link had Fashti in contact with the Refuge, now that the relay was up and working. Meziq was in less pain today, and had nothing to do but sit, be waited upon, and heal, in their enforced wait. Fashti sent regards and wished them success, saying that they were all eating well.