“Who was aboard?” Mischa asked. “Can we tell?”

“The rental was made by one Sera Penny Esker.”

“Never heard that name on any list.” Amy said.

“None of us have.” Ari said. “It searches to an Esker line resident in Novgorod, some employed by Novgorod Transport, Penny Esker being currently employed by the public library, data archive department.”

“Where Patil used to lecture.”

“Former student?” Tommy asked.

“Way out of her field. No University connections, not on any of the watch‑it lists, but they wouldn’t use somebody who flashed red lights. Penny Esker seems to be a nobody, so far as criminal records, which is the sort, if you were up to no good, that you’d prefer to use, especially to rent boats. Florian says, and I agree, she wouldn’t have been on the boat.”

“Why did they do it at all, though?” Amy asked. “Blow up a tower? Paxer nonsense?”

“Maybe,” Ari said. “Maybe something about the site leaked–but that sort of incident doesn’t do the Paxers any good. They’d want some sort of media coup, blowing up something of mine, coupled with revealing I’m some sort of junior megalomaniac out founding towns at random, building secret laboratories and siphoning money out of Reseune to do it. They want publicity. They want public dislike of me, in particular. What the bombers actually got out of this business was my attention, and a slowdown of about two weeks in the Strassenberg build.”

“It could scare people, though,” Tommy said. “It could scare Fitz Fitzpatrick. It could be aimed at him and his company.”

The man in charge of the construction company, the man Sam was up there working for. She nodded, not liking that version of it, but it was indeed possible.

“Did we do anybody out of a contract they wanted?” Amy asked. “Fourstar was closest bidder besides Fitzpatrick.”

“Worth checking,” Catlin said, “since Fourstar is working next door to us in Wing One. They’ve already passed a security check, but a second one wouldn’t hurt.”

“Investigate Svetlansk Mining and the rest of the Svetlansk operations that handle explosives,” Ari said. “How many companies are working up there?”

“Four,” Catlin said.

“Probably we won’t find anything blinking on and off with colored lights,” Ari said. “But if we continue asking questions, individual by individual, something may turn up.”

“Have we got any investigative people up on scene?” Mischa asked. “I know Sam is, but–”

“That’s the other thing,” Amy said. “Sam is up there and he’s at risk if this gets more serious than it is.”

“ReseuneSec’s going to be investigating,” Ari said, “already is, but that all lands on Hicks’s desk, and it’s clumsy, and it’s slow, and it’s damned useless if we need three layers of authorizations to stop a boat on the river. We do have Sam’s bodyguard. This is what doesn’t get out. He’s got non‑uniformed security with him. The two I sent with him aren’t trained as engineers. They’re taking tape on construction, but that’s not what they really do. So, yes, we do have our own investigation onsite. The problem is–they aren’t to leave Sam to go chase anything; and I don’t want Sam anywhere near a problem.”

“I’m glad they’re with him, though,” Maddy said.

“I have a question,” Tommy said. “Are we sending ReseuneSec all this info we’re gathering?”

“Not,” Ari said, “until they give us better results than they have in the last two weeks.”

“You don’t have confidence in Hicks,” Amy said.

Ari shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s malfeasance,” she said, “but it’s not total competence. This is what bothers me. Uncle Giraud was a demanding sort. Hicks is making mistakes, jumping on Justin was one. We’re not getting things he promised us. We know we’re not. So, no, I’m not trusting him.”

“But Yanni’s all right,” Maddy said.

“I think Yanni’s all right,” Ari said. “But, so you know, yes, we’re running down all the civil police reports and university police reports on the Patil case. We’re having a little trouble getting at Planys. Thieu’s had a lot of tendrils that go under Defense doors, and we can’t get everything we’d like from there.”

“Same trouble in Novgorod?” Amy asked.

“To a certain extent,” Ari said. “Patil’s ties to Citizens and Defense are a problem, where it comes to access. The fact Patil was actually registered in Science opens up a lot of files to us that we otherwise couldn’t get. But most of her scientific research is classified, and not just anybody can get at it. Yanni being Proxy Councillor, he technically can. He’s got a lot; I’ve got that; I’ve asked for more–and if he gets it, I can get it. But what we’ve gotten so far is a complete disappointment. I hoped I’d find keywords and names that might be useful, but there’s nothing. A lot of correspondence with Councillor Corain–we can get her side of it, and it’s nothing startling. She complained significantly about crazies at her lectures this last winter. One letter to the Dean of Science asked that enrollment in her courses not be available in virtuality–it already wasn’t–and that enrollment be interview‑only, with a background check, and no auditing her classes, which they did implement for the next session…that was before she agreed to take the job on Fargone. I tried to get the actual interview‑lists, of people she’d enrolled, but that wasn’t available. Corain could get it, and I might write to him, or get Yanni to, but I don’t think it’s too likely the people we’re after would be in any way up to her coursework.”

“Sounds as if she was worried, at least,” Will said.

“Well, she was being made an icon for the Paxers,” Maddy said. “I don’t blame her. But her restricting who got to her classes didn’t help her much, did it?”

“Anything on that name?” Mika asked.

“On Anton Clavery?” Ari said. “Almost a hundred percent it’s a pseudonym, maybe a shared identity. And here’s another place we don’t have all we want from Hicks. We know there’s undercover work going on, and Yanni’s dragging his feet about getting Hicks to divulge what’s out there.”

“Undercover?” Mischa asked.

“Infiltrating the Paxers,” Ari said, “but that’s a deep secret, supposedly. There’s no report I’ve been able to ferret out. Hicks has it stored somewhere, and I’m wondering if it’s in a disconnected computer. I’m going to corner Yanni on it and insist. What generally bothers me, since the big bang at Strassenberg, is that there’s nothing wrong in Novgorod. The Paxers have been uncharacteristically quiet for the last two weeks. Likewise the Rocher crowd. Just silent. When something that disorganized suddenly does–or doesn’t do something–all together, that’s worrisome. Somebody may have pushed a button. And we didn’t think anybody had that much control.”

“Anton Clavery,” Tommy said.

Mischa dug an elbow in his side, saying, “You’re making a bogeyman.”

“Maybe we’ve got one,” Ari said, and the little flurry of laughter died. “I just don’t like any signs of coordination in that lot.”

“Who could get them all to face the same direction?” Amy asked. “ Howcould they do it?”

“Fear,” Catlin said. “A few might die. The rest would understand.”

The whole gathering got quiet for a breath or two. Catlin dealt in things like that, in a level of seriousness that had never quite gotten to the group, not even when they’d brought down Denys.

“There’s reason to think some have died,” Ari said. “People have accidents in Novgorod. That statistics always there. But the number of crazy letters on certain boards we monitor has fallen right off. It’s just a silence. That’s all we can finger. And I want information out of Yanni, and I’m hesitant to press for it, because I don’t want alarms to go off in any system watching me. So I’m not making a great fuss. And, no, I’m not easy about Sam being where he is, but I have a code arranged that will bring him back fast, if we have to.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair, ankles crossed. “I don’t want to move yet. I don’t want to until I have enough information. I don’t want to call Sam back on a just‑in‑case, because it’s important what he’s doing. It’s his job with Fitzpatrick that’s at issue here.”