“Retired. He’s lived at Planys since the War was at its height. He’s elderly, came from Beta labs, was head of Research in that discipline, taught at the University in Novgorod for two years, moved to Planys when the terraforming project got canceled, managed the remediation program there until he retired, five years ago. Distinguished career, bit of a prick.”

“He knows Jordan, I take it.”

“They were socially acquainted at Planys. Understand, the Planys lab doesn’t have the facilities to have done anything of an anagenetic nature, not in the most esoteric sense.” That was the ten‑cred word for terraforming, where there was already life. “Let’s just say terraforming has been a hot topic behind certain closed doors, including Denys’, including the military’s, and it’s been hot for months. ReseuneSec is currently taking the whole Planys lab apart, and using Jordan’s departure as a plausible excuse to look into every nook and cranny of Planys operations–which has made Thieu madder than hell. Thieu and Jordan socialized–only twenty‑three primary researchers in the place, off and on, so everybody socializes, you can figure that. But Thieu has retained very close ties to the military at Planys and to the University in Novgorod. Terraforming Cyteen was going to be his big program. He spent decades laying out all the details for his project, right along with Patil–and Council vetoed it just before it launched, then shifted him out to Planys, threw him the sop of an applied project out there, because he was madder than hell and not keeping his mouth shut, frankly. When the nanolabs shifted their focus to remediation, it was mostly to maintain the careers of people who specialized in that field–Defense didn’t want to lose them: but it also gave us the chance to get Thieu away from the media.”

“Because we stopped terraforming in its tracks,” she said, shaken out of any sort of complacency. “But the military kept the research going. And the crazier Centrists still want it applied here.”

“We’re giving them Eversnow. But a lot of old business exists out there at Planys. Part of the black projects in the military wing we can’t get at, and we don’t like, are nanistics of a nature I don’t like. Officially the nanistics program slowed to a stop when he retired, no other personnel was brought in out there, and what remediation uses is very carefully regulated, but lately, with the Eversnow matter–it’s back, this time in Novgorod. There’s an inherent problem with research labs, you know. They contain knowledge you’d like to have just in case your enemies have it, but that you’d just as soon not have on the public market. And when people who know military things retire, they still know things and they have opinions–unless you want to mindwipe a Special, which wouldn’t attract too many people into the program.”

“So you think he’s been talking to people? Including Jordan? It’s not Jordan’s field.”

“Politics is. Jordan’s always been a political animal. And we know there’s been a leak to Corain.”

“One we found,” she said. “You think there’s more?”

“Oh, I think we brought a major item of it here, with Jordan.”

“My fault, you’re saying.”

“Having him sucked up by the military wouldn’t have helped at all.”

It wouldn’t. She’d prevented that. That was true.

“Thieu arrived at Planys during the War,” Yanni said, “quietest retreat he could have. We’d moved a major part of the lab there, in point of fact, because we didn’t want to risk a raid on Beta, and that research falling into Alliance hands. The staff moved back to Beta when the War ended–but he’d already gotten on the wrong side of your predecessor in an absolute fury over the cancellation of his programs. So there he was, just quietly aging, still within the Planys labs, not the man he had been, but still–still within the structure, still doing some work on biologicals for Defense, supposedly doing some side work on the rejuv sensitivity issue–he either wasn’t allowed to work on the remediation as of two years ago, or he refused to work on it any further: it’s not totally clear how that happened, and we’re quietly asking at this moment. The man has a temper that doesn’t always serve him.”

“But he still has his security clearances.”

“He still has some clearance–though he carried on correspondence with a few people in the University in Novgorod, not all of whom we were quite comfortable with: people who’d gotten burned in the program cancellation; people who leaned just a little to the Centrist fringes–ReseuneSec found it useful to let it continue, to see where the lines of communication led, granted nothing classified got out. Meanwhile he met Jordan Warrick…when Jordanmoved out there, not, of course, voluntarily. They weren’t close for the first ten years, didn’t even speak; but in the last few, as Thieu tended toward retirement, they started up a friendship. We can’t prove a damned thing, except our quiet in‑house inquiry about resurrecting a nanistics project–the Eversnow project, which we didn’t say at the time, nor mentioned Patil’s name–got Thieu very exercised. Hebreached security, at least within that close community of academics, and contacted a student of his currently teaching in Novgorod, qualified in the field, security clearance, to be sure, but not a contact he was authorized to make.”

“Patil.”

“Patil. He’d corresponded with her for years, but all those letters were innocuous, two scientists talking about programs, and definitely subject to censors who actually can read in that field. Recall there’s a strong Centrist bent in Novgorod University, through the social studies department and into some very shady nooks of the rebel chic. Patil’s work has a cult following. She doesn’t encourage the radicals. But they get excited when she publishes. When she lectures, they show up at her lecture series. If we revive the old studies for use at Eversnow, I want to be sure it doesn’tget used here on Cyteen by some lunatic with a lab vial. Let me tell you, with Thieu retired and Patil’s whole operation off at Eversnow we’re actually safer–barring something coming back by ship. All of which I mention to you just in the case I shouldfall down the stairs and break my neck–”

“Please don’t!”

“–in case, I say, I’m telling you verbally. There is that one very untidy and roundabout link to Jordan Warrick that we don’t like, the elderly and sometimes erratic Dr. Thieu, who connects with Patil, who’s the person we want to use at Eversnow, partly for very political reasons. But while we’re going ahead with the Patil nomination, we’re also going through the establishment on Planys with a microscope right now on the excuse of investigating Jordan, and it’s why we shouldn’t roundtrip Jordan right back to Planys at first excuse. If fire and fuel canmeet, we just want to be very sure the bottles are secure. Once we ship Patil out to Fargone, we’ll feel a lot safer.”

“But you’re saying it’s possibly all innocent.”

“Patil’s a natural candidate for the Eversnow post. But hauling her from the Centrist party to the Expansionist side of the slate is going to mightily annoy some people. It’s possible certain factions will be more interested in the politics of it than in the actual science, which is years off. Short‑term, it’s very likely to be political.”

“ ‘Rethinking the Theory of Long‑Period Nanistic Self‑direction.’ ”

“God, where did you run across that?”

“It was going to run in Scientialast year. It was pretty thick going, but I read it.”

“I should think it was. You and the censors. How did you get it?”

“The Centrists had made a fuss about it, pre‑publication, said it proved they could do what they wanted to do on Cyteen without killing the rejuv ecology. Uncle Denys was mad about it. He was threatening to have the editor fired if it ran, so they pulled it. I figured I should give it a look. So she was writing up what she shouldn’t have written about?”