“Half the presidents and ministers had secret bank accounts to protect,” Pedro replied. “So naturally they tried to obstruct. But in the end they failed—”

“They didn’t fail. They were used. Used up in delaying actions.” June’s eyebrows lowered. “Why do you think the war lasted so damn long, hmm? The Swiss people sure didn’t want to take on the whole damn planet! They never imagined all those generations spent digging tunnels and bomb shelters had a purpose beyond mere deterrence.

“And even when it ended at last, you don’t actually think the bank records that U.N. forces finally dug out of the rubble were the real ones, do you?”

Manella shook his head. “Are you implying whole levels of conspirators we missed? That all the drug lords and bribe takers and commissar billionaires we caught—”

“Were just expendable flunkies, thrown down to appease the mob. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, Mr. Reporter.” June’s voice was bitter. “The real manipulators wanted Helvetia completely destroyed. The war had to cost so many lives, so an exhausted world would exult in victory and desperately want to believe it was over.”

“This is ridiculous,” Teresa told Pedro. “She’s sounding like a bad Lovecraft novel now. What’s next, June? Dark Unspeakable Unnameable Horrors from Before the Start of Time? Or how about something out of those wonderful, paranoid Illuminati books? Who are your bosses, then? Freemasons? The Trilateral Commission? Jesuits? The Elders of Zion?” Teresa laughed. “How about Fu Manchu or the Comintern… ?”

June shrugged. “Those were useful distractions in their day — glitter and window dressing designed to attract fools, so conspiracy theories in general would get a bad odor with normal, honest folk.”

To her dismay, Teresa found herself drawn by June Morgan’s frankness. The woman clearly believed what she was saying. And she’s right in a way, Teresa thought, suddenly aware of her own reaction. Look at me now. Refusing to believe, even as proof tears the world down around me.

Pedro chewed one end of his moustache. “You aren’t referring to the aliens are you? The makers of Beta? Are they your—”

June looked up quickly. “Oh heavens no!” She gestured at the big display. “Do the assholes who sent me here seem that competent to you? Look how badly they screwed up their attempted coup. Would Beta’s makers have let Alex jerk them around like he has?”

As they all looked that way, a trio of yellow rays caused Beta’s purple dot to throb with incipient power, but once again they were foiled by a slender rapier from Easter Island, sending their pent-up force spiraling off uselessly in some other direction.

June shook her head. “No, humanity is able to breed predators all on its own, Pedro. Talented parasites with lots of experience tapping the innovations of others. You don’t need much brains for that, just certain manipulative talents and lots of arrogance.”

“The illusion of omniscience,” Pedro said, nodding.

“Oh yes. I’ve seen them, gathered in their halls with all their money, giving each other circle-jerks — telling each other how smart they are just because thirty years ago they managed to preserve some of their old power, because people were too tired and relieved at war’s end to peel back the last layer.

“Only now, at last, they know how stupid they really were all along. You got it right, Pedro. They miscalculated this latest move and are going to die soon. For that part at least, I’m truly grateful.”

The admission took Teresa aback. All this time she had assumed June was acting out of loyalty to some group or cause. Clearly the woman feared her veiled masters, but now Teresa saw how much she also loathed them.

Glancing at the great display, Teresa intuited what June meant. All over the world, in national capitals and command posts and even hackers’ parlors, there were other Earth-holos like this one. Perhaps cruder, but growing better by the minute. Especially now that Glenn Spivey’s group and others were spilling all they knew in sudden, panic-driven spasms of openness. On every one of those displays, the enemy resonator sites must shine like angry pirates’ emblems… standing out for the simple reason that no one claimed ownership over them. That lack of candor in these hot, tense hours was an indictment worse than any smoking gun.

Right now every security alliance, peacekeeping force and local militia with the means was probably sending units toward those mystery sites. Their weaponry might be paltry compared to TwenCen arms — their unpracticed reflexes might be slow — but those soldiers would certainly make short work of June’s employers when they arrived.

No, her bosses can’t have planned for this. They must have counted on taking the Tangoparu tetrahedron completely by surprise, wiping out the original four and all the newer resonators with sabotage or gazer strikes. Then, in sole possession of the ultimate terror weapon, they could hold the world hostage. They came damn close to succeeding.

But even as she saw the logic, Teresa had to shake her head.

In which case… so what? It’s an insane plan even if it worked! They couldn’t have gotten away with it for long. The result would have been just too unstable.

Teresa saw that a lull had fallen since Alex’s last successful parry. He was sipping through a straw from a glass held by one of the cooks. She wanted to go over and rub his shoulders and maybe whisper some encouragement, but she also knew Alex too well for that. Those shoulders were Atlas’s right now. And a lot more than the lives in this room rode on his train of thought. It mustn’t be interrupted.

“You’re describing an act of sheer desperation,” Pedro surmised, still talking to June. “These conspirators of yours… even in victory, they couldn’t hope to hold onto what they’d won!”

June answered with a tired shrug. “What did they have to lose? The status quo was deteriorating from their point of view. Everything they had rescued from the ashes of Helvetia was slipping through their hands like smoke.”

“I don’t get it. What threatened them?”

June motioned toward the consoles, toward Teresa’s data plaque, toward the phone on Pedro’s belt. “The net,” she said succinctly.

“The net?”

“That’s right. It was getting to big, too open and all-pervading… too bloody democratic to manipulate much longer. They were growing more desperate every year. Then this gravity amplification business came along—”

“ — which you leaked to them! “Teresa accused.

June nodded. “They had other sources. As you’ve said so often, it’s awful hard to keep secrets these days… that is, unless you own the system.”

“Own the net?” Teresa sniffed incredulously. “Nobody owns the net.”

“Well, bits of it. Special, strategic pieces. Think about when the original fiber cables and data hubs were laid. Someone could always be bought out, bribed, blackmailed. Computer nodes were designed with ‘back door’ entry codes, known only to a few…”

“Why? To what end?”

June laughed. “To always be first hearing about the latest technical advance! So your ferrets will get that split sec-ond priority advantage, letting you cache away items before others see them. To manipulate the mail—”

“Preposterous!” Teresa objected. “People would notice!”

June nodded. “Oh, now we know that. But then? The net was supposed to be their baby. Their tool! It would replace big banks as an instrument of control, above nations and governments. Above even money.

“After all, didn’t old sci-fi stories picture it that way? ‘He who controls the flow of information controls the world’? That was to be their answer to Brazzaville and Rio.” June’s voice stung with biting irony. “Only it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead of being their tame instrument, the Net kept slipping free like something alive. So they—”