“Cut the bullshit. What fresh hell are we facing today?”
“You have a meeting with Gorman Le from the scientific service in half an hour. Then breakfast with Prime Minister Smith. An interview with Karol Stepanov of the Eastern Economic Strategic Report, and then the meeting with the Strategy and Response Committee. That will last until lunch, ma’am.”
“Stepanov. He was the one who got the Cigdem Toker Award three years ago for the piece on Dashiell Moraga?”
“I … I can check, ma’am.”
“For fuck’s sake, Said. Try to keep up here. He is. I’m sure of it. I should talk to his wife before I meet with him,” she said. “Is there a place we can push him to in the afternoon?”
“I can make space, ma’am.”
“Do that. And make sure Smith is a private audience. I’m sick of every fucking thing I do being under a microscope. If I get an ass polyp, I’ll find out about it on Le Monde.”
“If you say so, ma’am.”
“I say so. Send the cart. Let’s get this over with.”
Gorman Le was a thin man with light brown hair salted with white and jade green eyes that Avasarala guessed were cosmetic. She hadn’t known him before she came to Luna. He’d been promoted above his level of preparation when the rocks fell, and it showed in his overly somber bearing and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke.
“The ships that … failed to complete the transition tended to be larger in mass,” he said. “The Oleander-Swift, the Barbatana de Tubar?o, and the Harmony all follow that pattern. The Casa Azul doesn’t match that, though.”
The science service had always been a large presence on Luna. It was where the first broad-array telescope had been built, up free from the interference of atmosphere. The first permanent moon base had been equally divided between military posturing and research. But the generations that had risen and fallen since then had left the Luna science service behind, pressing out to the places where the action really was: Ganymede, Titan, Iapetus. God help them all, Phoebe. It left the Luna-based service office hardly more than admin offices and children’s science-fair projects. The meeting room they were in was gray-green with wall screens left cloudy by years of fine abrasion and fake leather chairs.
“I’m hearing you say there’s no consistent pattern,” Avasarala said.
Gorman Le pressed his jaw tight and flapped his hands in frustration. “There are patterns. There are any number of patterns. They all had drives built within a twenty-month window. They were all using reaction mass harvested from Saturn. They all went missing in high-traffic periods. They all had the sequence ‘four-five-two-one’ in their long-form registry codes. With this little to go on, I can find as many patterns as you want that match all the missing ships. But which one matters? No, I can’t tell you that.”
“Any ships with four-five-two-one in the registry code make it through?”
Gorman Le made a small huffing sound, like an angry hamster, then looked down and blushed. “The Jaquenetta, registered out of Ganymede. It went through between the Oleander-Swift and the Harmony. Reported back from Walton with no trouble.”
“Well,” Avasarala said, amused that he’d actually tracked that down, “we can at least say that one’s less likely to be it, then.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gorman Le said. “Ma’am, if we could get further data … I’m certain that Medina Station has flight records for all of these. Maybe others. And for the ones that didn’t have trouble. If we could just—”
“If we controlled Medina Station,” Avasarala said, “a lot of things would be different. Do we have anything from our Martian friends about why their rogue navy was so interested in the Laconia gate?”
“Not even confirmation that that’s where the breakaway ships went.”
Avasarala scowled. “Keeping their knees closed after they’re already fucked. Typical. I’ll talk to Smith. We can’t get Medina, but we should fucking well manage access to all the data we do have.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Gorman Le said, but he said it to her back. She was already moving on.
Motion helped. The sense of doing things, of progressing, of the problems getting clearer and the solutions—where there were any—getting closer kept the despair at bay. It was harder for Smith. He was a world away from his home and his staff. There just wasn’t as much Martian infrastructure on Luna. When he wasn’t in meetings or trading messages across twelve minutes of light delay, he sat in his suite and watched the newsfeeds calling him an idiot and a buffoon and the man whose inattention had let the Martian Congressional Republic Navy be sold to terrorists and pirates. He didn’t even have managing the worst catastrophe in human history to keep his mind off feeling sorry for himself.
He met her at the door. In simple sand-colored slacks and a white collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he could have been a salesman or a minor prelate. His smile was professionally genuine and warm, the same way it always was. She stepped into the rooms and glanced around. No one. Not even security. A private audience indeed. Score one for Said.
Their breakfast waited in the dining room—poached eggs and thick, buttered toast. The sort of simple, elegant fare that she imagined royalty through the ages had enjoyed while the people they ruled died. She also saw the half-empty bottle of wine on the floor by the sofa, the wall screen tuned to an entertainment feed showing a slightly risqué comedy that had come out three years earlier. Shannon Poe and Lakash Hedayat were naked and trying to cover themselves with the same beach towel without looking at the other or touching skin to skin. In context, it might have been funny. Smith followed her gaze and turned off the screen.
“Laughter,” he said. “A balm in hard times.”
“I’ll have to try it,” she said. He pulled her chair out for her, and she let him. “I had a few things I wanted to run past you, but before that? I understand why your intelligence service is hiding information about Duarte, but why the fuck are you keeping the data about the gate-eaten ships to yourself? Are you looking to trade it for something, because unless it’s sexual favors, we haven’t got jack shit.”
“The eggs are good,” Smith said.
“You want eggs? I’ll have them squeeze a chicken. I want the data on the missing ships.”
Smith smiled and nodded as if she’d said something mild and polite. The pale flesh of the egg dripped gold on the way to his mouth. The yolk spattered his shirtfront, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I … You’ll have to take the matter up with my successor. I’ve had word today. The opposition is calling for a vote of no confidence. I will be out of office by this evening.”
Avasarala took in a deep breath and let it out through her teeth. The silence between them was rich until she broke it. “Fuck.”
“They’re angry and they’re frightened. They need someone to blame. I’m the obvious choice.”
“Who are they putting up?”
“Olivia Liu and Chahaya Nelson were both mentioned. It’s going to be Emily Richards, though.”
Avasarala chewed a bite of egg, but didn’t taste it. Richards wasn’t bad. She was serious, at least. Liu and Nelson were too entrenched in what Mars had been. They wouldn’t be ready for what it was becoming. Richards women made good policy. Always had.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This must be hard for you.”
“Politicians are gamblers,” Smith said. “We do our best to bend the odds, but the universe does what it does.”
Bullshit, she thought. Politicians are the frontal lobes of the body politic. The universe does what it does. They’d be better off without him. Only not yet.
“You have a day,” she said. “Get me the data before it’s too late.”
“Chrisjen—”