“Well, that’s worth shit,” she said.
Avasarala closed down her hand terminal and looked out the window. Around them the commissary murmured softly, like the best kind of restaurant, only without the ugly necessity of paying for anything. The tables were real wood and arranged carefully so that everyone had a view and no one could be overheard unless they wanted to be. It was raining that day. Even if the raindrops hadn’t been pelting the windows, blurring city and sky, she’d have known by the smell. Her lunch—cold sag aloo and something that was supposed to be tandoori chicken—sat on the table, untouched. Soren was still sitting across from her, his expression polite and alert as a Labrador retriever’s.
“There’s no data showing a launch,” Soren said. “Whatever’s on Venus would have to have gotten out to Ganymede, and there’s no sign of that at all.”
“Whatever’s on Venus thinks inertia’s optional and gravity isn’t a constant. We don’t know what a launch would look like. As far as we know, they could walk to Jupiter.”
The boy’s nod conceded the point.
“Where do we stand on Mars?”
“They’ve agreed to meet here. They’ve got ships on the way with the diplomatic delegation, including their witness.”
“The marine? Draper?”
“Yes, ma’am. Admiral Nguyen is in charge of the escort.”
“He’s playing nice?”
“So far.”
“All right, where do we go from here?” Avasarala asked.
“Jules-Pierre Mao’s waiting in your office, ma’am.”
“Run him down for me. Anything you think’s important.”
Soren blinked. Lightning lit the clouds from within.
“I sent the briefing …”
She felt a stab of annoyance that was half embarrassment. She’d forgotten that the background on the man was in her queue. There were thirty other documents there too, and she’d slept poorly the night before, troubled by dreams in which Arjun had died unexpectedly. She’d had widowhood nightmares since her son had died in a skiing accident, her mind conflating the only two men she’d ever loved.
She’d meant to review the information before breakfast. She’d forgotten. But she wasn’t going to admit it to some European brat just because he was smart, competent, and did everything she said.
“I know what’s in the briefing. I know everything,” she said, standing up. “This is a f**king test. I’m asking what you think is important about him.”
She walked away, moving toward the carved oak doors with a deliberate speed that made Soren scramble a little to keep up.
“He’s the corporate controlling interest of Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile,” Soren said, his voice low enough to carry to her and then die. “Before the incident, they were one of Protogen’s major suppliers. The medical equipment, the radiation rooms, the surveillance and encryption infrastructure. Almost everything Protogen put on Eros or used to construct their shadow station came from a Mao-Kwik warehouse and on a Mao-Kwik freighter.”
“And he’s still breathing free air because …?” she said, pushing through the doors and into the hallway beyond.
“No evidence that Mao-Kwik knew what the equipment was for,” Soren said. “After Protogen was exposed, Mao-Kwik was one of the first to turn over information to the investigation committee. If they—and by ‘they,’ I mean ‘he’—hadn’t turned over a terabyte of confidential correspondence, Gutmansdottir and Kolp might never have been implicated.”
A silver-haired man with a broad Andean nose walking the other way in the hall looked up from his hand terminal and nodded to her as they drew near.
“Victor,” she said. “I’m sorry about Annette.”
“The doctors say she’ll be fine,” the Andean said. “I’ll tell her you asked.”
“Tell her I said to get the hell out of bed before her husband starts getting dirty ideas,” she said, and the Andean laughed as they passed. Then, to Soren: “Was he cutting a deal? Cooperation for clemency?”
“That was one interpretation, but most people assumed it was personal vengeance for what happened to his daughter.”
“She was on Eros,” Avasarala said.
“She was Eros,” Soren said as they stepped into the elevator. “She was the initial infection. The scientists think the protomolecule was building itself using her brain and body as a template.”
The elevator doors closed, the car already aware of who she was and where she was going. It dropped smoothly as her eyebrows rose.
“So when they started negotiating with that thing—”
“They were talking to what was left of Jules-Pierre Mao’s daughter,” Soren said. “I mean, they think they were.”
Avasarala whistled low.
“Did I pass the test, ma’am?” Soren asked, keeping his face empty and impassive except for a small twinkle in the corners of his eyes that said he knew she’d been bullshitting him. Despite herself, she grinned.