way, rinse and repeat. Hell, they could even pick up extra change shipping legal cargo over the Erewhon-Manticore leg! Until the Beowulfers shoved their oar in, anyway. And apparently Fairmont-Solbakken leaned on the permanent undersecretaries pretty damned hard. I always figured there was a little blackmail involved in the horsetrading, but I could've been wrong about that. What I know for certain, though, is that the Navy put a destroyer detachment in Lytton and kept it there. So Upstairs decided to ‘send a message' to Beowulf, and my team and I were supposed to deliver it.”
“Obviously it didn't get delivered after all,” Manischewitz observed.
“No, not so you'd notice,” Ardmore agreed in a hard voice. “Matter of fact, it didn't go so well for my team. There were eleven of us, including my partner Gerlach and me; I'm the only one who got out alive. Somehow, the Beowulfers figured out what was coming and they dropped a BSC special ops team on us right in the middle of New Denver. I was out on surveillance when they hit; when I came back, it was like the rest of them had never existed. I don't know whether all of them were killed before their forensics people tidied up or if some of them got hauled back to a safe house somewhere on Old Earth and pumped dry first. I just know they were all gone, and that that little bastard Benton-Ramirez y Chou who'd ‘just happened' to be vacationing in New Denver when Fairmont-Solbakken arrived, was nowhere to be found after. So, yeah, it's kind of personal for me, Tobin. You got a problem with that?”
“I've got no problem at all, as long as you remember that I'm the senior guy on this team and you don't let the personal part of it get in the way of getting the job done. And as long as you remember that the whole object here is to not kill him. Yet, at least.”
“Oh, yeah, I'll remember that.” Ardmore's smile was ugly. “Because, you know what? I don't think it's gonna work. I think he's gonna try to get cute, instead, and when he does, both of them get dead. And that'll suit me just fine, Tobin. Just fine.”
* * *
Allison Chou breathed deeply and steadily, the soles of her running shoes crunching crisply on the gravel as she headed for the final bend in the trail before she headed back. She loved Rosalind Franklin Park, and especially its jogging trails. The park had been laid out the better part of two thousand T-years ago, and the great-great-grandchildren of the original Old Earth oaks which had been planted by the long dead landscapers were as much as two meters in diameter now, spreading their massive branches to cover the trails in deep, green shade. It was almost like running at the bottom of one of the parks' koi ponds, and the bursts of sunlight when she passed through a break in the foliage were as brilliant as they were dazzling. And on top of all of its other attractions, the Watson and Crick Boulevard entrance was less than two blocks from her off-campus apartment. It was her favorite place to run, and running was one of her favorite occupations when she had hard things to think about.
Face it, she told herself severely, you're going to have to deal with this. It's probably just a loose screw rattling around inside your skull. You always did have a vivid imagination, you know! God only knows what's caused you to fixate on this this way, but the only way you're ever going to put it to rest is to talk to him. Spend a little time actually with him instead of just sitting around wondering about him. You don't have to walk up to him with bedroom eyes, hit him over the head with a club and drag him off. You just need to . . . explore this, figure out what the hell is going on, and then either act on it or forget about it.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Sure. That was all she had to do. It made perfect sense—or as much sense as anything could make, under the circumstances. The only problems were that she'd never heard of circumstances like these, they weren't getting better, and they didn't scare her any less.
She stopped rolling her eyes and closed them briefly, then opened them again. It was still there. It was fainter,