“Traces of manipulation,” Elvi said. “Something that would show evidence that he’d had a direct neural link like the one James Holden and the remnants of Miller did on Ilus.”
“So you know about this?”
Elvi made a vague, helpless gesture. “She outranks me.”
“But you’re the administrator of the Science Directorate.”
“And that used to matter,” Elvi said. “Not anymore. Right now, her orders might as well say, ‘from the desk of God.’”
“These scientists want you to protect them from the bureaucracy.”
“What they want is for me to talk Duarte into overriding Trejo and getting her clearance pulled,” Elvi said. “There’s a problem with that plan.”
“That Duarte doesn’t exist?”
“That Tanaka will need to find him before I can ask him any favors, yes.”
Fayez was quiet for a moment. He didn’t want to go to the next place, but he had to. “Do you think that’s really what’s going on?”
Elvi’s sigh meant she’d had the same thoughts and suspicions. “You mean do I think Tanaka’s really searching for a version of Duarte that came out of his coma and disappeared?”
“Or is Trejo feeding us a story and seeing if it leaks out to the underground? This could all be a test. Duarte could be back at the State Building right now contemplating his oatmeal. We wouldn’t know until Dr. Lee gets a quiet order to put a bullet in the backs of our heads. We’re high in the food chain, but Trejo’s still an authoritarian despot, and there’s a lot of precedent for shit like that.”
“I can’t care about it,” Elvi said. “I can’t play the game. I don’t have the focus or the energy.”
“You can stop feeding our results to Jim and Nagata.”
Elvi nodded, but not in the way that meant she agreed.
Fayez pressed his fingertips into his closed eyelids. “Babe,” he said, but she stopped him.
“It’s happening more than we thought.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“The incidents. Like Gedara. We’ve only been seeing the near misses. We always catch the ones that turn off consciousness, but I had Ochida run through pattern matching for other anomalies like Gedara’s lightspeed thing? They’re happening all the time.”
“What do you mean, all the time?” Fayez said, but his gut had gone suddenly cold.
“Changes in virtual particle annihilations in Pátria, Felicité, and Kunlun systems. Lightspeed variations in Sumner and Far-home. Electron mass changed in Haza system for almost two minutes. Electron mass. Sanctuary system had gravity increase by a tenth of a percent throughout the system for six seconds.”
“Okay, every single thing you just said fucks me up.”
“This was one twenty-four-hour period. The things that are doing this are rattling all the windows looking for the way to make us die, and I don’t know how we guard our physical fucking constants against attack. It’s just a matter of time before they figure out how to trigger vacuum decay or something. So I’m going to keep doing exactly everything I can, and yes, that means sharing data. Because if that’s how we catch a break on this, it will be worth it. And if poor Dr. Lee needs to assassinate me because of it, at least it won’t be my problem anymore.”
“Okay. I get it.”
“Trejo’s fighting to hold on to an empire. I’m fighting to have something that’s recognizable as the universe with living things in it.”
“I get it,” he said again, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. Not until the pressure was vented.
“If there’s a chance—one chance in a billion—for me to figure this out, I’m taking it. If there’s a price that I have to pay, that’s fine. Not even going to think about that. Just opening my wallet, and whatever the universe needs to take from me, it’s welcome to. That’s what we’re playing for. So yes, I really, really hope that Duarte snapped out of his fugue state and ran off to do whatever the fuck half-protomolecule former emperors do in their retirement, because that would mean Trejo wasn’t playing court intrigue games with me while I’m at work. But who knows? I don’t.”
She went quiet, still shaking her head in a tight, angry motion. Fayez steadied himself on the handhold.
“How do I help?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing. Help me keep doing what I’m doing. Hope that we catch a break in time.”