Ammonite

Hiam was right. It had to be Company spying on her. Company going behind her back after seven years of faithful service. But it still did not make sense: if the people on Kurstwanted to know something, why not just ask her? She would tell them. She had nothing to hide. Nothing. She had always been loyal, aboveboard. Always. Only now they seemed to think she was not, that she could not be trusted, that she needed to be watched. Who, who the hell, was doing this?

“Can Sigrid find that frequency again?” She was breathing hard.

“I’ll check with her. Hold for a moment.” Hiam paused, finger poised above a key. “You might like this,”—she smiled wryly—“or you might not. It’s one of Nyo’s.” The hold screen was a cartoon: a knight in medieval armor balanced on the hull of the Kurst, aiming a catapult at the planet below. In other circumstances, it might have been funny.

The cartoon flicked out and Hiam’s face reappeared. “Sigrid says yes. Apparently she’s already monitoring it, just in case.”

Banner’s anger was mounting, but she kept her voice steady. “Please convey my gratitude and ask her to continue to do so. When our spy uses that frequency again, I want it recorded.” The code could come later. First, catch whoever it was. Then find out why. “Another thing. Tell her that finding the originating locus of this signal takes priority over its information content.”

“What if there isn’t a next time?”

“There will be,” Danner said grimly. That damn spy would want frequent reassurance from the powers above. She would need it. The muscles in her face felt tight.

“I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes when you catch her,” Hiam said dryly.

“No,” Danner said, and wished Sara was beside her, at Port Central, instead of up there.

After they said good-bye, Danner sat very still, trying hard to grasp the slippery idea that someone in Company did not trust her. Her. Now she knew how Marghe must have felt to have her judgment questioned. Who was the person who smiled, and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and then went running behind her back? She wanted to tear out of her office and destroy something, anything; shout, line everyone up against a wall and force the truth out of the spy with the sheer power of her rage.

Wait until you’ve calmed down, she told herself. Do some work, then figure out what you’re going to do. She took a couple of deep breaths, turned on her screen of lists, and tried to concentrate. No good. She was just too angry.

She strode to the door, opened it. “Vincio? I’m leaving. Unless a situation occurs which Deputy Teng can’t handle, I’m unavailable for the next three hours.”

She wished the office had the kind of door she could slam on the way out.

She marched across the grass toward her mod, then abruptly changed direction. She would take the long way back, around the perimeter. Walk some of this off.

It was cool, getting toward winter. Her uniform began to heat up, getting hot around the small of her back first and making her sweat. She switched it off. This time she wanted to get warm on her own.

How had Marghe dealt with the challenge to her judgment?

The sky was gray, full of hard rain. The wind in her face felt damp and cold. She shivered, walked faster. It would be even colder up north, where Marghe might be stuck in a snowdrift, or sneezing miserably inside her tent. Or maybe she had already reached Ollfoss and was snugged up in a log cabin with a cheery fire and some smiling woman bringing her soup.

Some smiling woman bringing Marghe soup.

Danner reached the perimeter fence and stopped. It was the first time she had really, deep down, thought of the indigenous population of Jeep as women. Not aliens, or natives, or beings to be taken into consideration from a humanitarian point of view, but women like her, like Marghe, like Teng or Vincio or Letitia Dogias. Like us. Women who lit fires against the cold and made soup for their loved ones.

She remembered, long ago, her meeting with the journeywoman T’orre Na. The journeywoman had held out her hand. Look at this hand, she had said. And Danner had. This hand can birth children. This hand can make music. This hand could kill you. And Danner had been shamed into risking her career, shamed into taking the part of T’orre Na and the herders Jink and Oriyest against Company.

Against Company… Was it this that Company held against her now? One act of humanity?