Downtime Read Free Page B

knew
the real reason. The other four active decemviri here at Aquae Solis had
already decided, but were deliberately stalling for time before revealing their
decision, trying to give Calla enough time to get into position to end what
would be the war of wars. The only optimistic decemvir, Bentham, hoped she
would stop the war before it ever started by revealing the traitor, a traitor
who could only be decemvir.
    D’Omaha
could stand it no longer. He excused himself from Koh and Bentham, whose
conversation he wasn’t listening to anyhow, and went to the table.
    “War
is inevitable by any probability tree you look at,” Calla was saying. “The
Decemvirate can only hope to delay it for a while.”
    “But
the traitor puts a new unknown into the probability trees,” Macduhi said, “and
you’re counting on the traitor to scale it down. You don’t know how, but you’re
going to risk everything on the chance that exposing the traitor will do it.”
    “No,”
D’Omaha said sitting down opposite Macduhi. “The traitor is obviously
entrenching for a long, long war. Otherwise he wouldn’t be establishing his own
supply of elixir. It also tells us that he probably hasn’t yet aligned himself
with either old worlds or new worlds.”
    “He?
What makes you think it’s a man?”
    “I
discovered what he was planning to do only because he made a procedural mistake
that an elder decemvir would not have made. That limits our traitor to being
one of the most recent five, who are all men. You had not yet been selected, so
you, too, are above suspicion.”
    “How
did the traitor err?”
    “It
takes two decemviral seals to authorize a supply of elixir starter seed.
Seydlitz Garden returned the authorization with a note that apologized for
having to delay shipping the seeds until the second seal was affixed. It was
just luck that our traitor hadn’t drawn the short straw for doing the stacks that
day. By tracing the requisition, we finally matched the ultimate destination to
a research center we’d authorized equally blindly. Actually it was an expansion
of a minor post already in existence. The request originated with the
ranger-governor; it was fairly routine, definitely legitimate in its original
form. But the expansion was greatly enhanced after the original approval, and
again the seal quite authentic.”
    “But
the seals are unique. You must have recognized the traitor’s.”
    “Now
the seals are unique. Until that moment it was expedient for them to be
identical. One decemvir could act for the entire body on minor matters. A
traitor in our midst was inconceivable.”
    “And
you, D’Omaha, never let on to me that you had discovered the traitor’s plan for
establishing a source,” Macduhi said. “You let me think . . .”
    “It
doesn’t matter now,” D’Omaha said hastily. What she’d thought had gone beyond
the predictions, and had somehow been more painful for him than predicted, too.
    “Still,
I owe you an apology.”
    “And
I, you,” he said. “We did manipulate you.”
    She
nodded, face impassive, then turned back to Calla.
    “And
you’re going to this obscure downtime world, Mutare, to establish the traitor’s
elixir supply. Then you wait for him to come and spring the trap.”
    “Something
like that,” Calla said.
    “What
makes you so sure he’ll go to Mutare?”
    “He
can’t afford not to. He has to be certain of his elixir supply before he
permits the war to escalate. There’s no way to do that except by going. He can’t
very well have messages coming back to the Decemvirate; he can’t guarantee that
he’ll be reviewing the stacks when they arrive, and messages regarding elixir
production don’t fail to get our attention. He will go to Mutare himself to
determine if yields are satisfactory.”
    “And
he does that by not permitting the Decemvirate to come to a decision over the
elixir redistribution.” Macduhi sat back in her chair looking pale. “How did
you know it was not me?