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the
computer screens. His fingers twitched. He was good with computers, but he wasn’t
that good. Dalin Rowan—now there had been the computer expert. In all these
years, Xris had never run across anyone as good as Dalin.
    Slowly, reluctantly,
the cyborg sat back down.
    Xris paused a
moment to get his thoughts in order. It didn’t take long. Not a day went by but
that he didn’t think about it. Wondering, trying to make sense of it.
    “It was back
during the days of the democracy. I was a Fed, a member of the bureau detailed
to handle interplanetary crime. I don’t know how much you know about the
agency; probably quite a bit.”
    Wiedermann smiled,
nodded. “The bureau hasn’t changed all that much under the new regime. Cleaned
up some, maybe. But basically the same.”
    “No reason it
should change,” Xris said. “They’ve got good people. We were good, most of us.
Dedicated. Loyal. And if there was some corruption, hell, that’s only to
be expected in an organization that big. Of course, I didn’t know at the time
that the whole damn government was corrupt, from the president on down. Not
that it would have made much difference, I guess. I did what I did for the
bureau for my own reasons.”
    “And those were?”
    Xris shrugged.
Taking out the cigarette case, he held it in his hand, but didn’t open it. He
tapped it thoughtfully with a good finger.
    “It’s no big moral
thing with me. Right. Wrong. Good. Bad. Ethics vary from planet to planet. On
Adonia twenty years ago, it was legal to abandon a child for being ugly. We had
a hell of a time with local laws. But that’s not important. What got to me,
what kept me going, were the people who got fat off other people’s misery.”
    “Yes, go on.”
    Xris shifted in
his chair, attempted to make himself more comfortable. Not an easy task when
half his body was metal.
    “I don’t suppose
you’d let me smoke?”
    Wiedermann shook
his head, patted his chest. “Asthma.”
    Xris removed a
twist from the case, clamped his teeth down on it, chewed it. The bitter juice
flooded his mouth, washed out the faint metallic flavor that he always tasted,
despite the fact that the doctors told him it was all in his mind. Some days
the taste was stronger than others.
    “It’s what kept me
from being on the take, I guess. I had my chances, but I knew where the money
came from: babies who were born whacked out from drugs, sixteen-year-old
hookers smashed up by their pimps, old people swindled out of their life
savings. These people were at the bottom and at the top were guys in the fancy
limojets who held handkerchiefs over their delicate noses when they drove
through the stinking slums they helped create. Bringing those guys down, making
them lie flat on the pavement in the muck and the filth, rubbing those delicate
noses in it—that’s why I worked for the bureau.”
    Xris thrust the
case back in his shirt pocket. “I had money enough. Everything I needed,
everything I wanted. My wife and I—”
    Xris stopped
abruptly, smiled easily. “But you don’t want to hear all that. It was a long
time ago, anyway. And it all came down to one job. One simple, routine job.. ..”
     

Chapter 4
    To unfailingly
take what you attack, attack where there is no defense. For unfailingly secure
defense, defend where there is no attack.
    Sun Tzu, The Art of War
     
    Xris and his
longtime friend and partner Mashahiro Ito forced their way through the crowds
pouring out of the mass transit station, walked the short distance to the main
entrance of FISA headquarters. The season was spring on Janus 2. The gardens
decorating the grounds were just beginning to come back to life after their
winter’s hiatus. Budding trees extended protective limbs over the tentatively
blooming flower beds. Ito had once discoursed at great length on the symbology
of the protective trees, the helpless flowers. Xris, grinning, had once told
Ito what he could do with his symbology.
    A large and
massive sign