“My last year, he led a research trip to Tatié, to the border. Had some work he had to do there. He needed cover, and he needed help. He didn’t call it espionage. I don’t know if he asked any of the others, but … when he asked me, I said yes.

“I was caught, of course, but too late. I got done what he asked me to. If I hadn’t managed it, if I’d crumpled a little more quickly when they asked what I was about, maybe everything would have turned out different. I wasn’t good enough to go all the way, then, but I was three-quarters there and I suppose someone figured they could drag me the last hundred yards.”

“But did you get in trouble?”

“Of course I got in trouble,” he said. “I’m still in it. One giant slog of trouble from then ’til now.” He could feel it all stuck to his boots with every step. “It had to be kept quiet. Especially since my father was in the corps. Interstate espionage was a serious crime—still is, I suppose. My father practically tied me in a bow when the FOCIS came calling; he made a deal and I had to take it to avoid prosecution.”

“That’s when they stopped trying,” Stephen said. “The moment they stopped trying to fix you. You think it’s going to happen to me.”

He shrugged. “Anything can happen. I don’t try to predict it anymore; I just try to be ready when the dice come down where they do.”

Stephen considered this, digging at the base of the fence post with his toe. The snow had all melted a few days ago, followed by a hard freeze, and he made no visible progress except to scuff his shoe leather. “What about the teacher? Did you pitch him?”

“Give him up? Of course. Everybody does, in the end. He was packed off back where he came from.” He’d been from some western suburb of Dastya, where rioting and revenge killings were commonplace. “By then he had a reputation, and it was hostile territory. I never heard from him again.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

It was harder than Aristide would have liked, approaching Frye. It seemed she wasn’t taking telephone calls from just anyone who rang, and lurking outside of her home was liable to get him shot or at least arrested; a rotation of ACPD hounds had set up on the street. He wondered if Saeger had such a thing, wherever she holed up at night. Maybe the labor unions ran her security detail.

He couldn’t ask Custler to put them in touch, either; she would want to know why, and this was a lever better applied without warning, to the top of the chain of command.