And Reynolt herself? Pham stared at her face more intently than he might have dared otherwise. He'd been in her presence maybe 20Ksec total and those encounters had been in meetings, with Reynolt generally at the far end of the table. She always dressed plainly, except for that silver necklace tucked down into her blouse. With her red hair and pale skin, the woman might have been Ritser Brughel's sister. The physical type was rare in this end of Human Space, arising most often from local mutation. Anne might have been thirty years old—or a couple of centuries, with really good medical support. In a crazy, exotic way she was lovely. Physically lovely.So you were a Podmaster.
Reynolt's gaze flickered up, and impaled him for an instant. "Okay. You're here to tell me the details of these localizers."
Pham nodded. Strange. After that momentary glance, her gaze shifted away from his eyes. She was watching his lips, his throat, only briefly his eyes. There was no sympathy, no communication, but Pham had the chill feeling that she was seeing through all his masks.
"Good. What is their standard sensorium?"
He grumbled through the answers, claiming ignorance of details.
Reynolt didn't seem to take offense. Her questions were delivered in a uniformly calm, mildly contemptuous tone. Then: "This isn't enough to work with. I need the manuals."
"Sure. That's what I'm here for. The full manuals are on the localizer chips, encrypted beneath what ordinary techs are allowed to see."
Again that long, scattered stare: "We've looked. We don't see them."
This was the dangerous part. At best, Nau and Brughel would be taking a very close look at Trinli's buffoon persona. At worst...if they realized he was giving away secrets that even top armsmen wouldn't know, he'd be in serious trouble. Pham pointed to a head-up display on Reynolt's desk. "Allow me," he said.
Reynolt didn't react to his flippancy, but she did put on the huds and accepted consensual imaging. Pham continued, "I remember the passcode. It's long, though"—and the full version was keyed to his own body, but he didn't say that. He tried several incorrect codes, and acted irritable and nervous when they failed. A normal human, even Tomas Nau, would have expressed impatience—or laughed.
Reynolt didn't say anything. She just sat there. But then, suddenly, "I have no patience for this. Do not pretend incompetence."
She knew.In all the time since Triland, no one had ever seen this far behind his cover. He'd hoped for more time; once they started using the localizers he could write some new cover for himself.Damn. Then he remembered what Silipan had said. Anne Reynolt knewsomething. Most likely, she had simply concluded that Trinli was a reluctant informant.
"Sorry," Pham mumbled. He typed in the correct sequence.
A simple acknowledgment came back from the fleet library, chip doc subsection. The glyphs floated silver on the air between them. The secret inventory data, the component specifications.
"Good enough," said Reynolt. She did something with her control, and her office seemed to vanish. The two of them floated through the inventory information, and then they were standing within the localizers' specifications.
"As you said, temperature, sonics, light levels...multispectrum. But this is more elaborate than you described at the meeting."
"I said it was good. These are just the details."
Reynolt spoke quickly, reviewing capability after capability. Now she sounded almost excited. This was far beyond the corresponding Emergent products. "A naked localizer, with a good sensorium and independent operation." And she was seeing only the part that Pham wanted her to see.
"You do have to pulse it power."
"Just as well. That way we can limit its use till we thoroughly understand it."
She flicked away the image, and they were sitting in her office again, the lights sparkling cool off the rough walls. Pham could feel himself beginning to sweat.
She wasn't even looking at him anymore. "The inventory showed several million localizers in addition to those embedded in fleet hardware."
"Sure. Inactive, they pack into just a few liters."
Calm observation: "You were fools not to use them for security."
Pham glowered at her. "We armsmen knew what they could do. In a military situation—"
But those were not the details in Anne Reynolt's Focus. She waved him silent. "It looks like we have more than enough for our purposes."
The beautiful janissary looked back into Pham's face. For an instant, her gaze stabbed directly into his eyes.
"You've made possible a new era of control, Armsman."
