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There’s only a man who thought, for some unfathomable reason, that he could make it to the finish line without fucking up his perfect adoptive sister’s life.
I pick my head up and tap some keys on my keyboard again.
The only way to fix this situation is to untangle the knots of the Senator’s favor, to solve that problem and get it away from my office, away from me, and thus away from Artemis.
I need more information for that.
Internet research is different when what you’re searching for isn’t on Google.
What I want to know is why exactly, if it’s so clearly the Right Thing To Do, Chris Walsh was selling me like a hustler. On his favor. If the government wants this transition, then why hasn’t the ask come to me through one of my usual contacts? It’s not as if I expect a White House press release on the issue, but still. This is just far enough outside the regular flow of research, policy development, and meeting coordination that I can’t just type that into a search engine. I have to come at it from a less obvious angle. Perhaps many less obvious angles.
Like looking through every photograph of him that the internet can identify. Like saving every pixelated one where he appears by someone shadowy, and then sending the batch over to August and Julien with a note that basically says enhancement ASAP? please and thanks with a link for them to invoice me for whatever fee they want. August is the photographer of the pair, and Julien is the one who does the write-ups—long-form, short-form, whichever strikes his fancy. The lifestyle shoots and wedding photography and family portraits—not to mention things like the Vogue cover shoot—are things August does for an extremely select clientele. He and his brother have spent more time embedding with military units in hostile countries, covering the aftermath of natural disasters and terror campaigns, and generally putting themselves in situations that would be intolerable for most people in the quest for in-depth reporting, although from what I understand, they’ve mostly been doing lower-stakes hobby work these last few years.
I also happen to know that August and Julien have done their own share of backchannel work for the government. Sometimes, journalists are easier to get in position as negotiators, and because of August and Julien’s long history of working as an inseparable pair, it doesn’t raise any eyebrows if they drop into a foreign country on assignment and take some extra meetings on the side.
The reply comes fast.
No need to beg.
August
He has also invoiced me for twenty thousand dollars.
Before I’m finished paying it, the enhanced photos come through.
Finally, I start looking into Mociar. Well, I try.
Delphi comes out of her office and paces the hall, picking at her guitar strings in a light, almost absent way. The melody reminds me of daydreaming. Maybe Delphi is daydreaming. It’s hard to tell, because she does the same thing when she’s solving a problem in her head. Equally possible that daydreaming is one and the same for her. She hums a tune that turns into words as she paces.
“—for the end of the circle, but it doesn’t end at all,” she sings outside my door, and then her voice gets softer.
More humming.
“—a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and you?—”
Fucking crickets. It’s a delicate, sunny tune, but that is not a delicate image.
Delphi’s sing-thinking out loud.
“—not a cut you can stitch up, and the doctor’s wearing cufflinks when he says he doesn’t know?—”
“What did you say?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she sings.
“Did you say cufflinks?”
“Maybe,” she answers, and interrupts her melody with a loud strum.
“What kind of cufflinks?”
“When you’ve seen one pair of cufflinks,” Delphi sings. “You’ve seen them all.”
She makes all last about thirty seconds, then peters out into silence.
When Delphi picks up her melody again, it sounds like pine trees.
I can’t explain how it sounds like pine trees. Wind in pine branches, maybe. The melody flows into an interlude that gives me a vivid memory of the way the crowd sounded on the deck of the Intrepid for Calliope and Orion’s party, then shifts again—the sensation of passing through a doorway, the street noise dying down into a quiet that buzzes.
