“No.” It’s a split second before he realizes what question she’s really asking and a split second later when embarrassment is smeared across his face. “Having been here before makes it easier. It is not, strictly speaking, a necessary precondition.”
“Could Tom have done that?” Ellie’s gaze goes back to the window.
“Good god, no.” Daniel opens the blinds a crack, peeks through, and whistles. “I’ve debugged his work. Tom doesn’t understand how the universes work anywhere near well enough. He’d have to follow someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Tom who?” Ahdi paces around the room.
“Dunham. You know, tallish.” Daniel gestures just below his chin. “Rather solid. Blond. Weirdly skittish.”
“I think that’s only around you,” Ellie interjects.
“Oh, Tom.” Ahdi’s voice is clipped. “I know him.”
“It’s easier to believe Aunt Vera showed him how to get here.”
“That’s oddly specific.” Ahdi taps the walls as he paces, nodding occasionally. “Oh. Of course that’s how he got in. It’s not something the Vera I know would do, though.”
“I don’t think she would either.” Ellie presses the betrayal out of her voice. “Maybe in those alternate presents, that monstrosity saved her without saving her, if you know what I mean.”
Daniel runs his hands across the tops of his window frames, checking for dust. This is as relaxed and unguarded as Ellie has ever seen him, and yet he still looks like anyone who attacked him from behind would find themselves pinned to the floor before they knew what happened. Even casual Daniel looms like a heavy sword dangling by a thin thread.
“Ahdi, does Daniel work for you?” Ellie takes a deep breath before pressing on. “Tom said that you were his boss, whatever that means.”
“Tom is being cute. Maintainers from many universes come to me to talk out their skunkworks issues.” Ahdi starts crawling on the ground and pushing at the baseboards. “Daniel, do you work for me?”
Daniel snaps around, looking oddly guilty. He crosses his arms across his chest, but looks like he’s trying to squeeze the life out of himself.
“More or less?” He notices his arms and lets them hang. “Things work out better if I just do whatever it is you tell me to do.”
“Daniel.” Ahdi stops and, for a moment, he slumps in disappointment. “You can’t just do whatever anyone tells you to do.”
“Not anyone. You.” Daniel packs an amazing amount of respect into three words. “Otherwise, what inevitably happens is whatever problem gets more complicated, and I wish I’d done whatever it was you told me to do in the first place. There’s like a cadre of us like this.”
“A cadre?” Ahdi and Ellie say at the same time, but only Ellie goes on. “That’s an interesting choice of word. How many people are in this… cadre.”
“I dunno.” Daniel blows air through his lips. “It’s nothing like the numbers Neeson has at his disposal. In this universe, a dozen or so?”
“So, there’s a small but impeccably trained group of maintainers who’ll do anything Ahdi tells them to?” Ellie asks.
She resists the urge to walk the three steps to give Daniel a dope slap. This seems like something he could have mentioned at any time. Then again, Daniel always gives the impression that he thinks he’s pretty typical as verifiers go. Never mind that half the maintainers he runs into treat him like a walking weapon while the other half simply bolt in the other direction.
Ahdi, for his part, simply lies prone on the floor, resigned. His limbs are splayed out, making a giant X on the hardwood. He looks like, despite his best efforts to dodge it, someone has thrown stupid all over him and now he has to wash it off. It’s not a huge deal, merely more work he didn’t need.
“No, not anything.” Daniel looks at Ellie as though she’s the one who deserves a dope slap. “The right thing. And we all understand why before we do it.”
“How many secret cabals of maintainers are there?” Ellie asks, even though she doesn’t really want to know.
“Strictly speaking, Ellie, you’re in at least one secret cabal.” Ahdi, his composure recovered, starts slithering around the room again. “Just because a group is common knowledge to you doesn’t make it common knowledge. And, apparently, you can even run a secret cabal without knowing it.”
Ahdi is surprisingly good-natured about discovering that he is the leader of a secret cabal. Daniel looks relieved. Ellie wants to shake Daniel until she’s convinced all of his secrets have fallen out.
“And how does that happen exactly?” Ellie’s gaze follows him as he inches along a wall.
“You have to understand.” Ahdi is now massaging the baseboards. “Maintainers have always come to me for help. We either talk through ways to resolve their design problems, or I explain to them why what they want to do is a terrible idea and why they should reconsider.”
“So, you never tell themwhatto do but you do tell them what todo.”
“Yes, that’s the unintended effect.” He sounds regretful, not testy as Ellie expected. “I should approach this with more intentionality.”
