"Luria would be aware": the conduit, the caution, and DuPlessis's suspicion

texture · 30 April YDAU (discussing the DuPlessis era and its end)

• When: night of 30 April YDAU on the desert outcropping (the Marathe/Steeply serial); the content reaches back across the DuPlessis era to his recent death
• What: Steeply, needling Marathe about layered loyalties, cites the enemy's own precedent: "your DuPlessis always suspected he tried to hold back on the information he passed sexually to Luria" — the plainest statement in the book of what Luria's double-amanuensis position was for: Tine's secrets, passed "sexually," audited by her principal for completeness. And after DuPlessis's death ("Under circumstances of almost ridiculous suspicion," Marathe notes — the burglary-and-grippe), the channel apparently still runs: Marathe says that if Tine's betrayal were incomplete, "we of Québec would be aware." Steeply supplies the mechanism — "Because of Luria." — and Marathe confirms: "But yes. The caution. Luria would be aware." Whom she now reports to, with DuPlessis dead, is not said; that she remains the working guarantee of Québec's read on Tine is. (All of this is dialogue between two professional dissemblers, each performing for the other; Luria herself is absent.)