“Yeah,” Guthrie growled approvingly. “Sitting tight.”
“—in the Assembly of the World Federation,” said the newscaster, “Colin Small of Caribbea responded to the North American call for Peace Authority intervention.”
The image became that of a thin ebony man whose lip movements showed the English was his own: “With due respect for my distinguished friend from the Union, I submit that this request is not what it pretends to be. It is for propaganda purposes, and perhaps for the injury of Fireball. Nations are sovereign within their own borders while they observe the Covenant. Therefore the government of the North American Union can restrict any Peace Authority forces to whatever sites and actions it sees fit. Its allegations are vague and unproven. If it honestly wants help, let it bring formal charges of activity military, genocidal, harmful to the common environment, or unreasonably in hindrance of traffic or communications. Let such charges be examined by the appropriate committee, and found probable. Then world law enforcement can move against Fireball—or, conceivably, against the government of the North American Union. I do not expect either will happen. Legally, at least, this is a dispute between a national government and a private but international organization.”
The scene changed to an economist, who answered questions put by the newscaster. Yes, North America depended on materials and energy from space; all Earth did. Yes, Fireball was the primary provider of these. Yes, if it halted service, the country would soon be seriously inconvenienced. No, there would not be famine or any such thing; the Federation and the Authority would see to that. Besides, the odds were against Fireball ever taking such a drastic measure. Remember, the cost to it would be incalculable, in lost revenues and, far more, in relationships with the rest of the world. It was more vulnerable than one might think. Remember, it was not really a nation, however arrogantly it behaved. It did not possess even the minimum peacekeeping armament to which a nation was entitled, let alone the arsenals of the Authority—Kyra, Lee, and Guthrie listened with less than half an ear.
“Remarkable, so much,” Kyra said.
“What do you mean?” Lee asked.
“That official multiception would carry any part of Small’s speech. I’ve met him, at a space development conference. We talked, and went partying, and since then we’ve swapped occasional letters. He’s on our side.”
“Bueno, he couldn’t come straight out and declare that, in his position, could he? I think the editor of this show is pretty smart. We’ve seen the exact snippet that conveys an impression of unbiased reporting.”
“They’re good at that,” grumbled Guthrie. “Everybody in communications is. With the result that the average man has no way of telling what’s real and what’s come out of a studio.”
“That’s not quite right, sir,” Lee argued. “The sheer volume of information, true as well as false—”
“Yeah, that and international traffic, they do make a totalitarian state impossible to maintain in the long run, unless somehow it took over the whole Solar System. They’re what keep an idea of freedom alive here, and give Chaotics the hope they need if they aren’t going to give up and become Avantists themselves.”
“Who are they?” Kyra asked. “I thought ‘Chaotic’ was just a government swear word for dissenters.”
“Which they proudly adopted,” Guthrie said. “Mostly they’re harmless malcontents.”
“But not all? Are some of them really terrorists waiting for a chance?”
“That could be another swear word,” Guthrie replied.
Kyra got a feeling he didn’t want to say more about this. “What do you expect Fireball will do, sir?”
“I told you. Nothing much, immediately. Play close to the vest till more cards come down. Maybe with some local exceptions. We aren’t a monolith, you know.” A knock sounded. “Quick, stash me. In the pack, might as well.”
His companions did, and admitted Tahir. The sheikh carried a bag stuffed full of fabric. His visage was drawn—Kyra guessed he had been up most of the night—but he stood straight, gave crisp greeting, and went directly to business.
“Sepo are here, uniformed and, undoubtedly, in plain clothes. They walk the halls, although not yet these, and watch at every portal. They carry electronic equipment. Nevertheless, insh’llah, I have made arrangements that should get you past them. Here are women’s clothes for you, Sr. Lee. Veiled and in my company, you ought not to be molested. The police will not wish to magnify their task by infuriating residents, especially those who are not entirely poor and powerless; and it is well known how we Believers feel about our women.” A crooked grin. “Of course, you must practice the gait and the manners. I will rehearse you until, when we go forth, passersby will wonder what this old scoundrel has been doing of late.”
Lee reddened a bit. “Mil gracias, sir,” he said. “Uh, afy aleyk, el-afy.” He gestured at the pack where it lay. “But what about this? We’ve got to get it out. It’s more important than we are, by orders of magnitude.”
“I have gathered that.” Tahir ran fingers through his beard and gazed beyond the walls around him. “I do not wish to know what it is. You have called it a special computer; let that suffice. I do know its size, and have made arrangements. At the proper time, an ambulance will arrive and the crew will bring a life support casket up to us. It has enough space to spare that you can place your . . . object inside while everyone else looks away. I trust it is fluid-proof.”
Kyra drew a sharp breath. Vision sprang into her head, a coffinlike box, its crusting of containers, tubes, valves, pumps, meters, cables, computer, manual controls, and the engineering underneath. Yes, all that metal, all that electrical and chemical and isotopic activity, would for sure mask Guthrie from any detectors.
“But won’t they check whether you’ve actually got a patient inside?” Lee fretted.
“There will be one.” The fugitives saw bleakness. “A son of mine is willing to be drugged. The simulation of a comatose stroke victim will be quite good, even to encephalographic tracings. I do not expect the Sepo will call a physician to inspect closer.”
“But that, that’s incredible, sir,” Kyra stammered. “You don’t owe us—this much—”
Tahir gave her a look. “I have an impression that a duty has fallen upon us.” Somberness turned impersonal. “Perhaps later they will think to check whether this man was indeed brought to Ibn Daoud Hospital. Records will show that he was, biorepair went well, and he was soon discharged to recuperate at home.”
Islamic solidarity? wondered Kyra. Could it be that reliable? Mightn’t Tahir have Chaotic connections? Experienced undergrounders could do a better job on a database, couldn’t they? Yes, it made sense. Of necessity, Avantism gave official tolerance to traditional faiths and lifeways, but it also gave them a hard time and in the long run it would destroy them. Thus the Chaotics, whoever they were, became natural allies of theirs.
“At the hospital you must reclaim your burden and leave us,” Tahir told Lee. “We can do nothing further for you.”
“We understand. We hope someday we can explain exactly how much you did do.”
Unease stirred. “Excuse me,” Kyra said, “but what about me? I need out too!”
“You can simply leave, can you not?” Tahir replied. “Have they reason known to them for stopping you?”
“N-no, I don’t suppose so.”
“Best you start now. That will spread the risk. Have you someplace, preferably outside this country, where you can go?”
The thought cataracted over her. It was as if she saw the house on Lake Ilmen, blue and white above her mother’s rosebeds, nestled by the glittering water in a grove of birches. Leaves rustled, sunlight and shadow danced in them, the breeze smelled of greenwood, here was a fragment of Old Earth and not in a quivira but real, real . . . She had ample funds. Get home, go to Russian HQ and let them know what the situation was—
Shock followed. No! How in MacCannon’s name could she have spent a microsecond on such
an excuse to cut and run? She was Fireball. She had given and taken troth, like her parents and two of her grandparents before her.
She stiffened her shoulders. “Yes, but I’d better not,” she said. “We’ve got to get this thing we’re carrying to safety.” Once she had Guthrie well hidden, maybe then she should flit with her information. Maybe then Fireball could mount a rescue operation, or appeal to the Peace Authority, or something. But first and foremost was keeping him from the hands of the reprogrammers. “That means me. Bob— They’ll be after Sr. Lee with everything they’ve got. No, they already are. I don’t see how any disguise can save him for long.”
She forced herself to meet the young man’s eyes while she spoke. Had he slept at all, knowing what could happen to him at the hands of the Sepo? His face hardly stirred.
“True,” he said quietly. “We’ll rendezvous and I’ll turn the object over to you.”
“Where?” They hadn’t discussed that, as weary and shaken as they were yesterday and as distracted this morning. Amateurs. Why hadn’t Guthrie reminded them? Because he figured there was little point in it before they knew better what they would be doing? She’d rather believe that than that his own wits had failed him.
“Write it down,” Tahir urged. “I should not hear.” He turned his back.
“Good thinking, sir.” Lee swung around and sat down at the terminal. Kyra went to stand behind him. She saw how the sinews were tensed in his hands. But the fingers keyed flowingly. Words jumped onto the screen. Do you know Quark Fair?
Almost, she replied aloud, then leaned over and reached past him. Only by a multi program or two. I have never been there. At the time they left this area, her parents deemed her still too young for that sort of thing. She felt how her right breast pressed lightly on his shoulder.
We can disappear into it for a while. The hand stumbled ever so slightly. And I can get something that can scarcely be gotten anyplace else.
Where in Quark Fair? she wrote.
She saw a wry smile. I have not exactly been an habitué, but I have visited occasionally and collected information from other sources, because it has some regional importance. Go to Mama Lakshmi’s Tea House. Take a room and wait for me. Give a false name so they can tell me which room. They will ask no questions but they will want cash.
A lodging that didn’t enter guest ident in the police database—in North America? Its existence couldn’t be unknown to them. But those were the civil police. Quite bribable, she’d heard. As for the Sepo and the real authorities, bueno, they’d allowed Quark Fair to continue all these years, no matter how foul a plague spot they officially called it. A commentator on a program she’d once watched had said that from their viewpoint, it gave atavistic impulses and incorrigibility an outlet in a geographically contained space. Sometimes the police raided it. After a day or two you couldn’t tell that anything had happened.
Thumb-at-the-nose naughtiness tingled in Kyra. She searched her memory. A name, a name, preferably no association with her— On a long space haul, ransacking your recreational database, you often turned up obscure old works. I will be Emma Bovary.
Tell them you are expecting John Smith. Lee’s grin stretched. It is conventional.
He wiped the file and rose. “Muy bien, we have decided, sir,” he said to Tahir. “You and I had better get busy.” He turned to Kyra. “Have a care, amiga. Buena suerte.”
“And a clean orbit for you, consorte,” she answered, as if he were also a spacer. They clasped hands.
Tahir raised his right palm. “Fi amân illah,” he bade her gravely. “Go in the peace of the Lord.”
Not knowing what else to do, she gave him the salute due a commanding officer. “Gracias for everything,” she said clumsily, and left them. For the first several seconds she was mainly conscious of wishing she had his trust in Providence.
But no, that would mean setting reason aside, wouldn’t it? She entered the corridor and its crowd. Awareness shifted outward. Again stares prickled her skin. If only Tahir had thought to bring her clothes less brazen, less conspicuous. If only she had thought to ask for them.
Bueno, probably the Sepo wouldn’t get around to rummaging this quarter for some days yet, if ever. By that time she’d have blurred in memory, an outsider among many, no special date or anything attached. Not that a dweller would likely volunteer information if he did recall. Just the same, Kyra grabbed the first fahrweg she spied.
On the way out, she made herself plan ahead. Thus every uniform she saw brought only a nasty little jerk in her pulse, a gulpdown of dry cotton in her throat. Worst was passing from courtyard to street. They stood there at the gate, two big men in tan on either side. One of each pair kept eyes on the instrument he gripped, the other’s raked all who went by. Those were fewer than yesterday. Word must have gotten around. Kyra held her mind to a mantra.
But then she was past, lost in the throng, under a sky turned mild and sunny. Free!
For a while. If she wanted the while to last, she should keep moving.
Near the vehicle rack she found a public information outlet. Setting her informant, she stepped into the booth and paid it with a coin. Not until she had drawn the particulars she wanted did she notice how hard her wrist had pressed the contact. With a rueful small laugh she proceeded to her bubbletrike, ransomed it, and drove off.
She must get rid of her Hawaiian garb, which marked her. What she needed was a medium-priced tailor shop some distance hence. The directions the informant spelled out led to an address in the Tonawanda area. The district was venerable, mostly brick buildings a few stories high and some detached houses that survived as tenements. Sidewalks were uncrowded, pedestrians went quietly. Full-size vehicles murmured along the pavement between, allowed because they were few. At first Kyra felt peacefulness. The giants beyond these roofs seemed remote, miragelike; the babel around them had dwindled to a susurrus barely heard.
Then she looked closer and saw crumbling masonry, store displays sparse, grimy hyalon, shabby clothes, furtive glances at her the stranger. Grass grew rank while the leaves of trees were unseasonably yellowed in a park where two men snored by an empty bottle. When she was a child, she had not known of anything like this anywhere in the whole region, in spite of the prolonged hard times and unrest that had aided the Avantists to power.
An occasional place still seemed in fairly good shape, a factory, a genetic clinic, two or three restaurants, the kind of establishments that could draw custom from a wide radius but, being of modest size, could not afford to move into higher-rent locations. The tailor’s was one such. Its interior was neat and clean, the live clerk who greeted her polite and well-clad. He offered assistance, explaining apologetically that the equipment was obsolete and the programming didn’t include the newest international fashions.
“Never mind,” Kyra said. “I remember shops like this from when I was a kid.” She didn’t, but her profession had whetted the innate talent for mechanics that it required. “What I’m after is just a few serviceable garments.”
Still, alone in the design room, stripped and measured, she took her time. It was fun, it was therapy, projecting this and that image onto the life-size hologram of herself, watching appearances shift as the computer modified patterns to fit, keying in her alterations and seeing them adapted. Four changes of underwear should do. Two pair slacks, perlux, one black and close-fitting, one blue and flare-bottomed with a thin red stripe down either leg. A stout gray work shirt, a more feminine apricot iridon tunic, a blouse fluffy and puffy in white luna but—she made sure—allowing free movement. A full tigryl skirt, calf length. A pale green cloak with hood, in case of rain. That gave her a variety of combinations which should fit most occasions. As a standard item she chose a carryall for them and her former apparel, convertible to a daypack.
Her finger pressed Complete. The price flashed onto the screen. It exceeded the cash she had with her. Reluctantly, she debited her account. If the Sepo somehow came to suspect her and ordered a data
retrieval, here was a footprint left for them to find.
Bueno, with luck it wouldn’t happen, at least not for days during which she’d be running. And she didn’t suppose that even in Avantist North America the system had recorded the specs of her purchase. Its capacity was enormous but finite. Minor data like the transaction itself were doubtless expunged after some such period as three years.
A statute of limitations. She giggled.
No, stay serious. Use the time while the machines worked to think further about her situation, and Guthrie’s. Cash didn’t leave tracks. Dollars were no longer convertible, but nevertheless preferable till she’d escaped across the border. Ucus were eagerly accepted, of course, but tended to fix her in memory. If she went to a bank and swapped, that would get into the database and could make somebody wonder why she’d done it. Yet she needed more bills and coins. And if she could lay a false trail—
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