Disappearing Act

by Margaret Ball

  What didn't belong was a glitter in darkness, a nearly invisible net of thread-fine light, and its movement was what caught her eye first; the graceful arcs of death swooping out toward the carriage. "Gabrel!" she shouted while diving out of the carriage and away from the tanglenet. She hit the dirt with a bone-jarring thump and rolled into a shadowed corner, not the one hiding the net. Dirt's softer to land on than plastisteel, and thank the gods those boxes-on-wheels-don't move at any speed, come on, up, you're not hurt . . .

  The roll ended at a pile of rubble that scraped her shins and banged against her ribs with jagged edges. Piled stones, mortar, leftovers from something that had been torn down and left for scavengers to pick, who cared? Maris came up to a crouch with a nice heavy sharp-cornered rock in each hand and saw that Gabrel was half entangled in the net.

  But only half. Warned by her shout, he'd moved fast enough to keep one arm and shoulder free, and he had drawn his sword. A lot of good that's going to do. The sickly pink sizzle of a dazer beam set for nerve disruption went through the tanglenet, but aimed at where she'd been sitting, not at Gabrel. Two seconds to recharge, if they're using the old models—if they've got the new ones, we're fucked.

  The dazer had to have been one of the older models, because Maris had time to sling her first rock at a shadow behind the pink flare. The dark shape yelped, went down on one knee and would have clapped a hand over its bruised shoulder if there had been time, but there wasn't because Maris was on him now with the second rock in her upraised hand, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand and hammering down at where the head had to be and hearing a sickening soft kind of crunch. The man slumped, a soft dead weight against her knees, and she stumbled backward. Her hands were sticky; she dropped the stone she still held and tried to wipe her palms on the fine floating panels of her skirts. Idiot, if there's another one you've just handed yourself to him on a platter.

  But there wasn't another attacker; only the one shape dark and limp in the shadows, and Gabrel still struggling with the tanglenet. At least the beasts pulling the carriage hadn't taken fright and bolted, there was a mercy. Maris gritted her teeth and felt along the dead man's body, found a small hard square shape, pressed down on the center where a button clicked and the lines of light entrapping Gabrel faded away.

  Now the turagai wanted to run; they must have been caught in the tanglenet as well. Gabrel had his hands full with sword and reins, and for a few sweating, swearing moments it looked to Maris like a toss-up who was going to control the carriage's movements, Gabrel or the thrashing, panicky beasts. Then he jerked their heads back, said a few words more quietly, and the turagai stood still, panting and rolling their great eyes but apparently under control again. For the moment.

  He looped the reins over a post and jumped from the carriage, seemed to stagger for a moment, then limped toward her. "Very—commendably quick reactions, Diplomat Vissi. My superiors will find it a most amusing story."

  "Funny sense of humor they've got, then."

  "After all," Gabrel pointed out, "I am supposed to be protecting you, not the other way round. Although I see the rumors are this far true, Diplomats need little protection." He leaned casually against the wall.

  God of Minor Fuckups preserve us! Do I have to deal with wounded male pride on top of everything else?

  "You prob'ly weren't expecting modern weapons," Maris said.

  "And you were? I could wish you would have mentioned the possibility."

  "Not exactly. I just had this feelin' something wasn't right. When somebody wants to make damned sure you're the last to leave a meeting, and you've got a long dark road to go . . ." Maris shrugged. You didn't need a Diplo's implants to figure that out, just common sense; but saying so would hardly sooth Gabrel's bruised ego. "You moved right fast there, getting your sword free, for somebody as wasn't expecting an attack."

  "And a lot of good it did," Gabrel said drily. "Can you bring one of those torches over here?"

  He pointed down the road to where the next pair of inadequate torches flickered against the night. Naturally the attack had been staged midway between sets of torches, to give this guy the deepest shadow; it was what Maris would have done herself, part of why she'd been hyperalert just there.

  "I would go myself," he said apologetically when she didn't move right away, "but I am not totally sure that my right leg will support me without the help of this excellent mud wall."

  "Pins-and-needles feeling? Feels heavy when you try to move it?"

  "Somewhat of an understatement, but—yes, more or less."

  "Nerve disruption backwash from the dazer beam. Must've just caught you in the outer glow. It should wear off in a few hours."

  "Delighted to hear it. Now, about the torch . . ."

  "How come?"

  "I like to know who's just tried to kill me. Don't you?"

  "I don't like knowin' people who are goin' to try and kill me." I really must do something about my social life; seems like that's the only kind of people I do know. But she fetched the torch. If she'd just killed one of Johnivans' people, she wanted to know whose ghost to appease.

  The torch was easy enough to detach—just a bowl on a stick, basically, dropped into the top end of a hollow pole short enough for even Maris to reach—but no fun at all to carry. She learned almost immediately that you wanted to keep the bunu bowl balanced just so, or some of the hot oil that fueled the burning wick dropped down your hand and arm.

  "Not a nice sight for a lady," Gabrel said apologetically when Maris came back, "but anybody using tangler nets and dazers is more likely to be your acquaintance than—" He took the torch from her, lowered it cautiously to shed light on their assailant's ruined head, and took a sharp inward breath "—mine," he finished in a curiously flat tone.

  Relief flooded Maris. It was somebody she knew, yes, but not one of her old gang; she would owe this ghost no remembrances. "I know him, too," she said. "Kaspar somebody."

  "Slevinen," Gabrel said. "Kaspar Slevinen. New-come from Barents, which could explain the weapons, but why smuggle them in? And damned close with some of the Good Old Families, which I thought strange before, seeing they mostly keep themselves to themselves, but Kaspar damned near lives in Torston Huyberts's pocket . . ."

  "That was the geezer who wanted to make sure we stayed till last," Maris said. She dropped to her knees, careless of the blood and dust on her borrowed finery, and picked up the slim dazer lying by Kaspar Slevinen's limp hand. She thumbed the power button experimentally. A faint pink glow shone out, then faded. "Careless," she said with regret. "He'd let the charge run down. That's why it didn't do you more damage." And we can't exactly ask him where he kept the charger, now.

  Gabrel nodded slowly. "Slevinen, Huyberts, and Stoffelsen. Always had their heads together in some corner. And tonight . . . Stoffelsen left early, so that you were sure to be coming back alone with me. Huyberts kept us there until all others had departed. Slevinen attacks us with pro-tech weaponry. And you're here to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's claim that somebody is corrupting the Indigenous Territories with prohibited technology. I do believe that someone doesn't want you to make that investigation."

  "If there's anythin' to it, of course they don't want me pokin' my nose in," Maris said. "Don't take a nanotech designer to figure that much out."

  "But why now? Stoffelsen was in charge of your schedule, and as your escort I've seen it; the man was planning to waste as much of your time as possible with receptions and banquets and speeches and tours. What happened tonight to make him change his mind?"

  "He decided death was better than sittin' through any more speeches," Maris suggested. "Specially if it was my death 'stead o' his'n."

  Gabrel looked down his nose at her. "This is hardly a time for levity."

  "Well, it ain't the best time and place for discussin' who wants to kill us, either," Maris pointed out. "First we need to get him out of sight, then let's get us out of sight. Your leg workin' now?"

  Gabrel
took an experimental step away from the wall and nodded. "Feels half dead still, but it'll hold me up."

  "Fine, then you take his head—eh, shoulders?" Maris corrected herself as she remembered the bloody ruin that was the back of Kaspar Slevinen's head. She took the torch from Gabrel, jammed the supporting stick into a crevice of the low mud wall he'd been leaning against, and picked up Slevinen's heels. Between them they got his body over the wall and let it fall heavily into the ditch on the other side.

  "Get his dazer and tangler," Gabrel suggested. "We might need them."

  "Dazer's no good, it's out of power." But the tangler might still prove useful.

  "For evidence." Gabrel took the two small devices from Maris and tucked them into his sash.

  "Now what?"

  "Well, I don't think it would be healthy for you to go back to House Stoffelsen," Gabrel said. "You leave anything there you can't do without?"

  "My credentials." She hadn't packed very well for a stint as Diplomat; there was nothing else in her traveling bag but Calandra's fashionable clothes, unsuitable for this climate and illegal for this level of technology. Why hadn't she taken weapons? Because she hadn't seen any. A Diplomat is a walking weapon. That was rumor speaking, and a rumor she'd have a hard time living up to. Too bad Slevinen's dazer was drained and she didn't know where to recharge it. Maybe she could get the tangler away from Gabrel.

  "I'll vouch for you. Come on, we've a lot to do. We need to leave before dawn, before Huyberts and Stoffelsen find out their plan didn't work."

  Maris dug her heels in, resisting the pull of Gabrel's hand. "Leave for where, exactly? Think we can get off-planet without them noticing?" Gods, she hoped that wasn't what he had in mind! Off-planet meant going back through Tasman. That wouldn't be exactly safe either, but she could hardly explain that while Gabrel thought she was the Diplo. But if that was their only way out, she'd have to tell him. Everything. Couldn't let him walk into Johnivans' hands without a clue what he was about to die for.

  "Off-planet? No way. You've got a mission, remember? I propose that we pursue it." Gabrel's teeth flashed white in the darkness. "The climate of the Hills is much healthier than these coastal lowlands."

  Chapter Eight

  Rezerval

  Niklaas was deep in level four hundred and twenty-two of Geek Dungeons when the nursing aide tapped on his shoulder, throwing his concentration off and blowing his ongoing attempt to write a decryption program that would enable the screen jump spell before the Dark Nerd blew him away with a disk wiper.

  "My apologies, Haar Silvan," the aide said. "A visitor."

  Niklaas closed the game with a tap of his right forefinger and smiled politely, as if he really didn't care that she'd just caused him to pay a three-thousand-point early escape penalty that would probably prevent him getting to the five-hundredth level before his seventeenth birthday. After all, it wasn't like he had a lot else to do in the three months to go before his birthday. Or after.

  Or ever.

  Then he saw who the visitor was and his smile became genuine. "Tomi! But what—how—?"

  Tomi Oksanen was walking toward his bed. His gait was somewhat stiff and jerky, but he was definitely walking. No float-chair, no visible supporters.

  It had been a strange friendship in the first place; no one would have expected the teenage son of a high Federation officer to join forces with the somewhat older black sheep of the Oksanen family, which itself was something of a black sheep on Rezerval—lots of money, even more unsavory rumors about where the money came from, and a family of bland, smiling towheads whose cherubic faces gave no hint about which of the rumors might be true.

  Tomi, though, hadn't been much of a smiler even before the infamous party where some of Rezerval's young society died from popping tainted joytoys, and he'd had a lot less to smile about after the party. The poison that an embittered Oksanen ex-employee had laced the joytoys with hadn't killed him, but it had paralyzed much of his nervous system and landed him in the same intensive care ward as Niklaas. Nights that each of them spent listening to the other one struggling for breath, days punctuated by the torture sessions called rehab therapy, and the shared despair of knowing that neither of them would ever approach the top of the waiting list for 'mat implants had forged a bond between these two most unlikely of friends, a bond that had survived Tomi's removal from the medical center for home care by the phalanx of trained nurses and therapists the Oksanen family could hire for him. They'd still had net-letters, and, once Tomi could get around in a float-chair, occasional visits. There'd been times when only Tomi's sardonic black humor had given Niklaas the will to face another day in the prison that his body had become. As for Tomi, he claimed there were times when only the sight of Niklaas's invincible naivete and belief in fables like universal justice amused him enough to distract him from his own troubles.

  "Muscle stimulators?" Niklaas guessed. "Braces under your pants?"

  Tomi grinned and pivoted, holding his arms out so that Niklaas could see that there was no place where his skin-tight jumpsuit showed the betraying bulge of a lock brace or a stim box. "You know they said those wouldn't work for anybody'd t-trashed his central nervous system the way I d-did, Niki!"

  The stutter was new, and would have worried Niklaas if the greater miracle of Tomi's walking hadn't overwhelmed him. They did say it wasn't good if new symptoms showed up months later, a sign that the nerve damage was ongoing. But who cared, if the nerve repair was also happening?

  "How'd you get a 'mat?" Niklaas whispered. He tapped his finger nervously on the bedspread until Tomi drew up a chair with a jerky scrape across the floor and plopped down beside him. "I didn't think there was enough money to bribe your way to the top of the list."

  Tomi gave the seraphic smile that was an Oksanen family trademark, the innocent look that warned older acquaintances of Oksanens to check their creds and keep a hand on their balls. "No bribery, Niklaas. It's a new, experimental t-tr- . . . t- . . . surgery," he finished, having given up on "treatment."

  "I haven't heard about anything like that." And he called up the med journal abstracts daily, looking for some hope between the unavailable 'mat transplants and the wishful-thinking world of the dreamers who claimed yak milk and soy extract would cause natural nerve regeneration.

  "It's not exactly being written up in the literature."

  "Oh. Very experimental, then."

  "No, just very expensive. T-t- . . . Couple of words, Niki." Tomi lowered his voice and whispered, "Cassilis Clinic."

  "Where?" It was hopeless, of course. Anything that an Oksanen considered expensive was far beyond the reach of a Federation official's salary. But just in case . . . "Where? Here on Rezerval?"

  "Castelnuovo P-pr-"

  "Castelnuovo Province," Niki said before his friend could find a synonym.

  Tomi's head bobbed in that strange jerking motion, like a chicken pecking for food. Niki didn't remember that happening before, either. Well, stuttering and twitching might not be one's idea of the perfect life, but it beat the hell out of being stuck in a Med Center ward working your way up to the five-hundredth level of Geek Dungeons or tapping the net screens with your one working finger to browse the literature on nerve regeneration.

  "And it doesn't use 'mats?"

  "Nobody on the list is losing a p-pl- . . . chance at a 'mat b-because of this," Tomi promised.

  "You swear?" Niklaas had been fighting his conscience ever since he regained consciousness and figured out that his chances of a legitimate 'mat implant were slim to none, what with new cases of Fournier Syndrome being diagnosed faster than 'mats could be bred on Kalapriya. Okay, he'd tried a dumb kid trick with his new roloprops, and that shouldn't wreck his life . . . but neither should it wreck the life of some guy who'd been born before the gene-screens caught signs of Fournier Syndrome, and who now faced paralysis in his twenties and death before he was thirty. Even if Mom's connections in the Federation could help her sneak him to the top of the list . . . and
the chances of that also were slim to none . . . he wasn't getting his repair at the price of some other guy's death sentence.

  But seeing somebody else who'd had no hope of making the list, somebody who'd been worse off than him and had done something even dumber, walking around like a halfway normal human being . . . to see Tomi with a future, able to go places, maybe even able to have sex some day . . . this was twisting his conscience into a pretzel. It was one thing to pretend to accept your fate when there were other people in the same fix. It was a lot harder to keep up the pretense now.

  "Your family wouldn't care whose place you took," he pointed out. "You don't have to uphold the honor of the Federation's Secretary of Internal Information." Life had been a lot easier when Mom was just another supergeek, before the high quality of her technical work got her bumped up the ladder until she was eligible for a Federation appointment where she didn't hardly get to do any technical work at all.

  The Federation appointment wasn't a lot of fun for Mom, either. She never said so—the Silvan motto was "Serve with Honor"—but Niki knew she missed the freedom of geeking around in the Federation nets and coming up with clever fixes for problems nobody else had even discovered.

  Tomi bobbed his head jerkily. "Right, we wouldn't care . . . but you would, right? You and Annemari, you are like something out of a historical vid sometimes, all your notions about 'honor' and 'service.' So while I was there, kid, I had some of our p-people check it out. They say this clinic is d-definitely not sneaking 'mats from any of the Federation medical centers. And they wouldn't bother lying t-to me, would they, because they know I wouldn't mind one way or another."

  After Tomi's departure Niklaas didn't bother to reactivate the game. He put off calling his mother, too, and told himself the reason was that he didn't want to discuss this mysterious clinic in Castelnuovo Province over a com channel to Federation offices; not secure enough. She visited him every day, it could wait.