The holozine’s title had struck her as particularly ludicrous. “Lyssa—A Life Tragically Cut Short.” As if a life could be cheerfully cut short. Maybe they’d explain that novel concept in next month’s issue. Jani hugged her duffel close as she boarded the first elevator she came to. She felt a common thief, but she didn’t want Evan to know what she read. She’d bet her ’pack he’d asked the Library to inform him of what she checked out. Even independent minds had to follow direct orders from Cabinet Ministers.
The elevator started down. Jani checked her timepiece and wondered at the possibility of hitching a ride into the city. Just to look around, get her bearings. It could prove interesting, now the blizzard had finally stopped.
But first, she needed food. She pressed the second-floor pad again. There was a cafeteria on that floor, as well as an Interior-subsidized grocery store. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation of a very late lunch.
Her absent gaze fell on the car’s indicator. It had flickered when she touched it, but the display above the door showed she had bypassed the second floor and was continuing down. Jani punched floor pads, then tried to activate the override, but her efforts to halt the car’s descent failed. She tried to push through the ceiling access panel. No go.
The indicator continued to flash. ONE. GROUND. BASE-ONE.
She was heading for the sub-basements. According to the touchpad display, Interior Main stretched five floors below ground level.
BASE-TWO.
Sub-basements were extremely well-secured. They were designed, after all, to serve as disaster shelters.
BASE-THREE.
“You should have taken the stairs, idiot.” She dug for her shooter, then tried to crack the seals on the car’s ceiling lights with the grip. The thick safety plastic resisted—only two of the four lights succumbed. The car didn’t plunge into darkness—more a cloudy dusk. It would serve.
BASE-FOUR.
Jani disengaged her weapon’s safety, then braced against the car’s rear wall. Feet shoulder width apart. Both hands on the grip. Maybe they wouldn’t expect her to stand out in the open. Maybe they wouldn’t expect her to shoot.
Direct line of fire—aim for the chest.
BASE-FIVE.
The door swept open. Durian Ridgeway, windblown and agitated, squinted into the car. “Who the—oh. Good afternoon, Ms. Tyi. This is a restricted-use lift, in case no one informed you.”
“Sorry,” Jani replied as she secreted her shooter in her coverall pocket
He glared at the car ceiling. “What in bloody hell happened to the lights?”
Angevin Wyle bustled in behind him, weighed down with shopping bags. “Hello, Risa.” She joined Jani in the rear of the car. “Why’s it so frickin’ dark in here?”
“Angevin.” Ridgeway thumped the touchpad in the vicinity of the fourth floor. “Language.” He didn’t bother to ask Jani which floor she wanted. The door closed like a judgment, and they ascended in silence.
The door opened to reveal a mob. Jani found herself surrounded by aggressively helpful staffers who first sought to separate her from her duffel and, when that failed, tried to usher her down the hall toward a large conference room. At the sight of the reporters, holocam operators, and Security guards milling at the room’s entrance, she executed a sloppy but successful excuse me ricochet spin-off. The move propelled her away from the conference room and past Angevin, who was engaged in heated conversation with a sulky young man who appeared determined to confiscate her shopping bags.
Jani skirted around a corner and down an empty hall as images from the display map paged past her mind’s eye. She wandered up and down halls, avoiding guards, searching for a stairwell or secondary elevator that wasn’t alarmed.
Close-controlled floors have one and only one nonemergency entry—slash—exit which means if I want to get out of here without lighting up the whole damn complex, I have to walk by the cams and have my face transmitted to every damn colony—shit!
“Ms. Tyi!”
Jani turned to find Durian Ridgeway rushing toward her.
“Have you seen Angevin? She’s disappeared!” His ruddy face flushed as he palmed into several of the offices, searching for his wayward aide. “The meeting begins in five minutes, and she has all my notes. The Deputy Prime Minister is here. Angevin needs this exposure, damn it, but every time she gets a chance to put herself forward, she’s nowhere to be found!”
What Angevin needs more than anything are six months’ pay and an hour’s head start. Jani leaned against the wall and watched Ridgeway pace. “Sounds important.”
He nodded. “Emergency session. Called by Langley.” His mouth twisted around the Deputy’s name. “‘We’ll meet as soon as you get back,’ he said. ‘Nothing important,’ he said. Then we pull into the main parking garage to find vans from every major news service parked there. We had to flee down to the subs to avoid being blitzed. Bastard.” His voice took on a desperate edge. “If you could help me find Angevin, Ms. Tyi, I would be very grateful.”
Jani gave him a halfhearted salute, hurrying away before he felt compelled to say, “please.” She picked a hall where most of the doors lacked palm locks. She tapped lightly on a couple, then pushed open one labeled, FURNITURE. The room lights had already been activated, brought to life, no doubt, by the furious motion taking place atop one of the desks. Angevin, her long skirt bunched up over her hips, had her bare legs wrapped around the arching back of the young man with whom Jani had seen her arguing a few minutes before. He wasn’t sulking now.
Jani kicked at a nearby trashzap, sending the metal bucket clattering across the floor. “Durian!” she hissed before forcing the door closed. She took off down the hall, rounded the corner, and barreled into an agitated Ridgeway.
“What was that noise, Risa?” he asked as he tried to dart around her.
“Just me being clumsy,” Jani said as she gripped his arm and spun him around. “Angevin’s down on the third floor. The parts bins.” That seemed reasonable. Documents examiners always fretted over their scanpack functions, especially before important meetings and transactions. “She’ll be on her way back up within a few minutes. I ran into someone who saw her go down. There.”
“I hope she doesn’t show up stinking of broth. Who told you she was there?”
“One of the Security guards.” Please don’t ask which one. “Angevin gave him a message to give to you. I intercepted.” Jani heaved an inward sigh as she felt Ridgeway’s arm relax.
“Well, nice to know she hasn’t lost all sense of responsibility.” He eased out of Jani’s grasp and smoothed the sleeve of his jacket. “Back to work, then. Thank you, Ms. Tyi.” With a curt nod, he walked off in the direction of the conference room bustle.
Jani waited until she felt sure he wouldn’t return. Then she hurried back around the corner and tapped on the storage-room door. “He’s gone.”
The door cracked open. The young man slipped out first. He glowered at Jani, looked past her down the hall, then whispered over his shoulder, “’S ok.”
Angevin crept out, jacket in hand. “Please don’t tell Durian,” she rasped as she struggled into the snug-fitting topper. “He’ll kill us if he finds—”
“Don’t fookin’ beg!” The young man’s Channel World accent could have blunted complexed steel. “We airn’t done nothin’ wrong!”
“You both shut up.” Jani leaned close to Angevin. Her frazzled appearance could be written off as travel lag, but no one could mistake the smashed berry stains surrounding her swollen lips. “Collect your gear, splash some cold water on your face, and get your ass to that meeting.”
Angevin rushed back into the storage room, reemerging with her documents bag in hand. “Please don’t tell—”
Jani waved her quiet. “You told a male Security guard to tell Ridgeway you had gone to the parts bins. I ran into the guard and told him I’d deliver the message. Got that?” Angevin nodded wide-eyed as Jani pushed her down the hall. She watched her disappear around t
he corner, then sagged against the wall. Her neck seized up as she tried to flex it.
“We airn’t done nothin’ wrong.”
Jani turned slowly to find the young man still scowling. He’d pulled a flat copper case from the inside pocket of his tunic and removed a nicstick. “Airn’t seen each other for over three bloody months.” He stuck the gold-and-white candy-striped cylinder in his mouth without cracking the ignition tip, shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, and started pacing.
Upon close examination, he proved good-looking, in a pouty, dissolute choirboy sort of way. Thick, straight auburn hair covered his ears and collar and flopped over his forehead. His skin had an office pallor, his uniform black boots needed polishing, and he slouched. Boy, I bet Ridgeway hated you on sight. “You Channel Worlder?” Jani asked.
He wheeled. “Yeah!” He stepped close, until his nose was only centimeters from hers and she could smell the spiced odor of his unignited nicstick. “So the fook what?”
Jani looked into his eyes, the same mossy green as Angevin’s. More bloodshot, though. “What’s your name?” she countered softly.
The question, or the manner in which it was asked, seemed to throw the young man. His jaw worked. “Steve. Forell.”
“Jersey? Guernsey? Man?”
“Guernsey.” He took a deep breath. “Helier.”
Jani smiled. “I’ve been to Helier. A beautiful city.” If you were born with antifreeze in your veins. “And what do you do here at Interior, Mr. Forell?”
The smile began in the depths of the narrowed eyes and quickly worked down. Steve Forell shook his shaggy head to help it along. Relaxed and grinning, he looked all of twelve years old. A gamy, street-wise twelve, but twelve all the same.
“Screw that—you’re trying to redirect me attentions.” He worked his nicstick like a toothpick. “I’m a dexxie, like Ange. Xenopolitical branch. Work with the idomeni. Schooled at Oxbridge Combined.” He tugged at his hair. “The xenos came looking for redheads and scooped me up.”
“Colony boy at an Earthbound school. You must be good.”
“I am.” The grin flickered as Steve glanced down the hall in the direction Angevin had gone. “Not good enough, though, according to some.” Then his smile vanished and instead of looking street-wise and twelve, he looked lonely, scared, and five and a half.
See what happens when you learn names. You get involved. Jani leaned harder into the wall. I do not have the time. Her back ached now, and the elevator episode coming so soon after the traffic adventure hadn’t done her post-augie nerves any favors.
“What’s the matter with you?” Steve asked. “You look fit to pass out.”
Jani massaged her tightened scalp. “Can you get me out of here?” She forced a smile, and felt her travel-dry skin crinkle under the stress. “I’m not cleared for the close-controlled floors. The elevator won’t listen to me.”
“Surprised Durian didn’t have you tossed out a window.” Steve pushed his way back into the storage room, emerging with Angevin’s shopping bags. “Here.” He shoved two of the slick plastic sacks into Jani’s arms and gripped the remaining bags with looped thumbs and forefingers only. “He even picks out her clothes,” he grumbled as he glanced at the bags’ contents. “We’ll leave them with the door guard. Meeting’ll go on for hours, anyway.”
They walked back to the elevators. The area had been cleared of cams and reporters; a pair of guards stood sentry by the closed conference-room doors. They eyed Jani warily, but relaxed when Steve walked over and handed them the bags.
“What now?” he asked as he rejoined her. He flipped open a panel beside the elevator and punched in a code sequence.
“I haven’t eaten since the Luna shuttle. That was over ten hours ago. Just point me toward the food.”
“You need dinner?” Steve brightened. “I could do with some dinner. The cafeteria on Two is the best one. That’s where all the nobbies eat.” The doors closed, and he blinked in surprise. “What the hell happened to the lights?”
CHAPTER 7
“Your government takes issue with the bidding, nìRau?”
Tsecha remained very still in his low bench seat, conscious of the sidelong glances of the others at the table and the more direct, fear-filled stare of the man who had spoken. Humanish eyes. He should have grown used to them by now. But so much white—like death-glaze.
He crossed his left arm over his chest and lowered his chin. “The bidding, we are most content with, and truly, Mister Ridgeway.” His voice rumbled, even in both tone and pitch and, he felt, unaccented. He was most proud of his English. “My Oligarch wonders only of the lapse in security. He fears it happening again.”
Ridgeway shook his head in a show of impatience, obvious for even a humanish. “NìRau,” he said, “Morden nìRau Ceèl has our word it won’t happen again.”
Tsecha remained calm as the other humanish at the table shifted in their chairs. Some exhaled loudly. He stared openly down the large wooden oval at Durian Ridgeway, but felt no pleasure as he watched the man’s tired face flood with color. It had always been too easy with that one. “Yes, Mister Ridgeway,” he replied, “but you also gave your word last year. And your office gave its word last month in your name. You pledged your word to research this company’s documents, and you failed. What value is your word, Mister Ridgeway? I ask you that.”
The room itself seemed to sigh in response. Then the man at the table’s head, Deputy Prime Minister Langley, spoke. “In Durian’s defense, Staffel Mitteilungen took us all by surprise, nìRau. They purposely delayed obtaining their start-up registration until the end of the fiscal year. Many of our new businesses do this for the tax advantage. StafMit did it in hope that, in the flood of applications, the screening committee Durian chaired would miss the fact that via a blind trust, Gisela Detmers-Neumann held a significant financial stake in the company.”
Tsecha looked directly into the Deputy PM’s eyes. Dark Langley, as the night is dark. If they were as idomeni, Langley’s eyes would look as two black pits. He sat rigidly, his seat, like the seats of all the humanish, elevated above Tsecha’s. The positioning of the chairs, the humans’ stiff, formal posture, were meant to display respect. But he had never detected either the gentleness of friend or the wary regard of esteemed enemy in any of those in the room. What could he sense? Fear? Definitely. Dislike? Perhaps. They do not want me here. That was indeed unfortunate for them. Here, he was. Here, he would stay.
“Tax advantage, Mister Langley?” Tsecha placed his hands palms down on the tabletop. Red bands trimmed the broad cuffs of his sand white overrobe, making it appear as though blood flowed from his wrists. His ring of station glimmered on his finger, the jasperite also reminding him of blood.
“Yes, nìRau.” Langley’s thick, black eyebrows arched with some vague emotion, but he offered no accompanying gesture or change in posture to indicate which it was. Puzzlement? Surprise? Or perhaps the man felt embarrassment concerning the question? Who could tell with these government humanish? Their faces were as blocks of wood, their gestures, when they bothered to gesture, meaningless flailing. “Taxes,” Langley repeated. “The saving of money.”
“Ah.” Tsecha spread his fingers. Wrinkled. Age-spotted. He touched a thread-fine scar near the base of his left thumb, the remains of a blade fight with an esteemed enemy, now long dead.
à lèrine—the ritual combat that declared to all idomeni the hatred between two. So many such bouts had he fought in defense of his beliefs—the scars etched his arms, his chest and shoulders. They had thinned and faded over time, as he had. He had grown so old, waiting. “Yes,” he said, with a nod he hoped Langley comprehended. “I know humanish have great interest in money, and truly. That interest has been displayed to idomeni in times past.”
The room sighed again, for those reasons all humanish knew, yet would not speak. In an effort to placate, Tsecha bared his teeth to the Deputy PM. Smiling, to humanish an expression of most benign regard. Why then did the man squ
irm so?
“We’ve been through all this, nìRau,” Langley said. Indeed, he seemed most displeased. His jaw worked. He gripped the arms of his chair.
“Yes, Mister Langley, we have.”
“Our purpose today is to discuss the Vynshàrau’s reluctance to allow StafMit the opportunity to bid for contracts to install communications equipment in the Haárin settlement outside Tsing Tao.”
“Yes, Mister Langley, it is.”
“Since Mister Ridgeway’s committee approved StafMit’s preliminary registration, thus bringing them to the Haárin trade council’s attention, I asked him here to—”
“To trap him, Mister Langley.” Tsecha dropped his words slowly, carefully, like stones into still water. “And to embarrass Mister van Reuter.”
Plink! Ridgeway stared at him openly, unsure whether to be grateful or to fear what could follow.
Plink! Langley exhaled with a shudder, his anger a solid thing that one could hold in the hand.
Plink! The other humanish at the table stared at their hands, in the air over each other’s heads, anywhere but at one another.
Tsecha pressed his lips together to avoid baring his teeth. He most enjoyed telling humanish the obvious truths they so feared. It shocked them so.
“NìRau, I would have thought this neither the time nor the place, but perhaps—”
Tsecha shut out Langley’s drone. He had heard the arguments before at too many meetings, could recite them as he did his prayers. It would have surprised the humanish to know if the choice had been his alone, Tsecha would have allowed Detmers-Neumann and her fellow outcasts to welcome him to this damned cold city, to sit and watch him speak to the shivering crowds. But when her first openness failed, she tried to worm, to sneak, to…to…Tsecha’s command of English failed him. He only knew that blood had asserted itself as it always did. Gisela proved she shared skein with Rikart, and truly. So, just as truly, would he never acknowledge her.
Code of Conduct Page 8
