Where are you hiding, Steven? Jani shuffled down the hall toward the elevators. She didn’t bother to eavesdrop on any of the groups clustered in corners and near doorways. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they talked about.
Fear not, citizens—your friends in Security have it all under control. She rode down to the lowest parking level; once in the tunnel, she hitched a ride to Private on a grocery skim. She rode the elevator to her door and keyed herself inside. The housekeepers had been through, apparently. Her bed had been made and the air possessed the eye-watering scent of cleansing agents. Jani sniffed again and wrinkled her nose. Odd smell for a cleanser. Sharp. Spicy. Familiar.
Oh no!
Out of the corner of her eye, she detected movement.
“Risa?” Steve walked into the sitting room, his cupped hand hiding his smoking ’stick. “Don’t yell. I can explain.”
CHAPTER 28
“How the hell did you get in here?”
Steve backed away, stumbled, and wound up straddling a footstool. “I said, don’t yell—”
“I’m not yelling,” Jani said, just a touch louder than necessary. “Start at the beginning. What happened after you ran out of the cafeteria?”
Steve’s nicstick puffed feebly. On the nearby coffee table, a small dish contained the remains of several others. “Scarpered down the hall. My office. Grabbed my shit and made for the stairs.”
“Did you pass Ginny Doyle on the way?”
“Hell no.” He looked horrified at the prospect. “Wouldn’t be here if I had, would I?”
Don’t be too sure. “The stairway lock let you through?”
“Yeah. Everything worked until I got to the first floor. Heard running. Ducked into a doorway. Saw guards running in all directions. Waited till they’d gone, then tried the stairway door again. Locked. I knew the main exits would be sealed before I could reach them, so I made for the delivery bays in the rear of the House.”
“They were still open?”
“Yeah. Food deliveries today. Skimvans inside, filling the bays—skimvans outside lined up ten abreast, waiting to unload. In this weather, they don’t shut down for anything. One of the supers saw me and started cussing me out. Told me to get my ass into some coldgear and start unloading. So I did.”
“So you got all muffled up and unrecognizable in a snowsuit and nailed yourself a skiff.”
Steve grinned. “Lucky, huh? I spent about a half hour unloading. Worked my way through Oxbridge at the school docks, so I’m pretty good at it. Super watched me for a few minutes, then left to squawk at somebody else. Guards came through every once in a while. One stared right at me, but I looked like I knew what I were doing. No one expects a nance dexxie to know how to handle a loading skiff, do they?” His lip curled. “A few minutes later, I steered the skiff outside, made like the battery were low, and drifted it to a maintenance shed. Changed it for a grounds-crew skiff and floated down the access road to here.”
Jani found herself listening with respectful interest. Then she thought of Betha, and her mood soured.
“Made for the tradesman’s entrance,” Steve continued. “Housekeeper leaves coffee and snacks for the Private crews in a little back room. I know because I stop by some days to check for blueberry tart. Outer door’s always unlocked. Had to wait until someone came out to refresh the pot—ducked in through the inner door while her back were turned. Up the lift. Snuck in with the cleaners. Here I am.” He looked at Jani in surprise. “You know, it really were easy to get in here.”
“Doyle will love to hear it.”
“Do you have to keep bringing her up?” Steve dug in his trouser pocket and pulled out another ’stick, which he shoved into his mouth without igniting. “How’s Ange?”
“About what you’d expect.”
“Pissed as hell. Doyle giving her fits?”
“I’m sure she has her under surveillance. I hope you haven’t tried to call her.” Steve shook his head. “Keep it that way. You both may go crazy in the interim, but if you try to hook up, you’re screwed.” Jani waited for his affirmative sigh. “So, you went straight from fourth floor to first? Never got off on the third floor? Didn’t visit the repair carrels?”
Steve gave her a puzzled look. “Nah. Didn’t have no bloody time, Ris.”
“When was the last time you were down there?”
“Last night. I stayed a while after you left. Had to turn in my parts req.” His expression grew guarded. “Why?”
A thin band of tension stretched from Jani’s scalp and down her neck. “Betha’s dead. We found her body in your repair carrel about two hours ago. She’d been strangled. The medical examiner put the time of death at around midnight.”
Steve tried to shake his head, but all he could manage was a palsied tremor. “Why—why would someone want to hurt her?”
“I think she went behind your back and tried to work a deal with someone.”
“Aw, no—”
“That someone killed her. The way she died suggested the killer wanted something from her.” Jani sat on the arm of a chair and watched the light play over her boot as she swung her leg to and fro. Now I feel better. It comes and goes in waves. She looked up from her mesmerizing footwear and into Steve’s frightened eyes.
“What do you mean, ‘way she died’? What do you mean, ‘wanted something’?”
“I mean it took a while for whoever killed her to kill her. They were trying to extract information from her.”
“Did they get it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe I can give ’em some of what they need,” Steve said as he ran from the room.
“Steve!” Jani rushed after him, reaching him as he disappeared into the bathroom. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Steve had already pulled on one leg of a pair of snowpants. Behind him, the lube-stained jacket lay in a heap on the floor. “Back to Main,” he said as he shoved in the other leg, then yanked the thick grey pants up to his waist. “I’m going to find whoever did this.”
Jani leaned against the doorway, positioning herself to throw a block if things needed to get physical. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Yeah? Why not?” Steve finished fastening his pants and pulled the jacket over his head.
“Because a lot of people back at Main think you did it. Because Ridgeway tried to declare anarchy rules and order you killed if you tried to escape from the compound, and while Doyle countermanded the ‘rules’ part, I’m not a hundred percent sure about the ‘kill’ part.”
The furious movement beneath the jacket slowly subsided.
“It’s become more than doc-jazzing, Steve. You’re wanted for questioning in a murder.”
The jacket sagged to the tiled floor. “Does Ange think—?
“No.” Jani moved out of her “brace” position. Steve didn’t appear too eager to leave anymore. “The first thing she said was, ‘He didn’t do it.’”
“But that were the first thing she thought.” He moaned softly. “She saw Betha?” He winced at Jani’s affirmative. “Is she ok?”
“She got sick. Doyle sent her to the infirmary. Personally, I think she just wanted Angevin locked up as long as you still ran loose.” Jani waited for Steve to reply, but he just stared over her shoulder. “That’s why you have to stay here. Someone has committed murder and framed you for it. The case is all circumstantial, but as the old saying goes, ‘Enough coincidence will surely hang a man.’” Steve’s eyes finally moved to meet hers. They held the dumb misery of a wounded animal, waiting for the killing blow. “Let’s go into the other room, where we can talk.”
Jani returned to the sitting room while Steve removed his snowsuit. She sat carefully. Her back had begun to ache again. The wave comes in. The wave goes out.
“Now, after you bolted you went to the office to get your ’pack and the papers,” she said, as Steve flopped into the chair across from her.
He nodded. “Yeah, I had—I usu
ally wear my ’pack on me, but Ange and me, we got in sort of early, and after she parked in the garage, we just stayed put and sat and talked and then—” A blush crept up his neck. “You know.”
Jani forced a smile. “Yeah, I know.”
“And when we got into the building, I realized I left my belt and packpouch in her skimmer. Then we were running late, tryin’ to track down Betha, so I locked my ’pack in my desk with the papers. Couldn’t carry ’em around in my hand like my orb and bloody scepter, could I? Not with that fookin’ lien.”
“Where are the papers?”
Steve’s face brightened a bit more. “They’re in the jacket.” He bounded to his feet and headed back to the bathroom, returning with the battered jacket. “I zipped it all in here. Thing’s got more pockets than a snooker tournament.” He unzipped and rummaged; soon, the coffee table between them held a scanpack in a scuffed case, an emergency ’pack tool kit, and a file pouch bursting with handwritten notes, general-purpose paper, and—
“Some of this stuff has the Prime Minister’s seal.” Jani fingered a creamy white page. The familiar silky smoothness of government parchment sent a shiver up her arm. “You’ve got original docs here. From another damn House! From the damn House!”
Steve stilled. “I know.”
“Eyes-only docs.”
“I know.”
“The Prime Minister’s eyes!”
“Yeah, well. She didn’t seem to want to use them the way they should’ve been.” Steve grimaced in disgust. “They followed her, you know. The Lady. They knew something were wrong with her, and they just followed her with scans and watched it unfold. She grew up with them, went to school with them. Treated some of their kids. She were one of them, and they just watched while she flamed out.” He shoved the doc pouch across the table. “Here.”
Jani flipped open the pouch. “Who compiled this?”
“Betha. The Lady helped with the personal stuff, but Betha did more than you think.” Steve’s expression darkened further. “She had ways of getting hold of stuff. She’d visit friends in other Houses and just go wandering on her own. She said the things people left out on their desks would scare you.”
Jani held up one of the PM’s documents. “Are you telling me she just walked into Li Cao’s office, and said, ‘Excuse me, Your Excellency, do you mind?’”
“I don’t know how she got that.” Steve fussed with a jacket zipper. A plastic rasp cut the air. “She wouldn’t tell me. Just said she had connections.”
She had connections, all right. “Well, maybe she did you a favor by not telling you,” Jani said as she flipped through a few more cream white sheets. “We could have found you on the floor next to her.” The image stalled Steve in mid-zip. He pushed the jacket to one side, mumbled something about needing a drink, and escaped to the kitchenette.
Jani continued paging through the pile. The PM documents contained information she already knew from the Court report. All of Lyssa’s public missteps, and a few private ones, all neatly cataloged and cross-referenced with her trips to Nueva Madrid. So, Betha didn’t reach her own brilliant conclusions—she stole them from an entire team of Prime analysts. She set the docs aside and rooted through the miscellaneous scraps.
Paper from Interior Grounds and Facilities, listing Lyssa’s vehicular mishaps. Liquor bills. A listing of wrecked furniture. Probably blasphemy coming from a paper pusher, but some things shouldn’t be written down. Physician, wife, mother—all forgotten amid the damning slips of paper. Jani brushed a stack of sheets aside, sending several of them fluttering to the floor.
Hold on! Jani picked up one of the fallen documents. A different sort of shiver moved up her arm. Consulate paper. From Rauta Shèràa. She checked the date code in the upper left corner. I was still at Knevçet Shèràa then. Yolan was dead, but the rest of them were alive, battered and weaponless, waiting for their Captain to keep her promise and see them safely home.
Jani touched the paper’s snow-white body, ran a finger along the bright blue trim. A log excerpt, judging from its margins and formatting, but without a Consulate cipher glossary, it would be impossible to break the code. They used semi-Rime iterations then. With her ’pack and a workstation, Jani could crack it eventually. Could take a day, or a couple thousand years. She heard Steve clatter out of the kitchenette and folded the document into the inside pocket of her jacket.
“Find anything useful?” Steve asked as he twisted the cap off a bottle of New Indiesian beer.
Jani shrugged. “Nothing we don’t already know. I was searching for Consulate paper from eighteen years ago.”
Steve shook his head. “That’s that blue-and-white stuff? I looked for that. There’s none in there. Betha said she had it in her half of the files. Did anyone find it in the carrel?”
“Not that I know of,” Jani said. “They could have been wedged beneath her body, or hidden in one of the desk drawers.” But the desk had been more a table; none of its drawers could have contained a file pouch the size of the one she held. And the one I’m holding didn’t have any Consulate paper in it when Steve looked through it last night. “Did you sleep in your office last night?”
Steve colored. “Yeah. Few hours. Didn’t want to go home. Don’t like sleeping alone.”
“What time did you fall asleep?”
“Tennish. I remember because my ’zap’s recharge light were blinking, and it weren’t when I woke.”
“And the cleaning crews come through about eleven?”
“At my end of the floor, more like ten-thirty.”
Jani plopped the doc pouch on the couch beside her and sat back. You had another visitor besides the cleaner. She could imagine Betha sneaking into Steve’s office, finding him asleep, and slipping the most important piece of paper Lyssa had given her into his share of the info tangle. What were you up to, Betha? Did she plan to withhold the most vital piece of information from her other co-conspirator? Of course. But her plan backfired. Her co-conspirator knew what to look for, knew what was missing. I need that cipher glossary. “I have to go.”
Steve stood. “I don’t suppose I can go with?”
“Not a chance.” She pointed to a stack of paper that had been growing steadily since her arrival. “There’s a three-day backlog of newssheets. Please keep your hands off my workstation. I’ve typed it to me, but I’m sure it’s monitored for intrusions. In fact, the whole damn suite could be under monitoring. I try to check it a couple times a day, but it’s their playpen. They know tricks I haven’t heard of.”
“They airn’t gonna bug His Excellency’s guest!”
“They’re not that considerate.” Jani walked over to the holoVee and patted the top of the console. “Keep away from this. Don’t use the comport, either. We don’t want signals coming out of this suite when they know I’m not here to make them. Understand?”
Steve sat down and dug out another ’stick. “Yes, Mother.”
“And if you’re going to keep smoking, do it in the bathroom.” Jani cracked open her office door. “Stash the snowsuit in here. If someone tries to get in here, you may have to dress tout de suite and go out the window.”
“We’re on the second floor, Ris.”
“There’s over two meters of snow on the ground. It’ll break your fall.”
“Says you. They’re not your bloody ankles, are they?” Steve sighed heavily. “Would they really shoot me?”
At this point, they’re so damned spooked they’d take out the entire Cabinet. Jani pulled her shooter out of her duffel. “Do you know how to use one of these,” she asked as she handed it to Steve.
“Y-yeah.” His mouth gaped as he examined the bulky grip and dated styling. “Crike, my dad has one of these. Thing’s a relic!”
“Thanks.”
His look sharpened. “He got his in the Service.” But his heart wasn’t in this particular attempt to badger Jani about her past. He slumped back in his chair. “Would they really, really shoot me?”
Jani left
Steve’s pained question unanswered and hurried to the bathroom. A quick splash of cold water on your face can take the place of a nap. Sure it could. She checked her films in the mirror, then examined her face. I look tired. But the garage guy had looked sick. Sallow, clammy skin. Bones jutting. And the delirium. Seeing Borgie as she had didn’t qualify as delirium. Hearing him. That was stress. Augie. The sight of combat weapons and dead bodies. She’d be fine as soon as she could manage some sleep. She finished washing up. When she reentered the sitting room, Steve still sat with the shooter cradled in his hands.
“Ris?”
Jani shouldered her duffel. The Consulate paper crackled against her chest as she moved. “Yeah?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep this?” He held the weapon out to her, taking care to keep the barrel pointed at the floor. “Betha’s murderer may have wanted her and me out of the way for starters, but you’re helping us. They might go after you now, too.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said as she locked the door on the worried young man. Nobody can kill me—I’m never going to die.
Everybody dies, Captain.
Not me. I tried it once, remember—it didn’t take.
She hurried to the elevator. Her touchy stomach shuddered as the car moved down, but the sensation soon passed. She hugged her duffel, imagining the empty slot that usually held her shooter. She felt no regrets over her decision to leave the weapon with Steve. Better he should have it.
The wave goes out…the wave comes in.
She wouldn’t need it anyway.
CHAPTER 29
Jani keyed into Doc Control’s Archive wing. As she studied the nameplates on the doors lining the narrow hall, she rehearsed the reasons she hoped would compel the code-room supervisor to let her see the cipher glossary.
Code of Conduct Page 29
