“It doesn’t sound like a very stable situation.”
“Never has been. We just try to go from day to day. Surprising where you can end up, that way.”
Raven, Miles noticed, was listening intently to all this, not in the least appalled. Well, Jacksonian-trained, after all. The Hippocratic Oath, if he’d ever heard of it, was likely only considered a guideline there.
Tenbury came back, and there followed a lot more tech-speak, then visits to other chambers with some alarming thumping and crashing. Miles sent the fretful Jin back to his roof to supervise the loading-up of his menagerie. When the noises of inventory at last died away, Raven returned.
“Well?” said Miles. “Go or no-go?”
“Go,” said Raven. “There will have to be some prep, but I find these people are good at improvising. And the physical impediments are made up for by a delightful lack of paperwork.”
“How soon will you be ready for me to make my snatch? I’ll probably want you along on the insertion, by the way, in case we run into any snags that are medical rather than security-related. How do you feel about risking arrest, by the way?”
Raven shrugged. “I’m sure your brother will extract me if you can’t. In any case, you can make your switch any time. Madame Sato can just as well wait here till we’re ready.”
“My time is not infinitely elastic.” Besides his wanting to go home, of course, there was no telling what can of worms would be emptied onto his plate with the revival of Jin’s mother. Miles was getting itchy to know.
“You can take that kid back to the consulate. I expect I’ll be working late here,” Raven went on. “I can get back to my hotel by public transport.”
Miles pointed to Raven’s consulate-issued wristcom. “Check in first. Secured channel. I’ll want a report. And it may be better to send Johannes to pick you up.”
“Actually…” Raven hesitated. “I think I will want to stop back at the consulate anyway. Can I use your secured tight-beam links to report in to my boss on Escobar?”
“Lily, or Mark?”
“Both. Though I’m not just sure where Lord Mark is, right now. Do you know?”
Miles shook his head. “His enterprises have become rather far-flung. I don’t track him daily. Are you arranging bail in advance?”
“Well, that’s a thought, but mainly because I may have found some elements of interest to the Durona group, here.”
“If they impinge on my investigation, I want to be fully apprised. Or even if they don’t.”
“Understood.”
Miles waved him back to work, and made his way back down through the basement maze and up to Jin’s rooftop.
As they unloaded the van, Consul Vorlynkin came out to see what all they were dumping in his back garden. Mina danced ahead of him and pounced on Lucky with an excited cry, rubbing her face in the soft fur. “Lucky! I thought you were dead!” The old gray cat endured the hug, but wriggled free promptly. “Do you still have your ratties, Jin?”
“Yes,” said Jin, lifting the cage he was lugging to show them off. “Jinnie and most of her children.”
“Handsome,” said Vorlynkin, inspecting Gyre, chained to his perch, from a prudent distance. “How do you keep it from eating your chickens?” Galli and Twig, released from their transport box by Lieutenant Johannes, ran past his knees, flapping their wings and squawking, then slowed to stare in apparent amazement at the grass patch before them, warm and green-smelling in the noon sun.
“Well, the big ones sort of defend themselves. I had to keep Gyre chained to his perch when the chicks were littler. I’ll have to keep him chained here anyway, till he figures out this is where he belongs.” Jin watched as Armsman Roic, with due care, unloaded a stack of terrariums onto the shelf they’d brought from Jin’s refuge. Tucked up against the back of the house and sheltered by its eaves, concealed by the house, the tall stone garden walls, and all the trees and bushes, the shelf and its contents would be almost as safe as in his tent-shelter at Suze-san’s.
“Cats and mice together as well?” Vorkynkin went on. “What next, lions and lambs?”
“Rats,” Jin corrected austerely. “Though I wish I might have a lion… ! Anyway, Lucky’s too old and lazy to bother the big ones, and I keep the little ones in cages with tops.” He looked around with satisfaction. “Now that I have all my creatures back, you can keep Lady Murasaki,” he told Mina generously.
She made a face. “But Lucky’s half mine. Because she wasn’t yours to start with, you know, even if you did steal her away.”
“I saved her from Aunt Lorna,” Jin reminded her.
Lucky curled around Vorlynkin’s ankles, rubbing her chin to scent-mark him as her new property and leaving a trail of hairs plastered to his formerly-tidy hakama trousers. He bent rather absently to scritch her spine, and she arched shamelessly under his hand.
Mina addressed him anxiously, “Oh sir, can we keep Lucky inside? Till she knows this is home? Cats do get lost, you know!”
Looking down into Mina’s upturned face, Vorlynkin said reluctantly, “Is she housebroken?”
Mina nodded vigorously. “I can fix her cat pan in my room!”
“The washroom off the kitchen would likely do as well,” he told her. “You and Jin… well, yes, I expect it will be good for you and your brother to look after her.”
Miles-san strolled past. “All shipshape here, Jin? Then I need Johannes back.” He added to Consul Vorlynkin, “We’ll be in your tight-room for a time. A lot of detail-work still to do.” At his gesture, Roic rose and took up what seemed his accustomed place at his shoulder.
“Is your scheme going to fly, then?” Vorlynkin asked. Miles-san nodded. Vorlynkin grimaced.
Miles-san returned a wry smile. “Flexibility, Vorlynkin. That’s the key.” He trod indoors, swinging his cane. Jin and Vorlynkin stared after him.
Vorlynkin voiced Jin’s own half-formed thought: “Was that supposed to be reassuring?”
Chapter Eleven
Roic figured midnight would have been the right time for a body-snatching expedition, possibly in the middle of a thunderstorm. Among other things, an electrical storm might help account for any power-flicker anomalies they left in their wake. But there were no suitable cold fronts predicted any time soon, and so Roic found himself, Raven, and m’lord, with Johannes driving the lift van again, turning in at the impressive entrance of the NewEgypt facility at high noon. It was only in Roic’s imagination that the dog-headed statues flanking the main gate seemed to follow them with their painted eyes.
Johannes was armed with a couple of little floral arrangements in water tubes and a script, but he wasn’t called upon to deploy either; the human gate guard waved them right through.
“What t’ hell,” said Roic.
“It’s visiting hours,” said m’lord mildly. “They aren’t going to harass their patrons’ kin, nor their potential future customers coming in for their tour, at this time of day. This isn’t a military installation. All NewEgypt security has to worry about is theft—which is more likely to come from an employee—vandalism, which isn’t likely to occur in broad daylight, and maybe something like the N.H.L.L.—who would probably wait for that midnight thunderstorm you wanted. Seems like their style, somehow.”
Roic settled back with a disgruntled, “Huh.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his somewhat-too-tight hospital uniform, XL, scavenged by Raven and Medtech Tanaka, possibly from the same source as some of their medical supplies now laid in and waiting back at Madame Suze’s. M’lord wore a similar set, XS, a bit too loose, with the sleeve and trouser ends rolled up. Raven’s set fit perfectly. Johannes was dressed in what Roic had been assured were unexceptionable Kibou street clothes, tidy and middle-class.
The van slipped past both the pyramid-topped building’s lobby, fronted by an inviting faux-Egyptian garden with stone sphinxes, and the sign pointing to the loading docks for pre-frozen patron intake, hidden on the more utilitarian backside, then on aroun
d to a discreet side entrance meant for employees.
“All right, this is where we unload,” m’lord said. “Don’t look hurried, but don’t waste time.”
Trying not to look hurried, not to mention harried, Roic helped Raven open the back of the lift van and slide out the float pallet. A stack of boxes, emptied of their medical supplies, concealed the long shape in what Roic thought of as the freezer bag beneath. The body bag, designed for short-term transport, would, if left sealed, keep its contents at cryo-temperature for a couple of days, Raven had explained to him. Roic had to grant, it was a hell of a lot less bulky and eye-catching than a portable cryochamber. Johannes drove off to find the visitor parking and wait, and m’lord led the pallet and its handlers inside through automatic doors that parted for them without protest.
M’lord checked the holomap on his wristcom and led off through a succession of corridors. They encountered a trio of gossiping employees and an elderly couple, clearly visitors, on their way to the cafeteria that Roic smelled in passing, but none spared the pallet a glance. Roic carefully did not look back. Two more turns and a short ride down a freight lift tube, and they were pacing along an underground corridor that stopped at a double door, the first locked barrier they’d encountered.
M’lord opened one of the boxes, whipped out his special tool kit, ImpSec standard issue with upgrades, and knelt to the electronic lock. He muttered unreassuringly, “God, it’s been a while. Hope I haven’t lost my touch…” He puttered for a minute or two, while Roic jittered and kept glancing over his shoulder, and Raven looked bland. The doors parted so soundlessly, Roic was taken by surprise. M’lord looked smug. “Ah, good. I’d hoped not to leave any evidence by damaging the lock.” He waved them through like some demented mâitre d’hôtel escorting diners to the best table in the room, and closed the doors gently again when the pallet had passed through.
The new corridor was much darker. And, Roic was surprised to see, unfinished, which made him worry about encountering workmen, but he supposed a construction crew would have lights that would warn them. Beneath the pyramidal building lay three sub-levels. Around the core stack of utilities on each level, four concentric corridors extended outward in squares, with radial connecting halls at the midpoint of each side. Too regular to be called a maze, it nonetheless seemed to Roic that it would be easy to get turned around down here. So just how disturbing it had been to m’lord to be lost for hours in a true maze, with no light?
They turned in at the next connecting spoke; m’lord’s lips moved as he counted off side branches, then set in a smile as the core stack hove into view. Another pause, while m’lord weaseled his way into a locked electrical access panel, did some careful counting, and nodded. They then went out another spoke and turned right into one of the corridors, this one completed, dimly lit with utility lighting and lined with loaded cryo-drawers.
“This doesn’t look so fancy,” Roic murmured.
“These are the cheap seats,” said m’lord. “If you want to be filed away behind faux mahogany and brass fittings—or gold, I’m told—NewEgypt can supply, on the upper levels.”
Even down here, a lot of the drawers had small holders set in the walls beside them for odd little personal offerings, including tiny bottles of wine, wrapped snacks, or burned-down stubs of incense sticks. Most common were flowers, mostly plastic or silk but sometimes real ones—some fresh, some brown and drooping sadly from their dried-out water tubes.
“Here,” said m’lord, stopping abruptly. He craned his neck at a drawer at the top of the stack. “Read off the number, Raven.”
Raven recited a long alphanumeric string, twice.
M’lord checked carefully against the data on his wristcom. “This is it.”
The disguising boxes then found another use, as m’lord filched one to boost him to a convenient height to examine the drawer lock and attach his ImpSec-special door opener to it. “All right,” he murmured, climbing back down. “When the lights go out, make the switch.”
He unshipped his own hand light and trotted off.
Raven issued Roic a pair of insulated medical gloves, donned a pair himself, and bent to unseal the long bag. The figure revealed seemed a slender little old woman, clad in a sort of plastic caul that clung to her shape. What with the translucent protective ointment heavily slathered on her skin and the frost that instantly began to form on the exposed plastic surface, her helpless nakedness had at least a decent veiling. Roic turned on his own hand light an instant before the corridor lights, and all the little green lights on the drawers, went black. There having proved no way to open a single drawer without setting off some indicator in the central control room, the next best thing had seemed to give the same flicker to five thousand or so drawers at once.
“Ready,” said Raven.
Roic tapped the button on the unlocking device; to his relief, the drawer lock opened easily. He slid the long drawer out like opening some dreadful filing cabinet.
Inside was another female figure, also in its caul, which also frosted swiftly. Roic frowned to see that the plastic wrappings weren’t quite identical—these seemed to be browner and reinforced with some sort of netting. But, bracing himself, he slid his hands under and lifted her out. Even with the gloves, she seemed to suck the warmth from him in a swift tide. He set her gently on the floor, Raven checked the name tag attached to the outside of the wrappings, and he and Raven between them lifted her replacement into the drawer. The drawer slid shut with a smooth click.
M’lord’s hand light flickered at the corridor corner, and he peered around; Roic waved all’s-well, and he nodded and ducked away again. By the time Roic and Raven inserted their prize into the bag and sealed it up again, the lights flashed back on. Roic reached up and carefully unsealed the unlocking device, and hid it back in m’lord’s kit. He then began re-stacking concealing boxes, wondering how soon a tech crew would arrive to check out their brief power failure.
M’lord returned, and murmured, “Go, go.” His eyes seemed as bright as any of the indicator lights, and Roic realized how much he was enjoying this caper. I’m glad one of us is. Raven seemed as amiable as ever, as if he indulged in this sort of chicanery every day, which Roic knew very well he did not. Roic swallowed and prepared to sprint as the hum of lift tube doors and the echo of voices drifted up the hall that radiated from the central stack, but they turned onto the outer ring before any shouts of Hey, you there! could find them.
A short stroll, and they were back at the underground double doors. M’lord paused to lock them again, and call Johannes on his wristcom. The lieutenant was opening the rear of the lift van as they arrived outside. The pallet-load of “supplies” disappeared soundlessly within. Roic still didn’t breathe easily till the van turned out the gates and joined the flow of afternoon traffic.
M’lord checked his wristcom. “Sixteen minutes,” he said, in a satisfied tone.
Raven had taken the front seat again with Johannes, which made all kinds of sense since the pair of them were by far the most normal-looking, by local standards. Johannes drove sedately but not too sedately, just as instructed. With the back seats folded down to make a cargo space, Roic crouched opposite Madame Sato’s body bag from m’lord, alert to reach out and prevent it shifting should Johannes make any sudden turns. Roic had been assured that the cryo-solution and protective ointments kept cryo-corpses slightly pliable, not brittle, and that despite their temperature they wouldn’t shatter like an ice cube thrown to the pavement at an accidental blow. But still.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, which Roic broke at last, low-voiced: “All this makes me think about Sergeant Taura. All these other folks got to die in some hope for their future, why not her? We were all right there at the Durona clinic, everything was in place for it, it wouldn’t have cost much…”
Taura was one of the mercs from m’lord’s old ImpSec covert ops days, before the needle-grenade and cryorevival damage had put him out of that business for good. Like Rave
n and the rest of the Durona cloned siblings, she was a product of Jacksonian genetic engineering; unlike them, she was a sole survivor, in her case of a failed prototype batch of supposed super-soldiers. She had escaped to m’lord’s merc troop, where the super-soldier part had actually worked, m’lord testified. But her creators had built in a fail-safe mechanism for their genetic prototypes; Taura would have been dead of old age at twenty-standard without the medical intervention that the Dendarii medics and later the Duronas had supplied her. Roic had met her twice, desperately memorably, the first time when she’d attended m’lord’s wedding, the second when m’lord and Roic had traveled to Escobar to attend her last days in the Durona hospice.
M’lord sighed. “I, you, Rowan, and Raven all tried to talk her into it. If her Dendarii insurance hadn’t covered it, I’d have popped for it out of pocket, not that the Duronas would have let me. They still figure they owed her and all the Dendarii mercs involved for their escape from Jackson’s Whole. But Taura wasn’t having it at any price.”
What, wake up, still a freak, in some strange place and time, with all my friends gone? Taura had said to the protesting Roic, in that terribly-wrong-for-her thready voice. But you could make new friends! was an argument that had failed to move her, in the exhaustion of her failing metabolism.
Roic made a helpless gesture. “You could have overridden her. After she was too far gone to tell, ordered her cryoprepped.” God knew m’lord was capable of riding over any number of other people’s wills.
M’lord shrugged, face sobered in the shared memory. “That would have been for our benefit, then. Not for hers. But Taura chose fire over ice. That, at least, I had no trouble understanding. High temperature cremation leaves no DNA.”
She’d been indifferent to where her ashes would be scattered, except not Jackson’s Whole, so m’lord had provided a burial plot for her urn in his own family cemetery at Vorkosigan Surleau, overlooking the long lake, a task m’lord and Roic had seen to personally.
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