No matter how Karra earned her income, the monthly check Su received from B’sheer Incorporated, an Inner City financial center, for caring for Chalatta, Karra’s daughter, seemed to be far more than a common paygirl’s income, at least as far as Su knew. Karra often gave addition gifts: “The kids need school supplies,” she would say. Or: “This might help buy something for Dugaan’s cough.” Maybe paygirls really did earn money like that.
Regardless, she was proud of her sister for wanting more out of life and returning to school. Karra had told her that her goal was to move herself and her daughter into their own apartment someday. Actually, Su believed Karra already did have another place she called home. She spent too little time here, and, in addition to a couple of changes of clothing, kept too few personal items at the apartment.
She loved the fact that Karra left Chalatta with her. Suzin had been the child’s only mother figure. After all, it was Su who had cared for the child, not her mother. Her sister didn’t know the first thing about parenting a child. But now that Chalatta was in school…
A loud banging at the front door stole Suzin Willo's attention from her thoughts.
"Security!" a harsh voice announced.
Suzin's heart lurched. Bitter memories returned of other times Security had invaded the peace of their home to locate Jem. She had hoped by now authorities knew that Jem rarely came to this place the rest of them called home. She wondered what Jem had done now to send them here. As she pulled back the deadbolt, the door jerked from her hands. Four Nevian officers burst into the apartment. She pulled back in dismay. Security questioning could be difficult enough when the questioners were human.
Two service uniforms ran past her, one heading into the kitchen, the other to the bedrooms, weapons drawn. Two field officers faced her, their pistols also bared.
"I'm not armed," she snapped at them. "You can holster those fool guns." To her surprise, one of them did.
The two service uniforms returned. "She is not back there," one said, meaning the bedrooms.
She?
"No one is in the kitchen or on the fire escape, either," the other added. Both had also holstered their guns.
The one still holding his gun grabbed her wrist and, twisting it behind her back, pulled her close enough for a lover's embrace. She turned away, right into the blued coolness of his gun barrel.
Her heart thudded as he began to caress her cheek with his gun. "Where is Karra Andra Willo?"
Karra? "Isn’t she at school?" Her voice shook. She knew what happened next.
Almost casually, he struck her. The pistol, which she feared most, brushed against her cheekbone. His knuckles, striking her eye the same instant, hit harder. An explosion filled her head. Her sinuses burned. Both eyes watered, blinding her.
Drawing her back into his embrace, he whispered into her ear. “I have a feeling you will start remembering fairly soon now. Yes?"
"If she isn’t at school, I don't know. I don't!" she screamed, as if he might believe her.
"You will tell me the places she frequents, her friends, everything. Do you understand?"
"I don't know her friends. I don't know where she stays." She ducked under the minor protection of her arms, taking blows on her back and shoulders, saving her already bruised face. "I don't! I don't! Please! Stop hitting me!"
But she knew he would not stop, not yet. Oh, my Maker! she prayed.
"Fre’id, let her go," she heard. “This woman will talk to me."
Suzin exhaled a silent prayer of gratitude when the Security officer released her.
"I can make her talk to me," the one called Fre’id insisted.
She peeked through her tears, noticing with her one good eye that the second officer now held a notebook. She backed away, terrified, as he moved toward her.
"You are Suzin, Karra's sister. Yes?"
She nodded, sniffing, her breath shuddering.
"Have you ever been in any trouble, Mistress Suzin?"
"No."
"Never? I can check on you.”
"Never," she repeated more firmly. "Go ahead and check. I'm clean."
"Sure," the one who had hit her sneered. "Clean as an Outer Area paygirl."
"I'm clean!" Her anger flashed at him, and her one good eye, still watering in sympathy, stared boldly at him, until she lost courage and turned away.
“This is the problem, Suzin. A lie this time, one baby lie, will get you locked in. You are in a bad situation for a good girl. Understand?"
“Locked in?” She stared in disbelief. No one would bother with lockaway when a little harassment would work just as well. “What’s happening here?” This time she met her questioner without wavering.
"You are about two steps away from being an accomplice to a murder." He returned her gaze just as steadily.
"Murder? What murder? Who murdered someone?" Her voice shrilled closer to hysteria with each question.
"Karra murdered the Chief Administrator of Education," he answered, his voice dead calm. "And the way it appears, you are protecting her."
"Karra?” Security had arrived at the apartment a number of times looking for Jem. It would never surprise her to learn that Jem had killed someone. Only once had Security ever looked for Karra. At the time, they thought she could help them find Jem because of a story some barmaid told them. She had seen them together at a local tavern, but Suzin couldn’t remember which tavern. Security had bullied their way into her life then, like now, and demanded that she give them information she never owned.
“Are you protecting her?” the officer persisted.
“No! I don't know anything!" she wailed, sick with fear.
"Then you must tell me everything you can, every smallest thing, or we really will take you in as a hostile witness."
"What do I tell you?" Suzin hiccupped. "She never stays here. She shows up to be with Chalatta. But I never know where she goes. I don't even know which bars she frequents, or any of her friends. No one comes here looking for her. No friends anyway. I don't even know if she has any!"
"When did you see her last?"
"Yesterday for a few hours,” she answered promptly. “She read a story to her daughter, then left. I don’t know where she went."
“So you watched her go out that door?” He gestured toward the front door.
“No. The back. She rarely uses the front door. When she leaves by the back, she always slips into an apartment a few stories down. I don't know where she comes out. I don’t know how she comes in, either. She’s real quiet."
The man jotted in his notebook. "Good. Fre’id, call that in. I want this building surrounded and people scouring every min, prem and larga of this neighborhood."
When he finished writing, he flashed a pleased smile at Suzin. "You are doing fine, Mistress Suzin. What was she wearing when you saw her last?"
"Shirt. Pants. Boots."
"What colors?"
"Thickweave work clothes. Dark green. Maybe blue. Thickweave is what she usually wears."
He muttered, “So do half the women in the Outer Area. But she did not change clothes here today?”
“No. She wasn’t here last night.” The night before, though, Karra and Carlon had gotten into a terrific argument, but she doubted if any Security cared about their constant feud.
“You said she read a story to her daughter.”
“Yes. And then she left. She didn’t return.”
“This is her legal address. Are you saying that she does not really live here?”
“I guess not. She comes here to be with Chalatta and her younger brothers and sisters, sometimes for a meal, although not always. Then she’ll be gone for a day or two. Sometimes she’ll crash on the couch for a while, rarely all night. You can’t set time by her.”
He scribbled on the notepad in letters legible only to himself. “Yet she attended school without absences, so she did something regularly.” He pulled a holo slab from his pocket and showed the ID holo to Suzin.
Suzin s
tared at, watching the image turn front to back, and noticed the tight bun at the nape of her neck. She shook her head. "That's Karra?"
“Is that a picture of your sister?"
Su nodded, angry at the image, at the lie it represented. "With her hair slicked back like that, it's like she deliberately tried to hide her looks there. She's prettier than that."
As the questioning continued, Suzin realized Karra wore the face people expected, always hiding her real self. All the times Suzin believed her younger sister was experimenting with different looks, supposedly ways to attract men; she had been working on disguises instead.
But murder? Suzin felt a wave of sick despair.
Chapter 5
An aircar poked its nose toward her, but not from the sky as expected. It rounded the corner of a building, nearly catching Karra as she left the shadow of a grocery storefront. Immediately she backed inside the building and pretended to shop. The storekeep eyed her as she perused several items. She ignored the grocer and watched the aircar as it sailed across the street and lifted soundlessly into the air.
“You here to buy, or just manhandle my produce?” the proprietor complained.
She realized that she clutched a cabbage rather tightly. “I guess I was just wishing,” Karra said, wearing a friendly smile. “You hiring?”
“Hah! Nice thought. I can barely afford to keep my doors open. Can’t afford to pay for help too. Why don’t you wish from outside?”
Karra replaced the cabbage on the produce table then held up the hand in a gesture of surrender. He never saw her other hand snatch a tin of smoked fish from the shelf behind her and slide it in the pocket of her baggy thickweave pants.
“Don’t those freets ever get tired of us?” the storekeep growled, his attention now on the hovering aircar just outside his window.
Karra slipped some of the greens piled next to the cabbages into her other pocket. “Freet them,” she murmured. “Could I leave by the back?”
He eyed her with suspicion. “I’ll walk you,” he said, unwilling to give her unescorted access to his storeroom.
Once outside she noticed with satisfaction that the aircar now flew a distance away. This was her neighborhood. She knew every corner, each shadow; they could not catch her here.
But Karra’s smug expression vanished when another aircar cast a shadow right over where she stood. She kept walking. Her long, waist-length hair loosened from its bun swung behind her, but she held her breath until the vehicle passed. Security patrols were out in force today. When it passed, she decided that they still searched for someone who fit her school photo.
Minutes later, she slipped into the basement of a vacant building. The structure appeared to be collapsing, but Karra had designed this illusion. Broken stones hid the reinforcements that kept the basement solid. The boarded and sealed basement windows prevented any light from leaking out, which made a small generator necessary to push air through a series of ducts in the ceiling under the thick padding beneath flooring of the apartments above. The public record read that twenty families occupied this building, not quite the truth. Sometimes a few additional strays found their way inside. As long as they kept out of the basement, she could care less. The fact that it didn’t look safe helped. But a few times she had needed to oust a few who had decided to sleep among the debris on basement’s crumbling stone floor.
She knew the place by feel. Once past the mounds of stone, she pulled a magnetic card she stored in a crack in the wall above the door. When she slipped the card into another crack in the wall, the lock released. The wall, simulated stone, slid back into place once she entered, locking automatically.
Karra waved her left hand over the light panel and the whole room brightened. Her basement apartment, divided into several huge rooms, overwhelmed the eye with all the walls painted white. Karra hated small spaces. She wanted the impression of a huge expanse, even larger than the one she owned, and to reinforce the illusion, also kept the place lit as bright as a sunny day. In addition to the brilliant overheads that could be dimmed for sleep, her bedroom contained a small night-light to keep the shadows at bay.
She used the largest room as a gym. Along one wall lay thick mats for practicing falls. Another backed movable boxes, ramps, bars and ladders that she arranged in obstacle courses. Her daughter loved this playground.
By contrast, she kept little in the kitchen. Even though she owned both a stove and a coldbox, Karra rarely cooked. She might stock the coldbox with a few items like fresh vegetables, fruit, or milk—her favorite food—but most of the time Karra ate in restaurants or bars, or occasionally at Su’s. She removed the tin of smoked fish from her pocket, placing it on the kitchen counter, and rinsed off the greens. She munched on them as she wandered toward her bedroom/dressing room, deep in thought.
In this room, she reinvented herself to fit the moment. Karra owned a closet full of various costumes, beggars’ rags, uniforms, business attire, Third Level gowns of the very rich, complete with gray skin paint and eye lenses, as well as the scantier clothing of the common prostitute.
She studied her reflection in a large free-standing mirror, wondering what Investigator Barnis Ves had planned for her. After showing her the white, triangular tablets last night, he assured her they would relieve a hangover. He never mentioned anything about hallucinations. She wondered if he intended to play some sort of a sick joke on her the following morning.
“Freet-slap it all!” she cursed, her voice loud in the massive room. The morning’s events clattered in disarray inside her head. Karra knew a dozen other ways to respond to threats besides murder. “And freet-slap Barnis Ves for drugging me!”
She stormed out of the dressing room and returned to the kitchen where she pulled a small jar of milk out of the coldbox. She opened the tin of fish, took a nibble, then drank some milk from the jar. I need to buy groceries, she realized as she peered in the coldbox. Next to a package of biscuits, a dried leaf of cress curled against an apple. The cress looks as tired as I feel. But the apple still looked good. Maybe she would snack on the biscuits and the apple later tonight.
Karra considered heading for her study, the one hidden room, before returning to her dressing room for some much-needed sleep. There, in solitude, she had studied the forbidden works her father had collected and written before his death. All except one. His own Zarindan history, the one he had been writing at the time of his arrest, had disappeared.
Instead, she headed for the double cot in the dressing room, cranked up the heat, and lowered the room light. After removing her knife, she tossed it and the sheath at the foot of her cot and scowled at it as if it were somehow responsible for her situation. But no, she reminded herself. Knives don’t kill by themselves. She yanked at her blankets, curled into their warmth, and let out a long breath, exhausted.
Scratch, pat, pat. The sound persisted. No matter what she did in her dream, which doors she opened, which windows she peered into, the pat-patting continued.
"Mama, let me in," came a cry that finally pierced her slumber.
Digging into her pants pocket, she pulled out the magnetized card and stared at it a moment.
"Please, Mama!"
"Hush, baby." She stumbled to the door and fit the card into the magnetic lock. "People might hear you."
The child stopped until the door opened. "Oh, I knew you were here." She sighed with tears in her voice and fell into her mother's arms. The door clicked shut behind them.
"Were you careful?"
"Sneaky as a rat." The child pulled back and opened her eyes wide for approval. "I came into the alley and hid behind the garbage pile until I was sure no one'd followed me. Then I slid through the window and crept to your door.” She gave her mother a look of mock contempt. “Besides, I only need to worry that someone might see me in the winter, when the snow’s too deep in the alley, and I have to go in the front door of the apartment building first. You told me so yourself.”
Karra chuckled. “So I did.”
Satisfied, Chalatta snuggled back into her mother’s arms. “I knocked a long time before I called you, Mama."
"It's all right, baby." Karra carried her daughter to her bedroom.
"You need to fix it so I can get in when you're here," Chalatta said. "No one can see the door when it's shut. But you always lock it from the inside, and I can't get to you."
"Neither can anyone else," Karra reminded her. She sat her daughter next to her on the cot.
For a while neither of them spoke. Karra held and rocked her little girl, simply enjoying her presence. This was what she lived for. This was why she had so reluctantly taken Jem’s assignment to eliminate Barnis Ves, even if he was getting too close to sensitive materials. Karra wanted out of the life she had been living, although she hadn’t told Jem as much. But each time she took on a job, she needed to shut out the part of herself that cared. And she cared deeply for Chalatta. The jobs, no matter how well they paid, couldn’t give her what she wanted the most, and that was a loving relationship with her daughter.
"Aunt Suzin says you killed a man," the child said. "I called her a liar and ran out. I wanted you to tell me the truth. Did you?"
"Yes."
Chalatta stared a long time at her mother, her brows knit and her lips turned down in disapproval. “Why?”
Karra remembered the vivid red, screaming paranoia, but how could she explain this to a child?
"Baby, when I was a little girl, a bit older than you are, the Security Watch broke into our apartment, not the place where you live now, but another apartment not far from here. They took my mama and my daddy. I don't know what they did to them while they were away from us, but one day they killed my daddy, and after a while they sent Mama home very sick. Later she died, too.”
“Was he the one who killed your daddy?”
“No. He was a school official. I killed him because I was afraid.”
Her Darkest Beauty: An Alien Invasion Series - The Second Generation Page 4
