Only if you tell her.
“I’m attached,” said Siri out loud.
“How attached?”
Siri rolled over on her side and let her eyes travel up and down Vijay slowly, appraisingly. “Enough that I don’t have to take anything that comes along.”
“Good. I hate it when they’re desperate.”
“Why do I get the feeling that’s a lie?”
Vijay grinned at her, and underneath the scarring and the hard talk, she saw his relief. She’d shown him what he wanted most to see, that she was all right, truly.
How am I going to tell you?
“You see right through me,” Vijay whispered in a tone of overly oily seduction. “And I just love that idea.”
“Shut it,” she said. “Before you wreck your chances.” And she rolled over on her back, folded her arms, and closed her eyes.
It was a struggle, but she managed to stay that way. Somewhere, exhaustion caught up with her, and she did sleep. When she woke up in the flickering light that passed for dawn on Dazzle, he was gone.
But he’d left a folded-up scrap of sheeting beside her pillow with the name EDISON RAY scrawled on it. As she picked it up, Siri felt the slight weight of a sliver drive.
Nicely done, she thought toward Vijay, wherever he had gone, and she tucked the sheeting into her pocket and looked around for an aide to get her signed out.
Either Dr. Gwin decided she was recovered, or Siri had finally worn the clinic staff down. It didn’t really matter. Gwin cleared her for release, and she marched out into the lobby, bouncing awkwardly before she remembered to adjust her gait for the lighter gravity. She didn’t change her direction at all, though, she just headed straight for the door and out into the streets.
The battered, stripped-down lobby was exactly as she remembered it, as were the people who passed to and fro: the ragged Baby Ds and the bustling Solarans trying to keep their own spirits and professionalism up in the face of the poverty that they could do little about, and the constant grind of permanent servitude, which they could do nothing about at all. The air was filled with the mixed smells of dust, unwashed bodies, and, incongruously, hot fresh food. Siri’s stomach rumbled painfully.
Breakfast? she thought to Shawn. It had been tough to eat the food aboard the Erasman ships, in part because it was tasteless, in part because she was pretty sure she was increasing somebody’s debt levels with each bite.
“Breakfast,” Shawn agreed.
Siri turned her footsteps toward the cafeteria, but stopped when she saw Liang Chen coming down the stairs with a steaming mug in one hand and an ancient datapad in the other.
She and Liang had not gotten along well the last time she was here. Back then, she’d thought it was part of his general dislike of the Guardians. But she found herself wondering what he had known about Bianca and her intentions. Vijay wouldn’t have told her that the word was out that they were here about Bianca if it wasn’t true. Had Liang been talking?
“Hello, Liang,” said Siri quietly.
The director of the aid mission on Dazzle stopped in midstride and looked around, confused for a moment. When he saw her, he frowned.
“Siri. How are you?” Liang’s tone made it clear this was courtesy, nothing more.
“Well enough that they let me out.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the clinic entrance. “Is my old room still there?”
“Pretty much as you left it.”
“I’ll bet the Clerks have been all over it.”
Liang shrugged. “What’d you expect?”
They stood there for a moment, awkward, neither sure whether they should end or continue the conversation.
“How’s the new boss?” Liang asked abruptly.
Siri felt her eyebrows lift. “Technically, she’s the old boss. She was recalled from retirement.”
“She’s another of Fayette’s, then?” He tried to say it casually, but it didn’t take a trained listener to catch the tension underlying the question.
What do you know? “You could say so, yes. We all put in a lot of time together, back when.”
Liang’s answering grunt was at best noncommittal. “I suppose I’d better leave you to get to it, then.”
Siri nodded. She wanted to say something to let Liang know that she knew what Bianca had been doing, that they were here to make up for it, and to clean up after it. But words would not come. It would be too much like an apology. In the face of his barely hidden hostility, she just couldn’t make herself do it.
“Let us know if we can help with anything,” Siri said. Liang’s mouth twisted up and she practically heard him thinking, You’ve got to be kidding.
“I will, thanks.” He was already walking away, sipping from his mug and thumbing his pad.
“Need to work on those interpersonal skills,” said Shawn.
Me or him?
She snagged a hot roll and some tar-black tea from the cafeteria and trotted lightly up the curving central stairway to the third floor.
Last time she’d been to Dazzle, she’d been assigned Room 356, one of the few chambers in the former luxury hotel that still had a solid door. Siri pushed it open, releasing the odors of dust and mold.
Yep, she thought as she stepped inside. Pretty much as we left it.
It was a dump, no two ways about it. The bed was assembled from bundles of sheeting. The blankets looked clean, which was something. There was one folding stool for guests, and one chair with a broken leg held together with tape. Pipes and hoses, bits of pumps and motors, lay scattered about. Nameless rusted machines spotted with bird droppings sat next to clean spools of mustard yellow carbon fibers. It was the working space of the mechanic and all-around-fixit woman that was Siri’s cover. Siri mentally congratulated Liang on his community relations as she picked her way over to the scarred cabinet beside the bed. Anywhere else on Dazzle, most of this would have been carried off already.
Siri stuffed the last bits of the roll into her mouth, set her mug down on top of a fiber spool, and pulled her glasses out of her belt pocket, hooking them into place over her ears. She also pulled out a thin cable and attached one end to the earpiece and the other to the cuff on her gloves. She tapped a command on the back of her hand, then turned in place, scanning the room.
Three red dots glowed on her lenses: one in the seam between ceiling and wall, one on the upper corner of the cabinet, and one on the seam between wall and floor, aimed at the door. Three microcameras left behind by the Clerks.
Right. Do you think we need to be subtle about this, Shawn?
“No.”
Neither do I.
She started with the one by the door, plucking it up between thumb and forefinger and squeezing until it made a soft but satisfying pop. She had to stand on the bed to get the one by the ceiling, and on the rickety chair to get the one on the cabinet.
She dusted her hands off and jumped down, landing on her tiptoes just because she could. Next.
Someone had brought up her duffel and her hard-sided equipment case. Siri snapped the case open. The latches were coded to her fingerprints, and, supposedly, would not open for anyone else. She didn’t rely completely on that. The Erasmus Clerks were nothing if not efficient. The microcameras were just the beginning.
They pay attention around here, Siri, warned Bianca’s voice from memory. They are always paying attention here.
Had Bianca forgotten that? she wondered as she lifted out the control unit for her station, an unadorned silver square, fifteen inches on a side and half an inch thick. Like the case’s latches, it should respond only to her touch. Like the latches, she didn’t rely just on that.
“She might have,” answered Shawn quietly. “If she was angry enough.”
Siri nodded. Bianca’s temper was legendary.
But it doesn’t make sense. She balanced the control unit on one hand and folded down the shelf from the station cabinet with the other. Bianca only truly lost it when it was personal. Bianca’s words ca
me back to Siri again. They laid their hands on one of mine.
“Maybe it got personal. She and Bern were involved.”
Maybe. But it didn’t feel right. Siri laid her palm on the control unit. All right, Shawn, fire it up.
“On it.”
There was a tiny burst of heat at her temple as her Companion sent a coded signal to her glasses, which her glasses relayed to her gloves. Siri ran her fingertips over the shelf’s pitted wooden surface. Where she touched, faint mustard-yellow lines embedded in the grain of the wood glimmered briefly. Siri slid the control unit into place on top of the lines. She laid one gloved palm on the box and one on the shelf. She stood there a moment, letting the system power up and read and confirm her identity. The system needed the touch of an authorized person’s gloves to work, and the gloves needed the proper pair of living hands. If anyone got the urge to go all twentieth-century on a Guardian to open up the network, they would be in for a rude surprise when the box flash-burned in front of them.
Siri slid her fingertips across the top of the box, activating the commands to open the connection between the control unit and her glasses, at the same time downloading the first set of prerecorded chatter. These were coded messages, carefully designed by teams of experts back on Earth to be puzzling and innocuous. They’d fire off at random intervals while she was at the station, providing the illusion of activity to any Clerk who happened to be listening in. In the meantime, Siri could get on with her real work.
Open it, she thought to Shawn.
Again, she got the brief burn as Shawn transmitted the code that opened the microfiber network she’d laid out with such care during her last visit. It was incomplete and in some ways primitive, but it was a start.
When the voices of Dazzle’s streets filled her ears, she also knew at least some of it was still intact.
Smiling, she settled back in the chair and closed her eyes, letting her fingers wander across the control unit, getting the touch of the box again, raising and lowering voices, switching locations, filtering and focusing.
Listening.
“…promised to have the spigot going at first light. Unless you want…” Liang outside giving someone hell.
“…take this up to Shirar’s corner, should be able to get twenty or so…”
“…haven’t got all day. I won’t get the second shift if I’m not…”
“…Papa! Where’d you go?…Papa!…”
“Siri, are you hearing that?” asked Shawn abruptly.
What?
“In the background. There’s some interference, or something.”
Siri relaxed, settling into herself, making her mind as still and quiet as possible to open her ears. Slowly, she did hear it; a kind of murmuring, almost a whispering.
She moved her fingers across the control unit, trying to focus in more closely. Are we picking up the ventilators?
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
We haven’t had a chance to walk any of the lines yet. Something’s probably broken, or degraded. It’s been two years. She glanced at the diagnostics report on the back of her glove—.03 percent complete.
“That’s probably it,” said Shawn.
You don’t sound convinced.
“I don’t know…It just doesn’t feel right.”
Her Companion was in part the voice of her own subconscious, which made Siri inclined to trust him in such situations. She listened again, opening wide, diving deep. Some people strained to listen, but what you really needed to do was relax and stretch. Bianca had taught her that. Siri opened herself up to the susurrations just on the edge of hearing, letting them wash through her, following their rise and fall.
Shawn was right. It didn’t sound like ventilator noise or like the random static she’d expect from a break. But what was it? Had the Clerks discovered her lines and found a way to tap them? Possible. But a tap shouldn’t be letting sound in.
“It’s like something’s trapped in there,” murmured Shawn.
Nasty idea. Siri leaned forward, stretching, focusing. But the more she tried, the more the sound seemed to slip away.
“Siri?”
Yeah?
“Visitor.”
Siri lifted her glasses. Someone was knocking on the door. God, she must have been far down not to have heard that. She slotted the control unit into the holder at the back of the cabinet, folded up the shelf, and snapped the cabinet door shut.
“Come!” she called.
The door opened, and a lean little man dressed entirely in sparkling black and white waltzed in.
“Natio Bloom.” Siri got to her feet and bowed.
“Field Coordinator Baijahn!” Bloom’s bow was much more theatrical than hers, and she smiled to see it. “If you are still a mere coordinator. Perhaps you’ve received a promotion while you’ve been away?” He cocked his head toward her.
“ ’Fraid not.” She gestured toward the stool. “Please. How have you been?”
“Oh, getting by, getting by.” Bloom sat and rested both his hands on his beribboned walking stick. “Our gracious Saeos are still pleased to give me work every now and then, and, of course, I’m glad to do what I can for my own poor world.”
“If it involves lunching with the roof class and complaining about how bad things are, yeah.”
“What have they got you doing this time?” asked Siri.
“The natal celebration for the most recent arrivals to the Blood Family.” Bloom’s grimace was as theatrical as his bow had been. “Still, it’s something to do. And what brings you back here?”
Siri saw no reason not to be at least partly honest with him. Word would be getting around soon enough anyway. Besides, if she had learned anything about Bloom from the last trip, it was that he liked being in the know and would go a long way to stay there.
“We’re trying to find out how and why my former commanding officer died.”
“Really?” Bloom sounded surprised. “That was supposed to have been a robbery.”
Siri shrugged, and waited. People in general did not like silence. Usually, they would talk too much in order to fill it.
“Ah.” Bloom nodded several times. “I should have known.”
“Known what?”
Bloom pursed his lips. His eyes flicked toward the door.
But Siri shook her head. “It’s just us here.”
“Well, when I heard you in particular were returning, it did lend credence to certain…rumors.”
Siri arched her brows, inviting him to continue. Bloom, however, chose to be coy.
“Voices have been cropping up in unexpected places, in the undercurrents, odd whispers in strange places.” A smile played about his lips. “You understand, I’m sure.”
Unexpectedly, Siri heard the unidentified background noise from her listening network, rushing back and forth, just exactly like whispers from another room.
She leaned closer. “And what are they saying, these unexpected voices?”
But this time, Bloom drew back. The coy smile faded, leaving behind a genuine concern Siri could never recall seeing on his face before.
“That perhaps this time they’ve gone too far,” he whispered. “That they’ve beggared Erasmus so they can make the jump elsewhere. Maybe even go out with a bang.”
“Bang?” Siri repeated softly. “What do you mean?”
But he shook his head hard. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I can’t. I can’t risk suspicion. I really only came to give you this…” The normally sure-handed Bloom fumbled as he reached for his jacket pocket and brought out a thin white square. “It’s for your commander, but I was informed she isn’t in just now.”
Siri took the white oblong. It was a surprising thing, a piece of actual paper, thick and stiff as canvas with static words laid on it.
“Just an invitation to a sit-down with the Honored and Elected Citizens Council.” Bloom got to his feet. “A group of nobodies doing nothing like the rest of us,” he added bitterly. “But it
would be good for appearances if she came.”
“Bloom,” said Siri softly. “If there’s something you’re hoping I’ll find out, why not just tell me?”
But Bloom shook his head again. “Not here. I can’t.”
“It’s safe. I promise.”
“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. “You don’t know…you don’t know what they’re doing, with the Clerks and the network…” He clamped his mouth shut. “Later. I’ll tell you where.”
Bloom drew himself up, suddenly every inch the suave old man he had been when he walked in, and took himself out of the room. The door shut with a loud snap.
Siri stared after him, turning the invitation over in her fingers. Well. What do you think of that?
“I think we’d better get to work.”
Yeah. Me too.
NINETEEN
TERESE
In the end, I slept for twelve hours, despite the fact that the sheeting “door” did not keep out the sound of voices and the warped window did not keep out the sound of parakeets. I woke clearheaded and insanely hungry.
Someone had stashed my duffel in the corner of the room. I reveled in the luxury of being able to change into a clean uniform and fresh socks. I tightened the pocketed belt around my tunic and checked to make sure I had all my gear.
Orry had been back. My glasses lay beside my duffel. I picked them up and stared at them.
Two messages from David waited in there. I swallowed and stowed them away in my belt pocket again. I needed breakfast. I needed to start getting a handle on the situation.
I started making my way down the corridor before I could think the word “coward” too many times.
I went to the clinic first, but Siri wasn’t there. They said they’d released her as soon as it was lights up, because if she was well enough to be that much of a pain in the ass, there wasn’t a whole lot wrong with her. She had thought to leave me a note on a scrap of sheet.
If the Field Commander has time after breakfast, could she come to Room 356 to inspect the diagnostic computer?
Ah, the joys of early-morning snarkiness. Was there any better sign of a healthy subordinate? I tucked the sheet into my belt pocket and made my way to the battered dining hall. As I crossed the lobby, I found my gaze straying this way and that. It took me a moment to realize I was looking for Amerand Jireu.
Bitter Angels Page 20
