The tout brought her at last to one of the circular inner lobbies, this one presided over by a young woman in a severely cut suit. She looked up at their approach, her thin face at once wary and annoyed, and the tout said silkily, “Good morning, Shen. Dam’ Heikki here is looking for Galler. Is he about?”
The young woman’s face did not change as she looked down at her board. “I believe Ser is mistaken—” She broke off abruptly, a faint line appearing between her brows. “I beg your pardon, dam-i-ser,” she said, after a moment, and there was an odd reluctance in her voice. She looked at Heikki, still frowning slightly. “The secretary has gone to get him—he’s out of his office right now. If you’d be so good as to wait… ?”
Heikki nodded, and the young woman smiled directly at the tout. “And there’s a message for you, Ser. Tynmar would like to see you directly.”
That was unequivocal, Heikki thought, and glanced sideways just in time to see the tout smooth a frown from his face. “Thank you, Shen. I’ll leave Dam’ Heikki in your capable hands.”
“Of course, ser,” the young woman said demurely, and looked down at her console.
Heikki waited until the lobby door had closed behind the tout, then, doing her best to keep the edge of fear from her voice, said, “Can you tell me if Galler’s here, please?” She heard the sharpness in her tone anyway, and hoped Shen would take it for a businesslike haste.
“One moment, please,” the young woman answered, her fingers busy on her keys. She looked up then, her work complete, all traces of the polite mask wiped from her face. “Galler isn’t here. He’s vanished, about a week ago.” She looked at her screen again, and shook her head. “They’ve called security, all right. Oh, don’t worry, I’ve put on the privacy screen.”
Heikki started to swear, then swallowed the words unspoken. There was no time for that, only for the right question, and then, maybe, a way out. “Why are you telling me this?” It could be a trick, after all, a part of her added silently, that would be very like the corporations….
“I worked for him for three years,” Shen answered, her expression old behind the heavy paint. “He was a good boss. I don’t know what happened, but he knew something was going wrong, and he told me I might expect you.”
Heikki’s mouth twisted, but she bit back her automatic response. He always knew how to punch my buttons…. She said instead, “You said security’s on its way. Is there another way out?”
Shen hesitated, then reached for the keyboard of a secondary screen. “Maybe—there’s always the fire tubes, but they’re alarmed. I don’t think I can cut them from here.”
“How far?” Without waiting for an invitation, Heikki came around the barrier desk to look over the other woman’s shoulder. Shen shifted her screen, pointing to a red line on the suite’s plan.
“The entrance is through the inner office, opposite the media wall. It comes out on the fourth level piazzetta, near the shopping concourses. But it’s all alarmed—”
“How much time do I have?” Heikki interrupted.
“Ten minutes, no more.” Shen gave a crooked smile.
“They figure I can keep you busy that long, and they won’t have to alarm the rest of the office.”
“Sa.” Heikki tugged at her lower lip, studying the plan. The Exchange Points maintained a standard escape system in case of fire, but the alarms that monitored unauthorized use were less standardized. There was a chance she could fox those alarms, if they were of the simple models she understood…. Not that there was any other choice. She smiled, briefly and without humor. Under any other circumstances—if anyone else had been involved—she would have chanced a private arrest, refused to answer questions and protested it to her lawyers, maybe even filed a harassment suit of her own. But there were too many unknowns here, too many ways she could hurt not just Galler, but herself and Santerese as well. Malachy’s advice had been to stay well away from Tremoth until the situation had settled a bit—and I wish to hell, she thought, I’d followed his advice.
Almost without conscious volition, her finger was tracing the course of the fire tube. As Shen had said, it debouched onto one of the busy shopping squares. It would not be difficult to lose herself in the crowds once she’d left the tube, not difficult in fact to get out of the tube—if she could deactivate the alarms. And even if she couldn’t, the crowds and the panic that any alarm would set off would help cover her escape. Odds on, she thought, this could work. She glanced at the data lens she still clutched in the palm of her hand, triggering the chronodisplay: seven minutes left.
“You said you didn’t know what happened to Galler,” she said, and held up her hand when the other woman would have agreed. “Do you know where he is, or how to contact him?”
“No.” Shen shook her head. “The only thing I know is, he annoyed some higher-ups over some contract job. Something outside the usual channels. There’s a man named Slade, a troubleshooter—he’s the one Galler was really worried about.”
“But why?” Heikki said involuntarily, and made a gesture of apology when Shen shook her head again.
“I’m sorry, Dam’ Heikki—”
“Sorry, talking to myself,” Heikki interrupted. She looked around the lobby again. “Where’s the nearest tube entrance?”
“Through there,” Shen said, and pointed to a half-closed door in the wall behind her desk. She smiled again, lopsidedly. “That’s—that was Galler’s office. I’ll tell them you wanted to wait there, that way I won’t get into trouble.”
“Thank you,” Heikki said, and started past her.
“He was good to work for,” Shen said, so softly that Heikki could pretend she didn’t hear. She pushed through the door and into the dimly-lit space. It was smaller than she had expected, most of the space taken up by the media wall and its peripherals, and by an enormous data block. Lights were still flickering across its multiple faces, and Heikki hesitated for an instant, glancing at her lens. Four minutes left—not enough for a search, damn it, she thought, and without thinking reached for the block controls. There were disks in nine of the twenty drives; she popped them all, and stuffed the disks into the pocket of her belt. Only then did she turn her attention to the emergency exit.
The heavy door, an airtight hatch more like an airlock’s outer seal than something you’d find in an expensive office suite, was hidden behind a painted screen. Heikki pushed that aside impatiently, and bent to study the lock. It was a type she recognized, and her spirits rose for the first time that day. The lock mechanism was designed to operate separately from the alarm, to allow for inspection; the trick was to find the codes that disabled the trigger. She frowned over it for a moment, then fished the data lens out of her belt, adjusting the bezel to an analyst setting. It was designed to pick up callcodes from the communications system, “reading” the tones as the system itself would, and translating them into numbers—not precisely an illegal function, Heikki thought, setting the lens against the box above the tiny number plate, but one the use of which required a certain amount of discretion. She studied the mechanism for a moment longer, then took a deep breath and pressed all the numbers in rapid succession. She hit the cancel button before the signal could go through—the alarm gave a gasping rattle, and subsided— and lifted the lens away. As she hoped, four numbers glowed in its depths: the key to the system. Or so she hoped. She smiled to herself, wry-mouthed, and pressed the four buttons. There was a moment of silence, and then an orange light flared above the lock. The system was disabled.
Heikki sighed, and depressed the latch, swinging back the heavy door, but paused long enough to pull the screen back across the opening. With luck, that would buy her a minute or two more, she thought, and tugged the door closed behind her.
The escape corridor was dimly lit, the lights amber and spaced several meters apart. Heikki blinked hard, and stretched out one hand to the wall, feeling her way along the padded surface until her eyes had adjusted to the light. According to Shen’s plans, the tunnel ran d
irectly along the firewall that formed the edge of the office suite, with only one sharp bend just before the exit into the piazzetta. She kept her hand on the wall as she increased her speed, her footsteps dulled by the thick flooring, looking for the turn that marked the exit. She did her best to move quietly, straining her ears for any sign of pursuit, but the only noise was her own steps, and the rasp of her breathing. Then at last the tunnel turned, and ended abruptly in another heavy door.
There was no lock box on this side. Heikki swore under her breath, and crouched to examine the mechanism more closely. Sure enough she could just see the wires that led through the sealant into the release bar, but there was no way to reach them from this side of the door. And why should there be, after all? she thought, and reached under her skirt for her knife. This part of the system would be tested from the outside, not from within. She pried at the seal, scraping for the wires, but the opening was too narrow. Then, distantly, she heard a voice shout something indistinct: Tremoth’s securitrons had figured out where she’d gone. There was no time left for finesse. She sighed, sliding the knife back into its sheath, and depressed the lock release. Instantly, the alarm wailed, a strident, two-toned siren, loud enough to hurt the ears, and the door swung outward, letting in a wedge of bright blued light from the piazzetta’s artificial suns. She blinked, blinded, but stumbled out onto the harder tile, blinking hard to clear her sight. Green clouds danced in front of her, obscuring all but the vaguest shapes; from a distance, she heard someone shout, and then the shrilling of a securitron’s whistle. She swore, ‘pointer manners forgotten, turned blindly to her right, where the maze of shops should begin, and felt someone grasp her left arm just above the elbow. She turned instinctively into the hold, her right hand coming up in the proper counterblow, and that too was blocked and held.
“My,” a too-familiar voice said in her ear, “haven’t you made a mess of things.”
CHAPTER 9
Heikki let herself be drawn away from the whooping alarm and the confused shouts, stumbling on suddenly uneven tiles. Then she was pushed through a door into darkness, and then through a second door into the subdued lights of a side tunnel. A hand snatched at her turban, pulling it loose, and Galler said, “Must you wear precinct clothes? You stand out like a sore thumb.”
“I work in the precincts,” Heikki said, and grabbed back the strip of cloth. Her sight had cleared now; they stood in one of the deliveryways that ran between the blocks of shops, the passage empty now except for neatly flattened and stacked piles of used packaging. She folded her turban as small as possible, grimly aware that Galler was right, her clothing was conspicuous, and then, changing her mind, wound the strip of cloth around her waist in imitation of a fashionable nuobi. It would help hide her own belt, with its many pockets, too. She shook her head vigorously, then ran her fingers through her tangled hair, trying to shape it into something resembling a style. Galler frowned, and fumbled in the pockets of his well-cut jacket until he produced a length of black ribbon. Heikki glared, but took it, and bound her hair into a short tail, then stooped to fasten all the clasps of her shift. That closed the walking slits, narrowing the skirt to a fashionable silhouette, and Galler nodded grudging approval.
“Better, anyway,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. “Come on.” He started down the deliveryway without looking back.
Heikki made a face, but followed, enough in control of her temper to recognize necessity. “What the hell were you doing there?”
Galler glanced back, a cherub’s smile playing on his lips. It was an expression that rarely failed to drive Heikki to attempt homicide. This time, however, she controlled herself with an effort, and repeated her question.
Galler’s smile broadened. “Waiting for you.”
“And if you knew I was going to be there,” Heikki said, her voice thin with anger and the need to suppress it, “why did you let me run myself into that trouble?”
Galler shrugged. “I needed to. Did you, by any chance, pick up the disks that were in my machine?”
Heikki’s jaw dropped, and then she closed her mouth firmly over her first response. He had known she would do it, he had known—had assumed, after twenty years of almost no contact between them—that she would take the time to steal his disks, and, worse, he had been right. “No,” she said deliberately. “Are you crazy? Why would I do a thing like that?” She was savagely glad to see his face fall.
“It would have been useful—” Galler began—betrayed, Heikki thought, into an unguarded utterance?—and then cut himself off. He said, with an attempt at his earlier manner, “Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. You always were too honest, Heikki.”
“Not a family fault, I see,” Heikki murmured, and was rewarded by a single angry glance before Galler had himself under control again.
“But profitable, you must admit.” They were almost at the end of the deliveryway, and he took a deep breath, stepping out onto the main street.
Heikki followed, grateful for the crowd of pedestrians that swallowed them instantly. This was one of the major markets, specializing in gems; the pedestrians were uniformly well-dressed, the professional dealers in expensive, casual clothes mingling with and deliberately indistinguishable from the tourists who moved slowly along the promenade, stopping now and then to gawk at the merchandise displayed on the shops’ window screens. There were corporate hacks as well, but not so many of them, and most of them wore their uniforms with a difference that suggested they were of sufficient rank to ignore the house rules. A bit above my usual company, Heikki thought, automatically matching her pace to that of the people around her.
“What now?” she said under her breath, and smiled blankly at her brother.
“We catch a jitney at the end of the plaza,” Galler answered, and Heikki frowned.
“Not here—?” she began, and realized her mistake almost as soon as she had spoken.
“Traffic restricted,” Galler answered. “They’re worried about crime, want to cut off the escape routes.” He took her arm in what seemed to be a polite gesture. The grip bit hard, and Heikki suppressed a curse. “Don’t look back.”
Heikki did as she was told, her mouth setting briefly into an ugly grimace. Obeying the pressure on her arm, she slowed before a display of jewelry, cage-coronet and bracelets and heavy collar, set with flawed PDE crystals. Even in the imperfect reproduction of the window, the crystals flared blue and white, strikingly beautiful against the black metal mesh that formed both backing and setting.
“The mesh is an energy damper—lavanite, I think,” Galler said. “Otherwise there’d be a danger of random discharge injuring the owner or his or her companions.”
I do know that, Heikki thought, irritated, and then realized that they were within earshot of another couple. She smiled sweetly and said, “One wouldn’t want that, of course. Just think of the insurance.”
Galler’s lips twitched—as much in surprise, Heikki thought, as in amusement—but he answered with commendable steadiness, “No, the liability would be high.”
The stranger couple had moved away. Heikki kept her smile as she said, “What’s going on, Galler?”
“Securitrons,” her brother answered tightly. “Behind us, coming up the street.” He turned away from the window, his hand still linked lightly, urgently through her elbow, drawing her on up the street. Behind them, Heikki could hear exclamations and the shrill peep of a whistle, and fought down the urge to run.
“What in the world—?” a strange voice exclaimed, quite close by, and Galler drew Heikki into the relative shelter of a shop entrance.
“Robbery?” he called over his shoulder, and a moment later they were joined by a well-dressed man whose face, close up, was a little too hard for his fine suit. A carrycase was slung over one shoulder, apparently idly, but then Heikki saw his knuckles go white on the strap. A jewel courier, she guessed, and made herself look anywhere except at the case. On the street, pedestrians scattered to either side of the main t
ravelway, tourists’ voices rising in immodest alarm as they tried to crowd against the shop windows and entrances. The merchants had locked their doors at the first hint of trouble. Heikki could see a frightened face staring through a peephole almost level with her shoulder. Then the securitrons swept by, a dozen of them riding two-man hoverfans, a dozen more on foot. Heikki stared in genuine astonishment—all this for me? or for him, she added silently, certainly, and could not help glancing at Galler. On her other side, the jewel courier whispered something that might have been a curse.
“What is the name of—?” someone else began, and remembered belatedly where she was.
And then the procession had swept past out of sight, whistles shrilling again to clear the intersection. Heikki allowed herself a soundless sigh of relief, and looked at Galler, who silenced her with a pressure of his hand. All around them, voices rose in worried speculation, here and there a voice demanding petulantly or in genuine fear to be taken home at once. Only she and Galler and the courier were silent, and she saw the courier eyeing them sidelong, the hard eyes narrowing.
She pitched her voice high, aiming for the fashionable squeal she found intolerable. “What could that have been about?” she cried. Galler gave her an irritated look, but the jewel courier looked away, his suspicion visibly easing. “I think we should leave, right now.”
Mighty Good Road Page 25
