Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (14 page)

The girls moved along, and the
transport finally went on its way.

“That ever bother you?”
Sean asked.

In the enclosed space she could smell
the more earthy notes of his scentbots, mixed in with a little melon, maybe. It
was very pleasing.

“Actually, that was the
first time it ever happened. I guess the ambasadoras are becoming
popular.” She didn’t smile when she said that last bit.

And, he didn’t smile when he
said, “I don’t doubt it.”

“So, what’s your client
need?” She hoped to change the subject.

“Huh?”

“Your client? The one you’re
going to meet now?”

“Reporter
implantation.”

Sara didn’t miss the jerky eye
movements just before his answer.

As if sensing her suspicion, he
said, “That’s something you should think about.” He held up his naked
wrist. Blue pictures and words swirled across his palm. “You could get an
implant like this. It’s almost universal because the reprogramming is fast and
easy.”

“I don’t like the thought of
any more foreign objects being implanted into my body.”

“Yeah, I bet those were
difficult to get used to.”

Heat ran up her neck. Did he
know?

She fumbled for a response, but
saw him looking at the purple lights deepening on her arm. Of course. How could
he know about the irradicae?

“Yes, they were…
are
.”
She needed to get away from him. Her emotions could only be kept at bay so long
and this idle chit chat was starting to feel invasive. Reaching a hand to the
console by her side, she pressed the destination button, alerting the automated
train to drop her at the next stop.

“Not going all the way to
the Embassy?” Sean asked.

“It’s better for me to use a
back entrance. Less attention, you know.”

“I can see that being a problem.”

The train stopped.

“Thanks for the company. See
you back aboard.” Her heart sank a little realizing that if she could be
free of Simon, she’d have to run pretty far, and probably wouldn’t ever see
Sean again. She squeezed his hand on the way out. He held onto hers a little
longer, then pulled away as if taken with shyness.

She hoped to recall the
genuineness of his reaction someday, preferably on a secluded beach away from
Simon and his threats. That comforting feeling waned as she boarded the next
transport and continued on to her meeting with Rainer.

“You look well,
considering,” Rainer said.

“Is that a compliment?”
Her anxiety heightened in the glaring tunnel lights.

“It is.”

Silence followed until Sara’s
thoughts got the best of her. “You’re taking a lot of risks to do
this.”

“You want to know why, is
that it?” He touched her shoulder to guide her through a doorway on the
left. The sensation brought back memories of Palomin, aftermath of torture, his
care, his rejection.

“No, you made your feelings
about what Simon did to me very clear. I guess I was trying to say thank
you.” Her heels echoed off the concrete stairs.

“There’s nothing to thank me
for. I’m not even sure what will come of this visit.”

“Still…” she said.

Rainer motioned for Sara to wait
while he opened the door at the top of the landing.

“Is it secure?” he
asked someone she couldn’t see.

“Yes,” a nervous voice
answered.

“Ambasadora Mendoza?”
Rainer tended to use her title when others were around. He gestured her inside the
med facility.

Shining silver and white surfaces
greeted her, putting her on edge.

The doctor who had attended to
her bio-light implantation stepped forward. “Ambasadora Mendoza, it’s
wonderful to see you again. You look beautiful. The black dress complements
your intra-tattoo.”

Sara glanced down at the short
sari she wore and realized she had been wearing black almost every day since
becoming an ambasadora. Was it her subconscious fascination with contractors or
an attempt to battle the constant white surrounding her?

“Thank you. Did Contractor
Varden explain why we came here?”

The doctor licked his lips.
“Yes, and I have to be up front. I’m not comfortable with all of the
secrecy.”

“Trust me,” she said.
“It’s better for all of us that way.”

“You haven’t mentioned this
to anyone, have you?” Rainer had been walking around the bright, sterile
room, noting the colored glass bottles lining the shelves, inspecting the
medical equipment attached to the walls, and feeling under the exam table with
the tips of his fingers. Now, he stood toe to toe with the doctor.

The other man pulled his
shoulders in and tried to shrink away without actually taking a step backward.
“I told no one, as you instructed.”

“Then let’s get this over
with,” Sara said.

“The scanner is back this
way.”

Sara slipped off her sari,
catching Rainer’s scrutiny of her naked body. She stepped into the scanning
cylinder. There was a possibility that Simon had bluffed, that even he couldn’t
resort to such measures.

A few minutes later, the man’s
voice carried through a speaker inside the cylinder. “You can step out now
while I read the scan.”

So fast? As much as she wanted
this all to be over quickly, the rapidity heightened her anxiety.

She emerged from the cylinder to
see Rainer and the doctor watching readings and impressions of her body scroll
over an airscreen. Sara dressed with automatic movements, her mind occupied by
what the scan would reveal.

The doctor said something low to
Rainer.

“Speak to
me
. This is
about
me
.” She yelled because she sensed the truth.

“I’m sorry, ambasadora. I’ve
confirmed that the irradicae are attached to your ovaries. It had to have
happened after the insertion of the intra-tattoo because my scans would have
picked them up before your surgery.”

“I guess Simon’s desperation
outweighed his sense of society.” Bitterness laced Sara’s words. “Get
rid of them. I don’t care how much it costs.”

The doctor looked from Sara to
Rainer, then quickly back again. “I can’t.”

Acid burned in Sara’s stomach.
“Can’t or
won’t
?”

“They’re set to trigger
should anyone try to tamper with them. Most likely there’s also a remote
trigger, could be through a sort of wave, probably transmitted via a large
network like the Media.”

“Those signals are
everywhere. They blanket the entire system,” Rainer said.

There it was, the truth. Numbness
crept into her limbs. Her vision funneled into a narrow dot of brightness as
she stared into the empty scanning cylinder. She wasn’t getting out of this.
For the first time since Palomin she felt like ending it all. Maybe she should
just let the doctor give her the suicide drugs now, bypass the humiliation,
stave off any more pain. Just end it.

Rainer folded her in his arms,
and she wept.

The doleful electronic screeching
of the street player echoed Sean’s mood. It reeked of uneasiness and deceit.
Waiting in the shade of a metal awning, he kept out of the scurrying Hub
activity. As the Embassy staff finished their day, they loaded into transports
or sat and chatted in one of the many perimeter cafés.

The whole corporate scene bugged
the shit out of him.

The tracing program he put on
Sara’s reporter just before he gave it to her showed she was still inside the
Embassy. Maybe she really did have a meeting. He imagined her sitting around
sipping neons or another fruity drink with her sister ambasadoras, discussing
what they should all wear at their next appearance.

He hoped that were the case, but
something about the way she acted at their first meeting said otherwise, said
she was into something more sinister.

A buzzing in his palm alerted him
to her movement. She was coming this way, out a side entrance. He ducked in
among a crowd of female staffers.

“Hi,” a brunette in a
dark suit said. “Come to join us?”

He looked around at the handful
of women and knew by their expressions it was an invitation for more than
casual conversation and a drink.

“Just passing through.”
He maneuvered to a spot concealed by a giant planter overflowing with clematis
stakes. From this vantage he could see and hear Sara without being noticed. A
contractor escorted her.

They emerged from around the
corner of the marble building. Sara had a scarf covering her shoulders, perhaps
to keep her bio-lights hidden and keep the voyeurs at bay.

The contractor led her by the
elbow. Sara stared at her feet as she walked. They remained silent until moving
several meters past Sean’s position.

“Will you be all right
returning to your ship?” the contractor asked.

Sara never looked at him.
“Yes. The sooner, the better.”

From different vantage points,
Sean and the contractor watched Sara board a transport heading back to Shiraz.
Her entire being showed her emotional state at the moment. The contractor, on
the other hand, was a blank slate.

Those times when Sean became a
blank slate to the outside world were when he had the most to hide. So, even
though his first impulse was to follow Sara, he chose to shadow the contractor.

Waltzing into the Embassy wasn’t
the best idea Sean had, but no one knew him from any other citizen. No one
would guess he was a fragger node, in charge of a few dozen commandos who would
rather blow this building up than take a stroll inside it. Moving among the
lobby crowd, he kept an adequate distance behind the contractor. Sean thought
about the lost details of this place when it was mapped and placed into a
training world. The programmers had forgotten the green floor lamps and didn’t
have the lighting quite right on the chalcedony wall. The planters were a few
meters too short, as well. Not even V-side architects paid attention to details
any more, and that was always a good way to mess up as far as Sean was
concerned.

They’d gotten the magnos perfect,
though. Probably a different team working on that lay-out than the lobby
planners. Consistency was sometimes difficult to manage with so many anonymous
contributors.

The contractor moved steadily
toward the corbelled arches of the office area and medical facilities. He
stopped to speak to a female contractor who approached him from an office. They
both glanced in Sean’s direction. Though his pulse pounded, he maintained his
pace, but altered his path slightly so it would seem he was heading toward the
elevator bank. He kept them in his periphery, however, ready to bolt if they
looked his way again.

But they weren’t interested in
Sean any more—they looked to be arguing. Sean was almost to the elevator when
the woman stormed off, her pink and black ponytail flipping after her. The male
contractor continued through the medical arch.

Sean changed course again, but
slowed his gait. He hesitated to keep on the contractor, wondering if perhaps
he’d misread the man, if he really had nothing to hide. Moving further into
enemy territory chilled Sean, yet he couldn’t ignore his instinct.

They meandered through mostly
deserted dark green hallways, Sean hanging a hundred paces back. The contractor
rounded another corner. Sean could see the man’s reflection in the smoky
colored glass of a nearby office door where he stood waiting. Sean tensed. If
the man attacked, Sean had the advantage of being able to see the contractor
coming, but he couldn’t outrun cender fire. The only weapons he had on him were
a half dozen razor discs plated with a special nickel alloy undetectable to
Embassy scanners. When used properly, the bottle capsized discs could be
lethal, but he wouldn’t get more than one or two off before the contractor
fried him.

When the contractor looked back
toward the corner he’d just rounded, Sean backed up a couple of steps and
grabbed a disc from a sheath sewn into his belt. The contractor keyed in an
entry code on the door in front of him, then entered. Sean siphoned the code
with his reporter.

When he reached the door, he
keyed in the code, but didn’t open the door. The contractor could be standing
just on the other side, or a whole room full of people who would know he didn’t
belong there. Judging by other rooms he’d passed on this floor and whose doors
were opened wide, there should be a foyer and a hallway leading to either side.

He was this far—he had to take
that last step.

With quick movements, which he
hoped mimicked someone who was accustomed to entering this area, Sean pushed
into the room. A darkened foyer with small lights along the floor met him. No
sign of anyone.

He stealthed to the inner hallway
and listened for signs of the contractor. Footsteps on a tile floor reached him
from the left.

“Contractor Varden?” A
doctor stood at a metal terminal inside the marginally lit office.

Varden.
The name on the
message waiting for Sara earlier was Rainer Varden. It made sense.

“I noticed you recorded the
results of Ambasadora Mendoza’s scan today.”

Not a meeting. A doctor’s
appointment.

“That’s just an
automatic—”

“Is it also automatic to
send those results elsewhere without the patient being told?”

Surprise registered on the
doctor’s pale face. “I would never….”

“That’s what you’re doing
right now. I put in a security measure to alert me if you accessed this system
within thirty-six hours of the ambasadora’s scan. If it’s not her results
you’re sending out, then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m sending them to the
Sovereign.”

“Why would you do
that?” Rainer moved closer to the doctor.

“So he knows I had nothing
to do with this.” The doctor sounded nervous. “I’m sorry if the
ambasadora is your amour—”