Standing in ranks around the mother of pearl dais were easily a hundred human pix, camera hands pointing, swinging in arcs, focusing down on new targets, pointing again while the intakes among them subvocalized data to their implants. As if at a signal they all swung toward Vida. Light fell on her in a column of gold and blinded her utterly.
Don’t fail me, Vida.
Vida smiled with a toss of her head that made her hair ripple around her shoulders.
‘This is so lovely,’ she called out. ‘I’m so happy to be here.’
The pix sighed and pushed forward, a happy crush, calling out, ‘Look this way, turn right, straight forward, can you wave a little, that’s it, smile now smile smile smile .. .’ Vida turned and smiled and waved and smiled and turned again.
‘That’s enough!’ Karlo’s voice boomed out. ‘Turn that spot off, will you?’
The column of gold flickered and disappeared. Her eyes full of sudden tears, Vida blindly turned Karlo’s way. Pero caught her arm again and gave it a comforting squeeze.
‘Good job, little sister,’ he whispered. ‘Now we’re going to go up the steps. Count ‘em one, two, three.’
At the top she could see again. Karlo stood, one hand outstretched, smiling at her while Vanna watched him with poison in her eyes.
‘Father,’ Vida said. ‘May I call you father?’
‘Of course, child,’ Karlo said.
While Vida made him a formal bow, she caught Vanna’s expression, a good bit less poisonous now. Vanna turned to whisper to Wan, who scowled, then stepped forward to take Vida’s arm.
‘No poaching on my preserve, brother,’ he said to Pero.
His voice rang false as a hologram’s smile, but the gridjockeys loved it, clustering close, pointing and murmuring, always pointing even as they shoved each other for the best positions. Wan made a show of clasping his hand over Vida’s, of kissing her forehead chastely while Pero made faces at him behind his back. A family moment. Human interest. It would be all over the vidscreens by the morning, Vida knew. She looked up at Wan and smiled the smile she’d practised against the day when she would take her place among the Marked women of The Close and greet her first customer. All at once, out in the hall, someone clapped, another pair of hands joined in, then more and more - a cascade of approval rang round the enormous hall.
Laughing, Karlo raised both hands and turned slowly round in a circle, calling for silence, while Vanna began whispering stage directions - Vida and Wan to sit on a small divan directly behind Karlo, Pero and Damo to hurry off to the side, while she herself sat in a gilded chair next to the cardinal’s. Once they were settled, Karlo stepped to a small podium, a black pillar, truncated at an angle, with rainbow colours flickering over its surface. Vida noticed a small transmit clipped to the wide collar of his uniform.
‘Citizens of Palace, I’m pleased to be able to introduce Se Vida L’Var. Yes, we all remember the treason her family committed, but she was only an infant, an innocent little child, at the time. Now that my son has found her, I think it’s time to heal that old wound. The L’Vars were a noble family once and will be again. When my son, Wan, came to me and told me just who he’d fallen in love with, I was furious at first, but he talked me round.’ Wan pasted on a smile.
‘So,’ Karlo went on. ‘I can understand that you, too, must be wondering how anyone could consider raising a family that had fallen so far. But look at this child! Is she really stained with her family’s treason? All I’m asking is this: give the girl a chance to be herself, in the here and now. Give her a chance to redeem her family name, not be dragged under by it.’ He paused, looking round the crowd, making careful eye contact with various individuals that, Vida assumed, he’d salted there earlier. ‘Can we do this? Can we put the past aside and let the L’Var family live again?’
The salts in the crowd began to cheer and clap. Caught up in the moment the guests began to join them, a few here and there at first, then more and more until the metallic hall seemed to buzz like a warplane with applause. When Vida smiled at Wan, he looked away and slumped a little on the divan, his full mouth set in a sulk. Oh how loath! she thought. He’s five years old or something! A beaming Karlo held up both hands again for silence.
‘Thank you, my friends,’ Karlo went on. ‘Thank you, my fellow citizens. I know that you’re all wondering about the genetic marker that set the L’Var clan apart. Well, she’s already had a gene scan, and the marker is there, but I think you all deserve to see for yourself, to prove her family line ... Cardinal?’
Roha rose, bowing rather randomly - it would be hard to see through that veil, Vida thought. Carefully he shuffled the few steps to the front of the dais and laid a hand lightly on the podium-like black pillar. Since the pix still swarmed around, he flung back his veil in a dramatic gesture and held the pose for a few moments before speaking in his booming dark voice, well-suited for the cathedrals of the Eye.
‘Citizens of Centre, Palace, and the Great Pinch itself, I have come before you this day as a Witness for God.’ The cardinal raised his gold-gloved hands and the crowd hushed. ‘Today, we celebrate a great healing. Se Wan Peronida, the son and heir of our beloved First Citizen, has found the last of the L’Vars, and she has won his heart. The Eye of God, who sees all, has decreed that the suffering of the L’Vars must end. But first we must prove without any trace of doubt the heritage of this girl.’
Roha gestured to a woman standing at the foot of the dais Sister Romero, Vida recognized, wearing a sunsilk shift of black embroidered with stars. She clasped her heavily veined hands at her waist and looked down as she strode up the steps. The cardinal held out one hand in acknowledgement.
‘My fellow citizens,’ he went on, ‘this is Sister Romero from the holy world of Retreat. Many of you know her as the Pope’s Eye. She came to Palace for many reasons, but now she’s taken on an additional task. She’s graciously agreed to test Se Vida and, with the permission of the Family Peronida, to approve the marriage contract.’
He paused, letting the crowd murmur among itself for a few minutes. The people nearer to the dais, the ones Vida could see, were nodding to each other in approval. The entire Pinch trusted the Pope of Retreat and his direct messengers, the Itinerants. The cardinal motioned to Vida to stand, then bowed to Sister Romero.
‘Shall we proceed?’ he said.
Sister Romero turned her dark gaze on Vida, then summoned her with the curl of one hand. As Vida walked over, she was only aware of Romero’s eyes, judging her, probing her so intensely that Vida wondered if she were actually a cyberdroid instead of the flesh and blood she seemed.
‘Stand there,’ Romero said, and her voice seemed oddly soft compared to those dark eyes.
‘Yes, just by the console.’
Vida stood. With flicks of her bony fingers, Romero activated the holo function of the panel. A revenant appeared, about the size of Vida’s forearm, and bowed to the Itinerant. All round the dais the gridjockeys pressed in, subvocalizing to increase the power to the audio pickups they wore in their headbands. Romero waited until this insect-buzz died away.
‘Meta: Romero One,’ she said. ‘My name is Romero. Identify yourself.’
‘Geno-deen ident unit.’
‘Have you been accessed before this moment?’
‘No. First access under Romero-One meta nine seconds previously.’
‘Are you prepared to conduct a genetic DNA test and cross-match the result to the database of human DNA compiled and stored by Retreat?’
‘Yes.’
Romero offered her palm to Vida, who placed her hand in the Itinerant’s dry and gentle grip. Romero turned her hand over and laid it palm-down upon the console. Vida gasped as a glass fang pricked her index finger. On the console a small black circle turned a sudden red, filled with her blood. When Romero released her hand, Vida sucked the tip of her finger. Camera hands swung her way to record the gesture. ‘Analyse,’ Romero said. After a few seconds, the rev spoke. ‘Genetic code sequencing complete.’
‘Search the sample for the following peptide chain: AGT AGC TCG GTA ...’ Romero reeled off a string of codons from memory while the pix swung her way, recording.
‘Found,’ the rev answered immediately. ‘Linked pair, allele positive, peptide unique. The subject is unquestionably a L’Var Prime. Family traits follow. Female line: ambidextrous, red hair-’.
‘Stop.’ The cardinal stepped forward, and at his command the rev paused. When Roha nodded slightly to the Pope’s Eye, Romero ignored him. He hesitated for a moment, then went on.
‘Palace is grateful to you for your service, Sister Romero. But I really don’t believe that we need a complete listing of all L’Var genetic traits. These two children would be too old to enjoy their marriage.’
The audience dutifully laughed. Romero seemed to be studying the cardinal’s elaborate robes. Finally, she shrugged and turned to the rev.
‘Lock database. End meta: Romero One.’
The rev vanished. Smiling, raising his hands in benediction, the cardinal stepped forward again.
‘Gentlefolk, we have our final proof. This innocent child is the last of the L’Vars.’
People began to clap, first a scatter, then a swell of applause, booming and slapping on the polished walls of the hall, on and on, louder and louder. Just as it seemed sure to fade, Karlo strode forward and flung up one hand for silence. The other he clamped onto Vida’s shoulder and squeezed in what he must have thought was a reassuring manner. Vida winced.
‘Please welcome her,’ Karlo said, ‘an innocent child saved from being Marked to Pleasure Sect so she could bring happiness to Centre and joy to the Peronidas.’ He looked down at the swarm of pix and intakes. ‘We’ve set aside one of the side rooms for you people. She’ll answer your questions there.’
Vida saw Brother Dav and two of his security guards pushing their way toward her. Behind her she could hear Samante whispering to Wan, and while she couldn’t make out the words, the interpreter’s tone stung like a goad - which Wan needed, apparently. When he joined her, he looked down on her as if she were a burden of inexpressible weight. Vida remembered Aleen, smiled brilliantly, and allowed herself to be led away. The gridjockeys trailed after, like a long ragged cloud chasing a storm.
* * *
The wood-panelled room stank of humans and spilled drink, barley beer and fermented fruit in equal measure. In the dim shadows that flickered from the vidscreen on the wall, human men crowded around one long table while Leps sat at the other. Dice rattled above the whisper of the vidscreen, which the Lep bartender had silenced at his patrons’ request. Vi-Kata didn’t need to hear the audio. He sat alone, nursing a glass of bright red liqueur, and watched Vida’s triumph with rage building in his heart. Government House. They had taken her to Government House, the one place on this stinking mouldy planet that he could never reach. Kata had become the great assassin he was by knowing his own limits. For him to try some elaborate ruse to get past Dukayn’s defence system would mean a wasted suicide. Sooner or later, though, the little human bitch would have to come out. She would be guarded, of course, but guards were not Government House.
He finished his drink in one swallow and stood up, smoothing down his most recent change of clothes, a long tunic and a wrap kilt, shabby but respectable enough. With this suit he could wear the amber pendant openly, though he’d transferred it to a cheap, strong chain. He tossed the Lep bartender a coin.
‘Toilet back there?’ Kata jerked his thumb in the direction of the back of the bar.
‘Yes, Se. Down that hall. It’s the blue door.’
Kata had just reached the entrance to the narrow hallway when the front door of the bar banged open. He took two quick strides into shadows, then glanced back to see Protectors, red armour flickering like fire in the moving light, trotting into the room, stunsticks at the ready.
‘Hey, what?’ the bartender shouted. ‘Nothing wrong going on in here!’
‘Then you don’t have to worry, do you?’ One of the Protectors glanced around. ‘All right, all of you, up against the wall! You -down there in the hall - get out here!’
Kata opened not the blue but the unpainted door Riva’s message had told him about and stepped through. He could hear the Protector shouting as he shot the bolt that locked it - a thin thing, and they’d break through in seconds. With one hand he found his pendant and pulled it free of his shirt. It gleamed in the darkness of the storage room to show a gate was near. When he whispered the activation code, a portal appeared on the far wall.
‘Open up!’ A voice from the hall, and then a heavy body slammed hard into the wooden door behind him. ‘Open up now!’
Kata strode across the room and stepped through the transmit gate. Although the icy feel of non-existent fingers made him as nauseated as ever, he could feel his crest lift as he imagined the look on the Protectors’ faces when they burst through to find the room empty. Behind him the door disappeared, leaving him in the usual pale grey cubicle. He could hear, as always, the throb that might have been heavy machinery. With a heavy sigh he leaned against a wall to wait. Those Protectors - were they a routine police sweep, or had someone realized that he was on planet, his brother perhaps?
Far up on the opposite wall a point of light appeared, spread, then transformed itself not into the directed hologram he was expecting, but the image of a vidscreen. In the upper right corner Riva appeared like a news presenter, smiling her peculiarly human smile. The rest of the screen windowed into images of Vida and Wan Peronida, some from the front, some the side, long shots, close-ups, all patterned into a mosaic of gesture and movement -somehow or other Riva had accessed the raw feed from one of the news centres on the Map. The pair was sitting in a pale gold room, it seemed, and although there was no sound, from the way that one or the other of them would speak briefly, then wait before speaking again, Kata could guess the presence of intakes, just out of camera range.
‘Riva! Can you hear me?’
‘Of course, Vi-Kata, of course. This is just a little show for your amusement.’
‘I know that I have failed.’ Kata’s head felt far too heavy; it seemed to sink toward his chest of its own will. ‘Let my ancestors know of my shame. The girl still lives.’