All at once Vida yawned, gulping air. No wonder this conversation doesn’t make sense, she thought. I’m so dred.
‘I’ve got to go to bed. Please fill the bedroom with white sound and darken the windows.’
Vida got only a few hours’ sleep, though, before Samante woke her, creeping into the dark room in a cloud of apologies. Yawning, stretching, shoving her tangled mass of hair back with both hands, Vida at first had trouble understanding her.
‘Who’s here?’ she said finally. ‘I missed that part.’
‘Molos,’ Samante repeated. ‘Don’t you remember meeting him? Ri Tal Molos, and he has a message from your guardian, Raal.’
Aleen’s name snapped Vida wide awake.
‘I’ll grab some clothes and come right out.’
When Vida, still carrying a hairbrush, hurried into the gather, she found Molos, dressed in a pale grey wrap jacket and blue slashed kilt, waiting for her with his crest uplifted. He stood in the curve of windows, draped in maroon and green flowered silk, that looked down to the gardens of Centre Sect far below. A nervous Greenie, sucking air into and squeezing it out of various sacs, was laying cups of steaming tea and a plate of breads onto the table in front of the long ivory-coloured couch. The Lep bowed to Vida with a flutter of his crest.
‘Good morning, Se Molos,’ Vida said, smiling in return. ‘Do come sit down.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ He limped over to a broad armless chair that Vida had bought especially for Lep visitors. ‘Your hospitality is already legendary, do you know that?’
‘Really? No, I didn’t. But after all, if there was one thing I was taught it was how to make people feel welcome.’
‘A charming trait, and one curiously lacking in most of Government House.’
‘Greenie, you may go.’ Vida tossed the saccule her hairbrush. ‘Samante said you had a message from Aleen?’
‘Yes indeed.’
Molos waited till the saccule had left, then reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a thick sheaf of folded papers, which he solemnly traded for a cup of tea. Vida glanced at the top page and realized that Aleen had written the entire thing with a pen; her round, firm handwriting was unmistakable.
‘Oh, this is wonderful!’ Vida said. ‘Thank you so much!’
‘I hope you continue to find it wonderful. It seems to be a critique.’
Later, when Vida had a chance to read all fourteen pages, a critique was exactly what she found. Aleen had been taking notes on the vidscreen footage of all of Vida’s public appearances. Her hair, her clothes, the way she walked, the way she offered her hand to be shaken, the way she bent down to speak with a child - no detail was too small to escape Aleen’s sharp eyes. Every now and then, while she read, Vida would wince or even talk back to the pages, but she knew that Aleen was always right. Yes, that shirt was too vivid a colour for the cameras, and yes, that dress too tight to wear to a religious ceremony. No, she shouldn’t have spoken that loudly here or whispered so coquettishly there. At the end ran a few lines of praise, and those Vida read over and over. ‘In general you’re doing very well, however. I have some reasons to be proud of you. Remember one crucial thing: you’ll never win over the best families. To them you’ll always be that little cull from Pleasure. But the ordinary people vote the screens, too, and there are more of them. A lot more. With my regards, Aleen Raal.’
She has some reasons to be proud of me, Vida thought. She found herself smiling as if she just might never stop.
* * *
Just about every public building in Palace had a rank of citizen access Map terminals, each isolated from the others by a bright red hood. In a grocery store in Service Sect, Kata found a convenient set and took the one farthest away from the noisy crowds of waiting customers. Since he couldn’t use a fingerprint ID to activate payment, with cash he’d bought the credit tags that activated public services like these. Here and there over the past few days, Kata had been spending the tags searching for information on Riva. He’d started with the list of the Lep cybermasters and Maprunners who’d been publicly banned from the Map by the Peronida’s laws. One at a time he’d tracked other listings down in public records and compiled what data he could find. He knew now who had left the planet and who had compromised themselves and stayed.
The richest data-trove, though not completely reliable, he found in the back files of Pansect Media. Before the war, Lep-owned Pansect had catered to the Lep community; the Peronidas had confiscated it, claiming planetary security, and handed it over to human owners, but its archives reflected its old focus of gossip mongering about the lives of the rich and eminent Leps on planet. Since Pansect had started life as a scratched together shanty-Map operation, its storage site lay at some distance from its other Map addresses and thus had escaped damage during the peculiar crash that had bedevilled the company the week before. Kata was looking for scraps of information indicating a master who would particularly resent having her career ruined by injustice but who would have good reason for remaining on Palace nonetheless. Speaking Gen as her third or fourth language would be another good indicator - if of course the master was even really female, Kata reminded himself.
While he worked, Kata kept close track of the time, but even so, Sar Elen, arriving a few minutes early, caught him at his research. The youngling let his crest droop as Kata powered out of a report, with video, of a banquet given by the Benar family.
‘That’s an odd thing to be listening to,’ Elen remarked; he was using the Lep language and speaking it very quietly.
‘I’ve got my reasons.’ Kata answered him in the same.
‘Of course.’ Elen lifted his head reflexively to expose throat. ‘I’m not questioning, only wondering.’
Kata grunted and pulled out his tag. The Map terminal sighed once and went dead.
‘I was just looking for pictures of the Floating Amphitheatre,’ Kata said. ‘You can see the details of a place on these old newsfeeds.’
Elen’s crest lifted.
‘Every bit of data helps,’ Kata went on. ‘So. Has our leader told you where we’re going?’
‘Yes. A courier brought me the message this morning. It’s not far.’
They left the grocery store and walked out into a chilly afternoon. In the fog the passers-by, mostly Leps here in Service Sect, walked fast with their jackets wrapped tight around them. Kata and Elen strode along in the crowd, then turned down a side-street. Just as they crossed to the other sidewalk, Kata saw a flash of a familiar colour and swung his head around fast. A slender human girl, her hair a long mane of russet-red, was walking in the opposite direction. He stopped, stared, and realized that it wasn’t Vida, just some other red-haired girl. What an odd coincidence - he’d never seen a redheaded human before, and now he’d seen two.
With a shrug he followed Elen into an alley between two white dwells. Above, narrow bridges crossed, binding the two buildings together. At street level bright red doors led into small shops -food stores, mostly, with signs in their windows stating that they could carry no more credit. ‘Pay on receipt’ was a new policy for a race renowned for honouring its debts. The alley debouched into a square courtyard with a cracked fountain, filled with litter, standing in the middle. A few hatchlings crouched on the dirty pavement and played with toy shuntjammers. On the far side, in a shabby low building, another red door led into a tiny store crammed with used furniture. Heaps of cushions leaned against every wall; rolled webbings lay on top of storage chests woven from thin wooden slats. Huge brass jugs, most of them scratched and tarnished, stood crammed together. In the centre of this clutter stood a black plasto Map desk, heaped with little straw boxes and tiny slings, wrapped round trinkets. A grandfather, his neck bowed from the weight of his gold chains, stood behind it.
‘We’ve come to talk with Zir,’ Elen said.
The old man considered, exposing his brown and cracking teeth, then jerked a thumb in the direction of a door in the back wall. Kata followed Elen through into a brightly-lit room heaped with photonics and electronics: old Mapscreens, hunks of terminals, interface boards, transmits, comm units, output stations. Some lay stacked on a counter that ran three-quarters of the way round the room; others sat in boxes that trailed power cords like spilled guts. On the far wall stood a closed door. Perched on a sling, halfway up a side wall, sat a young Lep woman, wearing a dirty grey smock over a long flowered kilt. Jewelled studs gleamed in piercings at the corners of her mouth.
‘Elen,’ she said. ‘Have you brought me a customer?’
‘I have, the fellow you were told about. The one who wants to talk about output stations.’
‘For multiple copies?’ Her crest lifted slightly when she looked at Kata. She had eyes of the finest scarlet, set at a pronounced slant; she narrowed them provocatively and looked at him sideways.
‘Practically a hatch of them,’ Kata answered. ‘For a mailing.’
At this exchange of code words, she lifted her crest a little higher and swung down from the webbing, dropping gracefully to the floor with a swirl of skirt. Kata wondering if his throat were reddening; it had been a long time since he’d met a woman capable of catching his attention the way this one had.
‘Zir,’ Kata bowed to her, head held low. ‘I’m honoured that our presents have crossed.’
‘May our futures cross as well,’ she said gravely. ‘And I’m hoping that you’ll let me share your past. I’ve heard so much about you. I’d love to hear you talk about your triumphs.’
‘I’m sorry, but no. I never talk about my jobs, not even to someone as beautiful as you.’
She hissed at him, wide-mouthed and sexy, then let her crest rustle. When Kata glanced at Elen, he found the youngling pretending to study a chart of fonts on the wall, but he stood easily, perfectly relaxed.
‘I have your new papers for you,’ Zir said. ‘Elen, what’s this about you becoming a street sweeper? You’ve finally found your true calling in life, have you?’
‘Watch your mouth, hatchmate.’ But Elen waved his crest. ‘We need to keep a low profile, that’s all. The Protectors won’t be interested in a pair of cleaners if they stop us for some reason.’
‘That’s true.
She
thinks of everything, doesn’t she?’ Zir nodded Kata’s way. ‘We’re so lucky to serve her.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t agree more.’
‘She’s told me about you,’ Zir paused, then looked him full in the face. ‘But then, even humans have heard about you, Vi-Kata. They’re afraid of you, aren’t they? Good.’
Kata ducked his head modestly and hoped his throat was behaving itself. For a woman to stare boldly at a man could mean only one thing, even here on Palace with its debased ways.
‘I’ll get the papers.’ Zir turned away.
She hurried through the door on the far wall and closed it tightly behind her. Kata realized that Elen was watching him with a rustling crest.
‘She’s one of my hatching mates,’ the youngling said. ‘Too bad, because by God’s Eye, how she’s grown!’
Kata lifted his crest in answer. Even now that he knew his ally could never covet her, did he dare take this female up on their mutual interest? It was dangerous to get attached to anyone, no matter how casually, in his line of work. Yet when she returned, moving with a graceful swing of broad hips, he knew that refusing her offer would give him long nights of lost sleep. When she stared into his eyes, he raised his head and exposed his throat in surrender.
‘Let’s see what you’ve got for us.’ Elen was pretending not to notice. ‘I need to start looking for our new jobs as soon as possible.’ Zir laid on the counter two sets of identification papers, the best forgeries that Kata had ever seen, down to the last crisp detail of the printing.
‘Riva transmitted these to a secret mail drop I have,’ Zir said. ‘I printed them out here.’
‘An excellent job,’ Kata said.
Her crest lifted at his praise. Elen scooped up his set and put them in the inner pocket of his wrap jacket.
‘Kata, I’ll meet you down at the Labour Exchange at the fifteens,’ the youngling said. ‘Zir, my best to your grandmother.’
‘Thank you, Elen.’ Her voice was soft and grave. ‘She remembers you in her meditations.’
With a quick nod, Elen let himself out the near door, which Zir locked behind him. Kata heard him saying a few words to the grandfather at the desk; then the shop fell silent. Her crest upraised, Zir stood watching him. In two quick steps Kata crossed to her and caught her by the shoulders to spin her around. With a gentle jaw he caught the back of her neck in his teeth. She sighed, deep with longing.
‘Come upstairs to my rooms,’ she whispered. ‘No-one will bother us there.’
‘Gladly.’ He ran his teeth ever so lightly along her neck scales, and she shuddered in his grasp. ‘Gladly.’
* * *
In his private office, Karlo sat at his desk and read through the latest set of speeches that his writing team had prepared for him. When he found something he wanted removed or reworked, he talked his changes into the mark-up utility, but he never put the screen into finalizing mode. If he was going to pay specialists, he always figured, he’d be better off letting them earn their salary rather than overriding their decisions without giving them a chance to change his mind.
Down the side of his vidscreen ran a message window, where notes from his staff scrolled in a continuous loop, waiting for him to freeze them and answer. Although most he would ignore till later, he kept glancing at the scroll, waiting for a particular bit of news. Finally it came: popular vote on the Fleet appropriations would start running at thirty past the elevens.
‘Time?’
‘Forty-five into the tens,’ the screen answered. ‘Message mode. Locate Wan and Pero. Tell them to come to the gather in my living quarters right away.’
Pero showed up some ten minutes later, striding in grim-faced to join his father. Since he was still serving under active commission, though on permanent assignment to Government House, he wore grey Fleet fatigues. They went into the gather, a huge pale room with floor to ceiling windows always closed against the fog. Chrome glittered from the picture frames and light fixtures.