‘This isn’t one of your beastly holonovels.’
‘Oh, I know. It’ll probably be Jak.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I’m just afraid that -’
‘That no-one will save me? Well, yeah. I thought of that too. But there’s going to be guards everywhere.’
‘I’m frightened, Vida, really really frightened. Palace always seemed so safe, and now I feel like anything could happen.’
‘Really? It never seemed safe to me, not in Pleasure Sect.’
‘No? Well, no, I don’t suppose it did.’
Samante picked up a fruit roll and tried a bite, then put it back down.
‘There’s one thing I wanted to tell you,’ Vida said abruptly. ‘With your law-uncle gone, you could leave this job if you wanted. I know you’re wasting yourself here, with all your interpreter’s training, I mean, and I know you never wanted to be anyone’s factor. My feelings won’t be hurt if you leave.’
For a moment Vida was afraid that Samante would cry.
‘That’s awfully kind of you,’ Samante said at last. ‘But you promised me that job as the L’Var Chief Interpreter, remember? A position like that’s worth waiting for, so I think I’ll just stay on.’
They looked at each other and smiled. Vida was groping for something to say that wouldn’t come out sentimental when from the kitchen rang the crash and ping of breaking glass. Samante shrieked and clamped one hand over her mouth. Vida leapt to her feet and yelled.
‘Greenie!’
Moaning and stinking, the saccule appeared in the doorway with the remains of a flower vase in its hands just as Jak came barrelling in from the gather. Although Samante laughed, the sound edged toward hysteria.
‘Oh by the Eye!’ Samante said. ‘I don’t know what I thought that was.’
‘The assassin, of course.’ Jak scowled at Greenie. ‘Wretched animal! Go clean that up!’
With a skirl from a chest sac Greenie skittered off. Growling under his breath Jak turned and stalked away.
‘We’re all going to be nervous wrecks till this is over, let’s face it.’ Vida sat back down.
‘TeeKay and Dan said they’d go through with it, by the way. Being witnesses, I mean.’
‘Did they really?’
‘Oh yeah. TeeKay said: shit, this is the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. You can’t cut me out of it now.’
This time Samante’s laugh sounded normal.
‘Well, then, at least I don’t have to worry about finding you last-minute witnesses. That’s something, I suppose.’
* * *
Out on the Map, Hi borrowed Rico’s rhomboidal personal icon, which Riva would most likely identify as a directory and ignore. He reached the frame page location of Rico’s deen sig insertion device, placed the rhomboid in a row of similar icons, and settled in to wait.
* * *
The contract ceremony would begin at the thirteens. Just at the twelves Kata reached the east gate of Government House. He was wearing his Power Guild coveralls, stripped of the janitorial greys, with new Power Guild ID pinned to a breast pocket, and carrying his toolkit. On the far side of the broad avenue, at the corner of a cross-street, he stopped and considered the situation. In front of the only functional entrance to Government House traffic snarled and backed up for at least two blocks: robocabs, private cars, service trucks, the occasional public bus. Just inside the entrance itself, a two-lane gap in the blueglass walls, he could see checkpoints. He’d expected no less. With Riva working behind the scenes, they weren’t going to matter.
Swinging his toolkit in one hand, his false papers ready in the other, Kata crossed the street. A side walk led to the pedestrian lane off to one side, where a long line of servants, technicians, and government workers, more than a few of them Leps, waited with papers in hand. As the line inched along, Kata yawned every now and then, glanced around, kept checking the time implant in his wrist. Other sapients were doing the same, but he was doubtless the only one timing the circuits of the surveillance choppers overhead. When the line made a turn, he could see ahead a guard kiosk and beyond it a pair of Garang Marines. Those he hadn’t expected, although as he thought about it the precaution seemed reasonable enough.
His turn came at last. At the wide window in the kiosk he laid his papers down, then slung his toolkit up next to them for inspection. He knew that his hands were crossing an invisible scanner beam, but he moved no faster than any sapient would. A human woman took the kit and began going through it while a clerk inspected the papers.
‘Slow going, huh?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ the clerk said. ‘Here’s your papers back. I’ve stamped them. Just show the stamp when you’re stopped again, and believe me, buddy, you will be.’
‘All right, good.’
The guard looked up sharply.
‘Hey,’ Kata said. ‘Do you think I want to see another tragedy? I’d rather wait in line half a day than that.’
‘That’s a good attitude to have. Wish more people shared it.’
With a smile the woman returned his kit. Kata raised his crest politely and walked on.
* * *
‘He’s here,’ Dukayn said. ‘There goes the alarm. Code red, Brother Thorn.’
The Lifegiver turned to the control panel and hit a preprogrammed switch. Rico let out his breath in a long sigh. All morning he’d brooded the fear that his fix-up would fail.
‘Hernanes, stay here and watch.’ Dukayn gestured at the vidscreen, windowed with surveillance feeds. ‘Just in case.’
‘Damn right I will.’
With a quick wave Dukayn strode out. Rico settled into a chair in front of the screen. He had a brief moment of wishing that he could hunt with Dukayn’s pack. He wanted to get hold of a weapon and run Kata down, or maybe even kill him for Vida’s sake. You’re as bad as she is, he told himself. Holonovels! He looked at his hands, his long slender fingers, bred for the fine work that he could do so well. In a way, in the way that would count, he already had them around Kata’s neck.
Kata had nearly reached his hidden rifle when all his instincts started screaming that something was wrong. Behind him the traffic began thinning out, as if the entrance had been suddenly closed. All around him lay the office buildings that did the real work of Government House, but the normal noise of the day had turned hushed, as if somewhere at the perimeter of his vision police were clearing pedestrians out of harm’s way. Kata darted off the sidewalk, ran across a lawn, and reached the stand of heavy frond-trees planted between two windowless power stations. He squatted in the shadows among the trees and began to dig through the fallen fronds and soft dirt, pulpy with mushrooms. When his fingers touched cold plastosheet, his crest waved. He pulled out the sack holding his rifle, slid off the plastosheet covering, and retrieved the pieces. First the ceramic barrel, then the battery pack snapped into the housing. He was armed. He got up, leaving the sack and the toolkit where they lay.
Kata had planned on carrying the rifle, in pieces and inside his shoulder sack, as he walked openly toward the Cathedral, which was bordered on one side by the cloisters of the Eye but on the other by a heavily planted park that would have provided shelter. No hope for that now
- he slunk through the corridor of frond-trees and surveyed the terrain around him. Overhead, he could hear the choppers gathering, sweeping in wide circles. Would they be projecting scanner beams? What had gone wrong? Somehow or other Riva had failed to hide him. That was all he needed to know.
Off to the north beyond the power stations lay open lawns and two tall office buildings - no cover there. He turned and looked down the corridor of frond-trees toward the south. Their shelter ran for about half a block more; beyond it he could see a spread of low buildings and narrower streets that, he knew from studying his maps, housed shops and restaurants. He’d hoped to avoid them. Cursing under his breath, moving from tree to tree, the pulse rifle ready, he headed south, then paused in the shadows at the end of his safe corridor. A lone Protector, unarmoured, was trotting down the sidewalk and talking into a comm unit as he went. Kata stepped out behind him and fired. The silent pulse struck the Protector in the middle of his back; he spasmed as his heart locked, then fell forward, hitting the sidewalk hard. Kata raced forward and grabbed the comm unit, then ran across the street. Far behind him someone shouted. In the middle of a turquoise lawn stood a grotesque white structure of huge pillars and statues - some sort of monument. Kata darted in among them. For a few seconds the shiny white stone would confuse tracer beams. He clamped the comm unit to his ear and heard a calm, dark voice - Dukayn, most likely.
‘He’s heading toward the shopping village. Red Four, swing around on Tay Avenue. Gold Seven’s coming up to reinforce. Shit! We have a casualty. Kata’s armed.’
They were tracking him down as easily as they’d find a Lep at an UJU rally. Hostages! Kata turned and ran for the shopping village. In his ear, the voice kept talking, disposing units of Garang Marines in a deadly circle. Overhead the choppers swung lower and pounded the air. The circle was drawing in smaller, tighter. Kata ducked down a service alley, turned to a flimsy back door, kicked it open, and burst through into a fruit market. Orange, red, and blue: the merchandise lay in bright, tidy rows on counters in the utterly empty store - not a clerk, not a customer, no-one. Dukayn must have cleared the entire area.
‘So. This is the day I die. Very well, we’ll see who goes with me.’
Kata ran to the front door and looked out into a deserted street, glanced each way and saw Marines charging from both ends. He ducked back into the market, swirled around and saw a human man, dressed in black and carrying a long black tube, standing in the back door. Kata swung up his rifle, but the fellow fired first. Some sort of energy weapon - Kata suddenly realized that he was still alive, still thinking. He’d been hit by some sort of stun beam. He could not move. His legs were collapsing under him. With an effort of will he tried to fire the rifle, but his hands spasmed and flung it to the floor. He managed one step, lurched, hit a bin, and fell in a long spray of tumbling red plums, smashing like drops of blood on the floor around him. He tried to speak, failed, and realized that his entire body had gone numb. The man in black laughed.
‘I’m Dukayn,’ he said. ‘You’re not going die, Kata, not just yet. I’m going to enjoy watching your execution on the vids.’ He raised his voice. ‘All right, men. Good job. Let’s get this bastard into custody.’
* * *
Up in the blueglass security centre, Rico and Brother Thorn both leapt from their seats and yelled, one sharp bark of victory, then watched the Garang Marines snap a control collar around Kata’s neck. Two of them hauled him up by the arms and began dragging him away.
‘I can’t believe my fix-up worked so well,’ Rico said.
‘Don’t sell yourself short, Hernanes. If you ever had a yen to do security work, Dukayn would take you on in a minute.’
‘Yeah? Thanks, but no thanks.’ Rico called up his time implant: just shy of the thirteens.
‘Well, I’ll be getting on my way.’
‘You could stay and watch the ceremony if you wanted. It’ll be starting any moment. You’ll get to see it from all angles up here, that’s for sure. Or are you one of the lucky ones with an invitation?’
‘No. Thanks anyway, but I think I’m going to go get some sleep.’
Rico turned and strode out, walking fast without really watching where he was going. Any moment. Any moment now the music would start, the cardinal would walk out into the Gaze and call the congregation assembled there to witness the signing of the contract. Rico collided with a wooden bench, clutched the back in both hands, and stood shaking in the chilly light.
‘Vida,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t, Vida, don’t.’
He looked up at flowering trees, nodding in the wind. Tired as he was, he would never sleep. All at once he wanted to get out of Government House, go home to the family compound, maybe. Anywhere would do but here, so close to Vida, so unreachably far away.
* * *
‘You mean it’s over?’ TeeKay wailed. ‘Nothing’s going to happen? Oh -’ She glanced around the small robing room, decorated with symbols of the Eye. ‘Oh how loath.’
‘Se Tina, you are the only sapient in this building who could say such a thing.’ Jak was holding a comm unit to his ear. ‘The duty sergeant with Dukayn tells me that they have captured the Outcast alive, Se Vida. He will be incarcerated in the high security facility in Centre Sect. You need worry about nothing.’
‘May God be praised.’ Cardinal Roha raised his hands to heaven. ‘Let us thank the Holy Eye.’
During the prayer Vida barely listened, looked instead at the wedding party assembled around her: TeeKay in demure lace, Dan in green velvet, Wan and Karlo in their Fleet dress uniforms, Sister Romero in a black cassock with a white stola draped round her neck. The Papal Itinerant would be standing in her mother’s place for the ceremony. It was an immense honour, of course, but Vida would have given half the L’Var fortune to have Aleen there instead.
Aleen would watch her daughter’s first marriage contract on the vidscreens, as no doubt everyone in The Close would watch, relishing the sight of one of theirs who had got out to a better life and freedom. I’m no different than the rest of you, Vida thought to them. Wan looked at her with a slight smile and one eyebrow raised. She’d seen him drinking half the morning, and she hoped he wouldn’t drop the pen or something equally embarrassing. Tonight she’d have to sleep with him, would have to start paying in advance for the Peronida support she needed to keep this new and better life.
The cardinal finished the prayer. In the silence Vida could hear music filtering into the robing room and the sound of voices from the crowded Gaze outside.
‘Very well,’ Roha said, smiling all around. ‘When I give the signal, you all file in.’
Vida felt dread clutch her stomach. How can I do this? she asked herself. Because she wanted to be a L’Var. Because she wanted a seat on Centre Council. Because she wanted to stay a somebody on Palace, not merely be some cull who was lucky enough to contract into the Cyberguild. To the swelling of the music the cardinal strode out of the room. If this were one of her holonovels, she would suddenly announce that she couldn’t go through with it, that she was going to sign a contract with Rico Hernanes y Jons and so they could all go hang. She could see herself, sweeping out of the room in her long green gown, rushing into the Gaze to make her announcement to everyone seated there, waiting. She would look up and there would be Rico, standing in the back of the Cathedral. She would run down the aisle and throw herself into his arms, and ‘There’s the signal,’ TeeKay said. ‘Shall we?’