Authors: Anne McCaffrey
“Hide in the tunnels! Quickly! Stand on the ledges!” She took Mirmalar herself, for the little girl was puckering up to cry again.
“Ah, there’s never anyone on goods trains,” Tombi said.
“Yeah, and how d’you think Yassim’s people get back and forth? Dumper cars are big enough to hold a dozen people.”
That shut Tombi silent and lost him more face in the eyes of the other boys. Tirla shoved him toward a tunnel as she pulled Mirmalar after her.
The screech of distressed metal announced another goods train being shunted into J from the north. She had not counted on one arriving quite so soon. She would never get the kids on this one even if it
was
going in the right direction for them to get home—unless there was a dumper car.
But there was something odd here: Tirla realized with a sinking feeling that there was no cargo waiting on the platform to be loaded onto the arriving train. If a goods train was coming in here, what was it coming
for
? Could Yassim have someone in the main Dispatch office? Could he know that she had emptied his cage?
There were five cars on the double-ended train. Two looked like empty dumpers. Without waiting to question such great good fortune, Tirla hauled Mirmalar out onto the platform.
“Quickly. It won’t stop long. We must all get in.”
They were, therefore, all on the platform when the train stopped. So none of them escaped the sleep gas that suddenly spewed out, catching them all in its mist. They fell like wilted flowers onto the plastic-coated loading surface.
“She’s some kid,” Sascha said as he and Carmen carefully placed the object of their intensive search on a blanket pad and covered her. “Christ, but she’s a bit of nothing.”
Carmen smiled slowly and turned the sleeping child’s head to one side to see where the lock of hair had been wrenched out. Her other hand reached halfway to touch it but then stopped. “She’s nothing but skin and bones, Sascha. We’ll have to improve her.”
Sascha frowned a bit, looking around to see the rest of the team attending the other children. “We may not want to, Carmen. Boris and I have a feeling about this one.”
“So do I.” Carmen smiled at him with her most mysterious smile.
Boris:
Did you catch her?
Yes, Brother dear, her and them. She’d sprung the lot of ’em. She must have known exactly where to go.
Sascha spoke aloud. “I’m wondering how.”
What the hell possessed her?
Boris swore with frustration. He and Sascha had followed Carmen’s lead, and while Tirla was haranguing the kids, a team had been cautiously organized, aware that Yassim had interests in Industrial J.
How about we find out where they were kept?
Sascha asked.
What good will that do now? He’s not likely to reuse a holding area that’s been breached.
He might if he thought the kids had escaped on their own.
Can you manage that?
Boris’s tone leaped to hopefulness.
I can try.
If you could, and rigged it, we’d have one more bolt-hole filed on Yassim.
Why
did she do it?
“Let’s wake Tirla up,” Sascha said to Carmen, reaching for the oxygen. “If she can show us where, we can get some good out of this operation.”
“We already have. We’ve found more than we hoped, haven’t we?”
“Yes, and no. Bear with me, Carmen. There’s a lot more than this valuable young girl at stake.”
Revived, Tirla went immediately on the defensive, wary and contained, her dark eyes darting around, taking in the unconscious bodies and noticing the medic, who was daubing scrapes and bruises with nu-skin. Carmen offered a restorative drink, deliberately taking a long swallow of it before handing the cup to Tirla.
Sascha, lightly trying to get inside the girl’s mind, could sense only her fierce thirst. With great restraint, she took a very small sip, rolling it around in her mouth before drinking more deeply. Her bright dark eyes challenged him. He sat down beside her in a relaxed position, hooking his hands around his knees and leaning back against the wall.
“Tirla,” he began. He saw her start of surprise. “Oh, you’re well known in G. And your bravery in releasing the children will be appreciated, and not just by their grieving families.”
“How could you find me here, with them?” She glanced inquiringly from him to Carmen and then saw the lock of her hair, which Carmen still wore as talisman. Involuntarily her hand started to the scabby patch on her head. Her shoulders sagged around her narrow chest, but any emotional reaction was carefully guarded in her mind. “I’ve heard of people like you. You found me because you had my hair.”
“It’s not witchcraft, Tirla,” Carmen said gently. She handed the strand back to the girl. “I have a Talent which allows me to find lost people and things.”
“I wasn’t lost.”
“No,” Sascha said conversationally, with an approving grin, “but you found what was missing from Linear G.”
“He hadn’t paid for them.”
Carmen gasped. “You mean, once he’s paid for them, he can have them again?”
“Sure. The parents live on subsistence. They need the money for extras only floaters can buy.”
Sascha was well aware that the girl’s seeming callousness distressed Carmen, who had seen the child in a much different light. “Also puts you in well with your clients, who were rather upset with your abrupt departure from the meeting,” he said amiably.
Eyes never leaving his, Tirla nodded once.
“They’re all illegal, aren’t they?”
Tirla’s thin shoulders lifted in an indifferent shrug.
“Sure, so it’s no credit out of your stash what happens to them.”
“Oh, no,” Carmen said, pained. “They’re alive. They have rights!”
Tirla gave her a quick look before resuming her scrutiny of Sascha. “Illegals don’t have rights.”
“Only their births are illegal, Tirla,” Sascha said. “They’re alive. They
have
the right to shelter, food, clothing, training, and useful occupation. They do not have the right to reproduce themselves.” Sascha was about to explain the legal anomaly in simple terms when he realized that she understood perfectly. She was mature far in excess of her chronological age, and well conditioned to the realities of Residential life. She was not a romantic like Carmen. “But they do not deserve the occupations Yassim had in mind for them.” Sascha caught that instant spurt of fear, followed by the hardening of the young eyes and the flick of hatred. “You don’t like Yassim either.”
Again one of her indifferent shrugs.
“Would you by any chance help us disable him?”
She had been wary before, but now she appeared to Sascha to coil in on herself. “You’re not LEO. Why do you want to queer Yassim?”
“No, I’m not LEO myself, but we have a connection. Especially against someone like Yassim.”
Tirla gave a snort. “Someone like Yassim buys himself off every time LEO collars him. He has powerful friends. LEO can never make it stick.”
“You wish that LEO could?”
She hesitated briefly, then gave him a candid look.
“There will always be men like Yassim, but I could do without
him
very much, thank you.”
Sascha would have given a great deal then to have been able to read her mind, to delve that reply. Tirla was far deeper than they’d had any reason to suspect. She sat there in front of him, cross-legged, completely composed, alert—and bargaining just as if she could get up and leave the scene at any moment.
“I want to get rid of Yassim, too, Tirla. Will you help me?”
A glimmer of a smile touched her eyes and mouth. “What’s in it for me?”
Carmen inhaled in surprise. Sascha sent the finder soothing thoughts, urging her to let him handle the situation his way. He flicked his fingers, fanning out crisp new floater notes.
“How did you manage that?” Her eyes widened in surprise and indignation.
Sascha did not often employ his kinetic ability, but this trick was always effective. “You help me now—and we must be quick about it before Yassim discovers his birds have flown—and these are yours.”
She eyed the notes. Casually she scratched about her ribs. Sascha kept his grin to himself, knowing that she was checking on the tied notes hidden there. She considered his offer with all the solemnity of a computer analyst.
“There’s the little matter of your legality, Tirla,” he added gently.
Boris nudged him mentally.
C’mon, Brother, we don’t have time for amiable lipflap.
On the contrary, we have all the time we need, Brother. This is a strong personality and a deep one. I’m not rushing her.
Get on with it then.
Tirla gave him a wide-eyed bright smile. “I am the only child of my mother.”
“But not her legally registered issue.”
“How would you know?”
Sascha touched her hair. “That told us. But it is a small matter that can be quickly remedied.”
She regarded him from narrowed eyes. “A small matter?” The twist of her lips was cynical. “You must be in real good with LEO.” She considered, obliquely watching Carmen’s expression. “And I get to keep the floaters, as well?” Her tone was ingenuous.
Sascha suppressed a grin. Legality would be the most valuable reward he could offer, and still her fingers itched to relieve him of the money. Not that he had offered a large sum, but the amount would keep her in extras for several months.
“If we get a move on—now!” he said, drawing out his acceptance.
She spat in her right palm and held it out to him. Without a second thought, he accepted the deal in archaic ritual. Her grip was unusually strong for the delicacy of her bones. Physical contact with the conscious and vibrant personality startled Sascha with an odd jolt—a sense of precognition that was gone too fast for him to pin it down.
Boris caught the edge of it.
What did she do to you, Sascha?
I’m not sure, Brother, but this one we handle very, very carefully. I want a special ID for Tirla when we get back. Hear me?
To hear is to obey!
Boris might sound facetious, but Sascha was relieved by his compliance.
Keep the bargain, but I want this wild one under control.
The deal struck, Tirla rose with lithe grace to her feet and tilted her head back to look appraisingly up at Sascha. “So how do we disable Yassim?”
“Can you lead me to where he kept the children?” When she nodded, he went on. “We want to fix it so that he will think the children escaped by themselves.”
Tirla snorted contemptuously. “I had to frighten them to make them leave at all. Such things I had to tell them. Though it was all very true.”
“How would Yassim know that they were all docile? It need only look as if they had broken out. That one of the guards had been careless locking them in.”
She considered that. “Yes, that could have happened. They had only just brought food.” She gave him a shrewdly appraising glance. “You will have to crawl.” That seemed to amuse her.
“Up this tunnel?”
She nodded, then looked over her shoulder, for the first time betraying some apprehension. “What happens to them?”
“They can sleep on until we get back,” he replied. “We’ve got to move now.”
She led him into the tunnel, and he did have to crawl, wondering how she had managed her initial trip until he saw the small circle of light that guided her steps. She had the courtesy not to go faster than he could follow, and he had time to reflect: she might not have an ounce of telempathy, or was perhaps too wary to let down the shield that had protected her so long in her young life, but there was no question that she possessed considerable Talent.
She halted at the end of the tunnel and turned to him. “You wouldn’t fit down the hatch I used, but if you know how to open that inspection door, that’s an easier way to get to where he held the kids.”
Sascha took the scrambler from his belt and decoded the door. He opened it cautiously, aware of the hissing intake of her breath, and listened—on another level than Tirla, who was kneeling at the lower half of the opening. The level and complexity of noise in the main industrial complex was appropriate for an automated factory. He sensed nothing human, but it was Tirla who first slid through the door. He opened it enough for his larger frame and closed it carefully behind them.
Though the industrial space was lit only by occasional green lights of operational machinery, Tirla moved confidently forward. Sascha would have passed right by the false wall, but she went unerringly to the double drum and pinpointed the lock mechanism with her pencil light. She glanced questioningly at him.
“Electronic, I hope?” he murmured, and she nodded.
He scrambled the circuit, and the door swung back to reveal the deserted room, the overturned bunk bed, and the table with the empty food packages. She pulled the door shut behind them, shooting him a disapproving look for his careless entry.
“How did you get them out?” he asked.
She pointed to the darker square of the grille in the ceiling.
“Good work.” He righted the bunk bed and pushed it back into its former position, managing to stick a minuscule device on the wall behind it. Then he looked about the place. It stank of many things, not all tangible. “I think you’d better mastermind this escape, Tirla. Make it look like a kid had done it.”
Tirla’s upper lip curled in derision. “None of them would have!”
“Point taken, but for Yassim’s benefit it should
seem
so.”
With her eyes half-veiled, Tirla considered the problem. Sascha waited patiently, wishing he could have been in her head, noting her thought processes.
“Okay,” she said finally, leading across the room to the corner where pieces of clothing had been discarded. Deliberately she tore strips from several garments, her hands clever in finding the break in a hem or seam that would rip. “There’ll be a fight . . .” She hauled mattress pads off two of the lower bunks, and the soiled blankets off the upper ones. She went back to the corner and, using a shirt, gathered up some of the containers and the remaining food before she knocked over the makeshift table. “Now, we open the door just enough to let kids out, and start leaving trails. Come out, I’ll just close the door over a bit. Now, you drop stuff halfway to that wall. Then circle around. I’m going this way. I’ll meet you at the maintenance door.”