Regeneration (22 page)

“You shouldn't be there at all. Leave it to Pilan to sort out.”

“Mama, I can't. It's my job and I'm good at it, and he'd be terrible. Besides, if I suddenly disappeared, it'd be pretty easy to put two and two together, wouldn't it?”

“I don't like this, Gabe.”

“I don't like it either, but I'd like it even less if I couldn't do anything about it.” He looked askance at her. “You and Papa aren't going to make me stay away, are you? Please don't.”

Gaela sighed deeply. “We've talked about it,” she said candidly, “and so far we've decided that as long as you personally are not in danger and you want to keep going, we don't want to stop you. But we're going to have to talk about it some more now, I think.”

“Mama—”

“No, listen to me, Gabriel. Your father and I admire your commitment, we really do. You know how proud of you we are. But we have a job to do too, and if we decide you're not safe or it's getting too much for you to handle, you're out. Not least,” she said with a catch in her voice, “because it would kill me if anything happened to you. Got it?”

He had to blink hard and clear his own throat before he could answer her. “Got it.”

She patted his arm. “Good. Now, those three delinquents are about to charge into the grocery, climb all over the tables in the café, and attempt to breach the kitchen. Your father will pretend to be amused, but it drives him crazy, so if you can help me corral them in less time than it usually takes we'll both earn major points.”

“It's a deal.”

In the end all it took was a promise to play mind-reading games to entice the giggling boys and a grumbling Eve out of the café and into
the garden, where Gabriel put them to work gathering up the overnight windfall of leaves and small branches. “So, Mish is thinking he doesn't know why we're bothering to do this,” Gabriel announced, holding to his end of the bargain. “He thinks it would be better to use the sticks to play swords or horses or throwing games.”

Misha, examining a boomerang-shaped specimen as he trudged over to dump it on the growing pile, stopped and stared with his mouth open. Gabriel grinned at him.

Then he looked at Misha's brother. “Suri thinks we're doing it just to tidy up for Aunty Gaela, and he likes things tidy so he doesn't mind. Right, Suri?” The little boy nodded gravely over a tiny armful of lichen-covered twigs collected from beneath the apple tree. “Whereas Eve knows
exactly
why, don't you, Eve?
She
thinks we're building special houses, and she's imagining all the creatures that might come live in them this winter.”

Misha rounded on her. “What creatures?”

Eve, caught between her determination not to accept any overtures from her brother and her love of showing off, wavered and broke. “Hedgehogs,” she said hopefully. “An' worms and bugs and spiders and maybe even
snakes
—”

“Snakes?” squeaked Suri, dropping his twigs in alarm.

“They're not
dangerous
or anything.” And she was off, spinning stories about all the creeping, crawling things she claimed to remember from back when they lived in the mountains near Grandpa Reginald, illustrating her tall tales by poking at rotting logs to disturb centipedes and woodlice, turning damp leaves over for earthworms, rediscovering the hole at the base of the old brick wall from which a toad had emerged in the spring.

Gaela shook with silent laughter, and Gabriel felt waves of approval rolling his way. “Very good,” she murmured to him as she headed inside. “We might have a visitor, by the way. It appears you're not the only one taking the afternoon off.”

Don't say anything,
she continued inside his head.
That way it can be a surprise if she comes, and no disappointment if she doesn't.

But she did come, of course. He had just about managed to get the drifts of fallen leaves raked up against the back wall despite the
scattering charges of the children, when a shadow flashed across the sunlit garden: sharp-edged, bird-shaped, and banking, far larger than any bird.

“Aunt Aryel!” Eve shrieked in delight as she curved around the treetops at the back of the garden.

“Aunty Aryel!” echoed Misha, hopping from one long leg to the other with excitement. Sural shaded his eyes with his odd little hands, lost his balance as he spun with face upturned to follow Aryel's movement and tumbled onto the damp grass, still looking up, barely noticing that he had fallen.

It was funny, Gabriel thought, that no matter how many times they had seen her in the air it was never any less of a thrill. The children scattered to give her room, though the idea that she needed much was an illusion born of the massive span of her wings; she swept them up to spill the air and dropped feet-first onto a small patch of lawn between a rose bush and Bal's herb beds. She carried a large, lumpy bag in her arms, and was immediately mobbed.

“What did you bring us?” Eve demanded as Aryel crouched to greet them.

“What makes you think I brought you anything?” Aryel returned, trying to hang on to the bag and hug three squirming children at the same time. “Maybe it's for—Oh well.” Their enthusiastic hugs had knocked it loose and several small golden apples tumbled out. As the boys scrambled after them Aryel scooped one up and tossed it to Eve. “There you go. A present from Maryam House, since your old tree doesn't fruit anymore.”

“Shonk'ou,” Eve said, around a massive mouthful of apple. Misha held his firmly clamped in his jaws as he returned two more to the bag, nodding solemnly in agreement. Sural considered the samples he held in either hand, made his selection and dropped the other back as Gabriel gathered the bag up.

“Aunty A, why are you flying with these?” he scolded. “They're heavy. I could have come over.”

“They weigh slightly less than a small boy,” she said, smiling. “And then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of a visit.”

“Are they for us or the café?”

“You,” she replied, and followed him inside as he took them upstairs to the apartment. He glanced back over his shoulder at her.

“Your band is off. You want to talk to me about Kaboom? Who told you? Papa . . . and
Herran
?” He looked back again, this time in surprise.

“I'm having a break from the band,” she said guiltily. “I dropped by to see Herran yesterday. He was a bit distressed, but I couldn't get him to explain why. He told me about the meeting, but not what it was actually
about
—just who was there. So I got hold of your father and he explained very briefly. I haven't said anything to anyone except Eli. But I wanted to ask you, because it—Hi, Gaela.”

“Hi—Wow, that's more than I expected—”

“Three less than there were.” She looked at the tray of sandwiches and drinks in Gaela's hands. “They might not have any room left.”

“Are you joking? They're like locusts. If we're lucky, maybe they'll leave a couple for the rest of us. Make yourselves some tea.” And she was gone down the stairs.

Gabriel unloaded the bag thoughtfully.

“Because it reminded you and Papa of something,” he murmured, finishing Aryel's thought. “Mama too.” He pointed at his own band. “Sorry. I turned mine off to play games with the kids.”

“Gabriel, you've been poking around in my head since you were Suri's age. I don't mind. Tell me about Kaboom: how does it work?”

“How
did
it work—they've been arrested and the story's going to break tomorrow.” He explained how the streamers had operated, reading her thoughts as she processed the information. “Blimey, are you serious?
Zavcka Klist
did the same thing?”

“Something very like it. She was lobbying for limits to be placed on the rights that were being extended to gems, and it was part of trying to stoke the kind of fear and distrust that politicians would have to respond to. And that led to the godgang attacks, the assault on Maryam House—”

“—when Mama and I were kidnapped and you rescued us,” he said matter-of-factly. “They call it the ‘Maryam House Massacre' in college.”

Aryel's expression was bleak. “It might have gone beyond what Zavcka intended, but she helped create the conditions that made
it possible. That was several years before the crimes that sent her to prison, though—the theft of the Phoenix genestock, and Ellyn and . . .” She nodded at the window, which was open a crack, letting in the cool autumn air and the sound of Eve's laughter from the garden below. “Her part in those earlier events was entered into evidence, but since it wasn't what she was actually charged with, it ended up being kind of a footnote.”

“And now you think—what? I can't tell.”

“That's because I don't know what to think. The similar methodology could be a coincidence, or it could be someone who knew about what she did then is part of this conspiracy now.”

“Maybe the someone is
her?
”

“I can certainly believe it of her, Gabriel, but I haven't been able to work out
how
. Kaboom's been active for weeks, and the toxin operation for months, but she's only been out of prison a few days. She was allowed very few visitors, all of whom were thoroughly vetted, and she had virtually no private communication. And apart from all of that, it's not obvious what she'd stand to gain from damaging Thames Tidal.”

“I don't want to sound like I think I'm important,” Gabriel said, “but I work there. And Eve is my sister.”

“I don't think she knows anything about Eve, but she might know about you, and you
are
important.”

“This is what you were thinking last night: that the thing that connects everything might be Zavcka Klist.”

“It was.” Aryel sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. For a moment she looked tired, and older than he was used to. “I've known for some time that there's a deep strategy against Thames Tidal, but not who's behind it—and I still don't, Gabe. Zavcka does have the kind of mind for this, but that doesn't prove it's her. It might just be sheer coincidence that she was released right into the middle of things.” She picked up the cup of tea Gabriel had placed in front of her. “She's been our bogeyman for so long, and with good reason, but there's a huge risk that if we decide this is her work we might miss what's really going on.”

“What's really going on is that she might have found a way to do it even from inside prison—she's smart enough. She might be doing it because of you, because of me, because it's gems. This might be her revenge.”

Aryel blew on her tea. He felt the thought take form a moment before she spoke, in the moment that she gave up fighting it.

“I can't be sure it isn't,” she said. “And it would explain a lot.”

For the third time that afternoon, Patrick Crawford apologized profusely and excused himself to take an incoming call, and for the third time, Zavcka Klist smiled graciously as he departed, although by now she was seething with anger. Had it not been for his other roles—sycophant, acolyte and potential threat—she would have been on the line to Dhahab Investments herself, insisting that he be replaced immediately. He was useful in the prosecution of her own business, but by no means irreplaceable; anyone from the premier-client division would be able to provide what she needed. It was only her knowledge of his other alliances that could compel her to put up with this behavior, and he knew it: she could hear it in his tone when he begged to be excused; she could see in his eyes that he knew the answer could only be yes. His mask of respect hadn't slipped but he had become presumptuous with her time and her space. There was no need for him to have been there for so many hours but he was confident now that come what may, she wouldn't throw him out. He was taking advantage. Her blood boiled at the gall of the man.

She walked over to the window, idly noticing that the books she'd handed to Eli Walker were still resting on the table where he had left
them. She found it ludicrous that their conversation was by far the best she'd had since she'd been released.

I'd rather spend another hour talking to Eli Walker than ten minutes more with this idiot—even Aryel would be preferable.

Dear god, what is wrong with me?

Outside, evening was closing in, and she realized that she was doing exactly as she had on countless other evenings, staring out through the bars of the grimy little window of her cell: watching another day die. At least the view was better here, but the study was no larger than the cell had been, and she had spent the entire day in it.

Well, there was no need for that anymore. Perhaps if she went to the living room and powered up the wall screen Crawford would get the message that it was time for him to take his leave. But that hope was dashed as she approached, and heard his voice issuing from within. So that was where he had gone, the bumptious bastard: not out to the hall, as he should have, but into yet another of her precious—
personal
—spaces. Glancing in, she saw that his back was turned and he was pacing across the room.
Pacing.
What did he have to pace about?

“No, of course I haven't heard from Fischer,” she heard him say angrily.

He sounded as thoroughly irritated with whoever he was speaking to as she was with him, which was some comfort, although his next words put the lie to his obsequiousness of the past few days.

“Look, I'm having trouble on this end too. She wants me to—No, I
know
you think I should just do as I'm told . . .”

Damn right.
She stepped silently back out of sight and headed for her bedroom, considering her options as she swallowed a dose of her meds. He could hardly follow her if she stayed there, but that would leave him free to roam the rest of the place until she emerged. And if she went to find Marcus in the kitchen the weasel might take it as an invitation to stay for dinner. She grudgingly returned to the study, wondering whether he was speaking to his boss at Dhahab or his associates in the K Club. She was not impressed with his tone of voice either way.

Back in her chair, she angrily swiped away the price curves and market positions from her tablet screen and called up a newstream feed; she might as well see if there had been any new developments in the Thames Tidal business, and whether those idiots at Bankside had gotten any better at damage control since the morning. She would soon need to decide which of her holdings to liquidate, in order to scoop up more Bel'Natur shares at the new, lower price she had spent the last few days engineering. If the energy giant persisted in mismanaging this affair they would be prime candidates for a dumping.

She found little to distract her. The police investigation appeared not to have advanced much; the names and faces of the two fugitives were still being flashed as
WANTED
and their former employers had progressed from incoherent to indignant, but their response was still a long way from commanding. One reporter snidely observed that even Standard BioSolutions's attempt to get on the right side of the story had ended up looking po-faced next to the swift and unconditional intervention of Bel'Natur.

Zavcka followed that link with interest and learned that Bel'Natur had worked around the clock to develop an organic inhibitor that could be deployed against the algae. Test data indicated that the product was close to a hundred percent effective and the company would make it available to endangered communities free of charge.

That's your work, isn't it, Aryel? So clever! A safeguard against future attack for your own people, at the cost of a few tens of thousands of credits in research time and materials. The company will gain millions in public-relations value, possibly billions in the future contracts. I wonder when the current management realized how much of an asset you are.

She knew the answer to that one, of course: they would have realized it when Zavcka Klist, major shareholder and chief executive par excellence, was hauled off to jail, the reputation of the company she had led once more in tatters, its only hope of salvation to make good on her false promise of reform and throw itself on the mercy of the Morningstar.

Zavcka mused on how well that strategy had worked, and considered how she might turn it to her advantage, barely seeing the
Thames Tidal streamfeed scroll by until a thumbnail of Aryel fluttering down into a crowd on a quayside caught her attention.

You, again?
She tapped it up, and watched clips of a bullish gillung man and a slender, pregnant woman looking self-consciously pleased as they were complimented by some politician or other; Mikal Varsi propping himself amusingly against a much-too-short lectern while he said something funny and true about the Thames always having been the source of the city's power; Sharon Varsi—with superintendent's bars on her shoulder—chuckling along with the rest and holding firmly onto the hands of two small, bored-looking boys; Aryel sweeping low over the water and into a graceful landing, close-up on the blue eyes and the smile and the crush of the press around her; here was a norm man with a delighted expression being helped out of a divesuit, and there two young women strolling through the crowd with their arms around each other; now a crowd of raucous children pelting back and forth between a large, low pool of water and a table full of whizzing, fizzing toys; everywhere were laughing faces and sunshine on water, a carnival atmosphere, a sense of—

Zavcka's heart caught in her chest. She felt it spasm, like a missed beat or a last chance . . . or a lost life.

She stabbed at the screen so hard that she would not have been surprised if it, or her hand, had shivered into a thousand pieces. She would hardly have cared. The vid rolled back under her scrambling fingers: and there on the screen, a child with tangled blond curls, dark, clever eyes and a lively, laughing face spun away from the pool, shouting gleefully at two other children, some pale-blue jelly-like thing clutched in her fist. She ran across to the table and shoved the jelly-thing into the base of a dormant toy. It fizzed and whizzed and threw purple sparks in the air. The little girl was jumping up and down in her excitement.

Zavcka froze the picture, froze the moment; was herself frozen in the moment as she stared at the leaping child. The child who was her. Herself at eight. In a place she had never been, with friends she had never had, in a time when she had never been a child.

She was never sure afterward how long she'd sat and stared, a stone woman and a graven image. The tablet's timer suggested no more than a few seconds. But she had spent them elsewhere, in the universe between heartbeats, a silent, stretched-out place where eons are reckoned differently. All of the years of her long, long life slipped by her in that space, and more of them, and more.

Then she moved, and when she moved she felt a rushing like a great wave, like a river roaring down, like the tide coming in, filling her with the speed and decision and power of the old self she remembered. She felt the heat and the cold and the fear and the joy of it, like worlds ending and beginning, and she moved like a new self she had never known.

When Crawford returned a few minutes later, as time is reckoned in this place, he found her standing at the window, hands clasped behind her back, gazing sorrowfully into the evening as it rapidly drew in. The tablet screen on her console was blank; it might not have been touched since he'd left the room. She knew that she looked lonely, and a little sad; needy, and vulnerable. Inside she felt light, as though some nameless thing that had filled her up and weighed her down had been jettisoned in that other place. In its absence there was a clarity that sought out and filled up every gap and crack and hollow. She stared into it, unflinching, and gathered the shadows around her on the outside.

Crawford launched into another round of apologies for how long his call had taken, spiced with the innuendo of one who knows better than to blame others directly, but is well-practiced in the art of deflection. Zavcka, listening with the acuity that had replaced her annoyance, detected a note of genuine unease: things elsewhere were not as they should be, and he was distracted and resentful. Good. It would make him that much more malleable. They were playing charades for real now, though he did not know it. She readied herself for confirmation, and the forging of new tools.

“You must find it very difficult,” she interjected when he paused to draw breath, “to focus on other matters instead of the thing that concerns you most. I know I do.” She gestured a weary dismissal: of the work they had been doing, the conversations that had called him
away, the world itself perhaps. The gesture said,
We both know this is trivial and that we are merely passing time.

“Madam?”

But she had turned away and was looking out the window again. A gust of wind blew another thousand leaves from the trees and she shivered as though the chill of it had rippled through her too.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” Crawford said hesitantly, “but are you all right?”

She let a few seconds drip down before she answered, sadly, “I'm thinking of my little girl, out there somewhere. It's cold this evening. I hope she's warm enough. I worry about her so much. Do you have children, Mr. Crawford?”

“I . . . ah . . . No, madam, I don't.”

“That's a pity. I left it so late.” Zavcka shook her head, staring at the window as if into the darkness falling outside, watching his reflection keenly in the glass. “I know you can't tell me very much, but—Do you think she's warm enough?” She injected a catch in her voice.

“I'm certain she is, madam. We believe she's well cared for.”

Almost exactly the words Aryel had used.
I need more, Crawford. I need to be sure the child I saw is the one you've identified. I'm
almost
certain, but almost isn't enough.

“I envy you, knowing that. What I wouldn't give for just a glimpse of her. It's so difficult to believe in anything when you can't see it for yourself.” She bowed her head, tightening her jaw as though fighting back a greater emotion. “I'm not blaming you, Mr. Crawford. I know that you are . . . constrained. I'd never wish to get you in trouble.”

“I . . . um . . . Thank you, madam. I wish I could help—”

“I'm just finding it difficult to . . .
focus
at the moment.”

She heard him reaching into his slide-pocket, and in the shifting, fracturing window-image she could see him take hold of his tablet. As he hesitated she said softly, “If there is anything that you could share . . . anything at all . . . I would be so very grateful.”

The sound of the tablet sliding free. In the glass he swiped and tapped and then scribbled a pattern password.
Encrypted file.
She did
not react to the reflected tablet, looming larger as he held it out; only when it appeared beside her did she look around.

The face filled the screen, glancing up and to the side, mouth opening as if about to speak. The child's expression was quizzical, and a bit mischievous, as though she was asking a question to which she knew the answer would be difficult. The hair and clothes were tidier than they had been in the TideFair clip; Zavcka had a sudden memory of sliding in her chauffeured car past children on their way to school, and thinking how much more presentable they were than the noisy brats who filled the streets in the afternoon. There was an early-morning light to the image that convinced her this was that exact scenario: a child on her way to school. In a few hours' time this pretty imp would become the joyous harpy from the Child's Play exhibit. The eyes were the same, clever as sin and dark as smoke. Nothing of her surroundings or companions could be made out.

Zavcka put a hand to her mouth and gasped, bending toward the tablet, her other hand outstretched for it as though in the shock of the moment she had forgotten herself. She pulled back with visible effort, let her breath sob, once, twice, then dropped the hand from her mouth to her throat. She felt the tracker necklace under her fingers and kept them pressed against it. That was a problem that would have to be solved very soon. Her face worked as she visibly struggled to control herself.

“We believe this is your daughter,” said Crawford. There was a note of surprise in his voice, a hint of almost vindictive pleasure at his awareness of the power he believed he now held. As he began to withdraw the tablet, Zavcka grabbed not it but his wrist, holding it still for another moment, letting her fingers grind into him through the layers of clothing.

“My daughter,” she said with trembling breath, her head tilted as though to examine the image more closely. “Yes . . . I think . . .” Then, “Are you certain she's old enough?”