The Sardonyx Net (69 page)

The guard said, “What are you doing?”
 

Zed said, “Bringing him out of stun.” He watched A-Rae's eyelids flutter. “I'm a senior medic attached to the Abanat Clinic. Would you close that door, please? You can leave it ajar if you like. This won't take long.”
 

“Well—don't take those cords off,” the guard warned. He shut the door. The latch clicked. As the room blackened, Zed palmed the light switch. He did not need or desire light but he wanted Michel A-Rae to be able to see. The darkness, freed of the constraints he had bound it with, devoured him, creeping through bloodstream and nervous system and into his hands. He extended the claws, and waited.
 

In about twenty seconds, Michel A-Rae blinked. He squirmed weakly. “Where—” His dark eyes focused on Zed's face. He worked his lips, tried to swallow, couldn't.
 

Zed smiled lovingly at him. “You know who I am,” he said, in a conversational tone.
 

A-Rae's shoulders spasmed as he struggled against the cords. Zed caught his head by the hair. He held it still, and let A-Rae see the claws.
 

“You can't—”
 

“I can,” Zed said. “Anything. I. Want to do. I can.” Lightly he drew the claws of the right hand from the corner of A-Rae's left eye to the lower line of his jaw, stopping short of the artery. “Greetings from Darien,” he said, and lifted the hand to let A-Rae see the talons touched with blood.
 

At the last minute, the Hype cops stopped Dana as he tried to leave the house.
 

“Hey,” said one of them whose name, he thought, was Malachi, “why don't you come with us? You look pretty bad, maybe you ought to see a medic. Hey, Captain!” This shout down the corridor brought Cat Graeme out of the front room.
 

“What?”
 

“I'm taking the Starcaptain to the cop shop.” He closed his hand around Dana's wrist.
 

“Don't hold me,” Dana said wearily. “I've been tied up for four days.”
 

“Sorry.” Malachi let go of the wrist. Dana thought, I don't want to go to the Police Station, really I don't....
 

“Wait a minute,” Graeme called. Malachi sighed and walked to her. “Don't leave,” he said warningly to Dana.
 

“I'm just going out for a breath of air,” Dana said. He opened the door. Forty-seven Cabell Street, forty-seven Cabell Street.... The glare of sunlight nearly knocked him down. He basked in the cleansing light for a moment, and then turned north. Five steps from the house and Malachi caught up with him.
 

“Thought you'd sneak away, huh,” he said. “That was silly.”
 

Dana stopped walking. His knees wobbled. “Look,” he said, “I've been locked in a room, I've been beaten, I haven't had much food—the last thing I need is to be pried at and pushed around. I need a bath and about forty hours' sleep. Once I've had that, I'll be glad to come to the police station and talk to your damn computer for hours—” He swayed. “Forty-seven Cabell Street. That's where I want to go.”
 

“The Yago house,” said Malachi. “Who told you to go there? The Commander?” Dana nodded. “Well—” the burly man hesitated, and then said, “Oh, why not. You're out on your feet anyway. Come on, they'll have the slideway running again by now. Can you walk by yourself? I'm not real enthusiastic about carrying you. You smell rotten.”
 

“I'll walk,” Dana said. “Thanks.” Just put one foot in front of the other, preferably in a straight line, he told himself. Malachi chattered beside him, needing no response, it seemed, as he discussed Chabad's weather—"I'm from Samarkand, myself"—Catriona Graeme, Rhani Yago, whom he admired though he had only met her for five minutes—"Hey, that's one high-powered lady"—and Chabad's markets. Every so often he would say, “You still with me?”
 

“Still with you,” Dana said.
 

On the movalong, the passengers took one look at Dana and edged away, until around him and Malachi was a clear space. Malachi said politely, “You don't mind if I stand upwind?” Dana didn't mind. Near the movalong exit they passed a fountain and Dana was tempted to wade into it. “Better not,” Malachi said.
 

Dana had almost decided that walking was easy when Malachi said, “Here we are.” Dana looked up. They stood in front of a house. It was low and covered with green vines that grew over the roof and down the sides of the house and against the windows. It reminded Dana very strongly of a house he had lived in on Pellin.
 

“You're sure?” he said, because it did not look like either of the houses he associated with the Yagos. It was almost plebeian.
 

“I'm sure,” Malachi said, knocking on the door. A tall, very thin man opened it. Dana frowned. For a minute he could not think why the man seemed so familiar, and then he realized that he looked like—not in feature but in manner—Binkie, only he was brown, and Binkie had been white....
 

He smelled the scent Rhani used on her hair.
 

“Dana!” She was standing in front of him. “Sweet mother.” He fended off her outstretched hands.
 

“Better not,” he said. “I haven't had a bath in days.”
 

“Then you shall have one,” she said. Turning, she gave a multitude of orders to people who came and quickly went. The man who looked like Binkie vanished and returned with a glass of what smelled like fruit punch. Dana clasped it in both hands.
 

It was fruit punch.
 

“Where's my brother?” Rhani asked Malachi.
 

“I don't know, ma'am. He stayed behind—I suppose he had something to do.”
 

Something—Dana held the glass out and someone took it from him—yes, you could say that, Dana thought. He remembered Zed moving from body to fallen body like an avalanche hunting for a place to spill. God help Michel A-Rae, he thought. Rhani was thanking Malachi, and he gathered the strength to turn and add his own grateful words.
 

Malachi was diffident. “Don't worry about it, man. Take care of yourself.” He backed out of the house. Dana felt Rhani's cool, strong fingers close around his wrist.
 

“Bath,” she said, and led him through her bedroom to a washroom. “Take off those clothes.” He stripped. As he bared his left side, he heard her suck breath in sharply. She stepped close to him and touched the purple-black bruise with her right palm.
 

“Now we match,” he said.
 

“Only mine was on the other side.”
 

A tub of water stood steaming at his back. He lowered himself into it, trying not to cry out at the sharp pain. The surface of the water turned dark as dirt floated off his skin.
 

“Here,” Rhani said, handing him a sponge. He sponged himself. It was luxury to be clean. “I'll do your back,” she offered. He let her take the sponge from his hand.
 

“This is a nice house,” he said, as the soft, thick sponge moved up and down his spine. The touch was mildly rousing; he felt his genitals stir.
 

When he climbed from the tub, he tried to hide his erection with the towel. Rhani saw, and grinned. “Hey, I've seen it before,” she said. Suddenly she pressed herself against him, ignoring the water that ran down him, soaking her clothes. “Damn it, Dana,” she said, “why did you come back? I wanted you to leave.”
 

It was an odd thing for her to be saying as she hugged him, he thought. “I tried to leave,” he explained. “The ships were grounded, and then I got drunk—”
 

“I know,” she said. She handed him a thick plush blue robe. He put it on. “Tori Lamonica told us you disappeared. I called the Abanat police but Captain Graeme didn't want to have anything to do with me.” She grinned, not pleasantly. “I changed her mind.”
 

Dana thought for a moment that he would have liked to have seen Cat Graeme and Rhani Yago skopping it. But of course, Rhani had won. This was her world. “Zed—looks well,” he said.
 

She nodded, and brought him into the bedroom. Instantly he was ravenous. A tray of food waited on a table. He scooped up a meat roll and bit into it. The crisp taste almost made him weep. “Oh, that's good,” he said.
 

“He is well,” Rhani said. Who, he thought, were we talking about? Oh, Zed. Yes. “He has a gym in the back of the house, he exercises a lot. He doesn't go to the Clinic any more, of course. He reads—” She sat on the bed, hands between her knees. Her gaze sharpened. “You spoke with him?”
 

Dana nodded. “He gave me something to drink. We talked for a few minutes. Rhani, why?” Her intense stare alarmed him.
 

She licked her lips, and reached for a piece of fruit. “Because he knows we were lovers,” she said. “He found out last night.”
 

It was too late to be frightened, but Dana's nerves reacted anyway, drying his mouth and racing his heart. “Oh,” he said. “That must be—he said you had something to tell me.”
 

“No,” she said, “that isn't it.”
 

Her tone warned him. He sat on a straw chair. “What is it?”
 

She said, “I'm pregnant.”
 

He blinked, and looked to see.
 

“It won't show for a while yet.”
 

“Is it mine?” he said, incredulous.
 

“Half,” she said, smiling, head tilted to one side. He remembered the evening they met. She had worn a red shirt, and black silk pants.... She was wearing them now. It had to be coincidence.
 

“And you want me to
leave
Chabad?” he said.
 

She frowned. “I didn't want to tell you. I would have, after the baby was born. I would have written to you, ‘grammed a message care of your family, to Pellin. I—it's complicated, Dana. I was going to marry Ferris Dur. But I didn't want to go to bed with him, and you were here, and I liked you—”
 

“How can you have a child and not tell the father?” he said.
 

She stared at him, her amber eyes unashamed. “I told you,” she said, “that's Yago custom.”
 

He stood, because he couldn't sit any longer. “Yago custom,” he repeated “And I suppose you plan to shut the kid up on the estate, with just slaves and her mother and her damned crazy uncle for company. She'll never see a starship, or a mountain, except those icebergs, she'll never see a horse or a dog or even a tree in its natural habitat, she'll grow up thinking slavery is humane and dorazine is a wonderful drug and hating her mother the way you and Zed both hate your mother—” He drew a breath and found that he had run out of words. Rhani's face was very white. Her hands were clasped in her lap, the knuckles icy. He wondered if she wanted to hit him.
 

She said, very calmly, “What would you want me to do, then? Would you stay?”
 

“Stay—” He hadn't thought of it. No, he could not stay on Chabad. Nor would she leave, of course. His anger drained from him. He sat again, not too close to her. He wondered what the child would look like, would it—she—he—whatever—have black eyes or amber eyes? Red hair or dark hair? “No, I couldn't stay.” He bit his lip. “Rhani, I'm sorry.”
 

“No,” she said, “You're right. It isn't fair to you.”
 

“Nor to the child,” he said.
 

She rose. “You wouldn't consider coming back, I suppose,” she said.
 

“Coming back?”
 

“Yes.” She walked to the headboard of the bed. It had shelves in it. She took something from one of the shelves. It was an auditor. She turned it on, and music filled the sunlit bedroom, well-remembered music; Stratta, Dana thought. “Concerto in D, for Ella—” She snapped the pellet from the auditor and tossed it into his lap. “There are two more downstairs,” she said. “I found them into the com-net's music library.” She leaned over him, hands on his shoulders. He felt their grip through the supple cloth. “Come back.” Her fingers tightened. “I don't want my child to grow up hating me, Dana. She—or he—is not going to grow up alone on the estate with only slaves and her mother and crazy uncle for company. We'll live in the city. I'll bring her to the Landingport, and even to the moon. I'll show her holos of other worlds. I'll let her read Nakamura's
History
, and then, when she's fourteen Standard, I'll give her the choice I was never given: to leave Chabad, to leave me, and Family Yago.”
 

“You'd do that?” Dana said. She nodded. “I don't believe you.”
 

“Come and see,” she challenged. “Come back to Chabad! Take her to Pellin with you. Let her meet your family, join your wagon journey to the mountains, eat goats and ride horses and live however people live on other worlds.”
 

Dana thought: I never want to see this world again.... He laid his hands over hers. Stratta's melody mocked him in lifting tones. Well, Starcaptain, it said, so much for fine words and rages. What will you do?
 

“All right,” he said. “I'll come back.”
 

They stood on the shuttleship platform of the Abanat Landingport. Chabad's sky burned about them, a harsh, stark blaze of blue. Porters with the “Y” insignia on their shirtsleeves jostled each other, jockeying around them. The air smelled of sweat and heated metal.