"I have followed accepted surgical protocols for bacteriomat implantation," the surgeon replied stiffly.
"And how many such cases are reported in the literature?"
"Well . . ."
"Never mind hedging," the clinic head snapped. "I can tell you. None! But far too many of our patients are becoming—like that. First twitching, then full-blown paranoiac insanity, then convulsions, then coma, then death."
"Young Oksanen's not dead."
"Yet." The head of the clinic looked coldly at his chief neurosurgeon. "If you want to keep your job here—if you want there to be a clinic to give you this job—if you want to stay out of a Federation prison, then I strongly suggest you find a way to reverse whatever error you made in his surgery before he does die."
* * *
Annemari and Calandra pressed their ears to the back partition of a storage pantry off the clinic kitchen. They could hear nothing but occasional anonymous bumps and thuds.
"Are you sure this wall backs up against the surgical sector?" Annemari whispered.
"Are you sure the clinic's construction permit blueprints are accurate?" Calandra retorted. "Because that's what I downloaded and that's all I have to go on."
They were both sweaty and somewhat irritable, having moved a number of heavy cases of very boring health food supplements to get access to the partition. Calandra was especially irritated because Annemari had kept remarking that if the health food supplement cases were painted pink and placed in the gym, moving them would be part of the aerobic exercise program that Calandra's alter identity, "Thecla," was paying big credits to enjoy.
"I don't enjoy it," Calandra finally told Annemari. "I look on it as one of the sacrifices I make for my Federation. And I hope the Earthlady sees to it that the clinic fees aren't another of the sacrifices I make; I've poured enough libations to her. I want full reimbursement for every credit these blood-sucking bastards have extracted from Thecla's account."
"That account was set up with Federation funds in the first place, as part of adding realism to your alternate identity," Annemari pointed out.
"Oh. Right. I guess that means I don't get any of it back, then." Calandra sat on a box labeled amino acid fortification extract and brooded. " 'Thecla' should have taken off for an exotic play world when she had the chance, instead of risking her life and literally working her butt off for the Federation."
"Nonsense," Annemari said, "you'd have been bored in a week at one of those resorts. And your butt has never looked better."
"You think?"
"I—ssh. Someone's finally saying something."
In a single sinuous movement Calandra was off the box and had her ear pressed to the partition.
"I can't make anything out," Annemari whispered in disappointment.
"Shurrup. I can." Calandra tugged her earlobe once, then again, to initiate the highest possible level of hearing enhancement. If anybody shouted now she'd go temporarily deaf . . . but she could hear the faint creaks of the partition supports, the rustle of a cockroach somewhere beneath the floor, and the quiet conversation going on in a back office of the clinic's restricted-access sector.
"Has there been any change in the way the 'mats are cultured?"
A snort of disgust echoed in Calandra's enhanced hearing like a minor hurricane. "How would I know? I don't even have any direct contact with van Vechten. You know how it works. His contacts in Valentin send the cases to Tasman. That Hongko gangster on Tasman, Johnivans, adds his own extortionate fees and forwards the cases here. One of our dummy corporations buys arms for a perfectly legitimate shipment to the Feuding Worlds—which just happen to lie the far side of a Tasman jump. We let Johnivans know when the shipment's coming through, and he diverts it to Kalapriya. How would I know how van Vechten's culturing the 'mats? He's the only man who's figured out how to grow them outside the coastal caves, and that's as much as we know about his process."
"All right, but you need to—what's that?"
"That" was the chime-timer on Calandra's wrist, announcing with increasing urgency that she was late for her aerobic acrobatics session. She snatched her hand away from the wall and tried to bury the timer between her thighs, but it was too late; the chatterers were nervous now, and left the office with no more discussion. She was disappointed to have to tell Annemari how little she'd learned.
"More than you think," Annemari said as they restacked the cases of nutritional supplements. The chime-timer rang at intervals, each time a little louder. "Can't you shut that thing off?"
"The rich idiots who come here for the spa environment aren't supposed to be able to figure out how," Calandra informed her. "I don't particularly want to blow my second cover, thank you."
"Then you'd better take one of these." Annemari reached into an open box and tossed her a stick of something that looked like seeds rolled up in dehydrated apricot skins.
"Why?"
"Don't ask, just start munching!"
A moment later two undercooks showed up to investigate the chiming sound. "Ah-ah, ladies," one of them said, wagging a finger, "trying to sneak in a between-meals snack?"
Annemari pouted prettily. "Don't tell on us, will you?"
"We won't do it again," Calandra promised. She took another bite of the sticky concoction. "What is this, anyway?"
"Bhlepti seeds and whole grains in apricot leather. Very nutritious." The cook grinned. "You ladies must be hungry if you're willing to snack on those. I'm surprised you didn't go for the chocolate."
"We couldn't find it," Annemari said glumly. "Come on, Ca—Thecla, you're late for aerobics. We'd better cut across the gardens." She batted her eyelashes at the cook. "You won't tell on us for that either, will you?"
She managed to look suitably hangdog until they were running past the ugly little shrubs with the puce blossoms, then stopped and grabbed Calandra's arm.
"This is a dead spot, right?"
Calandra nodded.
"Okay—what did you pick up?"
When she heard Calandra's summary of the overheard conversation she hugged her. "I love you, I love you, I love you," she announced. "You are a pearl among Diplos. Do you realize what you just gave me?"
"Confirmation that somebody is selling high-tech weaponry to Kalapriya in return for black-market bacteriomats. Which we can't use because it's just an overheard conversation."
"Didn't you record it?"
Calandra pushed the soft spot behind her right ear and a series of creaks, rustles, and inaudible voices came floating eerily out of her tousled black curls. "I can pick up more with the enhanced hearing than the recorder gets," she apologized. "That was due to be checked next time I went in for repairs."
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter," Annemari dismissed the problem of the faulty recording blithely. "The important thing is that now we have the information to put the whole plot together and track down the source of the 'mats."
"We do?"
"Calandra, think. Orlando Montoyasana registered a complaint that somebody was introducing prohibited technology into one of the highland Indigenous Tribal Territories of Kalapriya. Remember?"
"Yes, but he's always complaining about—"
"There'd be no need to smuggle high-tech weaponry into Valentin; they've got the Barents Trading Society's private army keeping the coastal Kalapriyan states under control, and the Society doesn't care what the mountain states do as long as it doesn't cause them any trouble. Obviously the weapons are going to an Indigenous Tribal Territory, and that's what alerted Montoyasana."
"And just how is some state hundreds of kilometers inland from the coastal caves going to produce bacteriomats for trade?"
"I don't know," Annemari said triumphantly, "but I do know who this van Vechten they were talking about has to be. His name came up in Montoyasana's messages. Access your Kalapriyan political database download!"
Calandra blinked twice, stared in an unfocused way out over the gardens, and then nodded. "He's the Barents Resident for the state o
f Udara, which has recently . . . expanded . . . taking over the formerly independent ITTs of Thamboon and Narumalar. Oh!"
"And what do you want to bet the Udarans had the help of some offworld weaponry for those surprisingly easy takeovers?"
"Okay," Calandra argued, "but we still don't know how van Vechten is getting the 'mats. He could be stealing them from the BTS supplies on the coast."
"If the coastal growing facilities were the source, Udara would have no leverage for special treatment and prohibited technology. Besides, those jerks you eavesdropped on said he'd figured out how to grow them outside the coastal caves. What we have to do next is very simple."
"It is?"
"We need to go to Udara and ask Haar van Vechten how he's doing it. Politely, of course," Annemari added, "but with a nice solid backup of Federation peacekeeping forces to underline the request."
"You mean I need to go. You can't leave Niklaas here, especially when he's scheduled for surgery. And it'll take me forever to trek into the mountains."
"And your identity is already compromised." Annemari frowned. "You might not even get there. I wonder . . . Are there flitters on Kalapriya?"
"I doubt it, and even if there were, it would be against Federation regs on protected worlds to take them inland."
"Then we'll have to take one with us," Annemari said.
Calandra blinked. "Can you authorize that?"
"No, not anymore than I can order the peacekeeping forces to accompany us, but I can hack into Enforcement's database and forge the orders . . . Well, really, Calandra, what are you staring for? Have you forgotten I was a technonerd for twenty years before they kicked me upstairs into Admin? What did you think I was doing all that time, data entry and accounting programs?"
"I just . . . don't . . . get it," Calandra said faintly. "You're a Silvan. The Silvans are so ethical; if you try to get them to break a rule, they bend it back the other way. You wouldn't even use your position to jump Niklaas up the list for a 'mat transplant."
"You really don't get it, do you? That would be unethical; this is merely illegal. And it's necessary."
"It is?"
"Do we know who's smoothing the path for the Cassilis Clinic on Rezerval?"
"Oksanens?"
"Got to be somebody official in on it as well. Until we know who, we daren't alert anybody. And the same thing goes for Valentin; we mustn't depend on the Barents Trading Society for resources, we have to take our own."
"Career suicide," Calandra muttered.
"Not if it works."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"In that case," Annemari pointed out, "the Federation's displeasure will probably be the least of our worries. Now come on. We need to do something about Niklaas and then get going. You'd better cut aerobics."
Chapter Fourteen
Dharampal on Kalapriya
When the soldiers from Dharampal surrounded them, Gabrel immediately demanded to be taken straight to their Vakil. He went on demanding this, with increasing loudness and firmness, while the soldiers tied their hands and feet and went through their packs.
"There's no need to play with those," the captain of the troop reproved a young soldier who was looking with interest at some fibrous plugs that had fallen to the ground when he shook out Maris's packed clothes.
Gabrel stopped his loud complaints for a moment to listen. He recognized what the young recruit had found, if the captain didn't.
"Looks like outlander magic to me," the soldier said defensively.
"Red Radhana take you, fool," said the captain. "They're obviously some of the things women use at, you know, their private times."
"Huh?"
The captain's face turned dark reddish brown and he pressed his lips together while one of the older soldiers shouted an offer to take young Varisha aside and explain about women to him. "Later, Odaka," the captain said. "Later you can take him to a brothel and demonstrate, if you like, but right now we're to bring these two in unharmed." He looked reflectively at the red marks on Gabrel's chin, where bruises would soon rise. "Reasonably unharmed. Now put all their outlander stuff back in the packs, and since you and Varisha are so interested in it, Odaka, the two of you can carry them. We'll turn the ghaya loose; they'll find good enough grazing along the river."
"Worth good money, those ghaya," Odaka grumbled, but he followed the captain's orders.
"Ghaya can't manage the paths we're taking," the captain said, "although why I bother to explain anything to you blockheads I do not know."
Hands bound in front of them, led on short ropes by two soldiers, Maris and Gabrel had a hellishly uncomfortable stumbling journey over mountain paths steeper and narrower than anything Maris, at least, had encountered before. The captain made no allowance for light or dark, and in the interval between sunset and moonrise they both collected a number of fresh bruises and scrapes from falling over rocks and thorn bushes that the locals avoided as if by instinct.
"I want to see the Vakil," Gabrel repeated at intervals, whenever the steep scrambling climb left him breath to make the demand.
"That's up to the Vakil, not to you or me," the captain said, reasonably politely, the first five or six times.
"He will be most annoyed to find that his good friend Gabrel Eskelinen has been mistreated this way."
The captain snorted. "That why he told me to bring his good friend Eskelinen at a rope's end? And the witch who travels with you, she a buddy of the Vakil's too?"
"Did he issue his orders personally?" Gabrel demanded. "Or did you have them from someone else—Minister Kansiya, perhaps? Does Yadleen even know what's going on?"
"The Vakil, may his beard increase, knows and sees all that is within the bounds of Dharampal," the captain said, but after that he allowed the marching pace to slacken a little and even loosened Gabrel's bonds so that he could catch himself when he stumbled. "Sorry about the witch," he said, looking at Maris, "but I daren't take any chances with her."
Gabrel started to complain again, but the captain interrupted him. "And if either of you say anything else, I'm to have you gagged. We've been warned that these outlander witches can corrupt honest men's thoughts, and maybe work worse magic, with their spells. I can't take the risk she might be working through your speech . . . you understand?"
"You'd better hope my friend Harsajjan Bharat, the Vakil's adviser, understands," Gabrel warned him.
The captain sighed. "And just who do you think signed the orders to bring you to the palace under guard? And told me to waste no time about it?" He patted the embroidered pouch tucked into his tunic sash, where stiff papers crackled under his hands.
After that Gabrel stopped arguing and saved his breath for getting up the mountain paths, and helping Maris when he could. At least the soldiers didn't seem to object to their walking together, though they were quick to interrupt any whispered conversation.
They reached the crest of the hills overlooking Dharamvai just after dawn, when the crude buildings of wood and mud were given a fleeting glory by the slanting red-gold light of the sun, the carvings that decorated every doorway and balcony thrown into high relief, and the piles of ordure in the gutters mercifully concealed by morning shadows. Gabrel could have wept at the irony of it. He'd dreamed of showing this mountain kingdom he had come to love to this girl whom—whom he had come to like a great deal—in just such a light, hoping that she would see the beauty and the decayed grandeur of this relic of empire as he did.
His dreams had not involved their being dragged down the mountain trail at a rope's end, jerked this way and that and staggering with weariness, hands bound before them like prisoners on their way to execution.
Not that it would come to that, of course. As soon as he had a chance to speak with Harsajjan, or even the Vakil, this foolish mistake would be cleared up. Gabrel resolved that he would beg the Vakil not to deal too harshly with the captain, who had dealt fairly with them within his understanding of the orders. He seemed to be a decent man overall;
the mistake was doubtless not his fault.
And it was less troubling to think about begging the Vakil's mercy for the captain than to wonder whether he might be in need of it for himself and Maris.
* * *
Once within the walls of Dharamvai, after following tortuous narrow passages between leaning houses to a muddy and desolate walled yard, Gabrel was so tired that he actually sat down and fell asleep against the wall. He woke with a shock from a pleasant dream whose details vanished into the air even as his consciousness returned. It was close to noon, the sun falling as directly into this narrow yard as it ever could, and his pillow was the lap of the Honored Diplomat Vissi. He jerked upright, a stammered apology on his lips.
"It doesn't matter," the Diplo said. "I wouldn't have waked you now, only I think something is about to happen."
Something was indeed happening. The heavy gate of the courtyard swung open, pushed by a dark man in a blue and silver uniform who glanced at the prisoners and said, "On your feet, and quick about it!"
"I demand to see the Vakil," Gabrel said.
"You come with me, then."
The stranger's demands were interrupted by a file of soldiers in the red and gold of Dharampal, headed by the captain who had taken Gabrel and his companion prisoner the night before.
"Honorable Envoy Jagat," the captain said with a low bow that somehow was not at all respectful, "I am commanded to escort the prisoners to the Vakil's midday audience."
"My master wishes them brought to him."
"Should the Vakil, may his beard increase, so direct me, I shall be honored to bring the outlanders to the borders of Udara for your men to take over. Naturally the Bashir of Udara would not so insult the Vakil as to send soldiers into a country with which he still has peaceful relations. But for now, as I told you, my orders are to bring them before the Vakil himself."
Disappearing Act Page 25