Pedro Olivo spoke harshly in Spanish. Luisa Javier answered in the same language. Then she sighed and turned back to Annette. "This is going to cause Crosstime Traffic a lot of trouble, you know," she said in English.
"I thought of that," Annette said. TV and the Net and newspapers liked nothing better than blowing the lid off corporate shenanigans. She couldn't imagine anything much juicier than this. Exploiting the natives from who could say how many low-tech alternates, masters—and slaves—from the home timeline, murders . . . "But those people caused me a lot of trouble. I'm just lucky I wasn't stuck there for good."
"Yes, I understand that," the head of security said. "I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into, that's all." Her cell phone rang. She listened, then went, "Thanks," and put it away. She looked at Annette. "They're at that building. The chamber isn't there, but they've got evidence it stops there. And they've arrested somebody who I think is the man you got past before you came here."
"Didn't he run?" Annette said in amazement.
"Sometimes people are stupid," Luisa Javier said. "Sometimes they're smart—for a while. Not smart enough, usually, though, and not for long enough. Now it's payback time." That sounded more vengeful than Annette felt most of the time. Today? Today she liked it fine.
230
Twelve
After Khadija disappeared, the people who ran the manor tried to act as if everything were normal. Maybe they even made most of the slaves think so. Not Jacques. Maybe the way they'd grilled him made him notice changes in routine more than he would have otherwise. Or maybe the guards just weren't so good at hiding how worried they really were.
They kept going up and down the stairs to the subbasement room where the transposition chamber came and went. They hadn't done that very much when things were running smoothly. They didn't look happy when they came up, either. Something down there was wrong, badly wrong.
Jacques was tempted to ask the guards what it was. He fought the temptation. Fighting temptation was supposed to be a virtue. Jesus and Henri would have approved of it. That wasn't why he did it, though. He didn't want to make the guards pay special attention to him again. The last time they did, he'd got away with one needle stuck in his arm. He had the feeling he wouldn't be so lucky if they glanced his way again.
Going out to work on the road seemed a relief. The guards swaggered and strutted. "Let's see the savages bother us now," one of them said. "This time, we taught them a lesson they'll remember for years."
No doubt he was right. But the locals had done damage here, too. The almonds and the olives and the vines and the rest of the crops would be a long time getting over their raid. If this were an ordinary farm, one that depended on what it grew, Jacques would have worried about going hungry. But it got food from elsewhere, as it got people from elsewhere.
Or it had. Jacques wasn't so sure it did any more. By the way the guards kept going down those stairs, maybe things had stopped coming. Did that mean just food? How much ammunition for their repeating muskets did they have? If the locals tried attacking again, could the guards rout them so easily? If they couldn't, what would happen then? Nothing pretty—Jacques was sure of that.
But he was also sure the locals wouldn't be back right away. For all he knew, they were still running. The copper-skinned tribes across the Atlantic couldn't face the muskets and cavalry the Muslims and his own people were using against them. The fight here was even more unfair.
For all the guards' bluster, Jacques wasn't the only slave who saw things had changed. "Why are they frightened?" Dumnorix asked him when none of the men in mottled clothes stood close by. "They took you in. They did things to you. What did you learn?"
He wanted to rise up against the guards. Jacques saw that right away. Dumnorix was a warrior, first, last, and always. If he saw a chance, he would fight—and he was looking for that chance.
"You know how you came here?" Jacques said. Dumnorix nodded. Jacques thought hard before he spoke again. He and Dumnorix didn't have enough words in common to make talking about the transposition chamber easy. "They, uh, bring things here in that box."
"Yes, yes." Dumnorix sounded impatient. "And so?"
"If that box is, uh, broken, then they cannot bring things," Jacques said. "Cannot bring . . ." He broke down. Dumnorix didn't understand about bullets. In a lot of ways, he was a savage himself. Jacques tried again: "Cannot bring arrows for thunder-sticks. Cannot bring food."
Dumnorix's eyes were the blue of a lake under a summer sky. They flashed fire now. "We can take them!" he said. His hands tightened on the handle of his shovel till his knuckles whitened. It might have been the neck of the guard he hated most.
"Jesus and Henri, be careful!" Jacques whispered. "They still have, uh, arrows." He hoped Dumnorix was following him. The redhead would get himself killed if he didn't watch out. He'd get a lot of other people killed, too. "For all I know, more will start coming tomorrow, too."
"Maybe." But Dumnorix didn't believe it. Jacques could see that. Those fiery blue eyes flicked towards a guard. "They don't think they can get more. Otherwise they wouldn't be so worried."
He might have been right. Even if he was, what difference did it make? "They aren't worried about us," Jacques said. "They're worried about enemies from their own people."
"So much the better." No, Dumnorix wasn't listening. All he could think of were battles—battles with him as a hero, as the hero. "We can take them by surprise."
"How?" Jacques asked. Dumnorix waved that aside. It didn't bother him a bit. Jacques wanted to take his own pick and bash the redheaded man over the head. He wondered if even that would help. He wondered if anything would.
When Annette got back to the United States, all she wanted to do was pick up the pieces of her life. She knew she would have to start at Ohio State a year later than she'd planned. Mom and Dad had made sure she could do that. It wasn't her fault she'd missed the start of the semester. She'd learned some things at the manor she never would have at the university. Whether they were things she wanted to know . . .
She wondered what she would do with herself till fall semester rolled around again. That turned out not to be a problem. Wondering, in fact, turned out to be foolish. Every police agency in the country seemed to want to talk to her.
It had been snowing in Ohio. When her plane landed in Seattle, it was raining instead. Variety, she thought. A cop met her in the baggage-claim area. She would have recognized him as a cop even if he weren't holding a sign with her name printed on it. He was built like a slightly undersized linebacker. He wore a suit that would have been almost stylish five years earlier. He looked like a man who'd seen too many nasty things, and who knew he would be seeing more.
"Miss Klein?" he said as she came up. She nodded. He held out his hand. "I'm Kwame Daniels."
"Pleased to meet you," Annette said.
"And you." He smiled, his teeth very white against his dark skin. The baggage carousel started going round and round. "Now we see if your suitcase ended up in San Francisco or Singapore."
"You know what? I don't care," Annette said. "As long as I'm back where I belong, I'm not going to jump up and down about the luggage."
"You're smart," Detective Daniels said. "Knowing what's important, that helps a lot. Too many people get all hot and bothered over stuff that doesn't matter." Annette plucked her bag off the carousel and pulled up the handle. He asked, "Shall I take you to your hotel first, or do you want to get right to it?"
"I'd like to get it over with, if that's all right," Annette said.
"My captain told me, however you want it, that's how we do it," Daniels said. "You're doing us a favor being here."
"No, I don't think so," Annette said as they started for the parking structure. "What I went through, what those other poor people are going through . . . That needs smashing. How could I look at myself if I didn't do everything I could to set it right?"
"You get no arguments from me." Daniels popped open a big u
mbrella to keep them dry while they crossed the street.
The police station to which he drove Annette looked like a fortress. Inside, though, it might have been almost any office building. Men and women sat at desks. They talked on the telephone. They sent and read e-mail. They typed or dictated reports. In most offices, though, very few of the workers would have been armed.
Most office buildings had conference rooms. So did this one, but they were called interrogation rooms instead. Kwame Daniels opened the door to one of them. Annette went in. In a loud, formal voice—everything that happened in there went onto video—he said, "Miss Klein, I would like to ask you if you recognize any of the persons seated here."
She'd cleaned up. She wore stylish business clothes instead of the outfit the manor had given to its slaves. Her blond hair didn't hang limp alongside her head any more. It rose in fancy curls. She had makeup on now. Without a doubt, though, she was Birigida, or whatever her real name was.
And, without a doubt, the man sitting beside her was a lawyer.
Annette sighed. "Yes, I recognize the woman."
"Thank you," the detective said. "And where did you last see Bridget Mallory?"
"Is that her name? I never knew what it was," Annette said.
"The last place I saw her was a manor that used slaves. It was in Madrid, or what's Madrid here. I don't know what alternate it's in. I don't think it's one that Crosstime Traffic visits, but I can't prove that."
"This is all a put-up job," the lawyer said. "If this person was a slave at this place, and if my client was a slave there— which she does not admit, not at all—what's the difference between them? That this person has bought immunity from prosecution by testifying against my client? That won't play well with a jury. We've seen it too often."
Kwame Daniels smiled a most unpleasant smile. "There is another difference, Mr. Nguyen." He turned to Annette. "Do you want to tell him, Miss Klein, or shall I?"
"I'll do it," Annette said. "I was a slave there because I got captured and kidnapped while I was working for Crosstime Traffic. The raiders didn't know I was from the home timeline. They took me to Madrid in that alternate, and the man who bought me took me to the manor I talked about. Miss, uh, Mallory was a slave there because she, uh, volunteered."
Bridget Mallory turned white, or possibly green. Under the harsh fluorescents in the ceiling, it was hard to tell. Detective Daniels threw back his head and laughed. "How do you think a jury'll like that, Sam?"
It didn't faze Sam Nguyen. Lawyers got paid for not letting things faze them. "What you say here and what you say in court under oath may be two different things," he said. "Besides, while it is illegal to make other people into slaves, it is not illegal to be made into a slave."
Annette had wondered about that. Wanting to be a slave might be sick and twisted and disgusting. Was it against the law? She had no idea. Up till a few months ago, she'd never imagined she would need to worry about it.
"Nobody's talking about charging her with being a slave, Mr. Nguyen," Daniels said. Annette wondered what he thought of this. His ancestors hadn't wanted to be slaves, but they got brought to America anyway. He went on, "But she dealt with people who took slaves. She paid money to people who took slaves. She worked with people who were slaves and didn't pay for the privilege. She knew they were forced into slavery, too. And she didn't say a word about any of it till we found out about it from Miss Klein here. How many different conspiracy charges do you think will stick?"
"You can bring conspiracy charges. Whether you can convict . . . You don't know how a jury will decide any more than I do." Nguyen was a cool customer. Whatever Bridget Mallory paid him, he earned his money.
But she turned and spoke to him in a low voice. Annette couldn't make out what she said, but he shook his head. She spoke again, more insistently. This time, Annette could hear her: "What will my name be worth after the reporters and the Net ghouls get their hands on this? Let's make the best deal we can. She was—"
Her lawyer held up a hand. "Whatever she was, you don't say it with the recorders running. You don't do anything with the recorders running till we have a deal. Got that?"
Bridget Mallory nodded. Annette hadn't dreamt she could sympathize with the blond woman, but she did. Her folks had had to sneak her to the airport in the wee small hours so she could go to Seattle. Too many stories had already said too much about what happened to her while she was a slave. Too much of what those stories said wasn't even slightly true. She'd had her picture splashed all over the Net, TV, and the papers. She didn't like being recognized wherever she went.
Maybe it was just as well she wouldn't be starting college for a while. By the time she did, maybe some of the fuss would die down. She didn't want people staring at her all the time. It would make her feel like a freak.
She sighed. It was probably too late to worry about that. People were going to recognize her. Aren't you the one who . . . ? She wondered if she'd be hearing that for the rest of her life. Maybe she would, because she was the one who. . . .
"You will be cooperating with us, then, Ms. Mallory?" Daniels asked.
Sam Nguyen started to say something, but she gestured for him to stop. She nodded. "Yes," she said. She sounded tired.
"All right, then," the detective said. "If you are, you'll need to talk to the people above me. We'll get that started now, if you don't mind." Bridget Mallory nodded again. Her lawyer looked unhappy. Annette understood why. Daniels wasn't giving her a chance for second thoughts. Once she started talking, turning back would be next to impossible.
"Please come with me, then," Kwame Daniels said. The blond woman and the lawyer got up. Before the detective led them away, he turned to Annette. "Wait right here, please. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Okay," Annette said. The door closed behind the others. She didn't like being alone in the interrogation room. It felt almost as lonely as waking up in slavery every morning. This wouldn't last long, though. That. . . That might have lasted forever.
When Detective Daniels came back, he was grinning. "I hoped putting her face-to-face with you would crack her," he said. "We get her testimony, we get your testimony, we get all the electronic evidence . . . They've recycled a lot of files, but they couldn't get rid of everything."
"It'll be an open-and-shut case as soon as they find the alternate where the manor is," Annette said.
Daniels shrugged. "You'd know more about that than I do. Not my line of work."
"Well, I didn't want this to be my line of work, either," Annette said. "You don't always get what you want, do you? Sometimes you just get what you get, and you have to make the best of it."
"Welcome to the world of grownups, Miss Klein," Daniels said soberly. "You'd be amazed how many people never figure that out. I deal with folks like that every day."
The slavers had thought they could get what they wanted and not have to pay for it. If they hadn't bought somebody from the home timeline, they would have been right. Oh, sooner or later they probably would have made another mistake—how could they help it? But it might not have happened for years.
Or it might not have happened at all. To this day, nobody knew who nuked Damascus in 2033. The Israelis? The Iraqis? The Turks? Rebels inside Syria? Some people even said the USA did it, though the bomb didn't come in on a missile. No one had ever claimed responsibility. If there were any survivors from the people who did it, they'd be old men and women now. Hard to imagine keeping quiet for more than sixty years, but they had— unless they were all radioactive dust.
Detective Daniels broke in on her thoughts. "I'll take you to your hotel now, if you want me to."
"Yes, please," she said.
"If I were you, I'd order room service and disconnect the phone," he said. "You've got to figure the reporters will work out who you are and where you're staying."
"I was hoping they didn't know I was here," Annette said in dismay.
"Well, it's a free country. You can hope whatever you want to," Da
niels answered. "That doesn't mean you'll get it."
She found out how right he was as soon as she left the station. News vans had pulled up in front of it. Reporters shouted questions at her. She didn't answer any of them. That didn't keep them from shouting more. It didn't keep them from trying to follow Kwame Daniels' car, either. But four cars with black drivers and young woman passengers left the police-station parking lot at the same time.
"I think we shook 'em." Kwame Daniels sounded pleased with himself.
But three news crews waited in the hotel lobby. Annette went right on not answering questions. Detective Daniels tried to stand between her and the cameras while she registered. He didn't have much luck.
Hotel security people did keep reporters from going up in the elevator with her or right after her. And two hard-faced men and a hard-faced woman in business clothes stalked the hallway on her floor. One of the men said, "We'll check your food before it gets to you, Miss Klein. Wouldn't want any unfortunate incidents."
Wouldn't want anyone poisoning you, he meant. Plenty of people would benefit if the star witness against them came down with a sudden case of loss of life. Some of them were bound to be rich and influential. Annette sighed. Next to worries like that, even reporters didn't seem so bad.
The jumpier the guards got, the more careful Jacques acted around them. The men in mottled clothes knew the slaves knew something was wrong. They knew they might have to deal with trouble. And they were ready to slap it down in a hurry, and hard, if it cropped up. Jacques didn't want to get shot for no reason at all, especially when he hoped Khadija would lead rescuers back here.
Dumnorix didn't believe that that chance was real. "We can take them," he said. "And when we do . . ." He knew what he wanted to do to the guards. He must have been thinking about it ever since he became a slave. Some of the torturers in the Kingdom of Versailles could have taken lessons from him.
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