by David Weber
Victor sighed. And that meant—
It was not that Victor had any prejudice against the hordes of poor immigrants who thronged in the Old Quarter and mobbed public transport in its vicinity. In truth, he felt more comfortable in their midst than he did among the Solarian elite that he hobnobbed with in the embassy’s frequent social functions. The Old Quarter’s residents reminded him of the people he had grown up with, in the Dolist projects of Nouveau Paris.
But there was a reason, after all, that Victor had fought so hard to get out of those projects. So it was with no great enthusiasm that he resigned himself to spending an hour crammed into the transport network. The Solarian League’s capital city liked to boast of its public transportation system. Yet Victor had noticed that none of Chicago’s elite ever used it.
So what else is new? He consoled himself with thoughts of the inevitable coming revolution in the Solarian League. He had been on Terra long enough to see the rot beneath the glittering surface.
Not more than five minutes after he forced himself into the mob packing one of the transport capsules—a good name for the things, he thought ruefully—he felt someone pressing against him.
Like everyone else, Victor was standing. He had been told once that the capsules had originally been built with seats, but those had long since been removed from the capsules used in the Old Quarter due to the pressure of overcapacity. Victor had the relatively short stature common to Havenites raised on a Dolist diet, but he was still taller than most of the immigrants in the Old Quarter.
He glanced down. The person pressed so closely against him—too closely, even by capsule standards—was a young woman. From her dusky skin tone and facial features, she shared the south Asian genetic background which was common to a large number of Chicago’s immigrant population. Even if it hadn’t been for the lascivious smile on her face, beaming up at him, he would have known from her costume that she was a prostitute. Somewhere back in the mists of time, her outfit traced its lineage to a sari. But this version of the garment was designed to emphasize the woman’s supple limbs and sensuous belly.
Nothing unusual, in the Old Quarter. Victor had lost track of the number of times he had been propositioned since he arrived on Terra, less than a year ago. As always, he shook his head and murmured a refusal. As a matter of class solidarity, if nothing else, Victor was never rude to prostitutes. So the refusal was polite. But it was still firm, for all that.
He was surprised, therefore, when she persisted. The woman was now practically embracing him. She extended her tongue, wagging it in his face. When he saw the tongue’s upper surface, Victor stiffened.
Speak of the devil. Mesa’s genetic engineers always marked their slaves in that manner. The markings served the same purpose as the brands or tattoos used by slavers in the past, but these were completely ineradicable, short of removing the tongue entirely. The marks were actually part of the flesh itself, grown there as the genengineered embryo developed. For technical reasons which Victor did not understand, taste buds lent themselves easily to that purpose.
The stiffness in his posture was partly due to revulsion, but mostly to sheer anger. If there was any foulness in the universe as great as Mesa and Manpower Inc., Victor did not know what it was. But this woman, he reminded himself, was herself a victim of that monstrosity. So Victor used his anger to drive the revulsion under. He repeated the refusal—even more firmly—but this time with a very friendly smile.
No use. Now the woman had her mouth against the side of his head, as if kissing him.
“Shut up, wonderboy,” she whispered. “He’ll talk to you. Get off at the Jackson transfer and follow me.”
Victor was stiff as a board. “My, my,” she whispered. “He was right. You are a babe in the woods.”
Anton
The Chicago police lieutenant’s frown was worthy of Jove. “I’m warning you, Anton—if we start finding dead bodies lying around in this complex, I’ll arrest you in a heartbeat.”
Zilwicki’s eyes never lifted from the packet the lieutenant had handed him. “Don’t worry about it, Muhammad. I’m just looking for information, that’s all.”
Lieutenant Muhammad Hobbs studied the shorter man for a moment. Then, the small figure of Robert Tye sitting on the floor of Zilwicki’s apartment. Then, the cybernetics console tucked into a corner. Even at a glance, it was obvious that the capabilities of that console went far beyond anything that would normally be found in a private residence.
For a moment, Hobbs’ dark face darkened still further. Then, sighing softly, he murmured: “Just remember. We’re really going out on a limb for you with this one, Anton. At least half a dozen of us, starting with me, will be lucky if we just lose our pensions.”
The Manticoran officer finally lifted his eyes from the forensics packet and nodded. “I understand, Muhammad. No dead bodies. Nothing, in fact, that would be awkward for the police.”
“Such as a rush of people into hospitals with broken bones,” growled the policeman. Again, his eyes moved to Tye. “Or worse.”
Tye smiled gently. “I believe you misinterpret the nature of my art, Lieutenant Hobbs.”
Muhammad snorted. “Save it for the tourists. I’ve seen you in tournaments, sensei. Even playing by the rules, you were scary enough.”
He pointed a finger at Zilwicki. “And this one? I can’t recall ever seeing him in a lotus, contemplating the whichness of what. But I use the same gym he does, and I have seen him bench-press more pounds than I want to think about.”
The policeman straightened and arched his shoulders, as if relieving himself of a small burden. “All right, enough,” he growled. He turned away and headed for the door. “Just remember: no dead bodies; no hospital reports.”
Before the door had even closed, Zilwicki was sitting in front of the console. Within a few seconds, he had loaded the data from the police forensics report and was completely absorbed by the material appearing on the screen.
Victor
Victor had never been into the Old Quarter before. He’d skirted the edges of it often enough, and gone through it in public transport capsules. But this was the first time he’d actually walked through the streets.
If the word “streets” could be used at all. Urban planners, following the jargonistic tendencies of all social sciences, often preferred the term “arteries” to refer to public thoroughfares. The euphemism, applied to the Old Quarter, was no euphemism at all. Except for being square in cross-section rather than round, and the fact that human beings passed through them instead of blood corpuscles, the “streets” were as complex, convoluted, tortuous and three-dimensional as a body’s circulatory system. More so, really, since the clear distinction between arteries and veins was absent here.
Victor was hopelessly lost within minutes. In that short space of time, the woman leading him had managed to take him through more streets than he could remember—including four elevator transits, three occasions when they passed through huge underground “plazas” filled with vendors’ booths and shops, and even one instance in which she strode blithely through some kind of lecture or public meeting and exited by a door in the back next to the toilets. The only logic to her route that Victor could follow was that the “streets” always got narrower, the ceiling lower, and the artificial lighting dimmer.
At least I won’t have to worry about being followed.
As if the thought had been spoken aloud, the women ahead of him cocked her head and said: “See? This is how you do it.” She chuckled throatily. “Anybody asks, you just went to get laid. Who’s going to prove otherwise?”
Suddenly, she stopped and turned around. The motion was so abrupt that Victor almost ran into her. He managed to stop, but they were now standing practically nose to nose. Well—nose to forehead. Like most Mesan genetic slaves except the heavy labor and combat breeds, the woman was very small.
She grinned up at him. The grin had a generic similarity to the professional leer she had bestowed upon him
in the transport capsule, but there was more actual emotion in it. Humor, mainly.
Like all solemn and dedicated young men who don’t suffer from extreme egotism, Victor suspected that the humor was at his expense. The woman immediately proved him right.
“You don’t even have to fake it,” she announced cheerfully. “If you want it kinky, of course, I charge extra. Unless it’s too kinky, in which case I won’t do it at all.”
Victor liked her grin. It was almost friendly, in a rakish sort of way. But he still stammered out another refusal.
“Too bad. You would have enjoyed it and I could have used the money.” She eyed him speculatively. “You sure?” The grin grew more rakish still. “Maybe a little bondage? Not—”
Here came the throaty chuckle. “—that you don’t look like you’re tied up in knots already.”
Fortunately, Victor didn’t have to think up a suitable rejoinder to thatremark. The woman just shrugged, turned, and got under way again.
They spent another few minutes following the same kind of twisted route. Two minutes into it, Victor remarked that he was quite certain they had shaken whoever might have been tailing him from the hospital.
The woman’s reply came with a snort: “Who’s trying to? This is how you get to where I live, wonderboy.” Again, that throaty chuckle. “I’m not in the business of shaking tails that way.”
The chuckle became an outright laugh. For the next minute or so, leading him through the crowded “public arteries,” the woman ahead of him put on a dazzling display of shaking her tail. Long before she was done, Victor was beginning to deeply regret his refusal.
Duty first! Discipline!
But he kept the thought to himself. He could well imagine her response, and the rakish grin and chuckle which would accompany it.
Victor spent the remaining minutes of their trek simply studying his surroundings. Chicago’s Old Quarter—or “the Loop,” as it was sometimes called, for no reason that anyone understood—was famous from one end of the Solarian League to the other.
Notorious, rather, in the way that such largely-immigrant neighborhoods have been throughout history. Dens of vice and iniquity, of course. You can buy anything in the Loop. But there was also a glamorous aura surrounding the place. Artists, writers and musicians abounded, filling the Old Quarter’s multitude of taverns and coffeehouses. (Real coffee—the true Terran strain. Victor had tried some once, but found he didn’t like it. In this, as in many things, the earnest young revolutionary from the slums of Nouveau Paris was more conservative than any decadent elitist.) The artists were invariably “avant-garde” and had the poverty to prove it. The writers were mostly poets and enjoyed a similar income. The musicians, on the other hand, often did quite well. Except for opera, the Loop was the center of Chicago’s musical night life.
Rich or poor, the culturally inclined habitues of the megametropolis’ Old Quarter rubbed elbows with their more dangerous brethren. Over the centuries, the Loop had become the center of the Solarian League’s criminal elite as well as every brand of political radical.
Chicago drew all of them like a magnet, from everywhere in the huge and sprawling Solarian League. But since respectable Solarian society generally refused to acknowledge the existence of such things as widespread poverty and crime, the bureaucrats who were the real political power in the League saw to it that the unwelcome riffraff was kept out of sight and, and much as possible, out of mind. As long as the immigrants stayed in the Loop, except for those who worked as servants, they were generally left alone by the authorities. Within limits, the Loop was almost a nation unto itself. Chicago’s police only patrolled the main thoroughfares and those sectors which served as entertainment centers for the League’s “proper” citizens. For the rest—let them rot.
In some ways—poverty, danger, congestion—the Loop reminded Victor of the squalid Dolist slums which had grown like a cancer during the long reign of Haven’s Legislaturalist regime. But only up to a point. The Dolist slums in which Victor had been born and spent his entire life until he volunteered to join State Security were grim, gray and sullen places. That was beginning to change, as popular fervor for the Revolution and the war against the Manticoran elitists swelled and Victor’s class of people began to accept the necessity for discipline. Still, the Dolist quarters of the People’s Republic of Haven were slums.
Victor suspected that the Loop was even more dangerous than the slums of Haven. Yet, there was a key difference. The Loop was a ghetto, not simply a collection of tenements. And, like many ghettoes throughout history, there was a real vibrancy to its life. Beneath the grime and the poverty and the sneers of respectable society, the Loop possessed a certain genuine verve and elan.
Alas, that dashing joie de vivre extended to pickpockets as well. By the time Victor reached their destination, he had lost his wallet. He did manage to hang onto his watch, but it was a close thing.
When the woman reached her apartment, she began punching in the codes to unlock the door. It was a time-consuming process, given the number of locks. She even had a key for one of them—a real, genuine, antique metal key. As he waited, Victor suddenly realized that he didn’t know her name. He was deeply embarrassed by his lapse into elitism.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “My name’s Victor. I forgot to ask—”
Triumphantly, the woman turned the key and the door finally opened. Just as triumphantly, she bestowed her grin on Victor.
“Sorry, wonderboy. I only give out my name to paying customers.”
She swept through the door like a grande dame making an entrance into a palace. Sheepishly, Victor followed.
The door led directly into a small living room. Usher was there, sprawled comfortably on a couch.
“He’s all yours, Kevin,” announced the woman. “But I’ll give you fair warning. He ain’t no fun at all.”
She moved toward a door on the right, shaking her tail with verve and elan and joie de vivre. “I’ll be in the bedroom. Probably masturbating, even if the pay is scandalous.”
She closed the door behind her. Also with verve and elan and joie de vivre.
Victor took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “She’s quite something,” he pronounced.
Usher smiled. The same thin, wicked smile that Victor remembered. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I married her.”
Seeing Victor’s wide eyes, Usher’s smile became very thin, and very wicked. “There’s no mention of her in my file, is there? That’s lesson number one, junior. The map is not the territory. The man is not the file.”
Helen
Helen was working much faster now. From experience, she had grown confident that her captors would only enter her cell to feed her. They seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that she might try to escape.
The heavy door which they used to lock her in the cell had clearly been brought there from somewhere else. An impressive door, in many ways—solid and heavy. It looked like a new door, in fact. Helen suspected they had purchased it for that very purpose. And then, must have spent many hours fitting the door frame into the ragged entrance and sealing it shut.
She found it hard not to laugh, imagining her father’s sarcasm. Amateurs! A splendid door, sure enough—except it had no peephole. If her captors wanted to check on Helen, the only way they could do so was to open the door itself. Which, needless to say, they had equipped with several locks—even, judging by the sounds, with a heavy chain to secure the entire frame to the exterior wall. As if a fourteen-year-old girl was likely to smash through it by main force!
The end result was that Helen would always have advance warning if her captors entered her cell. Enough time, hopefully, to cover her work—although that would become less feasible as her tunnel deepened.
She broke off from her labor for a moment. She had now managed to get two feet into the wall, almost too deep for her to reach the face any longer. The hole she was digging was just big enough for her to squeeze into once it became n
ecessary to continue the work inside. And it was still small enough to keep covered with an old panel which she had found lying among the pieces of rubble in the cell.
Thinking the situation through, Helen realized that she would have to figure out some kind of timing device before she went much further. Unfortunately, her captors had taken her chrono before they thrust her into the cell. Once she was actually working inside the tunnel, the loud warnings which her captors inadvertently made when they opened the door might not penetrate. And, even if they did, might not leave her enough time to come out and cover her tracks before they entered the cell.
But she didn’t spend much time pondering that problem. Helen had always enjoyed working with her hands, especially after her father introduced her to the pleasures of model-building. She was adept at jury-rigging little gadgets, and was quite sure she could manage to design and build some sort of simple time-keeper.
Instead, she concentrated on a cruder and more fundamental problem. Digging itself, fortunately, was not proving difficult. Helen had discovered, once she broke through the first few inches, that the rubble beyond was not much more than loose fill. She was quite certain, by now, that she was somewhere deep beneath the Old Quarter, in the endless layers of rubble and ruins which marked the ancient center of the city. Chicago was well over two thousand years old. Especially during the war centuries, no one had bothered to remove old and crumbled buildings and structures. Just—leveled them, and built over the wreckage.