Dolly walked across the lab and plucked her glass from atop a reader case. She had exhausted the gin, and contented herself with crunching ice. “This all seems to boil down to money, and that conflicts with what I know of the idomeni. I lived in Rauta Shèràa for seven years. I schooled with them. Worked alongside them. Human business models do not apply. Their status has nothing to do with what they possess, but with what they are.”
“You know born-sect, Dolly. The Haárin are different. They’ve developed a regard for the respect and freedom that doing sound business can earn them.” Jani finished her meal bar and immediately sought another. “In the vast rambling construct of humanish commercialism, they have found a haven. A place where they can live and ply their trades without the interference from born-sect dominants. A place where the threats of born-sect unrest no longer touch them. They don’t want to uproot their lives because two propitiators can’t decide which spice should be used to flavor meats in the morning and which at night. They don’t care about that anymore. Some of them are so far removed from their native culture that they’ve adopted humanish mannerisms and habits.” Visions of Dathim Naré danced in her head. “I met an Haárin recently who wouldn’t return to the worldskein if Cèel shoved a long shooter up his backside and threatened to press the charge-through.” She comprehended the silence, and looked up to see both Dolly and Roni regarding her with their hands over their mouths.
Dolly spoke first. “Jani. What an image.”
Jani pulled the black-covered file out of her duffel and walked to the reader. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes.” Dolly’s eyes widened when she saw what Jani held. “Now that we’ve gotten the xenopolitical discussion out of the way, perhaps you could tell me what point of human documents protocol you needed to illustrate using a ‘Ministers’ Eyes Only’ file?”
“I’ll take that.” Roni rushed to Jani’s side. A subdued tug-of-war ensued until Dolly’s intervention-with-arched-eye-brows gave the advantage to Roni, who plucked the top sheet from the file with an air of triumph and inserted the page in the reader slot.
Dolly cracked a cube between her teeth as she inserted herself between Jani and the reader, blocking Jani’s view of the display. She removed the sheet from the reader slot and read it. “Roni, is this really germane to the discussion?”
Roni looked over her shoulder. Her eyes goggled. She took the paper from Dolly and tucked it back in the file.
Jani walked to the sink to wash her hands, and tried to catch a glimpse of the file along the way. “What is it?”
“Details of a Minister’s personal life, which will no doubt be used to sway a vote or two in some future Council session.” Dolly’s voice had taken on a roughened velvet quality that, like Jamira Shah’s questioning lilt, Jani remembered all too well. “Just how did you go about choosing these files, Roni?”
“We were in a hurry, Dolly. Roni became confused.” Jani returned to the desk and pulled all the files out of the duffel. “OK, we’re looking for Channel World references. Guernsey. Man. Jersey. Acadia. We’re looking for my name. Service C-numbers. Haárin or idomeni references. For damned near anything we can find.”
Dolly walked up to the desk and braced her hands on the edge. “Jani, what did I tell you in my office? Do you remember that far back?”
Jani held a sheaf of files out to her. “And what did I ask you two days ago? Do you remember that far back?”
“Jani—”
“Do I need to repeat it?”
“Wait a damned minute—”
“Do you think I’m wasting your time? If you say yes, we’ll turn these documents over to you right now. You can return them to Exterior, and tell them they magically appeared on the Registry front step. Tell them anything you like.” Jani pushed the files into Dolly’s hands. “But here’s something to keep in mind as you cover your Registry backside. Someone tried to kill me. They tried to kidnap my parents. They’re trying to destroy Nema. I’m trying to find out who they are. At this particular moment, I don’t have much patience with proper form or peoples’ feelings. At this particular moment, you’re either with me or against me, and either way, I’ll remember till the day I die.”
“Ja—?” Dolly looked from Jani, to the files in her hand, then back to Jani. Started to speak. Stopped. Then she turned and walked to an open stretch of counter top, spread out the files, opened one, and began to read.
“And my assignment is?” Roni stepped up to the desk and held out her hand.
Whether the strong emotion that flushed Roni’s face and tightened her voice was anger or embarrassment, Jani didn’t know or care. She handed Roni her share of the paper, then watched her pull a lab chair up to a bench, sit down, and open a file. Only then did she sit down herself and open the topmost of those that remained.
“I think I found something.”
Jani looked up to find Roni hurrying across the lab toward the reader, and rose to join her. “What is it?”
“Meeting notes. Stuck off by themselves in a file. Guernsey watermark. They’re encoded, but the reader should be able to decrypt.” She pounded a beat on the reader to shake it out of standby. “Why do people take notes? Don’t they know that once they write it down, they’re mine for life?” Roni inserted the sheet of parchment in the reader, then stood back, rocking from one foot to the other as the paper disappeared into the slot. “On the other hand, this could be another false alarm.”
Jani flexed her stiff back, her eyes on the instrument display. “Let’s see what it says before we write it off.”
“Write what off?” Dolly entered the lab juggling three dispos of vend alcove coffee.
“Roni’s found meeting notes.” Jani took one of the cups from Dolly and sniffed the steam. It held a sharp, burning odor, which meant the brew was old, which in turn meant that it would taste like fuel to her hybrid tastebuds. She didn’t want to ask Dolly if the Hands of Might could lay hold of some pepper to kill the taste, however—judging from the look on Dolly’s face, those Hands wouldn’t be averse to boxing an Ear. Instead, Jani drank, swallowed, and kept her grimace to herself.
Roni took her own cup with the look of a drowning woman who had just been thrown a float. “The whole damned thing’s encrypted,” she said between sips. “Why would someone encrypt meeting notes? If the topic was so touchy, why write it down in the first place?”
“Sounds as through someone wanted to cover themselves.” Dolly tossed a couple of tablets in her mouth, then washed them down. “But that doesn’t mean the matter has anything to do with what we’re investigating here. Nothing in this melange has even come close to whatever it is Jani’s looking for—we’ve found everything from personnel profiles to construction plans for colonial buildings.” She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “This will turn out to be someone’s shopping list.”
Behind them, the reader beeped. The original document emerged from the slot, followed a few seconds later by a decrypted fiche.
Roni grabbed them both, then handed off the original to Jani as she plundered the copy. “It’s a note to Anais Ulanova,” she muttered after a few seconds. “Bet that’s why they wrote it down. Probably kept copies in lockboxes, too. What the hell does this mean? ‘Met with Le Blond—’”
“Let me see it.” Jani plucked the fiche from her hands and read it. “Met with Le Blond today. He will be at Exterior Main in three weeks. He says there are no problems. Service is set.” She glanced up. “I don’t know whether that’s service as in served or the Service.” She continued to read. “Contracts are set. Are—?” She cleared her throat. “Are you sure we must use him? He kills with his eyes. He is so cold—I do not trust him.”
“Jani?” Dolly leaned toward her, headache-narrowed eyes lit with question. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No. I’ve seen those before.” Jani beckoned to Roni. “Can you recall whether Anais would have been at Exterior Main in time to meet with Le Blond?”
<
br /> Roni glanced at the date. “I’d have to check her calendar history.”
Dolly gestured toward the lab comport. “You can do that from here.”
Roni shook her head. “Not tonight, Madame. Exterior Security disconnected the Annex from CabNet when they filed the missing doc report. We’re in lockdown until further notice—I’d have to go back to my office to check this.”
“I don’t know how the hell you talked us out of there.” Roni fell into the people-mover seat, then leaned forward and rested her forehead against the seat in front of her. “Dolly wanted to kill you. She wanted to string you up by your heels over boiling oil. She wanted—”
“She wants to find out what’s going on more.” Jani watched the dead-of-night city drift past the ’mover window. “If Dathim could recall in which pile he found those notes, I’d send him back to steal the whole stack. It would all be there. The meetings. The payoffs. The plans. Everything pertaining to L’araignée’s birth. I bet the trail would lead right to whoever composed The Nema Letter and spearheaded the white paper.”
“Let’s not give Dathim Naré any more espionage practice, OK?” Roni sat back slowly. “Like I said back there, I’d dealt with outfits like them before. If you’d leveled with me from the beginning, I could have searched Anais’s desk and uncovered the whole damned story.”
“No.” Jani shook her head, stopping when the rocking seemed to intensify. “L’araignée’s been leaving a trail of bodies. Ignorance is survival.”
“Is it?” Roni rocked her head from shoulder to shoulder until the bones in her neck cracked. “That little bit Dathim stumbled upon is all we’re going to get, unfortunately. My guess is that everything on Anais’s desk has been locked up by Security, to be released into her hands only.” She poked the plastic sack in her lap, into which Jani had transferred all the Exterior files except for The Nema Letter. Dolly had insisted on holding on to that “for safety’s sake.” Whether she meant the document’s safety or their collective security, she didn’t make clear. Considering her tense mood, Roni and Jani thought it wiser not to push for clarification.
“You’re going to have a hell of a time burying those.” Jani unbent her knee as far as she could without hitting the seat in front of her. The sharp pain had damped to a dull ache, but every step between the ’mover stop and her flat still promised agony. “What will you tell Lescaux?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” Roni yawned and sagged further into her seat. “‘Le Blond.’ You paled when you read that fiche.” Her breathing slowed, as though she neared sleep. “You think it’s Lucien, don’t you?”
Jani yawned in response, wide enough for her jaw to crack. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t give me that, all right—I’ve had a bad night.” Roni scowled and touched her sore cheek. “I’ve been roughed up in an alley, I’ve made the Registry Inspector General’s ‘watch this one’ list, and I’ve probably done myself out of a job.” She pressed her hand to her face, bleary eyes locked in the middle distance. “When Lucien still worked at Exterior, I used to study him. Much as I hated him, I had to admire the way he just cut through the place. Peter looks like him—the hair, the eyes, but he really can’t hold a candle. Lucien maneuvered people like pieces on a gameboard. Even Anais, although she didn’t realize it until it was too late.” She looked at Jani. “He threw her over for you. Did you ever wonder why?”
“Access to the idomeni, like I told you in your office.” Jani thought back to Lucien’s rapt studying of Dathim. “He finds them fascinating.”
“Well, folks say you’re part idomeni. Perhaps he thinks you’re fascinating, too.” Roni yawned again. “So, speaking of close but not quite, who was this person I remind you of?”
Jani turned her attention to the darkened buildings. “Yolan Cray. She was a corporal with the Twelfth Rover Corps. She died during the first bombing raid at Knevçet Shèràa.”
“She was your friend?”
“Inasmuch as we could be, considering she was enlisted and I was an officer in the same outfit. We reported to an asshole—that promoted the sense of solidarity.”
“Yeah, that’ll do it.” Roni nodded in the loose-necked way of the terminally punchy, then looked at Jani with bloodshot eyes. “You blame yourself for her death.”
Jani started. “No, I don’t—”
“Yes, you do. You think you’re responsible for everybody. Nema, Tsecha, whatever you call him. Everybody, and everything.” She fell silent. Her chin sagged to her chest. Jani had to nudge her awake when they arrived at their stop.
Roni hailed a ’taxi to take her to Exterior; Jani didn’t hire one to take her to her building, out of habit. By the time she arrived, she had slipped into the auto-drive of the truly exhausted, barely lifting her feet above the ground, taking care not to stop for fear of never getting started again.
She entered her flat to find it darkened and quiet. As she passed her desk, she spotted a note attached to the back of her workstation so that she could see it on the way in. Angevin’s handwriting. You have some explaining to do.
Jani crumpled the note and tossed it in the trashzap. Trudged into her bedroom, tossed her duffel bedside, and fell onto her stomach into bed, fully clothed.
She had just drifted off when the sound of footfalls jarred her awake. The heavy breathing unique to a body in discomfort. The sag of the mattress as Lucien got into bed beside her.
Silence. Then the voice that touched her where none ever had. “I’ve been waiting for you. Steve and Angevin gave up hours ago, but I waited. I was on the couch—I heard you come in. You walked right past me.” Silence again, as though he waited for her to speak. “Thinking about Dathim Naré helped keep me awake. I’ve never seen an Haárin like him before.”
Jani recalled his rapt look as he drank in Dathim’s every move. “I noticed.”
“Jealous?” A short expulsion of breath, as though he laughed. “Why do you think he cut his hair? Do you think the braids got in his way, or what?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Maybe I will.” Silence again, flavored with peevishness. Then Lucien cleared his throat. “Angevin said you went to Sheridan this morning. Make that yesterday morning.”
Morning. It seemed like a year ago. “Yes. I needed to talk to Frances.” Jani edged her hand in her pocket and felt for the antistat containing the broken marker.
“If I’d known, I’d have asked you to stop by my room and pick up a few things.” The mattress flexed as Lucien shifted position. “I keyed it to you. Months ago. You were still on-base at the time. I waited for you to visit, but you never did.”
Jani closed her fingers around the hard, sharp plastic of the broken marker half, and massaged the rough edge.
“Your parents are here. I found that out tonight, when I called I-Com to try and track you down.” Another sigh. “Everything I know about you, I have to find out from other people.”
Jani turned her head. “There wasn’t time to tell you.”
The dark form beside her reached out and touched her hair. “If you gave a damn about me, you’d make time.” The hand moved lower, caressing her cheek. “But you don’t, do you?” Lower, moving down her neck. “Where did you take the docs?”
Jani shifted her arm to block Lucien’s hand so he couldn’t work it lower. She wanted him to, in spite of everything, which was why she made sure to stop him. “I’m tired. We’ll talk later.”
Lucien pulled his hand away. “There’s later, and then there’s too late. Did you ever think of that?”
Jani didn’t answer. She forced herself to remain awake until she heard Lucien’s breathing slow and deepen in sleep. Then she struggled out of bed, her back aching, her knee popping with every step.
Her footsteps barely sounded as she walked across the sitting room, muffled as they were by Angevin’s rented rugs. She opened the door to the entryway closet and hunted through the bags and boxes that had been delivered from the sto
res. She barely glanced at her beautiful sari, digging until she uncovered her Ganesha with its pedestal.
She set up the shrine in the corner of the room nearest her desk. After she set the figurine on its base and placed the brass bowl before it, she knelt, leaning forward and touching her forehead to the floor three times in rapid succession. Help me, Lord, she prayed to the embodiment of wisdom before her, to the remover of obstacles. Help me find the answers I seek, even if they pain me. She leaned forward again, this time keeping her forehead pressed to the floor.
I told Niall that there’s no such thing as coincidence, that it’s hardest to see that which is closest to you. Have I failed to heed my own warnings, Lord? Her knee throbbed from the press of her weight. I have never obeyed my body instead of my brain—is this what I’m doing now?
She remained on her knees on the hardwood floor and offered her pain as sacrifice, imagining it as gold coins that she tossed into the bowl. Only when her eyes teared and she bit her lip to suppress a cry did she struggle to her feet, store the empty boxes in the closet, and return to bed.
CHAPTER 25
Tsecha sat on the veranda of Dathim Naré’s house and watched the lights of a Vynshàrau patrol skimmer flicker off the water. The activity had lessened considerably compared to earlier in the night. Then, the lake skimmers had traversed in pairs and triples, while demis swooped and glided above as seabirds chivying watercraft.
What do you look for, Shai? Tsecha watched the skimmer until it turned along the invisible border dividing idomeni waters from those of the Interior Ministry, then flitted toward the dim horizon. What is out on the lake that you find so interesting? Do you search for documents, too? He bared his teeth at the thought, but his humor quickly dissipated. He wished he had brought the timeform from his work table—the mental exercise of converting idomeni time to humanish would have occupied him, prevented his thoughts from wandering as the skimmers did over the water.
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