As the fighters did their cool down, I went to another bench. The gash in my abdomen ached, and I needed a pause, so I sat and considered our options. My students had participated in two tykado tournaments, the first ever sanctioned events between Cries and the Undercity. Before that, interactions between our cultures had consisted of Undercity kids sneaking to the Concourse to steal food, cops chasing them back to the aqueducts, clandestine visits by the Cries elite to Jak’s casino, the drug trade, secret trysts between forbidden lovers, and other whacked out misbehavior. Those two tournaments, for all their simplicity, were unprecedented. They almost hadn’t happened because no Cries academy wanted anything to do with Undercity teams. That changed when Lavinda Majda offered to give out the awards. She was the closest I had to an ally in the House of Majda. It also helped that another ally of mine, Professor Ken Roy from Cries University, knew people at the Cries Tykado Academy and put in a word for us. With two such distinguished supporters, CTA agreed to a tournament. Their students had expected to win easily, but the fights had been close and my group bested them in several matches.
My fighters sat together now, dark hair shaggy about their faces as they talked about their technique. Good. They’d caught the interest of the Cries coaches, so I was negotiating for them to test for their official tykado belts. But which ones? They trained every day, often for hours, far more than most Cries students. They hadn’t started out in tykado, though, and they still had gaps in their technique. Although they already had the equivalent of the lower belts, they hadn’t earned them at a school accredited by the ITF. The Cries Tykado Academy agreed to test them for first-degree black belts anyway, because in return I agreed to work with the academy students. It was a good bargain: As a sixth-degree black belt, I needed to teach as part of the training for my next level. I worried, though. As much as I didn’t want to hold back my students, who burned with dreams, if I let them test too soon and they failed, it could backfire. These five were trailblazers, informal ambassadors from the Undercity to Cries. The last thing I wanted was for them to feel humiliated in front of the city students, who already considered them inferior.
Footsteps sounded down the canal, muffled by dust. I looked up to see a huge figure walking in the shadows beyond the golden torchlight. As I stood up, he came into view. He towered, with wide shoulders, powerful arms, and legs like tree trunks. Yah, Gourd was big. Fortunately he liked engineering better than beating up people. Of course, no one here called him an engineer; our dialect didn’t even include the word. He was a mech wizard.
“Eh, Gourd,” I said as he came up to me.
“Eh, Bhaaj.” He nodded, and a curl of gray-streaked hair fell into his eyes. When had it started to change color? It seemed only yesterday we’d been kids, running with Jak in our own gang. We were both in our forties now, but he had no nanomeds in his body to delay his aging.
My efforts to improve medical care in the Undercity sometimes felt like wading through quicksand. Cries preferred to forget about the inconvenient slum under the desert. My people wanted nothing to do with Cries and would never accept anything they considered charity. Although I’d been making progress, seeing Gourd’s graying hair brought home how far I still had to go.
Gourd settled next to me onto the stone bench. “Heard whisper. You looking for me?”
“Yah,” I said. “You need to see Doctor Rajindia.”
“What for?”
I touched his hair. “Get health meds.”
He shrugged. “Feel fine. Like my hair.”
“Meds keep you always feeling fine.”
Gourd grimaced. “Don’t want them in my body. They never go away.”
I understood. I’d been uneasy when I got mine in the army. But now I took for granted the advantages of having little molecular laboratories cruising my bloodstream, taking care of my health. “Worth it. Live better, live longer.”
He crossed his huge arms and scowled. “Jak says this, too. Him and his meds.”
I’d never figured out where Jak got his, but I was glad he had them. “So yah, it’s good.”
“Won’t take charity.”
Again we came to that. He wouldn’t take anything for free, and he was one of the few people in the Undercity who understood how much meds cost. I knew how to reach him, though.
“Make a bargain,” I said.
He uncrossed his arms and regarded me curiously. “You get me meds, I do what?”
“Work for me. Do research.”
“Like what?”
I reached behind the bench and grabbed my backpack. Opening it up, I took out the sphere from the Quida mansion. “This.”
Over on the other bench, Angel lifted her head. “Pretty,” she said. She and the others nodded their greeting to Gourd, who nodded back. They then went back to their tykado talk.
I handed the sphere to Gourd. He turned it around, letting it catch glints of light. “Bright.”
“Puzzle,” I said.
“Why?” He tossed the ball into the air and caught it. “Round. Puzzle solved.”
I smiled. “Check it out for me.”
“Check for what?”
“Not sure. Was twisted.”
He gave a hearty laugh, deep and rumbling. “What, evil or just kinky?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “No kink. Just turned on its post. It was on a stair rail.”
“In a Cries place?”
“A mansion.”
He snorted. “Pretty and useless.” It summed up how most of my people felt about the city.
I took the ball and stuck it on my thumb. “Should fit like this.” I twisted the ball around, lifting it slightly. “I found it like this. Strange.”
“Why care?”
“Got job. City job. Woman gone. City exec.” I paused. “Maybe dead.”
He stopped smiling. “And this ball matters?”
“I don’t know. Cops say it’s fine. Cleaning bot twisted it.” I offered him the ball. “Seems wrong.”
He held the ball, testing its weight. “Wrong why?”
I wished I knew. “Not sure. Bots are smart. Wouldn’t move the ball. But it’s moved. You find what cops missed, eh?”
“I’ll look. Problem might be the cleaning bot, though.”
He had a point. Although the police had found no problems with the bots, you never knew. Even so. Gourd could maybe come at it from a different angle. “We’ll see. Check, yah?”
He slid the ball into a pouch hanging from his leather belt. “Will do.”
I nodded my thanks. “Got good news, too. For water.”
He perked up. “You can get new mech for my filters?”
“Get you city mech. Top-notch.”
He stopped looking interested. “Not news, Bhaaj. I always get city mech.”
“Not stolen mech. Not salvage, either. Legal and new.”
“Nahya!” He thumped his big fist on his thigh. “No charity.”
“Not charity.”
He still didn’t look interested. “Can’t buy it. Don’t have optos. Don’t want optos.”
“Don’t need optos.” Most Imperialate economies used opto-credits, a currency transferred through electro-optical systems. You never saw an opto, which was why my people considered them a scam. The Undercity economy worked on an exchange of goods or services. Gourd either traded his skills for what he needed on the black market or else mined salvage from the city tech-mech dumps. If people in Cries threw it out, then taking it wasn’t charity.
“Got a trade,” I said. “With Ken Roy. You talk to him.”
“Why?” He sounded more puzzled than anything else. “Ken looks at ruins.”
“Not exactly. Not an anthropologist. Terraformer.”
Gourd smirked at that. In our dialect, using a word with two syllables was considered emphasis. Three syllables either meant the speaker wanted to show importance with the word, as in “aqueducts,” or else they meant it as ridicule. A four-syllable word implied incredible importance, a great insu
lt, or a huge joke. My people considered Undercity two words: Under-city. The words I used to describe Cries amused them no end. I’d given up trying to explain I wasn’t insulting Ken Roy when I said he chaired the Terraforming Division at the university.
Gourd waved his hand at me. “Jibber, Bhaaj.”
I regarded him sourly. “Not gibberish. He wants talk to you.”
“Why me?”
“For his study on the aqueducts.” I’d met Ken Roy last year. He was studying the failure of the terraforming on Raylicon, as our world slowly became uninhabitable. He wanted to understand what motivated my ancestors to move underground, retreating to these ruins so many millennia ago. Of course, no one in the aqueducts wanted anything to do with him. So he was trying to work out bargains they would accept.
“Talk to Ken,” I said. “Get good tech in return.”
Gourd considered the idea. “Need new filters,” he acknowledged. “Need more drinkable water. Many new births. That doctor you sent, she helps babies survive.”
Ho! That was welcome news. Our population had one of the highest mortality rates in the Imperialate. Convincing a doctor to visit the aqueducts had taken some doing, but now that the military realized we had value to them, with so many empaths among us, they were more willing to help. Of course the charity business had reared its head, but Doctor Rajindia was no slouch. She learned fast how to bargain in the Undercity. She never came down without permission and the protection of a gang. She would treat anyone who asked for help, and in return, she asked to study the psions among us. Rajindia remained discreet and careful, never intrusive with her bargains, and gradually she earned the trust of my people.
Change was coming to the Undercity.
CHAPTER V
ABOVE CITY
“It happens every time I hear a sound in the house,” Lukas said as we walked through the Cries park. Sprinklers misted water across the feather-grass and cooled our skin. “I jump, thinking she’s come home. But it’s never her.” He waved his hand at the gardens as if to encompass its entirety of velvety lawns and imported trees wrapped with diaphanous vines that fluttered in the breezes. “How can this all look so beautiful? How can the world go on as if nothing happened?”
I started to lift my hand, to lay it on his arm, offering comfort. Then I stopped myself. Of course I couldn’t touch him. The elite in Cries lived by such coldhearted customs to isolate a grieving man this way, but violating those traditions was no better. He didn’t need the implied insult of my invading his personal space. I thought of the friends I’d lost to illness, hardship, and starvation in my youth, desperate in the Undercity, or the soldiers I’d fought with and lost to the violence of wars that never seemed to wane no matter how “civilized” humans became. It never stopped hurting, never stopped creating those empty spaces inside where grief crept with silent cruelty.
“I’m sorry.” I wished I had something better to tell him.
Lukas started to speak, stopped, and then said, “You asked me before if I felt her presence. Major, I almost had a convulsion that night, at the gala, after she went upstairs and never came down. It was like a mental tsunami blasted through my mind.”
I stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
He spoke bitterly. “In my experience, comments like that from trophy husbands are relegated to the realm of ‘high-strung neurotic.’”
“Del Lukas, you have never once given me the impression of anything but a sound mind.”
He hesitated. “This may sound strange, but both she and I believed the neurological processes of our brains had become linked.”
I thought of Jak. We’d grown up together, loved, fought, starved, triumphed, and failed together every day of our lives until I joined the army. He’d often infuriated me in our youth, the way he’d disappear for days without a word, off gambling or caught up in some scheme. Yet after I’d enlisted, I felt disconnected without him. The day I finally acknowledged that yes, I’d loved this man my entire life, it felt as if an undefined link became complete. Had some interaction between our brain waves become second nature? I had no idea. Jak wasn’t an empath as far as either of us knew. This much I’d never doubted; if Jak died, then no matter what distance separated us, I would know.
“I think people connect to each other in ways we’re only beginning to understand,” I said.
“A few times I’ve dreamed we were together again, taking a walk or talking.” Longing touched his voice. “It felt so real. As I woke up, just for an instant, I could have sworn she was lying next to me.” He drew in a shaky breath. “Then I realize I’m alone.”
That had to hurt. “Lukas, I can’t tell you I’ll bring her home. But I can promise you this. I won’t stop investigating until I’ve done everything in my power to get you answers.”
He looked at me without trying to disguise the pain of his loss. “Thank you, Major.”
Somehow, someway, I had to find closure for this anguished man.
Jen Oja refused my attempts to set up a meeting. Tough. I strode across the spacious lobby of the Scorpio Corporation tower. Aqua-blue panels stretched from the floor to the ceiling three stories overhead, showing oceans on other worlds. A balcony bordered the second level, its transparent floor and rails designed to look as if water filled them. Several people stood up there, taking a break from work while they watched visitors come and go as if we were sea creatures within an ocean.
A robo-server blocked my way, humanoid in shape, with a transparent body that looked as if it were filled with water. Holo-fish swam within his interior. “Do you have an appointment?”
I walked around him, headed for the lifts. “No.”
“Please stop.” He moved in front of me again. “You must have an appointment.”
“Look in your files for Major Bhaajan.”
Blue lights flickered in his eyes. “Retained by the House of Majda,” he told me, as if I didn’t know. He moved aside. “Please proceed.”
Well, so, that worked. I wondered how it felt to grow up as a Majda, with every door open and every desire met. It made a jarring contrast to my own childhood, with its crushing poverty. I’d wrestled with anger when I first came back to Raylicon. I managed better now because I could see progress in my efforts to improve life in the Undercity. The Majdas were even willing to help, and to follow my lead rather than trying to force their ideas on my people. I’d convinced them that such flexibility served their needs; they shouldn’t risk damaging whatever created so many psions among our population.
When I reached the lift, its blue doors whisked open and I stepped into a round car. Its walls, ceiling, and floor showed holo-scenes of water rippling while sunlight slanted through the clear blue depths. Aquatic animals drifted past, gold and crimson. As the lift went up the tower, I felt as if I were rising through an ocean. It was all painfully beautiful on a world where the only body of water on the surface of the entire planet was an artificial lake at the Majda palace. Scorpio projected a clear message: They offered their elite clientele services as valuable, and as rare, as limitless water.
Maybe my ancestors had named the canals in the Undercity “aqueducts” because water meant power on Raylicon. Hell, that could explain a subconscious choice on my part when I’d dressed for this face-off with Jen Oja. My designer skirt, blouse, and jacket were all aqua blue.
The lift let me out in a corridor that smelled of fresh water. How did Scorpio do that? Pure water didn’t have a smell. Yet as I walked along that spacious hallway, the air reminded me of freshwater lakes. The walls showed images of Scorpio Towers on other worlds, all near rivers or oceans. A fountain in a niche of the wall burbled with water, and blue-glass tumblers sat on a ledge. I tried to walk past it, but I couldn’t resist. So I stopped, filled a glass, and drank deeply. Damn, that was good. When I set down the glass, it moved into a wall niche and vanished. Another glass slid out, taking its place. Feeling guilty for taking part in such a display of excess, I walked away. It was hard to believe drin
king a glass of water was such a mundane activity on other worlds.
Jen Oja had a large office at the end of the corridor. Its colors matched the hallway, and a large window stretched across the far wall of the room. Niches in the walls displayed offworld artifacts. I hadn’t realized just how high the lift had taken me until I saw the panoramic view. Cries spread out below, its towers elegant against the pale blue sky.
“Who are you?” a cold voice asked.
I pulled my gaze away from the spectacular view and focused on the woman I’d come to see. She sat at a large holo-table to the left. She looked exactly like the images I’d found of Jen Oja: black hair pulled into a sleek roll on her head, a face of sharp angles, and a lean build. She wore a tailored suit in that pale color people called ivory, whatever that meant. It looked to me like white and yellow got together and had a baby, but what did I know. Everything about her whispered elegance. No metallic hair, no vivid colors, no loud words from this Scorpio luminary.
“My name is Major Bhaajan,” I said. “I’m an investigator working on the Quida case.”
She considered me like a queen checking out a lizard scuttling through the sand. “I told your assistant Max I didn’t have time to see you.”
I walked into her office, and discovered I rather enjoyed the way she took such pains to hide her unease. Apparently even my expensive blue suit didn’t make me look civilized. She tapped a panel on her table. “Security, send someone to escort my visitor out of the building.”
The voice of the robo-server answered. “I’m sorry, Del Oja. She has clearance from Majda.”
Oja scowled at the table as if the robo could see her. Hell, probably it could, given all the security here. She tapped off the comm and rose to her feet, facing me. “What do you want?”
I went to the table. “I’d like to talk to you about Mara Quida.”
“I already talked to the authorities.” Her voice was perfectly controlled. “I don’t know what happened to her. I was downstairs when Mara did her little vanishing act.”
“I’d still like to ask some questions.” I kept my voice courteous. I’d already pissed her off, to see if it stirred anything useful, but if I took that too far, she’d have me kicked out, Majdas or no.
The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3) Page 7