Awakening (Harmony Book 2)

by Margaret Ball

  “That’s enough!” she said; not in a shout that might be heard downstairs, but in her best controlling-rowdy-teenagers teacher voice. As everybody stopped, startled, she went on in the same tone.

  “I came here to warn you that there’s a habber downstairs already, not to join an Esilian debating party.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mikal, stopped by the shock of her words, standing in the doorway. “You might want decide what to do about him before you worry about me.”

  “They can’t come into the building. It’s Esilian territory!” Vess said.

  “Hot pursuit,” Mikal said gloomily.

  “He’s not in uniform,” Devra put in. “He’s disguised as a normal person.”

  “In that case,” Vess said, rising heavily to her feet, “I can throw him out. I’ll close the café and tell everybody to leave. You –” she glanced at Mikal “– and you –” looking at Devra, “are too ill to stand up, let alone serving kahve and pastries. Do you think you can remember that?”

  Even in fear and confusion, Devra noted that Vess’ talking-to-rowdy-children voice was even more effective than her own annoyed-teacher tones. She wondered how old you had to be to bring that off.

  As Vess’ steps receded down the stairs, Devra sank down on the edge of the bed. She might not be too sick to stand, but her knees were definitely wobbly. Mikal turned to Lars and Julle. “Just in case that doesn’t work, you two had better disappear now.” He gestured towards the door in the wall.

  “What about her?” Devra’s warning had done nothing to soften the hostility in Julle’s voice.

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  “The same way you took care of your so-called secret escape route, dropping enough clues that even a waitress could figure it out?”

  Professor Eklund spoke for the first time. “For the love of Harmony, woman, she’s right. This is not an Esilian debating society.” He put a hand on Julle’s elbow and gently urged her towards the hiding space.

  “We can’t leave her free. She knows too much now. She’ll have to come with us.”

  “I’m supposed to be sick,” Devra pointed out. “What happens if they do search the place and I’m not lying on a bed moaning?”

  “Just tell them that she went home,” Julle said to Mikal.

  Mikal threw up his hands. “Women! We don’t have time for this. Devra?”

  “All right,” said Devra, looking away from the dark space behind the false wall, “I’ll do it. Although I’m not crazy about being shut up in a small space with her.” She could be just as rude as this Julle if she wanted.

  The space behind the wall was larger and dimmer than she’d expected. She stumbled over a bucket that she had not seen and half-fell onto a mattress beyond it. Fortunately, the bucket had been empty. She felt along the sides of the mattress with cold hands.

  “Sssh!” Julle hissed. “Are you trying to give us away?”

  “No,” Devra whispered back, “I’m trying to find some blankets.” Cut off from the heated room, and directly against an exterior wall, the hiding place was definitely chilly. If they had to stay here for hours, they would either have to wrap up in something, or huddle together to share body heat. And Devra wasn’t even sure that – that icicle who’d come in with the Professor had any warmth to share. More likely she was a heat sink.

  Devra and Julle had made it in with no trouble, but it was harder for Professor Eklund. The opening in the wall was so short and narrow that he had to contort himself to follow them, and even so he knocked his head on the wall once before successfully folding his lanky body through the doorway. Mikal swung the shelves back into place with an audible thump.

  “Thumps and bumps,” Devra thought, remembering the night when she’d heard such noises overhead while she was setting up for the next morning. She wondered idly whether all men were incapable of shutting doors without slamming them, and thought that she had never appreciated modern wall-pocket doors enough.

  ***

  Lukas was sorely disappointed when the girl he’d been hoping to chat up first turned white, then fled up the stairs. After a few minutes a plump middle-aged woman took her place behind the counter, apologized for the delay, and announced that the café was closed for the evening due to illness among the staff, although those who’d already been served were welcome to stay and finish their snack.

  She stood behind the counter with folded arms, clearly not intending to leave until the café was cleared of customers, and very few of them could withstand her stare for long. Kahve was downed or, in two cases, poured into the dirt around a remarkably unattractive hanging plant. Pastries were choked down or wrapped in flimsies and pocketed.

  As someone who hadn’t even ordered, Lukas received accusing stares from several patrons who’d inconvenienced themselves in order to leave quickly. If I were in uniform, they wouldn’t even meet my eyes, let along glare at me. If he were in uniform, he wouldn’t have entered the café in the first place; the law against Harmony officials interfering with Esilian-owned business was strict. The only exception granted had to do with being in hot pursuit of a fugitive.

  I didn’t even get as far as lukewarm pursuit of Devra.

  His mood was not improved by the comments he heard as the other customers took their departure. “Give Devra my best, will you?” “Tell Devra we hope she’s better soon.” “Take good care of Devra and Mikal, now.”

  She was Devra to half the city, Lukas exaggerated bitterly, and he hadn’t even managed to get on unofficial speaking terms with the girl. I definitely need to look for a better class of work.

  As soon as he stepped outside he understood why there was such a crowd shuffling around the door. A colleague of his, impeccably uniformed and armed, was stopping each citizen and scanning their ID chips. When it was Lukas’s turn, he held out his right hand for scanning and tapped his closed lips with one finger of his left hand, fixing Prettyboy Jayson with what he hoped was a warning glare. The phrase, “Dumb as a box of rocks,” had been invented to account for Jayson. Lukas wouldn’t put it past the man to greet him openly and ask what he’d been doing in there.

  Fortunately, Jayson appeared to understand the Don’t say anything part of Lukas’s unspoken warning. Less fortunately, there was now a record of his presence at the Esilian café. Sure, he could explain that he’d been trying to pick up a girl whom he’d arrested and whom the SecHead had placed there as a spy. That would go over really well, wouldn’t it? He slid into a shadowy crevice in the wall and waited until his colleague was through with the departing customers.

  Once they were gone, Prettyboy grinned and clapped Lukas on the shoulder. “Anybody left in there?”

  “Only the staff,” Lukas said, “and two of the three are sick.”

  “And you’ve been there how long?”

  He remembered Devra’s white face. “Since they opened.” It was almost true.

  “So old Grigg set up surveillance inside the café as well as outside!”

  “He’ll deny it if you ask him,” Lukas warned. “Slightly illegal, and very hush-hush. Better to say nothing.” He tapped one finger on the side of his nose and tried to look conspiratorial.

  “Especially as it didn’t work, eh?” Prettyboy Jayson tried to imitate Lukas’s grimace.

  “He might prefer not to be reminded of it,” Lukas said, and then, truthfully, “and you really don’t want to get on his bad side.”

  ***

  The two fugitives were both silent after the door closed on the three of them and they were surrounded by darkness. Seated on the edge of the mattress, wrapped in one of the quilts she’d found, Devra had more time than she wanted to think.

  She’d definitely betrayed her country now. And she couldn’t regret it, although she did wish she could have thrown her life away on behalf of someone less prickly and suspicious than that Julle. Oh well, there was Professor Eklund too. He was definitely worth saving. She supposed she had already chosen her side, during the internal debate of the
last few days. It all came down to a very simple point, really. Subjecting people to “medical rehabilitation” was wicked and ought to be stopped. The rest followed from there.

  So her personal adventure was to end as it had begun, with trying to save someone from med rehab. She’d failed Ferit; she hoped things worked out better for Professor Eklund and his strange, abrupt girlfriend. They should be all right, unless… Her mind skittered away from what would happen when she was questioned, and she focused on any trivial detail that could help her not to think about that. The darkening skies outside. The firmness of the bed she was sitting on. The slight tinge of pain when Mikal had said so quickly, “Not my girlfriend.” No, that wasn’t even worth thinking about; they’d never been anything to one another but employer and employee. She had even managed not to betray that she had wanted something more than friendly banter.

  Well, no use thinking about it now. She almost certainly wasn’t going to have any kind of a future, let alone one with Mikal in it.

  A line of light appeared on the connecting wall. All three stiffened, then relaxed when Mikal entered and pulled the door almost shut behind him. “Vess has thrown everybody out and closed the café,” he reported in a low voice, “but there’s still a habber watching the back and two in the front. I think. One of the ones in the front isn’t in uniform. That might be the one you spotted, Devra.”

  “If the café’s closed, can’t we come out again?” Professor Eklund asked.

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” said Mikal. “Not while Security is openly watching the building. They could force their way in and search the place anyway, pleading hot pursuit of a fugitive. Devra could come out but you two had better stay in here.”

  “Devra isn’t going anywhere,” said Julle. “I don’t trust her. And if you have any bright ideas about making a noise if they come upstairs,” she said to Devra, “bear in mind that I know how to break your neck in five seconds.”

  “Julle, must you take such a tone?” Professor Eklund asked mildly. “We know no ill of Devra and one good thing: she did warn us of the habber downstairs. Besides,” he said as though that should settle the argument, “she was one of my best students.”

  “Which, of course, makes her incapable of betraying us.”

  “At the least, it should be considered highly unlikely. And in any case, you can’t watch her forever; we shall, I hope, be traveling on, and she will remain here.”

  “You’re right,” said Julle. “There’s no guarantee she won’t be running straight to Security as soon as we leave. My first suggestion is actually the only solution.”

  “You mean –” the Professor began.

  “It’ll be quick,” Julle told Devra. “You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

  “Absolutely not,” the Professor said, rather too loudly for someone in hiding. “I will not buy my safety with the life of one of my students.”

  But Devra had been thinking. “It might,” she said slowly, “be the only way. Or at least, the best way. You see, Julle’s suspicions were right. I am a spy. Security told me to apply for this job and to report anything suspicious that I saw.”

  “And did Security also arrange a handy-dandy job opening by killing Rojer?”

  “I think so,” Devra said. “I thought the fact that so many other people died proved it was an accident. But now – well, I’m not so sure that the man I report to would balk at killing innocent people to get what he wanted.”

  “I knew there was something off about her!” Julle explained. Professor Eklund made shushing motions with his open hand.

  “Let her talk. I want to hear what else she has to say.”

  “Two things. First, I had figured out that you were smuggling people out of Harmony before I ever came upstairs. I’ve been fobbing my Security contact off with text reports for a couple of weeks now, because I’m afraid he’ll be able to tell I’m leaving things out if I report in person. I’m on your side. Why do you think I ran upstairs to warn you about the habber?”

  “Three things,” Julle jumped in before Devra had finished. “Why did you agree to spy on us if you’re on our side? How do we know you were leaving information out of your reports? And why should we believe anything you say, if you’ve been lying to the owners of the café for weeks?”

  “I didn’t say I’d always been on your side,” Devra said wearily. “Before I started to work here I’d never actually met any Esilians and I didn’t know my own government was lying to me. I believed everything they said. I believed Esilians were sabotaging our economy and that I would be serving my country by taking this job and finding out if the Green Cat was a center for dissidents. Only, I couldn’t work with Mikal and Vess for long and still believe they were evil people who wanted to harm Harmony. And I found out – mostly thanks to Mikal – how much my government lies and censors and rewrites history. So, when I worked out that they were smuggling people in danger of medical rehab, well, I couldn’t make myself believe that was wrong. Illegal, maybe, but not wrong.”

  “So, you want us to believe that before you started work at the café you were just fine with medical rehab and now you’re so much against it that you’ve turned against your own country,” Julle said skeptically.

  “Devra’s not doing herself justice,” Mikal said on the heels of Julle’s words. “She hasn’t told you how she came to be here. She used to be a schoolteacher. She saw one of her students running away from habbers and lied to save him. When Security discovered her lies, she lost her job, her apartment, and her citizenship. They made sure she couldn’t find work anywhere else until she was dead broke and desperate; then they offered to reinstate her citizenship and wipe her record if she could find out what we were doing here. She hasn’t just been casually dodging a personal report; she was willing to give up her chance of regaining citizenship rather than betray us. Isn’t that right, Devra?”

  “I never told you any of that!” Devra gasped. “Except about Ferit and the habbers.”

  “You’re not the only one who can do research,” Mikal said smugly. “What I’ve just said – true or not true?”

  “It’s all true,” Devra said, “but it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Why should we believe –” Julle started.

  Devra interrupted her. “Let me finish. All that’s irrelevant now anyway. The important thing is that I’m not going to be able to stay away from Security now. My contact there will insist on interrogating me in person, and he’ll probably send a habber to fetch me. And even if I don’t give anything away the first time he questions me – he will be absolutely certain by now that there’s something illegal going on here, and he won’t stop until I give him what he wants.

  “If I don’t betray you at first,” Devra said miserably, “I might after he breaks a few of my fingers. And even if I can stand up to torture, he’ll use drugs next. He’ll find out everything I know and in the process he’ll strip my mind down for medical rehab. So I’d actually rather just skip it and let Julle kill me now.”

  “What the – Are you – that’s crazy!” Mikal exploded.

  “You think so? To me it makes perfect sense,” said Julle, beginning to raise her hands.

  “Julle, if you touch that girl I shall walk straight out of here and give myself up to the habbers,” Professor Eklund said. “Of course, that would destroy this café as a refuge,” he turned toward Mikal, “so it is in your interests, I think, to side with me.”

  “You are all insane,” Mikal said. “And terminally stupid. Of course there’s a better solution than killing Devra.”

  “I should be delighted to hear it,” the Professor said.

  “Look. We’re already committed to smuggling two people out. We can smuggle three just as easily.”

  The Professor was the first to recover from the brief, stunned silence. “An excellent plan,” he pronounced, “and you are quite correct. I was terminally stupid not to have seen that from the beginning.”

  “Well, all of you were somewhat
flustered,” Mikal said modestly. “I’m sure it would have occurred to you in time. Only, it didn’t look like Devra had a lot of time left. Um – maybe I should have asked first. Devra, are you willing to leave everyone you know here and immigrate to Esilia?”

  “As an alternative to death or med rehab,” Devra said shakily, “Esilia sounds just fine to me. Only – Mikal, could you or Vess feed Scat? I’m afraid he’s come to count on me giving him scraps at the back door.”

  “After this,” the Professor said, “I think Mikal and – what’s the lady’s name? Lizavess? Mikal and Lizavess had better come with us.”

  “Uh-uh.” Devra thought Mikal probably shook his head at the same time, though it was impossible to tell in the darkness. “For one thing, this location is too good to give up. We’ve got protection under Esilian diplomatic treaties, this hiding space, and a nice, easy way to reach the harbor. For another, what about people who’ve already been told to come here in emergency? Should we close the café – implicitly admitting guilt – and let Security station some habbers here to arrest anybody who comes in? No. Vess and I are going to keep the café and act very, very normal. We’ll even tell everybody we’re furious because Devra quit without notice to run off with some lad from upriver, and left her CodeX behind, and how are we going to keep the café going without a baker?”

  “I might be able to help with that,” Devra said. She told Mikal about her friend at Gunter’s. Kathi had been furious when the political officer told her she couldn’t hire Devra, and she’d said she hated being in management instead of actually baking.

  Eventually, when they’d hashed out all the problems anybody could think of, Mikal left and advised them to get some sleep. “There’s a freighter leaving for Esilia tomorrow morning, but you’ll have to get up before sunrise to make it there inconspicuously.”

  “How do you know?” Julle asked.

  Devra could hear Mikal’s grin, even if she couldn’t actually see it. “Because I left Professor Eklund’s CodeX on a rice transport going down to load the Isandro. And I had a nice chat with the driver – after all, I had to warn him to ditch the CodeX at least a mile from the harbor, we don’t want habbers swarming down there. And he just happened to mention that he was working at night because the crew of the Isandro were planning to leave at first light.”