“That thing’s gonna go off,” Kez warned. “Wot you waitin’ for?”
Tuan blinked and went back to the panel, his spare arm hugging his knees. “It’s—it’s good manners to swap names,” he said, glancing at her sideways. “I thought you were going to tell me yours.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kez, grinning in a way that made Tuan look away hastily and work at the panel much more swiftly, “you’ll know me ’f’you see me again.”
“Yes, I think so,” he said. His hand dropped away from the panel, which was now blinking all green lights in a satisfyingly languid manner.
“Good job, TuanTuan,” Kez said, and patted him on the head again.
“My name is Tuan,” he protested.
“Not anymore, it ain’t,” said Kez. “Orright. Where’s the other alarms?”
“Don’t turn the doorknob yet,” TuanTuan said, standing up. He made a long, lanky dash across the room and returned with a sticky hook and a cred-card. Crouching by the door again, he slipped the card between the door and the doorjamb, turning the knob at the same time. The door swung open toward them, and Kez skipped back to avoid it.
TuanTuan, wrapping his other arm around his knees, reiterated, “My name is Tuan.”
“Don’t care,” said Kez, plucking the sticky hook out of his hand. She slid the cred-card down as she pushed the sticky hook in its place, and gave it a thump to activate the sticky. “Wot’s your dad use an old style door for?”
“So he can put three alarms on it, I suppose,” said TuanTuan.
“Where’s the third—oooh! Oooh, that’s clever!”
TuanTuan’s eyes glowed. “Isn’t it?” he said. “He stole that off me. I don’t think he was expecting me to break in, so it’s not as stupid as it sounds.”
Kez, crouching beside him to get a better look, squinted at the patch of carpet that was the third alarm. It pulled away slightly from the rest of the carpet in her sight, though at first she wasn’t sure if that was because it was in a slightly different time, or a slightly different space.
“How can you tell?” asked TuanTuan. “I only knew because I recognised the setup; and when I tested it with a leaf it took too long to hit the carpet.”
“It ain’t an alarm like, though,” Kez pointed out.
“No. But if you step on that patch, you won’t be able to get away until it’s unlocked. Well, I suppose you could leave your foot there if you were really desperate.”
Kez nodded, impressed. As far a security went, it wasn’t bad at all. It wouldn’t help with someone who (like Kez) could shift right into the room without difficulty if needed, but it would be pretty effective against someone who (like Kez) didn’t find it advisable to shift right this moment.
“But how did you know?” pressed TuanTuan.
Kez rose from her crouch and leapt over the out-of-synch patch in one movement. As TuanTuan effortlessly stepped over it with his long legs, she said, “Ain’t you s’posed to be escapin’ or summink? You don’t need me to steal you if you’re already gone.”
She was feeling very curious. The security on the office door was all very well—and very good—but there was something else that was bothering her. If there was so much security on that one office door, where was the rest of the security? Why secure only the most sensitive part of the suite; why not make sure no one got even so close as to trip any of those alarms? She had seen enough of TuanTuan to think that even someone so indolent as he was would have walked out the door if it was possible. So where was the security on the front and other doors? What stopped people like Kez from getting in, and people like TuanTuan from getting out? Maybe she should have tried to break in through the front door instead of shifting through.
Kez came out of her thoughtful trance to find that TuanTuan was silently watching her beneath that thick fringe of hair.
“Wot?” she said. “Ain’t gonna show me where the safe is?”
TuanTuan blinked. “No,” he said. “You tell me what your name is, first.”
Kez gave vent to her gruff chuckle. “Like that, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Orright,” said Kez, and walked directly across the room to the safe. It was hidden in the water display with a release mechanism she had sensed as soon as she was in the room by the simple fact that it was a time-release mechanism. She prodded at the glass bubbles beneath the flowing water and found one that gave a satisfying click under her fingers. That click set off something behind the waterfall, and soon the water ceased to fall altogether, pushed out of the way by a square protrusion that advanced two inches and then stopped.
Kez, very well pleased with herself, turned to grin at TuanTuan. He was gazing at her with his lips just slightly open, his eyes bright, and the very faintest suggestion of a smile to the corners of his mouth. Kez had the uneasy feeling that she might have given away more than she had meant to, and that perhaps—just perhaps—TuanTuan was quite a bit more intelligent than she had at first thought.
“How did you know where that was?” he asked.
“Ain’t you supposed to be escapin’?” Kez said again, and went back to the safe. Behind her, she heard TuanTuan cross the room and sitting down beside her on the carpet. “Why should I steal you when you can get away by yourself? There’s a funeral on, and they’re gonna be pretty busy after I get outta here, too. Stuff gets messy when w—when I pinch stuff, so they’ll prob’ly have a bit to clean up after. ’F’you start now, you’ll be sweet.”
“It’s no use,” said TuanTuan, crossing his legs and leaning his elbows on them again. He propped his chin on the palm of one hand to watch her. “They’d just catch me again. Do you know how many times I’ve already escaped?”
Kez activated the time release function with the smallest edge of its own technology, careful not to wake up either her own talent or the manipulation sensors around the Chaebol. The door popped open. It was also an easy lock; but that could have been because the safe was entirely empty.
“Dunno,” she said irritably to TuanTuan. She hadn’t really been expecting anything else than an empty safe—there was too much about this suite that wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been—but she was still prepared to be irritable about it. “Flamin’ ’eck, it’s empty. Orright, then; ’ow many times?”
“Twenty-five,” TuanTuan said. “Those are just the ones that I remember, though; I know there are ones I can’t remember. They’ve been playing games with my memory, and I don’t know how much more it can take before they damage it properly. I’m regrouping.”
“Well, maybe twenty-six is ’ow many times it’ll take. Ain’t my problem if you can’t escape from a room.”
“That’s why I want you to steal me,” TuanTuan said reasonably. “They said if I can get away they won’t come after me. Auntie Li even said she’ll back me if I go into a useful profession; I think she thinks I’ll come back to run the family after I’ve been away for a while. Actually, for all I know, it could be one big test to see if I’m worthy to run the family business.”
“Your family’s messed up.”
“I know. Where did you learn how to break open safes?”
“That? That’s a time lock. ’Course I can open it. Don’t need to learn stuff like that.”
TuanTuan leaned further forward, his eyes glowing. “Can you teach me how to do it?”
“Nope,” said Kez. “Ain’t summink you can learn.”
“I’m very clever.”
“Don’t matter. ’Ere, move yer moosh back.”
“What?”
“Get outta me face. ’Ow am I supposed to work like that?”
“But you said there’s nothing in th—”
“Ain’t nothin’ in there now.”
“What?”
“Never you mind,” Kez said, mindful that she’d already said and done more in TuanTuan’s presence than was strictly wise. “Oi. Why you wearin’ a collar, anyway?”
TuanTuan’s long fingers went up to the collar and tugged
at it, as if he’d forgotten about it until she mentioned it and now found it unbearably galling. “Why does anything wear a collar?” he said. “To show I belong to someone, and give them something to pull me back by if I wander too far away.”
“You’d prob’ly feel better if you took it orf,” advised Kez, feeling about in the safe. At first, she’d thought it had some sort of trick to it—valuables kept in the past until needed, or something clever like that—but the more she thought about it, the safe really was empty. She could reach into the past and see what she pulled out, but if there was no trick to it, then what really mattered was that the safe was actually empty. The something she and Marx were meant to steal wasn’t in there.
“Oi,” she said to TuanTuan, “Got summink to disengage the mag locks on the side of this?”
“You want to take the safe out?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Cos it ain’t got nuffink I want.”
“Are you angry?”
Kez grinned at TuanTuan and he leant hastily back. “Ain’t that,” she said. “Told yer: I’m gonna leave a mess.”
TuanTuan leaned forward again. “You don’t want them to know what you were looking for.”
“Yeah, well,” said Kez, giving in to the inevitable, “don’t really know what I’m lookin’ for, actually. ’F’I make a mess, summink might turn up. Got anything I can use?”
Her question fell into one of TuanTuan’s silences. At the end of it, he blinked and patted his pockets, then pulled something red out of one of them, presenting it to her in the palm of his hand.
It was a magnetic screwdriver, old and chipped and dirt-encrusted, and when Kez dazedly took it from him, it fit in her own hand just right.
Kez looked down at it with pebbly, rage filled eyes, and hit TuanTuan hard across the side of the head. He went over like one of the ninepins in the Upsydaisy’s tiny recreation corner, and hunched there with his arms covering his head and his eyes far too big for his face.
“You said you’d give it back!” shouted Kez. “You promised!”
“It is you!” TuanTuan scrambled to his knees and threw thin, wry arms around her.
Kez, at first astounded and then incensed to find herself trapped by delicate arms—which, like his fingers, were by far stronger than they looked—bit his shoulder.
“Git orf!”
“Sorry,” TuanTuan said, releasing her and rubbing his shoulder. He gave her his sharp-toothed grin and, tugging at the hair beneath his ear with his free hand, added, “I was so cool before, wasn’t I? Now I’ve ruined it.”
“Knew I knew you from somewhere,” muttered Kez. “Lent you me best thing and you took orf wiv it!”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Couldn’t even keep yer own thoughts in yer ’ead—”
TuanTuan smiled at her without reserve, his eyes closing until they were barely slivers. “I’m sorry.”
“You—why you smilin’ so much, anyway?”
“I’m just glad. I thought I dreamed you, and even when I found the footage of you I wasn’t sure it wasn’t another trick.”
“Well, stop it. Gives me the willies.”
“Will you steal me now?”
“Why should I? Wot would I do wiv you?”
“Put me in a corner somewhere. I won’t mind. I just don’t want to stay here.”
Kez, temporarily putting aside thoughts of both empty safe and inadvertently stolen screwdriver, settled on her knees facing TuanTuan. He looked vaguely uneasy to find their knees touching, though Kez wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t appreciate the lack of personal space, or because he was afraid she was going to hit him again.
“Oi,” she said.
“Yes?” TuanTuan’s voice was certainly apprehensive.
“’Oo put you in the Institute, then?”
“I think it was the people pretending to be my parents. I can’t prove it, though; not even to myself. How can I, when there are memories in my head that don’t belong to me? And if I’ve got someone else’s memories, who has mine?”
“Yeah, but ’oo steals a kid?” demanded Kez, forgetting that in her own short life-time, she had been stolen and almost stolen myriad times and ways. “’Specially a long-shanks like you.”
“My genes are impeccable,” TuanTuan, standing up and lifting his nose. For just a moment, he looked elegant and princely, and very beautiful, all those thin lines of his face making just the right angles. “I was chosen for my genes. Probably also for my intelligence, but with the Lis, everything is about appearance.”
Kez made a rude noise that brought the colour to his cheeks. “Anyway,” she said suspiciously, “’Ow’d you know it was me? ’Fort you said you didn’t remember stuff.”
“I don’t,” TuanTuan said, his face growing very still and shuttered. “But the funny thing is that when I got back from the Institute, I found some things in my pockets.”
Kez grinned fiercely. “Still ’ad that as well, eh? Well, well, Marcus ain’t as clever as he thinks he is!”
“It took me a while to work out what it was that I had, and after that it took a while to work out that you were the one I had to follow all around the Institute if I wanted to know what had happened. It’s how I first found out that my parents aren’t my parents. No names are named, but almost everything is in there; the records of my being signed in and out, a lot of notes about the process in my handwriting, and all the footage from my last day there. Then it stops. Did you know what it was when you gave it to me? I mean, did you know it had all the footage and virtual evidence on it?”
“Yeah, well, had an idea. ’Ow’d you figger it out, anyway?”
TuanTuan shrugged. “It’s just a server. It’s not like it was something really hard, like biotech.”
“’Zat why you’re still wearin’ that thing?” Kez said, a little snidely, tilting her chin at his collar. “Couldn’t figure it out, eh?”
“I’m still working on it,” said TuanTuan, and his eyelashes flickered. “It’s a bit harder.”
“Ain’t that hard,” Kez said, since she felt that he needed to be taken down a peg or two. “I could fix it orright.”
TuanTuan looked at her for a very long time. Then, unexpectedly, he dropped forward onto his knees again and proffered his neck, collar and all. Kez saw a gleam of intelligence—or maybe just the suspicion of determination—in the brown eyes that were watching her beneath his lashes, and knew with an appreciative amusement that she had been manipulated again.
She grinned and patted his head. “Good job, TuanTuan,” she said. “Don’t move, will yer? Don’t wanna take an ear orf by mistake.”
“What?”
“Too late now,” said Kez, grinning one of her more feral grins at him. That particular grin had the effect of making Marx’s eyes narrow and flick around the room for the thing that was about to drop on him; on TuanTuan, the effect was more immediate and perceptible. He froze absolutely still, gazing up at her with very wide eyes, and didn’t seem to so much as breathe. That made Kez grin more widely, because what had to be done was a more simplified version of what she’d done with the Upsydaisy earlier; and, unless something very unexpected occurred, it would go a lot more smoothly.
“You said this thing was for people to tug on if you got too far away,” Kez said as she ran her fingers around the collar. She wanted a very good sense of exactly where it was in space before she tried to move it. TuanTuan’s neck probably wouldn’t do as well as the Upsydaisy did when it came to slightly wrong shifts; the Upsydaisy, after all, was used to shifting through time and space. “’Ow’s that work, then?”
Without moving a hair, TuanTuan breathed, “It’s connected to the security. If I get more than three feet beyond the door of this suite, it’s supposed to knock me out.”
“Said you could fix that,” Kez said, wriggling her fingers between the collar and TuanTuan’s neck. There were only a few places where she could do that; the rest of the collar was a
ttached firmly to the flesh, pulling it slightly up and away. “Back at the Institute.”
“Yes,” said TuanTuan, and Kez saw him swallow very slowly. “I turned that bit off. But I couldn’t get the collar itself off, and I couldn’t stop any of the other functions. Even if I did get past the other…thing—even if I got off the Chaebol, they’d be able to find me straight away. I think they might even be able to just shift me straight back.”
Kez made a small noise that could have been either encouragement or disinterest. TuanTuan gazing up at her with those wide eyes was very distracting—she couldn’t help feeling as though there was something she should be remembering, somewhere else that wasn’t the Institute, where she had seen him before. She considered that; and, pinched between her fingers, the collar quivered as it considered its place in space relative to Kez and TuanTuan.
“Gotcha,” said Kez, chuckling gleefully as the collar lost enough of its structure to waft easily through TuanTuan’s neck.
“Won’t it—” TuanTuan swallowed again, and looking down at the whole collar in her hands, said in a slightly less hoarse voice, “Won’t it set off the—”
“Nope!” Kez said. “It ain’t connected to anything at the moment. It’s not sittin’ right in the proper spot, see?”
“Your hands don’t look right.”
“Yeah, well,” said Kez, slightly huffily, “they ain’t sittin’ right in the proper spot, either. Can’t move stuff wivout touchin’ it. It’ll stay where I put it when I let go, but I ’ave to touch it first.”
“Oh,” said TuanTuan, and his voice was slightly breathless again. “Do you think you could tell me how you do that?”
Kez glared at him. She was still certain she’d seen him before, and not just through a blurry grating in the Institute. Why did he look so familiar now when he hadn’t before?
TuanTuan tugged at the hair below his ear. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“Nah, it’s your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?”
“Dunno,” Kez said darkly. “I’ll figger it out later.”
“Are you still going to take out the safe?”
Memento Mori Page 21