Mark shrugged. "I'm on system ship-time."
"Can I sit in?"
"Sit in, yes. Mix in, no."
"Mm," said Miles, but Jin, Roic and Kareen returned before he could take exception to this. Jin was bouncing with pleasure, but he paused to stare in the usual amazement at Miles and his clone-brother standing toe-to-toe. Miles still wished Mark hadn't picked weight gain as a way to differentiate himself, but Mark's grim glee at his progenitor-brother's discomfort with the choice was probably just a bonus, from his own point of view. Complicated man, Mark.
"I want to show my sphinx to Mom and Mina!" said Jin.
"You mustn't take it into her booth," said Raven, coming alert.
"I know that," said Jin. "But I can hold it up to the glass. Can Roic-san help me cart everything?"
Roic glanced at the empty office and cast Miles a tiny head-shake, bodyguard-conscious again. Vorlynkin caught it, and said smoothly, "I'll give you a hand, Jin."
Raven added prudently, "I'll come along."
"Actually," said Miles, "I think Leiber's still up there; we'll both come."
Tenbury returned then, to continue the interrupted tour; with no more than an eyebrow-twitch from Mark and a farewell smile from Kareen, the three went off toward another exit. Miles followed Vorlynkin, who carried the sphinx-carrier in Jin's train. Plaintive cries of "Aowt! Hum!" drifted back through the stale shadows of the underground garage.
Out. Home. You and me both, Sphinx.
His mother's reaction to the sphinx was disappointing, Jin thought, but not surprising. Familiar, in fact, and comforting thereby.
"Jin, no!" she said, holding her hand to her lips. "Where would you keep it?"
Nefertiti squirmed in a disgruntled fashion under Jin's arm as he hoisted her up on his hip for his mother to see, and attempted to flap her wings, but practice handling the fiercer Gyre left Jin undismayed. "I'll take good care of her! Don't I always? She came with a file of instructions, too, so nothing can go wrong."
His mother rubbed her forehead, in her bed beyond the glass wall. "That's not the point, this time, Jin love."
Mina, who had been lurking on the foot of the bed all day, sat up, interested. "She's huge! Bigger than Lucky and Gyre put together. She sort of looks like Lucky and Gyre put together, really. Oh, say yes, Mommy!" She wriggled down and exited the booth on a slight puff of positive air pressure.
"Did Tenbury get the intercom working?" Jin asked, realizing a bit belatedly that something new had been added. "When did he come by?"
"No, it was Consul Vorlynkin," said Mina, bending to stare into the sphinx's slow blink. "She has a funny face . . ."
"Oh, how?"
"I found the on-switch," said Vorlynkin, leaning one shoulder against the glass wall and watching all this in some bemusement.
Raven-sensei bent to capture Mina's mask and pop it into the sterilizer box for re-use.
Nefertiti flexed her claws and growled, and Jin set her down on her four paws, where she flapped her wings with a burring noise for all the world like one of the chickens.
"Does she fly?" asked Mina, holding out a hand for the sphinx to sniff.
"I don't think so," said Jin. "Her wings are almost the same size as Gyre's, but she's way heavier."
"These custom genetic constructs are usually made to be decorative, not functional," advised Raven-sensei. "Depending on what the buyer orders, of course."
Mina frowned. "That seems mean, to give her wings she can't fly with."
Jin crouched on his heels and scratched the creature's shoulder blades, between the wings, which folded tamely again as she stretched into the caress. She could not lick her fur like a cat, nor preen her feathers like a bird, so Jin would have a lot of interesting grooming to do, according to the care instructions in the file. "I wonder, do they lay eggs, or have live babies? One at a time, or a litter like kittens? I wonder if there are any male ones, left over?" And if he could find one, somehow . . .
"There may not have been any males made," mused Raven-sensei. "I believe sphinxes were traditionally female. But these proprietary constructs normally aren't given the ability to reproduce. You'd likely have to clone her, and hand-raise the babies."
Jin's imagination took fire. Home cloning of small animals wasn't that hard, if you could get the right equipment, from a pet supply place or hobbyist who was upgrading or quitting. Hardly something to be found in an alley scavenge, but there ought to be used stuff for cheap somewhere . . .
"Hum!" said the sphinx, plaintively.
"She talks!" cried Mina, her face breaking into a delighted smile.
"They come with about a twenty-word vocabulary, according to the file," said Jin. "I don't know if you can teach them more, like a parrot."
"We can try . . ."
Beyond the glass, their mother made a noise of hopeless maternal protest, much like the halfway point of other such negotiations, so Jin took heart. But this time, she said, "Jin, we don't even have a home to take her to, right now. Oh, no, I just thought of that! What's happened to our apartment, and all my things? Nobody could have been paying rent for a year and a half, with no one living there. Oh—and my bank account—what happened to my money, after I was frozen? If I have no job, no money, no place for us to live—"
"Aunt Lorna has some of your clothes in boxes in the attic, I know," Mina piped up. "And she took my stuff and Jin's. She had to sell the big couch, and the kitchen table, and a couple of the other big things, because she didn't have room, though."
Consul Vorlynkin turned and spoke through the glass, earnestly. "These are all solvable problems, Madame Sato, but none of them need be solved today, or all at once. As part of the Lord Auditor's case—a protected witness, more or less—your immediate needs will be covered by our consulate."
"My committee, my friends—what's happened to them all, beyond the ones you say NewEgypt murdered or took away? What if they—" Her voice shrank to silence.
"Your first task must be your own physical recovery," Raven-sensei put in, with a look of concern at her sudden distress. "Your normal mental resilience will follow. In two to four weeks, not two to four days—you have to give yourself time."
"I've never had enough time." She pressed her hands to her temples. "And that appalling creature—!"
Vorlynkin cleared his throat. "I'm not sure the Lord Auditor was thinking it through, when he accepted the animal. Nevertheless, it may be kept in the consulate's back garden with the rest of Jin's creatures, for now. They're doing no harm at all, there. Livens the place up, really. The space was underutilized."
She sighed, folded her arms, half-laughed, quelling Jin's growing alarm. "I suppose it just looms so absurdly large because it's closest." But her eyes sought Jin and Mina, not the sphinx.
Since they weren't going back to the consulate tonight after all, Vorlynkin let Jin speak on his wristcom with Lieutenant Johannes, and talk him through how to care for his creatures till Jin returned tomorrow. Johannes didn't even sound sarcastic at the added chores. So that was all right, for now.
Miles-san and Roic had taken Leiber-sensei off to another room to talk, right after they'd come in. They returned at length, toting, unexpectedly, a big stack of dinner boxes from Ayako's Cafe. Miles-san let it be known this bounty was courtesy of Miss Kareen, who had somehow found out where to get it, how to have it delivered to the facility, and had paid for it all, too.
They all ended up having a sort of picnic in the recovery room; Raven-sensei even took in a box to Jin's mother, so that when he pulled back the curtains after his medical check, it was almost as if they were all eating a family meal together again. Jin thought she looked a bit better after she ate, sitting up less wearily, and with more color in her face. But then, Ayako's curry was always very good.
It was funny to watch big Roic sitting cross-legged on the floor, being instructed on how to use chopsticks by Mina. Miles-san handled his pretty well, for a galactic; he claimed he'd practiced on the ship coming here, and at other times i
n the past. When he let slip he'd been to Old Earth itself, twice, Mina made him tell stories of his visits, though he mainly told her about his second trip, his wife, and gardens, lots of different gardens. All he said of his first trip was that it was purely business, he'd never got out of one city, and that it was the first time he'd met his brother, which last remark seemed very weird to Jin's ear. Consul Vorlynkin pulled his lip and looked thoughtful at this, but he didn't ask any helpful questions, and Miles-san didn't expand.
With frequent references to the instruction file, Jin fed tidbits to Nefertiti, who apparently could eat some kinds of people food but not others, at least not without messy digestive consequences. Unfortunately, Ako came in just as the sphinx was having an accident in the darkest corner, which was Jin's fault really because he hadn't paid enough attention to her little mutters of Poo! Pee! during her restless explorations of the recovery room. Ako was very upset, and made Jin clean it up, which was fair, but then insisted the creature couldn't spend the night in here. Raven-sensei, at least, seemed undisturbed by biological messes, and stayed out of the debate. Jin finally promised to take Nefertiti back to his rooftop hideout for overnight, which satisfied Ako, but then Mina wanted to tag along and see the place.
Miles-san and Roic had gone off by then to meet with Lord Mark and Suze-san, so Consul Vorlynkin, after a glance through the glass at Jin's worried-looking mother, volunteered to go along and help lug the sphinx carrier, and make sure that all was well. Jin's mother smiled gratefully at him, so Jin supposed that was all right, too.
They were filing down the end stairs when they met Bhavya, one of Ako's friends, panting up.
"Jin! Have you seen Ako? Tanaka-san wants her on the second floor—an emergency cryoprep. Some poor old lady collapsed in the cafeteria, all in a heap, they say."
"She's up in the recovery room with my mom." Jin pointed back up the stairs. "Raven-sensei's there, too."
Bhavya nodded and ran on, waving thanks without looking back.
Vorlynkin wheeled to stare after her. "Should we go try to help?"
Jin shook his head. "Naw, this happens all the time. Well, not all the time, but every week or so. Tanaka-san knows what to do."
Vorlynkin looked doubtful, but followed Jin down to the tunnels.
"The layout down here is very confusing," he remarked.
"Yah, the tunnels below are all offset from the buildings above, and run underneath the streets, too. And some go down four levels, and some five or six. You kind of have to memorize them."
Jin had no trouble finding his own familiar route, even when they passed out of range of the lit section, and Vorlynkin drew a small hand light from his jacket to illuminate the steps. Mina, who had walked on her own thus far, took a prudent grip on his wide coat sleeve in the deepening shadows. They trudged upward five flights to come out at last from the exchanger tower door onto Jin's roof. Vorlynkin wasn't wheezing too badly, for a grownup, despite carting the carrier.
Jin had lost track of time in the windowless recovery room, but it seemed to have grown very late. The air was damp and chill, lit by diffuse reflections from the street lights in the area that gave everything a funny brown tinge. The city noises had quieted down the way they usually only did after midnight. But around the side of the tower, Jin found his tarps were all still up and taut, not blown loose by the weather yet. His little refuge was littered with a dreary residue of things not taken away the other day—not needed for his creatures, or too big and awkward to fit in the lift van, or too junky to salvage. He'd taken his own hand light down off its wire and packed it along, so it was now less-than-usefully back at the consulate, but Vorlynkin amiably shone his around while Jin explained his old life up here to Mina, and Mina made admiring and envious noises.
When they let her out of her carrier, Nefertiti did not at once take to her new environment. She stared around warily, crouching, then at last went off in a stiff-legged reconnoiter. Jin followed along, explaining to Vorlynkin about the gruesome fate of the baby chicks who couldn't fly yet. "I can't tell, if she went over the edge, if she'd just plummet, or flutter down like the big chickens, or even fly away." The dense muscles Jin had felt beneath the golden fur didn't help him decide. "Maybe I'd better tie a line around her leg like Miles-san."
"Hm?" said Vorlynkin, so Jin explained his first night's safety procedures, which just made Vorlynkin go "Hm!" and set his teeth to his lower lip. But from the way his eyes crinkled, Jin didn't think he was mad or anything.
Jin's old bedding of shredded flimsies was still piled against the wall; if he slept out here, he could keep an eye on his new pet. Would Mom miss him? She'd have Mina—or would Mina try to stay out here with him?
Jin rose on his toes to make a grab when Nefertiti stretched her considerable length, put her front paws on the parapet, and peered over, but she drew back without any effort to launch herself fatally over the side. She visited Jin's latrine corner, and used it properly—Jin explained about the bucket-flushing to Vorlynkin—and Jin made sure to praise her, after the confusions about the corner of the recovery room. The sphinx did not quite look as if she believed him. She stretched and flapped her wings, but folded them again when she went to look over the parapet on the opposite side, toward the narrow parking lot behind the old complex.
And stiffened, growling, staring down with a predatory intensity like Lucky regarding the rats, back when Lucky had been much younger. The fur went up in a ridge along her back, and her wings spread and quivered, making a sinister rustling-rattling noise. Her tufted tail lashed.
"Foes!" she whined. "Foes!"
"What?" said Vorlynkin, sounding startled. He stepped up to peer along with her; Jin joined him.
Mina, who was not so fond of heights, hung back a few paces and asked, "What does she see?"
Jin wasn't sure what kind of night vision the sphinx had, but what he saw was a van parked in the shadowiest part of the lot, and some dark-dressed men moving about below. One swung some sort of long hammer or bat, three or four dull thumps, and Jin heard a ground-floor window pop out and fall from its frame, inward, perhaps onto a carpet, he guessed from the muffled clatter.
"Somebody's breaking in to the building," he whispered back over his shoulder to Mina, who at this news overcame her nerves and joined him to stare.
"Maybe it's robbers," she whispered back.
"What would anybody want to steal out of here?" The building had been stripped of usable furniture and equipment long ago; anything left inside was valueless or non-portable.
Two of the men lugged a big barrel-like thing from the van; they did something to it, then hoisted it through the window and let it fall and roll. A strange pungent aroma seeped up through the night mist, which made Vorlynkin jerk back and swear.
"Not robbers," he said through his teeth. "Arsonists!" He grabbed Mina's hand and looked frantically around.
Below, one of the men threw something through the window, and they all ran for their vehicle. They'd evidently left a driver waiting, because they shot out of the lot, past where the chain-link gate had been broken open, in a spray of gravel before the van doors were even all the way shut.
A flash of orange light; below Jin's feet, the building quaked as a boom echoed out across the lot and broke into mumbling thunder against the buildings across the street. A greasy boil of flame belched from the window, a licking tongue two meters long.
"Fire!" screamed the sphinx, all her fur on end, and her eyes like gilded saucers. "Fire! Foes! Fire!"
"We have to get out of this building, right now!" said Vorlynkin; Mina yelped as his hand tightened on hers. Vorlynkin lurched toward the towers. "Which stairs are farther from the fire?"
"Not that way!" said Jin. "There's an outside ladder drops down to the alley on the other side."
Vorlynkin nodded and ran, jerking Mina along with him; Jin grabbed up Nefertiti and ran after him. The sphinx struggled and hissed in his arms. Was there time to stuff her back into her carrier? Maybe not. Vorly
nkin reached the opposite edge of the roof and found the steel staples.
"I have to go first, to let down the extension!" Jin yelled to Vorlynkin.
"Mina next," said Vorlynkin.
"I can't reach that far!" Mina sounded like she wanted to cry.
"I'll lower you over, and hold you till you get your grip," said Vorlynkin. "Go, Jin!"
"Who'll carry Nefertiti?"
Vorlynkin choked back something short, and said, "I will."
Jin dropped Nefertiti, hoping she wouldn't bolt away, vaulted over the parapet, and slapped down the rungs faster than he'd ever gone in his life. Unlatched the ladder, thumped at it, prayed it wouldn't stick or hang up. It rattled, then reached its full extension with a clang. "All right!" he called up.
Mina's kicking legs dangled over his head, then she found her footing and started down with no more than one scared meep. The rungs really were too far apart for her to reach comfortably. Above, Jin heard Vorlynkin swearing, and the scrunch of his footsteps, and the sphinx screaming, "Fire! Foes! Fire!" and, apparently confused in her vocabulary by the commotion, "Food!"
Vorlynkin yelped in pain, seemingly from some greater distance, and swore some more. Jin reached the ground and stretched up to catch Mina, whose sport shoes wavered in the air when she ran out of rungs before she ran out of space. "You're all right! Just let go!" She fell into him, knocking him to the ground; they both rolled, then scrambled to their feet and stared upward. At that point, Jin found out how well sphinxes could fly, when Nefertiti sailed over the parapet, wings flapping madly, and descended. She neither plummeted nor soared, but she did land right-side-up on all four paws like a cat, hard enough to grunt when her belly hit the ground, but not hard enough to break anything.
Vorlynkin's big dark shape finally swung out over the edge; he dropped the last two meters, hit with knees bending like the sphinx's, staggered, but didn't fall. Blood was running down his face from a deep triple scratch below his left eye.
"Jin!" Vorlynkin's voice was sharp and hard, brooking no debate. "Take Mina straight to your mother, and do what Dr. Durona tells you to. If this fire spreads, they may have to evacuate all the buildings in the complex." He raised his wristcom to his lips and began snapping connect-codes into it.
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