Mighty Good Road

by Melissa Scott

  “I couldn’t get him. He’d changed his codes.”

  Santerese’s eyes narrowed. “So why are you going to EP4?”

  “Because I don’t intend to put up with this run-around any longer.” The transfer light flicked off, and Heikki freed and pocketed her lens. “He chose to change his codes after he’d asked me for help. That’s fine, except that he’s been screwing around with my—our— work. He said he’d pay for my help, and, by God, he is going to pay for my time and trouble, even if I have to beat it out of him myself.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Santerese began, and Heikki rounded on her.

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “Several,” Santerese said, drily, but Heikki had already pushed past her into the main room. “Heikki—”

  Nkosi was staring at them, open-mouthed, but Heikki ignored him, swinging around to stare at Santerese. “This is the last time that little bastard interferes in my life. You can’t stop me, Marshallin. Don’t try.”

  Santerese closed her mouth over whatever she had been going to say. After a moment, she said, “All right, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way I want it,” Heikki agreed, too angry to analyze the complex emotion in the other woman’s voice, and started for the storage wall. Nkosi’s voice floated after her.

  “Perhaps it would be well if I came with you?”

  “No.” Heikki tapped the nearest cell’s latch with more force than was necessary, got herself under control with an effort. “Thank you, Jock. But I want to deal with this myself.”

  It didn’t take her long to pack a change of clothes, and throw that and her kit into a single carryall. The others were still standing in the main room, Nkosi frowning and worried, Santerese with her face tight with anger. The sight made Heikki pause, letting the carryall slide from her shoulder.

  “Marshallin,” she said, slowly. “I have to do this.”

  “Oh, I see that,” Santerese agreed, with angry emphasis. “This is stupid, Heikki.”

  “I’m not going to be pushed around any more.” The flat finality of her own voice startled Heikki; Santerese seemed to hear it, too, and looked away.

  “All right,” she said, shaking her head. “If you have to. But be careful, damn it.”

  “I will,” Heikki said. They embraced, quickly, and

  Heikki pulled away. “I’ll try to get a jitney at the stairhead—”

  “I called one,” Santerese said. “It’ll be waiting.” She shook her head again, but said nothing more, and Heikki turned away.

  The jitney was waiting at the stairhead as promised, and reached the Station Axis with time to spare. Heikki made her way through the crowd at the inner arches, not bothering to leave her carryall at the baggage window, and took her place on the platform, waiting for the signal that opened the capsules for boarding. The platform was crowded, and by the time she had worked her way up to the train, all of the capsules were occupied. She found one that had only one other passenger, and took the seat opposite him, barricading herself behind an otherwise unwanted newssheet. She sighed, wishing she had been able to find an unoccupied car, and guessed from the rustling of faxsheets that the stranger was thinking the same thing. At least, she thought, a brief smile tugging at her lips, we don’t have to worry about unwanted conversations.

  The trip itself was uneventful. At the customs barrier, Heikki handed over her ID disk. “Purpose of your stay?” the securitron asked.

  “Business,” Heikki answered, and wondered if there had been less than the usual boredom in his voice.

  “You’re cleared for entry, Dam’ Heikki,” he said, and only the routine politeness colored his tone.

  Heikki murmured her acknowledgement, sweeping her ID back into her belt, and passed through the now-open barrier into the volume of EP4’s Entrance Pod. Like everyone else on the Loop, she had always known that EP4 was the richest of the Exchange Points, not excepting EP/Terra, but she could not help recalling that fact as she stepped out into the plaza. Underfoot, the broad flat-grey squares of tile fragmented and changed color, deepening first to a dark, moonlit blue, and then to the rich black of interstellar space as the tiles reached the center of the plaza. Across that background were scattered tiny points of light, diamond-like tiles no bigger than a child’s thumbnail, swirling across the darkening tiles until they formed a two-dimensional sketch of the galaxy, spread out across the plaza floor. At the center, where the galactic core should have been, a star-fountain bloomed, shaping a hemispheric haze of blue-white light. Overhead, meters overhead, beyond the crystal latticework that crossed and recrossed the open space, carrying the distance-shrunk forms of passers-by, a plane of silver flecked with blue and black reflected in negative the pattern of the floor. Almost in spite of herself, Heikki found herself tracing the curve of one spiral, following it in toward the central fountain; she shook herself hard, and made herself walk straight away, across the bands of diamond, toward the trilobed arch that gave onto the Transit Concourse.

  Things were less breathtakingly beautiful here; there was a roar of voices, and the constant snarling counterpoint of the jitneys that slid up to the well-marked kiosks to discharge one set of passengers and pick up another. A half-dozen Retroceder protesters stood under their green banner beside an information kiosk, but securitrons were already converging to move them along. Most of the travellers’ societies had branches here, ranging from elaborate clubs to a single information cubicle. Glancing to her left, Heikki could see the simple gold-on-black logo of the Explorers’ Club flaunting below a mirror-windowed bay, but she turned instead in the opposite direction, taking her place in the line of people waiting to use the standard station directories. It had been an instinctive decision, not at all rational, but it made a certain sense, she thought, tapping her fingers impatiently against the strap of her carryall. Why draw attention to herself by going to the Club, when her inquiry would be all-but-invisible among the hundreds of thousands of requests the system must process every day?

  At last the light turned green above the nearest cubicle, and a stocky man in a neat ‘pointer suit stepped out, politely holding the door for the next user. Heikki took it from him, and stepped inside, carefully sealing the door behind her. The fittings were spartan, but adequate, and included a socket for transferring data directly to her lens. She spent a moment studying the charges, then fed a single hundred-credit voucher into the cash slot. The machine hummed to itself as though surprised, and then unlocked the keyboard. Heikki smiled sourly, watching the credit number tick away in the upper left hand corner of the display, and began punching in her requests. Galler’s address and contact codes remained unchanged, as did his listed place-of-employ. She used the machine to plot the easiest route to his residence, downloaded it to her lens, and then glanced again at the credit number still displayed above the readout. Sixty-five credits remained. She smiled to herself, and typed more codes, transferring the set of general station maps into the lens’ memory. The low-memory warning was flashing in its depths by the time the transfer was complete, but the information was there, and accessible. She closed down the machine, accepted the twenty-credit voucher the credit meter spat at her, and stepped from the cubicle.

  The nearest free-transit station was one level down, on the secondary Lower Concourse. She found it without difficulty, and settled herself to wait for the proper omnitram, watching the crowd from under her lashes. It was a different group, all right, poorer than the pedestrians who wandered the Grand Concourse or the businesspeople who waited for jitneys and corporate shuttles on the Transit Court, and there were even a few spacers, conspicuous in their low-collared coats and jackets, waiting for the tram that ran to the distant docking pods. There were no neo-barbarians or protesters here: the securitrons, wandering in pairs along the well-marked rows of tramstops, made sure that the less desirable transients remained in the docks where they belonged.

  A tram, marked on every available surface with the f
ive-digit route code, slid up to the stop. Heikki pushed herself up off the bench, and took her place in the forming line. She felt out of place among the range of

  corporate workers, mostly machine clerks and data handlers, found herself almost unconsciously adopting their stance, head down, eyes on nothing in particular.

  The tram was almost full by the time Heikki was allowed aboard, and she had to climb to the upper deck to find a seat, squeezed in next to a thin, tired looking man whose broken-nailed hands betrayed him as a keyboarder, and a green-eyed girl who looked to be barely twenty and had not yet learned to suppress an urchin’s grin. The tram lurched into motion, throwing her against the keyboarder, who pressed his lips together and said nothing. Heikki suppressed a sigh, and tucked her heavy carryall under her feet. The girl darted a glance in her direction, but looked away as soon as their eyes met.

  The tram wound its way slowly along the Low Concourse, then turned onto one of the spiral ramps that led to the nearest connector, picking up speed as it went along. The corridor walls blurred into an indistinct smear of color, and Heikki looked down at her carefully folded hands.

  The tram slowed at last as it approached the spiral leading down to Pod Twenty-Eight, and Heikki allowed herself a sigh of relief. It slowed further in the turns of the spiral, and by the time it reached the Pod’s transit bay was moving at what even Heikki had to admit was a reasonable pace. It slid up to the double-levelled departure deck, and attendants moved to swing back the heavy hatches. Heikki filed off with the other passengers, bracing herself for possible questions. If the midlevel residence pods of EP4 were like their counterparts throughout the rest of the Loop, those attendants would have security responsibilities as well. Somewhat to her surprise, however, no one questioned her, and she followed the rest of the passengers through the station’s massive double doors. She did not pause, however, until she had turned a corridor corner at random, and was out of sight of any lurking securitrons. At least, I hope so, she thought, and reached for her data lens.

  According to the plan she had retrieved from the station directory, the Pod’s layout was non-standard.

  The usual quadrangles that held individual flats and the small, necessary clusters of service merchants had been broken up into smaller, asymmetrical units. Maybe as compensation, the corridors were unusually well marked, walls subtly color-coded, each junction displaying a central rosette like an ancient compass rose that named the corridors shooting off in each direction. It was easy enough to figure out the quickest route to Galler’s flat by comparing the numbers at the last intersection with the names in the map, but even so Heikki kept her data lens closed in the palm of her hand, a ready reference if needed.

  Galler’s apartment was one of four that lay off a cul-de-sac off one end of a corridor of service shops. It was late in the day, by EP4’s clock, and most of the human-monitored stores were closing; only a few people, mostly midlevel employees by their uniforms, stood in the vestibules of the robot vendors, choosing the night’s dinner. Heikki made her way slowly past the row of shops, pausing once to pretend to study the service menu displayed outside a small service broker’s. The menu’s polished surface reflected the corridor behind her: no one seemed to be paying the least attention to her. The precaution had been automatic, as automatic as her refusal to use her club’s facilities, and she was frowning to herself as she turned away from the little storefront. There was no need to take such care, no need that she could rationally see, and yet, instinctively, every time…. She put the thought aside, frowning, and turned toward the cul-de-sac.

  The alley was closed a meter from its mouth by a security grill. There was a call box on the wall to one side, however, and Heikki crossed to it, adjusting the bezel of her lens as she did so. Galler’s home contact code flickered in the lens’s depths, and she quickly punched those numbers into the call box’s tiny keyboard. Lights flashed across the tiny display plate, but there was no answer from inside the grill. Heikki’s frown deepened, and she repeated the codes, this time adding the standard emergency numbers. Still nothing happened.

  “Come on, Galler,” Heikki said, between her teeth, staring at the call box as though she could force a response by sheer will. Could he still be at work? she wondered. It didn’t seem likely—it was a point of status to be able to leave on time, and Galler had always been punctilious about taking every advantage of his position.

  “Oh, are you looking for Galler?”

  The light voice came from the mouth of the alley. Heikki controlled herself with an effort, and turned to face the stranger, schooling her face to an appropriate neutrality.

  “Yes, I was. Do you know if he’s out?” It was a stupid question, she realized instantly, and hid her annoyance.

  “I think he’s moved.” The voice belonged to a woman of indeterminate age, the childishness of her tone and mannerisms belied by the fine lines at the corners of eyes and mouth. Her suit, high-collared and softly tailored, was not quite a uniform. “Or been transferred.”

  “Thanks,” Heikki said, through clenched teeth. “I’ll try the directories again.”

  She swept past the other woman, out of the alley toward the distant free-transit line. A part of her saw that the stranger did not reach immediately for the palm-lock, but stood watching, until she turned the corner and passed out of sight. Moved again, have you? she thought, the words matching the rhythm of her steps. Not changed the codes? Then, by God, I’ll go to Tremoth, and see how you like that, your sister showing up on your doorstep, and I’d like to see you try to explain that away—

  She stopped abruptly, only peripherally aware of the free-transit station’s arches looming ahead of her. This was not the time to approach Tremoth, or the mood in which to do it—if nothing else, she needed to control her own anger, if she was going to have any hope of dealing with Galler. And that meant getting a room for the night—at the Club, probably, or in one of the better hotels, she added silently, pushing away the first picture that thought had conjured for her, of the anonymous transient pods that collected in the spaces around the docks. There was no need for such caution—no need to make herself uncomfortable. She took a deep breath, and continued on through the arches, heading for the tram that would carry her back to the main pods and the better hotels.

  Even without prior notice, it was not hard to find a room in one of the exchange point’s moderately priced hostels. Heikki told herself she was glad of its comforts, but could not shake her feeling of unease, and by the next morning, she was more than ready to leave. She curbed her impatience, however, and made herself wait until the morning meetings would be over before settling her bill and calling a jitney to take her across the Ring to the pod where Tremoth kept its adjudications department. That, at least, was the office Galler had listed in the directory; Heikki smiled slightly, anticipating the corporation’s response. If Galler were no longer with that group, and right now that seemed more than likely, she would simply have to make whoever was on duty there tell her where he’d gone—which might be a struggle, she added silently, but I think it’s one I’ll win.

  The jitney drew up at the entrance to the pod’s main lobby, a double-finned “airlock” badged with Tremoth’s trefoil logo. The doors opened ahead of her as Heikki crossed the sensors’ invisible line, and a disembodied voice said, “Please state your business and your employee number, if applicable.”

  Heikki did not look up, said instead to the young man who sat behind the ring-pedestal, “My business is with Galler Heikki.”

  The young man’s hand moved on controls hidden behind the pedestal’s edge, and the overhead speaker cut out with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Dam’—?” He let the words trail off” into a question. When Heikki did not answer, but remained smiling politely, he went on, “How may I help you?”

  “My business is with Galler Heikki,” Heikki repeated. To either side of the broad lobby, she could see the corporate touts eyeing her from behind the raised side of their collars, murmuring into the
voicepads sewn into the stiffened fabric.

  The young man touched his controls again, the movements as well as the results hidden from sight, and said, quite politely, “Who may I say is calling?”

  “My name is also Heikki. Gwynne Heikki.”

  “Yes, Dam’.” The young man did not look up from his hidden screen. “May I ask your business?”

  “It’s personal,” Heikki said, and bared teeth in a smile.

  The young man pondered his screen for a moment longer—too long, surely, Heikki thought, for a simple inquiry. “Is Galler in?” She allowed her voice to sharpen slightly, and was rewarded by a swift glance from under the young man’s lashes.

  “I’m very sorry, Dam’, I can’t seem to get a precise answer from his department. He seems to be out of his office….” His voice strengthened slightly. “They say, if you’d care to go to the inner lobby, they’ll have an answer by the time you get there.”

  Heikki frowned, and one of the touts stepped up to the pedestal. Probably, Heikki thought, in response to a private signal, and she eyed him discouragingly.

  “If you’d follow me, Dam’, I can show you the way.” The tout smiled ingratiatingly, showing good teeth.

  It was too late to draw back now. Heikki smiled more moderately, and nodded. “Very well. But I hope they’ll have found him by then. I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your valuable time.”

  The young man behind the pedestal nodded back, but the tout’s smile widened. “No trouble at all, Dam’, in fact, a pleasure.”

  Heikki murmured some proper response, suddenly wary. This was not the way the major corporations generally treated miscellaneous visitors, especially ones who could not claim to be on the usual admittance lists. She followed the tout across the lobby, and past a discreetly armed securitron into the maze of corridors that made up the office complex. As they passed more security stations, her suspicion hardened into certainty. The man she followed was more than a mere tout; the securitrons were too respectful for him to be anything except one of their men. The ordinary workers, keyboarders, data clerks, and so on, were even more respectful, and Heikki could feel a cold knot of fear growing in the pit of her stomach. She put it aside as best she could, all too aware that she had made a mistake in coming here to find Galler. If anything ever wanted discretion, she began, and shoved self-reproach away as well. There was no time for that now; what mattered was to get out of this with as little fuss as possible. She glanced to either side, painfully casual, trying to memorize the twists and turns of the corridors, but knew with a sinking sensation that she would never be able to retrace her steps unaided.