Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  A little silence on the other end-from the man who'd instigated the message to the ondat, asking their intervention. "Why do you think that?"

  "Because my man is walking Blunt at this moment with an ondat sign branded on his forehead."

  "I have the same information. What are you doing about it?"

  "I don't want to answer that on-line."

  "Dortland's headed down there. My daughter is somewhere down on Blunt. He knows where she is."

  A father's desperation. A hostage. A desperate request that a governor couldn't ethically make.

  "I'll bear that in mind." Damn, he thought. Complications.

  "If we get a containment team to bring Gide to your level, where should we take him?"

  "Bring him to Ausford and 22nd." That was dead in front of the Project police station. "We'll take him from there."

  "Done," Reaux said. "I've got to go. I've got to arrange that."

  "Do it," Brazis agreed, and clicked out.

  They were going to have Gide on their hands. Not a willing Mr. Gide, he was well sure.

  Meanwhile he tapped in on Magdallen's code, listened for a moment. Didn't hear anything.

  "Agent Magdallen."

  "Sir." A low voice. "There's a conference in the middle of the street, our man's group with sixteen others, three more of the Stylists and their particular fallowings. That's Diamant, Minx, and probably Brulant. I'm not sure of him. Diamant and Brulant haven't spoken to Ardath recently. It's a famous feud. It seems to be patched, by what I'm seeing."

  Feuds on Grozny were sometimes more smoke screen than fire, masking alliances, confusing external investigation.

  "I'll bet it is. What are they doing?"

  "Breaking up their meeting, at the moment. I'm sending you the image."

  He checked the phone. Saw the conference in question, over against a dark green shop frontage, he assumed on Blunt. If that was Brulant, who had been an informant from time to time, the man had had a few mods.

  Procyon was among them, standing beside his sister, looking grim.

  "Procyon." He tried to reach the boy. Saw him wince, real-time, shut his eyes and press a hand to his ear. Pain. A still-developing tap.

  Did he now instruct Magdallen to grab him? Or did he let the situation run, letting the street do what the street alone had resources to do, finding a way into in places so shadowy and immediately mutable that the police might never penetrate to the core of what was going on.

  Dortland's headed down there. Heavy-footed intervention was the last thing they needed in the matter.

  "Sir," he thought he heard. He couldn't clearly see Procyon's face to know if he was the one talking. His head was turned. The whole group was hazy-focused in Magdallen's image, with distance and bad lighting.

  A burst of static cut him off the tap and made Procyon lift a hand to his ear, as if someone had physically struck him. Ardath turned to her brother, laying a cautioning hand on his arm.

  He could shut down the local relays again. But seemingly that didn't stop the rogue.

  That meant there was an independent relay station out there. More than one. A thoroughly independent tap system.

  If a relay could override his transmission to Procyon, it was either stronger, or nearer. If the ondat had reached out into the main station to install relays independent from theirs-

  Ondat didn't come onto the human side of Concord, reputedly couldn't do it, for any long periods. They used robots to handle their occasional foraging, lately making rambling, exploratory forays out of their warmer, ammonia-perfumed level. Acquiring orange juice, and chlorine.

  Robots could safely do that sort of thing.

  Bots. Three of which were in the image Magdallen gave him.

  Any one of those. especially the repair-bot. was conceivably big enough to house the necessary electronics.

  Damn. They were looking right at their rogue relays.

  14

  Are you all right?" Ardath asked Procyon, and: "Braziss," the tap was saying, intermittently, dragging Procyon's attention back and forth between worry for his sister and worry for messages he couldn't get through. They had gathered force. Tap-calls summoned others. Michaelangelo's was across the street, dark and dim, with a police-closing sign on the door-was he surprised, that the place he had shared with Algol was where they were heading, to deal with him? He remembered the inside, the maze of halls, the common room, the back room where the Freethinkers had met, all of it a brown, dingy warren, the only competing color those faded blue plastic chairs. They'd been saviors of the universe. They'd known everything there was to know.

  It was shut, police-sealed. But one of Spider's men turned up a key-card, legitimate or otherwise, and no great amazement. Keys came on the market daily, and people had been thrown on the street by that police seal. Michaelangelo's clientele was notoriously low on funds.

  "Braziss," the tap said, and Procyon tried to focus where he was. They were going in. Brulant headed across the street to the service nook with six of his people, and as he moved, Isis was talking to her tap, still calling in favors to bring in others off the street. "This is war," Isis was saying. "Be here, do you hear me? Be here, as quick as you can." Diamant, glittering with dust, far from inconspicuous, took her followers across the street, strolling casually into position at the bolthole entrance, at the adjoining shop frontage.

  "There's a rumor out," Isis said in a low voice, at Ardath's side, "that they've snatched kids, upstairs kids, for hostages. Celeste says he's coming in with four of his, fast as he can: he's a block away."

  "Good," Ardath said. News flew with the speed of tap-calls from one end of the Trend to the other. Procyon had remembered boltholes even Spider had failed to know: "Carew's, over on White, another at Perle's-" and he was aware, past his headache, that they had gotten people to those, over on other streets: Cepheus, and Lotus, with their people.

  But: "Braziss, Braziss, Braziss," the voice in his head kept insisting, and he didn't know what it meant, except the voice thought he was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. "I'll go to Brazis," he promised it quietly, and he would, he'd get there, fast as he could; but getting Algol would get what Gide had come for, and bring down what threatened Ardath's safety, she being his sister, and at war with him. Getting Algol would get what disturbed the ondat, that no one could reason with. So he resisted the voice, bore down, concentrated, tried to think if he was inside Michaelangelo's, if there was any other possible way out that he hadn't remembered, and couldn't.

  "Brulant's there," Spider said, near at hand. Traffic on the street hadn't diminished at all. Bystanders osmosed out of the shops and the side streets, some to see, some to join. It had become a mob around them. Hundreds of them, not coming here for him, Procyon thought: for Ardath, for Ardath, on her say. And he had his own use-to show where the trouble in the station was, if Kekellen had failed to find it, to go where the police couldn't. To stand by his sister's side in shadowy places and scare hell out of anyone who threatened her. For his own protection he had a knife out of the bar kitchen. Some of Ardath's allies had more than that. He knew for a fact that Algol did.

  Half a minute to draw breath, just enough time for their people to call allies and spread out. "Go," Ardath said, and no more warning than that.

  They moved, Spider and his followers a spatter of ink, Isis's in gold and silver, Ardath's young adherents in every shade. Procyon kept by Ardath's side. His three small robot attendants buzzed along, chrome and silver, all in sudden, purposeful motion-where he went, they went; where he went, Kekellen's eyes and ears went.

  Michaelangelo's double doors sat catty-angled at the corner of a darkened frontage, and Spider tried the tenant's key, quickly, economically.

  Click. Click-click.

  It didn't work.

  "We have a problem," Spider said on a deep breath, a breath doubled in the gathered crowd. Then someone among the spectators laughed, that most deadly of sounds in the Trend.

  Whirr-click. Th
e repair bot, right at Procyon's elbow, hummed. Click-click, went the lock.

  "Well," Isis said with a nervous laugh. "So Procyon brought a key."

  Spider tripped the latch, softly, then flung the door open on light, on a common room full of laughter and riot-that died as they walked right into Michaelangelo's bar and the bots zipped to one side and the other.

  Motion stopped, a tableau of staring faces, not the ordinaries, not the common run of scruffy, self-important Freethinkers. It was a concentrated pack of Algol's allies, fifteen or twenty grotesques and a few sliding down the path to that distinction. Central among them, huddled in chairs, were a couple of juvvies who looked too normal to be sitting where they were.

  The girl of the pair sprang up and bolted, throwing over her chair at her tormentors, bolted straight for Ardath and Isis in the doorway. Bright girl. The boy, hesitating, Algol caught, snatched back, a hostage.

  "Well," Algol said, passing the boy to his friends, standing there in his red and black glory. There came a distracting thump from back in the farther hall on the left, and again on the right, and then a fight broke out somewhere in the corridors upstairs. "Is this a general break-in? Little dog, bringing his sister to protect him? Your friends back there have run into trouble."

  There was shadow enough, and Procyon moved into it. It might not be news, here, that mark of his, but it was there. He saw its immediate effect on the soberer, saner members of Algol's company, who began to look to the edges of the room.

  "A cheap tattoo," Algol said. "Is this Brazis's plan, is this little play how he scares fools?"

  "D‚class‚," Ardath said, stretching out an elegant arm, her fires fading as she walked into bright light, while Isis maintained an arm around the fugitive girl. "D‚class‚, Algol. Past and outcast. You're responsible for bringing in the slinks on the street. You're their best friend."

  "Silly, useless pretty-face! Run away, run, before I change those looks of yours for good and all." Algol's right hand flashed with silver. It was a stinger looped about his ring finger, that weapon of the outlaw fringe, capable of injecting mods or deadly poison. Cries broke out among the intruding audience, a jam-up in the doorway as observers crowded back out the door. Ardath stood her ground, and Spider's hands likewise flashed with metal, two such devices.

  But a gray-skinned man walked in from the back halls, a man with burning blue eyes, who wore a soot-gray coat over his shoulders, and unfolded fingers all loaded with stingers.

  "Well, well, Typhon," Spider said, who, depend on it, knew the very darkest layers of Concord. "There's trouble for us. Back away, back away, all."

  "Ardath," Procyon said, "go. Run."

  "This boy." Algol flicked his own stinger on, the flash of a green light on its shining top. "Does this foolish boy interest anyone? What is this currency worth?"

  "Let him go!" the juvvie girl cried. "Let him go! Please let him go!"

  "Friendship. Loyalty. Splendid virtues." Algol reached out toward the hapless boy, who could not budge from the grip of Algol's allies. "Will you come here, little girl? Come and take him-?"

  In the same moment Isis's hand lifted from her gold-pleated robes. A weapon hissed.

  Algol reacted as if slapped. Looked down at a needle lodged in his black hand, a silver spark in the light. The stinger loosened in that grip, slid. His followers shoved one another to avoid it as it fell. He let go the boy's arm.

  "Kill," the ondat voice said. That was what it sounded like. Procyon took a solid grip on the knife hilt, prepared to use the only weapon he had as darts hissed, as Typhon made a lightning move at Spider. Stingers spat. Spider jumped back.

  A gunshot deafened the air. Typhon spun back and around in a mist of blood and hit the corner wall. Supporters fled for the back hall, trampling one another in their haste. Typhon slid down, and Algol slumped heavily to the floor, the upstairs boy sitting stock-still, frozen, by his side, in a room rapidly vacated, except for Ardath's company, and the dead.

  The two cleaner-bots sputtered and hummed into action, rushing about madly, sizzling blood spots into nonexistence. The repair-bot moved to the back of the room, flashing investigatory lights into the dark.

  A man in a long black coat, the man from the service nook, walked from the streetside doorway behind Ardath, crossed the floor to nudge Algol with his foot. Algol didn't move. The man kept his right hand in a deep coat side pocket.

  The man looked up, then, looked straight at Procyon.

  "Procyon Stafford," he said quietly.

  "Yes, sir," Procyon said. His head buzzed. "Braziss," the ondat voice said, and he believed, this time, that the ondat was telling him what he already knew. "Yes, sir. I am."

  The man looked around at the rest. "I have names, I have image, and the Chairman's police have the exits blocked. Those of you who don't belong here, show ID as you leave."

  Ardath would die first. And being what she was, had no ID.

  "Magdallen," Ardath said scornfully, "Magdallen. Are we not surprised?"

  "Exquisite, take your people and go. Leave the refuse for the Council police."

  The juvvie boy suddenly broke from his frozen stance, leapt from his chair, and fled for the back door, dodging among Algol's fallen followers. He got as far as that doorway, where Brulant, red-gold fires glowing in shadow, stopped him with one outflung hand, a gold metal stinger on the other.

  "Procyon." Ardath came to him. Procyon evaded her touch, kissed his fingers and almost touched her face. But he didn't touch her skin with what had touched his lips at all.

  "I have an illicit," he said, and drew back the fingers. "And I need some help. I'll go with this gentleman, where I can get it."

  "I know a doctor," she said. "I know a good doctor."

  "I know others," he said, meaning the hospital inside Project walls. "And I'll be all right, Ardath. This is a friendly intercept. Magdallen, you say. We've met before. If it's a while before I see you again, don't worry."

  "He has no right, here!"

  "Complications, Ardath. Dangerous complications. Things you don't want to have a thing to do with. I can deal with them, the way you deal with the street. I love you. That's all."

  Tears stood in her eyes. He wished he could fix things. He wished he could make everything right for her, and for the parentals. She stood looking up at him, her true face, the Arden face, her blue and gold tendrils faded in the light.

  "Sir," he said. "Let me walk my sister out of here."

  "Be my guest," Magdallen said. He had a phone in his left hand, so it was a good guess the Project tap wasn't functioning here. Or they were communicating with station police.

  He didn't want Ardath deeper involved than she was, not with Earth authorities in the mix. He moved, close by his sister, but not touching, Ardath keeping close the girl who'd run to her for safety, another dubious touch.

  Point of good faith, Magdallen kept his focus on the several ex-devotees of Algol who emerged, standing frozen in a clump on the far side of the bar. Brulant moved his group in.

  The juvvie boy took his chance and darted to the door, ran to Ardath-not, however, touching her: Procyon interposed his arm to prevent any other contact with his sister, and the boy didn't near touch him, only maneuvered to stay close to her.

  The repair bot passed the doors with them. The two cleaner-bots stayed inside, zapping up the blood, clicking in robotic reproach. A small swarm of cleaner-bots arrived and two of them joined the repair bot, making up his trio.

  Procyon stopped outside with Ardath, in the relative safety of Blunt Street, in a ring of spectators. A knot of uniformed Earther police waited there, guns in evidence, along with a man in a gray Earther suit.

  "Katherine," that man said sternly.

  The girl with Ardath ducked to her far side, seeking protection. "I'm not Katherine, and I'm not going with you."

  "You have to," the man said. His face could be plastic. It had no expression, not even when Magdallen walked out of Michaelangelo's between them and t
he police. Magdallen held out an object in his hand, a simple phone.

  "You can call the governor. You don't arrest anybody here. This is Council territory."

  "Take the boy, I don't care. I'm authorized by this girl's father to take her back."

  "And I don't want to go with you!" the girl cried. "I'm with her! So is Noble!"

  "She's perfectly free to call her father," Ardath said calmly, in a low voice that hushed the crowd. "Let him tell her. And we know who that is."

  Silence followed. Standstill. The tap buzzed in that silence, a steady, repetitive noise: "Go Brazisss. Procyon go Brazis."