Jaqui thought about that while she wandered about the compound around the Citadel that evening, avoiding going to bed in the dorm room which she had shared with Shyla, and which, presumably, was all hers now. Gorsh had not asked her to stay the night in his apartment, which was too bad in the sense that it was more comfortable a place to sleep in than the dorm, but liberating because, obviously, her sexual services were not wanted. Wonder how the Agent had avoided the guards who had posts here and there around the periphery of the area, one of them being across the street from the empty lot where Shyla and Jaqui had met Lank and Chrysalia? The guards had not been a problem for her and Shyla, since they were used to seeing the two girls walk about, and knew them by sight, aware that they had been given a certain amount of freedom—because they had been well-marked, as it was—but a strange man, whether leaving or entering the compound, should have triggered the nearest guard into action.
“Mind you,” she muttered to herself, “they probably aren’t all that alert. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gorsh wasn’t paying them enough, to not sleep on the job. And it does sound like this Mikal made his way out in the night time. More to the point: how did he get away from the Cellar Creature which, I am certain, had been instructed to keep him down there? Was the jini powerful enough to negate the Cellar Creature’s strength?”
Well, maybe she could put such questions to Murra while she was down in the cellar. But if she was going to talk about the things that she wanted to talk about, she could not have Tere tagging along with her. Shyla may have trusted Tere, but Jaqui was not about to take that risk. Tere seemed okay, that was true, but could he hold his own against Gorsh or the Overseer questioning him, if they decided to grill him for whatever information he might have? No, she had no intention of taking the youth into her confidence. What she was doing was much too important and dangerous for that.
She ended up, the following morning, inventing an errand down into the Citadel cellars. It was not difficult to come up with an excuse to go down: there were always things that could be taken to the room at the back of the lab, and no-one really wanted to take them, unless they had explicit orders to do so. So it was just a matter of looking at the shelf where the things that the machinery caring for the comatose bodies required were, and deciding which of them Murra would be most likely to need soon. The nutri-supplement was the most common need, Jaqui remembered from when she and Shyla had been confined in the back room. It had always been on the verge of running out; Tere would bring just enough of it during his visits to get the patients through until his next visit. Jaqui recalled that she had wondered why he didn’t just bring down a bunch of the packets at one time, so that there would have been a supply of spares for the times when he did not get down as was usual.
“It only makes sense to have extra packages down there in case of an emergency,” she now muttered to herself. “I promised myself, when I was down there, that I would remedy the situation at the earliest opportunity. Now I have the opportunity, and I will do so.”
She placed several packets of the nutrient solution into a tote, and left Gorsh’s office, heading for the Citadel. Nobody bothered her, even as she had expected; the only ones who might have done so were Gorsh himself, or his Overseer, and neither of them were anywhere in sight. Either Gorsh was sleeping in again, and the Overseer was busy, or the two of them were closeted in the Overseer’s office having one of their many meetings.
With Mosse still in the infirmary, the laboratory was blessedly quiet. Murra had propped the door between it and the back room ajar so the lock could not click shut. Jaqui giggled to see this, as she approached, and had a bigger surprise when she went in, carefully leaving the door open a crack. There was a girl in the back room, in an animated discussion with Murra, the jini wrapped around her neck!
Murra looked up when Jaqui entered, and greeted her delightedly.
“The jini brought Elli in here from Mosse’s quarters,” he explained, indicating the girl. “And it’s healing the damage Mosse did to her.”
“It’s healing more than just her,” Jaqui said, sniffing the air. “I swear that I can almost smell field flowers in this room! What’s going on?”
“I think that Mikal and the Wise Woman Seleni have persuaded the Nature Spirits to flow inside here with the jini’s help,” Murra said. “They’re eroding the Cellar Creature’s hold, or its negativity, or both. I get the impression that the Creature is not quite sure what attitude to take to that. It likes the attention the Nature Spirits are paying it, but it knows that the more it lets them in, the more things will change.”
“They’re changing all right,” Jaqui mused, looking around.
In the newly clear air she could almost make out the two astral forms hovering by Murra. Had she interrupted a conference? No matter. They’d be able to confer again, as soon as she had left.
She handed Murra the tote-bag with the nutri-supplement.
“Here,” she said, “I noticed when Shyla and I were here earlier that Tere never keeps any extra of this on hand. Stick it behind something in one of the cupboards, so if ever you’re short, you can use these. We don’t want to starve your comatose friends.”
Murra took the bag with a smile.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re kind. Now, if ever you can bring down some fresh food for Elli and me, we’ve got it made. The canned and packaged stuff does get monotonous.”
“Hm, that’s going to be a little more difficult than the nutrient solution,” Jaqui said. “But maybe I can sneak some fruit from the cafeteria, now and then. I’ll try.”
Murra thanked her again.
“And it’ll get you to come and visit us, too,” he added with a disarming grin.
“Yeah, and I do have a reason for coming down this time,” Jaqui told him. “You can communicate with Seleni, and through her, with the Federation Agent, via the jini, right? Or maybe the astral forms in this room can answer my question, although, their bodies being comatose, I don’t think that they can do what needs to be done.”
Murra looked at her curiously.
“Communication is not a problem,” he said. “What do you need?”
With a slightly dubious glance in Elli’s direction—but, no, she was a chattel, and an abused one, therefore sure to be on the right side of this matter—she launched into an explanation of her adventure with Gorsh’s computers. She had the impression that the astral forms were listening to her every word attentively, along with Murra.
When she had finished there was a short pause while Murra listened mentally.
“Xanthus and Xoraya say that either one of them, were they in body, and given fifteen minutes with one or the other of these computers, could tease the HBusiness information out of it, without Gorsh ever knowing the difference,” he then said. “They say it sounds like his system is old enough that on Xeon it would be displayed in a museum as an antique.
“Which doesn’t help us, since neither of them have, at the moment, fingers at their disposal, and even if they did, they couldn’t sneak into Gorsh’s office to play with his things.”
“What about connecting nodally to his system?” Jaqui asked. “Could someone with a node do that, and get the information out that way?”
“Xanthus thinks not,” Murra answered. “He thinks that the system is so old, and probably built on one of the Fringe Worlds, so any node-compatibility it has would be an add-on, likely just to accommodate Gorsh’s node. Which means that a knowledgeable person would have to physically access the thing, but once that happened, the rest would be easy.”
“That’s sort of what I was afraid of,” Jaqui sighed. “I’m not that knowledgeable person; like I said, I alerted the Boss’s node when I tried to go into the HBusiness file, and it was a good thing that I had prepared a cover story, or I’d have been in trouble. Maybe one of the other off-worlders, like the Agent, perhaps, could do it, but how would he get into the office undetected, and with enough time, even if it wouldn’t take much time, to do the d
eed?”
“The jini and I will certainly communicate with Seleni and Mikal,” Murra promised. “If there is a record of Gorsh’s slave transactions, and/or a list of the bodies he has snatched, I know that Mikal would consider getting hold of it of utmost importance. You’re doing good work, Jaqui; Xoraya and Xanthus want you to know that.”
Jaqui found that she was almost skipping as she crossed the laboratory on her way out. The murk did not begin to affect her until she was in the corridor leading towards the stairs.
*****
“Jaqui found Gorsh’s file about his slavery business, apparently,” Seleni said after communicating with the jini which was ensconced in the Citadel cellar. “She came down to tell Murra and the lizard people about it.”
“A computer file?” Mikal asked. “Or does Judd Gorsh run his business in such a primitive manner that he has paper files?”
“A computer file,” Seleni clarified. “Although, it seems that Jaqui thinks that there’s a paper copy, at least of the chattel’s names, in the Overseer’s Office. Gorsh’s Overseer is pretty much computer illiterate, according to her. But, according to the Xeonsaur scientist, Gorsh’s computer set-up is extremely primitive, so primitive that there is no hope of using nodes to get into it. He figures that given a body and fifteen minutes in Gorsh’s office he’d have the file copied, but since he’s not likely to be able to fill either of those qualifications in the near future, he’s going to have to count on you other off-worlders to come up with a way to access it.”
“We’ll certainly have to access it,” Mikal agreed. “Information about to whom he sold what he was peddling would help Kati and the SFPO Corps to trace the slaves to their present locations, and, of course, it would provide valuable evidence against the man in a Federation Court of Law.
“We’ll just have to figure out a way to do it.”
This was good news, indeed.
“I hope someone has thanked Jaqui for her efforts. She is turning out to be quite the operative.”
“And I suppose that you’re going to snag her for the SFPO, if you can,” muttered Nabbish. “Though we on Continent Nord could certainly use talent, too.”
“My boss, Maryse r’ma Darien, would never forgive me if I didn’t give good prospects the lecture about how The Human Trafficking Division is always looking for good people,” Mikal laughed. “Jaqui, of course, is a free agent, and can do whatever she wants to. Although I do suspect that she would thrive in The Second City of Lamania, and might feel a bit constrained here on Wayward. There are still some old-fashioned attitudes prevalent here, especially when it comes to women.”
“That is a fact,” sighed Max, “as I have the misfortune to know. Although things are changing; we have a woman President for one thing.”
“And you lobbied long and hard to get her into that position,” said Nabbish. “For which you have my greatest respect, Max. She’s the right person for the job, and I was impressed at the time that you had no trouble seeing it.”
“Fortunately, not quite all of us Old Family fogeys are idiots,” Max commented drily.“A few of us have some sense.”
“However, the problem at hand—one of them—is how to get me or Lank into Gorsh’s office to fiddle with his computer,” Mikal muttered. “Either one of us could baby that mechanism into giving us the file without triggering any alarms, right Lank?”
Lank laughed.
“I’m assuming that you have the know-how,” he said. “I know that I do. And Ciela could do it too, even though she has no node.”
“True,” Mikal said, looking thoughtful.
“Could we use the second jini to pass the necessary knowledge to Jaqui, the way you talked Shyla through disarming Chrush at the bar?” Seleni asked.
“I’d rather avoid putting Jaqui at risk of Gorsh’s wrath, more than she already is, and that would definitely put her there,” Mikal said slowly. “Hacking into a computer can be painstaking work, and doing it through a go-between—two go-betweens in this case—ups the possibility of complications. And a mistake might bring Gorsh to check up on her in the middle of the process. I doubt that he’d be as forgiving the second time he caught her trying to access that particular file, as he was the first.”
“I did bring along a few lace crystal shards,” said Ciela. “Could we cut a communicator crystal-sized piece from one of them, and wire it to the computer’s compiler? That’s an easy, quick job with these old machines; even I could talk Jaqui through it, using the jini’s abilities.”
“Of course we could cut one of the shards,” replied Chrysalia. “I can do that task with my bare hands. If the jini is able to transport the crystal to Jaqui, or else, arrange to meet one of us somewhere where we can give it to her, we’ll be in business. Once the crystal is wired in, you computer jockeys can do whatever you want to with Gorsh’s mechanical pets, and he won’t know the difference.”
She was grinning from ear to ear.
“We might even be able to find out what the connection between Gorsh and Chrush is, if we can mine the contents of Gorsh’s machine!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
That evening Judd Gorsh decided to pay the cabin on the Leaven Estate a visit. He left just as the sun was going down, in the smallest flit that he had on his compound. He was determined to not be waylaid by Milla; he had no intention of spending another night satisfying her incessant desires.
“That woman can be an absolute man-suck when she wants to,” he muttered to himself as he climbed into the flit. “No way she’s going to get any action out of me tonight. I’m going to be lying with the luscious Kati.”
The organ between his legs was hardening in anticipation. He grinned to think of Kati’s naked body—surely she was exquisite when naked—next to his own! Oh, he was going to be enjoying himself tonight!
The jini, which had been hanging nearby formlessly, keeping an eye on his comings and goings, watched him leave, and contacted Seleni as soon as the flit was in the air.
“Find Jaqui,” the Wise Woman bade it, “and persuade her to take a little walk to the empty lot with the single tree, and the mess of bushes. We’ll contact her there.”
“Gorsh has left the compound,” she then told the crowd that had gathered in the usual suite in the third-best hotel in Salamanka. “Most likely for the night.”
“Those of us who are to communicate with this Jaqui will have to go down into the valley,” said Llon. “Have we enough lights since it’s getting dark?”
Lank brought out the handful that he had taken from The Spacebird Two. They were tiny, though powerful, so there were a number of them. Nabbish and his police recruits had three of the bigger, Waywardian versions of flashlights, and he offered them, since he and his men were not required to go into the valley this time.
“Jaqui has the one that Murra gave her and me to use when we tried to escape,” Shyla said. “So she should be all right.”
“Good,” commented Mikal. “Nabbish, I suggest that you hang onto a couple of your lights, since you’ll be ferrying Chrysalia, and the crystal fragment to Jaqui at that empty lot. The street lighting is not good in that part of the city, and I doubt that there is much light in the lot itself.”
“There isn’t,” Lank said. “You’ll need lights. “You have one of ours, do you, Chrysalia?”
Chrysalia displayed the one she had taken, switching it on and off.
“And I’ve got the crystal fragment, all wired up and ready to be attached to the computer, thanks to Lank and Ciela’s wizardry.” She displayed the little bag that held the makeshift gadget. “Jaqui can take it to Gorsh’s office in a pocket, and connect it to the compiler as per instructions relayed via the jini.”
“Instructions which our engineering genius, Lank, will be passing to her,” Mikal said with a grin. “I’ll be quite happy to be able to pass on that responsibility. I could do it, but Lank is the one with the real know-how. Me, I’m more of SFPO operative.”
“And the darling of the Nature Spi
rits of Wayward,” Seleni added, laughing.
“A fortunate circumstance, that,” Mikal said, grinning back at her.
They trooped downstairs, en masse, Max stopping to lock the suite door behind them. Outside the hotel they split into two groups: Nabbish, Kortone, Gerr, and Chrysalia heading for the flyer which the Waywardian law enforcers were using, and the rest making their way, in the fading daylight, towards the River Valley Nature Walk leading to the picnic area. Seleni and Mikal led the cohort, with Llon and Max following close behind, while the three younger folk trailed a bit while chattering excitedly. There was no hurry; they would reach the chosen spot in plenty of time to be ready for action when alerted by the jini.
“So you think that we can use the mapping computers in the flyers to download and store the data we’ll steal from Gorsh?” Max asked Mikal as they walked.
“Lank looked them over, and decided that they would do, at least in the short term,” Mikal replied. “He and I can access them nodally, and thereby use our nodal brains as back-up. When we get back to Strone we’ll upload into our ship’s brain, as well as the Shelonian gadget made especially for storing information, and giving easy access to it. And you Government officials of the Continent Nord can put the stuff on whatever equipment you have for electronic storage.”
“It’ll have to be either my personal computer, old-fashioned as it is, and/or Marna Naez’s private equipment,” Max muttered. “The Government has nothing much like that on hand, outside of a few communicators, which, at least, are in working order now that we got some crystals for them.”
“It may not matter all that much, if the Federation handles the legalities,” Mikal reassured him. “Your Government can always get electronic transcripts of the evidence, and the trial from the Federation judiciary. All you’ll have to do is ask.”
“It’ll be embarrassing, though,” Max sighed. “To think that we’ve sunk to such incompetence that we can’t keep evidence on hand.”
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 55