Mikal had a wicked grin on his face, and Kati wrinkled her nose.
“Yeah, I heard about your practise of sweet talking the ladies, from Maryse, and Arya, and.... And you had the nerve to tell me that my occasional, and always necessary, vamping of the various villainous males freaked you out. Hypocritical, no?”
“Only because you did it so damn convincingly,” Mikal said with a grin.
“Okay,” he continued. “How’s this for a division of labour: Nabbish and Karn go to the Civic offices, just as we decided, to try to get some satisfaction through the established channels. Cassi and Jaqui go and talk to the man at the Farox’s Carpet Factory, acting like a morality squad of two, but zeroing in on the little boy slaves that they’d heard about. You can pretend, if you want to, that you had assumed when you heard about them, that they must be at Farox’s, since that place has a slightly iffy reputation. Kati and Murra should go to the Office of the Council of Manufacturers, and ask to see this Yana, with whom Kati and Max chatted the last time they were in town. It would be interesting to see her reaction to Murra; that alone ought to be a clue to how much she knows, and if there have been bribes paid to that particular Council Office, or any of its members.
“In the meantime, I’ll take myself to Yaroli’s pretending to be either a Nordlander, or an interstellar traveller, who has heard about the hand-knotted carpets they sell—I’m stealing a bit from Captain Katerina, here—and want to look at some samples, and am interested in proof that the rugs are, indeed, hand-knotted.”
“Just don’t take on the role of Lady Katerina’s servant, Mik,” Kati threw in. “He’d never get the girls to talk, unless they were silly shepherdesses.”
“Oh, don’t underestimate Mik, Kati,” Mikal objected. “He got me past the guard at Gorsh’s compound—but I’ll tell that story later, over wine and dinner.
“While I’m at Yaroli’s I’ll try to persuade one or both of the office clerks to allow me to buy them lunch, and I’ll get her, or them, to spill whatever they have to spill into my ears, and my node’s memory.”
“Karn and I will try, at the very least, to get the authorities to listen to the reports that you people will bring us,” Nabbish said carefully. “It would be nice if we could get them to bring their law-enforcers to swoop down on Yaroli’s even before the rest of you have finished your parts, but I’m not that optimistic, although I’m an optimistic person, normally.”
“Yeah. If I thought the two of you could perform miracles, I’d permit the rest of us to sit inside this suite and drink wine,” Mikal said with a laugh. “But I doubt that it’s to be. So, be ready to work tomorrow, everybody; for now, let’s find a restaurant with some wine, and I’ll regale you with tales of the Lady Katerina, and her trusty servant, Mik.”
“And the young man Mik found, and hired, to run errands for them, in River City on Makros III, and who became their travelling companion,” added Kati.
Sometimes she still missed Jocan. And missing him made her think of Jake, and suddenly she was struggling to keep her eyes from spilling over with tears. Mikal put an arm around her shoulders, and Murra came to stand beside her, on the other side.
“Buck up, woman,” The Monk advised her gruffly, and began to work on her nerves to calm her down. “You’re still on the job, Agent Kati.”
Indeed she was.
“Food, and a glass of wine sounds to be exactly what each of us needs,” said Cassi. “There’s a fine, reasonably priced restaurant down the block. Shall we try it, see if they still serve as good fare as they did, the last time Karn and I were in town?”
*****
Over the next morning’s breakfast at the same establishment they studied transit maps, determining the monorail tram routes which each of the parties would have to use to get to where they were going.
Karn and Nabbish had the easiest travel, they determined; the Civic Offices were only a few blocks away from the hotel.
“Time wise, that can be deceptive,” Nabbish muttered. “Unless Karn can make use of his Old Family identity, I wouldn’t put it past the bureaucrats to block us for hours from seeing members of the top echelon of Civic Officials. My experiences on the Continent Sud have been that the people with even a modicum of power like to make Nordlanders wait at every opportunity. Otherwise, I suppose, that we might just consider ourselves too important by half.”
“It has to do with an inferiority complex that the Sudlanders tend to display,” Cassi said. “So try to be patient. Theirs is the poorer continent, and the one less well organized and indifferently governed. This city, Suderie, is their crown jewel, the pride of the Continent, the one prosperous place in a region of small towns and villages, struggling farms, and plenty of wilderness.
“Much of it is beautiful,” she explained to Mikal and Kati, “and because of that, while the Council of the Families ran the government in the North, many of the Old Families bought up land on the sea coast or on lakes, and built resorts for themselves, hiring locals to fetch and carry for them. That sort of thing, though it can provide employment for the locals, is not necessarily designed to win friends, or influence people; it smacks too much of privilege, and of taking advantage of other peoples difficulties.”
“The behaviour of many of these northern landlords left a lot to be desired,” Karn added. “The Gurts still own a sea coast property not too far from Suderie, and because we were one of the more reasonable families as far as the dealings with the locals were concerned, we heard a lot of stories. As a matter of fact, we haven’t given up our southern property simply because the locals in the nearest village have encouraged us to stay. We buy food at the local market, patronize the local winery and the brewery—both of which are very good, by the way—and we hire locals to do whatever maintenance and other work needs to be done.”
“We bring in very little except ourselves and Karn’s purse from the north,” Cassi added with a laugh. “That’s why we’re as familiar as we are with Suderie. We, our present group, that is, could have stayed at the house, if it was a bit closer to Suderie than it is; it’s just far enough from here to have made commuting, even by flyer, awkward.
“But, and we did point this out to Marna, if necessary, we can use our property to house the children until we’re ready to ferry them to Strone and beyond, always assuming that we can get them there from the hotel. Especially, if there seems to be some danger that we need to protect them from. The locals in the nearest village are wonderful; if we want the children kept safe, they’ll rally to the cause.”
“We’ll keep that in reserve, then,” Mikal said. “In case we do run into serious problems.”
“What kind of serious problem are you thinking of?” Jaqui asked.
“What comes to mind is the possibility that Yaroli and his henchman, this Tarig who runs the hand-knotting portion of their operations, might decide that Gorsh’s demise means that they get to keep the rented chattels until the boys are too old to be good knotters. With the need to make any more rental payments gone, they’d, of course, stand to gain extra profits for Yaroli’s Fine Carpets. Thus, I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to barricade us from their factory when they realize that we’re out to take the children away, immediately, if not sooner.”
Jaqui looked thoughtful.
“The children must be housed somewhere,” she said.
“And the office workers should be able to tell me where,” Mikal added with a grin. “One of the reasons why I’m keen to pick their brains.”
“And Cassi and I are to persuade this Farox guy to help us chase down the boys. Since it’s in his self-interest to do so, regardless of how he actually feels about child slave labour.”
“He did claim to not be in favour of it, when Max and I talked with him,” Kati said. “He said that he was paying wages to the ‘delinquents’ that he employed from his neighbouring school—for their own good, he claimed.”
“He may not be completely blowing smoke about that,” said Nabbish. “Those ch
ildren may be earning more than money. If they can show that they can do useful work, and stay out of trouble while doing so, often institutions like that will give them credit for such behaviour, and allow them to leave, to go live on their own, sooner than they would otherwise.”
“Still,” Kati sniffed, “if they’re young enough to be good knotters, they shouldn’t be in a place like that at all. What’s wrong with dealing with even difficult children in their own homes?”
“If they have homes,” Nabbish pointed out. “Like Cassi said, the Continent Sud is not a rich region, nor a well-organized one. These are street kids from various towns, I should imagine, sent to the school by frustrated officials.”
“Ouch,” said Kati. “That’s not good.”
“Plenty of work for the Federation,” Mikal muttered.
“Though, to be honest, we’d rather work out stuff like that ourselves,” Nabbish said. “If the Sudlanders will allow even us Nordlanders to interfere in their affairs.”
“Cooperation and consideration, those are the keys,” said Mikal. “And never making the mistake of looking down one’s nose at other people. Always assume that people are capable of taking care of things, given the right tools and a bit of instruction. Do that and you’ll be surprised how often folk live up to expectations. Not hundred percent of the time, of course, but surprisingly close to that.
“But, this is not the time for a lecture on government. Kati’s giving me the eye that says: ‘cease and desist’.”
Even Murra giggled at that.
*****
“Murra, you are going to have to put aside all the fine feelings about courtesy and privacy when we arrive at the Office of the Council of Manufacturers,” Kati said to the lad when the two of them boarded a monorail tram.
“If we’re to get the boys away from these literal slave-drivers, we are going to have to gather information, and that means ignoring the usual niceties of normal living. We’ll have to mentally eavesdrop on the people I’m going to be talking to. I’m not sure what this woman or her office mates might know about Yaroli’s operations, and I don’t know what Mikal expects us to discover, but a rough guess is that he thinks that either Yaroli or Gorsh bribed somebody important in the Council of Manufacturers to keep quiet about the chattels. So I want you scouting for stray thoughts that might indicate that; I’ll have my Granda node doing the same thing. And if you come across something else incriminating, probe if at all possible.”
Murra looked uncomfortable, but he nodded.
“I do understand,” he said in his soft voice. “I want the boys freed, of course, so I will do what is necessary.”
He, then, apparently turned his mind away from the unpleasantness involved, and eyed the train car that they were seating themselves in.
“This tram is all right,” he said. “It’s a lot like the one I used to ride between my Institute and my home, when I went to visit my family. Although I didn’t get to go very often; the lessons at the Institute were very intense, and we had to work long hours.”
“Your family lived in the city in which the Institute was?” Kati asked him.
She realized that this was the first time she had talked with Murra about his life before he had been abducted. Why hadn’t she asked about it on the slave ship? Probably because they had all been avoiding the topics of home and families, except when they could turn events into entertaining stories to pass the time. Dwelling on what they had apparently lost for good, had seemed painful and pointless. But now the time to deal with all the losses, and the accompanying pain was near. They were mostly free of the trap in which they had been kept, and once they were completely out, and after they found out from the Xeonsaurs, what, if any, hope there was, of anyone returning to lost lives, homes, and families, healing could begin.
To Kati’s surprise, Murra started to chat animatedly about life on his world. He told her about his home which apparently housed a large, extended family consisting of several generations of relatives, and plenty of cousins around his own age.
“You’ll have to trade notes with Mikal’s cousin, Rakil,” she told him. “He grew up in a clan something like yours, on the planet Borhq. They call them Tree-Families, because the clan house is built into a living tree.”
Murra smiled his beautiful smile at her.
“Mikal mentioned the Tree-Families of Borhq when he was under the mind-tangler in the Citadel cellar,” he said. “They sounded very interesting.”
The tram ride passed quickly while they talked, and Kati was surprised when The Monk intruded to announce that the next stop was theirs.
“Oh dear,” she said to her companion, “now the pleasant chat ends and the serious work begins. We need to get off here, and make our way to our destination.”
“And get busy with the spying business,” Murra added mentally, sensibly eschewing the spoken word.
“You’ve got it,” Kati subvocalized back, while studying the buildings on the street, accepting the Granda’s direction as to the one they wanted.
The building was a non-descript four-story, just as she remembered from her earlier trip; the plush Office of the Council of Merchants would be on the top floor. She and Murra climbed the broad stairs up to the fourth floor—there was an elevator, but it looked cramped and poorly maintained, and even as she and Max had done the first time, Kati thought it wise to avoid using it. Possibly Suderians believed, like the Lamanians did, that it was a good practise to encourage people to climb stairs, although the Lamanian elevators, at least in The Second City, had been in excellent repair, and welcoming to those who had mobility issues.
“Okay,” she subvocalized to both Murra and The Monk as she pushed open the Office door. “We’re all on the job, now.”
The receptionist was the same one with whom Max had dealt on their first visit. She looked at Kati in some surprise, as she and Murra approached her desk; then she glanced at Murra, and did a double take. Kati, leaving the psychic work to her node and her companion, studied the woman’s physical reaction, while keeping a studied expression of disinterest on her face.
“Remember me?” she asked the receptionist. “I’m Captain Katerina, the Free Trader, who came here with Sieur Max Lordz from the Continent Nord, asking about hand-knotted carpets. We talked to a woman by the name of Yana; do you think that my young friend, here, and I could talk to her once again?”
“I remember,” the young woman replied sharply.
She picked up the communicator, pressed a few buttons on it and then spoke into it, in very low tones. Though if she was trying to keep what she was saying from Kati and Murra, she was wasting her efforts. Kati had dialled up her hearing to its highest, and assumed that Murra had done likewise, besides eavesdropping on her thoughts. Kati had to ignore the buzz of some insect in the room, and the unpleasant whine of a ceiling fan, but she picked up the receptionist’s speech.
“Yana, you’ll have to do something,” the woman said in panicked tone. “That weird Free Trader that Yaroli suspected of snooping is here—and she’s got one of those funny-looking creatures with her! I thought Yaroli said that Gorsh took care of her!”
There was a moment’s silence; then the receptionist lay the communicator back down.
“Yana can see you in a half-an-hour,” she said to Kati. “There’s a cafe downstairs, if you’d like to wait there; otherwise you can seat yourselves on our benches.”
She indicated a corner of the room which contained a couple of long, backless, wooden seats, half-hidden by a large potted plant. They did not look comfortable; obviously the office staff preferred that those required to wait patronized the first floor cafe.
However, Kati was having none of that. She and Murra were working, and a little discomfort was sometimes a necessary accompaniment to work.
“She called me a ‘funny-looking creature’,” Murra whispered as they walked to the corner benches. “That’s pretty rude.”
“That’s probably how they’re self-justifying attempts t
o hang on to the boys, and keep them as working chattels,” Kati subvocalized, having decided that she did not wish to speak such an explosive accusation out loud. “They’ve decided that you and the other boys are not truly human.”
“If that’s the way they think,” Murra sent back, “I don’t feel guilty about invading their privacy.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” broke in The Monk. “I’m getting some really unpleasant impressions from just skimming over the surface of these people’s thoughts. If you can probe deeper while the two of you wait, truly human boy, do so. It may be important to know what is going on.”
Murra went off mentally, while Kati used her own ESP to follow The Monk into Yana’s office. The woman was on her communicator, talking to someone, an intense look on her face. Kati left the Granda to listen to, and record, the conversation, zeroing in on the image in Yana’s mind of the person to whom she was speaking. Could she get a good look at the person she wondered; he seemed, from Yana’s mental image, to be a fairly typical Waywardian.
Suddenly she found herself astrally hovering over the large expanse of the building which housed Yaroli’s Fine Carpets. She came down to the street level, insuring that it truly was the place she thought it was—the sign she remembered from her one time there, proclaimed the fact—and then entered the place in search of the person Yana was communicating with. For one fleeting moment she was aware of Mikal in the office, talking with the two female workers; she ignored him and them. Let Mikal take care of that; she was merely making certain that Yana was, in fact, letting the head carpet-making honcho know that he was under investigation.
She found her target in a large, plush office, on a communicator, of course. Kati took a deep, non-existent breath (unless her body on the wooden bench was physically reacting to what was happening with her astral self), surprised because she recognized the man—Yana was talking with Tarig, not Yaroli!
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 69