by Ellen Larson
“The flex.”
So. It was true that he still knew her. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A good one, I’d say, by your reaction.”
“I’m just surprised,” she said. “Weren’t you listening yesterday in the Locutory?”
“I heard you say it would be like old times. I didn’t hear you say you’d do the flex.”
“What have I been doing the last two days, if not preparing for the flex?”
“Making trouble? Acting like a two-bit clown?”
She was silent, stung by his words beyond expectation.
“Isn’t it a misuse of the Vessel?” he continued. “To flex for the Ratskies?”
The breeze tumbled up the boulevard, ruffling her hair. The traffic was light, mostly Rasakan-registered vehicles and a few people in uniform on the sidewalk. “We’re a joint state, now,” she said. “I do what my boss tells me to do.”
“Which is also not an answer.”
She forced herself to focus on his shield. “My answer is—” Her jaw worked. She had promised to tell him the truth. But what was the truth to him? What was it to her? “I don’t know.”
He exhaled and shook his head.
She felt suddenly exhausted, so much so that she wondered if she had the energy to walk to the barracks. “Look, can we stop this? You’re beyond busy, and I’m not gonna make it through the day if I don’t get some sleep.”
“You’re supposed to be at the VCC at four.”
“That’s my point.”
He turned his shielded eyes to the Authority Building, standing tall and imposing in the distance at the end of the boulevard, then turned his back on it and headed toward the front entrance of the JCP.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
* * *
Sunday, 16 April 3324, 3:10 p.m.
She floated down from the clouds in a slow spiral, the rushing air fluttering her sleeves as she spread her arms. Far below, the River, winding its sedate way through the rolling farmland, sparkled like silver in the sunlight. She leaned to one side and headed for theWood, swooping down to skim the uppermost branches of the trees. The trees ended, and before her appeared the octagonal buildings of the Conservatory, shining white in the midst of the green lea. She raised her chin and began to climb again, soaring—
Tap tap tap.
Merit dragged herself unwillingly toward consciousness. Not yet. Not. . . . Damn. Damn damn damn.
The tapping came again. Not a random noise, or some animal scuffling through the walls. No, no such luck. Someone at her door.
Her eyes flew open and she struggled to sit up. “Yes?”
“S’me.”
Thad. Disappointment scalded her skin like hot oil. She pressed a hand to her chest, trying to still her pounding heart. She had to stop doing this to herself.
“Hurry up. We gotta talk.”
“It’s open!” she barked.
He slipped inside and closed the door. “What, you don’t even lock your fuckin’ door anymore?”
She rubbed her eyes. “I got a lot on my mind.”
“Well, now you got more.” He took a step, then glanced down as his shoes crunched on the broken glass. “That Authority goon, the one they sicced on you yesterday? He cornered me in the can at the JCP just now.” He seated himself on the crate by the window.
She realized her shirt was unbuttoned and drew it together over her chest. “What’d he want?”
“Says he’s lookin’ for whatever’s left of the Resistance.”
“What’d you tell him?” she asked, fumbling with the buttons.
“The truth: there is no Resistance. Present company excluded.”
“Yeah, right,” she snorted. “Then what?”
Thad rocked uneasily on the crate. “He had a piece of paper. There were a couple sentences of the old code writ on it.”
“Resistance code?”
“Yeah.”
“Saints.” Merit flashed back to the glimpse of red lettering she had seen on the tondo. She should have thought of that. She should have found a way to see it up close.
“Wanted to know if I could decode it.”
“To which you replied?”
“What do you think? What we always tell ’em. Said I was only with the Resistance for a few months, right at the end, like it says in my file. Said I only knew a few passwords and identification sequences. Never touched black-ops stuff, myself. Nope.”
“Good.” She drew a deep breath. It was all right. It was only Eric, looking for a source to decipher the writing. But it was chilling how quickly he had found one. Of course, as an Authority agent, Eric would have access to Thad’s personnel file, including the information that he was ex-Resistance.
“So what’s the trouble?” she asked.
“Are you kidding me? He’s fuckin’ Authority!” Thad dropped his head into his hands. “I’m a dead man.”
“He threatened you?”
Thad gave a short laugh. “Too slick for that. He used the soft sell, the way they do at Authority. This is your lucky day. You know.”
“I know.”
Thad twisted his face in smirking mimicry. “He’s really my friend, he wants to help me. He’ll keep it just between him and me. Scumbag.” He squeezed his large hands tight. “I wish I knew what the hell was going on.”
“I can tell you, but you’re not gonna like it.” She met his eyes. “Somebody found a tondo in Zane’s study. That bit of code you saw was written on the back of it.”
Thad’s big face looked suddenly young and vulnerable. “What the . . . ?” Then understanding. “Fuck. The General musta kept it as a souvenir.”
Merit’s eyes drifted to her trousers, crumpled on the floor. “We don’t know that. It could be a different tondo.”
“Not likely,” he scoffed, “considering where it was found. Fuck. Did Authority-boy know what it was?”
“Not till I told him.”
“You told him? Are you crazy?”
“He was gonna take it to Authority! I had to stop him. If the spooks knew a Resistance tondo was found in the General’s study the night he was murdered, they’d shoot first and make up evidence after.”
Thad’s eyes bugged out. “But he is Authority!”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “He’s not a spook, he’s Research. Anyway, he promised not to take it to them.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yeah. I guess. He’s not the type to break a—I don’t know.” She reached for her water bottle and took a swig. “I just did.”
“Oh, man, you really are loco.” Thad took a huge breath and looked out the window. “Okay. Let’s find the bright side. Maybe Authority doesn’t know we tried to off Zane that time.”
“They know.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I told them.”
“You told him that too?”
“No. Not Torre. Last year. After I was captured. When they break you, you tell them everything.” She took another swig, though the water tasted like oil. “Everything.” She waited. It would be a relief to hear his angry recriminations.
But none came. He nodded, understanding—even sympathy—on his handsome face.
“Yeah, well, shit happens,” he said. “You give them my name?”
“I didn’t know your name at the time.”
“Well, that’s something.” He looked at her forlornly. “So what happens now?”
Merit shrugged. “If Authority learns about this tondo Torre’s got, they’d have to be much more objective than I know them to be not to think that it was left by the Resistance who, having blown the original assassination attempt, came back Friday night to finish the job. And then there’s this story of somebody trying to poison Zane a year ago! Anyone who had any ties to the Resistance is gonna end up with their feet nailed to the ceiling.” She slapped the cork back into the bottle.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anybody from the Resistance would do it. Kill Za
ne. Not now, when people are trying to get their lives back together. It had to be somebody else. And what the hell poisoning story are you talking about?”
“Does it matter? The Resistance makes a mighty nice scapegoat—especially if that ‘somebody else’ you’re talking about is a friend of Authority.”
“Fuck!” Thad clasped his hands together and bowed his head. When he looked up, his eyes were white with desperation. “My prints could be on that thing. My DNA.Yours too!”
“Not mine. I wiped it. You were told to do the same.”
“Well, I didn’t. Shit.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his palms together. “Torre must know something—why else would he come to me? I got a wife and kid! Zane got what was comin’ to him—I don’t mind saying it—but I didn’t have a damn thing do with it! He coulda lived to the ripe old age of till-hell-freezes-over for all I cared. Why the fuck should I get dragged into this now?”
There was a mist of sweat on his face and hands. His eyes, usually so confident, were bathed in fear. Real fear. It was so easy to read people, when you could see their faces.
“Calm down,” Merit said coolly. “Listen, I want you to humor me for a minute. Tell me what happened the night you were sent to off Zane.”
“What’s to tell? We got caught.”
“I know that part. Give me details.”
“I don’t like to talk about those days.”
“It’s important.”
“Okay, okay.” He exhaled softly and a quietness came over him. “It didn’t work the way it was s’posed to, is all. We got past the watch, all right, me and Nash. We slit the tent. The plan was to slit him, too, nice and quiet, only he wasn’t asleep. They musta heard us—”
“Who’s they?”
“Him and another gent. They jumped us as soon as we crawled inside. I got a crack over the head, and the next thing I know the General has a plasma gun stuck in my neck. I swear they knew—or maybe the watch saw us and gave the alert. Anyway they got us. Stripped us down. The other gent tied us up like sheep, and the General beat the shit out of us. Asked us questions. When they were done they locked us up in a sort of shed.”
“Who saw you, aside from Zane and the other man?”
“No one.”
“The other man. Can you describe him?”
“Oh, crap, it was a year and a half ago!”
“Think!”
“Okay. Uh. Tall—not as tall as me, but tall. Thin. Kinda bony face, with funny eyes.”
“Hair color?”
He shook his head.
“What’d Zane say to you?” she asked.
“Swore at us a lot. He was angry as hell. We admitted why we were there pretty early on. No point in lying with the fucking tondo with your nice scales of justice sitting in my fucking pocket. He knew what it was. Had the nerve to ask what he’d done to deserve it.”
“What’d you say?”
“Me? Not much, on account of the amount of blood in my mouth. But old Nashie teed off good and proper. We paid for that.”
“Nash’s daughter was killed at Abydos.”
“Oh, yeah? Good man, Nash.”
“He was one of the Last.”
Thad nodded, lowering his gaze.
“And the last time you saw the tondo?” asked Merit.
“In Zane’s hand.”
“And you only saw one?”
“Of course. You only gave me the one.”
“How did you escape?”
“Took us a while to get untied, but we managed it. There was a wooden hatch high in one wall. We got the hinges loose and crawled out. It was raining like hell and black as tar, but that only helped us get away unnoticed.”
“Yeah, real lucky about that hatch,” said Merit sarcastically.
“Rasakans are idiots,” said Thad, in a return of his bluff confidence.
“Zane was Oku, last I looked.”
“Yeah, I s’pose. Okay, Oku are idiots.” He shrugged.
“Did you ever see any Rasakans at all?”
He chewed on his lower lip, shaking his head. “What difference does it make?”
“Don’t you see? The Rasakans never knew you were there. He let you go, Thad, Zane let you go.”
“No way! Are you kidding me? No way.” He looked at the floor, thinking hard. Remembering. “Well, maybe he did. It was awful easy. But why would he?”
“I have no Earthly idea.”
“Shit.” He grimaced. “I shoulda got the job done. It made me puke when Zane was elected Governor. I never understood how he got a pass with so many of the Oku. He was a bald-faced traitor if ever there was one.”
“Good PR,” said Merit. “Authority PR.”
“How’s that?”
“The Rasakans took the blame for Abydos. As part of their phony line about burying the hatchet at Byzantion. They claimed they were after Zane when they bombed the cellar. Said they’d got a tip from a snitch that he was gonna be there and were just a few minutes late. Clever story, wasn’t it? Fits the facts. They covered up the truth, got to look contrite, and made sure their man ended up in power. Zane put up that big monument for the captains downtown. Everybody believed the story—except the Resistance.”
“Fucker.” He fell silent.
Merit sucked on her lips and glanced at her watch. Almost four. “Why did you quit the Resistance?”
“Hey,” he said defensively. “We don’t all have your death wish, Reb. I hung in there, till it seemed to me like there wasn’t much point in going on. When the kid was born, I needed a paying job, even if the pay was in apple cores.”
“Lucky you got hired by the JCP, considering.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “They hire a lot of ex-militia, and they don’t ask too many questions. Where else they gonna find people suited for law enforcement? They killed most of the old CPF. Look, can we get back to the present problem? ’Cause the more I turn it over in my head, the more I’m feeling this Authority goon thinks I was involved in Zane’s murder.”
“Where were you Friday night?”
His face hardened. “Whoa. Who are you to ask a question like that?”
“Hey, relax. Select, here.” She tapped her chest. “Criminologist. Doing what I was trained to do.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m not used to thinking of you that way.” He smiled wistfully. “You were somethin’ when I met you, you know that? Tiny little thing, full of fire, but willing to do the dirty work. I never woulda believed you previously were a Retrospector.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t my idea to ever become one again. Yet here I sit. So tell me where you were Friday night.”
He gave a reluctant nod. “At the Priory. Sentry duty.”
“Swell.”
“Ain’t it just.” He looked at her. “Listen. We gotta do something. Make sure that tondo never sees the light of day.”
“I did my best.”
“It’s not enough! We gotta get it back!”
“Forget it. It’s too risky.”
Thad’s face wrinkled in surprise. “Too risky? That’s not what you woulda said in the old days.”
“Well, that was then and this is a whole new now.”
“Whatever you say. Shit. I got sentry duty at the Priory again tonight.”
“You have to go. You can’t run.”
“Yeah, I know the drill. Guess I gotta sit tight till you do this flex and prove it wasn’t me.”
Merit lowered her eyes. “Yeah.”
“Y’know I got a look at that paper Torre had.”
Merit looked up quickly. “And?”
“It was three lines. I could only see the first few letters of each line. I can’t be sure.”
“Come on!”
“I think it was maybe ‘met’ or ‘meet.’Then some short words, maybe ‘the,’ then a word that started with a C.Then the number ten.”
“Ten.”
“Yeah. Means nothing to me, but maybe it’ll help a Retrospector.”
Merit’s gaze
drifted away from Thad. At ten o’clock on Friday night, Zane had been alone in his study with less than an hour to live. Had the killer made an appointment with him? But why send a message—if that’s what it was—on the tondo? In Resistance code, of all things? And where had the tondo come from? It made her head hurt, trying to make sense of it. She glanced around for her jacket, then realized that Thad was sitting on it. She met his gaze.
“What are you thinking?” asked Thad.
“That I could use a little pick-me-up.”
“Hey.” He stood abruptly. “Forget that. I told you, we’re done.”
“I didn’t mean that.” She flinched at the look on his face. “I’m stressed out, is all. Need one of my bennies. It’s hard for me to think straight sometimes.”
“Oh, right.” His face cleared. “Sorry. It’s just—you’re always so quick with the smart talk. My fault.”
“No, it’s my fault. My brains are scrambled or something. Have been ever since they let me out and stuck me in the JCP. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”
“Well, we all know you’re half loco, if that’s what you mean. But, knowing Authority as I do, I figure you got your reasons.” He glanced at the door. “I better go. Let you get ready for this flex.”
She lay back on the bed. “Yeah.” That’s what they all wanted. Marshall, psychotherapist, even her team—and now Thad. Do the flex, Merit, then everything will be all right.
“Don’t sweat it, Reb. So, maybe times have changed, and yeah, maybe you’ve lost a step or two, but when push comes to shove, you’re still the one we trust.”
His shoes crunched on the broken glass by the door. Shaking his head, he reached for the broom that stood by the sink. He swept the glass onto a sheet of paper with unexpected tidiness and took it with him as he left.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
Sunday, 16 April 3324, 4:20 p.m.
The Authority sentries at the new entrance to the VCC studied her pass as if it were a dirty scan and she a purveyor of smut for displaying it. They made her wait while they ran a security check, then, with another round of sneers and leers, let her in.