DarkShip Thieves (42 page)

So the lair would have food if this were one of the periods when Ettiene was more or less in residence. Otherwise it would be a wasteland of wasted broomers. And not a bite to eat.

So, I took the box with the gold ring—if Daddy could take my ring, I could take his—and I looked for one of the places at which I had sold jewelry before. Usually my own jewelry. It was a small hole-in-the-wall shop, and the owner might be one of those quasi-mythical Usaians, or at least he had a tattered bit of cloth showing stars and a few stripes hung on the wall behind the desk at which he sat, and I'd always heard that this was the representation of their male deity, just like the woman with the torch was their female goddess, who was said to change into an eagle in her incarnation as war divinity.

I didn't care. I wasn't here to ask him about his questionable beliefs. He must have recognized me because, as he looked up at me from behind his holographic screen—unreadable from this side, but writhing and moving across his face like electronic stigmata—he smiled.

Nodding, in greeting more than anything else, I set the gold ring on his dark dimatough desk. His eyebrows went up as he picked it up and weighed it in his hand. He brought out a scanner, attached to his computer, and pushed the ring against it. Figures scrolled on his screen and he looked at me. "Hot?"

I almost said no. Before going to Eden, I would have said no. You see, I could get a lot more money for the ring if he thought he could sell it intact and as it was. On the other hand, if Daddy was looking for the ring—and I had a very strong feeling he would be—anyone caught with it would die a horrible death. It wasn't only that by following the links Daddy might get to me—in fact, it wasn't that at all because I had to be out of here long before that—it was that looking at this man, with his sharp blue eyes, his wrinkled, tan-skinned face, his receding hair, I couldn't imagine causing his death by lying to him. I sighed. "Yeah. At least . . . it wasn't exactly stolen, but someone will be looking for it. Better as gold value only."

There was something, some internal shift behind his eyes, and I guessed that I'd passed some test. I didn't know what would have happened if I hadn't, but I know that when he paid me, he paid me far more than I had expected—a full sixty five narcs, in the coin of Syracuse.

He gave me the money coded into an anonymous gem and I tested it, then headed out the door, towards my lair, which was down two blocks, to the right on an alley and three floors up, to a rounded, arched entry way.

Before I had flown up the full height, I knew something was wrong.

For one, it was hard to avoid the idea that something was wrong, when there were dark marks—as of a fire—around the entrance, and the bowels of the lair, looked charred and deserted.

Shock had barely had time to register when a broomer flew into sight. He wore all black leathers with red piping, and I felt a sudden and overwhelming relief as I recognized the broad, ruddy features of my friend, Max Keeva. Max was the son of good man Keeva and we'd been friends before we were members of the same lair. Rumor had it that we'd clawed each other in our cradles.

He made the broomer sign for down, and pointed at the deserted warehouse. I followed.

We landed on a crunchy layer of burned debris. I wondered if I was walking on my other broomer lair associates, even as Max dismounted and turned. "Athena!" he said. "I'm glad we came here at the same time. I am so glad to meet you."

The hair I didn't have, prickled right at the back of my skull. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. I didn't dismount. Instead, I set the broom on hover, near the floor, and toyed with it, acting as though I were just taking my time. I gestured around. "What happened?"

Max frowned, if at my not getting up, or at what, I don't know. "Fire," he said. "One of Fuse's booms gone wrong."

This was perfectly plausible. Fuse, Aka Ajith Mason was a firebug. Well . . . and an explosion fanatic. He'd been both our demolition expert and our speed demon before his accident. After it, he'd become . . . Well. In all the rest of his functions, he was a child of six or so—a child of six with a lame leg and the manners of a two year old. But he was still very good at making things go boom. He just didn't always understand when he shouldn't.

So it was plausible, but the back of my neck was still prickling and the skin of my skull would stand on end, if it could figure out how to do so. "I see," I said. "Who else died?"

He shrugged, looking impatient, and shook his head. "Not many people," he said. "We moved. We're . . . elsewhere."

"Did Nat get out all right?"

He looked up and seemed surprised for a minute. "Nat?" Then he shrugged again. "Yeah, I'm sure. Everyone got out fine. Even Fuse. We have a new Lair. If you follow me, I'll take you there."

Right. Come into my lair, said the lion to the lamb. I smiled, big and idiot, and nodded like I'd lost all my marbles. "Sure. You go ahead. I'll follow you."

He looked a little suspicious, but he got on his broom, and took off, then hovered outside the entrance, waiting for me to follow. He'd have been a lot more suspicious if he knew that as I turned to follow I had my hand on my burner and pointed at him through the leathers' pocket.

And then, as soon as I was sure he was ahead of me, leading me somewhere and not looking back, I dropped, suddenly, way down. I feinted into an alley, and I actually flew among the pedestrians, till I backtracked into another alley, where I flew down to stop at a balcony wedged between two adjacent buildings. I didn't know to whom the balcony belonged, only that the door leading to it was dimatough and shut tight. And that the balcony had waist-high, enclosed dimatough walls all around. I fell into it, and crouched in a corner, so that I was in the shadows, even if Max should fly above me.

No, not Max. That wasn't Max. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't my friend. It was as though someone else were wearing Max's body.

I felt bitter bile come to the back of my throat.

Oh, maybe he'd hit his head and gone as potty as Fuse, but in a different way. Somehow, though, that didn't feel right. My lair mates—Fuse excepted—never called me Athena and rarely called me Thena. Or at least not unless we were in company. The rest of the time they called me Lefty.

And I couldn't imagine a place in heaven or hell where Max would be completely indifferent to Nat. Nat was the son of Max's Father's accountant. He had also been, since the two of them had developed an interest in sex, Max's lover. They weren't the only monogamous broomers, but they were pretty damn rare. In fact, part of Max's interest in joining the lair had been because it gave them a place to hide in, since his father could not be allowed to discover what the two of them were up to. They had other arrangements. I'd heard that Nat had a secret passage leading to Max's room and they slept together most nights. But the lair allowed them to be together and be themselves and accepted them implicitly.

To be indifferent to Nat's survival or not sure he had survived or—seemed like—not sure who he was meant only one thing. That person . . . that thing back there was not Max.

I squeezed myself into a tight ball and had a fit of the shudders. Was it possible to erase someone's mind and superimpose another? It was one of those technologies one kept hearing rumors of, but which never seemed to exist. Maybe that was what Daddy wanted to do with me. It explained so much.

The thought of myself with a superimposed personality and memories, behaving like Daddy's Little Daughter made me want to throw up again, but I didn't have the strength to get up and do it, and besides it might not be safe. For a while I couldn't even think how to get out of here or what to do next. I could just sit and tremble.

I hadn't tried to mind-touch Kit since I'd left the mansion, partly because I'd been running and partly because I didn't want him to feel my distress, but now I did. I reached my mind towards him, and touched his.

I had the feeling of a hastily cut-off scream, and then Kit.
Thena!
And in relief,
You're alive. You must make it to the powertrees and find a ship to take you back.

No. We are both going to go.

Thena, you damn stubborn Earthworm.

Yes, you horrible bio, my beloved husband?

I don't know . . . if it's possible to save me.

Oh, it will be. Don't get too attached to the accommodations, because you won't have time to use any of the drawers.

I got back a mental attempt at a laugh, and the sensation of his arms around me. By the time that subsided, I'd steadied myself. My mind was not going to be rewritten. I was not going to let Daddy get away with it. Because if I did, then Kit would be left alone and probably die. And that wasn't going to happen either. We were both going to get the hell out of Earth and back home. Together. We were probably worrying Kath, as was, and that was not a good thing.

I waited, in case the faux Max was in pursuit. I didn't think he would be. I had a strong feeling he wouldn't be any too at home in Deep Under. I though I heard someone fly by once or twice, but there was a good chance those flights were unrelated. Meanwhile I was thinking where I could find my lair. If they hadn't all died in whatever had destroyed the lair, they would have relocated somewhere.

Right. After a while, I flew straight down from the balcony, hooked my broom on my belt and, as soon as I could, ducked into a store that sold communicators. Some of them were the classic, palm-sized computer and phone, with enough memory to keep track of several families. And a very distinct electronic signature. I didn't want that, because if the call I made went wrong, I was likely to end up having to throw it away before being tracked.

In the end I picked a ring-com. A pain to dial, really, since it all hinged on twirling three rings around, like doing a very old combination lock. But they were disposable, had a very low signature and I could discard it without tears, since it cost me only half a narc.

I walked away with it, until I found another shop—this one selling rugs. I pretended to be interested in the merchandise and walked all around, amid the people.

Since the rugs were displayed by being strung up from the ceiling beams, it created so many convenient partitions where one could hide.

I made it to the back of the store, between two rugs, and I dialed Ettiene. It was no big puzzle which code to dial. Not his home, since that had a good chance of being answered by some employee. You see, Ettiene's Father . . . well, he hadn't exactly died, but he'd been in a horrible flyer accident when Ettiene was thirteen. And he'd been a vegetable ever since. No one had unplugged his life support, because only Ettiene could do that when he came of age and inherited in two years. Until then, his father's managers were the de-facto regents, but Ettiene had to do all the ceremonial occasions and was often referred to as a Good Man. Which meant he had a secretary and several assistants. Not his official personal code, because something funny might have happened to that and at any rate too many people knew it.

But Ettiene and I had been friends-who-slept-together for several years. Oh, not like Max and Nat. We were never going to set the world on fire and neither of us was monogamous.

Ettiene proposed, mind you, every other month, but I had no more intention of marrying him than I had of growing a second head. And besides Daddy, for some reason, disapproved.

Still, when you have that kind of relationship, it is useful to be able to contact each other without anyone knowing. Ettiene had had a com—voice only—embedded into his wrist in a shop around here, years ago. Embedded coms were illegal in most of the world, as were other mechanical enhancements, but here in Deep Under, people installed them quite gladly.

I dialed that code. For a moment no one answered, setting my heart hammering, because what could possibly be happening? If Ettiene was away from his wrist . . .

But then Ettiene's voice answered, husky and hurried "Thena. Thank heavens you're alive." He sounded horribly like Kit, and the Thena part was all right, because that's what he called me in private and not in the lair.

"Shouldn't I be?"

"There's a bulletin for you. your father said they recovered you from captivity . . ." He paused as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "Amid the darkship thieves. And that you'd escaped . . ."

"While unsound of mind, yeah, I imagine. Ettiene, tell me, what is my favorite ice cream?"

"What?"

"What is my favorite ice cream flavor?"

"Uh . . . mint," he said. "But—"

"No. Who put salt in the dessert of the representative of the Northern European Territories at the banquet when we were fifteen?"

"Max."

"Why?"

"The bastard had treated Nat like a servant."

"Right."

"Thena, have you lost your memory?"

"No. What was our biggest fight when we were kids?"

"When we were playing house."

"Why?"

"I wanted to be the mommy. Thena, have you gone crazy? Why do you want me to tell you all this stuff?"

I heaved a deep sigh. "Because I just met Max."

There was a silence and then "Oh."

"Is there an explanation?"

"Uh . . . several. Fuse thinks he got hit in the head by something. Jan thinks that he got hold of a bad set of oblivium and Nat . . ."

"Nat?"

"Thinks he's possessed. Nat has gone . . . uh . . . a little funny."

Yeah, I could imagine. I'd have gone down right hilarious if this had happened to Kit. But I didn't go into that. I asked Ettiene about the lair. He gave me the new directions. Everyone had got out alive, he said. They'd used the skedaddle plans. And that, now I thought about it, was another thing that Max didn't seem to know about.

I wasn't absolutely sure that Nat wasn't right. Perhaps it was possession.

Approaching the lair—located almost up against the wall of the desalination plant, where someone had carved a cave out of the material that had formed the isle—I didn't recognize the person on guard. He looked very young, too. Maybe fourteen or fifteen, that age where guys have just stopped growing but haven't put in any muscle. But he wore the right colors.