The Sardonyx Net (19 page)

“You will—”
 

“I will consider your offer,” she said firmly.
 

He snapped his fingers. “My slaves will escort you,” he said, and led her to the front door himself.
 

The street was hot. The two slaves kept Rhani between them as she walked down the Boulevard. One of them held a white parasol over her head. The tourists were all indoors, hiding from the heat, and the wide road was deserted; mutable as water, the stones seemed to dance in the brilliant, shimmering light.
 

Abanat
is
beautiful, Rhani thought with swift, possessive pride. Perhaps one day she would bring her daughter to this street, and tell her the history of the city. “
The fountain was built by Orrin Yago
,” she would say. “
Lisa Yago planted this tree
.”
 

She hunched her shoulders. Marriage, and with Ferris Dur? It was strange even to think about. She pictured a daughter, a solemn, slender girl with hair the color of wheat, and almond-shaped, amber eyes. I will name her Jade, or Cecilia, or Samantha, Rhani thought. She squinted into the sun, trying to see the child's face, and realized that she was remembering herself.
 

Then she thought: People are trying to kill me! The image shattered. She looked up; there was her house. “You may go,” she told the slaves. They bowed and shuffled away. Leaping up the broad steps, she hammered on the door. It opened. The hall was dark, and there seemed to be a lot of people in it.... She heard Binkie say her name, with a sound like a sob.
 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

With some judicious bullying, Zed found his ice climbing equipment at the little landingport. It lay in a corner, under a pile of greasy rags where some porter had dropped it. He checked the seals; they were unbroken. The manager apologized a dozen times.
 

Zed watched the porters move around the port, frowning. He wondered when they had last had blood tests. They were not slaves—the only slave near the landingport was in the exit booth—but dorazine addiction was a constant problem among laborers, ex-slave or not.
 

“I want your people tested,” he said to the manager. “I'm on my way to the Clinic; I'll have the clerk call you to set up a time.”
 

“Whatever you say, Commander.”
 

Main Clinic was in the city's southeast corner, six blocks from the Promenade. It looked, off-worlders said, like a Terran starfish; five long one-story buildings radiated from the center hub. The hub was CTD, Clinical Tests Department. Its spokes were Outpatient, Contagious, Surgery, Recovery, and Special Services. Outpatient's principal work was to coordinate and staff the mobile units that did the monthly dorazine tests. By Chabadese law, every slave on dorazine maintenance had to have a blood test every three months. The technicians who rotated to the mobile units called it “Going to Needle Row.”
 

Zed stopped at the Outpatient desk. The clerk said, “I'll put it in the computer, Senior, but they probably won't get to it until after the Auction.”
 

“Do what you can,” Zed said. The clerk shrugged.
 

The wheel-like architecture of Main Clinic reminded Zed with pleasure of the Net. He followed the traffic flow through Outpatient to CTD. From there he walked around the rim of the core until he came to the entrance to Surgery. He walked to the interior of the building and leaned on the chief clerk's desk.
 

Her name was Yukiko Chun; she was a dark woman, withered as a dry stick, all snap and bark. “Senior Yago,” she said, “welcome back.”
 

“Thank you, Yuki. It's good to be home.”
 

“Too bad you didn't get here earlier,” she said. “We could have used you last week.”
 

“Oh?”
 

“There was an accident at the Gemit mines.” Zed's interest sharpened. Rhani will want to know that, he thought. “A surgical team flew out there. They had to do some very tricky limb replacements.” Her mouth folded down severely; she was scolding him. As far as Yukiko was concerned, surgeons had no private lives. She moved them ruthlessly about to fit her schedules, knew their every foible, and treated them all alike. “You want morning or evening shift?”
 

“Wherever you're short,” Zed said.
 

“I'll put you on Emergency call,” she said. “Where are you staying?”
 

“The Abanat house.”
 

There was no exit to the street from Surgery; Zed retraced his steps to CTD, and from there to Outpatient. A woman came through a doorway; saw him; stopped. Shyly she said, “Hello, Zed.”
 

Her name was Sai Thomas. Like Zed, she was a senior medic. They were old friends, and a little more. Some five years back she had approached him with an offer.... “I've heard rumors about you,” she had said. Oh, no, he had thought, prepared to evade or to lie. “The rumors say you like pain.” She was forthright. “I'm high on the Réage test, you know.” The Réage test, Zed knew, examined an individual's emotional and physiological reactions to a situation of mutual, consensual, sado-masochistic sex.
 

“I'm not,” he said. It was the truth: he had no interest in mutual pain. The thought of being vulnerable in the ways he made his victims vulnerable terrified him.
 

“Tests have been known to be wrong,” Sai said. “I thought—” She laid a hand firmly on his forearm. “Zed, I think you're very attractive.”
 

Despite his better judgment, Zed had been moved. “Sai, I'm not—I don't usually choose women for partners,” he said awkwardly. Hell, I don't have partners, he had thought.
 

They had gone to bed together. The trappings of fantasy—silk and chains—excited him not at all. Sai was gentle, patient, determined. Zed was hopeful, but even the force of his practiced will had not made his body perform: he could, at her request, bind her, but when it came to inflicting pain he could not move. He was afraid of what might happen if he did. Finally she had understood that it was not going to work. Sadly she said good night to him. He had gone home and gotten drunk. He spent the next night in Lamartine's, the one brothel in Abanat willing to cater to his tastes. That evening five years back had been the last time Zed had tried to break out of his psychosexual patterns.
 

She was sturdy, fair-haired, quiet—not at all like Rhani. Yet that night in her room he had seen only Rhani.
 

“How are you?” he said.
 

“Fine,” she answered, “you?”
 

He respected her, and would not lie to her. “Things could be better. I'll tell you about it sometime. Family concerns.”
 

“Anytime. Are you on the schedule?”
 

“Emergency, on call. And you?” They talked Clinic business for a while. She had been the anesthesiologist on the team that flew to Gemit. Zed questioned her about the accident, but she knew few of the details. She described the surgical work with pride.
 

“You should stop in Recovery and look at it.”
 

“I'll do that.”
 

He rode the movalongs back to the house. It was getting close to noon, and hot. He slid the front door back. The house seemed very dark. Binkie, Dana, and Corrios stood in a huddle in the hall. At the sound of the door, they looked up. Binkie's face grayed. Zed stepped in. The door slid closed. Something was wrong. He touched the hall intercom. “Rhani?”
 

Not even an echo answered him.
 

He said to them all, “Where is she?”
 

Dana answered. “We don't know. She went out alone. We were making a list of places to call.”
 

Zed's mind filled with pictures of Rhani hurt, kidnapped, dead, somewhere in Abanat. Binkie babbled; he barely noticed the exculpatory whine. Dana's shoulders were hunched. Zed moved toward him. “I told you to stay with her.” With grim satisfaction, he saw the color drain from Dana's face, and fear tighten the muscles around his eyes.
 

“Zed, I—”
 

“Shut up. I told you to guard her.” He let his hand rest on Dana's shoulder, fingers caressing the pressure point. “Didn't I?”
 

Dana swallowed. In a half-whisper, he said, “Yes, Zed-ka.”
 

Knocking interrupted the moment. Corrios hurried to open the front door. Rhani stood, framed in the light. Binkie gasped her name. She came inside, glancing swiftly from Zed to Dana. “Zed-ka,” she said, “you promised. He's mine.”
 

It was true, and she was unhurt. Nevertheless, Zed permitted himself a hard look at Dana before he took his fingers from Dana's arm. “Where were you?” he said to his sister. “Why were you alone?”
 

She said, with a look at the slaves, “It's a long story. Corrios, make us something cool to drink, please. Dana, Binkie—you may go.” Dana bowed. The color was back in his face. He strode off toward the slaves' hall. Binkie nearly knocked a chair down in his haste to follow.
 

Rhani pointed to the dining alcove off the downstairs salon. “Let's sit there.”
 

Subduing his impatience, Zed followed her to the alcove. She had not been hurt; probably she had not even been endangered.
 

But she could have been. He worked his shoulders to loosen the tension in his frame. She could have been.
 

They sat. Corrios brought a pitcher of iced fruit punch and a plate of pressed dried seaweed, an Abanat delicacy that Rhani loved. She curled her legs into the chair and looked at Zed over her drink. “Dana was not remiss in his job, Zed-ka. I sent him on an errand, and then decided, while he was gone, to go out. I don't want him punished for something that wasn't his fault.”
 

Zed had to acknowledge the justice of that. “All right, Rhani-ka,” he said. “But if you send him on errands and then go out, he won't be much use to you as a bodyguard.”
 

“You're right. I should have waited. But the house was driving me crazy!”
 

He grinned at her, knowing what her mood must have been like. It always took her a few days to get used to Abanat. He sipped his drink; it was mixed to Rhani's taste rather than his, and was sweeter than he liked. “Where did you go?”
 

“I visited Ferris Dur. He was going to come this afternoon to see me, here. I ended up in front of his house, and decided to go in.” She tilted her head, smiling. “It's odd, that he should be there, and not Domna Sam. He's changed the house all around.”
 

“What did you talk about?”
 

“Business,” she said. She flicked a look at him. “Very important business. He wants to marry me.”
 

Zed grinned, wondering what Ferris had really wanted. “That's probably the first proposal a Yago ever had. What did you say?”
 

She smiled. “I said I'd think about it.”
 

“I'm sorry I asked. Truly, Rhani-ka, what did he want? I gather he didn't want to buy the kerit farm.”
 

She chuckled. “Zed-ka, you don't believe me? I'm serious! Ferris Dur asked to marry me, and I said I'd think about it.”
 

Zed shook his head. “The poor man has gone quite insane.” But why torment him, Rhani? Tell him no, and let him breathe.”
 

“I'm not tormenting him,” she said quietly. “He wants to marry me, and father my child, who can then inherit the fortunes of our two Families. He called it a business arrangement. It might not be a bad idea.”
 

She meant it. She really was thinking about it. Zed's mouth went dry as the Chabad earth. The hairs on the back of his hands lifted. For a moment he felt utterly detached, observing his own physical reaction. Then panic set in. If Rhani married—it could not happen, he thought, it
can't
—she might leave the estate, or, worse, ask him to leave it, to make room for someone else.
 

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his thoughts. She
could not
ask him to leave her. He still desired Rhani; she was, in fact, the central human passion of his life. Knowing her, he had wanted nothing else, and, taken from her, he had denied himself all lesser sexual delight, and need, so denied, had changed and twisted inside him. There was nothing in him any more of the ardent, gentle boy she had desired as a lover. But she was still his loving sister, his friend, and touchstone to his innocence....
 

He had learned to ignore his lust to strangle her occasional bedmates: they were not his rivals. His rival was Chabad, the Yago fortune, her work in which he now shared as her principal confidant and advisor.
 

She said, smiling, “Of course, it's early yet for me to think about having a child.”
 

He said tensely, “I fail to see the use for the arrangement.”
 

“Zed-ka, you're not thinking! Remember the Council meeting a year ago, when we argued for hours about using our capital for further exploration of Chabad? We couldn't decide which project to undertake, because none of us is willing to spend credits on a venture another Family will profit by. Imre wants to make a polar settlement. Domna Sam wanted to fund the undersea mining. Theo Levos supports seaweed farming. A concentration of capital would swing the balance of risk—"she turned a fist into a swinging pendulum—"to the other side. I can see value in all three projects. That's an example. It would be tricky. There would be problems.”