The Sardonyx Net (27 page)

“Officer Tsurada, please,” she said when the communications clerk answered. “This is Rhani Yago; I have priority.”
 

“Yes, Domna,” said the clerk. The screen blanked.
 

“Is he still there?”
 

“Yes.”
 

Fuming, Rhani waited for the screen to show her Sachiko Tsurada's face. Instead, the screen flashed VISUAL TRANS UNAV. PLEASE STANDBY. “I'm standing by,” she muttered.
 

Sachiko Tsurada's voice sounded through the com-phone. “Domna, I'm patched through to you. How may I assist you?”
 

“Still there,” said Dana at her back.
 

“There's a stranger in Founders' Green,” Rhani said. “He appears to be watching the house, this house.”
 

“Can you give me a physical description?”
 

Rhani scowled. “I can,” Dana said.
 

“Do it,” she said.
 

He crossed to the com-unit. “He's about 1.8 meters tall, pale skin, dark hair close-cropped to his skull, his clothes are brown with I think greenish trim—”
 

“Eyes?” said the com-phone.
 

“I can't see them, he's too far away.” He glanced at the window. “Rhani-ka, maybe you'd better see if—”
 

“I will.” She stood to one side of the window and gazed obliquely down. He was still there. Dana spoke with Tsurada for a moment and then joined her.
 

“Officer Tsurada says that there will be police along in five minutes to check his I.D.”
 

“Good.”
 

Five minutes seemed to take a long time. Finally, she saw four people wearing the cream-colored jumpsuits of the Abanat police force approach the gate. The watcher seemed unconcerned as they traversed the flagstone paths. Two of them converged on him. She saw him reach into a pocket and produce I.D.
 

“They must have a miniscanner,” Dana said, with interest. “Or else—” He did not finish. Or else what? Rhani thought. After some conversation, the man walked quietly out between the two police officers. It all looked very calm and cordial. Unconcerned, the children played around the fountain.
 

The com-unit beeped. She crossed to it and punched the phone line. “This is Rhani Yago,” she said.
 

“Domna, this is Leander Morel, Abanat police. You requested we examine the identificaton of a stranger who appeared to be watching your house.”
 

“Yes, I did. Who is he?”
 

The man on the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Domna, he is a member of the Federation Police Force, Drug Division. We verified his identification and requested his name, but he refused to divulge it, something he has a legal right to do. We questioned him, but he informed us that he would answer no questions and that all inquiries as to his assignment should be directed to his chief, Michel A-Rae. We asked him to leave the park, which he did.”
 

“A Hype cop!” Dana said.
 

Rhani gazed at the blank screen for a moment. “Thank you, Officer Morel,” she said at last.
 

“Our pleasure, Domna. Anything else?”
 

She rubbed her chin. “Founders' Green is a private park. I don't like strangers there. Can we—” She let the sentence hang.
 

Morel cleared his throat again. “I'm sorry, Domna,” he said. “You can ask your lawyers, of course, but I don't think there's any way you can keep the bastards out.”
 

Dana chuckled. Rhani grinned. “Thanks, then. No further business.” She cleared the line. “The drug police,” she said. “What the hell are the drug police doing, watching
my
house?”
 

Dana could not answer her.
 

Rhani asked the same question of Zed, that evening.
 

He had come from the iceberg just after noon, and had gone to his room saying only, “If anyone wakes me, it had better be for an emergency.” His face was darkened on forehead and cheekbones, and he looked unbelievably weary. But in four hours he had awakened, ravenous, and strode into the kitchen to ravage Corrios' stores. He then showered, and joined Rhani in her room. As he entered the room, Dana—who was lying on the rug—scrambled up, tense. He had been sitting on the floor, absorbed in a booktape Rhani had given him.
 

But Zed simply nodded to him. Crossing to Rhani at the com-unit, he bent and lightly kissed the back of her neck. She turned in the chair. “Zed-ka.” She smiled at him, face a softer mirror of his own, and he let his fingers trail along her cheek. Dana looked away.
 

“How was the climbing, Zed-ka?” Rhani said.
 

“Good,” said Zed. He sat in the chair. “Very good.” Dana looked at him curiously. He was tuned to Zed's mood; he could not help it. The Net commander sat with head thrown back, arms loose along the sides of the chair, throat exposed—Dana had never seen him so relaxed. He seemed sated, not with the intense sensual pleasure of another person's pain but with something deeper and less terrible. Suddenly his head moved: he looked at Dana, and grinned.
 

“Ever been ice climbing?” he said.
 

“No,” Dana said. “Mountain climbing, on Pellin.”
 

“Ah,” said Zed. “Ice is different. You should try it sometime.”
 

Rhani turned her chair to face him. “Zed-ka, the drug police were watching this house today.”
 

Zed straightened. “What? Tell me.” Rhani did so. Their faces gleamed in the soft lamplight, profiles matching. Dana listened and watched, marveling at how alike they were, and how unalike.
 

Zed tapped his fingers on the chair arm. “I wonder why they bothered,” he said. “They can't think you invite your suppliers to your home.”
 

“I don't know,” Rhani said. “If I could find someone willing to sell me dorazine, I might.” She bent over the com-unit. “Zed-ka, let me show you what I did today.”
 

Rising, Zed went to peer over her shoulder. Figures flashed in green across the screen. “If we substitute pentathine for dorazine here, here, and here,” Rhani said, “we can save sixteen thousand unit doses over the next three months.” She cited figures. Dana's attention wandered.
 

He glanced at the viewer in his hand. The booktape Rhani had given him was a Nexus historian's
History of Chabad
. He was surprised she even owned it, since the historian made no pretense at objectivity: he was venomously anti-slavery. A sentence from it ran through Dana's mind. “
The wealth and febrile pleasures of the tourist-minded aside
,” Nakamura had written, “
Chabad is and remains a prison. None of its citizens are free: some are slaves, the rest, jailers. This latter category includes the members of the so-called Four Families
.”
 

He had glanced through the index for references to the Yagos, but found none about Rhani, Zed, or the Net. He grinned, thinking of what wonderfully nasty things Nakamura would have said about the Net.
 

“Dana,” said Zed's voice above him, “what are you doing?”
 

Dana snapped the viewer off. “Reading, Zed-ka,” he said. Zed reached toward him, and the pulse began to hammer in his throat.
 

“Let me see.”
 

Dana relinquished the viewer. Zed turned it on, advanced the pages, and chuckled. “Nakamura! Where did you find this?”
 

“I gave it to him,” said Rhani.
 

“
Having institutionalized a pernicious, retrograde system and made of it an economically stable one, Chabad and her sister worlds in Sardonyx Sector defended that system to the Federation diplomats through a series of legal rationalizations
,” Zed read. “Nakamura is so pompous when he thinks he's right,” he said, and dropped the viewer on Dana's lap. “I'd bet Michel A-Rae loves him. Rhani, don't you have a file on Michel A-Rae?”
 

“Certainly.” Rhani instructed the com-unit. “Here it is.”
 

He read it over her shoulder. “He's young for his position; he's only twenty-eight. An Enchantean, trained in police work on Santiago in Carnelian Sector and on Old Terra. That's interesting. Trained in the drug unit on Nexus. Hmm. Also trained as a Hype navigator but never finished—Dana!”
 

“Yes, Zed-ka.”
 

“Could you have known him?”
 

Dana frowned, turning the name in his mind. “I don't think so. Is there a picture of him?”
 

“Come and look,” said Zed. Dana rose, leaving the viewer on the rug, and went to stand behind the com-unit chair.
 

He gazed at the photo on the screen. Dark hair, dark eyes, his skin the chocolate-brown typical of many Enchanteans.... Dana shook his head. “He looks like a lot of people,” he said.
 

“Yes,” Zed agreed.
 

Rhani read from the file. “Family connections unknown; personal history unavailable due to I.D. ex. What is I.D. ex?”
 

“I.D. exchange,” Zed said. “Where does it say that? When did he do it?” He bent forward eagerly, scanning the file.
 

“What does it mean?” Rhani demanded.
 

Dana said, “It means he changed his name.”
 

“Oh.”
 

Zed said, “He was how old—eighteen? Stars. His family must have
loved
that. He took his majority money and told them to fuck off. Where did he go? Ah, Nexus. Then Santiago and Old Terra, and back to Nexus again.” Zed grinned. “I knew some folks on Nexus who'd made three or four name changes.”
 

Dana nodded; so had he.
 

“Can you do that?” Rhani said.
 

“Sure. You apply for it at Compcenter. They verify you have no intent to defraud, take all your money, give you ten percent of it or the amount of your majority money, whichever is less, and change your name, removing all trace from their records of the person you were and of the change.”
 

“Why do people do it?” Rhani asked.
 

Dana and Zed looked at each other. “To escape the past,” Zed said. “To obliterate all traces of a person you no longer desire to be....” He stepped away from the com-unit.
 

“I want to know who Michel A-Rae was,” Rhani said.
 

Zed picked up the viewer from the rug. He turned it on and off again. “I don't see how you can, Rhani-ka. The legal record no longer exists.”
 

Dana said, “Maybe his name will tell you something.”
 

Rhani said, “Of course! All Enchantean names are formal. Now, what does ‘A-Rae' signify?” She punched instructions to the com-unit. Zed crossed to her. The three of them stared at the screen.
 

“A-Rae. Unclassified name, believed invented. Pun on Enchantean local dialect. Means ‘no one.'” Rhani snorted and blanked the display. “Well.” She rested her hands on her lap. “How remarkably useless.” She swiveled the chair. “I'm hungry. Dana, will you tell Corrios we'd like to eat, please?"'
 

“Yes, Rhani-ka.”
 

Dana found himself wondering who Michel A-Rae had been. If A-Rae had not been there in Sardonyx Sector, driving away the dorazine trade, then he, Dana Ikoro, would have slipped unremarked onto Chabad's moon. It was A-Rae's doing that he had been brought to the attention of Zed Yago. Bastard, he thought, sanctimonious, fanatic—he heard himself fuming, and laughed.
 

“Glad you've got something to laugh about,” said Binkie sourly. He was sitting in the kitchen, gnawing at some bread and cheese.
 

Dana ignored him. “They want to eat,” he said to Corrios. The big man nodded, eyes unreadable behind his sunshades.
 

“Has Rhani asked for me?” Binkie said.
 

“No,” Dana said. And then, because though he did not like the pallid secretary, they had something in common, he said, “Zed's back from the ice.”
 

“I figured,” said Binkie.
 

Dana went to the dining alcove. Amri sat there, playing with a three-dimensional game. She turned it this way and that, trying to make the counters fall through holes. “Can you do this?” she asked as he approached, holding the layered cube out to him.
 

“Nope,” he said. “Rhani wants to eat, kitten.”
 

“Oh,” She laid the game aside. “I'd better make this room ready. Why do you call me that?”
 

He shrugged. “A nickname. Don't you like it?”
 

She smiled at him. “I like it.” Hair like a blown cloud around her head, she went into the kitchen.
 

While Zed and Rhani ate, Dana, Corrios, and Amri stayed in the kitchen: Corrios to watch and Amri to serve the meal, Dana because he liked keeping Amri company. After dinner, he went to his room. He had just put Stratta's “Fugue for Three Flutes” in the auditor when the door of the room opened suddenly and Zed walked in.
 

Dana froze, sweat prickling the back of his neck. Memories of the last time Zed had come to his room were unpleasantly fresh in his mind. Zed gestured to the auditor. Dana shut it off. The Net commander grinned at him. “Relax.” He tossed something underhand onto the bed. It was the viewer, with the booktape still inside it. “Rhani mentioned at dinner that you were the one who noticed the watcher in the park,” Zed said.