Mainline (44 page)

He took it, and they sat at the counter together. Kastlin f funny, and it took him a while to realize he had a nervous stomach.

Feel like I'm going on stage, he thought, without knowing of my lines.

"So, how do we do this with Lish?" he finally burst out. "We don't know anything about her, in this Line. What kind of relationship we have, what's gone before.. . . How do you fake your way through this?"

Reva gave a tight smile. "I play it by ear."

"Isn't that kind of dangerous? Not knowing where you stand?"

She sipped from a cup of osk, wrinkled her nose at a broth saltier than expected. "That's the problem. You learn to be a good actor, and ask the right leading questions. Look—you follow my lead, alright? I don't want you saying something that'll sound too outrageous, like you dropped off a moon or something."

Kastlin frowned. "I don't usually put my foot in my mouth."

"No, but it's easier to trip up than you know. People either think you're on drugs, or get pissed at your 'forgetfulness.' Until we're clear where we stand with Lish, keep quiet."

He tilted his head in concession, and they finished their meal in silence. Reva called a taxi and headed for the door.

Vask was following her when it happened, a sudden buzzing behind the mastoid bone of his left ear. It caused him to jerk his head up, falter in midstep. Loud enough to drown out conversation, it seemed. It was a sound he hadn't heard since the implant was tested after his graduation from training.

"Something wrong?" Reva asked, looking at him oddly.

He forced himself to behave normally. "No, uh, just remembered something." "What?"

That Mother is calling me home right now, he thought. "Nothing important," he told the assassin, and walked out the door.

This was the damnedest time for Obray to recall him. Something big was up; the recall sounder was a last-ditch emergency beacon to reach an incommunicado agent. His ass was fried now: he'd been out of touch too long, or he was being pulled from held duty, or a major emergency had happened. When recall was transmitted the standing order was disengage yourself from field activities immediately, and report back in person. After a minute the implant fell silent. Vask knew it would sound again, repeating every hour until he returned to IntSec offices. His stomach erupted into the acid fire of stress, and he frowned as he trailed Reva down the hall. This was going to be a very long morning.

The warehouse complex
looked as they remembered it, until they entered Lish's office. It was more finely appointed than the workaday shipper's office they'd known, this one with plush cream floor matting and sonic sculptures on desk and shelves. The Holdout carried herself differently, too: her body language stiffer, more formal than they were accustomed to. She turned a sharp gaze on them, one glance at nearby chairs enough to order them seated.

Vask complied. Reva managed to take a seat slowly and make it look like her own idea.

The Shirani smuggler leaned against the edge of her desk, arms crossed on chest, clothed in a red work coverall of finer make than any Reva recognized. The battleslash caught her eye again, the unexpected splash of color distracting from that fine-boned face, a countenance that now belonged to a stranger.

Lish's voice hadn't changed, at least, and the edge to it demanded attention.

"I've been thinking about our arrangement," she began. "After that business in Rinoco, I've decided we don't need a discussion after all. I'm terminating our contract." She considered something, then added, "You did well enough, on security advice. I'll give you a reference, if you need one. You, too, Fixer." That last an afterthought.

Reva's lips thinned, one brow arching in unconscious surprise. A reference? As if she did security work for hire? She didn't da inquire about those details, but wanted to know more. Now, what would draw Lish out? Maybe playing off that imperious high-caste attitude....

"Why no discussion?" Reva demanded. "If you're unhappy with my work, clarify what you expect."

Lish regarded the assassin coolly. "How often do I have make my expectations clear? You offered to handle security. Fine. You did that. And questioned me in front of my derevin, and tried to take charge of operations. And now—"

"And now we know Yavobo is after you. This isn't a smart time to send me—to send us packing, Lish."

Of that much she could be certain, anyway. Yavobo hadtargeted the Holdout both before and after the timeshift in Rinoco Park.

Lish moved around the desk, answering serenely enough, in defiance of her body language. "I'm leaving when Devin's ready," she said. "I know you think I'm in danger from Adahn's hit man. But I'll be safe as long as I'm on my own turf, surrounded by 'Jammers. The ship will be ready in two days, and then I'm gone."

"But if—"

"This discussion is closed."

Reva regarded the arrogant and overconfident woman across from her. "Played castle-stones lately?" she asked on a sudden impulse. The smuggler looked at her blankly, and Reva shook her head. Her gut was telling her right. This woman wasn't making the right calls. Not like the other Lish, who'd started to smarten up and plan for the unpredictable. This one didn't play the great game of strategy in stones, or in real life.

She glanced at Vask and caught his eye. There was no reason to stick around here. If Yavobo wanted the Holdout, Reva didn't intend to stay close to this target any longer than necessary.

Lish busied herself with the desk console, then stood, pulling one plastic chit and then a second out of a slot on the console. Credit chits, withdrawn in that moment from her online account. She handed the money markers to the couple before her. Vask took his from her hand; Reva ignored the proffered card, so the Holdout dropped it in her lap. "Sorry we won't be doing any more business together," she said, her inflection imparting the opposite. "You'll want to clear out your room."

She nodded toward the wall, and the residence quarters beyond. "I expect you'll be out of here by the end of the day," the Holdout concluded. "After that your names are off the access list. Call my business number if you need a reference." Then she turned her back on them, done with an unpleasant task, and adjusted the position of the sculpture on her desk. Chiming notes rang out as her hand disturbed its sonic wave field.

It was dismissal, rude and brief.

Vask looked at Reva and she nodded toward the door. They left without farewells, and the Holdout didn't bother to watch them go.

* * *

"What do we do now?" Kastlin hissed as they walked the hallway past Skiffjammers and rooms of shipping supplies.

"Wait." The single word was all Reva would yield until they came to their room.

Lish had provided separate but adjoining quarters in that other Line. Now Vask walked into the room that had been his own— then tiptoed right back out again. In it were off-duty Skiffjammers asleep in their bunks. Reva's room, it turned out, lodged them both. Like the apartment, they shared here as well.

Vask followed her inside and shut the door.

"What are we going to do?" he asked. "She didn't tell us all that much."

"No, she didn't." Reva roamed, opening lockers and drawers, seeing what was there to salvage. "Though it would be pretty stupid to ask much more. Of her, or the 'Jammers,"

"Why not? We might sound forgetful—"

"We could sound worse than that. We could sound brain-wiped."

"So?" Vask joined her in the rummage through drawers.

"If it seems like we don't remember simple things we're supposed to know on a daily basis, like someone's name, or Lish's call code, and we fuck up often enough, they'll think we've been wiped. And that means we might be spying, or turned to the side of whoever wiped us." She shook her head. "It's too dangerous. Better to be ignorant and pass as best you can than to give yourself away by asking too much."

"Uh-huh." Kastlin took in the logic of that policy, and found he couldn't argue with it. "I still don't like being in the dark like this. There's too much I don't know."

Reva gave a small snort. "That's right. And you won't, until you have your nose rubbed in it."

"Meaning—?"

"Oh, like traffic laws change—you get pulled over for a violation you didn't know was a violation. Only it is, here. Or call codes change." Kastlin ticked that one off in his head. Systems Control, unreachable. "It's the small things trip you up. Believe me. Like asking for a kind of food no one's ever heard of. No one can help you with that."

"I'd feel better if I could hear some street talk, though," he said. "How the 'Jammers stand, what Lish's reach is on the waterfront. Stuff like that. Things we used to know."

Reva shrugged. "That couldn't hurt."

"You know what?" he said. "I don't think there's anything here I care to pack up and drag off with me. Nothing I can't replace, anyway. I'm leaving it."

"Oh?" Reva turned around, the Sundragon blast tube in her hand. "Look what I found." In this Realtime, the weapon had been left behind in the Lairdome, instead of in Lish's car. She slipped it now up the right inside forearm of her bodysuit. "Sure you don't want to look a little closer? Might be surprised at what you find."

"Maybe later. I'm going out for a while. See what I can hear."

Reva continued her search. "It's your party, Fixer. I'll meet you back at the apartment."

"Right." He raised a hand in a lazy farewell. "See you later," he said, and left the room.

A once-through of their quarters assured Reva there wasn't much she'd take with her. The holonoveis could stay there to enliven some 'Jammer's off-duty hours. A color-brush—that went into her carrybag, along with some earrings, a splash bottle of perfume, a few items of clothing. She'd pulled the electric blue Lyndir-cut dress off the rack before she realized what it was.

The dress she'd worn when she confessed to Lish that she'd been hired to kill her.

In Mainline, it was in a closet at Evriness. She sat on the bed, dress in hand, looking through it and into that other Timeline where it was charged with significance.

Why was it here, now, at the Lairdome? It was the kind of mystery that hinted at so much more. Had her actions in this Line been different?

There was simply no way to know. And no safe way to find out.

Her clenching fingers balled the dress up into her fist, and tears came unbidden to her eyes. It was always like this after such a drastic change.

I hate this, she thought. The not knowing. The lost connections. I promised myself I'd never come so far—!

She cut the self-reproach short. There was no help for it. She had had no control over it, not with the Sea Father involved.

I'll stay out of the damn water from now on, now that I know better.

She glanced toward the closed door, and imagined the hallway beyond it. Was this it? Just simply walk out of here? It felt wrong to abandon Lish, knowing Yavobo hunted this woman, after she'd spent so much time and energy on keeping the smuggler alive. The Holdout still. looked pretty damn good to her, too, even though she was so high-handed you wanted to smash her face in—

But the Lish she was drawn to was a different person, in a different place, another time. It wasn't this woman.

Let it go, Reva. ...

She sighed and tossed the dress back on the rack. That particular shade of blue she could live without.

Slinging bag over shoulder, she headed down the hall. Past lounge, past 'Jammer ready room, and out into the warehouse bay. She spent a heartbeat considering a last talk, a good-bye, anything that might bridge the distance between her and Lish—-and gave it up for a bad idea. She turned then, to walk out of the Lairdome, back into the muggy bright R'debh day where she could resume her life in this now-alien place.

Then she noticed Skiffjammers forming up, blast rifles unslung and at the ready. An officer escorted someone back through the gates and into the warehouse. The officer was Eklun, wearing Captain's flashes. Reva did a double take before the stranger by his side compelled her attention.

It was a cyborg. The armored body looked like a mecho's, blued-duralloy plating and servos hinted at by streamlined joint housings. The face was human except for cyber-eyes and the skull casing, gleaming blue-silver like a helmet as he passed from sun to shadow.

She glanced back, and saw that Lish had emerged from her office. If there was danger in meeting the cyborg, she wasn't going to risk dealing with it in the confines of a closed-in room. In the warehouse bay, 'Jammers could maneuver and give her cover. Security bots swiveled slightly, tracking the newcomer through targeting sights, although they remained passive, reassured by the 'Jammer escort and lack of threatening movement.

Who could this be? Reva wondered. Then she saw the Holdout pull a credit chit from her breast pocket, a gray card with the hint of a holographic validation stamp on its surface. The cyborg reached out one gauntlet-like hand, took the large-denomination bank marker with a movement as smooth as if flesh and blood animated the armored shell.

"Tell Hajba thanks for his help." Lish's voice carried faintly to where Reva stood, and suddenly the assassin realized what she was witnessing. In that other Mainline, Reva and Vask had agreed to deliver payment to the Scripman's pickup point. In this Line, he'd sent someone to collect: a one-man task force capable of claiming his pound of flesh if necessary.