The Sardonyx Net Part 54

"The h.e.l.l," said the first voice. Someone yelled. Zed opened the door. A woman in a maroon-and-gray jumpsuit walked through it. She had one green and one white eyebrow, and her hair was dirty gold. Sid loomed behind her, his hands spread apologetically.

"Sorry, Commander, Domna," he said. "She just cut through. Hit Barbara a good crack; she's behind a bush, whoopin' her guts out."

Tori Lamonica, hands on hips, advanced into the room without requesting entrance. "I don't like being questioned," she said tightly. "By anyone."

Zed said, "Never mind, Sid. You tried." The big man shrugged and stepped back. Zed closed the door. "Good evening, Starcaptain," he said.

Rhani rose. "Starcaptain Lamonica," she said. "I'm sorry you had to fight your way to the door."

Lamonica shrugged. Her pearl-gray jumpsuit shimmered like the mottled iridescent layering on a mollusk's sh.e.l.l. "I don't mind a good sc.r.a.p," she said.

She nodded at Zed. "You look better than you did when I last saw you." She turned in a circle. "How many houses you folks got?"

"Two," Rhani said.

"Nice," Lamonica said. She glanced at the carved walls, the woven straw rugs, the mirror sculpture Rhani had placed beside her chair; "Yeah, nice." Her medallion shone on her chest. She stroked the chain with one hand. "I come to ask _you_ a question." She took a breath. "I'm lookin' for someone you know.

Dana Ikoro. You seen him?"

Rhani said, "Not since the night you landed a bubblecraft on the Yago estate lawn." She could not see her brother's face, but she watched his shoulders hunch.... He turned around. His hands were in his pockets, and his mouth was rigid as stone. "Why?"

"Because no one else has either, since four nights ago, when he walked out of The Dancer drunk out of his mind with some big stud wearing a cloak. Also wearing one black earring, you know, the kind with a remote?" She was talking to Zed. He nodded. "Dana's mostly hetero, so there's d.a.m.n little reason I can think of for him to nest with some man for four days, and no one's seen _him_ again, either." Zed said, "Are you Dana Ikoro's keeper, Starcaptain?"

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "No. But ten years I've been riding the red dust, and I've learned to listen to feeling. Something's wrong with him. He's a nice kid and he got a raw deal from you, Commander, and a hard deal from you, Domna. So if I'm right and he's in trouble somewhere in this d.a.m.n town, I figure you owe him. Tell me I'm wrong." Her eyes flickered from Zed to Rhani.

What kind of trouble could Dana be in? Rhani thought. "No," she said to the angry Hyper, "You're not wrong."

Suddenly, Tori Lamonica deflated, became a diffident woman in a gray suit. "Sorry to come blazing at you," she said. "But I went to the A.P. Talked to the Hype cops. They don't care. Two days he spent yipping his throat hoa.r.s.e to their d.a.m.n computer."

Merril appeared at an archway in the lattice. "Would you like something to drink, Domna?" she said.

"Starcaptain?" Rhani said. She reseated herself in the rocker.

"No, thanks," Lamonica said. "I mean, nothing for me. I've been drinking all evening, how else do you think I worked up the snap to come here?"

Rhani grinned. She liked this woman, who could be rude and still disarm by her very rudeness. "Please sit, Starcaptain," she said, pointing to the second hanging chair.

Lamonica shook her head. "I'm not going to stay."

Zed said, "You've tried the usual ways to reach him?"

"I sent out a com-call, yes. Set it to key whenever he used his I-disc or his credit disc. No result. That was three days ago. Told folks to keep an eye out for him -- told your crew, even. Nothin'. Checked the Clinic, even. He's not there; he wasn't there."

"What do you expect me to do?" Rhani said.

Lamonica scowled. "h.e.l.l, I don't know. You're a Yago, they say you run this f.u.c.king planet. Tell me you can't find someone if you want him?"

Rhani thought: We haven't found Michel A-Rae. But then, he doesn't want us to find him.

Zed echoed the thought. "Maybe Dana doesn't want to be found." He picked up the viewer and was switching it off and on.

"I'm no telepath," Lamonica said. "I don't know. I'll shinny now, I've said what I came to say. I'm at NW724-07 if you want to reach me." She opened the front door. A cold wind licked slowly in from the garden before she could close it.

Rhani said to Zed, "What do you think?"

He was still holding the viewer, but she did not think he saw either it or her.

He said, "I'm going to bed." He walked through the arch in the lattice, and Rhani saw his shadowy form retreat down the hall. She heard the door close.

Well, she thought, sleep is one way to handle a problem you can't solve. Instead of reading about ice climbing, I wish he'd _go_ ice climbing.... But she knew it would be another two weeks at least before his hands would be strong enough.

Meanwhile, he would withdraw, grow moody, walk around the house and the city like a kerit in a cage, and watch the PINsheets, with malignant intensity, for news of Michel A-Rae.

As she fell asleep that night, she thought about Dana, remembering their loving, and the tenderness with which he had touched her. He was decent, gentle -- in a way that she was not -- and it troubled her that he had dropped out of sight in such a way that it worried someone with experience, someone like Tori Lamonica. A black earring.... She snapped awake. How had Lamonica described Dana's companion?" ..._Some big stud wearing a cloak and one black earring_...."

Rhani remembered -- and her skin crawled at the memory -- that Michel A-Rae liked to wear one black earring. He had worn it the afternoon of the Auction. No, she told herself, really, _really_ that's coincidence, you cannot build on it, it means nothing -- but as she thought it she was out of the bed and hurrying through the darkened hall to the common room, to the com-unit. As she reached it, she thought -- Rhani, don't do this, they'll laugh at you, they'll think you're crazy -- but her hands, working without direction, had already made connection with the Abanat police. The wall clock told her that it was not even midnight, not late, and if she were wrong, it wouldn't matter whether it was day or night, she would still be wrong, and if she were right...."This is Domna Rhani Yago," she said to the face on the screen. "Can you connect me with Captain Catriona Graeme of the Hypers.p.a.ce Police?"

"One moment, Domna," said the duty officer. The screen blanked, and lit again, with a different face.

"Domna, I'm Captain Graeme. What can I do for you?"

Rhani hesitated. She had not expected this conventional-seeming woman with a crooked nose whose face, on the display screen at least, appeared as homely as her PINsheet pictures. "Captain Graeme, I hope I haven't disturbed you."

Cat Graeme smiled. She had a singularly pleasant smile. "You haven't, Domna. Tell me how I can help you."

Rhani sat in the com-unit chair. Behind her, something creaked in the darkness, and then a light came on and a robe fell over her shoulders. She glanced up at her brother.

"Captain Graeme," she said, "I'm worried about a friend. I think he may be in trouble, perhaps in danger, and I think Michel A-Rae has something to do with it."

Nothing changed on Cat Graeme's face, but shadows moved behind her, and suddenly a board at her back winked into life. Beside her, Rhani heard Zed's breath hiss through his teeth. "Go on, Domna," said Graeme.

Rhani took a breath. "Do you know who Dana Ikoro is, Captain?"

"Certainly," said Graeme. "A very cooperative young man. He spent two days here, telling us everything he could remember about Michel A-Rae and his cohorts."

"Starcaptain Tori Lamonica" -- Graeme nodded -- "came to my house tonight, a few hours ago, to inform that Dana Ikoro disappeared four days ago, accompanied by a total stranger, and hasn't been seen since."

Graeme's face remained polite, but her voice was tinged with weariness as she said, "Dana Ikoro's a Hyper, Domna Rhani, and Hypers tend toward odd friendships and adventures. When he left here, as I recall, he expressed a strong ambition to be very drunk."

"He was drunk, Lamonica said so. But she also said -- " Rhani licked her lips. "Captain Graeme, this may not make much sense, but please try to take it seriously. Dana Ikoro went off with a man no one seems to know, a man wearing a black pearl earring, with, she said, 'a remote.'"

"A transmitter-receiver unit, yes. They're quite common pieces of equipment, Domna, you can buy them anywhere."

"Michel A-Rae wore a black pearl earring the day of the Abanat Auction,"

Rhani said.

A thin line appeared between Cat Graeme's eyebrows. "Domna, that's one h.e.l.l of a speculative jump. Do you think Dana Ikoro was kidnapped by Michel A- Rae? What for? As a hostage toward escape? Surely, we would have heard from him by now if that were his intention."

Rhani said, "I don't know what his intention is. I do know that Dana Ikoro has vanished, that he is not in the Clinic or in jail, that he has not used his credit nor his I-disc in four days, and that -- "

"Three days," said Zed softly.

" -- Three days," Rhani said, "and that I don't believe he left with a lover." Not a male lover, she thought. "I'm sorry, Domna," said Catriona Graeme, "but though these speculations are interesting, they aren't evidence. Starcaptain Lamonica proffered no suggestions as to what might have happened to Ikoro, but she did refer frequently to her intuition. He seems to have been rather a popular young man, as well as a cooperative one."

For a moment, Rhani wondered if they were still speaking the same language. "I beg your pardon," she said.

"I think you know what I mean well enough, Domna," Cat Graeme said.

Not, Rhani thought, if you mean what you seem to be implying.... A wave of heat pa.s.sed from her heart to her head and back down to the soles of her feet. She felt as if the nerves in her skin had begun to crackle, and that her hands might be letting off sparks. "Captain Graeme," she said, in as measured a tone as she could achieve, "do you have pictures of Michel A-Rae's male cohorts?"

"Yes, we do," said Graeme, clearly puzzled.

"Then I suggest you call Tori Lamonica at NW724-07, show them to her, and ask if she recognizes them. I also suggest you discuss with the Abanat police the best way to locate two people, both male, one large and wearing a cloak, one slender and drunk, who left The Green Dancer at whatever time they left it five nights ago. If you have any problems with cooperation, I hope you'll mention my name."

Cat Graeme looked as if she had swallowed something which stung her.

"Domna, you don't appreciate the -- " she paused. "Might I submit that you don't entirely understand police work?"

"I don't care what you submit," Rhani said. "Nor do I care, Captain Graeme, if you or the Abanat police get credit for Michel A-Rae's arrest. I can easily repeat this entire conversation with the Abanat Chief of Police and receive a more appropriate response. You are not dealing with a hostile force, Captain Graeme, you are dealing with an intelligent planetary community that needs to be neither manipulated nor subdued. No, let me amend that. You _were_ not dealing with a hostile force." She turned off the com-unit. She was no longer hot. She drew the robe around her shoulders, savoring the feel of the silk.

Beside and over her, Zed said, "What made you so angry, Rhani-ka? Her intimation that you and Dana Ikoro were lovers?"

"No!" Rhani said. She swung around in the chair. "No. But she a.s.sumed that my judgment would be less reliable because of it, and decided that she could, with impunity, be rude about it. I don't mind being told that I'm wrong, Zed-ka, but I _despise_ being told I am wrong as if the teller's opinion itself was proof." She gazed at the com-unit. Suddenly, it began to _beep-beep_ with anxious regularity. She turned the alarm's audio off. A green light blinked.

Pulling the two halves of the robe's front seam together, Rhani sealed them with her thumb, and stood. Light glowed through the lattice walls from the direction of the kitchen; Merril, too, was up. Rhani swallowed. Vehemence had parched her mouth, and she wished for some sweet lemonade or some fruit punch -- Corrios'

fruit punch. Or even, since it was night, some sweet chocolate, a taste from her childhood, remarkable because it was one of the few childhood memories for which she felt a true nostalgia....

"Were you, Rhani-ka? Lovers?"

Rhani was shocked. Zed never asked about her lovers. And because he had never asked before, she knew that she had to answer it. Fingers clenched together, she said, "Yes, Zed, we were."

She heard his in-drawn breath. She could only see his face in profile against the lamplight. At the very edge of her vision, the green light went off and on, off and on. Better tell him the rest, too. "Not only that, but I'm pregnant," she said. "Dana doesn't know. I never told him." He did not move. In the single light, he appeared ghostly, an eidolon.

Then he walked, slowly, to one of the hanging chairs. It creaked. Released to response by the sound, Rhani took a step toward him. "Zed?"

"No," he said.

Had he wept, she would have ignored all words and gone to him. But the exigency of his isolation was too extreme for comfort. She knew; she remembered.

So she extinguished the light and left him to his grief.

In the morning, Zed did not appear for breakfast.

Rhani lingered in the dining s.p.a.ce off the kitchen, hoping that he would come from his room and join her. When it was clear that he would not, she went into the common room to wait. Cole Arajian was sitting reading a PlNsheet. He pa.s.sed it to her and she looked the front page over: it contained the first of his creations, and a quotation from Imre Kyneth...."Once more a Yago has found a solution to a problem of such complex dimensions that many of us believed it was insoluble...." There was a bad picture of her on the second page.

As she returned the sheet to Cole, someone knocked at the front door.

Cole opened it. John Salambo, one of the Net crewmen, was standing just outside.

Behind him were three strangers. One of them was Catriona Graeme.

"Domna, these folks want to speak with you." Salambo was studiously casual. Cole looked at Rhani.

"Thank you. Let them through, please." They walked in: Graeme, a burly- shouldered man in black, a tall woman holding a communicator. The morning sunlight touched the gray strands in Graeme's dark hair.

"Domna," she said, hands at her sides, shoulders square in an unconsciously military stance, "I came to apologize." The jagged scar at her right temple pulsed. "I made some stupid a.s.sumptions last night. I was wrong."

She swallowed. "Starcaptain Lamonica confirms identification of the man she saw leave with Dana Ikoro as one Elon Liddell, ex-member of the Hypers.p.a.ce Police, who disappeared with Michel A-Rae the day after the Auction. We have ascertained the route they took and the district they went to, on the other side of the Boulevard, just south of the Barrens. I am hopeful that, within a few hours, we will have located the very house."

Rhani thought: It took courage to come and say that to me in front of my entire household and her own subordinates...."Captain Graeme, I appreciate your choosing to tell me this in person," she said. "I have complete confidence that you will indeed find what you're looking for. Last night was an unfortunate misunderstanding."

The tall woman murmured into the communicator. "Clear," she said.

"Captain, we've got it! One-oh-nine West Cooley. A big man with a black cloak has been seen by the neighbors going in and out of the house. Three of them recognized a holo of Liddell."

An electric current seemed to shimmer suddenly through the latticed walls of the house. "Good," said Graeme. "Notify the A.P. and ask them to set up backup, just in case. Seal off the block, tell city services to cut the power on the northeast slideway, call Moa Li at Base and tell her to move Group B to within a block of the house and set up a perimeter, and to wait. Domna, we have to go -- as you've gathered, we may have found our target." She turned toward the door, which the burly man had already opened.

"Captain Graeme," said Zed from the archway.

She turned impatiently. "Yes?"

"May I join your forces?" His voice was very steady. His skin looked stretched across cheekbones and jaw, and it was flushed to a clear, even rose.

His clothes were drab, except for the silver mesh of his gloves.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Zed Yago, ex-commander of the Yago Net."

"Can you take my orders?"

"Try me," he said. She frowned. "I don't need amateurs in the middle of this. They get hurt, or hurt someone else."

Zed said nothing.

Graeme flicked a look at Rhani. "All right, Commander," she said. "You come with us. Malachi -- " she jerked a thumb at the man by the door -- "will tell you where to go." She strode out of the house. The others followed her like the tail on a comet.

"Zed-ka," Rhani said, "what ...?"

He smiled, and brushed her cheek with one hand as he pa.s.sed her. "I love you," he said, and then the door closed.

In Auction Place, the heat shimmered upward from the pavement, distorting vision. The air thickened, and it smelled of burning. Overhead, the city flags flapped fitfully on their poles. Malachi, twenty meters to Zed's left, was walking through the square with disinterest, a busy man with somewhere specific to go. He swerved right. Zed counted to ten and followed him. Behind them, irritated tourists milled around the stationary movalong. Zed counted the streets in his head. Four more to go to West Cooley. One-oh-nine was a corner house. B Group was already in position, cutting off possible escape routes. Zed reached up to rub his left ear, caught the motion, stopped it. He was not used to wearing a remote. It spoke suddenly. "A Team, positions in eight minutes."

Zed lengthened his stride. Malachi had vanished, but twenty meters to Zed's right strode a figure in cream-colored pants and a brown, webbed shirt, ordinary garments, except for the stunner in the boot holster.

In the quiet sunlight, Zed held his hands in front of him and worked his claws.