Up Against It Part 35

"You could. But DeadMan is about to trigger a request for a code, and if I don't respond promptly, the recording goes out automatically."

"Let her go," Ogilvie said. "Don't be foolish, Nate."

Glease had gone pale, and now red. Jane could see the rage in his eyes. He gained control, gestured for the young man to release her. DeadMan asked for the input and she gave it. Meanwhile, Glease spun and ordered Thondu, "Track her signal. Crack her face. Shut off the switch! Shut off the switch!"

Jane looked at Thondu and held her breath; ze could almost certainly break into her waveface and disable DeadMan-and might just, to protect the feral.

The Viridian spent a couple of minutes doing something in hir waveface. A bead of sweat trickled down hir cheek. Ze turned to Glease, avoiding a glance at Jane. "I'm afraid I can't. She's masked with some security tech. I've never seen anything like it. I'd need my lab and several hours of uninterrupted time to penetrate it."

Glease eyed Thondu. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He opened the safe and pointed his gun at the thing inside it. Jane realized it was the biocrystalline backup of the feral sapient.

"I'll count to three," he said. "One... two..."

Thondu went ashen. "I can't!"

"Too bad," Glease said. "Three."

"No!" Thondu launched hirself at Glease. The lawyer's hireling intervened, pinning Thondu to the wall. Glease fired, and an explosion released a puff of mist. Bits of biogla.s.s went everywhere. They all ducked. Jane covered her mouth and nose till the ventilation sucked the mist away.

"I hope that made you feel better," she said.

"I should just shoot you and be done with it," he told her, aiming the gun at her. "That would definitely make me feel better."

"You could. And the police commissioner gets a recording of the murder in his inbox, with coordinates. There's only one way off Zekeston, and they can get to the surface lifts before you do."

He lowered the gun.

"So here is my counterproposal," she said to Ogilvie, watching impa.s.sively via wave. "I will wait exactly an hour to release my recording. That might give Mr. Grease here enough time to get offworld-if he hustles. If at any time, anything bad happens to me, my husband, or anyone I know, ever, I will release the recording. There is no statute of limitations on this kind of crime, Mr. Ogilvie. You renege on the deal, I release the recording." She checked the time in her heads-up. "The clock has started."

They all looked at Ogilvie. He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her and tweaking a lock of his well-groomed beard.

"Well played, Commissioner," he said finally, with a sigh. "Nate, please haul your expensive legal a.s.s out of there. Now." He signed off. Glease shoved a finger in her face. "You'll pay. I'll see to it."

"You're burning escape time."

The door snicked shut behind them. She hurried to the outer office. Glease had left the hatch open. She leaped up into the memorial garden, and exited. A few people walked along the atrium, along the curve of the thoroughfare, and someone was helping someone else stand. They were looking at the Weesu lift doors, which were closing.

"First things first," Jane said. She called Aaron. He answered sleepily, and she filled him in on what had happened. "I can't release the recordings for another fifty-nine minutes," she said. "A deal's a deal. But I never promised not to report Glease's movements. He should be arriving in the Hub in the next two minutes. Can you shut down the Hub-to-surface lifts, and get a police squad out there?"

Aaron's eyes glinted. "You bet I can."

Jane disconnected, turned off DeadMan, and returned to Thondu.

Thondu was on hir knees by the safe, looking at the wreckage inside. Ze looked back at Jane, stricken. "I couldn't sacrifice Phocaea. Not even to save BitManSinger."

Jane knelt, too. "I'm sorry. You have the other copy though, yes?"

Thondu dashed away tears, touched hir belly again. "Yes. Thank the Nameless. It's the last complete copy. But we may have lost everything already. This new method of encoding was experimental. We haven't fully tested it yet."

Jane stood. "How would you like a chance?"

"To test it, you mean?"

"Yes. My husband and some others are still in trouble. Woody Ogilvie has a fleet of ships within striking distance. We have no ice. This isn't over yet."

Thondu stood, too, and brushed off the gla.s.s dust, looking wary. "What did you have in mind?"

She gestured at hir belly. "Do you have a way to extract your copy of the feral and install it in a standard server? What would it take to do that?"

Thondu hesitated. "We'll definitely want to make another backup. But what good will it do you? Only the city system and Upside-Down's servers are big enough to house an active copy-and we all agree that BitManSinger isn't ready to be released into the wild. It is still too young and unformed. Unbiddable. Destructive."

"I'm going on instinct, Thondu-"

"Call me Vivian." Jane looked at hir askance, and ze said, "I'm not Thondu. Not when I'm expressing the female and suppressing the male."

Jane suppressed exasperation. What was this, multiple personality disorder? But she had little room to talk; h.e.l.lo, Voice. "If I can come up with a place the feral will fit, will you help me use it against the mob? I promise you, no harm will be done to the sapient."

Thondu-no, Vivian's-gaze went to the shards on the floor and wall. Hir gaze hardened. "If it can be done safely, yes. With great relish."

27.

Geoff and the others spent a good while trying to figure a way out. While Amaya and the professor made an inventory, Geoff and Kam explored the mine tunnels. Kam suggested they look for forgotten pa.s.sages, and Geoff remembered that Joey Spud had had maps. They located the mining map archive. The maps were archeotech, as usual for Joey Spud: big, dusty scrolls of blue-lined, laminated scrip, tucked away on shelves in an old storage room. Geoff dug through the scrips and pa.s.sed them to Kam, who spread them out on the workbench.

They went through several dozen maps and got nowhere. Most of the tunnels they had not yet explored had been sealed off with methane ice, and the rest were now inaccessible due to the explosions at the entrance.

Finally they gave up and headed back to join Amaya and the professor in the way station. The professor was dozing in his hammock. Geoff didn't like the way he looked: his skin was ashen and his breathing shallow.

Amaya looked up from her lists. "Any luck?" she asked softly, but saw their expressions and slumped back down. A gloomy silence settled over Geoff as he surveyed his companions' dirty, tired faces. He was out of ideas.

"Are we certain," the professor asked from his hammock, "that there is no way in?" Geoff looked over, surprised. He hadn't been aware the older man was listening. "Our lives may ride on the answer," Professor Xuan said, "so consider carefully."

Geoff shared a glance with Kam and Amaya.

"We could be missing something," he said, "but I can't see any way. Not anytime soon." The older man looked at the other two, who nodded agreement.

"So," Kam asked, "what now?"

The professor said, "All right. We have supplies, fuel, and air. Our enemies can't get in. We have friends and family who will soon miss us. And we are all exhausted. It seems to me our best approach is to rest for a while, and sleep, if we can."

They settled into the hammocks and tucked blankets around themselves. As distressed as he was, Geoff could not believe he would ever sleep again. But sleep came swiftly.

As they ran toward the lift, Vivian said, "Commissioner... wait. There is something else you need to know. It's important!"

Jane quelled her impatience and paused. "What?"

Vivian said, "I think Nathan Glease has commissioned another a.s.sa.s.sination. We may have time to stop it."

They both stepped into the lift. The other people there edged away from them, and Jane realized it was because Vivian was a Viridian. She felt a twinge of sympathy for the young woman-man?-and guilt; she had reacted that way herself.

Vivian ignored them. Ze told Jane, "Right before they brought you in, he had another meeting. It was a woman, wearing nurse's clothes. He gave her a vial of liquid, showed her an image of someone, and told her to destroy the vial when she was done. He gave her a big wad of cash."

"The hospital. He's targeted someone at the hospital." Jane grabbed Vivian's arm. "Who was he targeting? What else do you remember?"

"I only caught a glimpse. A young man, I think. A big white guy with a s.p.a.ceburned face. One of his arms was missing."

Jane remembered Sean telling her about Geoff's friend-the one whose arm the feral tore out. Ian. Ian Carmichael. He was big, white, and blond, a biker with a s.p.a.ceburn. And he was still at the hospital. "I know the target."

The lift doors opened in time for them see a cuffed Glease being hustled into one of the other lifts by the police. He wore a smirk when he spotted her. She knew why.

The hospital was right across the way. Quicker to go herself than to explain. She headed straight for Yamashiro Memorial, trailed by Vivian, clouds of "Stroiders" glamour, and a small army of mites. They barged through the antimote sprays, and went up to an orderly on duty at the information desk. He was talking to a colleague inwave.

"What room is Ian Carmichael in?" Jane demanded. When he did not acknowledge her right away, she reached over the counter, grabbed him, and gave him a shake. "What room?"

The young man stammered the room number. She brought up a map overlay of the hospital, touched "Guide me" inwave, and plugged in the number. Following the golden marquis that appeared, she kicked off down the tube, bounding off walls and people indiscriminately. "Out of my way! Cl.u.s.ter emergency!" She did not bother to check whether Vivian followed. People caromed off the walls and each other to clear a path.

The room was a private suite that smelled of cleaners and chemicals. The lights were dimmed. The young man was snoring, his mouth half open. He was hooked up to a Regrow apparatus. The woman Vivian had described was replacing a vial in the nutrient feed setup by his bed. She looked up at Jane in guilty surprise.

Jane launched herself over the bed, grabbed the bed rail with her foothands and, bracing herself there, pinned the woman against the wall. She took the vial from her. The young man, Ian, startled awake and struggled with his cover. "Hey! What's going on?"

"Pull the other vial," Jane told Vivian, pointing at the apparatus. "The one that's already in there. Now!"

A doctor came into the room. "What is the meaning of this?"

Jane gestured at the woman she had hold of, who was protesting. Jane gave her a look, and she fell silent. "Is this woman one of your staff?"

The doctor looked at the woman, and then glanced at her companion, an elderly man dressed in nurse's garb, who shook his head. "I'm head nurse for this shift," he said, "and I don't know this woman."

"Test this." Jane tossed the vial to the doctor, who plucked it out of the air. "And that one there," she pointed at the one Vivian was holding. "You'll find that one of them contains a biological toxin. I just stopped this woman from inserting it into the apparatus."

Ian looked at the vials in horror. "Gaaah!" He grabbed the tubes and monitoring devices and yanked them out of his arms and chest, and shoved himself out of bed. Small drops of blood and nutrients dribbled from the tubes and the holes in his arm and chest. He hung there, tumbling slowly, panting and trembling. The doctor came over.

"Careful there! Easy. You'll be fine." She guided him back into bed, resettled him, and staunched his bleeding. Vacubots launched from the walls and sucked up the spilled blood and fluids. "Don't worry, we won't put the tubes back in until we know they're safe."

Ian eyed the woman who had tried to kill him. She turned her face away. The doctor turned to one of the staff who had gathered in the hall outside. "Call the police."

While they waited for the police to arrive, Vivian asked to see Learned Obyx. Jane accompanied hir.

The Viridian leader was in Intensive Care. Obyx wore a plastic body glove, goggles, and a respirator, and was suspended in a network of Regrow tubing. Vivian alighted next to hir leader. Jane hung back.

"Is ze going to be all right?" Vivian asked.

The nurse said, "He's doing better." Vivian winced-Jane was unsure whether it was the gendered p.r.o.noun, or the nurse's deliberate dodge of hir question. "We don't treat many people with, well, with his genotype. We'd appreciate any information you can give us on his physiology."

"I'll contact my colleagues and have them send you hir medical files. We have medical specialists who may be able to help you." Vivian hesitated, eyeing Obyx with grave concern. "May I talk to hir?"

The nurse eyed the two of them, considering. "For a moment, perhaps. He won't be able to answer questions, and he won't really remember anything you say later on." She moved in front of them as they started toward Obyx, and said, "Keep it brief. And don't say anything to alarm him. He is gravely injured and needs to remain calm."

Vivian went over, and spoke softly. "Learned?"

Obyx opened hir eyes and gazed blearily at them. "Wathra?"

Vivian carefully worked hir hand through the tubing and gave Obyx's own plastic-gloved, gel-smeared hand a squeeze. "It's me, Learned. You're going to be OK. They've arrested Glease."

"James?" Obyx whispered. "Where is ze? Is ze all right?"

Wathra looked across at Jane. "Everything's going to be fine, Learned," ze told hir. "You rest now, and heal."

Obyx sighed softly, and closed hir eyes. Vivian gave Jane a look. Ze lofted hirself into the hall. Hir face was implacable, but ze dashed away tears. Jane followed.

The hospital staff gave them a nook in the staff lounge. The police commissioner called them. "You two have had an exciting evening."

"I'm not sure how many details Aaron was able to share with you, Jerry, but this is Vivian Wathra wa Macharia na Briggs. Ze was also kidnapped by Glease and his cronies. Hir spiritual leader James Harbaugh was killed during the kidnapping, and Obyx has been severely injured."

"Y-e-e-s. I heard about the fracas in the Badlands. Obyx was already on my list to get a statement from." Jerry pursed his lips, looking harried. "Ian Carmichael sure is lucky you got here in time. What happened?"

Jane gestured to Vivian, who told the police chief about Glease's transaction with the nurse-a.s.sa.s.sin. Jerry took notes and asked questions. Finally he said, "All right, well, we've all had a long night. Go on home, both of you, and get some rest. Come to the main precinct station tomorrow and my detectives will take your statements."

But this wasn't over yet, and Jane was not about to rest. After the police commissioner signed off, she leaned toward Vivian and quietly asked, "Can you do one of those stealth bubble things?"

Looking puzzled, the Viridian flicked hir fingers. A faint, glistening bubble settled over them. Outside its walls settled a glittering sphere of fizzing, dying "Stroiders" dust.

"Something is bugging me," Jane said. "Why would they want to harm some random kid?"

Vivian shrugged. "Spite, perhaps."

Jane frowned. "I don't think so. There was more to it." She remembered that Ian had been helping Sean the other night. Sean might know more. "Vivian, can I make a call through this?" She gestured at the bubble surrounding them. Ze flashed a smile. "Sure... now that you have Arachnid installed. It should penetrate any security barrier. Even ours."

Jane put in a high-priority call to Sean. He materialized in wave.

"Sean, where are you?"

"Still out at the docks. The PM freed the ships, and we've got departures happening left and right. Things are crazy out here."

"Well, I'm I'm at the hospital. Someone just tried to kill your young friend, Ian Carmichael." at the hospital. Someone just tried to kill your young friend, Ian Carmichael."

He gaped. "What the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k?"

"We got here in time. He's OK. There's something more important I need to know. Have you heard from Xuan?"

He opened his mouth to answer. Then he looked thoughtful. "Hmm. Good question. Don't go away." A moment later, he returned, visuals activated, looking worried. "Xuan's ship hasn't returned yet, and no one has heard back from Geoff Agre or his companions."