Erasing Time (32 page)

Echo tapped one hand against the table and glanced at Sheridan again.
Well
, his expression seemed to say,
what do I do now?

She shrugged dejectedly back at him. It wasn’t going the way she’d expected. All her hopes of freedom—now they seemed for nothing. The waiter had no idea what Echo was talking about.

The waiter’s gaze moved to Taylor and Sheridan. “What about the ladies with you; do they need any recommendations?”

“No, they won’t be eating right now. They feel sick.”

It was true.

The waiter gave the group one last insincere smile and turned away. Before the computer screen changed back into a menu, he mumbled to someone offscreen, “How come I always get the memory-washed customers?”

Echo nodded and let out a long sigh. “He thought I was crazy.”

Sheridan slouched in her seat. “Maybe we should have used different phrases.”

Taylor propped her elbow on the table and put her chin into her hand. “Yeah, let’s make Echo call the waiter back and ask him if he’d put a candle under a bushel.”

“I’m not calling the waiter back,” Echo said. “They would think I’d had a neural failure and call the meds.”

The noises of the restaurant seemed artificial, too loud, too happy, too confining. “I was so sure it would work,” Sheridan said.

“Maybe we got the contact place wrong,” Taylor said. “Maybe we can think of something else.” She turned to Echo. “When the food gets here, let’s take it outside to eat. They may think it’s strange, but we’ve set a precedent for strange behavior, so it won’t matter.”

Echo didn’t answer. Instead his gaze shot to the aisle by their table. Sheridan turned to see what he was looking at. A waiter was approaching them, and not the teenager from the computer screen. This waiter was tall, at least six feet seven, with hulking broad shoulders and arms that looked like they could snap chairs in two. Braids of black hair hung down past his shoulders. He wore no colors on his face, and somehow it seemed even more menacing to be able to see his features clearly.

It’s the bouncer
, Sheridan thought.
We’ve acted too strangely and now we’ll be thrown out of the restaurant.

When the man reached their table, he smiled at them calmly. “I heard you had some special menu requests. I thought you’d like to see the chef. Perhaps he can help you.”

Echo’s gaze ricocheted between Taylor and Sheridan, but neither of them answered. They just rose from their chairs. He joined them. “Yes, we’d like that.”

“Come with me.” The waiter turned and walked back the way he’d come. They followed him down the aisle, through a door, and along a hallway with more doors. He opened a side door and a light automatically came on, showing a staircase. With each step down the stairs, Sheridan’s optimism grew. They weren’t going to a kitchen. He was taking them somewhere else, somewhere secret. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, then pulled a calculator-looking box from his shirt pocket. He held the device up first to Taylor, then to Sheridan.

“Scanners are illegal,” Echo told him.

The man held the device up to Echo. “So are weapons, but my scanner tells me you have one.” He held out a hand to Echo. “Before I take you any farther, you’ll need to give me your laser box.”

Echo’s jaw clenched. He pulled the black box from his belt and slapped it into the waiter’s hand.

The waiter checked his scanner and held out his hand again. “And whatever other electronics you have.”

Echo took his sensor box and his lock disabler from his belt and gave those to the waiter too.

The waiter slipped them into his pocket, then checked his scanner again. “
Pues
, you’ve got as many gadgets as an Enforcer.” He motioned with his fingers to Echo. “Give me the last one.”

Echo grimaced. It was clear he didn’t want to turn over this last device. Slowly, he unclipped a silver box from inside his belt and handed it to the waiter.

The man turned it over in the palm of his hand. “What is this? A tracker?”

“A project I’m working on.”

The waiter grunted and slipped it into his pocket with the rest of the things. He eyed Echo suspiciously, then gestured for the group to follow him down the hallway.

He stopped at what appeared to be a normal stretch of wall, took a small disk from his belt, and inserted it into a nearly invisible slit in the top of the molding. Immediately the outline of a door appeared amid the wall markings. It slid open, and the waiter moved aside so they could go in.

A desk stood at one end of the room and chairs sat at the other. Abstract paintings hung on two of the walls, and low cupboards topped with counters lined the other two. The waiter motioned for them to have a seat. He went and sat on top of the desk with his arms folded. “
Pues
, tell me who the three of you are.”

Before Echo could answer, Sheridan leaned over and whispered what to say.

Echo hesitated, as though he hated saying these things that made no sense, but he repeated her answer anyway. “We’re people searching for a Good Samaritan.”

The waiter’s eyes narrowed. He looked from Echo to Sheridan. “How come you don’t answer for yourself?”

“She has a sore throat,” Echo said.

Sheridan smiled, which was probably not the best indication that she was ill. She couldn’t help herself, though. She wanted to go hug the stern look from the waiter’s face. He could help them.

The waiter’s eyes remained narrow. “Who sent you here?”

Echo opened his mouth, and Sheridan thought he was going to say Elise’s name, but his gaze went to something behind the waiter. Echo folded his arms. “You told us we were going to see the chef—your boss. If we answer questions for anyone, I want to answer to the person in charge.”

The waiter briefly glanced behind him, checking to see what Echo was looking at. “You’re afraid to answer to me?”

“I’ll answer for your boss.”

The waiter slid off the desk and sauntered over to Echo. His eyes were cold with barely masked anger. “
Bien
. I’ll tell my boss you want to talk, but you’ll have to wait. He’s busy running the foodmart.” The waiter strode to the door, put his disk into the wall again, and went out. His footsteps thudded down the hallway away from them.

Echo leaned back in his chair and let his head fall against the cushion. “I don’t have my laser box, my lock disabler, or my disrupter, and now we’re locked in.”

“Why didn’t you answer his questions?” Sheridan asked. “Why antagonize him by insisting on seeing his boss?”

Echo turned to her, and she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. “Because these people aren’t Doctor Worshippers; they’re Dakine.”

The room felt hot, small, and suffocating, yet the room hadn’t changed. It was only Sheridan’s dread wrapping around her in an oppressive blanket. “You’re wrong. How could they be Dakine when we used Christian symbols to find them?”

Echo reached out and put his hand over hers, a gesture of sympathy. “Maybe there was a trail here once. Maybe this used to be a contact place, but if it was, it’s been taken over by Dakine.”

Taylor turned to face him, mouth open in disbelief. “How would you know that?”

He gestured at the paintings. “Christians aren’t the only ones who have symbols. Dakine have them too. They’re in the artwork.”

Sheridan’s gaze swung to the first painting, and then the second. It was abstract art; basically it looked like someone had emptied a bag of shapes and squiggles onto the canvas. “Where?” she asked.

“The one behind the desk has their most important symbol in it.” Echo stood up and began checking the cabinets. They were locked. “Only sworn Dakine members know it. It’s a way they identify each other.”

Sheridan stared at the painting. Which of the squiggles was the Dakine symbol? She supposed it didn’t matter. Tears stung at the back of her eyes, and then just as quickly were replaced by anger. Anger at the Dakine. Anger that she’d worked so hard to find a way out of the city and had only gotten them captured again. Anger at Echo for all of his secrets. “I thought you weren’t a member of the Dakine. How do you know their symbols?”

Echo tried the last cabinet. It was locked too. “That isn’t important right now. We need a strategy.” He looked across the room, thinking. “There are several different organizations within the Dakine. This one might not realize that others are looking for us. If we pretend to be Dakine and say we’re searching for contact places in order to trap the DW, they might let us go.”

“How did you know the Dakine symbol?” Sheridan stood, facing him square on. “Are you Dakine or not?”

Taylor folded her arms. “We’re just taking your word for it that there’s a symbol there. How do we know these people aren’t really DW, and now that you know how to find them, you want to leave to go report it to the Dakine?”

Echo held up one hand as though trying to make his logic appear in visible form. “If I thought these people could get us out of the city, I’d be the first one to strap provisions on my back, but the DW wouldn’t have two pictures with Dakine symbols in them. These people aren’t who we thought they were.” Echo walked over to Sheridan and put both hands on her shoulders. Gently, he said, “I’ll talk to the boss. It’s our only chance to get out of the building.”

And then what? More running, more fear, more of Echo’s half answers?

Taylor looked to Sheridan, waiting for her input. Did they trust Echo now or not?

Sheridan turned back to Echo, searching his blue eyes as if she could see past them into his soul. “Why do you want to leave the city?”

He dropped his hands away from her shoulders in frustration. “Ever since you arrived, you’ve told me how horrible Traventon is, and now you’re asking why I want to leave?”

Sheridan lifted her chin. “If you want us to trust you, it’s time to tell us the truth. All of it. Are you trying to leave the Dakine? Is that why you need to leave the city?”

“Something close to that.”

“Because they killed Joseph and Allana?” she asked.

His eyes flashed. “Because they killed my brother.”

He hadn’t cared about Allana—no, it was worse than that, Sheridan realized. Echo blamed Allana for Joseph’s death. “Why did the Dakine kill Joseph?” she asked.

The muscles on Echo’s jaw pulsated, and every part of him looked stiff and pained. He didn’t answer.

“Was it something Allana did?” Sheridan prodded.

Echo looked away from her, his expression still tight. “It’s hard for me to talk about it. There are things you don’t understand, things about my past.”

Sheridan put her hand on his arm. Her anger had been replaced by concern. “Then tell it to us like a story, like it’s just the story of two brothers you know—Echo and Joseph.”

He gave a half smile then, the kind that isn’t really a smile but an acknowledgment of the bitterness of life. “If I tell you, will you trust me enough to do what I say?”

“I hope so.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you the story of Echo and Joseph.” His gaze traveled past the desk to the painting on the wall, but he didn’t seem to be seeing it. It wasn’t a confession he was offering, or even an explanation. It was an accusation against fate. “People don’t understand how close brothers are, because hardly anyone has them anymore. No one has a twin brother. It was just Echo and Joseph in the whole city.

“There are two sets of identical twin sisters living in Traventon, both of them very old. One of the sets visited the boys when they were seven. Back then, the boys were too young to know what questions they should have asked. They hadn’t thought much about the tracking crystals at that point. But then, the sisters’ crystals might not have worked the same, and sometimes asking the wrong questions brings more trouble.”

Taylor turned in her seat to better see Echo. “What didn’t you ask them?”

Echo waved off her question. “I’m sorry. I’m telling my story out of order. I’ll go back to the beginning. Only sometimes I don’t know where the beginning is or when things changed. But in the beginning, Joseph and Echo had no secrets between them. They could work together to create or destroy a program like they had one mind. Sometimes they used to switch places to see if anyone noticed. Every once in a while their caretakers would catch them at it, but more often the caretakers would accuse them of switching places when they hadn’t. No one could really tell because they were so good at being each other.”

Echo began pacing, his hands thrust into his pockets. “The problem was that things changed for Echo, and Joseph couldn’t see it. Echo wanted to be more than a wordsmith. He wanted prestige, rank. Once the Dakine found out about his computigating skills, they offered him a membership and promised him a rank that would always be under a hundred thousand.

“I suppose the Dakine would have gone after Joseph too, but they didn’t need to. Joseph shared everything he knew about computigating with Echo, helped him with any problems.”

Echo let out an angry grumble from the back of his throat, almost a growl. “Allana dated both of the brothers. She was beautiful, influential, and used to having everything she wanted. Why she wanted both of them, I still don’t know. Perhaps it was the novelty. Perhaps she wanted to see if she was powerful enough to destroy a bond that nature had created. Maybe she just couldn’t decide. Whatever the reason, there began to be …” He paused, searching for the right twenty-first-century word.