Law of Survival (17 page)

“As do you, nìRau.” Dathim did not look up. He had hung a lampstick by a cord around his neck; the yellow light illuminated the work of his hands. “Did the noise awaken you, as well?”

Tsecha lowered to the ground beside the stump. He
looked up at Dathim's face and tried to discern his feeling, but all was obscured by the odd shadows cast by the lampstick. “I heard no noise in the embassy. My suborn awakened me.” He debated telling Dathim of his house arrest. The Haárin had declared himself to him, and for that reason alone he had a right to know Tsecha's status.

But Tsecha decided against doing so.
I must fight secrets with secrets.
Dathim would find out from the guards or the embassy staff soon enough, and he would understand the reason for silence. If Shai discovered that the Chief Propitiator discussed such matters with an Haárin, confinement to the embassy for one could become confinement to rooms for both. “What noise did you hear, ní Dathim?”

“The ComPol sirens. Other sirens as well, for the skimmers that transport humanish sick and injured. But then, one hears those every night.” Dathim set the stone aside, and held the ax-hammer blade close to his face. “Tonight has been most different.” He tilted the blade end back and forth, then ran a finger along the edge. “Interior Security has been most active tonight, nìRau, and truly. Constant passes up and down our borders. Along the lakeshore, as nearly as they could approach. Overhead, in demiskimmers.” Something about the blade made him frown. He lowered it and once more ministered to it with the stone. “I saw all this. Then I saw the embassy lights, and the activity of our guards.”

Tsecha looked through the trees, and watched the green and blue lights of Vynshàrau and Interior lakeskimmers shimmer and reflect over the water. “My Lucien was shot.”

“He is the youngish, the pale-haired soldier?” Dathim nodded in the humanish way, which signified that his head moved up and down. “I have seen him walk with you. I have seen him walk alone, in the public areas. Even though he stays within the allowed boundaries, the guards follow him most closely. He watches as someone who remembers what he sees. Not always a wise thing, for humanish.” He lowered the stone to his lap and pointed to another tight formation of lakeskimmers that flitted on the Interior side of the Michigan Strip boundary. “The last time I saw this much activity was in the winter, when they took the dominant van Reuter away. For the entire season afterwards, when I traveled into
the city, I heard the talk about that night. And now I see it again, for one humanish lieutenant who walks where he is allowed and remembers what he sees.”

Tsecha thought back to the night of van Reuter's arrest. The incomprehensible cold. His Jani's rescue from Interior, which he had planned with Lucien. The pursuit. The fleeing. “My Jani was with Lucien. Any more than that, no one knows.”

“Did she shoot him?” Dathim lifted his hand in question. “She shoots, nìRau. Such is her way.”

“She would not shoot
him
!” Tsecha heard his own voice raised too loud, and berated himself. Such a shout, an avalanche of sharpening stones could not have drowned out. “They are friends,” he added, much more quietly.

“As you say, nìRau.” Dathim turned the stone over. The surface changed from rough to shiny, from honing to polishing. “But friends often turn on friends. This I know from reading humanish history.”

“I, too, have read humanish history, ní Dathim.”

“Have you, nìRau?” Another sweep of the stone. “No wonder you walk the night.”

Tsecha clenched his hands at the Haárin's assured tone. “You vex me, ní Dathim.”

“I am unworthy to sit in your presence, nìRau.” Unworthy though he was, Dathim made no move to rise. Instead, he set the ax-hammer and stone on a nearby log and looked out once more toward the water. “I must return to sleep. Tomorrow, I visit the Exterior Ministry for the first time, to examine the space which Anais Ulanova wishes me to tile.” The dimness played tricks with the bones of his face, filling in hollows with seeming substance, combining with his hair to make him appear even more humanish. “They will show me, among other places, a
lobby,
and a
conference room.
I am to look over each location very carefully, and pick the one that will highlight my stunning work the best—this was I told, and truly.” Ready as he claimed to be to leave, Dathim made no attempt to gather his tools. “I am to look. And look.” Instead, he sat slightly forward, hands on knees, perched to stand, yet waiting…waiting….

Tsecha waited, as well, for the most seemly offer he knew
to be forthcoming.

“Is there anything in particular you would have me look
for,
nìRau?”

Tsecha felt his heart catch, as it had all those times in Rauta Shèràa when his Hansen had made the same request. How Dathim had come to know of the behavior of spies, he did not think it wise to ask. Better to simply accept, and quickly. “Anything of this shooting, ní Dathim. Anything you see of my Jani.” He picked up a twig and used it to poke beneath some fallen leaves. “Although I do not know how you will remove it from Exterior grounds.”

“I know of facilities, nìRau. So I told you.” Dathim grew still as an idomeni demiskimmer skirted the shore. “You should believe your fellow Haárin when they tell you of matters, and trust them to do as they say.”

“Fellow—?” Tsecha's shoulders sagged as fatigue suddenly overtook him—he could muster no anger at Dathim's impertinence “You claim to share skein and station with me, ní Dathim? You claim me as equal?”

“No, nìRau.” Dathim stood slowly, long limbs unwinding. “I am able to leave this place, and you are not. You are a prisoner, and I am free. In such an instance, we are most unequal, would you not say?”

Tsecha twisted his head so quickly, his neck bones cracked like dried leaves. “You know of that? So soon?” Even the darkness could not obscure his shock—that he knew, though little did he care.

Dathim looked down on Tsecha from his great height. “Yes, nìRau—I know of your restriction. Thus did I hear from an embassy Haárin, who overheard a conversation between your suborn and Diplomatic Suborn Inèa. After your meeting, when you were informed of your imprisonment in the interest of your safety.” He bent to pick up his tools. “Such listening is the way of Earth, nìRau. The way of humanish. Of your Eyes and Ears. It shocks me that you have not learned it better.” He strode off, sharpening stone clenched in one hand, ax-hammer in the other, leaving Tsecha alone in the dark and the leaves.

“Look at the light, Jani.”

Jani glanced out the corner of her eye at the red illumination that fluttered just beyond arms' reach.

“You know better than that.” Calvin Montoya stepped out from behind the lightbox. “I need to assess the activity level of your augmentation so I know how to treat you.”

“I'm
not injured.
I
wasn't shot.”

“Look at the light.”

Jani kept her eyes fixed on a point above the lightbox. Then, slowly, she dropped her gaze until she stared at the red head-on. “See? I told you I was fi—”

Suddenly, the light twinned. Once, then again and again. The pinpoints skittered across the source surface and throbbed in programmed patterns.

The examination room spun—Jani had to grip the edge of the scanbed to keep from toppling to the floor.

“That's what I thought,” Montoya said smugly. “On the downward slope, but still firing. Augie had enough of a jolt to initiate normally—I think we can let you settle on your own without a takedown.” He shut off the source, and the red dots faded to black. “Show me an augie that doesn't kick in when its owner's shot at, and I'll show one worthless bundle of brain cells.”

Jani struggled to maintain her equilibrium. The walls of the examining room billowed out, then in, as though the room breathed. “I can show you another worthless—”

“Testy,
aren't we?” Montoya pushed the lightbox to the
far corner of the examination room. “Lieutenant Pascal will be all right.”

“He didn't look all right in the ambulance.” Jani watched Montoya fuss with a tray of instruments. He still wore the trimmed beard she recalled from the winter; his band-collar dinner jacket mirrored its rich black color. Together, they made him look like a cleric in a historical drama.
Bless me, Father, for I don't know what the hell's going on.
“How much longer will he be in Surgery?”

“They've only had him for half an hour.” Montoya's voice still chided, but more gently. “He suffered serious injuries in addition to the burn. A shooter blast is like a kick in the gut—you know that as well as I do. Along with internal bleeding, add a ruptured peritoneum and a bruised kidney.” He pulled a stool in front of the scanbed and sat. “He's young, strong, and augmented—he'll heal quickly, but he'll still need to
heal.
” He fingered the scuffed knee of Jani's trousers. “Now, you said you fell after the shot blitzed out.”

“My right knee gave out when I walked down the ramp.” Jani massaged the injured joint. It had begun to ache soon after she arrived at the hospital—now that her augie had backed down, it hurt every time she flexed it.

“Let's see what we have here.” Montoya braced her foot atop his thigh and pushed up her trouser leg. “Oh, my.” He probed the egg-sized bruise below the patella. “You've got some nice soft-tissue damage there. Augie quelled the worst of it, but I'll still fit it with a chillpack to ease the swelling.”

Jani cupped her hand over her knee so Montoya couldn't probe it anymore. She could feel the heat radiate from the injury like a localized fever. “Can't you inject it with something so it heals faster?”

“No.” He glanced up at her and smiled his regrets. “If I give you anything while augie is still active, your healing cascades will go into overdrive. A month from now, we'd have to remove tissue and bone growths, or worst case, have to rebuild the joint entirely.” He pulled open a drawer in the base of the scanbed and removed a packet of gauze and an aerosol canister. “And there are just some risks we can't afford to take with you right now.”

Jani leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Meaning?” As if she didn't know. As if she hadn't heard the same excuses from a multitude of medical faces over the last few months.

“Meaning that you could react adversely to one of the accelerant proteins. If you did go into anaphylaxis, the only thing we could treat you with is adrenosol and your therapeutic index and toxic threshold overlap. In other words, a dose sufficient to help you could just as easily kill you.” He pulled her hand away from her knee, sprayed her bruise, and wiped the freezing foam with the gauze. “We need to develop desensitizing proteins specific to you. We're close, but we're not there yet.” He continued to spray the cooling, cleansing foam, then dab it away. “On the other hand, there's a chance you won't need them. If your response to past injury is any indication, your body is a healing accelerant factory on its own.”

Jani looked at the
à lérine
wounds on her right arm, and compared them to the faint scars on her animandroid left. The real had caught up with the counterfeit—the wounds had already healed to silvered threads, as though she'd had them for years, not months. The residual weakness in her right knee served as the sole reminder of her most recent health disasters. According to every physician she spoke with, both Neoclona and Service, anyone else who had gone through the myriad adversities she had would be bedridden. Or dead.

John tells me I'll outlive everyone I know.
All she'd lost in exchange was the right to call herself a human being.
I am a hybrid. A race of one.
The idea hadn't bothered her so much when she lived on the run—when all that matters is getting through today, who thinks about tomorrow?

But as her body continued to change and the inevitability of the process dawned, she'd come to resent every aspect of the transformation. That her life had become the eggshell walk of the chronically ill. That she couldn't put anything in her mouth without wondering whether it would sicken her. That she couldn't think an odd thought without worrying whether it was just a passing weirdness or the sign of a brain that didn't process things the same way anymore.

Add to that the reactions from others—the orderly who switched duties whenever she came in for a check-up because he thought hybridization contagious. The nurse who crossed herself when Jani looked her in the eye. The doctors who called her names when they thought she couldn't hear. Goldie. Pussy cat.
John would kill them if he knew.
But to what purpose, when others would take their place who felt the same. Even the kindest remarks, from Niall and Dolly, aggravated and worried her. She changed, and everyone could see that she changed. She couldn't hide it anymore.

She looked down at Montoya, who had finished with the foam and gauze, and now adjusted a padded coldpack around her knee. “Calvin?”

“Yes?”

“I'm tired of being a medical miracle.”

His hands stalled. He didn't look up. “I'm sorry, Jani.”

Jani studied the top of his head. The first traces of a bald spot had formed on his crown, a thumbnail-sized imperfection in his thick cap of straight black.
I spit in the eye of the inevitable,
he had told her when she asked him why he didn't correct it. His refusal to tweak his own little defect colored his judgment regarding hers. He was one of the few white coats who treated her like a woman named Jani, not a cross between a freak and the publication opportunity of a lifetime.

Jani tapped Montoya's bald spot to get his attention, then pointed to his jacket. “Where were you when you got the call?”

He grinned at her and sat up straighter. “My parents' fortieth wedding anniversary. Brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren.” The grin wavered. “The party had just started to wind down. The call came at just the right time—I didn't have to help with the clean-up.” He looked down again, but not soon enough to keep Jani from spotting the longing in his eyes.

“Guess it's my turn to say I'm sorry.”

His head shot up. “Did you plan this?” He waited for her to shake her head. “Then don't apologize.” He looked down again and fiddled with the coldpack. “So, I heard buzz that it was a robbery attempt.”

“More than likely.” Jani had no intention of discussing her certainty as to the professional nature of the attack. She
placed a hand over her left shoulder, on the spot that Lucien had touched just before the shot.
Touched.
She winced as she pressed her fingers into the area. Make that
grabbed.
She'd find a bruise there in a few hours, augie or no.

“What's wrong?” Montoya stood up and kicked the stool back into its niche beneath a bench, then pushed back her T-shirt and probed her shoulder with the same uncomfortable thoroughness with which he'd examined her knee. “A robbery, huh? I've lived in this city awhile, you know? Robberies in garages happen. Not in the Parkway area, though. Too many Family members. Too much high-priced security.” He took a scanner from the top of a nearby table and pressed it to her shoulder. “Bit of a wrench,” he said as he read the display. “I don't need to reseat the arm, but it will be sore for a few days.”

“Is this another ‘augie will provide'?” Jani got down off the scanbed and tested her knee. Thanks to her internal factory, the sharp pain had already receded to a dull ache. Unfortunately, the motion aggravated her Montoya-induced vertigo—she had to keep one hand planted on the bed frame as she adjusted her trouser leg. “Why wouldn't criminals come to the Parkway? That's where the money is.”

Montoya eyed her with professional scrutiny as she walked across the room. “A Chicago robber would not attempt to kill his victims. Bad for business. His colleagues would nail him before the ComPol did.” He walked to her side. “Speaking of the ComPol, they're here. A detective inspector and a detective captain. John deposited them in a lounge down the hall.”

“Really?” Jani recalled the green-and-white skimmer that had dogged the ambulance. She waved away Montoya's offer to help with her jacket, since he'd have detected the small but weighty presence of Lucien's shooter and personal effects in her side pocket.

“I wouldn't advise talking to them for at least two days. Not until we're sure augie has settled down.” Montoya blocked her way to the door. “You're not yourself. That feeling of invincibility isn't the thing to take with you when you deal with authority.”

Jani patted his shoulder. “Calvin, I was dealing with the ComPol back when you still had a full head of hair.”

“That's cold.”

“I'll be fine.” She stepped around him and out the door.

The Outpatient wing was deserted at that late night hour. That made it easier to hear the raised voices emerging from the lounge where the ComPol awaited. Three voices—two women and a man.

“Ms. Kilian has nothing to say!” the man shouted. His voice was cultured Michigan provincial flavored with Earthbound Hispanic.

“Why don't we let Ms. Kilian tell us that!” one of the women countered.

“No!” the man responded. “Absolutely not. She is on bioemotional restriction and cannot be questioned at this time!”

Jani sneaked into the lounge entry so that she could gauge the combatants before stepping into the fray. The women appeared to be her age, and wore the professionally dour dark green of ComPol detectives. The man was older, a brown-skinned walking wire dressed in casual trousers and an expensive pullover. He spotted her first, and turned his back on the women's verbal barrage.

“Jani.” He hurried over to her, his expression at once tranquil and alert, the way Val looked when he felt he needed to calm her down. “You shouldn't walk around.” His face was shallow-boned and dominated by an aquiline nose, his hair a grizzled cap.

Jani took a step back. “Who the hell are you?”

“Joaquin Loiaza.” He pulled up short and bowed from the waist. “John has asked me to represent you in this matter.”

“You're a
lawyer
?” All the reply that elicited was a slow affirmative blink. “What the hell do I need a lawyer for!”

“That's our question too, Jani,” one of the detectives piped.

“Did you see anything?” the other asked. “The garage's monitoring system was knocked out by the construction—you're our only witness.”

Loiaza turned on them.
“Ms. Kilian has nothing—!”

“Jani?”

Silence fell as everyone looked to the voice, a rumbling bass that made any word sound like a command from on high.

John Shroud stood in the hallway. He looked a study in ice: bone-white hair, milk-pale ascetic's face, an evening suit of palest blue. “Should you be walking about?” He turned his attention to Loiaza, who stiffened. “I asked you to see to this, Joaquin.” As usual, John had filmed his eyes to match his clothing—the crystal blue glare moved from the lawyer to fix again on the reluctant client. “I'll see you back to your room.” He walked toward Jani as though one quick move would dislodge his head. Spine straight, stride long and smooth. A weighty step, but fluid, like mercury.

Jani tried to dodge, but two ice-blue arms snaked around her and held her fast.

“You will come quietly.” John spoke in her ear, sounding like Death come to collect his due.

 

“I don't need your lawyers, or your goddamned help!” Jani gripped the arms of the visitor's chair, supporting all her weight on her hands as she struggled to sit without bending her knee. The furniture in John's office was all ebon wood instead of battered metal, the floor covered with Persian carpets instead of cheap lyno. Yet still she sat, and still she argued, as she had so many times before in the basement of the Rauta Shèràa enclave hospital. “I could have found out what they knew. Who they suspected. Right now, I have
nothing!
”

“Any information they have, Joaquin will obtain through proper channels.” John fell into his chair. The ergoworks screeched in protest. “Now are you going to tell me what happened tonight, or are you going to make me guess?” He slumped forward and worked his hands through his hair.