Law of Survival (25 page)

It took Jani some time to realize that she was being watched, as well. She looked around to find her father still standing beside Val's skimmer. He massaged his knuckles one at a time, a tic he took down from the shelf whenever his emotions threatened to get the better of him.

“Your mother loves you more than her own life, Jani-girl.” Declan's voice emerged dead calm, as it did when he was the most angry. “You always fire at the wrong target. When you were mad at Cheecho, you took it out on his sister. When you were mad at your schoolwork, you took it out on your games, and I took the calls from the parents with the bruised children. When you were mad at van Reuter, you took it out on everyone but him.” He walked around the skimmer to the passenger side and popped the gullwing. “Wrong target.” He lowered inside the low-slung cabin and yanked the door closed, sitting in stiff-faced rage as a visibly distressed Val hurried over and inserted himself into the driver's seat.

Then Declan said something, and Val's head bobbed up and down in overwrought agreement. Declan opened his gullwing, struggled out of the skimmer, and strode back to Jani.

“Man his age driving that ridiculous thing. Looks a twit.” He pulled Jani to him. “Be careful.”

Jani hugged him hard, wishing part of the embrace travel to wherever Niall's skimmer was.
“Oui,
Papa.”

“Don't stay away for days. She doesn't deserve that.”

“I know, Papa.”

“She loves you. I love you. You're our girl.”

“I love you, too.”

Declan released Jani and returned to the skimmer. The vehicle sped away—just as it cornered, Jani caught sight of her father's furiously waving hand. She raised her own in response, even though it was too late for him to see. Then she let it fall, and felt the numbness settle as she turned to walk up the road toward Neoclona Main.

“Where do you need to go?”

Jani wheeled to find John leaning against the treatment facility wall, jacket once more unfastened, hands shoved in
trouser pockets. As distinctive as he was, he had a talent for fading into the background that she always found unsettling. “I don't know. Back home, I guess.”

John pushed off the wall and ambled toward her. “I'll take you.”

“You don't have to.”

“Jani, just get in the goddamned skimmer.”

As Jani opened her mouth to argue, her right knee started to ache, a low-level twinge that promised to become a higher-pitched misery if she kept walking. She limped after John, stood aside as he opened her gullwing for her, fell into her seat, and sat with hands folded in her lap as he closed her in.

John sat heavily himself, and punched the charge-through four times before it engaged. They maneuvered down the street and through the same gate Jani had entered seeming days ago.

The streets contained more people than they had earlier now that Chicago's night had begun in earnest. Jani glanced at John's dapper suit, and added two and two. “I blew another evening for you, didn't I?”

John was either too beaten or too angry to deny the obvious. “Dinner. With a very close friend.”

“If she was that close, you shouldn't have left her.”

“First I get the forward from Security with the notation that you'd called Val from a military line, then I get Val's message. What the hell did you expect me to do, waltz back to the sorbet!” John swerved too close to the skimmer in the next lane. Proximity alarms blared, and he jerked the wheel to return to his track. “I never said my friend was a
she.”

Jani watched the passing scenery, and thought of all the famous females she'd seen over the summer in the
Tribune-Times
or on the 'Vee. John's “very close friends” tended to fall into very specific categories. “Anybody I've heard of?”

John hesitated, then shrugged. “She sings at the Lyric occasionally.”

“Hmm.” Jani yawned. “Niall could probably recite her every role.”

John struck an uneven beat on the steering wheel. “You really don't care, do you?”

“I abrogated the right to care the night I fled Rauta
Shèràa. You asked me to stay. I said no. End of story.”

“No. It never ends. We keep writing new chapters.” The skimmer windows filtered the city light. The resulting semi-dark of the cabin offered the perfect backdrop for John's voice. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Jani answered automatically, but some truths were easier to admit than others. “Not that I had much choice. You were the first thing I saw when I came out of the coma, and you always did make a strong initial impression.”

“Funny how some things never change. You used the same excuse back then.” John wore the glower of a statue that had found a crack in its pedestal. “Maybe there's something to it. You were the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, too. Figuratively speaking. I didn't have much…experience with women before you came along.”

Didn't I know it.
“You bury me with your regard, John, until I can neither move nor breathe. To save me the trouble of making choices, you make them for me. I can't live like that.”

John snorted lightly, but didn't speak. The traffic jam that ensued as skimmers maneuvered around a double-parked people-mover gave him something to concentrate on for a time. “I really got off on the wrong foot with your mother,” he said as the squeeze cleared. “Mind telling me what happened?”

“Niall got me some food while we were at Sheridan. Maman tried it, and the pepper almost did her in.” Jani blinked away the ache as the image of her mother bent over the bathroom sink returned.
Anormal. Mutant.
“Your folks used to call you a freak, didn't they?”

“No, they had the Christian Fallback Council of Elders declare me Marked by God. Amounted to the same thing, though.” John's lip curled. He had never offered more than the occasional remark concerning his youth. That reticence alone told one all they needed to know. “How would my life have changed if they had approved my
in utero
genetic adjustment? Would I have grown into the man I am? Built Neoclona? Would I even have studied medicine? I don't know. But as I told you back in the basement, by the time I was old enough to request adjustment on my own, I didn't
want it. Being unique has its advantages.” He glanced at Jani, and raised a hand in grudging admission. “It has its disadvantages, too, but overall the good outweighs the bad.

The skimmer turned onto Armour Place, and Jani leaned forward to stretch her back in preparation for the trudge across the lobby. “At least you could make a choice. Refer to my previous comment on the matter.”

John edged the skimmer curbside, then waved away the doorman who hurried toward them. “Well,” he said after a time, “that was an interesting interlude.”

“Niall reacted to a perceived threat—”

“I'm not blaming him. If I'd seen a skimmer bearing down on you, I'd have shot at it myself.” He focused his broody attention on his fingernails. “I wish you'd called me personally.”

Jani shook her head. “Not after this afternoon.”

John made as if to speak, but made do with a shaky exhale. The silence stretched. “Get some sleep,” he finally said.
“Eat
first. Be careful, like your father said.” He looked at Jani. His eyes were too dark for his sepulchre face, which seemed to glow in contrast. “Everybody's shooting at me tonight. I'm the right target he thinks you should hit, aren't I?”

Jani nodded. “I think so.”

“That means I made a sterling impression on him, too. I'm…sorry, for what resulted.” John groaned. “Val will speak up for me. They seem to like Val. But then,
everybody
likes Val. Hell,
Nema
likes Val.”

“You need to get back to your singer. She likes you.”

John shook his head. He had found a new scab to pick and refused to leave it alone. “She'd like Val if he'd have her.”

“Don't underestimate yourself. You always did.” Jani smiled as a few of the better memories resurfaced. “You have your moments.”

“Oh yeah?” John perked. “I've got half a mind to press the accelerator to the floor. We could be in Seattle in two days.” He sagged back in his seat. “Only problem is, the first time I slowed below forty, you'd bail out the window.”

“I would—not—I—” Jani tried to formulate a lucid protest. But the fatigue and the emotional upheavals of the
last few hours caved in on her, and she laughed instead. John gaped at her for a few moments, then joined in. They began quietly, then grew louder as various scenarios played through their minds.

The merriment fizzled. Jani wiped her eyes with care. She knew she had damaged her right film, and she no longer felt compelled to reveal herself to the world. “You don't want me, John. I'd make you as crazy as you'd make me. Go back to your singer. There's absolutely no reason for you to be alone.”

John's grin died. “I've been alone since you left. The fact that another woman occasionally occupies your space doesn't make any difference.” He unlatched Jani's gullwing, remaining silent as she disembarked, ignoring her good night and vanishing into the dark before she reached the building entry.

Jani stopped and stared at the place where the skimmer had parked, then to the dark into which it had disappeared. It had felt so warm inside. So quiet. So comforting.
If I just said the word, I could have that forever.
John would raise the walls and affix the locks, and nothing would ever reach her again.

Nothing.

Poor John.
She yawned as she limped across the lobby. If she could beg any good luck from her Lord Ganesha, she would find Steve, Angevin, and Lucien asleep. Particularly Lucien. She wouldn't possess the energy to deal with him unless she slept through the night and into the following day.

Pondering Lucien deflected her attention from her surroundings. She didn't see the figure dart in from the sitting area until it intercepted her.

“Where the hell have you been!” Angevin grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the lift bank. “We have been calling everybody and everywhere! Lucien even woke up his CO trying to track you down.”

Jani flashed on the possibility of taking John up on his Seattle offer. If he was on his way back to his singer, Val could forward him Jani's message. They could leave inside the hour. “Angevin, I know I left some things undone, but I'll get to them first thing tomorrow, I prom—”

“Oh, you think it's that simple!” Angevin's eyes gleamed green fire.
“You just wait.”

“Angevin, what's going on? Angevin?” Jani hurried down the hall after the diminutive figure, who broke into a run as they neared the flat entry.
“Angevin!”

“Did you know that the rear service entrance to this building isn't as well secured as it should be?” Angevin stopped in front of the door, then began to pace. Now that she'd made her goal, she couldn't follow through. “Did you? I sure as hell didn't. Heard the entry buzzer and assumed it was the front desk. Opened the door.
Guess what!”

Jani looked from the door to Angevin's stricken face, then back again. “Who's in there? Are Steve and Lucien all right?”

“They're fine.” Angevin took a step toward the door, then backed away again. “Maybe you should go in first.”

“Oh, for—” Jani keyed in and gave a panel a good push to help it along. She strode through the entry, and saw Steve sitting at her desk, twisting an unlit 'stick between his fingers. “What's going on?”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. He held out his hand to Angevin, who had scuttled in behind Jani. Together, they pointed toward the sitting area.

Jani turned to find a robe-wrapped Lucien sitting in a chair that had been pushed in front of the couch. The couch itself was occupied by a formidably tall man, his head and shoulders towering above the seat back.

Man
…Jani's senses gave her a swift kick, pointing out the dark gold tinge of the skin and the rigid posture. The jewel-rich green of the shirt, and the liquid-like way the ma
terial flowed over the broad back.

Then the head slowly turned, and she saw the eyes. Cracked gold glass, catching the light like gilt. “Ná Kièrshia.” The Haárin tilemaster rose to his feet. “I am Dathim Naré. NìRau Tsecha trusts you are most as uninjured, and bids me offer you the glories of the evening.” He spoke in English, flavored with the trilled R's and biting consonants of Vynshàrau Haárin.

Ná?
Jani detected the shortened vowels and altered accent of the Haárin feminine title. Well, that made sense. Or at least as much sense as everything else had that evening. “Ní Dathim. I am uninjured, yes.” She felt spun around, disoriented, like she'd just emerged from a pitch-dark Veedrome into the blaze of day.
What the hell time is it?
Too late at night to deal with an Haárin who sheared his head as humanish and felt no compunction about visiting his people's Toxin in her downtown Chicago flat, surely. “My home is not clean. Your soul is in danger.” She had slipped from English into Vynshàrau Haárin without conscious thought, her straight back and anxious hand flicks defining her distress. “You should not be here.”

“I go where my dominant bids me go, regardless of the threat to my soul. I have declared myself to him. Such is my duty.” Dathim's arms hung at his sides as he continued his half of the conversation in English. “He has bid me come here to witness your condition, and to bring you something that you must take care of.”

“Nema gave you something to give to me?” Jani groaned inwardly. Then again, judging by the odd looks she received from the assembled, maybe it wasn't so inward. She walked to the sitting area. She had a choice of perching on the arm of Lucien's chair or joining Dathim on the couch. Considering how she currently felt about Lucien and how her right knee and back felt about her, her choice proved no choice. She stepped past the chair without giving its occupant a look and sagged into a cross-legged slump on the couch, a respectful bodylength away from the Haárin.

Dathim sat as well. However, instead of pressing against the couch back, he shifted so that he nestled in the corner and faced Jani. That meant he couldn't plant his booted feet side
by side on the floor in the knees-together seat of a typical idomeni. Instead, he lifted his left leg and crossed it over his right leg, ankle to knee. Then he placed his left hand on the bent knee and stretched his right arm atop the arm of the couch in the classic “this is my space” sprawl of a human male.

Jani glanced at Lucien, who stared at the Haárin, his lips parted ever so slightly. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought he had a crush on him. If she didn't know better—

John, take me to Seattle!
No, the last thing she needed was John and Seattle in any combination.
I'm tired, hungry, and in pain. Someone tried to kill me and my lover may have arranged it. My mother called me mutant tonight. Now Nema has a job for me.
Maybe she should call him and tell him it was safe, so that he could leave the embassy grounds and do whatever the hell it was himself.
Except he's been locked down. He can't leave. He's in trouble. Wake up!
She buried her face in her hands on the off chance that augie had gone south and she hallucinated.
When I look up, the far end of the couch will be empty.
Lucien will be gone, too.
He'll have been transferred to Whalen's Planet.
Steve and Angevin will have moved out.
I'll be alone, and it will be quiet, and I can sleep.

She looked up to find Dathim studying her full-face, auric eyes shining. When she'd lived in the colonies and dealt with Haárin merchants on a daily basis, she had grown used to their efforts to adopt humanish appearance and the habit of direct eye contact.
Make that “somewhat used.”
Idomeni appearance could be startling—to that, Dathim Naré had added his own spin. His was the long, bony face of his Vynshàrau forebears—his shorn hair accentuated the hard lines even more. He wore no overrobe atop his open-necked shirt and belted trousers. He wore no earrings. Not even his
à lérine
scars, the elongated welts ragged and brown against his dark gold skin, hinted at his alien nature. They could have been caused by an accident. He could have been a human male suffering from genetic disorders of the bone and liver, an inhabitant of one of the colonial outposts that had slipped beneath Neoclona's detection limit.

“You are unwell, Kièrshia? You do not act as bold as I have seen you at the embassy.” Dathim's appearance seemed
to alter his voice, making it sound merely foreign rather than alien. Deep. Rich. Not quite the twin of John's inestimable bass, but definitely a sibling.

“I've had a very long day, ní Dathim.” Jani broke contact with the probing stare.
And you're making it longer.
“You said you had something to give me, from Nema.” She reverted to English, since sitting cross-legged on a couch didn't lend itself to proper Vynshàrau Haárin language postures. “Could you give it to me, please?”

“Yes.” Dathim twisted around, reached over the side of the couch, and came up holding a large idomeni-style briefbag. “NìRau Tsecha said that you will know what to do with these.” He dropped the bag in the empty expanse between him and Jani. “I know what to do with them as well, but nìRau Tsecha does not trust my judgment. This is most unfortunate—I must ponder ways to earn his trust, and truly.”

Jani watched Dathim as he unclasped the bag's complicated fasteners.
Did I just hear an Haárin employ sarcasm?
He appeared perfectly serious, but Jani seldom met an idomeni who didn't. Nema bared his teeth more than most of his race and took pride in the fact that he had a sense of humor and knew how to use it, but he was an exception to every idomeni rule.
And now there's Dathim Naré.
The fact that he and Nema had found one another made her head ache. “Most as your dominant, ní Dathim, you possess a capacity to surprise.”

“Surprise is a good thing, is it not, Kièrshia? A good thing for gaining humanish attention, and truly.” Dathim undid the last fastener and pushed back the flap. “Surprise!”

Jani looked into the bag, and saw files and data wafers inserted in an array of upright pleated pockets. Files in burgundy folders. Files in white folders with burgundy trim. One file in a black folder. She tried to speak, but couldn't think of anything to say that Dathim would understand, even taking into account his expertise in sarcasm.

“Oh shit, Jan.” Steve had wandered over to the couch. “Those are bloody Exterior Ministry Exec files.”

The words “Exterior Ministry” brought Lucien out of his chair. He lifted one of the files out of its pocket, looked at the information tab that ran across the top, and shoved it
back into place as though the paper stung to the touch. “I don't know about the rest of those files, but that one is classified ‘For Ministers' Eyes Only.' At this moment, we're all facing at least twenty years in prison for violating the Commonwealth Secrets Act.”

Jani looked at Dathim, who had resumed his cross-legged sprawl and looked extremely pleased with himself. “How did you steal these documents? More importantly,
why
did you steal these documents?”

“I took them out of Anais Ulanova's office. NìRau Tsecha wanted to learn more of your shooting, and believed that Anais Ulanova would possess information.” He still watched Jani with interest, studying her reactions to his every revelation. “I was taken there to look at places to lay my tile. I examined the lobby, but the tilework that nìaRauta Ulanova wanted there was not suitable, so they took me to look at the conference room that was connected by a door to her office. She had many stacks of files on her desk. I took something from each stack.”

Lucien slumped back into his chair. “I told her for years to seal that damned door.”

Dathim finally used an Haárin gesture, a brush of his open right hand across his shirtfront that indicated relief. “I am most glad she did not listen to you, Lieutenant Pascal, and truly.”

A glimmer of liveliness returned to Lucien's face. Oh yes, the fact that Dathim recognized him definitely pleased him. “You know me?”

“I have seen you at the embassy, with nìRau Tsecha. And alone. The lieutenant who remembers what he sees.” Dathim regarded Lucien less intently than he did Jani. If he noticed Lucien's fascination with him, he gave no indication. But then, odds were overwhelming that he had no experience with human sexuality or any idea what that captivation implied.

“When Anais figures out that you rifled her office, and she will, Commonwealth–Shèrá relations are going to get interesting. I think the term ‘major diplomatic incident' is applicable here.” Jani fingered through the files. “And nìRau Nema expects me to do what with these? Return them?”

“Yes.” Dathim gave a human-style shrug. “He said that you would see to them. He called this an ‘incident,' too. He said that he is quite good at them.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jani glanced up at Steve, who looked sick to his stomach.

“We could turn them over to someone in my department.” Lucien spoke to Jani, but he looked at Dathim. “Certain people owe me favors. It would be a no-questions-asked return. The best way to go about this, in my opinion.”

Jani pretended to consider Lucien's offer, then shook her head. “If Service Intelligence turns them in, Exterior is going to think they took them in the first place. Service and Exterior are just starting to get along again—I don't think we want to risk scuttling any tenuous truces over this.” In truth, she didn't want Intelligence sticking their nose in. Not after the way they bobbled her parents' transfer.
This needs to be handled by someone I trust.
Someone she could…persuade. She knew where she needed to go—she just needed to get there without tipping off Lucien.

“One of the ministry Doc Controls?” Angevin had joined Steve, placing herself in such a way that he hid her from Dathim's view. “Stuff happens. ‘So-and-so left her briefbag behind after a meeting' is the standard excuse. The Ministries exchange unauthorized acquisitions all the time.”

But the Ministries won't let me analyze these files before I give them back.
Jani closed the bag flap and dragged the strap over her shoulder. “I'll think of something.” She stood, not quite as shakily as Lucien, and limped across the room toward the kitchen. “Steve, run interference for ní Dathim while he leaves.” She pushed past the sliding door, then leaned against the counter until she could dredge up the strength to walk to the cooler. “I just need some juice.” And one of John's meal bars. That would provide enough energy to get her through the next few hours. “Hours.” She yawned as she cracked the seal of a dispo of lemon tonic.

Jani had leaned her head back to drink when she heard the kitchen door open. She didn't bother to turn around. If it was Angevin or Steve, the melodious howls of shock and dismay would soon fill the air, and if it was Lucien…. She felt her body tighten in anticipation of his touch, and gave herself a
mental swift kick.

“You are not as you should be.”

Jani's throat stopped in mid-swallow. Her head came down, luckily over the sink. She spewed, coughed, and sneezed tonic—the bubbly astringency filled her nostrils and burned her sinuses. Her eyes teared as though she wept—she felt the damaged right film split.
“Damn—!”
She grabbed for the sinkside dispenser, yanked napkin after napkin, blew her nose and wiped her face. Then she turned, taking care to cover her exposed eye.

Dathim stood just inside the doorway. The prospect of entering a humanish kitchen seemed to have tempered his boldness. He touched the edge of a counter, the handle of a cupboard door. “I surprised you again.” Then he drew his hand back and examined his fingertips, as though he expected the contact to leave a mark. “You surprise easily, and truly.”

Jani watched in amazement as Dathim opened a drawer and removed a serving fork. “Is there nothing you fear, ní Dathim?” She spoke in Vynshàrau Haárin, so that her words would better express her shock at his actions.

“I am already damned, according to the Oligarch. What difference?” Dathim turned the fork over, then returned it to its holder and slid the drawer closed. “This kitchen is cleaner than I expected. We are told that humanish leave their food on the counter for the insects and the parasites to season.”