The Sardonyx Net (17 page)

He did not immediately answer. He lifted a hand to touch her damp cheek. “You should wear your hair down more often.”
 

“It's too much trouble.”
 

He held out a wrapped and ribboned box on the palm of one hand. “For you.”
 

“Zed-ka, you shouldn't!” She took it from him. She debated giving him the sculpture now, and decided to wait. She shook it. Nothing rattled. Pulling apart the wrapping, she lifted up the lid. Nestled in cotton lay a small golden cylinder decorated with thin jade stripes. She picked it out of the box.
 

“Careful,” said Zed. He took it from her. “It's not what you think it is.”
 

“What is it?”
 

“I had a hell of a time finding it. See this button on one end?” He turned it to show her a small gold button. “Press it firmly and a stun dart shoots out the other end, into whomever you point it at. Normal finger pressure won't trigger it. There's a matching chain in the box, so you can hang it around your neck.” He lifted a gold chain from the box. Clipping the chain to the cylinder, he fastened it around her neck. It hung coldly between her breasts. Somewhat repulsed, she went to the wall mirror and stared at it.
 

“It looks like a pendant.” She touched it with cautious fingertips. “Is it legal?”
 

“No,” Zed said calmly. “But if you have to use it, I doubt that'll make a difference.”
 

“Where can you buy such things?”
 

“In the Hyper quarter.” He glanced around the room. “Where's Dana?” Rhani shrugged. She rolled the cylinder between her fingers. The chain stretched. She pretended to take aim. “He's supposed to stay with you!”
 

“Not in the house, Zed-ka.”
 

“Even in the house.” Zed swerved to the wall speaker and said Dana's name into it. Dana answered. “Come upstairs.” Zed swung around. “Have you had a chance to talk to Corrios yet? He needs to know about the bombing. I want this house locked tight.”
 

Rhani felt herself getting annoyed. “I haven't had time to talk to Corrios. I went to Tuli's shop, I bought some sunshades, and I met Charity Diamos crossing the park. I pissed, and showered. That's all I've done.”
 

Zed looked contrite. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to rush you, Rhani. But I'm not going to stop worrying about your safety, especially when you don't seem to want to worry about yourself.” Dana appeared at the door. “I want
you
where Rhani can reach you, even in the house. If that means sleeping on the floor outside her door, you do that. Understand?”
 

“Yes, Zed-ka,” said Dana. He shrank back as Zed walked toward him.
 

Zed said, “I'll talk to Corrios. Then I'm going to the landingport. Those damn moronic porters lost the bag with my ice climbing equipment in it. They did the same thing last year, and it took a week to find it.”
 

He clattered down the stairs. Rhani looked at Dana; his face was white. Her irritation with her brother spurted up again. What did he think he was doing, turning her slaves into zombies? Dana had proved his loyalty by saving her life. “Look at this.” She touched the cylinder hanging over her heart. “Do you know what it is? If I press this button, the other end shoots stun darts. Zed was hunting for it in the Hyper quarter while you and I were listening to Charity Diamos.” She stepped back, aimed, and pretended to press the button. “Pfft. No more Charity.”
 

Dana's look lightened. “That would be no loss.” He lifted the cylinder by the chain. “I've seen such things before.” His fingers brushed her throat. She liked the touch. “I've never seen one of gold.”
 

“Zed probably found the only gold one in Abanat.”
 

When he heard Zed's name, his shoulders hunched.
 

Rhani chose her next sentence carefully. “I enjoyed walking through Abanat with you today.”
 

That brought no reaction. Damn it, she
hated
it when he looked like that. One of the things she valued in him was his free spirit. With him, she had broken her careful rule, never to ask a slave about the past. Even with Tuli she had kept that rule. But it didn't seem to bother Dana to talk about Pellin, or his family. Maybe the ease with which he talked about his past meant he had reconciled himself to his future.
 

“Are you tired?” she said. “Does your head hurt?”
 

“No, Rhani-ka.”
 

Rhani abandoned subtlety. “What's the matter?” she asked.
 

Dana said, “Does Zed really want me to sleep outside your door?”
 

“Oh, Zed.” Rhani made a throw-away sweep of her hands. “He's getting on my nerves. Probably he does. But I don't want you to sleep outside my door. That would be uncomfortable.”
 

Dana bowed his head. His hands knotted together. He said softly, “I will, though.”
 

Rhani's temper flared. “Not if I tell you not to.”
 

“If your brother tells me to, yes, Rhani-ka, I must.”
 

“You forget,” Rhani said icily. “
I own you
.”
 

His yellow-ivory face grew automatonlike. Distantly, he answered, “Yes, Rhani-ka.”
 

Oh no, Rhani thought, suddenly ashamed, I didn't want this. Her ill temper vanished. She laid a hand on Dana's forearm. “I'm sorry. That was ill-mannered of me. I know what an intolerable position you are in. You will not have to sleep outside my door. Don't worry about it. I'll speak to Zed.”
 

The rigidity of his muscles lessened. She was inordinately pleased that he did not flinch from her touch. He needed to be distracted. She beckoned him to the tall bedroom windows, holding the curtain aside. “Look.”
 

The windows looked west, at the turquoise ocean and at the shining bulk of the Abanat icebergs. They gleamed like crystal mountains in the sun.
 

Rhani felt Dana's tension leave him, as perceptibly as if the room temperature suddenly dropped. His hands lifted; his lips parted. He swayed toward the window in a graceful, unconscious gesture of flight.
 

He was not looking at the city, or at the sea, or at the ice.
 

He stared up, into the untrammeled depths of Chabad's sky.
 

Dana Ikoro slept badly that night.
 

He dreamed of Pellin, and then, a nightmare from which he woke crying, he dreamed about the Net. He had been on Chabad long enough to attune himself to its cycles, and his sense of temporal orientation told him that it was just after midnight. He turned the light on to drive the shadows from his mind. He felt restless, and also desperately tired. His body, less easy to discipline, was rebelling against the stern control he had put on his conscious mind: to wait, to watch, and above all not to fight. The luck would turn his way. A chance would come.
 

A hundred desperate schemes ran through his mind: to steal a bubble, to hide away on a shuttleship, to somehow get to
Zipper
. He told himself that every slave on Chabad had such thoughts. He turned off the light.
 

At breakfast, Amri, happily chattering, mentioned that Zed was not in the house. “He went back to the landingport to find that bag the porters lost.”
 

Good, Dana thought. I hope it takes them hours to find it. It seemed to him that whole household breathed more easily when Zed was out of the house. He did. He could deal with Rhani; saving her life had earned him her trust. But Zed—he shivered inwardly. He knew damn well that Zed did not trust him.
 

He knew that Zed was right.
 

Amri stared at him, troubled by his sudden silence. He grinned and crossed his eyes. Amri laughed. He took another piece of fruit from the bowl. Suddenly, he had an appetite. Corrios came into the kitchen from the hall, his big hands filled with paper. “Mail,” he said. He gestured upwards with a jerk of his thumb.
 

“I'll take it,” Dana said.
 

Approaching her room, he heard Rhani talking to Binkie. She sounded out of sorts. He knocked and stepped into the bedroom. Rhani was pacing the length of the space. She turned to glare at him. “Mail, Rhani-ka.”
 

She riffled through it. “More party invitations,” she said with contempt. “All they do in Abanat is go to parties. Do something with this junk.”
 

Binkie took the pile out of her hands. In a noncommittal voice, he said, “There's a letter here from Dur house.”
 

“Let me see it.” She read it swiftly. “Ferris Dur requests permission to call upon me this afternoon. Thank you very much. I suppose I must say yes. Am I supposed to do something else this afternoon?”
 

“The manager of the Yago Bank respectfully asks to see you at your convenience.”
 

“So he can waste time telling me he's making a profit? That's what I employ him for, to make a profit.” Binkie said nothing. Rhani sighed. “Ah, well. I will send him a personal note fixing a time.” She went to her desk. “And I should write to Ferris. There is paper here but no pen. Binkie, give me something with which I can write!”
 

Binkie handed her a pen. She scribbled two letters, and sealed them with a blue stamp bearing the Yago “Y.” Suddenly she glanced at Dana, and smiled a rueful, deprecating smile. “I have the disposition of a kerit today. Binkie has been listening to me all morning. It's Abanat. I hate Abanat. I miss my garden.” The printer whirred: the same soft sound as in her bedroom at the estate: a soothing noise. “I hope you slept better than I did. Have you been outside the house?”
 

“Not since yesterday, Rhani-ka.”
 

“How are you going to escort me around a city you don't know anything about?”
 

This seemed to have no answer.
 

“What have you been doing this morning?”
 

“I ate breakfast, Rhani-ka.”
 

She gazed at him, her head cocked a fraction to one side. “And now what will you do? Make beds?” She rubbed her chin. In a softer voice she said, “Binkie, let me have copies of the last four bank reports.”
 

“Yes, Rhani-ka.”
 

“And when you have done that, go outside. Take Dana with you. Show him how to use the city maps, and then you may separate to deliver these notes. Take your time. You work very hard, and you don't get holidays, or time to be alone, very much.”
 

Binkie said, “Thank you, Rhani-ka.” His tone was even, but his face blazed with joy. As he leaned over the computer keyboard, his hands shook.
 

Dana pictured Zed returning to find Rhani alone, her bodyguard out. “Rhani-ka, perhaps I should—”
 

“Perhaps you should both do as you are told,” she said. Binkie handed her a stack of records. “Thank you, Bink. I have work to do, if you don't mind.” It was clearly a dismissal. Dana shrugged, and walked out. He waited for Binkie to join him in the hall.
 

Downstairs, he remembered to pluck his sunshades from their hook. Corrios let them out. Heat rose from the pavement as he followed Binkie around the fenced-in park. The air was clean, dry, motionless, and very hot. Abanat streets were closed to all but foot traffic and the occasional emergency truck; travelers in a hurry rode the movalongs, which glided at the standard pace of ten kilometers per hour. The movalongs were jammed with gossamer-robed tourists. Morning was market time in Abanat.
 

A block away from Founders' Green, Binkie stopped. The black sunshades against his pale skin made him appear to be wearing a mask. He handed Dana one of the letters. “That one's for the bank,” he said. “It's about six blocks from here, the other side of the Boulevard.” He pointed to what looked like a bas-relief sculpture set into a piece of wall. A stylus swung beside it from a chain. “I'll show you how to get there.” He picked up the stylus. Dana recognized a pressure-sensitive map. “We're here. That's the Yago house on the other side of the park. The city is divided into quadrants by its two main streets: the north-south street, the Promenade, and this east-west street, the Boulevard. The ocean's west. Auction Place is in the center of the city, where the avenues cross.”
 

“The bank is—”
 

“There.”
 

“What's that square in the northwest quadrant?” Dana asked.
 

“Main Landingport.”
 

“I've got it. Thanks.” Binkie disappeared without a backward look into a gaggle of tourists. Dana looked in the other direction. Where Binkie went was his own business. He was not going to pry into anyone else's privacy, even in thought.
 

He went to the bank. The building was cool and filled with machines. People shuffled through it; it echoed, like a vault. The pressure-sensitive maps were all over the city; there seemed to be one on every wall. It would be hard for a child to get lost in Abanat. He delivered the note. Taskless, he went out into the crowded street.
 

Perhaps the luck had turned; fickle fortune smiling at him, radiant and deadly as Chabad's sun, mocking him with this sudden and revocable gift of freedom. He glanced around the street. No one was looking at him.
"Take your time,"
Rhani had said. He straightened his spine and lifted his head. He was a slave on an errand.