“Cancel that,” I said. “I’ll bring them here. You describe how I can locate them, with enough detail so my gauntlet EI can make a map. Once I get you all together here, we’ll figure out what to do.”
Her forehead furrowed. “Eh?”
Had I pushed too hard? “You can’t leave my apartment. The city authorities will catch you.”
Singer turned to Jak, who was standing back, listening.
“Bhaaj.” He spoke quietly. “You’re talking in the Cries dialect.”
No! That was unexpected. Usually it worked the other way, that I switched to Undercity speech under pressure. That dialect drilled rocks when it came to expressing emotional complexities, though. Apparently I reverted to Cries speech when I wanted to tackle emotional issues. No wonder it happened so rarely.
Both dialects had their roots in ancient Iotic. Although we could understand each other if we worked at it, I doubted Singer had ever heard Cries speech except last year, when she went to the Rec Center for testing, and they had brought translators that day.
“You stay,” I told Singer. “I get Taz. Baby. Bring here. Figure out what to do.”
She spoke firmly. “I go for them.”
“Can’t leave.” I motioned toward the window. “Cops catch.” It would weaken my ability to negotiate on her behalf if the police picked her up.
“Made it here,” she pointed out.
“Yah. Set off alarms. You go out, they get.”
She motioned around at my apartment. “They come here?”
“Nahya. Majda protects.” One of my conditions for agreeing to live in a tower they owned and monitored was that it remained off limits to the police, including Majda’s private force.
A gleam came into Singer’s gaze. “That mean Majda protect me?”
Actually, it did. “Yah. Safe.” Maybe I’d see a solution to this mess before the Majdas found out I was harboring a Vakaar assassin and demanded to know what the bloody hell I thought I was doing.
“Majda place protect Taz too?” she asked. “Baby?”
“Yah,” I said. “All of them.”
“Good. I tell you where is Taz. You say to no one.” She glanced at Jak. “Your man can know.”
My face heated. Jak wasn’t “my man.” Well, he was, sort of, but we had no promises. I couldn’t look at him, but then for some ill-conceived reason I did look. He was watching me with that dangerous stare, the one where he seemed angry, ready to vanish. When that happened, sometimes I didn’t see him for days.
“So.” Singer walked past me, oblivious to the undercurrents. “Is decided.”
We followed her into the living room. She went to the window-wall and stood looking out. I understood. I often sat for hours bathed in the miraculous light of the sun pouring through the glass.
Jak held out his arm, showing me his leather gauntlet embedded with tech-mech, including his comm. “Royal Flush has a message for you.”
That was odd. His gauntlet EI talked only to him, no one else. Except, apparently, me today.
I spoke into his comm. “Royal, is that you?” Jak had named his EI after the legendary poker hand he had pulled in an illicit game with a high wheeler from Cries. That hand had earned him the credits he used to start the Black Mark.
A deep voice came out of the comm. “My greetings, Major,” Royal said. “One of your Dust Knights is looking for you. The bartender’s oldest daughter.”
“You mean Darjan?”
“Yes. She asked me to relay a message.”
It must be serious if Darjan asked her mother to contact Jak. I was surprised Royal had agreed. “What’s the message?”
“An intruder,” he said.
Damn! Not again. After what happened to Duane, I’d hoped the Majdas wouldn’t send anyone else to the Undercity. “Who? And where?”
“I don’t know who,” Royal said. “The ‘where’ is the Foyer. She is sitting on one of the sawed-off rocks there.”
I let out a breath. It could have been worse. Probably no one would bother her in the Foyer. “Those seats aren’t ‘sawed off,’” I told Royal. “They’re works of art.”
“If you say so.” He sounded just like Jak.
I smiled. “I’m on my way.”
“Good. Be well, Major.” With a click, Royal cut the connection.
“Wonder what that’s about,” Jak said.
I had no idea.
I didn’t walk into the Foyer, announcing my presence. I slipped through spaces in the wall that surrounded the chamber and inched along a hidden path until I reached a tall crack with a view of the cave. A woman sat there on a sawed-off rock exactly as Royal described. She looked innocuous, dressed in simple trousers and shirt, both a light color, what some people called “ivory,” whatever that meant. I watched for a while. Eventually I squeezed through a crack in the wall and entered the Foyer, but out of the woman’s view.
“Eh?” I said.
“Oh!” She turned with a start. “Where did you come from?”
I recognized nothing about her. “Why are you sitting here?”
“I was hoping someone would come,” she said.
“Why?”
She stood up. “I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge.”
“No one in charge.”
“Are you Major Bhaajan?”
“Maybe. Who are you?”
“Ah, my apology.” She smiled with an ease we never saw down here. “I’m Doctor Karal Rajindia.”
Rajindia? What the hell? The Rajindias were another Imperialate noble House, not as powerful as the Majdas and no longer native to Raylicon, but part of the aristocracy. They were best known for providing the military with biomech adepts, the neurological specialists who treated psions.
“Why are you here, Lady?” I asked. “It isn’t safe.”
“Doctor,” she said. “Not Lady.”
“You’re not a noblewoman?”
“I am. But I prefer to be known as a doctor. Pharaoh Dyhianna requested I come.”
This was certainly different from the last time the pharaoh sent someone here. Of all the ways this doctor could have approached my people, she had used what might be the only viable method, staying here in the Foyer, away from the true Undercity, but enough in our territory to draw notice, all the time waiting patiently until a potential guide showed up.
“Why did the pharaoh want you to come here?” I asked.
“To treat your people. She said you asked for her help.”
With all that had happened in the past day, I had forgotten my request to the pharaoh, that she help the Down-deepers. It seemed ages since we had talked in the temple, when I was recovering from my climb out of the Down-deep, but it had been less than a full Raylicon day.
I spoke awkwardly. “My people can’t pay you, Lad—Doctor Rajindia.”
“Pay me?” She seemed puzzled. “Why would they pay me?”
“Don’t you charge for your services?”
“I’m on retainer to the Ruby Dynasty. I work for them.”
Good gods. If Dyhianna Selei had sent us one of her personal physicians, this woman was among the best doctors in the Imperialate, one who specialized in treating psions. I had no idea how to answer. No, that wasn’t true. I knew what I had to say, as much as I didn’t want to. “My people won’t take charity.” They would let their hard-headed pride kill them rather than accept handouts.
“I’m not interested in charity work,” she said. “I offer a bargain.”
Ho! The pharaoh learned fast. This doctor should have said “proposal,” not “bargain,” since we hadn’t made one yet, but who cared. It was close enough. “What’s your proposal?” I asked.
“I will treat your people,” she said. “In return, they will let us do more Kyle testing.”
“Why do you need more tests?” It didn’t take many to determine if a person had the DNA. After that, what was left? You didn’t have to verify it twice. Then again, my army tests must have shown I had the DNA, and I hadn’t man
ifested any traits for most of my life.
“We would like to see how your people use their abilities,” the doctor said.
“I doubt they do much.” I thought of Singer. “It can be a nightmare.”
“The tests are harmless,” Rajindia assured me. “For example, I might ask a child if she can raise a barrier in her mind to mute the emotions she picks up from other people.”
“She wouldn’t even know what you meant.”
“I’d explain. If they have trouble with it, I can bring some reading material for them.”
Did she have no clue at all? I spoke stiffly. “Most of my people can’t read.”
“I can help.” She paused. “As can those who keep the Code of your tykado teams.”
What the blazes? “How do you know about the Code?”
“Some of the young people in Cries talk about it.”
Okay, I knew that. Last year a Cries boy had asked me if he could join the Dust Knights. He had heard about them after his cousin’s brother’s girlfriend or whatever, some kid who snuck into the aqueducts. Even so. Hearing this stranger say the name unsettled me. The Dust Knights were purely Undercity. I didn’t want Cries to interfere with what we were doing.
“The Code is private,” I said. “Not above-city.”
“Yes,” she said. “My offer of a bargain is only for the Undercity.”
And then I finally understood. She didn’t want to “test” us at all. She offered an education in disguise. My people hated the condescending charity Cries had tried to extend since they realized we had something they wanted. This doctor wanted to teach my people to use their abilities, yes, but she offered to do it our way, under the guise of a bargain, while tending to our health and supporting my efforts to promote literacy.
“Did you think of this bargain?” I asked. It seemed unlikely. I doubted she even came from this world; the Rajindias lived on some other planet, I didn’t remember where.
“Pharaoh Dyhianna suggested it,” the doctor said.
She’s brilliant, I thought. Aloud, I said, “I don’t know. It might work.”
“We can start today if you wish.”
“Too soon.” If we tried her bargain, it would take time to introduce to the Undercity. I wanted to see how she interacted with my people first, and I wanted her to stay alive in the process. “If you go into the aqueducts, you’ll need an escort.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” In my youth, when the archeologist named Orin from the university in Cries had given me sweet bars in return for my showing him the ruins, I had convinced my dust gang to protect him when he came here, pottering about his digs. We would need similar for this doctor.
“Maybe,” I said, “the Dust Knights could look after you.”
“Something is wrong,” Ruzik said. “Very wrong.”
We stood together on the midwalk at Lizard Trap. The children in his circle were down in the canal, laughing and kicking up dirt as they chased one another. They avoided the dust statues, never damaging those symbols Ruzik used to mark their territory. The rest of his gang patrolled the canal. Only Angel had told me her name; I didn’t know what to call Ruzik’s brother or the other woman. No matter. They would tell me if they decided they wanted me to know.
A man and woman, both cyber-riders, were seated a ways down the midwalk, cooking dinner for everyone on a stove cannibalized from a Cries salvage dump. The savory aroma of roasted lizard meat reminded me I hadn’t eaten. Across the canal, on the other midwalk, three teens stood together, singing. They improvised a melody with no words, just sounds. The trio harmonized, modulating the melody, always in a minor key. Their music echoed in the canal with a natural resonance. It was no wonder we sang so much in the Undercity, for the ruins reflected and amplified the music with amazing acoustics. Their song reminded me of a Skolian opus called “Harmonics of Loss,” a haunting piece composed in a time before my people knew Earth existed as more than a legend. It mourned the loss of our home world, and I heard the same pain this music. The ever-changing melodies of the Undercity created the most painfully beautiful music I knew. We wept with our songs.
I didn’t, however, understand what Ruzik was telling me. “What’s wrong?”
“Aqueducts,” he said. “Canals. Tunnels. Small places. Large places. Down-deep.”
“Wrong how?”
He made a frustrated sound. “Dark.”
“In the dark?” That included most of the Undercity.
“Nahya.” He paced away, then swung around and stalked back to me. “The aqueducts.”
I motioned around the canal. “Like this?”
“Nahya!” He hit the wall. “Wrong!”
I tried another tack. “What does this wrongness do?”
“Kill.”
Maybe he meant Calaj. “Jagernaut?”
“Nahya. Aqueducts.”
I still didn’t get it. “Aqueducts evil?”
“Yah.”
“Aqueducts are rock.” I shrugged. “Not good, not bad. Just rock.”
“Inside the rock.”
“Rock is inside rock.”
He glared at me, then pointed at my head. “Rock inside there.”
Ha, ha. Very funny. “How can rock kill?” Maybe he meant the canals were unstable. “Collapse? Ceiling fall? Walls?”
“Not that way.” He bounced on the balls of his feet as if he were in a tykado match, preparing to fight. “Something is wrong. Don’t know how to say.”
“Show, maybe?”
He considered me for a glowering moment, as if I had asked some highly personal question that was none of my business. Well, tough. He was the one who had sent one of his duster kids to bring me here. I had been on my way to get Singer’s family when the youth showed up to deliver Ruzik’s message: Come with.
Ruzik spun around and strode down the midwalk to where the riders were cooking dinner. When the man offered him a skewer of braised meat, Ruzik shook his head. After he conferred with them, the woman tapped the implants on her arm, and they glittered, gold then green. She was contacting someone, though who or why I had no clue.
Ruzik motioned to Angel, and she jogged over, sending up clouds of dust. She stopped under him. “Eh?”
He knelt on the edge of the midwalk. “Take watch. I go.”
“Where?”
“With Bhaaj. Back later.”
Angel nodded. “We’ll protect.”
“Good.” He jumped to his feet and strode back to me, “Come with.”
I took off with him, going to search for the darkness.
XII
Detector
Hack wanted us to leave.
I had never seen his cyber den before, and he left no doubt that he had wanted it to stay that way. He didn’t look surprised to see us, though; Ruzik’s cyber-riders must have warned him. He let me enter the den with Ruzik, but his glare could have incinerated stone.
We walked into wonderland. Columns formed by joined stalactites and stalagmites supported the ceiling. Tech-mech covered every wall, alive with lights that flickered and flashed. Crystal deposits shimmered on the ceiling and even the splint on my wrist reflected the light. Equipment glinted everywhere, engines, flyers, filters, cycles, goggles, prosthetics, and hundreds of other bits. Screens covered one wall, all showing real-time views of Cries, from plazas to skyscrapers to private homes. Holos rotated in the air above a film on a stump of rock, a broadcast about some singer who fell off the stage during her performance. Hack had never left the Undercity, but he knew the above world in all its myriad moods, seeing it with a hundred eyes, invisible to the world he watched. Today he stood in the middle of his realm, large and rangy, glowering as we invaded his sanctum.
I motioned to his cave. “Good den.”
He nodded, accepting the praise. After that, he looked infinitesimally less belligerent.
Ruzik conferred with him in low tones. When Hack beckoned to me, I followed them across the den, stepping around a filtration system withou
t a spout. The scent of machine oil tickled my nose. He kept his den unusually quiet; I barely heard even the thrum of a generator. It wouldn’t surprise me if he could turn this all off in seconds, dousing the lights, sounds, and signals until his lair vanished. Our path here had taken us through a labyrinth of tunnels deep within the aqueducts. To find his hideaway, you already had to know the way.
Hack took us through a natural archway lined with glowing fiberoptic cords. We entered a smaller cave with one piece of equipment dominating the cramped area.
The stolen guns.
Damn. Hack had taken apart the pulse rifles, cannibalizing their power sources, targeting devices, and EM systems. What he built from them still had the shape of the gun, but one so encrusted with tech-mech, I doubted it could shoot bullets anymore.
I managed to keep my anger to a low boil. “You call this ‘no guns’?”
“Not guns.” Hack even said it with a straight face.
I crossed my arms. “Was a gun.”
“No more,” Ruzik said.
Great. Just great. My tykado team, the ones ready to compete in the first ever athletic meet between the Cries and the Undercity—my ambassadors to a new future—had just shown me their unlawful possession of stolen military firearms.
I scowled at Hack. “What does it do?”
“Probe Undercity.” He laid his hand on the targeting cylinders, which he had enhanced with lasers, a viewing monitor, and what I could have sworn was a music amplifier. It all sat on a mount that resembled a larger version of the shroud in my backpack. “Probe the wrongness.”
“Wrongness?” I had to find a way into this opaque explanation of theirs. “Is that alive?”
Hack looked at Ruzik. Ruzik looked at him. They looked at me. It was like those stories about humans who destroy an AI by asking it logically impossible questions, as if you could actually find an AI dumb enough to fall for that trick. Hack and Ruzik weren’t AIs, they were two very human dusters who apparently had no idea how to answer me.
I tried again. “What the probe finds—not a bio-bot?” It was slang the kids used to mean human.