Code of Conduct (34 page)

Jani pushed her plate aside. The little she had eaten froze in her stomach. “Tsecha?”

Montoya nodded. “He drove us here. In an Exterior skimmer Pascal took great pleasure in telling us the ambassador had stolen. He wore eyefilms. Makeup. And an evening suit. Pascal treated this like it was the most normal thing in the world. Steve and his bundle, a young woman named Angevin, blinked perhaps twice, then piled you into the backseat of the ambassador's skimmer and shouted for me to, and I quote, ‘hurry the fuck up.'” He sighed. “So I did.”

He knows I'm alive
. Did she ever really doubt he'd discover the fact? What had he told her on the Academy steps, when she handed him back his ring and told him she had every intention of remaining human until she died.

You will never die, nìa
.

“Well,” she said.

“Indeed.” Montoya nodded absently. “Tsecha is a proponent of what he calls evading. He evaded us down side streets and alleys I never knew existed, and I've lived here all my life. We took corners at complete verticals. I yelled that if he didn't slow down, I was going to tear his head off. I couldn't keep you still enough to intubate you. Time was running out. Your throat was swelling shut. The shockpack alarm was blaring.”

Jani eyed the entry.
He wouldn't come here, would he
? Risk his Temple's wrath and the Commonwealth's anger by calling upon a murderer.
Of course he would—he thinks killing is just something I do
. Part of the job description. Eyes and Ears…destroyer of diplomatic relations…toxin….

Montoya rattled on, a captive in his own recollective jet stream. “He just smiled, if you can call what he does a smile, and told me, ‘Ah, Doctor, you know my Captain will outlive us all.' I commented that that could be by a grand total of five seconds if we slammed into the side of a building. He then slowed down just long enough for me to reinsert and anchor the endotracheal tube.” He bit his well-buffed finger
nails one at a time. Just a nip here and there, an old broken habit undergoing spontaneous reassembly.

“So you were getting air. Thank God. We were being pursued, you know, until Tsecha started
evading
. The lieutenant had drawn his shooter, and the ambassador…he was armed, as well. A shooter in a chest holster. Knives up both sleeves.”

Jani's throat felt dry and tight. “He would have used them, too.” She stole a sip of water from Montoya's glass. “Idomeni martial order broke down after Knevçet Shèràa. Self-protection became the order of the day, even for those who had never had to think about it before. Nema always adapted quickly to change.”

“Nema?” Montoya's eyebrows arched. “Oh, Tsecha's born name.”

“He changed it after the war ended. Then he went into seclusion in his Temple enclave for five of our years.” Jani's gaze kept veering toward the cafeteria entry. “And with all they knew about his beliefs, they still let him out of his cage.”

Montoya nodded. “I've heard about those beliefs. That someday, the human and idomeni races will be as one.” He played with his fork. “Did you feel the same way when you studied with him? Did you buy what he sold the way Hansen Wyle did?”

The sudden sharpening of Calvin Montoya's voice didn't surprise Jani. Anyone who had won John Shroud's confidence couldn't have been as ingenuous as he first appeared. “Hansen believed. But I think he enjoyed the thrill of it all, too. He liked flipping it off in people's faces.”

“He died in an air raid a few hours before he was going to try to negotiate you away from my boss.” Montoya smoothed away a ragged nail edge. “Seems to me our alien ambassador isn't the only one capable of making associates ignore their better judgment.” He eyed her pointedly. “Let's get out of here,” he said, gesturing toward a fluted paper cup nestled beside her soup bowl. “Take those. Chew and swallow them.”

“Why?” Jani sniffed the dark brown tablets. They smelled like chocolate fudge made with sour cream. “What are they?”

“Enzyme tablets. They'll help you digest your food.”

“What's wrong with my digestion?”

“It needs help.”

“Why?”

“There's no time, Jani. Just trust that it's for your own good.”

“I've heard that before.” Jani chewed dutifully, chasing the bitter, gritty mass down with a swallow of water. “John's favorite line. Whatever happened next either hurt like hell or made me sick.” The increased sensation in her left leg still jarred her, and she half walked, half hopped as she followed Montoya out of the dining hall.

It didn't surprise her that Lucien Pascal waited for them near the nurses' station, or that he carried her duffel as though he owned it. He looked tired; thin lines of scabs dotted one cheek. He offered her a cool nod, then turned to Montoya. “Think she's up to it?”

Montoya's nails again found their way to his mouth. “No. But it would be no next week as well. No right into next month, but we don't have the time, do we?” Muttering curses in Earthbound Spanish, Montoya ducked behind the nurses' station.

“You're not ready,” he said as he emerged carrying a small polyfilm bag. “There's too much that needs to be talked about. Too much left up in the air. But I've been ordered to let you go anyway.” He thrust the bag into Jani's hands. “The directions are in with the tablets. When you run out, stop at any facility. You have nothing to worry about, Jani. You're being seen to. If you don't trust anything I've told you, trust that.” He squeezed her hand, glared at Lucien, then strode down the hall without a backward glance.

Jani turned to Lucien. “What's going on?”

He pantomimed an explosion. “All hell's broken loose.” He gestured for her to follow and walked to a side door labeled,
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY
. “We need to get you through as many GateWays as possible as soon as possible,” he said as he ushered her though the door. “But before that, there's someone who wants to see you.”

“Where are you taking me?” Jani lagged behind Lucien as he led her through the garage. She swore under her breath as she searched for an escape route.

“My skim's charging. I'm just behind that,” he said as he pointed to the silver-and-purple ambulance that jutted through a low arch like a metallic tongue. “I hope to hell I can pull around.”

“
Where are you taking me
!” Jani's voice bounced off the cement walls. Her eyes teared freely, both junctions ached, the drying skin of her right arm tingled and itched, and Dr. Montoya's enzyme tablets had left a sickening metallic taste in her mouth. Oh, and there was the fear. Fear did wonders in countering take-down malaise. Jani planted in the middle of the garage, her hands curled into fists. “I'm not budging until you tell me where we're going.”

Lucien turned back to her, his handsome face a study in angel innocence, his hand resting possessively on her duffel. “We're going over there,” he said.

Jani squinted in the direction he pointed, trying to pick out details in the dark. A battered sedan nestled in a charge station, but the flow monitor atop the station's housing shone blue, indicating the vehicle's cell array was already fully charged.

Dark red. The vehicle's color was dark red. An old Exterior skimmer. Jani's stomach roiled as the driver's side gullwing popped up.

“I tried to talk him into stepping up to a better class of
vehicle,” Lucien said, “but he seems to have taken a shine to that old wreck, color and all.”

Nema emerged from the vehicle like poured syrup and stepped into the light. He had left his humanish evening suit behind, opting for the Vynshàrau clothing of an elder male of his skein and station. Full-sleeved, off-white shirt tucked into loose, light brown trousers. Dark brown knee-high boots. Wide bands of scarlet hemmed the edges of his cream overrobe. His thin, silver brown hair had been gathered into a single braid and looped like an oversize earring on the right side of his head.

“My Captain,” he said in English, his High Vynshàrau accent softening the hard sounds. “I thought I would need Albino John's help to identify you, but to my joy I find you most as yourself. Glories of the day to you.” He bared his teeth fully, an expression of highest regard. His bony face seemed to split, gold eyes opening wide. Grim Death with a Deal for You.

“NìRau ti nìRau.” Jani stood up straight despite the stinging pain in her thigh junction and crossed her left arm over her chest, palm twisted outward. She tilted her head to the left. Nodded once. Thank God for the mechanics. If you could concentrate on the mechanics, you could block out everything else. She glanced to the side and saw Lucien watching her like an anthro student on his first field trip. “Push off,” she said.

“I don't think so.”

“Go, Lucien,” Nema said. “I wish it as well.”

“No, nìRau. I have my orders.”

“Which were to guard. So guard out there.” He gestured sharply toward the garage's entrance. “There is no need for guards here.” He looked Jani in the eye and bared his teeth again. “My nìa and I are most safe with one another, and together, we win against all.”

Lucien took a step in Nema's direction, ready to argue. But when Nema refused to look at him, he turned on his heel and strode out of the garage.

Jani waited until the echo of his footsteps died away. “You've hurt his feelings,” she said in semiformal High Vynshàrau, etching fluid symbols in her air with her right
hand. Her gestures accentuated the humiliation of a suborn cruelly mistreated by his dominant. “He is new to the ways of Vynshàrau, and he is not predictable. He might do something to hurt you in return.”

“Perhaps,” Nema replied, the angle of his head implying tentative agreement, “but then he will find I am not so predictable as well.” He shook his head, humanish urgency leaching into his speech and gestures. “There is no time for him. Ulanova searches for you, nìa! She knows you are here in this damned cold city!”

“She wants to see me court-martialed that badly?” Jani glanced toward the garage entrance. She trusted Lucien. In this particular instance. Really. She just wished she'd had the presence of mind to ask him for her duffel.

Nema flicked his left hand in affirmation. “Eventually, I am most sure. My injured Lucien believes she first would force you to testify in Cabinet Court against van Reuter. The trial would be broadcast throughout the Commonwealth. Such a triumph for my Anais.” His brow wrinkled in bafflement. “She hates van Reuter so. Lucien tried to explain it to me, but I could not understand. Things to do with business and your ways of marriage, among so many other stupid things. Such ridiculous disorder, inappropriate for dominants of their levels, and truly.” He sighed. “So much I do not understand, and no one is to be left to me to explain.” He looked Jani in the face and his posture grew somber. “Step closer to me, nìa, so I can see you.”

Jani edged nearer, fighting down the urge to bolt back inside the hospital. When Nema grasped her chin and tilted it upward, her eyes stung and her throat ached.

“You have not changed, nìa.”

“I look completely different to humanish.”

“Humanish only look at the face. I see the gestures and hear the voice of one who is most as she was.” Nema's amber eyes glittered like molten metal as he studied her. “I would have spoken with you in your hospital, after your damned transport explosion, but John would not let me. He hid you away, when I could have sheltered you better. He behaved in a most stupid manner.”

“He had his reasons, nìRau.”

“Yes, stupid humanish reasons. Did you choose him freely?”

“Yes. No.” Jani pulled Nema's hand away from her chin. “I thought he'd turn me over to the military police if I didn't. By the time I realized he never would have done that, it was too late. The Haárin had entered the city, the humanish were fleeing—”

“And he, your physician, did not see you safe!”

“I never gave him the chance, nìRau.”

Nema took a step back from her, touching the side of his face in a way Jani couldn't interpret. For the first time she could recall, her teacher appeared at a loss for words. “You must go soon,” he finally said in English, his speech stripped of gesture. “Lucien has found a ship which will take you as far as Felix. I do not know how he found it. He tried to explain it to me, but I could not understand! It is not as it was with you. My Eyes and Ears. When you saw and heard, it was as if I myself saw and heard.”

“You had Hansen.”

“Hansen was Hansen. He taught me games—he was not you. And now I have found you after so much time, and you must run again.”

Jani took a deep breath. “I killed, nìRau.”

“Yes.” Nema tucked his hands into his sleeves. “You killed. In that way, as well, you are most as you were.”

“I did what I did.”

“Yes, nìa. We all do what we do.”

She stared into her teacher's eyes, felt adrift in a sea of gold. “I'd do it again.”

“Yes. Your own did not know you for what you are. The Laumrau believed your own, and see how they paid.” Nema's attitude grew distant, as though he questioned her for an exam. “You have recovered from your injuries most rapidly, I understand?”

Jani nodded, addled by his presence and the abrupt change in subject. “Yes, nìRau?”

“Your Dr. Mon-toy-a, he is confused. Albino John is not so confused, I think.”

“I wouldn't know, but—”

“And you, nìa, are not confused at all.”

“We're not at Academy anymore, nìRau. We don't have time for philosophies.”

Tsecha gestured sadly. “No, you are most right, nìa. The time for philosophies has passed us both.” He fell silent, staring at her impassively. Then he pulled his hand from his sleeve. Held the closed fist out to her. Opened it. “Now is the time for realities.”

Her Academy ring rested within. The jasperite glinted like the eye of a night creature.

“
Inshah
,” Jani said, addressing Nema with the informal High word for teacher, “you're wrong.”

“Wrong?” Nema's brow wrinkled as he considered the concept.

“I'm not the one you want. Hansen would have been, maybe, but not me. I'm too disorderly.”

Tsecha nodded, gesturing in strong affirmation. “You are toxin, Captain. You bring pain and change. Such is your way. You know no other.” He reached for her right hand and placed the ring on her third finger. It was still too small—metal scraped over skin as he forced it into place. “Still some time yet, I think. But soon. Soon.”

“I'm not your heir, nìRau. You've made a mistake.” Jani sensed motion out of the corner of her eye and turned to find Lucien standing in the garage entry. He tapped his timepiece. “I have to go,” she said.

Nema looked at Lucien and sighed. “Yes.” He turned back to Jani and stood straighter. “But someday, when you have not killed for a time, you will come back to me. Then we can argue your suitability.” His lips curved. It wasn't an idomeni expression of goodwill—he didn't bare his teeth a millimeter, or even cock his head. It was a humanish smile, the smile of someone who knew better. “
a lète onae vèste, Kièrshi-arauta
,” he said as he gestured farewell to her, left hand extended, palm facing up. A farewell to an equal. Then he slipped back into his skimmer. The vehicle came to life with a smooth hum, then flitted away from its station and out of the garage like a bedraggled bat.

It took Jani a moment to realize she was shaking.

Lucien drew up beside her and handed her her duffel. “He
drives like a maniac,” he said, still smarting from his abrupt dismissal. “Not much for good-byes, either.”

“No,” Jani agreed, “none of the Vynshàrau are. They each live in their own little world. Nema figures if he likes you, you'll come to him again, and if he doesn't, why should he care?” She tried to fluff her pillow-mashed hair, then tugged at her medwhites in distaste. “Trade ya clothes,” she said, eyeing Lucien's warm polywools with envy.

“I've got some for you in the skimmer.” He headed toward his charge slot. “We better get going—your shuttle leaves in an hour.”

Jani fell in quietly behind Lucien, noting with interest that he now drove a stolid blue sedan. “New skim?” she asked, as they drifted sedately into busy late-afternoon traffic.

“It does what it has to. It's also less conspicuous and loaded with antitracking.” Lucien frowned at Jani as he maneuvered between lanes. “Yes, I had to give the other one back to Anais. Happy?” He reached behind her seat. “Here,” he said, tossing a bundle of clothes in her lap.

“Who sideswiped your face?” Jani asked as she pulled a heavy shirt over the medwhite top. Service surplus winterweight fatigues, baggy and dark blue. Her kind of clothes. “Anais or Claire?”

Lucien touched his injured cheek. “None of your business.”

“Be that way. Are we going to O'Hare?”

“No. A private port.” He unsnapped the top of his shooter holster as he eyed the traffic flowing around them.

Jani tugged on her heavy trousers. “How are Steve and Angevin?”

“Forell was locked up for a day and a half. Unfortunately, they found the code. Ange rousted some of her dad's old Academy chums. Your old chums as well, I suppose. They twisted arms. You could hear the sockets pop all down Cabinet Row.”

“I would liked to have seen them before I left.”

“Not an option. I'll tell them good-bye for you.” Without warning, Lucien cut across five lanes of traffic and shot down an exit ramp. Jani took a few deep breaths to slow her heart,
but kept her comments to herself. She knew the difference between reckless and evasive driving.

“Montoya told me you ignored the news,” he said as he maneuvered down a side road. “No mention of Betha. Lyssa's death is still considered an accident.” He paused. “Ridgeway's death has been ruled a suicide.”

“I broke his neck,” Jani said as she pulled off the med-shoes. “Wonder how the medical examiner explained that?”

Lucien shrugged. “It's Chicago. Precedent exists.” He nodded toward the bag, which he'd tossed on the floor at Jani's feet. “Your boots are in your duffel.” He stared at the side of her face until she gave in and looked at him. “I don't know why you should feel bad,” he said. “He would have killed you.”

“It's just post take-down.” Jani stared out the window at the passing scenery. “Look, I do what I have to. It doesn't mean it doesn't affect me.” She took a deep breath and opened her duffel. “Ah shit.” She picked at the ragged-edged remains of her scanproof compartment.

“Sorry about that,” Lucien said. “By the time I got my hands on it, Doyle had already torn it apart. I was able to sweep your room at Private before her people got there, though. Hope I got everything you need.”

Jani thumbed through the bag's contents. Her boots. Two sets of coveralls. Underwear. Scanpack. Tools and parts. Her shooter, fully charged and polished. The tiny soldier saluted her from an inside pocket, where he stood guard over a static pouch containing an ID and cashcards.

She probed deeper. Her hand closed around the holocard. She studied it in the half-light of the cabin, tilted it back and forth. The racers swooped and glided, surfing the wind. She looked at Lucien out of the corner of her eye. Lucien the manipulator, who could always be counted on to keep his head. The frosty operator. The beautiful young man with the dead eyes. And a cheek that had been a scratched mess four days before, but was almost healed now. She touched her own shooter graze, mended to barest visibility. “You gave me this card for a reason. For a while, I thought it was your oblique way of telling me Lyssa was an augie. But that wasn't it, was it? You were letting me know. You're an augie, too.” She
waited until he answered with a scarcely perceptible nod. “When did you have it done?”