Coming of Age (24 page)

Sheelah's eyes snapped back up to the detective, guilty surprise plastered across her face. “I don't now what you're talking—”

“Sheelah,” Tirrell cut her off quietly, gesturing at Lisa's bed. “You don't have to look very closely at that blanket to see that
two
people have been sitting on it—and I remember enough of hive housekeeping standards to know Lisa wouldn't have left it like that in the morning. You let her in, sometime in the past half-hour or so, you sat on her bed together and talked, and then she took off looking for a place to hide. True?”

Sheelah's gaze was back on the floor, her throat making swallowing motions. In the silence Gavra stepped forward and sat down on the edge of the girl's bed. “Sheelah, is he right?” she asked gently.

The preteen closed her eyes and drew a shuddering breath, but otherwise remained silent. “Look,” Tirrell said after a moment, “we know you're trying to protect her, but you're only making things worse for both of you. Aiding a fugitive, especially one who's committed assault, could—”

“Lisa didn't hurt that policeman!” Sheelah flared with a sudden fire that took Tirrell by surprise. “It was that other guy—Weylin something.
He
did it.”

“So Lisa
did
come here,” Gavra said, her voice tightening. “Why didn't you—?”

“Wait a second,” Tirrell interrupted. “What makes you think Weylin was involved? He wasn't even in the same room at the time.”

Sheelah's expression was pure puzzlement, without a trace of guile in it. “Yes, he was. He took Lisa there to … look at some things.”

Tirrell stared at the girl for a long second, his brain adjusting to this unexpected revelation. It could be a lie, of course, Lisa trying to cover up what she had done. But the more he thought about it the more sense it made. Weylin had the necessary skill to use a spy-scope, and faking an attack on himself took nothing but determination and chutzpah. Belatedly, now, Hob Paxton's idle comment several weeks back about how Weylin had nagged him into requesting the liaison job took on a new significance. If Weylin had been spying for Jarvis all this time, then it was no wonder the scientist had outmaneuvered them at every turn—and in that case Lisa might simply have been recruited on some pretext for this specific job. If she had no especial loyalty to Jarvis she would make a good witness against him … if she could be found.

Gavra was speaking again. “What was she supposed to look at, Sheelah?”

The preteen shook her head. “I don't know, exactly. This Omega guy who sent her said it had something to do with a child who'd been kidnapped.”

Gavra looked up at Tirrell, startled. But the detective nodded. “No, she's right—I
am
working on a kidnap case. I think Lisa was after our list of the kidnapper's possible locations. How much she got, I don't know.”

“But why would anyone be interested in something like that?” Gavra asked. “It doesn't make any sense.”

“It does if the man who sent her is also the kidnapper,” Tirrell said bluntly.

Sheelah's eyes widened. “You mean … but Lisa said Omega was a
prophet.
”

“Prophet, my foot,” Tirrell growled. “He's a coldblooded kidnapper who thought nothing of snatching a five-year-old boy for—well, never mind.” The detective had no intention of going into the whole story. “The point is, he's just using Lisa to find out how close we are to him. Once she's served her purpose, there's no telling what he'll do to make sure she can't tell us anything about his hideout.”

This time Gavra's eyes went wide, too. “You mean he might …
kill
her?”

“He already faces charges of kidnapping and possibly of suborning a police righthand, depending on what we find out about Weylin,” Tirrell pointed out. “I'd rather get to Lisa before we find out just how far he's prepared to go.”

But Sheelah's face had gone rigid again. “You don't believe me, do you? You still think Lisa hit that policeman, and you're making up this whole thing about Lisa being used just so I'll tell you where she's gone. Well, I won't.”

Clamping his teeth together, Tirrell counted to ten, cursing his loose tongue. Of course he wasn't going to pass final judgment on Weylin on Sheelah's unsupported word, but he hadn't intended for the girl to know that. “Sheelah—”

“No! You don't want to help Lisa, so just go away.” Flopping down onto her back, Sheelah turned sideways to face the wall.

“All right, this has gone far enough,” Gavra said, her voice abruptly hard. “Sheelah, this isn't some kind of game. If there's any chance at all Lisa's in danger, you owe it to her to tell Detective Tirrell everything he wants to know. You'll regret it the rest of your life if something happens to her that you could have helped prevent.”

Sheelah said nothing, but Tirrell could see her body shaking with quiet sobbing under the sheet. Studying the back of her head, he decided that threats against her hive points would probably be a waste of time. “All right, Sheelah,” he sighed. “We'll find her ourselves—and maybe prove Weylin's guilt or innocence in the process.”

“How are you going to do that?” Gavra frowned.

“I'm going to call headquarters and tell them we've picked up Lisa and are bringing her in,” Tirrell told her, watching Sheelah. The preteen was still facing the wall, but her shaking had stopped.
If you can convince her you mean this
—
and can convince
yourself
it'll work
—“I'll tell them that you, Ms. Norward, have told her not to say anything until she's formally charged, and that they should therefore call the hospital and have Weylin come back to the city building to make a positive identification of her.”

“But you don't
have
Lisa.”

“No, but Weylin won't know that—and if Sheelah's version is the truth, he'll know that the minute Lisa starts to talk his little charade will disintegrate. With any luck, when he runs he'll head straight to his boss's hideout.” Tirrell nodded to Sheelah, who had now turned halfway back toward him. “Sheelah, if you can at least tell us which general direction Lisa went, it'll help us pick up Weylin's trail when he takes off.”

Sheelah pursed her lips tightly. “South,” she said at last.

“Thanks.” Tirrell looked back at Gavra. “I noticed a phone at the other end of the hall. Can I get an outside line on it?”

“Yes—just punch one first. Can you find your own way out? I'd like to talk to Sheelah for a moment.”

“No problem. Sheelah, whatever you might feel about it now, you did the right thing to tell us what you did. Thank you.” Nodding once to Gavra, Tirrell left the room, closing the door behind him.

Tonio was hovering in the middle of the hall, his expression reminiscent of an approaching thunderstorm. “That lousy, rotten,
bailing
eater!” he hissed.

“I gather you were listening in,” Tirrell nodded. “Good. You think you'll be able to follow Weylin if he runs for it?
Quietly,
I mean, without being noticed.”

“No problem.” Though his expression said he'd rather teek Weylin into something solid.

“Okay. I want you to get going right away and find a good spot to watch the south side of Mercy Hospital from. Stop by the car first and grab a portacom—the private, not the broad-band; I don't want Weylin listening in if he thought to take a broad-band with him. Weylin or anyone else, for that matter.”

“You're not going to tell the other police what we're doing?”

“Not yet. If Jarvis got to Weylin he might have gotten to one of the others, too, or even to some of the officers. For the moment, it's just going to be you and me on this. If and when Weylin leads us to Jarvis we'll think about how to get some help. Get going; I'll give you a few minutes to get in position before I make my call. I'll head out on the Plat City road when I'm done—give me a call when you've got a clear direction.”

“Right.” Taking off down the hallway, Tonio vanished into the stairwell.

Checking his watch, Tirrell followed more slowly, bypassing the stairs and stopping finally beside the phone fastened chest-high on the wall.
How on Tigris did Jarvis get Weylin in on this?
he wondered, staring at and through the phone.
What could he have promised him in exchange for information? Or was he instead using some kind of blackmail? Or
—and the sudden thought was sobering—
has he come up with a genuinely foolproof method of mind control?
The concept was not as farfetched as most people preferred to think; hypnotic drugs came disturbingly close as it was … and Jarvis
had
presumably kept Colin Brimmer under some kind of control these past two months.

There was a footfall behind him, and Tirrell turned to see Gavra Norward approaching, a piece of paper in her hand. “Something?” he asked.

She held out the paper. “Lisa left a note for me,” she said steadily, watching his face. “I convinced Sheelah you should see it.”

“I know about Lisa,” he nodded, taking the paper. The message was short, its painfully blocky letters done in some kind of soft blue pencil. But the words, if not the meaning, were clear enough:

Gavra i am al rite. I hav gone to see the profit omaga. He and the other kids wil find Daril for me if Waylin and i got wat he wanted us to. Plese dont wory il be al rite i did it to help Daril. Lisa.

“‘Daril'?”

“Daryl Kellerman was the teen who taught her to read,” Gavra explained. “He's just been transferred from Barona to an intro school in Cavendish, but I've been forbidden to tell her where he is, and she's gotten it into her head that something terrible's been done to him.”

“Damn,” Tirrell swore gently. He reread the note, a small feeling of uneasiness nagging at the back of his mind. Who in hell were these other kids Lisa was talking about? Colin and Weylin? Or was something else entirely going on out there?
A fagin operation? Ridiculous
—
world-famous scientists don't become fagins.

“Is something wrong?” Gavra asked, frowning.

Tirrell refocused on her face. “A
lot
is wrong—and I'm not sure anymore I understand all of it,” he growled. “I'd like to keep this, if you don't mind.”

Gavra nodded. “If you think it'll help you find Lisa.” She hesitated. “You know, I think I've persuaded Sheelah to trust you a little. I'd like to think that trust will be honored.”

“Saving one preteen's respect for authority is pretty low on my priorities list right now,” Tirrell said shortly. “I'll see what I can do, but if it turns out Lisa deserves getting the book thrown at her, then that's what's going to happen.”

Surprisingly, Gavra smiled tightly. “‘The book.' Your choice of words is appropriate, Detective.” The smile faded and she nodded. “I understand. Good luck.” Turning, she walked back down the hall toward Sheelah's room.

Probably going to prepare her to expect the worst,
Tirrell decided morosely.
Jarvis, I think I'm starting to hate you.

Checking his watch, he turned back and reached for the phone.

B
Y DAY, THE TESSELLATE
Mountains south of Barona had been as unfamiliar as the buildings of a strange city; but by night, they might just as well have been from another planet. Coasting to a stop for probably the hundredth time since crossing the Nordau River, Lisa gazed out across the shadowy landscape before her, trying to find anything that looked familiar while at the same time fighting down the panic that seemed to have lodged permanently in her throat. The stars blazed brilliantly down from a cloudless sky, and Akkad, the larger of the two moons, was still up, but all of the light seemed to hinder more than it helped. The shadows the moon created were sharp and very dark, confusing the shapes of the mountains and sometimes hiding the smaller peaks completely. The handful of snow-covered mountains were easy enough to identify as such, but except for the slopes nearest her at any given time, Lisa found conetree forests, scrub-weed, and bare rock to be virtually indistinguishable.

Just ahead and a little to her right were a pair of mountains that might be the ones Camila had pointed out to her that morning—yesterday morning, now; it was a good half hour past ten. If they were the right peaks, she remembered, she needed to pass them on the left. If they weren't … well, in that case, she was probably lost already. Swallowing her fear, she picked up speed again.

So intent was she on the landscape ahead that she failed to see the figure angling down toward her from overhead; failed to notice him, in fact, until his soft voice jolted her into a four-meter swerve to the side. “Weylin? That you?” the voice called.

Heart abruptly pounding, Lisa leveled out, rolling in midair to see who it was. “No, it's Lisa Duncan,” she told him, trying to pierce the shadows hiding his face. “Who are you?”

“Senior Acolyte Axel Schu,” he said. “The Prophet sent me out here to watch for you. Where's Weylin?”

“The police almost caught us,” she told him, a wave of relief at having a guide almost covering up her other worries. “I don't know if Weylin got away or not.”

For a moment they flew together in silence. “Well …” Axel said at last. “Did you at least get the stuff the Prophet wanted?”

“I don't know,” Lisa sighed. “I hope so.”

“A little more to the left here,” Axel said as they rounded a craggy peak. “I guess you'll find out soon enough,” he added, pointing to a glistening cone directly in front of them. “That's our mountain. The Prophet's waiting for you.”

“All right,” Lisa said, matching his increase in speed.
The Prophet's waiting.
Somehow, that thought wasn't as comforting as she'd expected it to be.