Laldasa (46 page)

Ana moved to the door with Kareen Devaki's name on it. She laid her hand on the door handle, then closed her eyes, whispered a prayer and turned the handle, gently. There was no click, no creak, no groan, just silent mechanical obedience. The door opened.

Ana took the luxurious but business-like place at a glance, saw the vicom terminal and the connecting door to what must be Kareen Devaki's private suite. She moved into the room, closing the door behind her. The terminal was active, displaying what appeared to be a tally of the day's receipts. She slid into the chair, a smile beginning to curve her mouth. She recognized the program. Her father and mother used the same software to track their accounts.

It was almost too easy. She hadn't dreamed she'd actually find the system opened to a module of the very program she needed to access. The thought that struck next wiped the vestigial smile from her lips. All this might mean that Devakisa had just left the terminal for only a moment—that she was even now in the next room and had every intention of returning to complete her late-night work.

Ana put her fingers to the keyboard. She exited the accounting module and called up the inventory. It was a continual shock seeing the familiar layout of fields detailing the acquisition and disposal of goods filled with the names and descriptions of human beings. She found Vanam Sanoh easily enough in the database—simply running a search for the girl's name—but, reading the entry, she knew she would not find her in the dalali. Vanam Sanoh had been sold at public auction the day before she had supposedly sent her plea for help.

It was chilling knowledge—that a trap had been deliberately set for her. The mixture of fear and fury made her brain and fingers fly. When a search for “none” in the cree field yielded too many records, Ana added “fair” skin tone to the logic and netted a more manageable group. She eliminated several more on the basis of their descriptions then made a quick cross-check against the list she pulled out of her satchel.

There were still more fair-skinned id-less people in the dalali's database than were accounted for by the list, but Ana couldn't afford the time for a detailed comparison. She looked around, a little frantic, and saw the imager on a nearby table. She keyed the program to scan her list and enter them into a table she could check against the database records ... and all but jumped out of her skin when the machine responded with a low hum.

Her eyes fastened on the door she assumed led to Devaki's private salon. She fully expected it to swing open at any second. She was so intent on it, she almost failed to hear the sly sound that penetrated the door from the outside corridor.

At the exact moment she realized there was someone just outside the office, the imager disgorged its list. She froze for an instant, her hand already reaching for the printout flimsy, her eyes now on the external door. In that instant, the door handle turned.

She grabbed the flimsy from the imager's output tray and flung herself out of the chair. She went toward the door, not away from it, and was barely behind it when it swung open.

Whoever was there didn't move for a moment, but hovered with an uncertainty that Anala felt as a prickling sensation on the side of her face and neck. She tried to swallow the knot in her throat, but the muscles seemed paralyzed. She gave up and settled for taking a deep, silent, shaking breath.

There was a warm crackle of movement from the unseen one; a sliding of fabric on fabric, an intake of breath, a shift forward into the room.

Come in! thought Ana. Just come in and let me slip past you!

He/she did come in—swiftly, suddenly—and closed the door behind. Exposed, Ana recoiled, cold adrenaline pouring through her core. Then she lunged forward, whipped out a hand and grasped a black-clad arm.

“Hadas! What in the name of Ram-ji are you doing?”

He whirled around and half raised an arm in defense. His face showed immediate relief.

“Ana! Thank God!” he whispered. “I thought I'd lost you!”

“No, only your senses. What are you doing?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she shook her head. “Never mind. I know what you're doing.”

“I couldn't let you do this alone.”

“So now no one knows where either of us are.”

“I left a note on my bed. If they think to look for me, they'll find it. Do you have the list?”

Exasperated, Ana took a deep breath and nodded. She patted the satchel. “Right here. Let's get out of here.”

“Why don't we make another copy of it?” Hadas suggested. “I'll take one—you take the other. That way if anything happens to one of us ... ”

She grimaced. “You really take to this skulk and scurry business, don't you?”

He shrugged. “It makes sense, doesn't it?”

Ana nodded. “Keep an ear to the door.” She crossed to the desk and started the imaging process again. The machine responded with its sonorous hum and slid out a second copy of the records. Ana took it, then returned the vicom program to the accounting module, leaving it (she hoped) the way she'd found it.

She moved back to the door and handed Hadas the flimsy.

“Now, we've got to get out of here. Quietly and quickly. We'll go back the way we came. There's another airvan due in about-“—she glanced at her timepiece—“-twenty minutes. That's our ride out.”

“Vanam Sanoh?”

“Already sold at auction. She couldn't have sent that note.”

Hadas nodded, then tilted his head toward the door. “All quiet.”

“Let's go.”

The hall was empty. Ana slid through the door with Hadas right behind. They hurried to the exit, slipped through and started their downward journey. It was still except for the muffled hammering of rhythmic music from the levels below.

They were perhaps halfway between the first and second floor when the door just above them opened and closed. They now shared the stairwell with an unknown someone.

Ana pushed Hadas downward, her eyes raised to the second level landing. He glided gracefully the remaining steps to the first floor. She followed and just saw someone round the corner of the second landing as she slipped around the corner of the first. The footsteps above them moved deliberately and swiftly downward.

Ana shoved open the door to the foyer and pushed Hadas through, following him into the dimly lit interior. It stretched before them in a seemingly endless tunnel of wood paneling and carpet. The backstage storage area was half the length of the building to the right along that tunnel, but at least the tunnel was empty.

“Run,” Ana whispered and gave Hadas a gentle shove. Together they sprinted toward the opposite end of the hall.

Ana heard a shout go up behind them, but ignored it, her eyes on Hadas's back as his greater speed pulled him ahead of her. She was hungering for the black warmth of the storage area when someone stepped out of a doorway into Hadas's path and collided with him.

The man grabbed the Avasan's arms and held him, a scowl building on his broad face. Ana slowed, readying a sassy remark, and glanced back over her shoulder. Three men pursued them up the long foyer. One of them was Ashur Badan.

Barely thinking, Ana launched herself at their roadblock, hitting his elbow and jarring his grip. Hadas moved at the same time, kicking the fellow square in his sturdy shins. He wrenched free and pelted off down the foyer. Ana tried to follow, but found a hand wrapped solidly around one wrist. Terrified and furious, she put her head down and bit the man's forearm as hard as she could. He shrieked and let go, grasping at her shoulder. He caught the rope that hung there instead. Ana let the rope go, slipping out of its coils and twisting away.

Hadas had disappeared and she made a flash decision not to draw their pursuers after him. With Badan's men nearly on her heels, she threw herself through the next open doorway. Three doors confronted her in the semi-darkness. She chose one and catapulted into an unlit room that echoed every breath, every footfall. She was lost in a barrage of harsh, ambient sound.

She ran and collided with hard, cold surfaces, fell and scrambled up and went on. She met maze-like walls that herded her in square coils so that she lost all sense of direction. She could hear her own breathing—loud, rasping. She could hear the sound of feet on the unyielding floor and voices flinging themselves against the chill walls.
 

Someone was very near. She recoiled and staggered along yet another smooth, patterned wall this one studded with painful obstructions. She bumped her shoulder, her breast; bruised her ribs and hands.

Without warning, a spray of freezing water hit her full in the face. She screamed and recoiled and was met by a stinging spray from another direction. She screamed again and ducked out from under it, stumbled and slipped and came down against a wall. The water was beneath her, too, cold as Niraya Hell.

On her knees and soaking wet, she felt along the wall for a way out. Trembling, she didn't dare rise; didn't dare poke her head up out of the black pocket of spray. She put her hands against the tile surface and began to creep along to the left.

Oh, God, should it be to the left?

A prickling ran up her back, colder than the water that lapped around her knees. He was right behind her, standing in the stinging spray and maybe he could even see her there, groveling at the wall like a pilgrim before a shrine. She started to turn and rise and was knocked down again by a blaze of light.

White. White room. White light gleaming and glittering and shining viciously off of every surface—tile and polished chrome. Her eyes watered from the glare. She knew this place, this deadend corner. She'd been here before, stripped naked and cleansed of Avasan soil.

He blocked out the light when he stood over her, and she dared, stupidly, to look up into his face. Anala Nadim experienced, then, for perhaps only the second or third time in her short life, a moment of real fear.

 
Standing in the hall with Hadas's note clutched in his hand, Jaya felt as if his internal organs had been sucked out and put back rearranged. There was a sudden rushing of blood in his ears and through a peculiar tunnel of black mist, he could see everyone frowning at him, waiting for him to say something.

When he didn't say something, Govi shrugged uneasily and said, “I guess I should have given tale before. Didn't know the memsa was liable to craziness.”

“Kena says there's a two-wheeler gone,” said Heli quietly.

Jaya nodded, struggling for decisiveness. “Ravi, call down to the gate station and find out what time she left.”

Jaya carried the note back to his study where Mall Gar pored over his surveillance team's reports of back-alley activity.

Gar got to his feet, eyes intently on Jaya's face. “What has happened?”

Jaya swallowed; it was difficult. “You know I have a second informant. One I was reluctant to reveal to you.”

“Yes, Nathu Rai?”

“Her name is Ana. She's Avasan—dedicated to locating and freeing the Avasan das. She's been secretly keeping track of our research, monitoring our activity.”

He hesitated, then held out the note.

Gar took it, read it, then glanced back at him, his eyes now showing honest concern. “She has gone to the dalali herself? With this young man, Hadas?”

Jaya's reorganized insides twisted. “Apparently so. I suspect she thought we weren't as avid in pursuing the missing Avasans as we were seeking a connection between the dalali trafficking and the Consortium. Or maybe we just weren't moving fast enough for her.”

Gar frowned. “We must move very fast, now,” he murmured. He pulled a palm-sized comlink from his belt and keyed a coded sequence into it. The response from the recipient of the message was immediate. “Voice link,” Gar said to the small unit. “Report, Srestha.”

A male voice answered. “Sir. Everything seems normal at this end. The linen wagon arrived on schedule, unloaded and went on its way. There should be a catering vehicle along in about ... ten minutes.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“No, Commander. Haven't seen any of the couriers tonight, but they're pretty irregular.”

Gar nodded, watching Jaya fidget by the door. “We have reason to believe a couple of young Avasans may try to penetrate the dalali's security in an attempt to rescue some of their compatriots. Don't take your eyes from the back of that building, Srestha. If you see anything that seems at all suspicious, contact me immediately.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Gar broke off the link and stared at the carpet.

“What do we do?” asked Jaya.

“We could raid the dalali now—tonight. But then, if this young woman is successful-“

“If she's successful it won't matter one way or the other. If she gets caught-“

Gar nodded. “Yes. Then, it makes a great deal of difference. You are supposing these people would kill her? Would they not take note of her id and send her home to repent of her mischief?”

Jaya stirred uneasily. “Her id is fictitious. She's wearing a doctored dascree. She has no leaf.”