Mainline (47 page)

They could always come back to the importers later. "Get moving," he ordered Mikos. "We're right behind you."

Callis nudged the
yoke leftward, turning his skiff into the incoming traffic pattern in Amasl's inner harbor. The hand on the controls was steady enough, though his free hand, raised to wipe his furrowed brow, trembled in passage to its destination.

Yavobo noted the fisherman's sidelong glance, a fruitless effort to spy out the Aztrakhani where he lurked in the rear of the skiff's long cabin. "A simple run, Captain," Yavobo told the man, watching him start at the unexpected voice of his passenger. "Stick to your routine, and all will be well."

Callis turned his weather-lined face forward, toward Lairdome 5. He had no choice in the matter. Toughs with green-glowing cybereyes sat with his wife, surety for his cooperation. Yavobo had invited himself aboard, then busied himself with the reserve fuel pods before the fisherman was allowed on the deck of his own boat.

Fear for his wife didn't interfere with the man's ability to pilot. It was just as well, for deviation from the course to Comax Shipping would have earned his death. Yavobo was prepared for that contingency, as for many others, and his unwilling pilot sensed it. The skiff continued true, inbound for Lish's warehouse stronghold.

Reva led the way back into the Lairdome, walking boldly past Skiffjammer checkpoints. There was no sign of the smuggler, though mechos outside her office were readying cryocases for outshipment. Reva glanced at her companion meaningfully, glad to avoid confrontation with this unsympathetic version of the Holdout. They moved quickly down the long hall and back to the room they had left earlier.

"So far, so good," Kastlin breathed, locking the door behind them. He was used to sneaking around in an altered state, blind-spotting or sideslipping, not brazening it out in broad daylight.

Reva gave him a half-smile. "Now for the fun part. Let's see how good you are with your dimensional sense of direction, Fixer."

She sat in a chair; he sat opposite her on the bed. They clasped hands. "Do this right, Kastlin," she breathed, "or I'm going to be very disappointed in you."

Vask exhaled sharply, almost a snort. "Encouraging words."

"Fuck encouragement." Her hazel eyes held his; she was biting her red-painted lip. "I'm praying you can do this. And I don't pray."

He nodded understanding and gave her hands a squeeze. The return pressure of her fingers nearly made him wince. Then they relaxed their grip, and sat, breathing in a well-known rhythm, muscles relaxing as they altered the pulse and energy frequencies of their bodies.

Their forms shifted, blurred, then faded swiftly from sight.

"Incoming, grid C-3, bearing 293 degrees," Zay read her headsup display in a bored monotone to her second. "What's it squawking?"

"Callis, from Avelar," Novic answered. "His weekly run. A little late, today."

The battered green hydroskiff cleared the channel buoy and headed for the water-side ramp of Lairdome 5. Zay swam leisurely out to the edge of the submerged sensor cones, to meet and pace the skiff back to the ramp.

Since yesterday's attempt on the smuggler's life in the water-park, the 'Jammers had been on alert. They'd doubled up on guards at all security checkpoints. The underwater team now numbered four; two on the loading ramp, two on the sensor boundary. They traded off every hour.

It was nearing time for that trade-off again. "We'll follow Callis in to the ramp," Zay told her team, "and relieve you at the dock."

Acknowledgment came, bored ayes to a routine procedure. Zay glanced at the vessel's path in the HUD band of her faceplate, and swam to intercept the approaching fisherman.

"You have things
that are not yours," Karuu confronted his prisoner inside Riggo's bait shack. "If you are telling me about these, now, you can come out of this alive."

Riggo stood to one side, eyes flicking from the Holdout he knew as Okorr to the Islander he'd reluctantly sheltered. Daribi looked pale beneath the shed's skylight, pink scars gleaming against the hairless skin of head and chest. The Islander glared at Ins former employer, belligerence and capitulation warring in his expression.

"I was keeping your stuff safe," he finally said. "Lish was Ncooping up whatever the Bugs overlooked. I tried to salvage what I could."

Riggo knew about the streetwar; he knew who Daribi had worked for. He suddenly realized who his boss must be, and regarded him with widened eyes.

"You are keeping silent about what you hear," Karuu spared him an aside, "or you are taking it to your resting place with you. Understood?"

"I'm deaf, Boss," Riggo hurriedly assured him.

"Good. Daribi here is deaf, too, I am thinking." He gestured with the sting, still grasped and tugging in his doubled hands. "I am not asking
why
you stole, you piece of beldy shit. I want my goods back. Where are they?"

The Islander blanched, but he had no stomach to be broken by Dockboys before he was forced to confess.

"Oh, gods, Boss," he whispered. "It's gone."

"Gone?"

"I liquidated some, moved the rest to our base, then the 'Jammers rolled over us...." He rushed to explain himself. "I didn't mean to lose it all, I thought we'd be safe there. It was Lish's fault. I need money too, Boss, I need medical work real bad. Hey, maybe we can work something out—"

"Gone?" Karuu's voice broke into a higher octave. Riggo and Daribi both stared. Whites were visible around the Dorleoni's eyes, and his fur bristled. "Gone?" he repeated, eyes glazed and unseeing. Staring through the Islander, watching his hopes for redemption wink into nothingness.

"Awwwrrrrr!" The ear-piercing howl caused both men to start, distracting them from Karuu's sudden movement. The Holdout released the seeker. The device arrowed from his grasp to plunge unerringly into the Islander's thigh. Injection delivered, the cylinder went inert and remained in his leg, a tube secured by barbed prongs and piercing needle.

Daribi's scream of fear and pain joined Karuu's screech. The Dorleoni launched himself after the seeker and fell upon the helpless man before him.

The shed door cracked open. Cricker stuck his head inside.

"Bugs. Here now, Boss!"

Riggo looked past Crick's shoulder, saw approaching strangers, saw their guns. Flashing lights in the distance warned of Grinds on the way. "Evasion One, Cricker. Center here, on the shed. Evasion One. Fast!"

The youth shut the door; Riggo turned back to the tangle of bodies on the floor. "Boss!" He said it again, louder, then dared to touch Karuu's shoulder. "Dom Okorr! We've got to go, now. Bugs are here."

The words sank in slowly. Karuu eased his aching jaw muscles and looked up blankly at Riggo, blood and matter dripping from his tusks.

"Bugs?"

"Come on." Riggo turned his eyes away from Daribi's gore-spattered body. "We've got about a minute to get the hell out of here."

Karuu came to his feet stiffly, like a drunken man. Riggo pushed aside a storage shelf, and swung a plaspanel out from the wall. "This way!" He pulled the Dorleoni's arm.

They emerged behind the shed. Dockboys were mounting their airbikes; repulsors hummed as they lifted, circling to buzz with open thrusters back down the dock. Two airbikes, five, then seven wove a confusing pattern, circling the shed, threatening the IntSec agents who ducked and dodged out of the way.

Karuu was hoisted aboard Riggo's own vehicle; his bloody fingers clutched the Dockboy's jacket as they shot out over the water. As soon as they were airborne, the other bikers followed them out over the water of the harbor, evading the pair of Security skiffs rushing to intercept. They scattered in eight different directions, weaving at water-level past skiffs and boat traffic, some out into the harbor, some toward the marina, some skirting the waterfront road.

Jorris and his team were left with an empty dock, a body without a throat, and no Karuu.

"Lords of Ice!" the Security agent spat. "This isn't going to be a wash." He turned to Mikos, and the police captain beyond. "Back to Verchiko's," he ordered impulsively. "I don't know who's there, but I want them locked down before they fade on us, too. Move out!"

It took three Line-switches before Vask signaled
no,
this was not the direction they wanted. Reva moved again, taking her companion back through one branch of reality, then another, returning to the Line that was their starting point, then going beyond that, cutting across different parallel Nows. A direction that brought a smile and a thumbs-up from Kastlin.

She took his guidance on faith, for as always the assassin could see nothing distinctive about the different Lines she crossed. These varying Nows were not remarkable: in most all of them the pair sat, undisturbed, in the privacy of their room. It was a monotonous panorama, Vask in one pose on the bed, overlaid by a second Vask with elbow on knee, overlaid by a third with his head cocked at a different angle, and so on—each one connected to her, through the ethereal clasp of their hands. Fragmented and blurred, yet looking about with hopeful concentration for all that. She had to take on faith that the Fixer came with her, that his consciousness moved, as did hers, across the perspective of differing Nows.

Their transition was fast, and it was timeless, and from Reva's point of view, it was barely happening at all.

Vask drifted in the greenish glow native to this Realtime. Molecular energy suffused the air with radiance; bed, floor, chair dissolved into sculptures of light and mist gleaming with yellow highlights.

He glanced at Reva, seated before him, the strobe-like figures that overlaid her form—her selves in various Lines—flickering in and out of sight. He tore his eyes from the confusing imagery, and concentrated instead on the reason for their experiment, energy only he could perceive in this sideslipped state. The greenish frequency of light was not the familiar hue of the dimension the Mutate called home but, as he looked about, pulled across Lines in the wake of the assassin, the yellow highlights diminished, faded, then dropped entirely from the visible spectrum. Greens deepened, became blue-green, until blues dominated, each minute variation corresponding to a separate Timeline. Each Line with molecules vibrating at a basal frequency ever-so-slightly different from neighboring Lines. How to tell which one was the place they had started from?

Vask searched for the right mix of color and radiance, the right sheen of ghostly substance to physical objects. They both knew from the start that they might not end up in precisely the same Line where they had encountered the Sea Father of R'debh. There was no way to pick that single frequency out of the hundreds of parallel realities they skimmed through. They could only hope to come close, so close that Mainline would be nearly as they remembered it.

They relied on the Mutate's ingrained recognition, his perception of what was "right"—and so Vask readied himself for that moment, the one he sensed approaching. He squeezed Reva's hand, a gentle flexion of potential, and raised his other hand to alert her. The muted blues and luminescent grays seemed like those he had known before, or so close he could not tell the difference. Before they could drift beyond, he dropped his hand.

Reva heeded his signal, and stopped their movement across the Lines. A heartbeat later they left that state of shifted energy, returning to their bodies, now stationary in this one Realtime. Reva was breathing as if after light exertion.

They collected themselves, eyed their surroundings uneasily. The room seemed unchanged.

"So you think this is it, Fixer?"

There was a quaver to the assassin's voice he had never heard before. "Maybe," Vask answered. "Or pretty close."

"Then let's go see where we've gotten ourselves to."

Kastlin nodded, and the pair headed for the door.

"He's here, Domna."

"Who?"

"Callis. You wanted to know—"

"Ah. Good." Lish nodded to the Skiffjammer. "I'll be right there."

She had readied a big shipment of cases today for the apaku fisherman from Avelar. And this time he wanted an extended warranty on her goods. He was shipping offworld, he said, and wanted the safety margin. Warranty and insurance, something she didn't sell much of. It was a nice piece of extra change, worth a few minutes spent discussing terms with Callis face-to-face.

Lish plucked the datapad from her desk, eyed the warranty contract, and smiled in satisfaction. She walked out her door into the loading bay where the fisherman's skiff was approaching the water ramp.

Reva and Vask walked down the hallway, past the ready room, the lounge. The few faces in the halls looked familiar, but there was nothing yet to prove this Line was closer to home than where they'd been. They neared the warehouse bay, and a 'Jammer walked toward them, unlimbering his blast rifle as he moved to J the ready room for his break.

Reva recognized his features and a quick glance at his insignia confirmed what she had hoped for. She stopped abruptly in her tracks. "Sergeant Eklun!" she exclaimed, relief evident in her voice.

The 'Jammer slowed, then stopped, puzzled by the assassin's greeting. "Yes?"

Vask waved him on. "Nothing. It's nothing." He tugged Reva's arm, got her reluctant feet moving again. Eklun passed | them by with a quizzical look.