Mainline (6 page)

The walrus-faced Holdout tilted his head in response. "An inconvenience. There is new competition here, selling Inert Delivery Patches. I am wondering in the name of good business if you can provide me with same?"

"Too risky," Adahn refused him. "Imperial Security monitors those raw materials. If we moved enough quantity to make it worth our while, we'd alert them."

"Then Imperial Bugs come to see this competitor, I am hoping. Because if trade continues, we are maybe seeing loss of old customers."

The Dorleoni did his best to look plaintive, but Adahn was having none of it. This was business-as-usual, and nothing for an up-and-coming Tribune to be wasting his time on.

"You know the game," he snapped. "If you don't like the competition, get rid of it. Was there anything else?"

He waited impatiently for the smuggler to shake his head. "Well, then. Later." The MazeRat boss severed the connection, jacked into his deck, and put out a call for Janus.

His lieutenant was in the cybernet, as usual, and responded directly through Adahn's visual cortex. Janus appeared to float in mid-air over the crime boss' command console.

"Sir?"

"Holdout operations. Karuu's having trouble with a competitor on Selmun III. Help him a little, will you? If he really needs it."

"Sure. Is it urgent?"

"Don't know. Talk with him."

"Will do."

The exchange, facilitated through the Net, took place at the speed of light and flash relays. Janus' form vanished an instant after it appeared, and Adahn unplugged from the cyberdeck. He finished the breath he had been taking when he jacked in, and returned to the affairs the Holdout's call had interrupted.

The
monorail
sliced toward Baneks Cape, its mag-field racing over the track ahead, bursting the thick sheath of ice and wet snow that coated it. The train was wrapped in dark and fog and veils of wind-driven ice crystals, a blizzard so dense that only flakes packing against the monorail windows could be seen.

Reva did not try to make out the snowy, forested mountains and valleys she knew lay outside. Instead, she settled into her kria-fur coat, and regarded her fellow passengers.

The sixth sense she had experienced in the terminal had left her uncomfortably wary, so she studied her fellow travelers closely: a R'debhi businessman; a mother and children with packages from a day of shopping; two Vudesh clansmen, their crossbows nearly hidden among the long strands of deska fur they wore as cloaks. She judged and dismissed each as representing
no
danger to her, then closed her eyes and concentrated on the soothing rhythmic vibration of the Cape-bound transport. Vask Kastlin watched Reva from his seat across the aisle, her closest observer and yet not one she had noticed. Then again, no one else had noticed the wiry, dark-haired man, either. No one could, at this moment, unless they glimpsed him with sensors or video monitors, or were as skillful at applied psychonetics as the man himself. For Vask was a Mutate, a graduate of the Academy of Applied Psychonetics, and, like many of his kind, an agent of the Emperor's Ministry of Internal Security. "Security" to the public; "IntSec" to the bureaucrats. "Bugs" to the criminal element, a play on their abbreviated department title.

A bug, indeed, thought Vask. Like a bug on the wall, I see you; you don't see me.

It was tiring, using his blindspot skill to assure that those around him failed to see him. They glanced nearby, or looked away, or walked past, unconsciously skirting his position, never quite registering his presence. Yet it made tailing his elusive quarry much easier.

Reva's destination was clear, though what she planned to do there remained a mystery. As was she. Tall, with brunette hair today, dressed as a winter-clad Des'lini, no longer in the revealing party clothes she had worn in Amasl, he might have overlooked her in a crowd had she not already come to his attention. Inert Delivery Patches and their buyers were always of interest to IntSec.

Vask relaxed into his seat, prepared to doze along with this buyer of contraband. Tracing the IDP delivery to her workshop had not been too hard; nevertheless, he had scrambled for the last several days, using more than his share of hoppers and marshaling psi energies carefully to stay on the trail. Then he had lost her for a time, and only picked up the trail again when she straggled back to her hotel after an extended revel out on the town.

A quick data check turned up no records on Reva—not too surprising, if she worked with Holdouts. Strangely, though, he couldn't tell if she was really Normal: he sensed no active psi from her, and neither could he detect the surface murmur of her thoughts. That could be due to a cyberimplant, a psi shield, although such were tremendously expensive and rarely encountered. His telepathic powers were weak, but he should at least be able to pick up a sensation of conscious thought. Or if she were shielded by natural psi ability, there ought to be some period when she dropped the shield. So far, there was none. Reva was an enigma.

Soon it would be time for Vask the Fixer to meet Reva, and become her friend. First, though, he would follow this trail to its end. Lish had attracted Imperial attention weeks before. While other agents investigated the smuggler and her offworld connections, it fell to Kastlin to see who used the contraband she was passing, and what for. Her dossier mentioned Tyree Longhouse on Baneks Cape, so when Reva boarded the monorail there was hardly any need to guess her destination. Kastlin tagged along, inventing ways to approach her when the time came. His R'debh cover as Vask the Fixer had a lot of connections. Surely one could give him cause to go to Baneks Cape in a solstice storm.

Tyree Longhouse was
an upscale version of the traditional Vu-desh structure, the preferred way to build in the chill Des'lin climate. It splayed on the land like a grounded turtle, a long rectangular box two-thirds underground, with sloping earth-bermed sides and synthetic thatching. Its ridge-top position braked gusting winds and caused snow to heap roof-high against the sides.

A snowcrawler approached and stopped as close to the covered entranceway as possible. Reva got out, waded through thigh-high drifts, and pushed the call buzzer on the gate control panel.

A scanner hemisphere emerged from the panel, angled toward Reva, retracted. Her face was not among those it was programmed to admit, and so the gate remained closed. She fumbled the blue house pass out of a pocket then and shoved it into the keyslot. Panel lights turned green, and the security bars lifted out of the snow-covered ground. Reva waved to the snowcrawler. The taxi turned back toward the monorail station as she walked inside the entrance gallery.

She had no chance to try the chit on the house door. The portal that looked made of rustic wooden planking swung open before she could touch it, and Lish stood there to greet her. "Bad night for traveling," she said with collected poise. "Come on in."

Lish led her visitor into the great hall, a ground-level room that ran the length of the longhouse. Running down its center was the traditional fire trench, with real logs burning at the far end of it. Felted mats and cushions for floor seating cluttered the edges, while food warmed on a nearby sideboard.

It was a primitive yet gracious setting, reminding Reva of her own sojourn on Des'lin in her late teens. Her coarse Vudesh companions had had floor mats of the same style and a firepit just as welcoming on a cold night. The fruity Cadanessa wine Lish handed her would only be served by one who appreciated the native food and drink.

Her habitual scan of the Lines was soon done, yielding no hint of danger. Then the assassin allowed herself to do what she seldom did. She relaxed in the company of another, and enjoyed her drink.

Vask had a problem. None of Lish's street connections knew of her hideaway on Selmun IV. That meant he couldn't walk up, knock on her door as if he had legitimate Fixer business, and finagle an introduction to Reva.

You better come up with something, he chided himself, or you're gonna blow this trail and freeze to death at the same time.

He sat shivering in a rented snowcrawler, watching the gateway of Tyree Longhouse appear and disappear between swirls of snow. He needed a break in this stakeout, a way to get closer, and nothing was suggesting itself. Well, there was one way, sideslipping. ... He shook his head. That was crazy. Draining enough even when he was rested.

No, wait a minute. If I sideslip, then ...

He began to tick off points on his left hand.

I get in tonight, undetected. I hear what they have to say between them now, in this very private meeting. I might get a lead I can follow up on soon. The bad news is...

—he switched to the other hand—

I've been on hoppers too long. If I take psiboost now, I'll crash afterward, and there's nothing I can do about it. Out for, probably, a day and a half. What if I have to move sooner than that?

Sideslipping was one of the most difficult of psionic disciplines. It required concentration and energy that would deplete all his reserves and then some. Was it worth it?

He wasn't learning anything by sitting in the snowcrawler, that was certain. And there was no telling when either of the women would leave the longhouse again.

He powered off the vehicle, then fished around in his carrybag until he found the medtab applicator. Punching up a dose of psiboost, he injected the potent compound into his thigh muscle and waited while the psionic drug took effect. In a few minutes he felt refreshed, not physically, but mentally alert and once more up to his full psychic potential. He knew it was part fact and part illusion, and he needed to get moving before the dose wore off. He opened the crawler's door and climbed out into the blustering storm.

The agent walked away from the vehicle, into the snow-laden darkness beyond a feebly glowing lightpost. Better there than toward the longhouse gate, where security cameras might pick up his disappearing act. As soon as he was in relative obscurity he stood motionless and gathered his concentration. When the next flurry of snow whipped over him, Vask closed his eyes against the sting of icy flakes. He stood stolid and relaxed, then let himself go into the trance required for sideslipping.

Soon a peculiar, skin-crawling sensation came over him as his molecular structure unphased. Like many psi powers, phase-shifting was simply a matter of manipulating the body's natural energy field. Or, not "simply." It was a difficult skill to master, and few could learn to do it.

But Vask had. Every particle, every elemental chain that composed the man on the physical plane shifted its vibratory frequency ever so slightly up-spectrum. He was there, yet not there, existing in a state more akin to light than gross physical matter. Straddling dimensions, the entity that was Vask became a semi-coherent form, one no longer hindered by the physical stuff of his natural state. A form no longer visible to earthly sight at all.

The snowstorm faded to a cloud of gray mist as Vask phased out of the realm of ordinary sensation. He no longer felt cold or stinging ice. His clothing, caught within the radius of his body's natural bio-electric field, traveled with him, although it, too, lacked substance and tangible presence.

He walked in a foggy half-world where mist-soft objects glowed with a blue-gray luminescence born of radiant molecular energy. He approached the shadowy gate of Tyree Longhouse and moved through the incorporeal structure of the bars. As he pushed through, he felt a crawling sensation in the path of the earthly material. It was not a horrific feeling; neither was it pleasant. He gathered his nerve before pushing through the door of the long-house in the same manner.

What seemed to be rough wood planking was a veneer over thick steel, with a reinforced core like a blast door. The crawling sensation came again, throughout his body. Vask closed his eyes, hating the disorientation of walking through what his mind told him should be—no,
was—
a solid object. Only when the sensation was gone and he was on the other side did he open his eyes.

At the far end of the great hall, Lish and Reva sat beside the firepit drinking wine. Vask could hear nothing of their conversation, for sound, like other physical sensations, was not perceivable in a phase-shifted state. To eavesdrop, he would have to sideslip back to the material plane, then either hide in a mundane manner or use his blindspot ability to avoid detection. Blindspot-ting would exhaust even more of his powers; it would be better to simply hide.

The furnishings in the room were sparse: cushions and mats, a few benches and tables along the walls, and the sideboard that held the dinner dishes. That high-backed furnishing stood behind Lish.

Vask wafted through pillows and cushions, skirting the women as he came closer to them. Moving through the inanimate was uncomfortable enough; sideslipping through living creatures was even more disturbing, and could be detected by the highly sensitive, at least as a chill or sense of presence. He took care to avoid the women as he moved past toward the sideboard.

The furniture was angled so that he would be hidden from sight behind it. The shadows there were deep. He would not be able to watch his subjects from that vantage, though he could listen to their conversation, and he could blindspot if either walked around the room.

He moved to the space behind the sideboard, assumed what would be a comfortable sitting position, and shifted the phase of his structure back down-spectrum. First there was nothing, then there was a shimmer, then a form rested in the natural gloom at the end of the great hall.