Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) (16 page)

Sif
blinked, dumbfounded.

Stu
turned to Laura. “You’re the fancy lawyer. Do something.”

“Who
told you?” Laura snapped.

“No
one.”

“I
spent hours changing my appearance.” She removed her glasses and the cheek
implants. “Airport facial recognition can’t even tell who I am with these on.”

He
rolled his eyes. “A woman as gorgeous as you can’t hide behind fake glasses any
more than Clark Kent.”

“Gorgeous?
I couldn’t have made myself any plainer.”

Stu
put a forefinger in the middle of his forehead. “I look with my talent as much
as my eyes, Laura. You shine like a Christmas tree no matter what you wear.”

He recognized my aura.
She
swallowed hard.
That is the sexiest thing any man has ever said to me.
“I
came on this trip to show you I’ve changed.”

“Prove
it. Use your skills to rescue our friend.”

Only
her grandfather would have the clout to help. She would probably need to beg.
I’d
rather drink piss again.
But this was for Stu. “If I do this, will you give
me an hour alone with you to explain myself?”

The
request startled him, but the others pressured Stu into agreeing.

Laura
asked, “Now, how do I get a comm link to Japan?”

Nemesis
replied, “You’ll have to use a landline. The prince destroyed our long-range transmitters,
and he’s blocked access from our computers.”

“The
airport uses bots to refuel the plane and empty the toilets,” Artemis said.
“They’re still connected. You could ride one of them back to the shelter.”

Kaguya
looked up from her book. “We can reach them from the landing gear bay in the
cargo section.” When Laura raised her eyebrow, her mother said, “What? I learn
the specs for every plane I ride on in case I need to fly it in an emergency.”

The Ballbusters plane
departed for Rio de Janeiro, leaving Laura and her mother crouched beside the
runway with overnight bags. As they crept toward the terminal, Laura opened herself
to the Collective Unconscious to locate possible snipers. She sensed another
mind following them—a woman.
Definitely not Saudi.
Laura did some fast
calculations. The person was invisible and probably an ally.

Laura
had heard rumors about Chinese stealth armor during the last war. In Japanese, she
asked, “Did Stewart send you?”

Kaguya
replied, “Relax,
Tsukiko
. It’s
Oleander Dahlstrom. She’s under orders not to speak, but she’s been on the
plane all along, protecting your boyfriend.”

“He’s
not—” Laura bit back her irritation. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I
discovered her when the troops searched the plane. I was too busy hiding her
and her daughter, Joan, to let you know. We have an uneasy alliance.”

“Where’s
her daughter?”

Kaguya
adjusted her head covering and attached the veil. “She continued to the school with
Stu, where it’s safe.”

“Why
did Oleander trust you?”

“Because
her brother, Johann, works for NERO. He vouched for my sincerity.” When Laura
remained skeptical, Kaguya added, “I told the crew that we broke ties with your
grandfather in order to assist Conrad. When I showed Oleander proof that
Commander Zeiss is your father, she agreed to this mission to protect you.”

Laura
fixed her own veil in place. “Oleander, the prince has wireless electric fences
everywhere around here. Also, don’t record anything, or he’ll know where you
are.”

From
the terminal, four paths branched off every 60 degrees around the semicircle.
Each path led to an identical house. Kaguya explained, “Each wife has to be
treated equally. The question is: where is the prince? We need to avoid him.”

“Any
of them have a choo-choo parked in front?” asked Laura sarcastically.

Oleander
tapped the gravel on the house closest to the Persian Gulf.

Laura
chose the opposite direction. The house was denoted with a “1” on the door. “Stay
here. You two can bail me out later if I need it.”

Her
mother sat in a rocker on the porch. “Be respectful.”

A
Filipino woman her mother’s age answered the knock.

“Excuse
me. May I borrow your phone to call my grandfather?” Laura asked, miming a
phone in her hand.

The
servant smiled and directed her to the gold-plated old-style rotary phone in
the foyer. Laura could hear silverware clanking on plates. She dialed the exit
code for this country, followed by the Tokyo number. Back home, it was Grandfather’s
bedtime.

Nana
answered. “What?”

“We
need you to ask a Saudi prince to release someone … as a favor.”

“No,”
Nana replied.

“What?”
Laura lowered her voice. “I’m stranded here in the middle of nowhere. I did
everything Grandfather asked. Did he get the package?”

“The sample was so degraded by heat
and contaminated with your DNA that it was virtually useless. All we could
discern was that Llewellyn’s telomeres were twice the normal length.”

Someone with his genes could
live 250 years!
“I did everything I could.”

Her grandfather took the phone. “I
heard the recording of your seduction. Where is the sperm sample? You milked
him dry.”

“It’s all a misunderstanding.”

“
That’s
my sperm. You’re trying to sell the real sample to the highest bidder.”

“
I’m
not like you,” Laura spat.

“Well,
you’re cut off from everything until you deliver.” Then he hung up.

Part
of Laura cringed, eager to please the only father figure she ever had and
reclaim her place in the Mori palace, while another part of her looked for a
way to give Nana and Tetsuo the finger.
I still have options. Once I have
the sample, I can do anything I want.
The most likely scenario involved Stu
enjoying the sample-extraction process so much that she got to keep him, too.

The
maid vanished, presumably to tell someone guests were here. Laura dialed one of
the high-end lawyers in England before their offices closed or Nana emailed a
warning.
Time to get my 2 percent of Fortune back.
“Hello? Mr.
Kiersgard? My grandfather has breached my allowance contract. Yes. He’s refused
me transportation. I need you to reinstate
every right
I waived in that
contract. No, I haven’t been fired. In the meantime, I’ll need the services of
a corporate mediator in this area.” She provided the address just as the prince
and two of his guards approached.

“You
are now trespassing,” said the prince.

“I
came to explain the camera situation. Grant Thisbe is innocent—”

“Take
this one to the sorting pile. Perhaps it will teach her manners.”

With
her mother still on the porch, Laura was hauled off to the dump. To be more
humane, the sorters worked at night when it was cooler and the nanobots weren’t
active. Laura hadn’t slept well the night before, and she was punchy. The
thought of working all night in a stinking trash heap struck her as hilarious.

The
monotony of picking out glass bottles gave her a chance to plan her revenge.
She plotted several scenarios where the puritanical Stu would beg her to do
wicked, perverse things.
He is so going to grovel. He’ll start by kissing my
feet. If he’s suitably convincing, I may let him work his way up my legs.
She
was the sole woman on the festering heap, and the others stared at her.
Broadcasting
sexual fantasies might not be the best idea in this situation.

Laura
shifted her musing to how Koku could be abused. Assembling a dozen odd facts and
parts of conversations she had heard at the office, she became convinced that Tetsuo
Mori had worsened the wheat crisis in order to maximize profit. The number of
failures in the system were too numerous and precise to be coincidence. Perhaps
two copies of the AIs had been aiming for the same effect and tipped the scales
too far.

Because
of her inattention, she slipped down the pile and cut her calf on a broken
washing machine. Several men carried her to the infirmary in the zoo enclosure.
While she waited in a cinderblock room, someone tapped on the window pane.
Laura sensed Oleander by her aura and could barely make out the shape of a
face. Laura opened the window.

Oleander
asked, “So … need a rescue yet? This compound is about sixty clicks from Qatar.
Can you walk?”

“Since
we’d pretty much have to walk down the beach, they’d have to be incompetent not
to catch us by morning, especially since I’d be facedown in the sand from
exhaustion.” Laura found peroxide and gauze to treat her own injury. “How’s my
mom?”

“She’s
an honored guest. Evidently, the prince and his wives were all fans.”

“That’s
my family. Fall in shit, do evil, and come out smelling like a rose.”

Oleander
chuckled. “They called the zoo vet to come check you out. He has to drive back
from his place in Bahrain. It’s his day off.”

“He
has a car?”

“All
these people drive big, off-road vehicles.”

This
gave Laura the beginnings of a plan. “Do you know where they’re holding Grant?”

“Yeah.”

“Wake
Mom and break Grant out as soon as the vet arrives. I’ll take care of the
rest.”

“What
good will your mom do?”

Laura
grinned. “At night, nothing can stop her. She is a bloody ninja. She can see
ahead Out-of-Body, and men fall at her feet. If charm and psi-bolts don’t work,
she can kick their asses. I just need you to keep her focused—no blinking
lights or patterns.”

“She’s
stayed in training all these years?”

The
smile vanished. “Mom wants to be ready for Conrad. It’s all she thinks of. In
fact, if she ever spaces out, ask her a personal question about him.”

“Yeah.
About that …”

“Zeiss
is
my father,” Laura replied. She didn’t feel like telling her about
Monty yet.

Oleander’s
face betrayed shock. “Z wouldn’t do that.”

“Nana
found a sample he left behind. I’m sort of a science experiment.”

“Oh,
crap.”

“I’ve
been saying that every day since age ten. Go. We can swap family horror stories
later,” Laura said. “Before I forget, tell Mom to have everything from our New York apartment shipped to Rio before my grandfather cancels the lease.”

****

The vet arrived in a
covered jeep, and Laura had him wrapped around her finger in a manner of
minutes. As soon as she sensed that Oleander, Mom, and Grant were hiding in the
back of the jeep, she let the vet talk her into driving to a motel out of the
country for a quick fling. He gave her an antibiotic, another shot for the pain,
and then whisked her away.

The
guard at the border let them through in exchange for a bribe and the promise
that it would only be for a few hours. Whatever he had given Laura for the pain
kicked in soon after, and she was glad that she had guardian angels in the
back.

She
woke up in a rest stop when Mom splashed water on her face. The vet lay on the
asphalt with his pants around his ankles. “Stay awake. He dosed you with
ketamine.”

“I’ll
drive,” Laura said, attempting to keep her eyes open. “Mom might have a
seizure.” Her head flopped back against the headrest, and she admired the
elephant-shaped car deodorant on the mirror.

“Maybe
I should drive,” Oleander said.

“Invisible?
That would attract attention,” said Kaguya.

They
decided to let Grant wear the sneak suit.

Kaguya
stopped at the next gas station to buy temporary black hair dye. “A blonde in
this country will attract too much attention and make you too easy to track.”
She even found the brown contacts back in the suitcase so Laura would match her
Japanese passport. The Salome identity was over for now.

At
the Bahrain International Airport, Kaguya went to the Gulf Air counter and
asked for three first-class tickets to Brazil. Oleander held out the untraceable
credit card and the identity card Mira Hollis had provided. Oleander and her
mother had to practically carry Laura to the desk with her passport, making the
woman behind the ticket counter suspicious.

Then,
Kaguya explained, “My daughter just got engaged to an important sheik. Her
father and I arranged it. What I didn’t know was that she recently gave her virginity
to a foreign musician. The girl took pills to erase the shame on our family,
but I caught it in time. We’re going to Rio to surgically reconstruct her
hymen. You appreciate the delicacy.” She handed the clerk a folded bank note.
The tickets were in their hands a moment later.

“Lady,
you’re good at lying,” Oleander whispered.

“Saxophonist,”
mumbled Laura. “Circular breather. He let me use his genes, and I let him slide
mine off. God, he was good.”

Kaguya
snorted. “I’m glad we have a stop in Rome. She’ll need to sleep this off and
buy a change of clothes.”

“Speaking
of clothes, Laura said your father might cancel your apartment lease out of
spite. She hinted that you should ship everything to Rio that you want to
keep.”

Kaguya
phoned seven different apartments and express-shipped all the contents to the
school in Rio, care of Ambassador Llewellyn.

“No
need to rush the shipments. Grant will need a few days to get a new passport.
The sneak suit won’t have much charge left after this flight,” Oleander said in
a distracted manner.

“Talk
to me,
Tsukiko,” Kaguya said. “You have to stay awake until we board the
plane. Where would you like to visit in Rome?”

“Bartiluccis
live there. They couldn’t make it to the London meeting,” Laura said. She meant
the meeting Stu held for the families of those on
Sanctuary
.

Oleander
gasped.

“Ah,
yes. Giancarlo Bartilucci,” Kaguya said. He had been the first crew member to
die on Labyrinth. “Did you tell the Bartiluccis about Joan? That they have a
granddaughter?”

Oleander
scowled. “Screw you.”

“Hurts
when the Devil’s daughter gives you morality lessons, doesn’t it?” Kaguya
replied.

To
avoid suspicion, she bought a new sports bag for Oleander to carry on, one that
could hold the sneak suit later. They stocked it with essentials at the airport
shops, including some items for Grant.

On
the underbooked flight, Laura fell asleep before the fasten seatbelts light
came on.