Silver Eyes (2 page)

Most of our audience followed us outside, tracking through the dewy grass, and I chose Ben, a thin, dark-bearded techie whom I'd played basketball with, to stand as timekeeper.

“Wait,” I said, just as Anaximander was about to enter. I smiled at him. “Care to make a bet on the outcome?”

He shook his head. “I don't bet.”

“Anyone else?” I looked hopefully at Ben.

“You're hell on wheels on the basketball court,” Ben said. “I'd bet on you if you were going first, but no way can you win going second. I've seen you two run together.” Ben politely didn't mention Anaximander's many Augments, which would help him.

“It's a bet then,” I said, swinging my arms to keep the muscles loose in the April morning chill.
“Winner gets to use the loser's employee debit card for one day.”

The others whistled appreciatively.

Ben insisted on a maximum spending allowance but accepted the bet. I tried not to show my relief. The bet was the best way that I'd thought of to get my hands on someone else's debit card.

Anaximander looked impatient. “Can we start now?”

Ben clicked his stopwatch. “Go!”

Anaximander vanished into the maze. I listened for his footsteps but heard only a faint patter. I couldn't tell which way he'd gone.

Ten seconds ticked by. “Go!” Ben shouted.

I entered the maze at a crouched run. The entrance bottleneck was the most obvious place for an ambush, and when I saw movement ahead of me I threw myself into a dive.

On the floor, I saw that it wasn't Anaximander's tall black form up ahead, but my own reflection in a mirror. Only the outside of the maze was painted; inside, all the walls were mirrored, throwing off infinities of possible turns. It took my eyes a moment to sort out the two true choices available to me: left, then straight ahead or right, then straight ahead.

Anaximander could follow two possible strategies: running flat out for the exit or lying in ambush. It all depended on whether or not he knew the maze. I didn't see Anaximander as the type to be intrigued by a maze, but if he had walked through it even once he would be able to call up the layout from his Memory Recorder Augment and navigate it perfectly. If he didn't know the maze, he risked
losing time in a cul-de-sac and being tagged by me when he reversed, so ambush was the better option.

If so, he was sure to be waiting just beyond one of the passages. If I chose wrongly, he'd tag me as soon as I poked my head around the corner. If I chose correctly the game would become more complicated with the two of us hunting each other.

My odds of winning were less than fifty percent.

I've always hated losing. So I changed the rules.

I
FACED THE INNER WALL
of the maze and jumped up. My hands caught the top edge of the mirrored wall, and I exhaled softly, trying not to grunt as I pulled myself up out of the maze.

The walls were six inches wide; no sweat for someone who'd had her own balance beam as a kid. From above I scoped out the layout of the maze: the right-hand path led to a dead end, while the left-hand one eventually wound around to the exit.

I spotted Anaximander running down the correct path, halfway through the maze.

“Hey!” One of the crowd at the exit saw me and pointed. After a jaunty wave, I ignored them, intent on the maze.

I started to run along the top of the wall but quickly realized I couldn't catch up to Anaximander without going too fast and risking a bad fall. And losing.

I narrowed my eyes and took a closer look at
the maze, memorizing the hairpin turns and forks that led to the exit. Swiftly, I lowered myself back down to the ground. I took off at a run, taking the next three turns flat out. Left, right, right again.

The correct path went left next, but I kept running straight forward into a dead end. I charged my own reflection, leaping at the wall. I scrambled over it into the passageway beyond, saving myself a lengthy detour. Unfortunately, I was still behind Anaximander.

A second scramble over another wall did the trick. I was home free, within sight of the exit, when a sudden impulse of mischief seized me. Anaximander would be confident of victory, certain that even if I could catch him, I would come up from behind. Never in a million years would he expect me to have gotten ahead of him.

Ben poked his head into the maze, impatient to see who the winner would be, and I held a finger to my lips for silence. I flattened myself against the last corner.

I almost forgot about my reflection, but a movement from Ben in one of the mirrors reminded me. I retreated two steps, pulling my mirror image with me, just as Anaximander's footsteps pounded up.

The second his reflection entered the mirror facing me, I launched myself forward. I slapped his arm.

“Tag! You're It,” I started to say, but Anaximander cut the words off in my throat, grabbing my arm and twisting it behind my back. His arm hooked around my neck—and then loosened as he remembered that this was a friendly contest, not a true
pursuit. He released me, and for a moment I saw astonishment on his face. “How did you get ahead of me?”

Ben answered. “She climbed over a couple of walls. She beat you to the exit, too, but went back for the double win.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I bet on the wrong person.”

I grinned.

Anaximander wasn't impressed. As we exited the maze, he said coldly, “You cheated. The purpose of the chase was to test your fitness. You circumvented this.”

His words stole all the pleasure from my victory. I shrugged, trying to hide my hurt. “I thought the purpose of the exercise was to win.” Which I had.

He paused, then softened his stance. “You demonstrated great ingenuity. Nevertheless, I wished to test your abilities. We will repeat the exercise—”

“Oh, surely there's no need for that,” a new voice said.

I turned and saw a short, little man with black hair and sideburns walking toward us. He wore a skintight gray suit with a purple iridescent sheen, the kind of outfit only the vain and rich wore and only the young and beautiful
should
wear. It threatened to burst at the seams when he flexed his biceps.

Ben and the other watchers scattered as he neared us, as if suddenly remembering other places they had to be.

“I was watching the contest from the second floor; Angel here seems very competent to me.” He
showed off his dental work with a smile, but the warmth didn't reach his close-set brown eyes. “I'm Edward Castellan, but please call me Eddy.”

I blinked once, then shook his manicured hand. His heavy gold ring pressed into my palm. I recognized the name of SilverDollar's Head of Operations. Eddy? I was supposed to call him Eddy? “Nice to meet you,” I said politely.

“That was very impressive, Angel. We're glad to have you on our team.” Up close, the tightness of his skin made me suspect that his muscles were from body-sculpting surgery, not anything as sweaty as exercise. “I think she's ready to go on a real job, don't you, Anaximander?”

When your boss suggests something you agree. “Very soon,” Anaximander stalled.

“Why wait?” Eddy said, still smiling, but with a hard edge to his voice. “Why don't you take her along on the case you're working on?”

I pricked up my ears, interested in spite of the bad vibes the two of them were giving off. I hadn't realized Anaximander was working on an investigation during the hours I spent doing lessons.

“I don't think this is the right case for Angel to start with,” Anaximander said.

“I insist. After all, you could use the help!” Eddy smiled as if making a joke, but I got an uneasy feeling that it wasn't funny. “How long has the fugitive been eluding you now?”

“Five months, sir.” Anaximander's voice was toneless, but something in his body language raised the hair on the back of my neck. He staggered slightly as if standing on the deck of a ship in stormy seas. He blinked—a purely habitual
function as his silver eyes had no need of lubrication. He watched Eddy as a hypnotized bird might watch a snake.

Seriously creeped out, I followed his gaze to where Eddy was fiddling with a bizarre necklace he wore instead of a tie. A black, butterfly-shaped piece of plastic, three inches tall, that dangled from a black cord. The plastic had something engraved on it, but Eddy's fingers hid all but the first two letters,
A L.

“Well, I'm sure you'll catch him soon,” Eddy said, a definite implied threat in his tone.
Catch him soon, or else.
“I have confidence in you, Anaximander. You're our best investigator. At least until Angel here starts!” He clapped me on the shoulder, laughing heartily.

What a loser.

“So how are you doing, Angel?” Eddy asked. “Are you settling in here at SilverDollar?”

There's something wrong with my memory,
I thought but didn't say. “Everything's great. I'm enjoying working here.”

“Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Anything, anytime, okay?” He winked.

“I will,” I lied.

After another minute of uncomfortable small talk, Eddy turned back to Anaximander. “I'm sure I'll hear from you soon. When you catch the fugitive.”

A small bead of sweat had formed on Anaximander's forehead. Amazing. I would have sworn he was too Augmented to still have sweat
glands.

“Yes, sir.” Anaximander's gaze remained locked on the token around Eddy's neck.

What could it be? A good luck charm? It was rather large and clunky. It didn't go with the corporate image.

Eddy nodded to us both and left. We stared after him for several moments in silence. I noticed that he had tiny feet.

Eddy. I couldn't get over the little-boy nickname. Had he been trying to be buddies? Puhleeze.

I gave in to my curiosity. “What was he wearing around his neck?”

Anaximander shuddered as if coming out of a trance. “What?”

“The thing around his neck. What was it?”

“I don't know. I didn't notice it.” Anaximander began to walk back to the gym.

I stared after him, unable to tell from his enigmatic expression whether or not he was lying. I caught up with him at the door, before he could vanish for the day. “Tell me about this fugitive we're after.” I didn't like the way Eddy had forced my help on Anaximander, implying that he was incompetent, but I couldn't help feeling a rush of anticipation. I was dying to get out of the classroom and do something. “Is it a saboteur?”

“No, a thief. He has something that belongs to SilverDollar that's worth millions.”

“Do you know where he is?” I trotted at Anaximander's side down the hallway.

“I've narrowed down the area,” Anaximander said precisely.

I raised an eyebrow, waiting.

“He was last seen in Taber two days ago.”

“So close?” I asked, astonished. Taber was only
twenty kilometers away. I would have expected the thief to leave the province of Alberta, if not the entire continent-country of NorAm. Staying so close to SilverDollar's Operations facility was either an act of idiocy or great daring, hiding in plain sight.

Anaximander nodded tersely. “He wants something we have. Until he gets it, he's not going anywhere. I have a dozen men conducting a door-to-door search. He'll be found soon.”

If he had eluded Anaximander, the most tenacious person I knew, for months, I didn't think we could count on him turning up on a door-to-door search.

Taber. I cast my mind back to a map of the area I'd seen.

“You know,” I said, “if it were me, the Wasteland is where I'd go.” The stretch of barren land—once prosperous corn farmland—had been devastated by a man-made blight during the World Environmental Crisis. In the years since the crisis, eighty percent of arable land had been successfully reclaimed, but Taber's soil was one of the unlucky varieties that the process didn't work on. Now it was good only for collecting solar energy.

“Impossible,” Anaximander said flatly. “On sunny days the solar collectors are too hot. It would be like hiding in a frying pan. He would go blind from the mirror glare.”

A dart of annoyance pierced me. “The fact that it's impossible just makes it safe. I'll bet I could do it, and if I could, so could he.”

“No.”

“If I'm right, one of the solar collectors will be
registering slightly less energy than the rest of them,” I said.

Wordlessly, Anaximander moved to one of the numerous computer access points that dotted the complex. I watched over his shoulder as a hologram of blue hexes appeared. “There.” I pointed at a border hexagon that was shaded more green than blue. “That hex. Off by one and a half percent.”

“It could be anything,” Anaximander said. “A dead bird. A spot of rust.”

“It's him. I know it.”

“So confident.” Anaximander stared at me for a moment. “All right. This afternoon we'll search the solar collectors. Do your morning lessons, and then meet me at the aircar bay at one o'clock.”