The Sardonyx Net (31 page)

“Yes, that's right. I wasn't hurt, just shaken up. My side aches.”
 

“Tell me about it.” She described the attack as best she could. “Let me see your side.” She drew back the coverlet to show him the bruises. They were purple-green, very big, and ugly. In places, the flesh was puffy. Clinically, carefully, he touched her ribs. It hadn't occurred to her that they might be broken.
 

“You see,” she said, “I'm fine.” She smiled at him to prove it.
 

He did not return the smile. “Rhani, do you want to go back to the estate?” he said.
 

“Run away, you mean?” He nodded. “Absolutely not. What would you have me do on the estate, build a Cage-field? Live behind bars? No. I am going to the Auction tomorrow, and in six days we will have the Yago party. We will leave after that, as we always do. Family Yago built this city; I will not be chased out of it!”
 

Mildly, he said, “I had to ask.”
 

“I suppose you did.”
 

“Did you notify the Abanat police of the attack?”
 

“Of course.” Rhani got out of bed and reached for her robe, wincing a little at the ache in her right arm.
 

“What is it?” said Zed quickly.
 

“My arm ... I fell on it. It got wrenched out of the socket. Dana put it back.” His name resonated in her mind, like a bell ringing. She turned her face away in unaccustomed dissembling from her sharp-eyed brother. She turned the lights up. The purple had faded into a soft, shadowless blue, herald of darkness. She wondered how long it would take him to learn that she and Dana had bedded. Amri might let it slip. Corrios would not. Binkie would not say two words to Zed by choice.
 

She called the kitchen on the intercom. “Amri, tell Corrios that Zed and I will want dinner in the dining alcove.” To Zed she said, “Are you hungry? You must be. I am. When I left the Dur party they had just begun to serve lunch.”
 

“You left early,” he said. “Was it so tiresome?”
 

“Yes,” she said, half-smiling as she recalled Ferris Dur's mouth against her own. So clumsy. Not like Dana. “Very tiresome. Zed-ka, don't you want to put on other clothes?”
 

He glanced at his Clinic greens. “Oh. Yes.” He rose, and then came to her, and very gently, as if she were made of glass, put his arms about her and buried his head in her hair. “Rhani,” he whispered.
 

She held him lightly. “Zed, I'm all right. I'm all right, twin.”
 

“Yes,” he whispered, and let his arms fall.
 

Dana watched Zed and Rhani walk side by side down the curving marble stair.
 

As he had been the first time, at the estate, he was struck by their likeness. But now he could see beyond it, beyond the fact that their eyes were amber, their hair red-brown—Rhani's dark, Zed's lighter—their height the same, their voices similar. They were different as light and dark, different as pleasure from pain. He remembered the springy weight of Rhani's hair on his throat, and shivered. And what am
I
now? he thought. Slave, Starcaptain, pilot, friend, lover, bodyguard....
 

Amri pushed past him, carrying a tray. He retreated from her path, into the kitchen. Zed and Rhani went into the dining alcove. Corrios was bending over his pots, muttering. Binkie sat on a stool, eating. His look was unfriendly.
 

Corrios jabbed Dana in the ribs with an elbow. “Eat,” he said.
 

“All right.” Dana filled his plate and sat on another stool.
 

He tried to think of something lighthearted to say to Binkie, and couldn't. They sat in silence, and ate. Suddenly Amri came from the dining alcove. “Dana, Zed wants you.”
 

“Wants me—now?” Dana said, half rising. Amri nodded. Dana swallowed. Binkie looked at him, expressionless. Dana's hurts began to ache as he walked from the kitchen. His left arm had been scraped on the stones of the Boulevard, and there was a dark, painful knot where he had been kicked, on his left thigh.
 

He walked to the dining alcove. Rhani was there. He was careful not to look too long at her. Be careful, warned the blood hammering through his chest, be very careful. He called upon the discipline he had learned on Nexus, and shut Rhani's presence from his consciousness. Then he turned, to face the one person who could, if he chose, obliterate that self-control with a touch.
 

“You sent for me, Zed-ka.”
 

“Yes,” said Zed. He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about this attack today.”
 

“There were three of them,” Dana said. “They were waiting for us, approximately halfway between Founders' Green and Dur House, on the Boulevard. They pretended to be drunk. It was noon, a perfect time; there was no one on the street for blocks. Rhani's black wig didn't fool them: they must have known she had it on.”
 

Zed frowned. “Black wig?” he said to Rhani.
 

“I wore that black wig, the one I bought four years ago,” she said. “And the silver sari.”
 

He nodded. “Go on.”
 

Dana thought back. “The woman with the bottle went for Rhani first, I think. Yes. I got between them. I kicked the bottle from her hand.” He grimaced. “It was a stupid move, but it worked. I brought her down and hit her. The second one tackled me and we rolled around for awhile. The third one went after Rhani. He was twisting her arms when I got to him. I pulled him off her and they all got skittish and ran. There wasn't a soul in the street to see it.”
 

“Was it difficult, chasing them off?” Zed asked.
 

Dana's thigh throbbed. “It wasn't fun.”
 

Zed said, “What did they want, do you think? To kidnap Rhani? Hurt her? Frighten her?”
 

Dana considered that. “I—I don't know, Zed-ka,” he said. “They couldn't have wanted to kill her or they would have done it from a distance, and I never would have seen their faces.”
 

Zed locked gazes with Rhani. “It makes a pattern,” he said.
 

Rhani was nodding. “Yes. The day after tomorrow I should get a letter from the Free Folk of Chabad.”
 

Zed's gaze shot to Dana's face. “You did well,” he said.
 

“Thank you, Zed-ka,” Dana said.
 

“Tell me"—Zed sipped his wine, still looking at Dana—"was there no way to put one of them out? A knock on the head would have done it, and the police would have had someone to question.”
 

Dana swallowed. He had been expecting this question, and dreading it. Truthfully he answered, “When I pulled the third one off Rhani, I was afraid for her; I thought she'd broken an arm. I let him go without thinking.”
 

Eyes like bits of crystal bored into his. Then Zed said, “All right, Dana. Go back to the kitchen.”
 

Safe in the kitchen, Dana leaned against a wall. Amri touched his arm, her round face anxious. He smiled to reassure her. “It's all right, kitten,” he said. “I'm not even bent.” But his heart was still pounding. He had told the truth, but not all of it. If Zed had pushed, he would have learned that Dana had chosen not to try to capture one of the attackers. He could not face bringing someone back to the house so that Zed could break the poor fool slowly and painfully apart.
 

He sat, and finished his cooling meal. Corrios cleaned the kitchen. Rhani and Zed left the dining alcove; Dana heard them laughing on their way up the stairs. Amri straightened the alcove. Finally she came into the kitchen. “I'm done,” she said to Corrios. The albino checked the food storage bins and coolers, nodded to them all, and stalked out.
 

Amri flicked off the kitchen lights. “Are you going to stay here?” she said to Dana.
 

He nodded toward his empty plates. “I want to clean those up.”
 

“I can do it,” she offered shyly.
 

“No,” he said, “that's all right, kitten. Go to bed.”
 

She left. In the quiet dark, Dana put the plates through the cleaning unit and set them in their places. Alone like this, he could pretend that he was free on Pellin. Suddenly he realized that he was not alone. Binkie had been sitting on his stool, silent as a wall, watching him.
 

Dana stared at him. “Aren't you going to bed?” he said.
 

Binkie stirred, and slid from the stool. Almost pleasantly, he said, “What the hell business is that of yours?” He reached out and gripped Dana's arm. Dana froze—it was Zed's grip, thumb poised, ready to drive nerve against bone.
 

Angered, he thrust the secretary from him. “What do you think you're doing?” he said.
 

In the dim light Binkie's features were bleak, hard as stone. “You're lucky, you know that,” he said.
 

Dana said, “I don't know what you mean.”
 

Binkie smiled at him. “Rhani,” he said, very softly. “Who do you think turned off the com-unit alarm?”
 

Dana felt himself blushing. He was glad the light was dim. “So?” he said belligerently. “I owe you for it.”
 

“That's right,” Binkie said. “You do.”
 

“Let me know when you want to call the debt in,” Dana said sarcastically. He walked to the entrance to the slaves' hall. Binkie did not follow him. As he went into his bedroom, Dana wondered why Binkie had turned off the com-unit alarm. Simply to get Dana in his debt? Or was there another reason? Did Binkie have a secret he wanted protected, a lover perhaps, some treasure hidden in Abanat that he visited on those rare occasions Rhani gave him a morning off?
 

Stars, Dana thought, we live in the same house, we are fellow-victims of the same man, and we know nothing about each other, nothing at all.
 

The next day was the day of the Auction.
 

From the maps, Dana knew that the Auction was held in a square at the center of the city: Auction Place. It was sunny. He wondered if it had ever rained the day of the Auction. Both Rhani and Zed would attend it, of course, and he would be at Rhani's side, as her bodyguard. He washed and exercised. He was dressing when Amri tapped on his door. She was wearing pale yellow, and Dana was reminded of his first meeting with her on the estate. More than ever she looked like a butterfly.
 

She held out a pair of blue boots. “These are for you, from Rhani,” she said.
 

Dana took them from her. They were very light, and he wondered what animal's skin they were.
 

Amri's errand was not complete. “Rhani says she wants you to wear blue, and the sapphire earrings that you wore yesterday.”
 

“All right,” Dana said. Wondering why it mattered what he wore, he changed his clothes. His thigh felt almost normal, and the gel on his face had dried. Peeling it off, he felt the contours of the cut with his fingertips. He looked in the mirror: its edges had knit. It would not even leave a scar. He hurried into the kitchen. Now he could hear clearly the sound that had awakened him: the musical chiming of many bells.
 

Binkie sat on a stool, the same one he had occupied the night before. He too was wearing blue: the fresh clothes were the only sign that he had left it. “Better eat something,” he said to Dana. “You'll need it.”
 

They assembled in the front hall: Rhani, Zed, Dana, Binkie, Amri. Rhani was dressed in silver and blue; Zed in the silver Net commander's uniform with the Yago “Y” on its sleeve. The sight of it made Dana's stomach contract into a tight ball. Rhani's hair hung loose. A topaz at her throat accentuated the amber of her eyes. She spoke to Zed; the conversation had evidently started in her room. “Zed-ka, I don't want to talk about my bruises, or about the attack. I want to go to the Auction and have a good time. We can be serious and worried tonight.”
 

With punctilious courtesy, Zed said, “Whatever you wish, Rhani-ka.”
 

The bells had stopped. Corrios held the door open for them. They went outside. In the night, the city had erected flagpoles all along the Boulevard from which a splendor of flags was flying: the flags of the Four Families and the flags of all five worlds in Sector Sardonyx. Below them, all of Abanat seemed to be moving in one direction: eastward, toward Auction Place. It was early. The lighter-eyed folk were wearing sunshades, but most of the people in the streets were carrying theirs. Dana pushed his to the top of his head. Rhani said, “The banks and businesses close today; everyone goes to the Auction. It's one of our holidays.” She and Zed went down the steps together. Dana, walking beside Binkie, saw the secretary's face contort at the word
holidays
as if he smelled something rotten. They joined the throng. Dana moved to walk at Rhani's right shoulder. She chuckled. “No one will attack me today, Zed-ka. I have two bodyguards.”
 

She rested her fingers for an instant on Dana's bare left arm. Dana screened his reaction by pretending to stumble and regain balance. Zed glanced at him curiously. Dana said, “I'm not used to walking in these boots.”
 

Zed said, “You're growing worldbound.” The word described the inevitable dissolution of agility and grace that happened to Hypers who lived too long away from the starships.