The Sardonyx Net (46 page)

Suddenly Rhani stepped forward. Kneeling, she put a hand on the slave's knee. “Ramas—Binkie. Aren't you afraid?”
 

He looked at her, shrinking a little toward the wall. A tremor shook him. “Of course I am.” He swallowed. “I don't want to die. I—” He halted. “Oh, leave me,
please
.” His pale face was chalk-white.
 

Rhani said gently, “Are you sure you want me to?”
 

A communication passed between them, a silent, mysterious thread. Hope? Dana thought. Love? He did not understand what was happening. Rhani looked at the door, which from this side was gray and opaque. “Officer Tsurada,” she said, “I want to speak to you.”
 

The door folded back and Tsurada stepped to the doorway. “Yes, Domna?”
 

“What happens now?” Rhani asked. She was still kneeling.
 

The policewoman looked faintly embarrassed. “Well, he's confessed. The sentence is automatic. Normally, we would wait until evening, when we would drug his food and then—” She did not finish.
 

“What drug do you use for the sentence?” Rhani said.
 

“Morphidyne.”
 

Dana had heard of it. It gave release from pain, but was said to be terribly addictive. Of course, in this case it wouldn't matter, he thought. The smell of the hallway was beginning to sicken him. He breathed deeply to push the nausea back.
 

Rhani said, “Binkie?”
 

The slave's hands trembled. “I—oh, this is hard.”
 

“I'll stay,” Rhani said. She sat beside him on the narrow bunk and looked at Officer Tsurada. “Do you have any objections to that”
 

Tsurada looked bewildered. “No, Domna,” she said. “But it isn't—usual.”
 

“I don't care,” Rhani said. “Go and get your drug, Officer.”
 

Tsurada left the room. Dana wiped his palms on his pants; he was sweating badly now. When Tsurada returned, she held a cup with a small black pill in it in one hand and a loaded syringe in the other.
 

“Which do you want?” she said.
 

Ramas stared at her laden hands. He nodded at the syringe. “That's faster, isn't it?” he said hoarsely. Dana felt dizzy. He put a hand on the white wall to hold himself upright. I refuse, he thought, I absolutely refuse to be sick.
 

“Yes, it is,” Tsurada said.
 

“That's what I want.” He looked at Rhani. “You said you'll stay. To the end?”
 

“To the end,” she agreed.
 

Officer Tsurada shut the folding door. She lifted the syringe to the light, checking the solution, Dana thought. “Your left wrist, please,” she said. Ramas pushed his left wrist at her. It was trembling; he tried to stop the tremor with his other hand, and could not. Rhani reached to the man who tried to kill her and cradled his hand between her own. Tsurada inserted the needle under the skin. The vein stood up. She pushed the plunger, and then drew it back a centimeter: blood backed into the tube, turning the liquid pearly pink. Ramas sighed; under the impersonal lights his face seemed translucent. Tsurada pushed the plunger the rest of the way in.
 

When she drew the needle out, a drop of blood welled on Ramas' wrist. His mouth opened. He licked his dry lips, tried to speak, tried with muscles weaker than a baby's to contract his fingers. He couldn't. “I'm cold,” he whispered. He went loose, like a sack with its stuffing out of it. “Tell my daughter—” he started to say, and then the lines on his taut face smoothed. He breathed shallow, soft gasps that did not fill his lungs, and died.
 

They went into the hall. Dana balled his hands until his knuckles ached and concentrated on seeing. Rhani was talking with the policewoman about the Hype cops. “What will happen to them?”
 

“They're Federation officials,” Tsurada said. “They'll be shipped to Nexus, tried, and I expect convicted.”
 

“Did they tell you anything about A-Rae's current plans?” Her voice was cool, unfazed, unfathomable.
 

“Only that he had expected to have to hide.”
 

“I was thinking about what Binkie—Ramas—just said.”
 

Tsurada shook her head. “No.”
 

“Has the rest of A-Rae's staff gone with him into hiding?”
 

“He seems to have taken a core, maybe ten people, with him. The rest are milling about on the moon, under the command of Henrietta Melones, the acting captain. Word is that a replacement has already been designated for the position, and that the person—whoever she is—is on her way here.” They reached the elevator, entered it, went up to the ground floor. Dana felt his stomach muscles settle.
 

Rhani said, “I would like to see the reports of the interrogations made on the five police. Are they available?”
 

“They're in the computer, Domna. I'll make sure they are released to you.”
 

“Thank you. You are very kind.” The elevator wormed its way to the roof.
 

They stepped into the bubble hangar. Rhani said polite things to Sachiko Tsurada, pressed her hands, dismissed her. Dana waited. His guts had relaxed, but his nerves were so tense he felt as if his skin were on fire. Rhani climbed into the bubble after him. The roof pulled back, the sky blazed down, and they were free. He sent the little machine into the light. He said, “Where do you want to go?”
 

She glanced at him in surprise. “The Kyneth house.”
 

He directed the bubble south. The Promenade unrolled beneath them. Rhani sighed. “Wait,” she said. “Go west.” He took the bubble winging out over the lambent icebergs. “Are you all right?” she said.
 

He nodded. “I didn't think you noticed.”
 

She raised her eyebrows. “Of course I noticed.” She leaned forward, filled a cup of water, drank it. “Dana, you've never watched anyone die, have you?”
 

He shook his head.
 

“I have. My mother died at home. So did Domna Sam. Death isn't strange to me.” The blood had risen under her skin so that its honey color deepened to bronze. “But it wasn't easy, witnessing that death. I did it because it wasn't easy.”
 

He said, “I don't understand you.”
 

“I know that. I don't expect you to.” She leaned her head back, leaving her throat exposed. Something in the posture—he could not remember what—reminded him vividly of Zed. “I have my secrets from you, as you have yours from me. Binkie—” she halted, and then continued—"Binkie was right, I was cruel beyond belief when I let Zed have him. I should have put him on dorazine.”
 

Part of Dana's mind agreed with her, and wanted to say it. But he found himself thinking: You couldn't help it, you didn't know how he felt—excusing her ignorance, denying the self-admitted culpability. “Don't put me on dorazine,” he said. “I'd be of no use as a pilot.”
 

“And Binkie would have been no use as a secretary.”
 

They sailed over the iceberg peaks. On one of them Dana spotted a small toiling figure. An ice climber? he wondered. “May I ask you ...?”
 

“Ask,” she said.
 

“What was Binkie's—Ramas'—crime?”
 

“On Enchanter, you mean?” Rhani sighed. “He ran an arson ring for profit. He was the administrator, not the one who made the flames.”
 

Dana recalled Binkie saying to him, his first evening at the estate, “
I could be an arsonist, or an axe murderer
.” The bubble plunged on a downdraft, and he righted it automatically. He licked his lips and said, “What about Amri?”
 

“What about Amri?” Rhani asked.
 

“What was her crime? She was so young, so childish—”
 

To his horror, Rhani laughed. “Oh, Dana,” she said, and her voice was weary. “You poor innocent. Have you never met a person who'd been brain-wiped before?”
 

“Brain-wiped?” he said, incredulous. “Amri?”
 

“Twice,” Rhani said. “She was a thief, Dana; an imaginative, incorrigible thief. The first time she was sentenced—she was just fourteen—the court judged her capable of rehabilitation, and sent her for treatment. She returned to her profession the week they released her from the Clinic. They did a minimal brain-wipe—they call it a therapeutic wipe. It didn't take. They did a slightly deeper one the next time. Finally, in desperation, they delivered her to the Net. The Clinic telepath suggested that slavery might set up some kind of pattern of restitution.”
 

Dana said, “Was it—was it working?”
 

“How do I know? Amri never stole from me, if that's what you mean.”
 

“It's hard to believe—she seemed so pure.”
 

“Brain-wipe does that. Let's go back now.” As Dana swung the craft to the southwest, making a spiral toward the sun, she said, “I blame Binkie for that, for that death, above all. Amri deserved a chance to be something other than what she had been.”
 

There was an acid taste in Dana's mouth. He felt a fool: he had thought Amri innocent, and she was simply a felon who had been trapped too many times. Starcaptain/slave, child/thief: Chabad kept transforming what he thought he knew. It was unfair. He was reminded of toy holograms he'd played with; when you turned them, the figure seemed to move, and yet when you looked again, they hadn't, and when you tried to touch them the smooth plastic casing pushed your hand away.
 

He had done that as a child on Pellin. Stars, he was still a child, as much a child as Amri, anyway....
 

“Dana!” Rhani gasped. Dana jumped in his seat.
 

Somehow they had gotten too close to another bubble. Dana saw the pilot's mouth opening and closing impotently. He veered left as the other craft spiraled down. They missed each other. Fighting the wash of air that bobbed them like two corks, Dana said, “Thanks!”
 

You idiot
. It was not Rhani's voice, and it came from inside his head.
This is Tamerlane Orion, Abanat's chief pilot. Where did you train, you fool? Don't answer me, I can't hear you. But watch what you're doing over my city, if you please, or I'll let you explain to Zed Yago how you nearly killed his sister because you weren't paying attention to what else was sharing the space-lanes
.
 

“Dana, what is it?” Rhani demanded. “What's happening?”
 

Signing off
, the voice said grimly.
 

“Dana?”
 

“A minute,” Dana said. His head was ringing. His contact with telepaths had been mercifully limited. He had had one examination by the telepaths on Nexus to qualify for his medallion; it had left him sick for a day.
 

He swallowed. “The chief pilot just communicated with me,” he said.
 

Rhani looked at him as if he were out of his mind. Cautiously, she said, “How? I didn't hear a thing.”
 

“You don't—oh.” He was surprised. “He's a telepath, Rhani-ka.”
 

“Really?” She rubbed her chin with one hand “That's odd; I didn't know that, and I've met him.”
 

Being very, very careful, Dana brought the bubblecraft the rest of the way across Abanat, and headed down toward the Kyneth roof. The hangar top was already open for him. He felt as if he needed to sleep, or else to scream long and loud where no one could hear him. He wished devoutly that the destruction of the Yago house had not also included his musictapes.
 

They settled into the hangar. “Wait,” Rhani said into the shadows. Dana turned off the machinery and sat, hands in his lap. She leaned against him. Her hair blew against his mouth. He glanced at her and saw age lines, strain lines, at the corners of her eyes and lips. “Dana, do you hate me?”
 

“Hate you?” He was shocked. “No.”
 

“Despite what Binkie said about Zed and me?”
 

He let his hand touch her cheek. “No. I don't hate you.”
 

“I'm glad. I should tell you—” She stopped.
 

“Tell me what?”
 

“No,” she said. “Not yet. Let's go in.”
 

He held her back. “Rhani, you have to—” Her mouth came up to his. Like pieces of a puzzle locking into place, they embraced. Her fingers stroked his back. He breathed her scent. Her breasts and hips moved against him, and he felt his body move to answer.
 

This
can't
go on, he thought, and groaned as she touched him.
 

“Rhani.” He captured her hands and folded them between his own. “Rhani, tell me something.”
 

“If I can.”
 

“How long are we going to stay in this house? Three or four days? A week? Two?”
 

“Perhaps a week,” she said.
 

“And then we'll fly to the estate. Will Zed stay in Abanat?”
 

“Of course not. The estate is his home. He may fly to the Clinic if they call him.”
 

“How frequently might that happen?”