The Sardonyx Net (68 page)

“Were you, Rhani-ka? Lovers?”
 

Rhani was shocked. Zed never asked about her lovers. And because he had never asked before, she knew that she had to answer it. Fingers clenched together, she said, “Yes, Zed, we were.”
 

She heard his in-drawn breath. She could only see his face in profile against the lamplight. At the very edge of her vision, the green light went off and on, off and on. Better tell him the rest, too. “Not only that, but I'm pregnant,” she said. “Dana doesn't know. I never told him.”
 

He did not move. In the single light, he appeared ghostly, an eidolon. Then he walked, slowly, to one of the hanging chairs. It creaked. Released to response by the sound, Rhani took a step toward him. “Zed?”
 

“No,” he said.
 

Had he wept, she would have ignored all words and gone to him. But the exigency of his isolation was too extreme for comfort. She knew; she remembered. So she extinguished the light and left him to his grief.
 

In the morning, Zed did not appear for breakfast.
 

Rhani lingered in the dining space off the kitchen, hoping that he would come from his room and join her. When it was clear that he would not, she went into the common room to wait. Cole Arajian was sitting reading a PlNsheet. He passed it to her and she looked the front page over: it contained the first of his creations, and a quotation from Imre Kyneth...."Once more a Yago has found a solution to a problem of such complex dimensions that many of us believed it was insoluble....” There was a bad picture of her on the second page.
 

As she returned the sheet to Cole, someone knocked at the front door. Cole opened it. John Salambo, one of the Net crewmen, was standing just outside. Behind him were three strangers. One of them was Catriona Graeme.
 

“Domna, these folks want to speak with you.” Salambo was studiously casual. Cole looked at Rhani.
 

“Thank you. Let them through, please.” They walked in: Graeme, a burly-shouldered man in black, a tall woman holding a communicator. The morning sunlight touched the gray strands in Graeme's dark hair.
 

“Domna,” she said, hands at her sides, shoulders square in an unconsciously military stance, “I came to apologize.” The jagged scar at her right temple pulsed. “I made some stupid assumptions last night. I was wrong.” She swallowed. “Starcaptain Lamonica confirms identification of the man she saw leave with Dana Ikoro as one Elon Liddell, ex-member of the Hyperspace Police, who disappeared with Michel A-Rae the day after the Auction. We have ascertained the route they took and the district they went to, on the other side of the Boulevard, just south of the Barrens. I am hopeful that, within a few hours, we will have located the very house.”
 

Rhani thought: It took courage to come and say that to me in front of my entire household and her own subordinates...."Captain Graeme, I appreciate your choosing to tell me this in person,” she said. “I have complete confidence that you will indeed find what you're looking for. Last night was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
 

The tall woman murmured into the communicator. “Clear,” she said. “Captain, we've got it! One-oh-nine West Cooley. A big man with a black cloak has been seen by the neighbors going in and out of the house. Three of them recognized a holo of Liddell.”
 

An electric current seemed to shimmer suddenly through the latticed walls of the house. “Good,” said Graeme. “Notify the A.P. and ask them to set up backup, just in case. Seal off the block, tell city services to cut the power on the northeast slideway, call Moa Li at Base and tell her to move Group B to within a block of the house and set up a perimeter, and to wait. Domna, we have to go—as you've gathered, we may have found our target.” She turned toward the door, which the burly man had already opened.
 

“Captain Graeme,” said Zed from the archway.
 

She turned impatiently. “Yes?”
 

“May I join your forces?” His voice was very steady. His skin looked stretched across cheekbones and jaw, and it was flushed to a clear, even rose. His clothes were drab, except for the silver mesh of his gloves.
 

“Who the hell are you?”
 

“Zed Yago, ex-commander of the Yago Net.”
 

“Can you take my orders?”
 

“Try me,” he said.
 

She frowned. “I don't need amateurs in the middle of this. They get hurt, or hurt someone else.”
 

Zed said nothing.
 

Graeme flicked a look at Rhani. “All right, Commander,” she said. “You come with us. Malachi—” she jerked a thumb at the man by the door—"will tell you where to go.” She strode out of the house. The others followed her like the tail on a comet.
 

“Zed-ka,” Rhani said, “what ...?”
 

He smiled, and brushed her cheek with one hand as he passed her. “I love you,” he said, and then the door closed.
 

In Auction Place, the heat shimmered upward from the pavement, distorting vision. The air thickened, and it smelled of burning. Overhead, the city flags flapped fitfully on their poles. Malachi, twenty meters to Zed's left, was walking through the square with disinterest, a busy man with somewhere specific to go. He swerved right. Zed counted to ten and followed him. Behind them, irritated tourists milled around the stationary movalong. Zed counted the streets in his head. Four more to go to West Cooley. One-oh-nine was a corner house. B Group was already in position, cutting off possible escape routes. Zed reached up to rub his left ear, caught the motion, stopped it. He was not used to wearing a remote. It spoke suddenly. “A Team, positions in eight minutes.” Zed lengthened his stride. Malachi had vanished, but twenty meters to Zed's right strode a figure in cream-colored pants and a brown, webbed shirt, ordinary garments, except for the stunner in the boot holster.
 

In the quiet sunlight, Zed held his hands in front of him and worked his claws.
 

Graeme had refused to give him a weapon; he was a spectator at the feast this day, not a celebrant. He crossed an intersection. “Five minutes,” said the voice at his ear. He breathed easily, feeling the film of sweat casing his body like a caressing hand. Another intersection. “Three minutes.” He wondered if the people in the houses had noticed the strangers hurrying through their streets and speculated on what was going on. A muscle cramped in his left thigh and he snarled, unable to halt and flex it. He kept moving and after a while the knot went away. The houses here were small, set close together on crooked streets. “One minute,” said the voice at his ear.
 

He crossed the last intersection and turned right toward the corner of Cooley and Thaine. Malachi beckoned him. Zed went to him and dropped to his knees beside the brawny, dark cop. He was holding a communicator in one hand. There was a water gauge on a pole beside him; Zed pretended to examine it. “Now what?” he said.
 

“We go in,” said Malachi. “You stay here. Move when you're told to.”
 

Zed nodded. He had hoped that Graeme would let him join the first attack team but it had been an unlikely hope. He did not want to get in anyone's way. “They're still inside?” he said.
 

“As far as I know.” A tone sounded in Zed's ear. “That's it. See you later.” Rising, Malachi sauntered away from the pole. A second tone sounded in Zed's ear. Sweat curled his hair and plastered his shirt to his body. Malachi was running now toward the corner house. It had white walls, a slanted roof with solar panels turned toward the sun, a gravel path.... He watched running figures converge in all directions. The side windows of the house fell inward. The sound of shattering glass brought saliva to his mouth; he swallowed. Human shadows flowed through the windows. Smoke puffed from one window and dissipated on a warm slow breeze.
 

“All units move in,” said Cat Graeme's voice in the remote. Zed stood. The muscle in his thigh cramped again. He loped toward the house. The front door eased slowly open. Cat Graeme stood framed in the doorway. She was holding a stun gun.
 

“You mount an impressive operation, Captain,” Zed said.
 

She grinned. “Thanks.”
 

“Have you got them all?”
 

“Every one.”
 

The blood roared in Zed's ears like the sea. He walked into the house, noting a huge, motley pile of things against a wall, tools, clothes, electronic components, stun charge casings, rope, blankets.... He almost stumbled over the first body: a woman, holding a stunner in one hand. He glanced at the charge; it was set at lethal, but the casing gauge showed it to be empty. She was breathing stertorously. He moved on. A second room held two three-tiered bunks like the bunks on a starship. A second man lay slumped on one of the bunks, his head and upper torso on the bunk, his hips, legs, and feet trailing on the floor. He, too, was snoring. A fourth man lay on the hall floor with a laser bur through his shoulder. He was moaning. Zed closed his nostrils against the smell of burned flesh and walked to the rear of the house. He heard voices and angled toward them. “Can you cut that—yeah, right, now get him on his feet. Did they even feed him, I wonder?”
 

“Took you long enough,” said Dana Ikoro.
 

He was standing, one hand on the wall to steady himself. As Zed entered the little room, he wavered, and one of the members of the attack team caught him and eased him to the cot. The room stank of feces and urine. Dana's mouth was bruised. But his voice was steady as he swore—in Pellish—and tried to lift himself again. Zed walked to him and levered him away from the soiled bunk. “Need a hand, Starcaptain?”
 

“Thanks,” Dana said, and then all his muscles went rigid. “Zed?”
 

“Can you walk?” Zed said.
 

“My legs shake,” Dana said.
 

“Then hold still,” Zed said. Wrapping an arm around Dana's waist, he picked the slighter man off the floor. It was only a few meters down the hall to the kitchen. Dana put both hands out rather blindly, and Zed set him down beside a wall. “Here's a chair.” He guided Dana to it and lowered him to the seat before he fell. Dana steadied himself.
 

“Thank you,” he said. He breathed arrhythmically, and Zed guessed that his ribs were bruised and maybe broken. His clothing was filthy, and there was a blotch of what looked like dried blood in his unkempt hair.
 

“Bad?” Zed said.
 

Dana looked up. His mouth quivered. But he straightened in the chair. “Not too bad,” he said. “It was mostly the big man, Elon. A-Rae—” he paused—"he left me alone after the first two days. It frightened him too much to watch.” He rubbed his face with one hand. His cheeks were stubbled with beard. “May—may I have some water?”
 

Zed walked to the cooler and brought him water in a plastic cup. Dana took the cup. He had it halfway to his mouth before his hand began to shake. Zed steadied it for him and helped him drink. Dana put the cup on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I kept telling myself it could never be as bad as the Net,” he said. “I even told Elon. He didn't like that.”
 

“Was it?” Zed said.
 

Dana tried to smile. “No. Oh, no.”
 

“
Did
they feed you?”
 

“Off and on. No baths, though. I must stink.”
 

“You do,” Zed said. The darkness was seeping into him, but he held it back. “Think you can remember an address?”
 

Dana nodded.
 

“Forty-seven Cabell Street. Rhani's there. She has something important to tell you. I suspect she'd even let you take a bath.”
 

“Cabell Street, forty-seven,” Dana repeated. “Got it.”
 

“Good,” said Zed. Then, before the dark rage moved to snare him, and Dana with him, in its embrace, he walked from the kitchen and began, with methodical diligence, to check the faces of the fallen.
 

He found the ex-chief of the drug detail in the smallest room in the house, really a closet. Someone had bound his hands behind his back. An attack team member in a tattered shirt and pants said, “Hey, maybe you—” but Zed was already past him. The windowless concrete room reminded him of a Net cell. A-Rae lay on his side. Stunned, his face was slack with sleep; he seemed harmless, and very young.
 

Zed wound one hand in the dark hair and lifted the slumping head. His other hand reached to stroke A-Rae's cheek. The claws extended. With tremendous effort, Zed checked the motion. He rose. “Don't move him,” he said to the man standing guard at the door. “Has this place got a medikit?”
 

The man shrugged. “We brought one with us.” Zed went back down the hallway. He found Cat Graeme in the cottage's front room, talking into a communicator. Shards of glass littered the floor.
 

He waited for her to notice him. “What is it?” she said finally, letting the communicator crackle into silence.
 

“You brought a medikit with you.”
 

“That way.” She pointed. “The kitchen.” Zed went to the kitchen. Dana had vanished. The man with the laser burn was sitting groggily on the floor, being treated by a puzzled young medic. Zed rummaged through the open medikit beside her, picked out a stimulant ampule, and returned to the closet where Michel A-Rae lay asleep. Kneeling, he pulled up A-Rae's collar and laid the ampule against the carotid artery.