This Alien Shore (16 page)

I'm trying,
she told him. Tears in her eyes.
I really am
trying.

Teamwork....

“
J
amie?”

She looked up from packing and saw him standing in the doorway. As always, his presence brought a flush to her cheeks. For a moment she hesitated, waiting to see if Katlyn would take over—Justin was really her lover, not Jamisia's —but for once she didn't. Was that good or bad?

“Come in.”

She looked up from the bag she had been packing, one of two that held her meager belongings. Despite the temptations of the metroliner she had purchased very few things, always aware that her resources were limited. Clothing, mostly practical. Jewelry, modest pieces that could be worn with anything. Cosmetics, enough to accent her features without adopting the bright and often hideous fashions that swept through the great ship at intervals. No music beyond that which she had brought with her from Shido. No books. There were libraries for those, from which she could borrow journals for Verina, suspense novels for Katlyn, combat manuals for Derik, space adventures for Raven ... now that she was allowed to share consciousness with the Others it was all a mess in her brain, she could no longer remember who had read what.

For a moment it seemed that he might come into the room and kiss her. She braced herself not to draw away from him if he did. It wasn't that she didn't find him attractive herself, and the few times she'd been with him in her own right she'd rather liked him. But the memory of her involuntary intimacy with him made her skin crawl when he touched her.

Damn it, where was Katlyn?

“We need to talk,” he said quietly.

She started to say something about long good-byes—and then looked up at him, and looked in his eyes, and the words died in her throat. This wasn't about her leaving the metroliner next E-week. It wasn't about two lives that were about to be separated, to Katlyn's frustration and Jamisia's great relief. They had been through all that, a dozen times over.

This was about something else ... something more.

“Okay.” She closed the cover of her bag and sat on the edge of the bed, not quite knowing what to expect. “Go ahead.”

“Not here.” He glanced around the small room—somewhat nervously, she thought—then gestured toward the corridor outside. “Come with me.”

Mystified, she followed him. This kind of behavior wasn't typical of Justin at all. As she left the room, she flashed a quick thought to her Others—?????—but none responded. Apparently they were as much in the dark about this as she was.

Be careful,
Derik warned her, as they walked down the corridor in silence. External silence, anyway.

One would think that after three years a passenger would know the metroliner by heart, but he took her to a place she had never seen before. Once he used an ID tag to open a sealed door; at another portal he hesitated, and she guessed that the ship's system was checking his brainware for clearance. Soon they were in a part of the metroliner where no passengers besides themselves could be seen, all stark corridors and simple doorframes with numbers beside them: cold, undecorated, unwelcoming. Something about the place made her skin crawl ... could it be memory? Was this the place they had brought her when she first arrived, where medical tests had been performed on her, to guarantee that she was free of infection? With a start she realized that Verina had been present for much of that testing, her quick mind absorbing every fact within reach. Not an ordeal, for that one, but an education.

How different Jamisia's memories seemed, now that she knew about the Others who were part of them. She wondered if she would ever get used to it.

“In here.”

The door he opened led to a meeting room of some kind. She hesitated, then went inside. It was a small room, simply furnished, with a table and chairs set alongside one wall and a computer console along the other. No pictures. No labels. No fragments of someone's business left behind, that she could judge its purpose from.

He locked the door behind them and then walked about the room, peering into its comers. He had a sensor in his hand, which he referred to periodically, and at last he seemed satisfied with its readings. “It's clean,” he muttered, and he put the box away. Only then did he turn to her, leaning back against the computer console as he did so.

“Clean?”

“Most of the metroliner has surveillance capacity. I shut it down in this room. They won't discover it till tomorrow at least, not with all the other stuff that's going on here.”

“So you mean—” It hit her suddenly; she could barely whisper the words. “My room?”

“I said
capacity,”
he stressed. “Under normal circumstances, passenger privacy is considered sacred; we'd have a revolution on our hands if it weren't. But the Captain-General reserves the right to use surveillance if necessary to safeguard the ship ... so all the rooms are wired, just in case. Don't worry,” he said quickly, seeing the growing alarm in her eyes. “I know for a fact yours has never been turned on before today. No one's been watching you, Jamie.”

“But you thought someone might be.” Her heart had begun to pound in her chest. “Today.”

He hesitated. “Let's say ' I didn't want to take any chances.”

He came toward her, drawing a folded plastic sheet from out of his pocket. “This came yesterday. Mom doesn't know I have it.”

She looked at him for a minute, then took the letter. And opened it. And read.

 

To Viktoria Clarendon, Captain-General of the Earth Metroliner
Aurora.

 

She read the letter twice, and then finally the signatures and titles scanned in beneath it.
Earth Central Security. United Habitat Defense.
Two of the most powerful security operations in Earth's domain. They wanted her, these people, and they wanted her badly.

Suddenly the old fear was back. She wanted to run somewhere—anywhere—but where was there to go? So she forced herself to take in a deep, deep breath and hand the letter back to him. Waiting.

“Well?” he said quietly.

She swallowed thickly. It hurt.

“Jamie?”

She whispered it: “What do you want me to say?” God, they had her retina, her betawave ... everything. What effort would it be for the ship's crew to scan the passengers as they left? Security probably did that anyway. She was trapped, trapped....

“Tell me about this,” he urged softly. “Help me understand. ”

How many dreams had she had, in which her tutor warned her about the enemy? How many times had he told her in dreamscapes that her brainware was worth a fortune to Shido's rivals, that they would come after her if they possibly could ... and she had been foolish, and imagined herself safe here. She had forgotten the first rule of inspace, which he'd drilled into her from childhood: people can only travel so fast. Data moves at the speed of light.

It had beaten her here.

“Jamie?”

She drew in a deep breath, trying to assemble a plausible lie. What could she tell him? How much did she dare trust him?
Go for it,
Katlyn whispered, but Jamisia wasn't about to take her advice; Kat's brain was between her legs.

“I am from Shido.” She said it slowly, picking her way through each word with care. “That much is true.” Where could she lie safely, and where would he catch her? There might be more to this message, she realized suddenly, which he had not shared with her. She'd better stay very, very close to the truth. “There was a hostile takeover about the time the
Aurora
was leaving Earth. The habitat was destroyed. I...” She saw the look in his eyes and was suddenly wary.
He knows what happened to Shido,
she thought.
He researched that before he came to me.
She felt tears beginning to build in her eyes, and dreaded the moment they would begin to trickle down her cheeks, advertising her fear.

“I got away,” she said at last. “One of my ... family sent me here. To go join my outworld relatives.” One more deep breath: shaky though it was, the rush of oxygen lent her strength. “My father was involved in research for Shido. He was teaching me about his work, he ...” The first tear began a slow course down her cheek, and she decided to use it. “He's dead,” she whispered. “He died in the explosion. All of my family died.”

She broke down then, and wept openly; it was only partly for show, mostly it was genuine grief pouring out of her. It had been so long since she'd mourned the loss of everything she'd had, everyone she'd loved, she'd been holding it all in....

That's it,
one of the Others whispered. She didn't even know which one.
Let the tears flow, Jamie, he'll respond to that.

And he did. After a moment's hesitation he came to her and gathered her tenderly into his arms. The embrace felt awkward—he was little more than a stranger to her, though a lover to Katlyn—but the warmth was good and the caring was genuine, and in the back of her mind a flicker of hope began to spark.

Verina began to feed concepts into her brain; she tried not to hesitate as she absorbed them, tried to make the words flow like her own. “His work was highly secretive. It's worth a lot to Shido's rivals. I don't know all the details, but I know—”
Careful!
Derik warned. “Enough to be afraid of them. Enough to know that they think I have information I don't ... and they're not going to believe that.” She met Justin's eyes then, and tried to pour all her desperate need for masculine support into that precious contact. “Shido's rivals will be looking for me. They want to bring me back to Earth; once we're there, corporate law gives them the right to what's in my brain. Only they'd have to ... they'd have to ...” She choked out the words. “It's ... not a safe process,” she said at last. “It might ...” she hesitated, not wanting to push the truth too far. Then:
oh, what the hell...
“I might not survive it.”

He fingered the paper in silence for a moment, as if weighing her words against the formal titles printed on it.
He isn't a corporate,
Verina judged.
Most likely a rockborn for whom this type of affair is the subject of viddies, little more. He probably doesn't know enough of corporate law to judge if what you're saying is reasonable or not.

At last he folded up the message. It took him a while, lean fingers pressing each crease before going on to the next. She held her breath while she watched, afraid to ask what he was thinking. What he intended.

At last he said, “When you get to these relatives of yours ... you'll be okay?”

Her heart pounded wildly. She tried to sound calm. “Yes. Yes. Earth law doesn't hold in the outworlds ... once I'm there, they can't come get me.”

He said nothing more for a moment.

“Justin?”

“Mom hasn't seen this yet,” he muttered. He slid it into the pocket of his jumpsuit; a faint smile touched the comer of his lips. “Guess she doesn't have to, does she?”