When it began to rain, Hephaestion strolled into the upstairs main room and watched Zone and Edge play cards. Dance was napping on the second-hand sofa, her feet up and her dress shirt unbuttoned.
It was Rock's turn to scan the nine-inch television for news reports, watch the alarm panel, and monitor the satellite phone.
Hephaestion turned from the card game to the double windows that overlooked a hill. Beyond the trees ran a road. The trees blocked view of the road. Even so the drapes were pulled, giving the room a somberness that its single table lamp was unable to dispel.
He returned to Siris' workroom, stopped to watch her checking Manegold. She was never perfunctory but seemed to care what her fingers and her instruments did against her subject's skin. When she was done, she made a notation into a flex hand-held and sat with slim legs crossed, a finger in her mouth, absorbed in thought.
He moved into the bathroom and closed the door.
As soon as he could, he stepped over to the window, lifted the edge of an old plastic curtain, and looked down through the green-tinged light toward the street.
He cast his senses wide, much as a fisherman would cast a net. On the street that led up to the university a single car motored by. For a while, after it was gone there was nothing. Ajan Street was a mix of residences and storage sheds belonging to the university. Mostly people used the hill to reach the main street, to ride up and down through town on the big buses.
It was like coming out of the mist. The mist clung like a familiar lover, what he remembered of one. A woman's slender arms drawing him back to her skin, moist lips on his ear. The embrace warm and safe and thick with the scent of her sex. Sometimes sex made him dizzy. But he needed to get up.
To wake up--
Come here!
He slid his nose between the curtain and the cold glass of the window. He saw nothing, only the shivering latticework of tree branches.
He left the bathroom and said, "I am going outside to look at the main road."
Siris glanced at him. "Should we be worried?"
He was conscious of the beginning of a lie and hesitated. Unfamiliar territory, both. The lie and hesitation. When he did not want to answer Dr. Interlandi, usually he said nothing.
He opened his mouth. "Something has found me."
She frowned, trying to understand how he knew such a thing. On her feet, she followed him upstairs.
Hephaestion lifted a coat from the back of a chair, repeating the words to Zone.
Zone turned to Rock. "Shadow him."
"No," Hephaestion said. "You know it's not necessary."
Dance stirred from her nap, asked what was happening.
Hephaestion went down to the back door. "If I do not return in a quarter hour, you must move quickly to the next safe house. Be ready."
Zone snapped his fingers at his team. "Let's go."
Siris caught up to Hephaestion at the door. "Wait. What does it mean, something has found you?"
"I don't know what it means. I only know if I don't go outside, it will come here to us and you will not get your chance to see life in your new young man."
Siris stepped back. "A quarter hour?"
"That should be sufficient."
"If you don't return, we will find you."
He nodded. "I know. You will find me. Of course you will. First, the new one must wake. We agree?"
"Yes."
He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles, appreciating the unexpectedly pleasant contact because she did not flinch. He was glad for the intensity and veracity of her concern. It matched the intensity of the soldiers.
"Good," he said.
Outside, he inhaled the damp soil and mold of last year's leaves and walked into the rain.
He stepped toward the driveway, and there it was again: hesitation.
In his chest his heart did something it rarely did. It clamored against his ribs, making his skin hot.
On the street, he made his way down the hill. When he was near the corner, he saw a bus careen down the avenue without slowing.
A wind found the wings of his coat. He knew the wind was too cold for the season but he could not really feel it. The rain misted his hair and his face. He came to the corner, breathing slowly, trying to prepare for the shock of the woman he knew was waiting.
At the bottom of the hill, across the street, the city had built a stop for buses going into the city central. The stop had a bench, and there was a plastic shelter with an ashtray.
A woman stood inside the shelter. She wore a long, tan coat with a white scarf and gloves for her hands. On her feet were low heels. She did not need to wear high heels. She was tall as he was.
He looked past a spattering of cars released by the traffic light and gazed over at her side of the street.
Although her skin was brown he knew that she was not the Ussurian lady he had shared a bus with. How many bronze-skinned women were in Bhavaja? No, that was not the essential question. This woman, the one in the bus shelter, was the one he mistook the other for. This one was the one he wanted. She was the reason his skin was damp and his knees felt like water. This one.
--I am here. Should I cross over?
-- No, stay where you are. I will tell you when I'm done.
-- When you are done with what?
-- Scanning you.
Indeed there was something a bit larger than a flex in her gloved hand, which she had removed from a dark leather shoulder bag. Her eyes hid behind shaded spectacles. A plastic rain hood covered her hair. Her features, however, he could see: small, thin bones, a straight nose, a small mouth.
-- I'm not armed.
-- No, you are not. No trace of foreign substances in the bloodstream. Come over, please.
He checked the traffic light, waited for another downtown bus, then jogged across the street. When he entered the shelter, he lifted his arms. It was, he sensed, a wise and courteous manner in which to approach an official of the city. She put the flex-looking object into her bag. Proceeded to run her gloved hands over his body, starting with his coat, his pockets-- she removed a bus token and kept it --and going, next, inside his coat, touching his body with only his shirt and his slacks and her gloves between their skin.
She lifted his identification card from his slacks. The flex-sized object came out again. She slid the ID card into a side reader. "Bojidar Rambach, twenty-nine, from Borazjis. Entered the country sixteen days ago on a business visa. What is the name of your company, Bojidar?"
Her Volodyan was impeccable, down to the university finish. She had not learned the Volod state language in Volodya.
"XTO Sun Energies."
"In Borazji, if you please."
"XTO Sun Energies. May I put my arms down?"
"Is this your credit card?"
"Yes."
She used the reader on his credit card, studied the screen. "You are well endowed, Bojidar. Why are you so far from your office during the day?"
"I am visiting an acquaintance. Am I under arrest?"
"You are under suspicion. Arrest is not quite called for. Yes, you may lower your arms. Would you like to sit down?"
"I would not like to sit down here."
"Where, then?"
He held out his hand, palm up.
She put his credit card, identification card, and bus token into his palm.
"Take off your spectacles," he said, this time in Volodyan.
She shifted a hand to the frame, lifted away the glasses without pause.
Dark blue eyes gazed at him, hard as agate and as extraordinary against the even darkness of her skin as his pale metallic ones were in the smooth, fresh face of a young man.
He tilted his head like a schoolboy, staring. Then, "Will you lunch with me?" he asked.
* * *
The woman in the bus booth was telepathic. Generally, he initiated telepathy and sustained two-way traffic with his power. His consent and aid was critical, because he did not roam the world like a flex with its comm channel open. There was too much stimuli. His internal mental shield adjusted according to his needs. After centuries of use, the shield operated without conscious thought. One might say he was restricted access on an encrypted frequency.
She clicked to him when the rain began.
She had found him, shield or no shield, and called him out to meet her.
It seemed appropriate to do as she asked.
What was she dialing into? Why did he hear her?
He had gone outside to find out.
Then, at the corner, through the traffic, he saw her.
He probed her. Tried to, was denied. Got nothing. Not even the beating of her heart.
There was the telepathic exchange, followed by the patting down as though after defeating his shield she was not sure she had enough information.
Now he turned with her down the street, leaving the bus shelter and entering the rain. He glanced up the street as they started downtown looking for a snack or a sandwich shop. He glanced over at the little sidewalk mall. Nothing better would be this far from downtown. And he did not want to get on a bus, lose the intimacy of her movement at his side.
She gestured to a vehicle, a matte gray Sailles, an imported luxury model, parked illegally on the street. "Can you drive one?"
"I don't have the papers."
"I'll drive." She pointed to the car.
The doors lifted outward. He waited until she got inside, then joined her. He was drenched. It could not have been a good condition to expose the fine biscuit interior to. She lifted the rain hood, cast it dripping into the back seat. Her hair was black, as he knew it would be, its length contained in a conservative roll.
She entered her personal identification code into the dashboard computer. The code resonated in his brain. Maybe she did not know he could steal a code that way, file it and keep it forever.
The Sailles purred to life, glided away from the curb, and settled behind a bus.
"Let's go to the Sun At Top," she said.
Two roadblocks, at least, he thought. "Very well," he said.
"You seem surprised."
"I said, very well."
She pressed the accelerator, motored around the bus, and zipped to a traffic light. She applied breaks furiously, as though angry at the car for allowing the light to trap it.
The bus towered behind them, faceless and intimidating.
He said, "You're not from around here."
"How do you know?"
"The bus is reporting us. We are going to be stopped soon."
She had placed the bag between them on the front seat. Now she reached inside, consulted the small silver computer she had used to check his identification. She said, "You are right."
The traffic light changed. While they waited for it they saw no one cross the intersection. A delay at a checkpoint usually caused this.
She drove forward, but slid into the travel lane to let the bus pass. At the next intersection, a man in a black uniform jumped into the street to wave at them.
There was a police wagon at the curb, black, solid, and without letters or insignia, a familiar presence. Three uniformed men carrying rifles appeared on the walkway.
She pulled into the vacant space indicated by the waving policeman.
He pointed a wand at the car, waiting in the rain while the vehicle operations computer downloaded the Sailles ownership details to his wand screen. Hephaestion sat back. His power told him that the police knew the car and the police were not concerned.
A final glance at his wand, the policeman ambled to the driver's window. Rather than let down the window, the woman opened the intercom.
"Yes, the meaning of this would be?"
He huffed into her intercom: "You were driving suspiciously. Our citizens are alert."
"Thank you. May I go on?"
"Yes, yes, go on." He turned away, rolling his eyes. He never looked at Hephaestion.
Meanwhile, Hephaestion touched the policeman's mind.
The woman motored back into traffic.
"Tell me who you are," Hephaestion said, "and what agency you belong to."
"You can't pronounce my name. Most people torture my name into Zoa."
"Zoa what?"
"We will build trust slowly, Bojidar."
"Are you a government official?"
"Yes."
"For what country?"
"There, again, you go too fast."
"But you are not from around here."
"No, I am not from around here."
"Am I being detained?"
"We are going to a late lunch at Sun At Top. If ever I detain you, you will know it."
* * *
The restaurant was in the penthouse of the Miron Tower. Reservations were required. Zoa presented hers in the form of her identification card. Hephaestion touched the mind of the hostess as the identification card was scanned, came to understand that the woman with the bronze skin was a VIP. The hostess, a thin blonde in a black skirt and red bow tie perched neatly on a crisp white shirt, smiled tightly and escorted them into a small dining room with a stormy view of a park. The table with its white and lavender linen and antique chairs rested against the smoky glass.
A balding, middle-aged man with gray lips appeared. He twisted his mouth into what passed for a professional sort of smile and asked what they were drinking.
Hephaestion checked his wristwatch. He was discovering the initial twinges of panic. Certainly, a swimmer gone far out to sea must feel as he did, looking finally for the shore and seeing it away in the distance. How did he get to this place? He glanced momentarily out the glass. The park was a toy park and the people in it small as ants. Even in the rain the people had come out. With a simple nudge of his power he folded the distance, folded it again, drawing the park close. So close he was just above it and looking into the face of a child with her mother. Mother and child were wrapped in waterproof plastic. The child was unaware of his attention. He was no closer to her than he would be if he had dialed a setting on his binoculars and gazed at her through them. Yet he could see that she had freckles.
Zoa's voice: "Do you have the Buiron 281?" She had a unique accent, which soon and quite involuntarily Hephaestion was certain he would begin to mimic.
He sensed the server's smile deepening greedily. "Yes, of course."
"The 179 is better," Hephaestion suggested for no particular reason. Then he said, "I'll have sebera with ice."
Zoa said, "What are you looking at?" when the server left.
"The rain." He turned slowly from the glass to see her. Slowly, because he hoped she had changed, lifted away the mask, and let him through the layers of tissue, vessels, and bone to her soul. In other words, he hoped to find her human. But she was the woman he first saw across a street in the rain, and she was not human.
"Where is your office from here?" she questioned. It was not an idle question.
He inhaled. "I'm at 4025 Cholykur, on the fortieth floor. We can go there, if you like."
"I'll have someone go there with the photo I uploaded from your ID. If they do not know you, I will have to arrest you. Shall we eat first?"
"Either way." He leaned forward slightly and inhaled again. He could not smell her with his power, and he wanted to smell her. Just the faintest trace of powder. Where? From where? Without her raincoat, she showed a triangle of flesh at the base of her throat, where her blouse was open. There.
She watched him with a small widening of the eyes.
He glanced at the bit of exposed skin, inhaled a final time, and slid back. "Do whatever you wish. I'm not very hungry, for food, that is."
The drinks came.
He stared at the glass while the server suggested marinated chicken to Zoa.
She sent the server away without ordering, then lifted from her bag the computer that looked like a flex but was not. A sip of wine preceded her sending a command over the computer.
Hephaestion picked up his glass, drank. The spirit would not affect him but the liquid acted upon his power the way water fed the roots of a plant.
She continued staring at her screen and sipping wine, unaware. Then she said, "We have a mystery."
He wrinkled his brow, choosing a look of perplexed innocence.
"Why does an XTO Sun Energies executive engineer have an energy wave similar to one that penetrated a security shield at a government facility?" She ought to have asked, "Why does the cosmos reflect the face of the goddess?" That he could have answered.
"Why does-- why do I what?"
She held the computer just above the table, scanning him. "You have an energy wave similar to one that penetrated a security shield at a facility here in Bhavaja several days ago. Would you like to see it?"
"Yes."
Could he mess with her little machine, its readings, trace its link all the way to the server, and take it all apart?
She rotated the computer, let him examine a screen with a file that read Rambach, Bojidar. In labeled panels he saw the data used by Kinder to build his Rambach identity. And he saw a sequence represented by a scan line. The sequence was his, Hephaestion's. She, Zoa, possessed technology to record it, replay, track, and match it. No doubt the sequence was as unique as a fingerprint or an iris scan. He admitted that it was only a matter of time before somebody figured out how to teach a machine to do these things. They called the life force signature, in ancient times, a call. Zoa called it an energy wave. Well, all right. The vettoi of the Wolf Isles were tracking energy waves with witchcraft a thousand years ago.
He gave back the computer.
"We shall be more frank, now," she said.
He said nothing.
"Why did you take his body?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Unfortunate, he thought. Very.
"How did you take his body?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"But you must. First, you penetrated my security shield, then when you returned to the same facility you shut the shield down. Who are you? How did you do that?"
"I don't know what you are talking about." He swallowed more of the sebera. "I'm an engineer but I never heard of a wave pattern, not in the way you're using it. What is a security shield?"
"You are an engineer for a company that builds power plants. Does your clearance level give you access to the storage locations?"
"I don't like where this is going."
"The wine is good, by the way. The body you took belonged to the son of a leader of a terrorist faction."
"Storage locations, for Quiranium?"
"Now, I think, I am going to arrest you."
He nodded, picked up his glass, and realized that it was empty. He looked away at the window, raised a finger, and brushed his upper lip.
She pointed her computer at him. "Elevated heart rate, body temperature. Pupil dilation indicating perception of threat."
He frowned and saw her stop looking at him and look at her screen. She tapped her reboot key, waited. Meanwhile, "I'm going to ask you to ride with me down to the lobby. Will that be a problem?"
Her computer was not going to reboot. Although he did not understand the technology, he had located the thing's energy signature. The unit was protected against a surge so he snapped the board. She'd find the problem, or someone would, when they checked the power crystal. The real problem was if she was recording when he did it, if the unit had time to upload that wave pattern.
"No," he said. "Might I make a call?"
"No," she said, and got up.
So did he.
The server hurried over.
She gave the server her identification card, which he scanned with an anxious smile.
Hephaestion did not bother to touch the server's mind or seek the cause of the server's anxiety. It was that his, Hephaestion's, brow was damp, his skin slick and pale as a man's face might be when he has learned a terrible and inescapable truth.
Zoa glanced toward the penthouse lobby. "Please," she said. "You will be in my custody, not the Volods."
He stepped away shoulder to shoulder with her. They entered the elevator lobby. Zoa pushed the button, then looked at him.
He glanced at a potted plant in the corner of the lobby, at an impressionist's work framed over an empty chair. He turned to the window, cleared his throat. Then he looked at Zoa.
"I think you actually believe that makes a difference," he said.
She gazed back at him, uncertain of his meaning. Her telepathy was off. Her telepathy was no more than data transfer on a frequency decoded by a machine that had been taught to use a bio-energy wave. Essentially, the machine had his number. But he had broken the machine.
She'd have to get a new one, download his frequency from whatever storage source his wave lived in as a file.
A file with the name Rambach, Bojidar.
The elevator arrived. There were two men in raincoats inside the car. Their respective puddles met around their booted feet. The men were heavy, thick-boned, so the boots seemed proper for them. They wore stiff, angry faces.
From Grazdoz's briefing and in other ways he understood the men were Federal Authority.
Then he was out of time. Most certainly. Although the others by now were well away from Ajan Street and the university.
The bearded men dashed off the elevator.
The hostess of Sun At Top fled her station, fearful of what was taking place.
Hephaestion raised his arms, permitted the search of his body. When the Volods grabbed him, he became a thing of stone. His heart steadied. His skin cooled.
The bearded men twisted his, Hephaestion's, hands behind his back and put manacles on his wrists. Predictably, they said things. Called him things. Promised things. And on the elevator, because they were impatient to begin, one of the agents struck Hephaestion across the face.
Zoa slid her body between the Volod and Hephaestion, his prisoner, and extended her hand to the agent.
"Please, no rough stuff."
The Volod smiled thinly at the wall. Have your way for now, that smile said.
-- Next Chapter
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