CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I don’t know,” Selene said hesitantly, scooping up a spoonful of a fruit-flavored gelatin from her plate. “Second of Three is already suspicious. Wouldn’t a request like that tip him off that we’re looking for something?”
“But he won’t know what we’re looking for,” Huginn pointed out. “Besides, we already know they’re trying to find out why we’re here. If we make it sound like searching the portal ring is a vital part of our mission, they should be more than willing to let us follow up on it, if only so they can watch.”
“My concern is that they’ll think we’re trying to run out on them,” I said. “We get anywhere near those portals and they’ll be watching us like paranoid hawks.”
“Which is fine,” Huginn said. “All we need is for Selene to get close enough to identify the portal our Gold One came in through.”
“If he came through recently enough for me to smell him,” Selene warned. “That wasn’t the impression I got from Second of Three.”
Huginn grunted. “Like we can trust them to tell the truth. Drop your napkin, Selene, will you?”
Selene looked at me, her pupils questioning. “Go ahead,” I confirmed.
“They also seem very regimented,” Selene said. She lifted her napkin from her lap, fumbled it out of her grip onto the floor. Huginn bent down and retrieved it, and as he handed it back I saw him surreptitiously rub his fingertips against one edge. “They may not want their schedule changed. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Huginn said. “You got it?”
Selene lifted the napkin to her face, as if dabbing at her mouth, and I saw her nostrils and eyelashes working the cloth. “All I smell is Icari metal and the various scents of the Tower,” she said.
“Try it again,” Huginn said. “Maybe it’s in there somewhere. Okay. Twelve portals in a ring, equally spaced apart from each other, with a mostly north-south alignment. Right?”
I thought back to the views I’d had from the various Tower windows. The positioning wasn’t exactly north-south, but it was close enough. “Right. So?”
“So for our personal convenience let’s number them one to twelve starting from the north and going clockwise,” he said. “I’m thinking we ask to start at Number Three and work our way counterclockwise around the circle.”
“And if they say no?” I asked.
“Then we’ll just have to get persuasive.” Huginn pushed back his chair. “While you two think of how to do that, I’m getting more of that bacon stuff.”
“Be sure to leave a little for the rest of us,” I said.
“Forget it,” he said. “With breakfast meat, it’s every man for himself.”
He headed toward the buffet table the Ammei had set up for our breakfast. They’d been able to read yesterday’s dinner preferences from our earlier lunch selections, but breakfast had turned out to be an entirely different menu, and they’d thus opted to run another buffet. Tomorrow’s breakfast, I suspected, would likely be a repeat of our favorites from today.
“Quick summary,” I muttered, holding up my own napkin to hide my lips from the Ammei waiters standing poised by the serving door. “Ixil and McKell came through last night, McKell’s gone back, Ixil’s still here. I got out of my room by jumping, got back in via a rope Huginn made out of vines from the grove. Question: Did he also climb down and up, or did he just dangle the rope for me and stay in the Tower all night?” I reached over and made a show of brushing an imaginary speck off her cheek, bringing my hand close to her nose and eyelashes.
“I think he used the vine,” she said as I withdrew my hand. “Too much of his scent mixed there for just tying pieces together. It also smells a little sweaty, so exertion was involved.”
“That could just be me.”
“It’s also him.”
“Figured.” So Huginn had snuck out of Imistio Tower, prowled around the city’s grounds, and snuck back in again, all of which he’d carefully not mentioned to me. As expected, he had some private game going on under the table.
A game that required the three of us to get to one of the portals?
“He’s also wrong about the Ammei staying out of the Upper Rooms,” she continued. “There are several scents there, all very recent.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “The Upper Rooms are the perfect place to keep an eye on the portals during the day. It’s only after dark that they need to put boots on the ground to watch for visitors.”
“That seems reasonable,” she said. “Any idea why Huginn wants to look at the portals?”
“Not a clue,” I said. “Ditto as to whether Three O’clock has particular significance or whether he picked it at random. But whatever it ends up being, it’ll make sense.”
“To him.”
“And for his purposes. Not necessarily for us and ours. Were you able to fill in the Tower map any?”
“I got most of it,” she said. “I didn’t get into the big room on the north side of level three, though, so I don’t know what’s in there.”
I felt a sudden tightness in my throat. “You talking about the room opposite the library?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Though I don’t know if it’s a single room. It could be subdivided inside. What’s wrong?”
“I got a quick look inside last night,” I said. “Oh, and as a side note it’s also got floor-to-ceiling windows that have been covered over with metal plates.”
“Interesting. What did you see?”
“Not much,” I told her. “There’s a curved object in the middle—the place is one room, by the way—about ten meters across and mostly made of metal gridwork. Lots of cables and equipment boxes all around, plus a thin cylinder at the bottom pointed upward.”
“Interesting,” she said, her pupils showing sudden thoughtfulness. “There’s definitely silver-silk inside—I could smell it under the door. There’s also a lot of Icari metal.”
“Like for books?”
“No, this is one of the heavier-duty versions,” she said. “Like they use for portals and lightning guns.”
I felt a hard knot form inside my breakfast. “You hadn’t mentioned the lightning guns were made of portal metal.”
“They’re partly portal metal,” she said, her pupils gone wary. “Partly other materials. What’s wrong?”
I thought back to the brief glance I’d had under the library door. Could the cylinder I saw have been a super lightning gun? Some battlefield-level weapon?
But why build it in the middle of Imistio Tower? Especially since they would have to haul it down the ramps and outside if they wanted to give it a full field of fire. They’d do better to build it in one of the houses out there. No, it had to be something else. “Passing thought,” I told Selene. “Never mind. Back to last night. I tried to follow the silver-silk hunter-gatherers last night, but they got in and out ahead of me. I’m pretty sure they went all the way to the end of the subway line, though, so they could have brought the night’s haul to the Tower. You have the map with you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Ready?”
I looked at the waiters. They were focused on Huginn, who was saying something and pointing to one of the dishes on the buffet. “Ready.”
Selene set her hand briefly on the table beside me, and when she moved it away I saw she’d put the map there.
But it was no longer the folded piece of white paper I’d given her earlier. Instead, it was a muted shade of reddish brown. “Nice camouflage,” I said, moving my hand casually on top of it. “Is that dirt?”
She nodded. “From a flower pot in my sleeping room.” Her eyelashes fluttered briefly. “It’s from the soil in front of the house. Imported there from one of the other Ammei enclaves, I think. The smell is very intriguing.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, scooping up my last bite of a sort of chocolate-laced pastry and standing up. I’d tried time and again to detect some of the rich olfactory tapestries she routinely sampled, and I’d only rarely been able to do so. On this one, I could get a hint of almost-lavender, but that was about all. “I’m going to get more of that bacon stuff. Want anything?”
* * *
I’d fully expected Second of Three to refuse Selene’s request, or at least to go into private consultation with Third of Three before making a decision. To my mild surprise, he agreed instantly.
“But you will not be together,” Fourth of Three reminded her. “The Second of Three and I will guide you in one direction. The Third of Three and Rozhuhu will guide Roarke and Huginn of the humans.”
“What about my servants, the Iykams?” Huginn asked.
“They spent a peaceful night, and have received their morning meal,” Rozhuhu said.
“I’d like them to join us,” Huginn said.
“I would like that, as well,” Selene added.
“That is impossible,” Rozhuhu said. “Later, when we have returned to the Tower, they will rejoin you for the midday meal. But they will not join you while you are outside.”
“I protest that decision,” Huginn said. “They are my servants, just as Roarke and I are servants of Selene of the Kadolians.”
“That is impossible,” Rozhuhu repeated.
“Is it impossible for the First of Three?” Huginn asked.
Selene had tried that gambit the previous evening, the question precipitating a brief discussion before she was turned down. This time, Second and Third were ready for it. “The First of Three cannot be disturbed,” Rozhuhu said.
“Why not?” Huginn asked. “It can’t be too late or too early. It’s full daylight outside.”
“The First of Three cannot be disturbed,” Rozhuhu repeated.
Huginn shot me a frustrated look. “Fine,” he ground out. “But I want to see them sometime today. With or without the First of Three’s permission.”
“We will speak of this later,” Rozhuhu said. “If you wish to see the ring, we must go now.”
Huginn didn’t answer, but merely stepped to my side, glowering. “We’re ready,” I told Rozhuhu.
Second turned and headed toward the dining room door, Fourth behind him, Selene and her usual six-Ammei guard following. Rozhuhu waited until they’d all gone a few steps, then gestured to us. “Come,” he said.
Third turned and followed the first group, Rozhuhu falling into his usual position behind him, Huginn and I bringing up the rear.
And as we walked, I kept a close eye on Huginn.
It had been a good performance, I had to admit. His demand to bring the Iykams along and his growing frustration at being denied had been spot on. But to my hyper-suspicious ears, the whole thing had rung just a little bit false. Huginn knew he’d be expected to make such a request, especially after his genuine frustration the night before. But he’d surely expected Second to turn him down.
Which meant that, whatever his game plan was, he didn’t need the Iykams to pull it off.
And as my father used to say, A plan where you aren’t needed can keep you out of the line of fire. It can also put you directly into a different one.
Last night’s gentle breeze had turned into a brisk wind blowing from the west toward the river. Second led us across the waving grass and bushes and down into the subway, where the usual four-car train was waiting. Second, Fourth, and Selene settled into the first car, while Third directed our lower-status group to the rearmost. The six Ammei guards took seats in the two middle cars. Fourth got the train moving down the tracks, and a couple of minutes later pulled to a stop by the pair of ramps that led to the south end of the portal ring. We got out of our cars and walked up the ramp back to the surface and the wind.
I hadn’t yet been this close to the portal ring, and while the guards formed up around Second and Selene I took a moment to assess the situation.
As we’d already concluded, there were twelve portals, each presenting a dome that was the top part of a half-buried sphere. I’d tentatively concluded these portals were the smaller, dyad-style Gemini type, rather than full-range portals like Icarus and Alpha, and the twenty-meter sphere diameter indicated that it was the receiver modules that I was seeing.
Which was the only way it made sense, of course. The launch modules were crammed with equipment and as far as I knew had no exit hatches, while the receiver modules had a whole grid of them that could be opened wherever was most convenient. Flipping the portals over to put the launch modules on top would have required some kind of underground tunnel network to the receiver modules in order to get inside.
The area of nice houses began about twenty meters inward from the portal ring, forming concentric rings until they reached the lawn that surrounded the Tower. Twenty meters in the opposite direction, outside the portal ring, was the beginning of the zone of abandoned and decrepit buildings that filled the rest of the city.
There were places in the Spiral where the dividing line between affluence and poverty was equally sharp. But they were never anything less than depressing. The contrast here just underlined the bleakness of this place, and made me again wonder what had brought this city crashing down so completely.
“We have arrived,” Fourth said formally when Selene and her entourage were settled. “What is here that you wish to see?”
“I wish to examine the portals,” Selene told him. She pointed northeast, toward the one at Huginn’s specified three o’clock position. “I will begin with that one.”
“We will begin with that one,” Huginn put in before Fourth could reply. “All of us, together.”
“That is impossible,” Fourth said.
“We need to be with Selene of the Kadolians,” Huginn insisted. “It’s for her own protection.”
“Protection from what?” Fourth asked.
“From the enemies of the Kadolians,” Huginn said.
Fourth turned to Second, and once again they held a brief conversation. “Selene of the Kadolians is protected,” Fourth told Huginn. “You and Roarke of the humans will begin there.” He pointed northwest across the ring toward the nine o’clock dome.
I looked at Huginn, saw a fresh wave of pseudo frustration flow across his face. He scowled at Fourth, then at Third, then at me. Silently, he spun on his heel and stalked across the grass toward the distant dome, Third and Rozhuhu hurrying to catch up with him. I gave Selene a lingering look, noting the mix of tension and dark amusement at Huginn’s performance in her pupils, and followed.
As my father used to say, Sometimes the best way to get someone to do something is to insist that he do the opposite.
Huginn had gotten about ten steps before the two Ammei caught up with him. I closed to within three meters of them, then slowed just enough to start falling behind. “Slow down, will you?” I called plaintively.
“Speed up, will you?” Huginn growled back over his shoulder. “You want to be out here all day?”
“Is there difficulty?” Rozhuhu asked.
“I have a bad leg,” I said, throwing just a hint of a limp into my left leg’s stride.
Third said something. “Why did you did not speak of this before?” Rozhuhu translated.
“No one said we were going to be doing wind sprints before,” I bit out. “I’m okay—I just need a minute.”
“Oh, for—” Huginn swallowed a curse and headed back toward me. “Come on, lean on me,” he said, stepping to my side and putting an arm around my waist. “No, you keep back,” he added as Third and Rozhuhu started to reverse course as well. “I’ve got this.”
“Thanks,” I said, leaning my head against Huginn’s shoulder as I measured distances with my eyes. The two Ammei had stopped, and while they were watching us closely they were still far enough away for what we needed. “Do you ever get tired of it being that easy?” I murmured, just loud enough for Huginn to hear.
“Do you?” he murmured back.
“Not really,” I said. “What do we want at the nine o’clock?”
“Nothing,” he said. “How’s your sprinting technique?”
“Adequate. Where are we sprinting?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“What do you speak?” Rozhuhu called.
“He’s telling me it hurts,” Huginn called back. “I’m telling him to man up and get his act together.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said, grunting for effect as I disentangled myself from his hands. I didn’t much like the idea of charging into someone else’s plan without knowing all the details, but we’d already pushed this conversation as far as I dared. Hopefully, Huginn and I would find or make another opportunity down the line to fill in the blanks.
A few minutes later we reached our target portal. “What is here that you wish to see?” Rozhuhu asked.
“Everything,” Huginn said. “Every dome in the ring, starting with this one.”
“After that, we may want to examine some of those buildings, too,” I added, pointing toward the inner ring of houses. “Though that part will depend on what we see around the domes.”
Third said something. “That is impossible,” Rozhuhu translated.
“What if Selene of the Kadolians wishes it?” I asked.
“That is impossible,” Rozhuhu repeated.
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Huginn said. “Come on, Roarke. Try to keep up.”
He began to circle the portal, staying a couple of meters back from the dome’s edge. I followed more slowly, mostly also keeping my distance from the portal but occasionally moving in for a closer look at the metal. Once I stopped completely, squatting down and fingering the grass and dirt that was pressed up against the dome.
None of the places I studied looked any different from any of the others, either on the portal or on the ground. But I figured I might as well put on a good show. On top of that, I was curious to see if I could do something that Third or Rozhuhu would declare off-limits or otherwise impossible, which might give me a better handle on what we were and weren’t allowed to see or know.
But the chief goal of the exercise was for my slower pace to force the two Ammei to split their attention. As Huginn’s faster walk took him away from me toward the edge of the dome, Third and Rozhuhu held a hurried discussion that ended with Third staying with me and Rozhuhu hurrying to catch up with Huginn. A moment later, the two of them disappeared around the side, leaving Third and me alone.
I still didn’t know what kind of diversion Huginn had planned. But whatever it was, it would almost certainly be easier to pull off with only one set of eyes watching him.
The magic trick hadn’t happened by the time Third and I finished our circle and arrived at our original starting position. Huginn and Rozhuhu were waiting there, the former watching me closely as I came in view. “Well?” he called. “Anything?”
“Not here,” I said as Third and I rejoined them. “Maybe the next one.”
“Maybe the next one,” Huginn repeated. He looked at Third and pointed to the eight o’clock portal. “We’ll do that one next.”
He got two steps before Third snapped something that sent Rozhuhu scurrying to block his path. “What do you seek?” the Amme asked. “The Third of Three offers his assistance.”
“There’s nothing he can do,” Huginn said.
“It’s difficult to explain,” I added, trying for a bit more diplomacy. “But assure the Third of Three that we’ll know it when we see it.”
Third said something else. Rozhuhu answered, and for a moment they talked back and forth. Then, Third gestured toward the portal Huginn had identified. “We will go now,” Rozhuhu said, stepping out of Huginn’s path.
“Fine,” Huginn said shortly and resumed his stride. I followed, remembering to maintain a vestige of my earlier limp.
We reached the portal and repeated our divide-and-conquer routine. This one didn’t seem to suit Huginn’s diversionary purposes, either. We rendezvoused at the beginning of our separate circumnavigations, I again told them my investigation had turned up negative, and we moved on to the seven o’clock portal.
“Third time’s the charm,” Huginn announced as we approached the dome. “I have a feeling we’re about to get lucky.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, feeling my heartrate pick up a little. Apparently, this was it. “Just don’t get your hopes too high.”
“You just keep a sharp eye,” he countered. “If this is it—” He broke off, giving Third and Rozhuhu a sideways look. “Just keep a sharp eye.”
“Right.” Whatever Huginn had planned, he was playing his chosen role to the hilt.
We reached the dome and he shifted into his now familiar circular walk. I settled into mine, pausing more often and peering more closely at the dome and the land around it than I had before. Three, in response, seemed to also be paying closer attention to my imaginary studies. We all finished circling the dome.
Only this time I found Huginn and Rozhuhu waiting on the east side of the portal instead of on the northwest side where we’d started. “Over here, Roarke,” Huginn called, beckoning as Third and I walked up. “What do you think about this?” He pointed to the base of the dome.
I had just focused on the spot when, without warning, a muffled crack came from the western side of the portal, the area directly opposite us. I frowned—
As the whole area exploded into a massive white cloud. For a second the smoke billowed outward and upward, dwarfing the ten-meter height of the portal dome as it clawed its way toward the sky. Then the westerly wind caught it, and the cloud rolled over into a roiling river of white. It flowed over and past the portal toward the four of us, washed over us—
I felt a hand grab my right wrist. “Come on,” Huginn’s soft voice came, tugging me in the direction of the flow. “Side edge; back hinge.”
There wasn’t time for questions. I obeyed, taking off into the fog alongside him as he urged us into the sprint he’d hinted at earlier. The gas had some of the same carbonized sugar smell as the smoke shell McKell and Ixil had dropped on us way back on Pinnkus, which meant it was designed to provide visual camouflage and not to kill or disable.
Though right now I was more concerned about the possibility of being killed or disabled by running full-tilt into something solid. Hopefully, Huginn had paid better attention to the landscape and obstacles on our way from the subway than I had and would keep us from a sudden and highly embarrassing death.
Because it was for sure that we weren’t going to outrun the smoke. I could still feel the wind against the back of my neck as we sprinted along, which meant the air and smoke were moving faster than we were. As long as we were going this direction we weren’t getting into clear air until the stream finally dissipated.
In the distance I could hear alien shouts and rapid-fire sentences, angry or frightened, I couldn’t tell which. I hoped part of the frantic activity was focused on getting Selene away from the smoke before her hypersensitive sense of smell was overwhelmed and all but incapacitated her. I’d started off trying to number my steps, but I’d quickly lost track and I now had no idea where we were. I had the vague feeling that we should be close to one of the portals on the far side of the ring, probably either the four or five o’clock, possibly the three or six.
And then, abruptly, a second hand grabbed my left wrist.
My pace faltered with surprise, nearly sending me pitching forward onto my face. Had Rozhuhu found us? Third? One of the Ammei guards?
I was still trying to sort it out when the hand on my left wrist yanked me forward, forcing me back into a run. Two steps later, Huginn’s grip vanished from my right wrist.
Again, I had to fight to keep from stumbling as my brain spun with uncertainties. Had Huginn been captured? Three and Rozhuhu should still be well behind us, but with all the houses blocking our view I hadn’t been able to see where all of Selene’s guards were when Huginn set off his smoke bomb. Had one of them managed to intercept us?
But the mystery hand on my left wrist was still hurrying me along, without any indication that the owner wanted to stop me. Had Huginn passed me off to someone else?
The problem was that the only allies he should have available were his three Iykams. Had they managed to break out of confinement without anyone noticing or raising an alarm?
I started to call to Huginn, realized in time that if we were trying to avoid detection the last thing I wanted was to loudly announce my current position. Clenching my teeth against my increasingly strained breathing, I regained my balance and got back into the rhythm of the run.
Whoever my new guide was, he clearly had a plan. A few steps after Huginn’s departure, he gave my wrist a gentle but persistent push, not letting up until he’d shifted our vector a few degrees to the right. I had the sense of other bodies now moving around us—there was a soft but teeth-jarring squeak from somewhere in front of me—
Abruptly, my guide yanked back on my wrist. I took the cue and braked to a halt. He gave me another gentle nudge forward, and two cautious steps later I felt my feet suddenly leave dirt and grass and hit something with the less yielding but slightly bouncy feel of wood. There was another creak, this time from behind me, and the wind that had been pushing steadily at my back was suddenly cut off. My guide swung around in front of me, and with his other hand deftly drew my plasmic from its sheath. The remnant of the white fog dissipated, and I found myself in the middle of a large room in one of the city’s dilapidated houses.
And I wasn’t alone.
My new guide, the one Huginn had handed me off to, the one still gripping my wrist, turned out to be a woman. She was slender and surprisingly attractive, her black hair tied back out of the way in a short ponytail. But her grip was strong, her bare arms showed a lot of wiry muscle, and her expression was the same coolly calculating global awareness I’d seen time and again on Huginn and other Patth Expediters. Behind her were two Iykams, both with corona guns ready for action. Behind them were a pair of Patth, one of them apparently trying to brush bits of smoke off his elaborately tooled duster tunic, the other more modestly dressed one staring at me.
And the look on his face…
I felt a shiver run up my back. I was hardly an expert on the nuances of Patth expressions, but I’d seen enough pure hatred to know what it looked like.
I cleared my throat. “Hello, everyone,” I said as calmly as I could. “My name’s Roarke. Welcome to Nexus Six.”
“We know,” the woman said, still holding my wrist. “Be a good boy and keep quiet, okay? Get over here—”
“Kill him,” the Patth glaring daggers at me interrupted.
The woman turned a frown on him. “Excuse me?”
“I said kill him,” the Patth repeated. “He is Gregory Roarke. He is a threat to the Patthaaunutth.” He slapped the backs of his fingertips insistently against the shoulder of the nearest Iykam. “You will kill him.
“You will kill him now.”