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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I’d thought Huginn and I might be taken to the same level-six room where we’d been sent to rest earlier that day. Instead, we were escorted up to level seven, the lower of the two floors in the Tower’s pentagon-shaped tier. Rozhuhu unlocked one of the bedrooms we’d passed by on our tour and we all stepped inside. “I will return at the seventh hour of the morning,” he said. “You will eat a meal, then the Third of Three will show you the city.”

“Can’t wait,” I assured him. “What if we need anything before that?”

“What if my Iykams need anything?” Huginn added.

“Everything you need has been provided,” Rozhuhu said, stepping to the door. “As have your servants’ needs. Sleep well and happily.” He left, closing the door behind him.

“You were expecting there would be a summons cord?” Huginn said sourly as we turned to inspect our new quarters.

“Wanted to see if he was leaving a guard outside,” I said, walking over and trying the knob. It opened easily, revealing an empty corridor beyond. “He wasn’t,” I said, closing the door again.

“Or the guard’s in one of the other rooms waiting for us to try something,” Huginn said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, looking around. We were in some sort of common room, with a door on either side. “You do remember that they want us to look around, right?”

“Doesn’t mean they can’t be subtle about it.”

“I don’t think they know how to be subtle.”

He grunted and fell silent. I thought about reminding him that they still needed our goodwill, which meant the Iykams would be okay at least through the night. But it didn’t seem worth the effort. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and looked around our new home.

The suite consisted of two small sleeping compartments, a bathroom that included a long tub, multiple horizontal shower jets, and a slightly alien version of a sink/toilet combination. Beside the tub was what looked like a combination miniature house and a hamster exercise and climbing structure.

It was remarkably similar to the suite Kinneman had put Selene and me in back at the Icarus Group base, or like the sleeping arrangements Sub-Director Nask had put us in aboard his ship. But then, there were only so many ways you could arrange this kind of place, especially if you wanted your guests to be comfortable.

“Interesting add-on in here,” I commented over my shoulder from the bathroom. “I’m guessing it’s for the outriders.”

There was no answer. “Huginn?” I called, walking back into to the common room.

To find that he’d disappeared. Evidently, he’d decided to skip the tour of our new quarters and go hunting.

“So much for worrying about subtlety,” I said under my breath.

Still, I wasn’t sorry he was gone. I had my own hunt ahead of me, and I’d just as soon not have to make up a story about it.

The common room and both sleeping compartments had spacious windows that looked out across the city. One of the compartments would have more privacy, I decided, and stepped into the one on the left. Pulling aside the curtains, I looked out.

The city was bathed in a faint but uniform glow, probably reflected light from the nightly beacon. I couldn’t see anyone in the grassy region between the Tower and the inner ring of houses, but there were some interior lights showing in one of the houses. Possibly Selene’s quarters for the night, and I made careful note of the house’s location, shape, and color. Despite our cautious optimism about her current status, I’d learned the hard way that such things can change in the blink of an eye.

If the city’s inner core was deserted, the area around the Gemini portals more than made up for it. With the dual benefit of height and the beacon’s illumination I could see that each of the portals had no fewer than two Ammei standing guard around it, more likely three or four. They’d apparently concluded that their two sets of visitors had arrived on Nexus Six via one of them, and had no intention of letting anyone else pop in without them knowing about it.

I frowned. No; not all the portals were being guarded. At the very edge of my viewing angle I could see one that seemed be unguarded.

Had someone missed a work order? Or had the First of Three run out of soldiers?

I nodded as the obvious answer hit me. Huginn and I had already decided that the Ammei enclaves were using one or more of these portals to travel back and forth. With their own people controlling the far ends of those particular Geminis, there was no reason for the leaders here to waste troops watching them.

Which also meant that such portals were guaranteed doors to at least some place in the Spiral, should the need for a quick exit arise.

Of course, arriving in the middle of a group of annoyed aliens was hardly an ideal situation. But it beat the hell out of taking pot luck with everywhere else in the universe.

I shifted my gaze downward. My window was a good twenty-five meters above the ground, but the way the Tower’s tiers were laid out I should be able to take the levels one at a time without ever having to face more than a four-meter drop. Still not pleasant, but also no longer a guaranteed set of broken legs or ankles.

Getting back inside the Tower and up to our suite would be an entirely different challenge, of course. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. As my father used to say, Don’t go overboard when you’re making plans. Most of them will get thrown out the window anyway. Luckily, most of the other guy’s will, too.

The window’s fasteners weren’t like anything I’d seen before. But once I’d figured them out they were easy to operate. I made sure I could get the window open far enough to get through, then closed it again and lay down on the bed.

Huginn had said the beacon ran two hours and seven minutes. In two hours ten, I would be on my way.

* * *

Despite my internal pep talk, I’d had some qualms about this part of the plan. To my relief, it came off without a hitch. Each tier downward had enough width for me to land without the risk of an off-balance moment sending me head-first over the edge, and the roofing material itself was softer than most I’d jumped onto, fallen off of, or been thrown against. Four minutes after I let go of that first windowsill I was on the ground, with only minor aches in my legs and knees to show for it.

I’d anticipated the next part of the night’s activities to be trickier. There’d been guards on all the Tower’s doors when Selene and I were first brought in, and I needed to find a route that would get me across the lawn, utilizing the bushes and flower clusters wherever possible, without any of them spotting me.

Once again, the execution turned out to be way simpler than I’d expected. Mainly because the door guards had disappeared.

I puzzled at that as I slipped through the darkness across the lawn. The door on this side of the building seemed to be closed and was presumably locked. Did the Ammei consider that adequate security for what seemed to be their most important building? Or had the need to keep a watch on all the portals out there siphoned away the guards who would otherwise have been on duty?

Either way, I wasn’t going to complain.

I reached the ramp into the subway tunnel Selene and I had taken from the dock and headed down. The train we’d ridden was no longer where we’d left it, presumably having been put back into service by someone who needed to go elsewhere in town.

Which boded well for my evening’s hunt. If the group I’d spotted a couple of nights ago were in fact harvesting silver-silk from that riverside ruin, and if I could catch them at it and then follow them to wherever they were taking the stuff, I might be able to get a better clue as to what they wanted it for.

Still, without the car it was going to be a long walk, and even though much of the trip would be underground it wasn’t like I would be completely invisible. There were all those other ramps leading up from the tunnel that someone might happen to look down as I passed. Worse, if anyone happened to wander down here with me, there was zero cover anywhere.

But there was nothing for it but to keep an eye out and try to anticipate any such dangers. I headed out, trying to strike a balance between speed and silence.

The trip quickly settled into a slightly tense routine. I paused at each of the side ramps, looking and listening for voices or other signs of activity, but I saw and heard nothing. I was especially careful near the ramps that led up to the portal ring area, the one place in the whole city that I knew for a fact was crawling with Ammei. But there, too, all was silent.

Which was not only reasonable but pretty much inevitable. If the guards wanted to nab any newly arrived visitors they needed to lure them far enough onto Nexus Six soil that they couldn’t beat a hasty retreat back the rabbit hole. I slowed my pace, focusing on maintaining absolute silence, and kept going.

I kept up my mime act until I was two subway stops past the portals. Then, surrounded now by the ruined and abandoned section of the city, I finally felt safe enough to pick up my pace.

I was approaching the last pair of exits before the final ramp leading up to the riverside when my luck ran out. Ahead, a group of shadowy figures appeared, framed against the faintly lit landscape of the final subway opening.

And they were moving in my direction.

I hissed a curse under my breath, a quick glance confirming that there was still no cover nearby. My only hope was to get to one of the side exit ramps and duck out of sight before the group piled into the car and the driver switched on whatever headlight he had available. With my gaze locked onto the faint movements in the distance, I broke into a full sprint toward the closest right-hand ramp.

Fortunately, the newcomers didn’t seem in any hurry to get home. I had reached the ramp and made it a couple of meters up the slope when the tunnel behind me lit up with a soft glow and I heard the sound of the car’s engine. I dropped flat onto the ramp, pressing myself against the wall and trying to make myself as invisible as possible. People gazing ahead into a lighted tunnel would normally be pretty much blind to everything alongside them in the shadows, but I didn’t put it past this crowd to have people with starscopes watching the darkness around them on both sides.

But the car rumbled past without slowing and without any shouts of sudden discovery. I let them get a couple of seconds past me, then crossed to the other side of the ramp and pressed myself against that wall, just in case someone decided to look back. I waited another few seconds, until the car had made it past the next ramp, then crawled back down to the subway opening. I stroked the thumbnail of my artificial left arm, turning it into its mirror mode, and eased it cautiously into the tunnel.

The car was still trundling its merry way along, with no indication that anyone had seen me or had had their suspicions aroused in any other way. I kept watching, wondering if it would stop at one of the intermediate stations or continue all the way to the Tower. If it stopped anywhere in the ruined part of town, that might suggest they were using the silver-silk for something clandestine, perhaps without the First of Three’s authorization. More importantly, given how few of the buildings out here still offered any shelter and privacy, such a move would also severely limit the number of places I would have to search once they were clear.

But no. The car went all the way to the end of the line. It stopped, the headlight went out, and its passengers presumably disembarked.

They were too distant, and the tunnel too dark, for me to see that last part. Outside in the starlight I might have a better chance, but with all the ruined buildings out there sticking up between them and me I would have to be extraordinarily lucky to have even a partial line of sight.

But if I couldn’t find out where they were taking their haul, I could at least confirm that they had indeed been to the silver-silk house. I gave them a few minutes to make their way out of the tunnel and to wherever they were settling down for the rest of the night, then stood up and walked the rest of the way to the end of the subway.

I’d gotten used to being at least mostly out of view in the tunnel, and coming out into the night breeze gave me a fresh sense of vulnerability. But I could hardly crawl from here to the river. Hoping that anyone who spotted me would assume I was just another Amme out for a stroll, I headed off through the scrub and bushes toward the sound of rippling water.

The ground cover was as dark as everything else around me, but once I got through them I found that the river reeds themselves displayed a strange shimmer in the starlight. That glow, plus their gentle swaying, made them stand out of the darkness and much easier to see than I’d expected. A nice side effect was that with the reeds visible, so was the gap in the rows that marked the path toward the river that I needed to follow. I reached it and headed in.

It was impossible to walk silently through plants that were swishing against my legs, but I did my best to keep down the noise. It was only an assumption, after all, that the Ammei who had passed me in the subway car were the only ones working this site. If there was another shift hunkered down in the building, or if the Ammei in the subway had been out here for some other reason entirely, I could walk right in on them before I even knew they were there.

I was nearly to the river when I heard a quiet rustling in the reeds.

I stopped short and dropped into a crouch, my eyes darting around as I tried to figure out where the sound had come from. No one the size of an Amme was visible, which suggested it was an animal. Possibly a nocturnal herbivore, possibly a nighttime predator.

Possibly a tensh.

I winced. If it was one of the latter, and if they worked the same way as Kalixiri outriders, the minute this one got back to his boss this quiet little side trip would blow up in my face.

I crouched a little lower, my hand reflexively gripping my plasmic, knowing full well that I couldn’t use it. Here in the darkness, with Ammei standing portal guard a couple of kilometers away, a plasma blast might as well be a fully lit adboard proclaiming my presence.

The rustling came again, closer this time. But now I had its location: ahead of me, just off the path. I shifted my gaze to the tops of the reeds, watching for the telltale twitching that would indicate something pushing its way through them at ground level. The plants right beside the path gave a final twitch—

I looked down again, tensing. Something the size of a large rat or small ferret had appeared on the path. It froze in place a moment as it gazed at me, maybe trying to decide if I was too big to eat. Then it stirred and started toward me.

I drew my plasmic, shifting my grip to the barrel. As clubbing weapons went, it would be fairly useless. But if push came to bite it would be better than nothing. The creature moved closer…

And then, barely a meter away from me, it stopped and gave a tentative little squeak. A very familiar little squeak.

I huffed out a sigh of relief. “Hello, Pax,” I murmured as I returned my plasmic to its holster. “You come here often?”

Pax gave another squeak, this one sounding more confident, and scampered up to me. “Hello, Ixil,” I said, feeling my usual sense of the absurd whenever I used one of the outriders to send what was essentially an organic voice message. “Welcome to Nexus Six. I have lots of news for you, and I’m sure you have a note or two from Kinneman for me. A couple of buildings south of the dock, right along the riverbank, is a building that still has two walls and a partial roof. I’ll meet you there.”

I nodded, as if Pax would understand the gesture meant I was done, then gave the little animal a nudge against its cheek. “Go back to Ixil, Pax,” I said. “Go on.”

He gave one final squeak, then turned and scampered back along the path. I stood back up, looked around, and followed. Distantly, I wondered what Ixil’s reaction would be to my news.

I didn’t have to wonder at all about the notes Kinneman had undoubtedly sent.

* * *

I’d been waiting in the ruined building for nearly forty minutes, listening to the breeze and the rippling of the river and getting colder by the minute, when Ixil finally appeared.

To my complete lack of surprise, McKell was with him.

“Welcome to Nexus Six,” I greeted them as they picked their way through the debris toward me. “You and Kinneman hug and make up? Or is this just a short vacation away from the thumbscrews?”

General Kinneman,” McKell said, leaning on the rank, “is only slightly less furious with us than he is with you.” His eyes flicked around. “Where’s Selene?”

“Currently a guest of the locals,” I told him. “An honored guest, as near as we can figure. But that could change.”

“What about you?”

“Not quite as honored,” I conceded. “But there’s still a kid-glove feel to this that makes me suspicious. Though come to think about it, Huginn and his Iykams might disagree about the kid-glove thing.”

“Wait a second,” McKell said, frowning. “Expediter Huginn, Sub-Director Nask’s right-hand man? He’s here?”

“He is indeed,” I confirmed. “He and his Iykams actually got here a few days ahead of Selene and me. You might want to gloss over that part a bit when you make your report.”

It took a couple of seconds for them to track through the dots. Then, Pix and Pax gave a simultaneous twitch. “The Alainn portal,” Ixil said. “The Patth got it working.”

“So it seems,” I said. “And then it gets complicated.”

“Does it, now,” McKell said, his eyes narrowing. “How so?”

I gestured to the slabs of masonry around the one I was perched on. “Pull up a chunk of rotted building material,” I said, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”



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