CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By the time Third and Rozhuhu once again intruded on our privacy, Huginn and I had sketched out a reasonably good floor plan of the Tower, or at least the parts we’d visited. Rozhuhu announced that dinner had been prepared, and told us Selene was already there.
We reached the dining room where we’d had lunch earlier to find that all the tables and chairs had been removed except a single four-person table and three chairs set equidistantly around it. Selene was seated in the chair that faced our approach, with Second, Fourth, and the six guards grouped in a loose semicircle behind her also facing us.
And as we came closer, I could see there was tension in Selene’s pupils. “Something’s wrong,” I murmured to Huginn. “Be ready.”
“Understood,” he murmured back.
“I greet you, servants of Selene of the Kadolians,” Fourth said as we came up to the table. “The First of Three sends a message and an order. The escorts of the Iykams must be returned to confinement for the night.”
I’d flipped through a dozen different scenarios during those last few steps. That one hadn’t even occurred to me.
It apparently hadn’t occurred to Huginn, either. He glanced over his shoulder at the three Iykams, who’d come to a stiff halt behind him, then turned back to the Ammei. “Excuse me?” he asked, his voice gone quiet and deadly.
“The escorts of the Iykams must be returned to confinement for the night,” Fourth repeated. “They will rejoin you in the morning.”
I focused on the landscape visible through the windows behind Selene. The dining room faced northeast, overlooking part of the river, so I couldn’t see where the sun was positioned in the western sky. Still, there was only a slight darkening of the cloud layers to indicate that nightfall was on its way. “It’s not really night yet,” I pointed out. “Can’t the escorts of the Iykams at least eat with us before they leave?”
“They will receive food in confinement,” Fourth said. “They will leave now.”
Again, a declaration without any consultation between them. The verdict had been handed down from on high, and there was no point in arguing it further.
Huginn must have caught the same signals. But he wasn’t ready to let it go, at least not without an argument. “If that’s your decision, I accept it,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “I would like to see them to their confinement.”
“Why?” Fourth asked.
“I’m their superior,” Huginn said. “I have a responsibility to assure myself that they’re being properly treated.”
“Selene of the Kadolians is their superior,” Fourth countered.
“He speaks correctly,” Selene confirmed calmly. “They are my responsibility.” She stood up. “I will accompany them to confinement.”
The offer seemed to catch everyone by surprise. “That’s very kind of you, Selene of the Kadolians,” I jumped in before anyone else could say anything. I’d spotted the shift in her pupils from wariness to determination as Huginn and Fourth were talking, and had been pretty sure she was planning something. But I hadn’t expected this particular gambit. “In fact, why don’t we all go?” I added. “That way there will be no question.”
There was brief consultation between Second and Third, with Fourth and Rozhuhu watching closely but remaining silent. Selene also stayed silent, looking first at me, then at Huginn, then at the Iykams behind us. Probably checking our scents and wondering if any of us were going to try something stupid.
She needn’t have worried, at least not about me. The Ammei were arranged in a simple fan formation, with the important people in the middle of the semicircle and the armed guards on either end. Even given a plasmic’s limited recoil, and the consequently quicker cycling it took for a gunner to shift aim, my chances of taking out all six guards before one of them got his lightning gun into position were extremely low.
If this had been an actual emergency, if Selene had been in imminent danger, I would have risked it, especially since she was in position to create a diversion. Throwing herself at Second or Third would draw the guards’ attention and buy me a couple of extra seconds.
Though at that point we still would be faced with the uphill task of getting to the dock and our vac suits before the Ammei could organize pursuit.
Fortunately, such extreme measures didn’t seem necessary right now. Selene clearly still held VIP status, and until and unless that changed we would do best to play along and let the Ammei do whatever they wanted with the Iykams.
But then, she and I didn’t have the same sense of responsibility to the trigger-happy aliens that Huginn did.
I looked sideways at him. He was still standing motionless, his expression one of grudging acceptance as he waited for the Ammei to finish their conversation. But I could see an ominous tightness in his cheek muscles.
Second and Third finished their conversation, and Second gestured to Rozhuhu. “The Second of Three has decided that such will not be necessary,” he said. “You will remain here and eat before you are taken to your places of sleep.”
It was my own cheek muscles’ turn to tighten. Places of sleep, plural? Did that mean they were going to split us up again?
Probably. As I’d just reminded myself, Selene was the important one who deserved special consideration. The rest of us were just extras moving around in the background.
Unless what I’d assumed was privileged treatment was simply the standard care given to a valuable hostage.
I focused on Selene’s pupils. If she was a hostage or otherwise believed we were in danger, I couldn’t see any evidence of it.
And as if to underline her assessment that no action on my part was necessary, she quietly sat back down.
I sent Huginn another sideways look. If Selene and I were out, he had no choice but to be as well. Without Selene to create a distraction and chaos in the opposition’s ranks, and with his own most trustworthy allies standing out of position behind him, he didn’t have a hope of coming in anything but second.
As my father used to say, Shouting damn the torpedoes only inspires the troops if they’re also not your last words.
Second waited another moment, as if expecting Huginn to object further. But the Expediter remained silent. Apparently satisfied, Second gestured, and the six guards broke formation and circled around the table, walking past Huginn and reforming around the Iykams. Huginn didn’t turn around as the group headed back toward the door, but instead kept an unblinking gaze on Second and Third. I half turned—someone ought to at least figuratively wave good-bye—and watched until the Ammei and Iykams disappeared through the doorway.
“You may sit,” Rozhuhu said. “Your food will be brought.”
There didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Huginn and I sat down, me taking the seat to Selene’s right, Huginn dropping into the one on her left. A door in the wall behind where the lunch buffet had been set up opened and three more Ammei appeared, each carrying a large tray with a glass and two covered dishes. They brought them to the table and set out our meals.
I eyed the tray as my waiter removed the dome-shaped covers. One of the dishes was a bowl containing some sort of soup with crouton-like objects floating in it. The other was a large plate holding a selection of the five items from the lunch buffet that I’d found enough to my liking to take seconds of. Selene’s and Huginn’s plates held different assortments, and from the approving look in Selene’s pupils I gathered that selection was also of her favorites.
Clearly, the Ammei had kept close tabs on what we ate, and had planned their dinner menus accordingly. Did that mean Huginn and I were also at Selene’s VIP level?
So what had the Iykams done to get themselves kicked out of the club?
The waiters finished laying out the food, then retreated back to the door where they’d entered. They waited there, apparently so that they would be available if any of us wanted seconds.
“Are you all right?” Selene asked.
I opened my mouth to answer. Closed it again. Her attention, and her question, were for Huginn.
“Of course,” he said.
“Sure you are,” I said. Even without Selene’s sense of smell I could tell he was still upset. “Any idea what brought that on?”
He sent me a quick glare, then lowered his eyes to his tray as he worked to suppress the flash of emotion. “No.” He looked back up at me. “Unless it was one of you?” he added with sudden challenge.
“Not guilty,” I assured him. “Selene?”
“It was nothing I said or did, either,” she said.
“You sure?” Huginn demanded, the glare going a little more intimidating. “You don’t exactly have warm feelings for them. Or for any of the rest of us.”
“One: we’re the ones who got you sprung in the first place,” I said. “If we’d wanted you left in that walk-in freezer, we’d have told the Ammei right then and there. Two: if we’d reconsidered and wanted you tossed back in, we’d have sent you packing with them. Three: Iykams may not be my favorite species in the whole Spiral, but at the moment, you, us, and them are all we’ve got against a whole bunch of Ammei who have a private agenda that somehow includes us. As my father used to say, You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. You usually don’t get to choose your allies, either.”
“What Gregory is saying, Huginn,” Selene said gently, “is that you’re family.”
Selene was normally calm and unassuming. Some people in our past had accused her of being borderline boring. She seldom made jokes, pointed out incongruities, or engaged in irony. But on those rare occasions when she did, the results were dead-center bull’s-eyes.
Huginn tried his hardest. He was, after all, an Expediter: elite troubleshooter for the Patth Director General, the epitome of all the spies and special agents who filled the ranks of popular star-thrillers. More than that, he was neck-deep in an unknown situation. He didn’t want to react to Selene’s comment. He certainly didn’t want to smile.
But even he couldn’t help himself. For about half a second he continued to glower at me. Then, the scowl softened, the tension in his face faded, and he actually gave an amused chuckle. “That’s what they used to call hitting below the belt,” he said, leaning back in his chair and giving Selene a mock-annoyed look. “Family, you say?”
“Provided you don’t ask to borrow the car,” I said. “So?”
“Fine,” he said, the brief smile fading again into seriousness. “You’re off the hook. But if you didn’t engineer this, why did it happen?”
“I have a theory,” I said. “But before I talk about it, I need a little more information. What happened before you were first caught and tossed into confinement?”
“We should also start eating,” Selene reminded us, her eyes flicking toward the silent waiters across the room.
“Yes, dinner conversation always looks less suspicious when the participants are actually eating that dinner,” I agreed, scooping up a spoonful of the soup and carefully touching it to the tip of my tongue. Not too hot, and the taste seemed decent. “Go on, Huginn.”
He hissed out a breath as he cut off a section of one of the two egg-roll things on his plate. “As I said before, we arrived six local days ago.”
“Via the Alainn portal,” I put in.
The corner of his lip twitched. “Yes,” he said. No doubt he’d put two and two together and concluded we already knew which of the Gemini portals out there he and his team had used to get here.
Still, as my father used to say, When you add two and two, always assume your math has been deliberately manipulated to get four. In this case, Selene and I hadn’t had any opportunity to check the portals for human and Iykam scent before we were also picked up by the Ammei. But Huginn didn’t know that.
“It was night, and everything seemed quiet,” he continued. “We looked around a bit, I assessed the situation and terrain, and we set up a command post in one of the larger buildings on the western edge of the city where we hoped we could evade notice. We spent the day hidden on upper floors, watching the activity in the core area—that’s this tower, the rings of houses, and the portals—and checking to see if and when the inhabitants came into the outer parts.”
“Did they?”
“No one came close to us,” Huginn said. “We saw a little movement in the areas along the river, but they were too far away for us to get any specifics.”
“Yes,” I murmured, thinking about the silver-silk retrieval project we’d stumbled onto. “May have been fishermen. We spotted a troop of them heading to the pier around dusk. Them and their little pets.”
“Those tensh things,” he said, nodding. “Any idea what they are?”
“Far as I can tell, they’re just pets,” I said. “Maybe they help the fishermen retrieve their catch or something.”
“I don’t know,” Huginn said doubtfully as he scooped up another mouthful. “They’re definitely not just pets. There were a bunch of them with the handful of Ammei who were poking around the city’s outer areas, too, so they’re not just for fishing.” He finished chewing and took a sip from the water glass, wrinkling his nose as he set the glass down. “A little heavy on the minerals for my taste. So after nightfall we waited for the beacon to shut off—”
“Beacon?” I cut in, frowning.
“The evening beacon,” he said, frowning as he looked back and forth between us. “How long did you say you’d been here?”
“We weren’t in observation range during the night.”
“Yeah,” he said, still eyeing us. “You must have been really out of it. That thing’s probably visible for tens of kilometers, especially the way it lights up the lower cloud layers.”
“So they just fire it into the clouds?” I asked. Was that the light we’d seen from orbit? “Why not wait until the clouds clear away?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Given how old this place seems to be, it could just be that that’s how they’ve always done it.”
“You said the beacon shut off,” Selene said. “How long did it run? Did you time it?”
“Of course,” Huginn said as if that should have been obvious. “Two hours, seven minutes, three seconds. Exactly the same both days.”
“Hold it,” I said, trying to do the math in my head. “You said the day here was eighteen and a half hours long?”
“Eighteen point six three three hours,” he said. “Works out to eighteen hours, thirty-seven minutes, fifty-nine seconds. Boiled down, that means the means the beacon runs eleven point three-six percent of the day.”
“Odd number,” I commented. “You sure it’s not an even ten percent? Or maybe even twelve point five?”
“Very sure,” he said. “Bear in mind that’s a sidereal day, and the measurement might be off a bit due to the unfamiliar star patterns. But it’s close enough that, no, it’s not an even tenth or eighth. Or an even anything else.”
“Interesting,” I murmured, trying to think. Some fraction of pi, maybe? No—ridiculous. The Ammei wouldn’t scale time in the same way anyone in the Spiral did, nor would any of their measurement system match up with ours.
Something that had a special significance to the Ammei, then. But we weren’t going to figure that out without more data. “We can work on that later. So the beacon shut off and…?”
“We poked around the abandoned parts of the city a bit while it was dark,” he said. “Some of the more elaborate-looking buildings—or rather, the larger ones that looked like they might once have been elaborate—were missing their baseboards and had had the flooring torn up alongside the walls.”
“Really,” I said, trying to sound intrigued. It sounded just like what Selene and I had seen in the riverfront building.
Except that that one had silver-silk tucked away inside the excavation area. Huginn’s buildings didn’t.
Or did they? Had there been silver-silk and he was simply withholding that information? That’s certainly what I would have done.
Come to think of it, that was exactly what I was currently doing. “But just the fancy ones?” I asked.
“We didn’t make a detailed survey of the area,” he growled. “But of the nine buildings we looked into it was only the two fancy ones that had been torn up that way.”
“Maybe rich Ammei liked to bury their valuables inside their walls,” I said. “Or else went in for some very pricey paneling.”
“Or it was something else entirely,” Huginn said, giving me a hard look. “I thought you were the one who wanted us to work together.”
“Let’s finish your story before we start ours,” I said. “So you looked at some of the buildings. You find anything else interesting?”
“Not really,” Huginn said, still eyeing me suspiciously. “I was working on a plan for checking out the core area when about a dozen Ammei suddenly popped up around our building.”
“I’m guessing the Iykams wanted to charge to the attack?”
“Iykams are loyal and ready to die for the Patth and their servants,” Huginn said, his tone going darker. “They also obey orders. I told them to lower their weapons and surrender, and they complied.”
“Under the circumstances, a wise move,” I said, studying the tension in his face. He’d surrendered, and now the Iykams under his authority had been summarily hauled away for another night in confinement.
Or worse. We had only Rozhuhu’s word, after all, that that was what the Ammei were going to do with them.
Typically, Selene got to the end of that thought before I did. “They’ll be all right,” she assured him. “They still hold me in high esteem. They won’t risk angering me. Not yet.”
“Yeah,” Huginn said, giving her speculative look. “Maybe.”
“Regardless, if they’d wanted you dead, they could have done that before you even knew they were there,” I said. “We saw a quick demo of those lightning guns of theirs. Straight shot into the dirt, but even so.”
“Maybe,” Huginn said, clearly still not willing to concede that his actions hadn’t set up his Iykams to be slaughtered. “Anyway, we stayed in lockup until you showed up. Your turn.”
“We got here almost two days ago,” I said, sorting through what I should and shouldn’t tell him. Working together was fine in theory, but his backup was likely to arrive way before ours—if ours ever did—and there were a few bargaining chips I needed to hold onto. “It was already close to sunset, so we stuck around just long enough to look at the Tower and get a feel for the city before we left.”
“How close is your portal to ours?” Huginn asked. “Is it nearby, or somewhere all the way across the ring?”
“Come now,” I chided. “We can’t have your backup getting here first and floating a balloon into the middle of ours to lock it down. Or do you have a different way of keeping out unwanted company?”
“Careful,” Huginn warned with a hint of facetiousness. “Giving away state secrets is probably a capital offense under Kinneman.”
“It’s hardly a state secret,” I assured him. “Besides, Sub-Director Nask saw what I did on Fidelio. It’s not like he can’t extrapolate that to something simpler and more elegant.”
“No, he could certainly do something like that.” Huginn gave me a sly smile. “Though given the level of leakage from your Alien Portal Agency, it’s not like we wouldn’t have heard about your methods eventually anyway.”
“No, of course not,” I said, keeping my voice casual. We’d long since known about the taps the Patth had into StarrComm and other supposedly secure communications networks. But having actual human intelligence assets inside the Icarus Group would raise that game to a whole new level. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share any names with the rest of the class.”
He shrugged. “As far as I know, there aren’t any specific names,” he said. “It’s all just bits and pieces we’ve picked up from incautious comments and gossip.”
“Ah.” Of course, that was also what he would say if the Patth had a whole legion of spies reporting regularly from inside Kinneman’s organization. “Anyway, we came back a day later and were poking around the outer edge of the city when we were caught. Though in our case it was more a greeting with an armed escort.”
“Because of Selene,” he said, again giving her a probing look. “And you get Second of Three while we get Third of Three. What makes you so special?”
“Maybe the better question is what makes humans and Iykams not special,” I said. The hazy beginnings of a theory were floating around my brain, but I needed way more thought and data before it would coalesce enough to even share with Selene, let alone Huginn. “On another note, I assume you noticed how much better Rozhuhu’s English is compared to Fourth’s.”
“At about the third word out of his mouth,” he confirmed. “I assume you have a theory?”
“Remember back on Alainn I told you that someone had been using that portal to get to the Loporr village for the past fifty to a hundred years?” I asked.
“Yes,” Huginn murmured, his voice going all thoughtful. “You think Fourth was one of the last people who dealt with the Loporri before the Ammei closed down the operation?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Bilswift was barely an outpost at the time, so Fourth’s exposure to English would have been minimal.”
“Rozhuhu, on the other hand, looks way too young to have been to Alainn before the Janus was shut down,” Huginn said. “He must have picked up his English since then.”
“Which means he’s had at least semi-regular contact with humans,” I said. “Which also means the Ammei haven’t just been sitting on all those portals out there. They’ve been using some of them.”
“To get to the exotic foodstuffs they pipe into the Ammei enclaves to sell,” he said, nodding. “Already figured out that part.”
“Good,” I said. “Then there’s just one other crucial bit of information we need to keep in mind. The Gemini portal you came in through was shut off at the Alainn end, not this one. To me that says the Ammei wanted access to either the Loporri or their silver-silk.”
“Agreed,” Huginn said. “If they didn’t pull the plug, any thoughts as to who did?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “But I can imagine the Ammei being royally pissed off at their private trade route drying up.”
“Though apparently not pissed off enough to try to get to Alainn some other way.”
“And how exactly would they have done that?” I countered. “They probably never knew the planet’s name. Certainly not the name the Spiral calls it by. Add to that the fact that the upstanding citizens who’ve been exploiting the silver-silk trade all these years kept it a very dark secret, and the Ammei could search for centuries before they figured out where it was.”
“Only now they’ve got a fresh shot at it,” Huginn pointed out grimly. “With you and Selene blowing open the question of Loporri sapience, the silver-silk connection is bound to come out.”
“Eventually,” I said. “But that’s not our problem. Our problem is to figure out what’s going on here.”
“Agreed,” he said. “Question: If the Ammei here are making regular trips back and forth to the Spiral, why don’t more of them know English? It’s one of maybe three main lingua francas these days.”
“I see two possibilities,” I said. “One, it’s the Ammei from the other enclaves who do all the trade and language studies while this bunch mostly sit around pining for the glories of the old days.”
“The old days?”
“A city doesn’t collapse this far without having had some glorious old days,” I pointed out. “Or at least days the current populace fondly remembers that way. Second possibility—” I shot a surreptitious look at the three servants, still standing patiently along the wall. “Second possibility,” I continued, lowering my voice, “is that they all speak perfect English and this whole happy-natives thing is a huge scam they’ve manufactured for our benefit.”
“Through which they hope to find out why we’re here and what we’re looking for?” Huginn asked. “Sounds a bit paranoid.”
I shrugged. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong.”
“True,” he conceded. “Actually, come to think of it, the whole town doesn’t have to be in on it. I don’t think we’ve interacted with more than twenty Ammei total.”
“Most of whom haven’t said a word,” I agreed. “Still, as my father used to say, The first half of getting through a con is recognizing that it is a con.”
“And the second half?”
“He said he would leave that up to me,” I said. “He liked to encourage resourcefulness. Regardless, I think our best plan is to keep going on as we have, remembering we might still be in option one. It’s embarrassing to call B.S. on someone who is completely innocent and has no idea what you’re babbling about.”
“Especially when it could get you shot,” Huginn said. “I still want a closer look at that library and those Upper Rooms.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But we should wait until Selene’s had a chance to fill in her part of the map.”
“Map?” Selene asked.
“It’s more of a floor plan,” I said, again looking at the waiters. I didn’t know if they were close enough to hear us, or whether they were among the group of locals who understood English. But they sure as hell were close enough to spot me passing something the size of a folded piece of paper to Selene. “We need to know everything we can about the Tower’s layout before we can decide on our next move.”
“In the meantime, it’s getting close to sunset and our watchdogs are looking antsy,” Huginn said. “Ready to put a ribbon on the evening?”
“Almost.” I scooped up the last bite from my plate and popped it into my mouth. “I need you to block their view long enough for me to get the map from my right front pocket.”
“Sure. Say when.”
“When.” I lifted my left hand toward Selene and pointed, as if gesturing to something behind her, making sure to keep the hand from getting suspiciously close to her head or body. She picked up instantly on the cue and half turned to look. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Huginn fumble his napkin onto the floor and climb partway out of his seat as he bent down and retrieved it.
And for about a second and a half, I had my window.
I dipped the first two fingers into my pocket, pickpocket style, and pulled out our map. By the time Huginn was back in his seat I had the folded paper palmed invisibly in my right hand. “And now we go?” Selene asked as she turned back to me.
“Now we go,” I confirmed. “Kindly be a lady and let your bodyguard help you up.”
I pushed back my chair, stood up, and walked around behind Selene. The waiters reacted to my action, two of them stiffening to a sort of attention while the third seemed to be speaking rapidly to no one in particular. An earbud, presumably, or something similar, and I made a mental note to ask for a radio scanner whenever our backup showed up. Even if we couldn’t understand their language, knowing what frequency and pattern they were using to communicate could be very useful. I settled myself behind Selene and got a grip on the two sides of her chair, and as she stood up in response to my murmured prompt I pulled the chair back.
And as her hip rose to the level of my right hand, I slipped the map behind her belt and into the hip waistband of her trousers.
I stepped back as Huginn likewise got to his feet. “You!” I called toward the waiters, gesturing the same way I had over Selene’s shoulder a minute ago. “Inform the Second of Three that Selene of the Kadolians is ready to be escorted to her place of sleep.”
I’d barely finished speaking when the door we’d come in through opened and our entourage marched in. Second led the way, as usual, with Fourth a step to his side and a bit behind him. Third was next, with Rozhuhu holding the same position to him as Fourth was to Second. The six guards who’d escorted the Iykams out of the dining room earlier were also back, fanning out to both sides of the door. Second said something—
“The Second of Three expresses his hope that the meal was to the satisfaction of Selene of the Kadolians,” Fourth of Three translated.
“It was,” Selene said with the proper level of calm dignity. “I am prepared to be escorted to my place of sleep. I ask again that my bodyguard be allowed to accompany me.”
“That is impossible,” Fourth said. Again, there was apparently no need for consultation.
“Perhaps it is impossible for the Third of Three,” Selene said. “Is it also impossible for the First of Three?”
For a second, Fourth seemed to freeze. Then he moved a few centimeters closer to Second and began talking rapidly. Second said something back, and the conversation was on.
I glanced at Huginn, saw my own freshly heightened interest reflected in his expression. I still had only a vague understanding of the rules of this hierarchy, but it was clear that Selene’s appeal to the top dog wasn’t something any of the others had anticipated.
Second and Fourth finished their hurried dialog and both turned back to Selene. “The First of Three cannot be disturbed at this hour,” Fourth said. “The Second of Three will discuss the matter with him in the morning.”
“How surprising,” Huginn muttered. “We going to settle for that?”
I looked sideways at Selene, noting the minor satisfaction in her pupils. Whatever her goal had been in appealing Second’s decision, she’d apparently achieved it. “For the moment,” I muttered back. I turned my attention to Third. “We are prepared to be escorted to our place of rest, Third of Three,” I said.
“We are likewise,” Rozhuhu said. Even with the heavy cloak of alienness obscuring his voice and expression, I could swear there was relief there. “The Third of Three will lead you. Selene of the Kadolians, the Second of Three and your escort await.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Selene, I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well.”
“You, too,” she said.
“I will.”
Which was a promise I had no intention of keeping. If Huginn was right, the beacon would soon be blazing its way into the sky and clouds. Two hours after that, darkness would presumably settle across the city.
I intended to use that darkness to the fullest.