The Sardonyx Net Part 26

Her melancholy irritated him. "That woman's not your twin," he said. "Her name's Darien Riis, not Rhani; she's not from Chabad; she's a computer technician; and her eyes aren't gold, they're brown." He paused. "And anyway, she's not free."

Sudden mischief lit Rhani's eyes. "My dear, the resemblance is striking, oh my yes!" She laughed. "You're right. I'm being stupid."

Dana wondered if he dared tell her about Tori Lamonica. "Her hair's redder than yours, too."

"I know," Rhani said. "She doesn't look like me. But -- you couldn't know this -- she looks like what I used to look like. My hair was redder when I was younger." She rubbed her chin. "Zed's fascination with her -- disturbs me." With evident pain, she said, "He wouldn't talk to me the whole way home."

"At all?"

She nodded. Suddenly she came back to the com-unit keyboard. She punched a set of symbols, and the screen printed out: RECORDS OF THE YAGO NET: CURRENT YEAR: HOLDING. She sat on the chair and keyed in further instructions. The screen said: CARGO ROSTER: HUMAN. There was a pause, and then the screen flashed, in bright green letters, IDENTIFY.

She pressed her thumb to the screen.

Dana said, "Are those the Net records?"

She nodded. "They're only accessible to authorized persons. Me, Zed, the Net staff, the Barracks staff, the Clinic -- "

Dana said, "That's a lot of people." He remembered what his first computer instructor had said: "_Anything that anyone can put into a computer, someone else can find. All you need is the time to look_." "I suppose I'm there, too."

"Yes," she said, "you are." The screen began to fill with words. Dana read them over Rhani's shoulder. DARIEN RIIS; SX: F; AGE: 26; PROFESSION: COMTECH; LENGTH OF CONTRACT: 4 YRS; PLANET OF ORIGIN: ENCHANTER; DORAZINE.

DOSAGE: 1.25 TID: CRM STATUS REGIS: 79R. Rhani frowned and touched a key. The green letters did not change.

"Are you looking for something more?" Dana asked. He was fascinated.

"There should be information about her offense," Rhani said. "I forget what 'Status 79' means, but 'R' denotes restricted information. I wonder what's going on."

"Can you override it?"

"My thumb print should have keyed in an automatic override. Whoever fed the computer the original data made an error. Or else there's a defect in the override circuit." She tapped the keyboard. "I've asked it to define 'Status 79.'".

The screen printed: STATUS 79: PERSONAL VIOLENCE AGAINST INDIVIDUAL ADULT.

"Oh," said Rhani softly.

Dana found himself wondering what circ.u.mstance or combination of them had driven a redheaded twenty-six-year-old Enchantean computer tech to an act of personal violence. Rhani touched a fingertip to the slick plastic screen, as if trying to feel the pinpoints of light. Then she erased the words. "You're right," she said. She swung the chair around. "Right about what?"

"She's not my twin. My twin would never commit a crime of violence against an individual."

"How do you know that?" Dana said.

Rhani rubbed her chin. "Because I wouldn't." She rose. "Thank you for your comfort," she said.

She looked very solitary, standing in this room which smelled of her, her voice husky, even, and formal: Dana wanted to go to her, to hold her, to feel her upright body curve and soften against his.... He couldn't do it now. Now she was not his lover Rhani, but Domna Rhani Yago. She doesn't need a twin, he thought; she herself is twins, as Zed is, as I am, surgeon/s.a.d.i.s.t, slave/Starcaptain.

Someone knocked sharply on the door, and then slid it back. Zed leaned in. "Rhani-ka, I'll be at the Clinic if you want me," he said. He closed the door before she could answer. Startled, Dana glanced at Rhani. It was not like Zed to be so brusque with her. She had not moved, but her shoulders were hunched as if against a blow, and her face was thinned and drawn.

Dana went to her and put both arms around her. She laid her head against his chest. He could feel her breathing deeply -- finally she sighed and stepped away. "I'm all right," she said, with something of a child's defiance in her tone.

"I know you are," he said.

She brushed her hair back from her face with both hands and lifted her face to his.

The kiss was lingering. As they disengaged, Rhani sighed -- with pleasure, with melancholy? Dana didn't know. Her glance at him seemed oddly calculating. Was she working out the next time she could take him to bed? He felt as if she had made some kind of decision about him, a decision she did not intend to tell him about.

She thumbed the intercom. "Binkie? What is your file number on Loras U- Ellen?"

Binkie's voice said, "Number 1216, Rhani-ka."

"Thank you." She walked to the com-unit and sat before it. A little apologetically, she said to Dana, "I still have work to do."

She tapped the com-unit keys. "You remember I asked you about Loras U- Ellen? Well, the reason I asked you if you knew the name is that he appears to be a drug dealer."

Joltingly, Dana remembered Tori. "I told you when I first met you, Rhani- ka," he said, "I don't really know the drug dealers."

"Yes. That's right." She continued to touch keys. "I'd like something cool to drink," she said. "Would you ask Corrios to make me up some fruit punch?"

She was Domna Rhani Yago again. "Yes, Rhani-ka," Dana murmured.

The kitchen was cool and empty. Dana wondered where everybody was.

"Corrios?" he called. No one answered, but a noise from the dining alcove drew his attention there. He walked toward it. Halfway there, he met Amri. Her blue eyes were reddened, and she was sniffling.

"Kitten, what is it?" he said. He curled an arm around her, as he would have embraced a weeping brother or sister. "What's wrong?"

She said, "Binkie yelled at me."

"What? Why?"

"Because I asked him who he was talking to, on the steps."

"What?"

"Someone came to the back and they talked. I just wanted to know who it was. I didn't mean to snoop." She knuckled one eye.

"Is that what he said?" She nodded. Dana contemplated finding the secretary/slave and telling him as nastily as possible what he thought of this. Amri snuffled again. "Never mind, kitten," he said, wondering for the hundredth time how old she was, and what she could possibly have done to make her a slave on Chabad. "He's a _kamsharrah_."

"What's that mean?"

"It means he's the sort of man who would sell his mother's body to be eaten by goats."

"Ugh!" Amri made a face. "That's horrible. Is it a Pellish word?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't think he is," she said. She looked suddenly thoughtful. "I think he cares a lot about his family. He's from Enchanter. When he first came here -- to the estate, it was -- he showed me a picture of his little girl that he carried with him all the time. But then he tried to run away, and Zed -- " She paused. "You know. After that, he stopped talking about his family, about anything." She blinked. "I need to wash my face."

He hugged her, and let go. "Rhani wants some fruit punch," he said. "Is Corrios out?"

"He's asleep," Amri said. "He likes to nap around noon. I'll fix it." She grinned suddenly, and gave him a little push. "Go back to her. I can bring it up."

Dana returned the grin. "All right," he said. As he ascended the stairs, he decided that he would have to stop thinking of Amri as a child. That little shove had not been a child's reaction. Maybe, he thought, maybe Amri's artless look is just an act. Or no -- not an act -- a persona, a mood put on to hide what she was really thinking and feeling. We all wear one, he thought grimly. We must, or the contradictions between what we were and what we are -- between free being and slave -- would rip us apart.

Suddenly, three steps from Rhani's door, he was shaken with such rage that he had to lean against the wall. d.a.m.n this place, d.a.m.n Sardonyx Sector, and d.a.m.n and double d.a.m.n the people of this planet, who had stabilized and made functional a social system based on degradation and drugs. The realization that he had helped to make it work contributed to his horror. He found himself thinking of Michel A-Rae with sympathy. Let him bring it down! he thought. I don't care what they put in its place: a room with bars is more merciful than this. At least, inside a room with bars, you would not constantly have to see what you had lost.

"Dana?" called Rhani.

"Coming," Dana said. He straightened, breathing evenly, consciously relaxing the tension that shuddered through his flesh. Finally, he slid the door aside, hoping that none of his feelings -- his true feelings -- were showing on his face.

Rhani sat on the bed, surrounded by printouts. "Amri's making punch,"

Dana said.

"Thank you." She looked up, pus.h.i.+ng her hair away from her face with her wrist. "Come look at this."

He sat on the bed beside her. She laid the printout in his lap. "What am I looking at?" he asked.

"A summary of the information on Loras U-Ellen. Personal data, family data, economic interests."

"Uh." He scanned it. "How can he be forty-seven and ninety-three?"

"The old one is his father. This is him." She pointed to the paragraph.

"Unmarried, three times liaisoned, father of seven children, three of whom live with him..."

"I see it." Dana read the paragraph quickly. "What the h.e.l.l is a _pinoth_?" he asked.

"It's an Enchantean flute," Rhani said. "He plays in an amateur orchestra." "Really?" Dana wondered what music they'd played, and if they had ever heard of Vittorio Stratta. "He's independently wealthy?"

"He's officer of a corporation," Rhani said. She leaned over the page; a strand of her hair tickled his throat. "Please note what corporation it is." She pointed to the relevant line. "Pharmaceuticals, Inc. They manufacture pentathine, a legal dorazine subst.i.tute."

Amri leaned through the doorway. "Rhani-ka, I have your punch," she said.

Rhani glanced up. "Thank you, Amri. Put it down."

Amri laid the tray on the footstool, poured some punch into a gla.s.s, and brought it to Rhani.

"Thank you," Rhani said. "That's all." Amri left. "What the h.e.l.l is a corporate officer doing, sneaking around the back alleys of Abanat, pretending to be a drug dealer?"

Dana shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know anything about corporations, Rhani-ka."

She gazed at him, startled.

"We don't have them on Pellin," he said. "All the industries and products belong to everybody. It's been that way from the time the colony was founded."

"Oh," she said. She rubbed her chin. "Well, it's most uncharacteristic behavior, take it from me." She was frowning as she studied the printout. "Sweet mother, they're a huge family! I wonder how they keep it all straight."

Dana half smiled. For a moment, his mind leaped back to his own big family. On Pellin, every family had an unofficial recorder, some member of the clan with a capacity for retention and a real historical sense. His Aunt Kobe could recite the lineage of everyone in the clan for three generations. There were so many of them that when they traveled to the northern mountains for _shamshama_, the yearly traditional reunion, it took three huge wagons to carry them all ... Soon there would be one more. His sister, Anwako, was pregnant for the second time; that had been four, no, six, months ago. She had probably already had the baby. The baby's father had blue eyes, her last letter had said, and the rest were taking bets as to whether the baby's eyes would be black, like those of most of the Ikoro clan, or blue....

"Well?" Rhani said.

She had asked him something. "I'm sorry," Dana said. "I was thinking about something else. Would you say that again, Rhani-ka?"

She gazed at him impatiently. "I asked you what you thought was the best way for me to contact Loras U-Ellen."

"Send him a letter," Dana said.

He meant it flippantly. But Rhani's hard gaze told him that he had made a mistake. "I beg your pardon," she said. "This must be very boring to you. You may go."

Dana swallowed, and rose. He had not meant to offend her. Sweet mother, he thought, I don't understand this woman sometimes...."Rhani-ka, I'm sorry," he said. "I was trying to be funny. It was out of place. I'd like to help." And as he said it, an idea lurched out of the back of his mind and roared at him. "You said -- " his throat was abruptly tight, and he coughed to clear it -- "you said he is on Chabad, pretending to be a drug dealer?"

"Yes," she said. "More exactly, he appears to have bribed my regular dealer, Sherrix Esbah, to leave the planet, and has taken her place. But he is _not_ dealing dorazine."

"How did you find _that_ out?" he asked.

"Jo Leiakanawa, the Net navigator. Remember when Zed left the estate for Abanat, a few days after you came? I had written several times to Sherrix, and still not heard from her. Jo had spoken to the dealers about Family Yago business before. Zed asked her to investigate Sherrix' silence for me."

"You could do that again," he said. Her shoulders hunched. "Zed would have to do it," she said. "Talk to Jo, I mean. And he -- " She took a deep breath. "I don't know what is happening to him."

Nothing good, I hope, Dana thought. Trying to sound casual, he said, "You know, I could do it, Rhani."

She did not misunderstand him. "Find Loras U-Ellen for me." She leaned back on the bed, studying him.

He sweated beneath that amber gaze. There were moments when she was very like her brother. "He must be in the Hyper district," he said. "I could go down there, talk to people."

"They would talk to you?"

"I think so." He touched his left arm with his right. "I would have to hide this, of course. And I'd need some money, a credit disc -- "

"Your medallion?" she said.

Do you have it? he wanted to shout. But, warned by her tone, he shook his head. "No. That's not necessary."

Leaning back on the bed as she was, the outline of Rhani's body showed clearly through her pants and s.h.i.+rt. He could not help looking at her and finding her lovely. For a moment, he became aware of the gulf between them, not of age or even, so much, of wealth, but of experience. Each had knowledge the other could not even dream of. And, under her penetrating, meticulous gaze, he saw himself mirrored -- and felt himself wanting.

Quietly she said, "Dana, you do know, don't you, what my brother did when Binkie tried to escape from the estate."

His mouth drying as if scoured by wind, he nodded.

"Good. I -- I would not want it to happen to you."

He caught his breath. "Wouldn't you stop it?" he asked.

She sat upright, shoulders hunching. "I would try. I'm not sure I could."

She gazed at him, and said, not flinching, "I cannot always control him, you know."

"Why do you let..." he started, and stopped, afraid that he would indeed overstep bounds.