The Sardonyx Net Part 55

Graeme had refused to give him a weapon; he was a spectator at the feast this day, not a celebrant. He crossed an intersection. "Five minutes," said the voice at his ear. He breathed easily, feeling the film of sweat casing his body like a caressing hand. Another intersection. "Three minutes." He wondered if the people in the houses had noticed the strangers hurrying through their streets and speculated on what was going on. A muscle cramped in his left thigh and he snarled, unable to halt and flex it. He kept moving and after a while the knot went away. The houses here were small, set close together on crooked streets.

"One minute," said the voice at his ear.

He crossed the last intersection and turned right toward the corner of Cooley and Thaine. Malachi beckoned him. Zed went to him and dropped to his knees beside the brawny, dark cop. He was holding a communicator in one hand.

There was a water gauge on a pole beside him; Zed pretended to examine it. "Now what?" he said.

"We go in," said Malachi. "You stay here. Move when you're told to."

Zed nodded. He had hoped that Graeme would let him join the first attack team but it had been an unlikely hope. He did not want to get in anyone's way.

"They're still inside?" he said.

"As far as I know." A tone sounded in Zed's ear. "That's it. See you later." Rising, Malachi sauntered away from the pole. A second tone sounded in Zed's ear. Sweat curled his hair and plastered his s.h.i.+rt to his body. Malachi was running now toward the corner house. It had white walls, a slanted roof with solar panels turned toward the sun, a gravel path.... He watched running figures converge in all directions. The side windows of the house fell inward. The sound of shattering gla.s.s brought saliva to his mouth; he swallowed. Human shadows flowed through the windows. Smoke puffed from one window and dissipated on a warm slow breeze.

"All units move in," said Cat Graeme's voice in the remote. Zed stood.

The muscle in his thigh cramped again. He loped toward the house. The front door eased slowly open. Cat Graeme stood framed in the doorway. She was holding a stun gun.

"You mount an impressive operation, Captain," Zed said. She grinned. "Thanks."

"Have you got them all?"

"Every one."

The blood roared in Zed's ears like the sea. He walked into the house, noting a huge, motley pile of things against a wall, tools, clothes, electronic components, stun charge casings, rope, blankets.... He almost stumbled over the first body: a woman, holding a stunner in one hand. He glanced at the charge; it was set at lethal, but the casing gauge showed it to be empty. She was breathing stertorously. He moved on. A second room held two three-tiered bunks like the bunks on a stars.h.i.+p. A second man lay slumped on one of the bunks, his head and upper torso on the bunk, his hips, legs, and feet trailing on the floor. He, too, was snoring. A fourth man lay on the hall floor with a laser bur through his shoulder. He was moaning. Zed closed his nostrils against the smell of burned flesh and walked to the rear of the house. He heard voices and angled toward them. "Can you cut that -- yeah, right, now get him on his feet. Did they even feed him, I wonder?"

"Took you long enough," said Dana Ikoro.

He was standing, one hand on the wall to steady himself. As Zed entered the little room, he wavered, and one of the members of the attack team caught him and eased him to the cot. The room stank of feces and urine. Dana's mouth was bruised. But his voice was steady as he swore -- in Pellish -- and tried to lift himself again. Zed walked to him and levered him away from the soiled bunk.

"Need a hand, Starcaptain?"

"Thanks," Dana said, and then all his muscles went rigid. "Zed?"

"Can you walk?" Zed said.

"My legs shake," Dana said.

"Then hold still," Zed said. Wrapping an arm around Dana's waist, he picked the slighter man off the floor. It was only a few meters down the hall to the kitchen. Dana put both hands out rather blindly, and Zed set him down beside a wall. "Here's a chair." He guided Dana to it and lowered him to the seat before he fell. Dana steadied himself.

"Thank you," he said. He breathed arrhythmically, and Zed guessed that his ribs were bruised and maybe broken. His clothing was filthy, and there was a blotch of what looked like dried blood in his unkempt hair.

"Bad?" Zed said.

Dana looked up. His mouth quivered. But he straightened in the chair.

"Not too bad," he said. "It was mostly the big man, Elon. A-Rae -- " he paused - - "he left me alone after the first two days. It frightened him too much to watch." He rubbed his face with one hand. His cheeks were stubbled with beard.

"May -- may I have some water?"

Zed walked to the cooler and brought him water in a plastic cup. Dana took the cup. He had it halfway to his mouth before his hand began to shake. Zed steadied it for him and helped him drink. Dana put the cup on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I kept telling myself it could never be as bad as the Net," he said. "I even told Elon. He didn't like that."

"Was it?" Zed said.

Dana tried to smile. "No. Oh, no."

"_Did_ they feed you?"

"Off and on. No baths, though. I must stink."

"You do," Zed said. The darkness was seeping into him, but he held it back. "Think you can remember an address?"

Dana nodded.

"Forty-seven Cabell Street. Rhani's there. She has something important to tell you. I suspect she'd even let you take a bath."

"Cabell Street, forty-seven," Dana repeated. "Got it." "Good," said Zed. Then, before the dark rage moved to snare him, and Dana with him, in its embrace, he walked from the kitchen and began, with methodical diligence, to check the faces of the fallen.

He found the ex-chief of the drug detail in the smallest room in the house, really a closet. Someone had bound his hands behind his back. An attack team member in a tattered s.h.i.+rt and pants said, "Hey, maybe you -- " but Zed was already past him. The windowless concrete room reminded him of a Net cell. A-Rae lay on his side. Stunned, his face was slack with sleep; he seemed harmless, and very young.

Zed wound one hand in the dark hair and lifted the slumping head. His other hand reached to stroke A-Rae's cheek. The claws extended. With tremendous effort, Zed checked the motion. He rose. "Don't move him," he said to the man standing guard at the door. "Has this place got a medikit?"

The man shrugged. "We brought one with us." Zed went back down the hallway. He found Cat Graeme in the cottage's front room, talking into a communicator. Shards of gla.s.s littered the floor.

He waited for her to notice him. "What is it?" she said finally, letting the communicator crackle into silence.

"You brought a medikit with you."

"That way." She pointed. "The kitchen." Zed went to the kitchen. Dana had vanished. The man with the laser burn was sitting groggily on the floor, being treated by a puzzled young medic. Zed rummaged through the open medikit beside her, picked out a stimulant ampule, and returned to the closet where Michel A- Rae lay asleep. Kneeling, he pulled up A-Rae's collar and laid the ampule against the carotid artery.

The guard said, "What are you doing?"

Zed said, "Bringing him out of stun." He watched A-Rae's eyelids flutter.

"I'm a senior medic attached to the Abanat Clinic. Would you close that door, please? You can leave it ajar if you like. This won't take long."

"Well -- don't take those cords off," the guard warned. He shut the door.

The latch clicked. As the room blackened, Zed palmed the light switch. He did not need or desire light but he wanted Michel A-Rae to be able to see. The darkness, freed of the constraints he had bound it with, devoured him, creeping through bloodstream and nervous system and into his hands. He extended the claws, and waited.

In about twenty seconds, Michel A-Rae blinked. He squirmed weakly. "Where -- " His dark eyes focused on Zed's face. He worked his lips, tried to swallow, couldn't.

Zed smiled lovingly at him. "You know who I am," he said, in a conversational tone.

A-Rae's shoulders spasmed as he struggled against the cords. Zed caught his head by the hair. He held it still, and let A-Rae see the claws.

"You can't -- "

"I can," Zed said. "Anything. I. Want to do. I can." Lightly he drew the claws of the right hand from the corner of A-Rae's left eye to the lower line of his jaw, stopping short of the artery. "Greetings from Darien," he said, and lifted the hand to let A-Rae see the talons touched with blood.

At the last minute, the Hype cops stopped Dana as he tried to leave the house.

"Hey," said one of them whose name, he thought, was Malachi, "why don't you come with us? You look pretty bad, maybe you ought to see a medic. Hey, Captain!" This shout down the corridor brought Cat Graeme out of the front room.

"What?"

"I'm taking the Starcaptain to the cop shop." He closed his hand around Dana's wrist.

"Don't hold me," Dana said wearily. "I've been tied up for four days." "Sorry." Malachi let go of the wrist. Dana thought, I don't want to go to the Police Station, really I don't....

"Wait a minute," Graeme called. Malachi sighed and walked to her. "Don't leave," he said warningly to Dana.

"I'm just going out for a breath of air," Dana said. He opened the door.

Forty-seven Cabell Street, forty-seven Cabell Street.... The glare of sunlight nearly knocked him down. He basked in the cleansing light for a moment, and then turned north. Five steps from the house and Malachi caught up with him.

"Thought you'd sneak away, huh," he said. "That was silly."

Dana stopped walking. His knees wobbled. "Look," he said, "I've been locked in a room, I've been beaten, I haven't had much food -- the last thing I need is to be pried at and pushed around. I need a bath and about forty hours'

sleep. Once I've had that, I'll be glad to come to the police station and talk to your d.a.m.n computer for hours -- " He swayed. "Forty-seven Cabell Street.

That's where I want to go."

"The Yago house," said Malachi. "Who told you to go there? The Commander?" Dana nodded. "Well -- " the burly man hesitated, and then said, "Oh, why not. You're out on your feet anyway. Come on, they'll have the slideway running again by now. Can you walk by yourself? I'm not real enthusiastic about carrying you. You smell rotten."

"I'll walk," Dana said. "Thanks." Just put one foot in front of the other, preferably in a straight line, he told himself. Malachi chattered beside him, needing no response, it seemed, as he discussed Chabad's weather -- "I'm from Samarkand, myself" -- Catriona Graeme, Rhani Yago, whom he admired though he had only met her for five minutes -- "Hey, that's one high-powered lady" -- and Chabad's markets. Every so often he would say, "You still with me?"

"Still with you," Dana said.

On the movalong, the pa.s.sengers took one look at Dana and edged away, until around him and Malachi was a clear s.p.a.ce. Malachi said politely, "You don't mind if I stand upwind?" Dana didn't mind. Near the movalong exit they pa.s.sed a fountain and Dana was tempted to wade into it. "Better not," Malachi said.

Dana had almost decided that walking was easy when Malachi said, "Here we are." Dana looked up. They stood in front of a house. It was low and covered with green vines that grew over the roof and down the sides of the house and against the windows. It reminded Dana very strongly of a house he had lived in on Pellin.

"You're sure?" he said, because it did not look like either of the houses he a.s.sociated with the Yagos. It was almost plebeian.

"I'm sure," Malachi said, knocking on the door. A tall, very thin man opened it. Dana frowned. For a minute he could not think why the man seemed so familiar, and then he realized that he looked like -- not in feature but in manner -- Binkie, only he was brown, and Binkie had been white....

He smelled the scent Rhani used on her hair.

"Dana!" She was standing in front of him. "Sweet mother." He fended off her outstretched hands.

"Better not," he said. "I haven't had a bath in days."

"Then you shall have one," she said. Turning, she gave a mult.i.tude of orders to people who came and quickly went. The man who looked like Binkie vanished and returned with a gla.s.s of what smelled like fruit punch. Dana clasped it in both hands.

It was fruit punch.

"Where's my brother?" Rhani asked Malachi.

"I don't know, ma'am. He stayed behind -- I suppose he had something to do."

Something -- Dana held the gla.s.s out and someone took it from him -- yes, you could say that, Dana thought. He remembered Zed moving from body to fallen body like an avalanche hunting for a place to spill. G.o.d help Michel A-Rae, he thought. Rhani was thanking Malachi, and he gathered the strength to turn and add his own grateful words.

Malachi was diffident. "Don't worry about it, man. Take care of yourself." He backed out of the house. Dana felt Rhani's cool, strong fingers close around his wrist.

"Bath," she said, and led him through her bedroom to a washroom. "Take off those clothes." He stripped. As he bared his left side, he heard her suck breath in sharply. She stepped close to him and touched the purple-black bruise with her right palm.

"Now we match," he said.

"Only mine was on the other side."

A tub of water stood steaming at his back. He lowered himself into it, trying not to cry out at the sharp pain. The surface of the water turned dark as dirt floated off his skin.

"Here," Rhani said, handing him a sponge. He sponged himself. It was luxury to be clean. "I'll do your back," she offered. He let her take the sponge from his hand.

"This is a nice house," he said, as the soft, thick sponge moved up and down his spine. The touch was mildly rousing; he felt his genitals stir.

When he climbed from the tub, he tried to hide his erection with the towel. Rhani saw, and grinned. "Hey, I've seen it before," she said. Suddenly she pressed herself against him, ignoring the water that ran down him, soaking her clothes. "d.a.m.n it, Dana," she said, "why did you come back? I wanted you to leave."

It was an odd thing for her to be saying as she hugged him, he thought.

"I tried to leave," he explained. "The s.h.i.+ps were grounded, and then I got drunk -- ".

"I know," she said. She handed him a thick plush blue robe. He put it on.

"Tori Lamonica told us you disappeared. I called the Abanat police but Captain Graeme didn't want to have anything to do with me." She grinned, not pleasantly.

"I changed her mind."

Dana thought for a moment that he would have liked to have seen Cat Graeme and Rhani Yago skopping it. But of course, Rhani had won. This was her world. "Zed -- looks well," he said.

She nodded, and brought him into the bedroom. Instantly he was ravenous.

A tray of food waited on a table. He scooped up a meat roll and bit into it. The crisp taste almost made him weep. "Oh, that's good," he said.

"He is well," Rhani said. Who, he thought, were we talking about? Oh, Zed. Yes. "He has a gym in the back of the house, he exercises a lot. He doesn't go to the Clinic any more, of course. He reads -- " She sat on the bed, hands between her knees. Her gaze sharpened. "You spoke with him?"

Dana nodded. "He gave me something to drink. We talked for a few minutes.

Rhani, why?" Her intense stare alarmed him.

She licked her lips, and reached for a piece of fruit. "Because he knows we were lovers," she said. "He found out last night."

It was too late to be frightened, but Dana's nerves reacted anyway, drying his mouth and racing his heart. "Oh," he said. "That must be -- he said you had something to tell me."

"No," she said, "that isn't it."