Trickster se-3 Page 6

  "Attention! Attention!" barked the computer. "A hand has left the boundaries of Sunnytree Farm. Attention! Attention! A hand has left-"

  Markovi waved a frantic hand over his desk computer and the holographic screen popped up. The alarm continued to blare. "Billy, close down the exits and show me which hand has left the farm. And shut off that goddammed noise!"

  The alarm instantly shut off. "All hands are accounted for," the computer said.

  "What? But you just said someone had left."

  "Please restate request."

  Markovi ground his teeth. "Billy, explain the inconsistency in the last two reports."

  "No inconsistency found. All hands are accounted for."

  The vidscreen chimed and flashed the words Incoming Call. Markovi tapped his desk. Alex appeared on the wall looking worried. "What's going on boss? Did someone go AWOL?"

  "That's what I'm trying to figure out," Markovi snarled. "Get your ass down to the quarters with Joe and do a physical head count. I want everyone-"

  He was cut off from another blast of alarm noise. "Attention! Attention! A hand has left the boundaries of Sunnytree Farm. Attention! Attention!"

  "Billy, shut the fuck up!" Markovi yelled, and the computer obeyed. "Billy, run a count of all hands."

  "All hands are accounted for."

  "Billy, did any shackle bombs go off?"

  "Negative."

  The vidscreen flashed another incoming call, and a moment later, one of the Compulink techs-the wimpy one who Markovi had yelled at earlier-appeared on it.

  "What do you mean?" Markovi demanded. "Does this have something to do with the alarm system?"

  "How the hell did we get a goddammed virus?" Markovi barked. "Our goddammed system is isolated."

  The tech shrugged. "We can try to track it down for you, sir, since we're here."

  "It won't be our emergency rates, sir," the tech said. "We're already on the premises, so-"

  "Attention! Attention! A hand has left the boundaries of Sunnytree Farm. Attention! Attention!"

  "Shut up, Billy!" Markovi screamed. Then to the tech, "Just fucking fix it!"

  "Attention! Attention!"

  Markovi had had it. "Billy, shut up and take the hand alarm system off-line for ten minutes. No more."

  "Acknowledged."

  "Now get off your ass and get to work," Markovi ordered. The tech nodded and vanished from the screen.

  Ben poked his head into the van. "Go!"

  Lucia dePaolo muttered a quick prayer to Irfan and set to work, her white-scarred hands moving with swift, serene efficiency. The boy watched with both interest and trepidation as Lucia forced open the control panel on his wristband with a tiny pick and started on the electronic lock within. He stood inside the crate while Gretchen kept a lookout through the van window. His bands were newer than the ones she was used to picking, and they were going to take longer to work than she had thought.

  "What if you make a mistake?" the boy whispered.

  "I won't make a mistake," she told him quietly. "Just hold-" She broke off and stared at the band.

  "Hold still?" the boy asked.

  "Seven minutes left," Gretchen said.

  Lucia's face remained expressionless, belying the pang of fear that temporarily overwhelmed her usual calm. The wristband contained a small detonator-another new feature. These shackles would do more than shock. Any slave who left the boundaries of the farm would probably lose a hand and a foot-easily repairable if he were found quickly enough, and a one-footed slave wasn't likely to be running anywhere. The bombs would doubtless also go off if she didn't get the bands removed before the alarm system came back on-line and detected tampering. Lucia spent several precious seconds debating whether she should first remove the shackles or disarm the bombs.

  Lucia took a deep breath and murmured a short mantra to restore her peace of mind. This was a simple puzzle, one she could solve with Irfan's help.

  "Five minutes," Gretchen said, then gasped. "Oh shit-it's that Alex guy. He's coming over to the van."

  Wasting no movements, Lucia pushed the boy down into the crate and slid in after him. She fumbled around in the dark for a moment, pulled a flashlight from her belt, switched it on, and put it in her mouth. The boy huddled, scared and unhappy, on the floor of the crate as Lucia grabbed for his wrist again. Dim light, cramped quarters, time running out. Another deep, calming breath. Irfan was with her, everything would be fine.

  "You guys seen Joe anywhere?" she heard Alex say.

  "Not lately," Ben said. "Why?"

  "I can't raise him." Alex paused. "Aren't you supposed to be working on the computer virus?"

  "Nancy's already gotten started," Ben said. "She'll have the alarm system cleared up pretty quick, so Denise and I came back here for the program disks we'll use to check the rest of the system." His voice got louder. "You did bring them, didn't you, Denise?"

  "There in here somewhere," Gretchen shot back. "Probably won't take more than three minutes to find them."

  Lucia pressed another section of the lock with her electric stylus and the wristband popped open. Lucia caught it just before it thudded to the floor of the crate. Mouth dry as a raisin, she reached for the boy's ankleband. This one should be easier since she now knew the lock mechanism better, but she had little time, so little time. The boy was shaking noticeably. He had to know about the shackle bombs. Telling the slaves about such a thing would be a powerful deterrent against escape.

  For a moment Lucia considered stage-whispering to Gretchen that she needed more time, that Ben should contact Markovi and tell him to keep the alarm system off-line for a few more minutes. Then she realized that as "Nancy" she was supposed to be working on the computers in the equipment barn and there was no way Gretchen or Ben could know that she needed more minutes. Activating her earpiece and explaining to Ben over the radio, as "Nancy" would have done, would eat up too much time.

  "Two minutes," Gretchen murmured.

  The ankleband came off.

  "Done!" she said hoarsely. "Go!"

  "Those disks aren't here," Gretchen said loudly. "We'll have to go back and get them while Nancy finishes up. It'll only take a minute."

  "Better go," Ben said, presumably to Alex. "Time is money, after all."

  Lucia poked her head cautiously out of the crate in time to see Ben all but leap into the driver's seat. He slammed the door and drove away as quickly as he dared. Just as the van was about to round the first bend in the driveway, Lucia caught sight of a figure through the van's tinted rear windows. It was a man, and he was staggering as if drunk.

  "Who's that?" she said, pointing.

  Gretchen glanced out the window. "Shit! It's Joe. He can't call for help because I took his earpiece, but once someone sees him-"

  Ben floored it. The van careened around the driveway curves beneath the dark shade of the cacao trees. Lucia's heart was in her throat, and no amount of deep breathing slowed its pounding. How long would it take Joe to sound the alarm? And what would- "Vik!" she cried, and dove back into the crate. Shoving aside the startled boy inside, Lucia scrambled to recover the slave shackles. The van rounded another curve, making the job harder. The boy lost his balance, fell against her. At last Lucia thrust the bands at Gretchen. "Toss these out the window. Quick!"

  Gretchen obeyed and the shackles vanished into the mulch surrounding the cacao trees. A moment later, a muffled boom rattled several trees. Pipes rose out of the ground and sprayed fertilizer again. The main gate was in sight-and it was shut. Ben aimed a remote control at it, and they began to grind open. Before the van reached them, however, the gates froze, then started to slide shut. Ben swore and tried the remote again. Nothing.

  "They've figured out what's going on and changed the codes already," Ben said. "Hold on to something!"

  Lucia just managed to grab the crate's rim before Ben slammed his foot down. The van leaped forward. Behind her came a yelp and a thud from the crate as the boy lost his balance. Gretchen was flun
g backward against the rear doors. They popped open. Gretchen shrieked and barely managed to snag a cargo handle. Her feet dragged the ground behind the speeding van.

  "Gretchen!" Lucia launched herself from the crate. The van rushed toward the closing gates, but Lucia didn't dare spare a glance to see if the opening were wide enough for them. She caught Gretchen's wrist and pulled, but Gretchen couldn't get any purchase on the rushing ground to aid in the effort. Lucia braced herself against the floor and, with a bone-cracking heave, yanked as hard as she could. There was a horrendous screech of metal and a shower of sparks as the gates scraped the sides of the van. Then they slammed shut on Gretchen's foot. Gretchen screamed and tumbled into the van on top of Lucia. Lucia disentangled herself, got the doors shut, and turned to look at Gretchen's tight, pale face.

  "My foot," Gretchen moaned. "Oh god, my foot!"

  Steeling herself, Lucia looked down, expecting to see crushed bone and spurting blood. Nothing of the sort greeted her. Gretchen's shoe was missing and her trouser cuffs were torn, that was all.

  "You still have it," Lucia said. "Blessings to Irfan for that. Let me have a look."

  Ben, meanwhile, had turned onto the main road and was once again driving at breakneck speed. Lucia touched Gretchen's foot, and the blond woman howled in pain.

  "It's broken," Lucia said. "And you have some abrasions on your legs. We'll have to have Harenn take a look when we get back to the ship. You were lucky, I think."

  "It sure as shit doesn't feel lucky," Gretchen growled. "God."

  The van slowed, and Lucia glanced out the window in time to see Father Kendi detach himself from a patch of brush near the Sunnytree Farm wall. A thin rope hung over the wall behind his hiding place. The other end, Lucia knew, was tied to the slave shackles that carried a frequency she had taken from the copycat. Father Kendi had been hauling the shackles over the wall with the rope and then tossing them back in order to set off the escaped slave alarm.

  Father Kendi hopped into the passenger seat. "What happened to the van?" he asked. "We're going to lose our damage deposit."

  "We had to make a break for it. The van almost got caught in the gate," Ben said. "So did Gretchen, for that matter."

  "Just drive, computer boy," Gretchen snapped. "My foot isn't getting any less broken back here."

  Kendi looked suddenly panicked as the van moved onto the road and zipped back toward the city. "They know what we did? All life-they'll call the cops."

  "Not for a while, they won't," Ben said. "They'll have to find the chip Gretchen installed first. Until then, they're going to find they can't reach anything but one of the downtown porn shops. I give it an hour, and by then we'll be long gone."

  Kendi laughed, then turned in his seat to face the boy. "So you're Jerry, huh? I'm Father Kendi of the Children of Irfan. How's it feel to be a free man?"

  "I'm really free?" the boy said in wonder. He held out his bare wrist and looked at it.

  "Damn straight," Kendi told him. "And not only that, there's someone back on our ship who's dying to meet you."

  CHAPTER THREE

  "We must protect our children not because they are innocent, but because they are powerless."

  - Ched-Balaar Child-Rearing Manual

  Harenn Mashib sat stiffly at the pilot's board of the Poltergeist. If she moved, even dared to blink, she would start clawing at the walls. Kendi had just called to tell her they had Bedj-ka and that she needed to make sure the ship was ready for take-off. Harenn wasn't a pilot, couldn't fly even a paper airplane, but she could switch everything on, prime the systems, and get take-off permission from the spaceport authorities. All this she had done. Now all she had left to do was wait.

  Harenn felt like she had been waiting forever. She still remembered with excruciating clarity the day she had come home to find her baby missing and her husband gone. Initially Harenn had assumed Isaac had taken Bedj-ka and gone out, perhaps to the park or for a walk. She had enjoyed an hour of solitude, even taken a nap. But when evening came and Isaac didn't return, she became worried, then frantic. She called everyone she knew, everyone they both knew, but no one had seen them. Finally she called the Guardians, the police and legal force for the Children of Irfan. Late the next day a Guardian Inspector named Linus Gray informed her that a man matching Isaac Todd's description had been seen carrying a baby on board a slipship. Inspector Gray also told her that his partner had gotten hold of some contacts on other planets, contacts who were experts in the underground slave trade. They had heard of Isaac Todd.

  "It seems your husband has been pulling this game for years," Gray told her. "He marries a woman, gets her pregnant, and then sells the child into slavery before vanishing to another planet and doing it all over again."

  "But this is not true," Harenn protested. "Isaac loves me, and he loves Bedj-ka."

  "According to my contacts," Gray continued softly, "he has unexpressed Silence-genetically Silent but unable to enter the Dream. His Silent genes, however, always breed true. All his children are Silent, and immensely valuable on the slave market. Ms. Mashib, your husband is a con artist of the worst kind. It's probably not much comfort, but you aren't the first woman he's fooled."

  Gray continued to talk about how the Guardians would do everything in their power to find Isaac but now that he was off-planet, the odds were low and so on and on. Harenn barely heard. She was thinking about how insistent Isaac had been about having children, how fierce he had been about making love, how ecstatic he had been when she told him she was pregnant. Her cheeks burned with shame at her naivete and vulnerability.

  After Gray left, Harenn barricaded herself in her tiny home, the one that was now only hers. The thought of going outdoors made her sick. Not only was there the crushing grief at the loss of her child, but also the fact that everyone was surely either laughing at her stupidity or clucking their tongues in sympathy. Which was worse? She couldn't tell, but there was no way she could face either one.

  In the end, it was the memory of her mother's funeral that saved her. Harenn found herself sitting on her bed with the veil she had worn to the service, which had taken place six months before Harenn met Isaac Todd. The cloth was soft, flimsy, and opaque, like a secret. Harenn had hazy memories of a place with stone walls, dark-haired men, and veiled women, and she knew Mother had fled this place, but Mother had always refused to talk about it. Sometimes, when she was feeling insecure or unhappy, Mother would wear her veil for a few days, then remove it without comment. Mother's death had been a devastating blow in itself, and Harenn had decided to hide her own grief behind the impenetrable cloth, a shield between her and the rest of the world. Harenn looked down at the veil for a long time. Then, with grim determination, she slipped the hooks behind her ears to hide her shame and went out into the world to find her son.

  Harenn was already a certified nurse with the Children of Irfan, but nurses with no other skills didn't go on slave rescue expeditions, so Harenn learned engineering and joined Mother Ara Rymar's crew of seekers. Everywhere she went, she looked for clues to her son, and always she came up empty. In the process, Harenn learned the arts of disguise and makeup, making her even more valuable to Mother Ara's expeditions. And always the veil stayed with her. Nine years later, Harenn helped smuggle a Silent street hustler named Sejal out of the Empire of Human Unity, and like a genie showing gratitude at being released from his bottle, Sejal had told her where to find her little Bedj-ka.

  Now she sat in the pilot's chair of the Poltergeist and waited for his return, afraid to move for fear she would wake from a strange dream. What did Bedj-ka look like? How would he react when he saw her? How would she react? Harenn's imagination continued to portray Bedj-ka as a babe in arms, though she knew better. Kendi had said over the communicator only that Bedj-ka appeared healthy and uninjured and that they would be there in less than half an hour.

  Out of the entire nine years she had waited, this half an hour was proving to be the longest. Even the busywork she had tried to cre
ate for herself among the engines had failed to occupy her mind. In the end, she merely sat and waited.

  "Attention! Attention!" said the computer at long last. "Father Kendi has returned to the ship."

  Harenn bolted from the bridge. She flew down the corridor to the airlock hatchway, veil fluttering in the breeze. In the entry bay, she skidded to a halt and covered the returning group in one swift glance. Kendi looked triumphant. Lucia wore her usual serene expression, though she was rubbing the small figure of Irfan she habitually wore around her neck. Ben was carrying Gretchen, whose face was pale with pain. And standing next to them, looking shy and uncertain, was a boy with dark hair and eyes. Harenn's breath caught. The resemblance to Isaac was so strong that if she had seen him at random on the street, she would have instantly recognized him as Isaac's son. Harenn tried to speak, but her throat closed up.

  "Hi," the boy said to her.

  "Bedj-ka?" she blurted.

  "This is Jerry," Kendi said. "He says that's the name he's always had. Markovi only changed his last name."

  Harenn found she couldn't move. Nine years she had dreamed of this moment, longed and yearned for it. Now it was here and she didn't know what to do.

  "Ben, take Gretchen to medical," Kendi said. "We'll get her fixed up as soon as we can. Lucia, get to the bridge and get us the hell out of here before the cops show up."

  The three of them left, leaving Harenn, Kendi, and Bedj-ka-Jerry? — alone. Kendi squatted, bringing his head down to Bedj-ka's level.

  "Jerry," he said, "remember how I said there was someone on the ship who wanted to meet you?" At Bedj-ka's mystified nod, he continued, "Jerry, this is Harenn Mashib. She's your mother."