Getaway world, p.9
Getaway World, page 9
"The rose and the cape you've got. The sword would be illegal in many places and wouldn't go at all with your wardrobe."
"As well as meeting with such astonished eyebrows," Nav agreed. Their cart arrived and the Newforester helped Yvette climb inside before getting in himself. "Where to?" he asked.
"My home," Yvette replied. "I'm afraid I'm feeling very tired. I've been living too long on lighter gravity worlds; I'm starting to fatigue a bit more easily than I should."
"The same with me. What I wouldn't give to be back on Newforest right now, sitting in a glade in the woods with some real gravity pulling on me, whistling a gypsy tune."
Nav inserted the indicated fare and drove the cart in the direction of Yvette's apartment.
Neither of them spoke much as they rode. Yvette cuddled up against the Newforester's strong masculine body and basked in the warmth of their relationship. He felt so right for her; their personalities, their desires, their thoughts matched one another so well. And yet she knew, down deep within herself, that what her brother was trying to tell her was true. She would finish her assignment here, hopefully in the near future, and then move on to some other hazardous job. Pias-well, he would probably move on, too, to follow his own particular destiny.
Yvette gave a small sigh. All the ifs were so lovely that it seemed a shame to tarnish them with reality.
They came to the corner of the street where Yvette's apartment building was, and there the cart stopped. The two of them got out and walked with their arms around each other's waist down the narrow pathway fifty meters to Yvette's door. Their good-night kiss lasted five minutes, and even then they were reluctant to pull away from each other.
Yvette was seriously tempted to invite him inside, no matter what Jules would think of it; but then she remembered the dinnertime conversation and decided that, if she were to survive this affair at all, she would have to keep it on a surface level. Finally she just said, "I have to go in, now."
Her escort nodded. "I'll be in touch with you in the next day or so. After all, we'll be here for a long time; we'll probably end up becoming bored with ourselves."
Yvette nodded and kissed the tip of his nose as she sent him on his way. She stood with the door open until he made it to the corner. She could hear the Gypsy whistling as he walked casually down the path to the street.
The next morning as the two SOTE agents went for a walk, Jules asked her how she had fared the night before. "No sign of Helena," she answered, evading the real meaning of his question.
"I haven't found her yet, either. It's becoming very frustrating. What if they've already spotted her and killed her? We could look for years and never see anything. "Let's not give up hope just yet. There's 27,000 people living here; we can't expect to see everyone in the first couple of days."
"It would certainly help, though, if you would stop seeing so much of one particular person."
Yvette exploded. "Listen. Brother or not, you have no right to intrude in my affairs this way. I'm getting tired of your constant carping. Pias has been nothing but charming and polite to me since the first moment we met. And even if he were to turn suddenly into the Beast of the Upper Galaxy, I'm perfectly capable of defending myself, thank you."
Jules struggled to maintain his own temper. "I just can't help remembering," he said slowly, "that Paul Symond was incredibly handsome and charming, too-and that we learned one of Rustin's robots was built in the shape of a male from a high-grav planet."
The argument took Yvette by surprise. She stopped walking and gave a tiny gasp. Paul Symond had been the first of the robots they discovered, built specifically to be attractive to women-and to one woman in particular: Crown Princess Edna. Dr. Rustin and his superior, Duke Fyodor of Kolokov, had been intending to have their creation marry the Princess and thus gain some control over the affairs of Empire. The actions of the d'Alembert family had broken up that plot; but, as they well knew, there were still some robots unaccounted for. And Yvette herself had been there when they discovered the fact that there was a high-grav male on the list.
When she regained her tongue, she sputtered, "That's impossible, he couldn't be..."
"How can you be so sure? Symond was an awfully good imposter. It took special detection equipment for us to spot him positively, and we don't have any of it with us now."
Yvette sat down on a nearby rock and stared blankly out into space. "He's real, I know he is."
"You could stick a pin in him to see if he bleeds." "You can be a cruel man, frere Jules."
A trace of banter was starting to return to her voice, but Jules could detect the turmoil and indecision lying beneath the surface.
Suddenly his anger at her deserted him. She was his sister, after all, and he shouldn't be trying to hurt her. "I'm not saying he is a robot," Jules soothed. "I'm just saying that people in our position can't be too careful. He probably isn't, as a matter of fact; that would be one bell of a coincidence, wouldn't it? But we're in the middle of enemy territory right now, all alone, and we may be fighting for our lives at any moment. We have to be positive about every step we take, n'est-ce pas?"
"Oui." She looked up into his face. Was it his imagination, or did he see the glimmer of a tear in her eye? Whatever it was he thought he saw, it was gone in a second. "All I know," she said in an even tone, "is that I can't help feeling what I do for him, any more than you can help feeling what you do for Vonnie. I promise, though, that I'll be a good little agent and not let my feelings interfere with the performance of my duties."
"I never doubted that for a second." Jules gave her an encouraging smile, his first in almost a week. "I think we should split up for the rest of the day. Why don't you take this side of town and I'll roam around the west side, and see what we can pick up."
"All smooth," she agreed, fully in control of herself once more. Jules left her, then, without a qualm and took one of the public carts to a shopping center on the west side of town, where he proceeded to browse around the mall, looking more at the people than at the merchandise.
After two hours without success, he was just about to -give up and try a new location when he saw her. Helena was coming out of a store with a small package under her arm, and she began walking off in the direction opposite to him.
Jules's heart gave an extra beat. Helena was still alive! That at least quashed the worst of the fears he and his sister had entertained. That left them with two major questions.
The first was, how much had she learned about this operation... and the second, much more important, was, how were the three of them going to get off this planet alive?
Chapter 8
Razzle Dazzle
Jules was about to go after her when his sharp eyes noticed one other detail: Helena was being followed. A man who had been lounging against a wall across the way suddenly straightened up and began walking parallel to her path. The man's demeanor was casual, and he expressed no overt interest in Helena's destination, but Jules was not fooled. He'd had sufficient training-and he'd done enough tail work himself-to know when something looked suspicious. Looking through the crowd, he spotted another tail on Helena as well--this time a woman. That, he supposed, was so that Helena would not be able to use the time-honored trick of dodging into the ladies' 'freshers and leaving the male shadow waiting outside while she disappeared out the window.
Jules's heart sank. If the people behind this conspiracy were worried enough about her to put two tails on her, Helena's cover must be completely broken. And yet they were still letting her roam free. To Jules, that could mean only one thing-that they were confident enough of their security to know they could take her in at any time. She obviously, then, was being used as bait to trap any other SOTE agents in the neighborhood like himself and Yvette. The d'Alemberts dared not approach her until they had made sufficient arrangements to protect their own covers.
At the same time, now that he'd finally spotted her he couldn't let her get away until he knew where she could be reached; he couldn't count on finding her accidentally again.
Making sure to appear casual himself and ascertaining that there was no one following him he set off after Helena and her two tails.
The surreptitious parade wandered through the shopping area, with Helena stopping at two more stores for small items. Then she pressed a button on the comer call post and waited for a cart to come by. Jules went to a different corner and summoned a cart of his own. The two shadows, he noted, did the same thing. The carts were passenger driven; as long as he kept dropping coins in, there was no limit to how far he could go.
Consequently, he didn't worry about his quarry getting away. At fifteen kilometers an hour, she couldn't go too far too fast.
He followed her to an apartment, where she entered and closed the door. Her two other followers took up what looked to be, to them, familiar positions from which they could watch the doorway. This, then, must be Helena's apartment and, like Jules's own, it undoubtedly had only the one door. Jules made a note of the address and drove on by, making sure he was not noticed by the two followers.
One hurdle had been overcome: he knew now that Helena was alive and where she was located. The next problem was a tricky matter of logistics-how could he communicate with her without revealing his identity to the people who were tailing her? He certainly couldn't walk up to her door; the tails would be instructed to make note of anyone contacting her. Helena's corn line was bound to be tapped; even if he called her from a public booth and spoke entirely in code, the people tapping her would be aware that she was in contact with someone else and would be alerted. He could wait until she went out on another errand, then break into her apartment and leave a note-except that her apartment was likely to be bugged with both microphones and cameras, and he would be spotted, photographed and identified.
Jules parked his cart and walked along the street, considering the problem. Finally the solution occurred to him. He walked to a nearby stationery store and bought a notepad, a pen and a box of chalk. Then he went to a bench in a park and carefully composed a note in SOTE's highest level code. Deciphered, the note began: "Call the following number at exactly seven P.M.: 84-76-873. It's a public phone at the Beechwood Cafe.
One of us will answer. Say you dialed a wrong number and hang up immediately." The note went on to give further instructions for arranging a private meeting between them.
With the message completed, he looked around until he found a rock of adequate size and took it with him back to the corner nearest Helena's apartment. He put the rock down next to the corner call post, with the piece of paper under it, one edge barely visible. At this position he was out of sight of Helena's two followers at the door and, when he was sure that no one else was watching, he took a piece of chalk and scrawled a bit of graffiti on the call post. It was a heart; in the upper comer he wrote the name "Wombat" (his own code designation) and in the lower side diagonally opposite he wrote "Periwinkle" (Yvette's code name). Through the middle of the heart he drew an arrow.
To the casual eye, the scrawling would look like just the work of some immature mind, the sort of thing that was seen on all planets all over the Galaxy. Nobody would stop to think that there weren't any children on Sanctuary, and they would ignore the writing. It was something that civilized people learned to tune out of their minds.
But Helena's was not a casual eye. Jules knew from previous experience just how quickly she was able to grasp seemingly innocent signals and decipher them immediately. That call post was the one closest to Helena's apartment, and was the one she would almost certainly use when summoning a cart. The two code names would register instantly in her file-like mind. Her eye would follow in the direction of the arrow, which pointed directly at the rock. She would find some excuse to bend down casually and examine it, notice the paper and palm it, to read in private.
Jules gave his handiwork one quick skim to make sure it was perfect, then walked quickly away. The longer he dawdled here, the more chance he had of arousing suspicion. The plan had been put in motion; the next step would be up to Helena.
He walked two blocks to the next closest call post and was about to summon a cart to take him home when he spotted Pias Nav across the street. The gambler was just emerging from an alleyway, looking both ways as though to be sure no one was observing him. He didn't see Jules standing across the street more than sixty meters away. He wiped his hands nervously on the sides of his jumpsuit and walked briskly in the opposite direction.
Jules stopped and wondered at this strange behavior. Something happened in that alley that he doesn't want to be associated with, he thought. And whatever it is, I want to know about it--for Evie's sake.
Crossing the street, he walked with feigned casualness to the mouth of the alleyway. The space between the two buildings was narrow and the buildings were high, shutting out most of the light and making it hard to see. Cautiously, Jules picked his way over and around scattered boxes and trash that littered the ground, until he came to a dead end.
He looked around, but saw nothing unusual at first glance. He was about to start out toward the street again, disappointed, when he nearly slipped on a wet spot of ground.
Leaning down closer, he saw that it was a small pool of fresh blood.
The pool was fed by a little stream that emanated from a large overturned box one meter away. Jules went over to it and lifted the carton to see what was under it.
There lay the body of Rowe Camery. The pirate had been tied up very securely and gagged so that he could not make a sound. Then both his wrists and throat had been slashed, quite neatly. His clothing was soaked in his own blood, and his eyes stared openly in glassy horror. He had been dead for a little while, at least.
Even Jules's steady nerves were a little shaken by the sight. He set the box down again and took a step backward, leaning against the wall so that he could think.
As far as he was concerned, this clinched his case against Pias Nav. Yvette would not be able to excuse away such a barbaric, deliberate murder as this. The man was a ruthless killer, not to be trusted.
Rowe Carnery was not his concern. Virtually everyone on this planet was here because he had committed enough crimes to fill several books. Jules didn't care if they all murdered one another-it would save himself and the imperial courts a lot of trouble. But his sister was his concern. She would have to be told about this before she became any more deeply involved with the gambler from Newforest.
It was not a task he was looking forward to.
As he'd feared, she took it pretty hard.
He had gone back to their apartment and waited for her to return. A brief hand signal indicated there was something he wanted to talk to her about privately, so they went out on one of their habitual walks. He told her first about finding Helena and leaving the message, which thrilled her completely. While she was still on the peak of excitement, thinking about what their plans should be from this point, he told her what he had seen after planting the message.
Yvette was stunned. She sat down on a large nearby rock and stared blankly out into empty air. "I can't believe it," she muttered, half to herself.
"I wouldn't lie about a thing like that."
She shook her head. "I know that. It's just... I know Pias. Or at least I thought I knew him. I would never have believed him capable of anything like that. He had a few faults, but on the whole he seemed to prefer to avoid trouble. You don't think there's any chance that someone else committed the murder and he just stumbled across Carnery's body by accident, do you?"
Jules cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose it is possible. But in the back of a dark, narrow alley, where he had no business being in the first place? And after the look I saw on his face in Carnery's cabin aboard ship? Maybe one chance in a billion, but those aren't odds I'd care to bet."
Yvette closed her eyes and bowed her head down. Jules could tell that she was fighting back a stream of tears. "Tu as raison, as always. I knew it, but I had to ask the question." She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I knew from that first meal aboard ship that something was not right between Pias and Carnery. Pias's tone was slightly off when he spoke about Carnery. Yet it seemed to be a one-sided thing; Carnery took no notice of him."
She pounded her fist repeatedly against the rock on which she sat. "Oh.Pias, why, why, why? Why did you have to do it? Why did it all have to be here and now? Why did things have to be the way they are?"
Jules stood beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm afraid I can't give you any explanation."
"I was thirty years old last month, and still without any 'prospects,' as they say. You must admit, for our family that's pretty unusual. Most of our women are married and tending large families by this time."
"Well, even in our family, you're pretty unusual. Any woman can have a husband and kids; how many of them can save the Empire as often as you have?"
Yvette looked up, a watery smile on her face. She patted her brother's hand. "You have the habit, mon frere, of injecting business matters into the most intimate of conversations.
Yes, of course you're right, I do have a higher obligation. There are already plenty of our relatives busily engaged in prolonging the family line. We have work to do."
Her eyes were dry by now, her voice level. Her body was still trembling slightly, but it was coming more under control. She was back to being Yvette d'Alembert, secret agent extraordinaire for the Service of the Empire-a top professional doing what she did best.
Pias Nav was, if not totally forgotten, at least relegated to a distant corner of her mind where he could be locked away until there was the time available to go into that matter at leisure.
"The way I see it, then," she went on, "we hang around the Beechwood Cafe at seven P.M. tonight; if she doesn't call, we assume she didn't spot the message yet, and go back there tomorrow."
"Au juste. If she misses three nights in a row, we check up on her and try something else. I don't think she will, though-she's a clever girl."
