Blood Double (18 page)

Jamming a tourist's hat onto my head to hide as much of my face as I could, I walked out of the stall, washed my hands and exited to the ticket counter. The trip to the groves lasted another four clicks and I was already exhausted. Squaring my shoulders, I and seven others stepped off the bus at the gates to NorthStar groves.

Three major gishi fruit groves exist on Avendor—not long ago, there had been four but a group had purchased two smaller ones, combining them under the NorthStar name. EastStar was still smaller, but it produced gishi fruit ice cream and had a patent on the recipe. SouthStar, the largest grove (by a very wide margin), was well-established and had a more permanent, regular staff. SouthStar and EastStar did extensive background checks on anyone applying for a job with them. NorthStar was still working on the same type of arrangement. I'd done my research and NorthStar was my best bet.

Two men met us at the gated entrance—one was very tall, broad across the shoulders and had the blackest skin I'd ever seen. His head was clean-shaven and he had a beautiful smile. The other man was taller than the first—nearly seven blocks tall with dark hair, fairer skin and almost black eyes. He wasn't smiling.

"We are only looking for two," the taller one said. "And those two will be placed in the cutting rooms."

Cutting rooms. I'd done my research; that meant the blemished fruit that couldn't be used for anything else would be sent to the cutters, who pared away the bruised portions of the fruit along with the remaining stem and seed before sending the fruit through the pulp machines to be made into beauty creams and other cosmetics. I and two others stepped forward, one woman, one young man. The others wanted the more lucrative work of picking or sorting gishi fruit.

"SouthStar is looking for another picker," the dark-skinned man announced. The others walked toward the road where a hoverbus would come along to pick them up.

"Come on, we'll see what you have," the tallest man said and the three of us obediently followed him and the broad-shouldered black man toward a building nestled among endless rows of gishi trees. At least we weren't walking over a dusty path—the narrow lane was made of carefully fitted stone and led right to the building.

"My name is Trace, this is Lion," the tall man introduced himself and his companion. "We'll let you watch one of our best cutters and then see if you can make your quota and keep up with the other employees."

Great—a tryout. Squaring my shoulders, I lagged behind the other two—I was nearly a block shorter than both my competitors and easily overlooked since I still wore my hat. The building we entered was filled with workers lined up at stainless steel tables, each one wearing a white coat and cap to hold their hair back. White, disposable boots were worn over shoes and the place was clean to the point of sterility.

Hands of workers moved quickly to cut bruised flesh away from gishi fruit; even from a distance the smell of the fruit permeated my senses and I nearly closed my eyes in pleasure. Forcing those thoughts away, I concentrated on watching each worker as they swiftly cut away bad portions of the fruit before removing the stem and large seed. Those things were tossed into buckets, which were lifted and carried away by other workers once they were filled. Bruised flesh went into one bucket, seeds in another.

"Got it?" The one called Trace asked. I nodded with the other two. My female competitor was perhaps five and a half blocks tall, weighed half again as much as I did, had brown hair down to her shoulders, blinked hazel eyes suggestively at Trace and smiled provocatively at him, throwing her hip out as she walked toward the table Trace indicated.

I could have told her that Trace preferred men—she might have had a better chance throwing herself at Lion, although he was happily mated. As I said, I always know. My male competition was young—barely old enough to search for a job. He was thin, dark-haired and eyed and swallowed nervously as we followed Trace to a cutting table.

We were garbed like the others in no time; a white cap had replaced my tourist hat and a securely buttoned white coat covered my clothing. I also wore white, disposable shoe covers. A woman stood before us on the opposite side of our cutting table, knife in hand. Two gishi fruit were cut, deseeded and de-stemmed in a blink while we watched.

"Now, you try," she grinned malevolently at us. The young man to my left swallowed nervously again. Small knives were handed over and we were instructed to start. I think the young man and I would have had the job if he hadn't sneezed at the end of cutting up his fruit—all over the stainless steel table. He was dismissed immediately, leaving me with the brown-haired woman. Yes, I knew she would be trouble; I just had no idea how much.

* * *

"Dee, I had to." Teeg rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. "Stellan wouldn't talk to me, so I had to do something."

"Child, this should not have been." Dormas, known to Teeg and many others simply as Dee, pointed out in a clipped voice.

"Look, I know I promised them that I'd never place compulsion, but I never dreamed something like this would happen. That woman has been nothing but trouble. Dad growls every time her name is mentioned."

"Yet he was the one who turned her. I disagree with your father's treatment of her—this is not the way to handle your vampire offspring, child."

"Dee, this conversation will not continue. It's bad enough that I had to place compulsion on all four brothers, starting with Stellan. I had to place compulsion on Trevor and Kooper, too, so they won't bring her up with Stell. I don't need this, especially when there's another bounty on my head, right along with the one on Ildevar."

"Someone wants to throw both Alliances into chaos, and then take advantage."

"You think I don't know that?" Teeg rose to pace behind his desk. "The worst part of it is, I need Breanne's services again, and she'll know something's up when Stellan doesn't even look at her."

"Child, you will regret this action, I can promise that. Undo it now, and minimize the damage."

"I can't do that, Dee. Forget that idea now."

* * *

Breanne's Journal

Five days passed and still there was no word from Kooper. I sat through another boringly aggravating Council meeting while new streets were mapped out for yet another addition to Casino City. The architecture and engineering teams had come to display electronic drawings, overlapping three-dimensional images of buildings to be constructed over water pipes and energy lines. Grateful that we'd solved the problem of the additional water needed in Casino City already, I worked to keep my eyes wide and feigned complete interest in something that threatened to put me to sleep.

* * *

Kay's Journal

Just as I feared, Yinza, my brown-haired competitor, talked and gossiped the entire time she worked and just as I imagined, I was heartily sick of hearing her voice by the end of every workday. She asked incessant questions until she received answers. I learned that several of the owners resided in the almost-palace sitting atop a nearby hill. I also learned that the owners were all quite attractive and sometimes came down to inspect the facilities or visit the groves. I knew names—my research had given me that; I'd just not seen any images. No photographs were posted on any of the company sites. Griya, our supervisor, walked through several times, but Yinza curtailed her gossip while the boss was on the floor.

The young men who took the buckets of seeds and bruised fruit chunks away were all flirted with—Yinza rubbed against them whenever they came near. I wanted to vomit—Yinza was using her youth and what prettiness she had to cover for what I considered shoddy work. She always managed to make the quota set by Griya, however, so she kept her job. Yinza always chose the table behind mine, too, and while I didn't assign much truth to what came out of Yinza's mouth, I did learn a few things.

"I heard the owners are late coming back from vacation," Yinza said as she flipped a seed into her bucket one morning. We'd been there nearly an eight-day and already had two days off. Yinza had disappeared during those two days, arriving back at our barracks just under curfew with a smile on her face. It didn't take a psychic to realize what she'd been doing. She'd returned with all sorts of new information to pass along.

"I heard they're never late and they never miss harvest," Yinza prattled. I glanced up briefly; Yinza's knife had stopped while she gestured at her tablemate, a pretty brunette named Sora. Sora had quickly fallen in with Yinza and the two were nearly inseparable, except when Yinza was in bed with a man, I assumed.

Names of the primary owners of NorthStar floated into my conscious mind—I'd done research on it as well. Again, no images could be associated with names; there'd been only the briefest of biographies on NorthStar's site. The rumor (supplied by Yinza) was that the owners were somewhat reclusive and seldom were seen leaving their palace-like home.

"Do you think there's a problem with NorthStar?" Sora breathed. Any problem with the gishi fruit groves would have a major impact on Avendor's economy. The groves paid the most in taxes, after all, but Avendor was diversified. They had other cash crops—mostly tropical fruits and berries, along with a thriving furniture industry.

Next to nothing was made of actual wood in either Alliance, but Avendor raised hardwoods and supplied wealthy buyers with the finest in handcrafted, solid wood desks, tables and other furniture. Woodcarvers and furniture makers had their own guild and enticed the best artisans away from other worlds. Even so, Avendor was still sparsely populated; it only boasted two cities that held more than six million people and I had the impression that this was the way the government on Avendor wanted it to be.

"Has to be a problem. Vacation? Who can't cut a vacation short if they're needed at home? I think they're having financial problems and are looking for a buyer." Yinza was moving into the realm of wild speculation, with a side trip into misinformed supposition.

NorthStar was stable, handsome and beautiful owners notwithstanding. If Yinza had the intelligence to do research rather than rely on her own vivid and erroneous imagination, she'd know that as well. Her knife hadn't cut a single fruit the entire time she'd been traveling in the outer reaches of possibilities, and I wondered for perhaps the hundredth time how she made her quota.

* * *

"You're falling behind." Griya called me to her office first thing the following morning.

"What?" I was stunned and it came out in my voice. The older woman handed me a comp-vid, showing that my current rate of production was below what it had been in the beginning, twelve days earlier. "That can't be right," I muttered.

I knew I was getting faster at cutting; my sore muscles at the end of the day attested to that. I also hadn't counted the number of filled bags the young men carried away from my end of the table—those bags were hauled toward industrial walk-in freezers, awaiting shipment to a cosmetics factory elsewhere.

"Are you contesting these figures?" Griya asked, a grim expression on her wrinkled face. She was aging, although Avendorans, like many races, lived to be two hundred or better. I imagined that she was nearing one-ninety at least.

Biting my lip, I stared at Griya. Should I contest the figures? I was new and only beginning to suspect what was really going on. Rocking the boat was often dangerous—more so for the one reporting the problems at times than for the actual perpetrators. I couldn't afford to be without this job—any movement by Kalia Sollo could alert the assassin that no doubt still hunted me. Swallowing my pride and the truth with difficulty, I shook my head.

"I'll work harder, I promise," I muttered, staring at my hands. That afternoon, I listened to Yinza prattle away about things she knew next to nothing about, filling only six bags of a fifteen-bag quota. I, on the other hand, filled twenty-seven. The following morning, I saw that I'd been credited with sixteen bags while Yinza had seventeen listed beside her name.

* * *

"They're in bed with her and taking another employee's bags to fill Yinza's quota," Griya pointed out to Trace the next day. "I watched the cameras myself—those boys are covering for her."

"Do we know for sure that Yinza is in on this, or are the boys taking the initiative?" Trace asked.

"No idea at this point, but we can fire the boys and see what happens."

"Who are they stealing from?"

"The other new girl, who is nearly doubling her quota. She's faster than any of my others at this point."

"I still can't get over what that face is doing working in gishi fruit groves," Trace shook his head. "The most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and she's doing this."

"She hides her face as often as possible," Griya pointed at the screen, where Kalia ducked her head whenever anyone walked past. "Did you do a background check?"

"Came up clean," Trace said. "No reason not to hire her."

"No reason not to keep her, either—she's better at this than the rest of them."

"Let's call in those boys, then, and see if they point the finger at Yinza."

* * *

Kay's Journal

I had no idea what happened, until it was too late. Too focused on my work, I suppose, getting out thirty bags of fruit and doubling my quota for the afternoon. Our meals were served at our barracks every day, brought from a central kitchen located between the cutting facility and the hill on which the owners' mansion stood. The food was good—I had no complaints and could see no evidence that NorthStar was in financial difficulties, although Yinza continued her speculation in that area at every opportunity.