“I don’t want them at my meeting. I thought I’d made that clear.”
“Unless you need them, you won’t see them,” Malkah said. “Riva’s good. She knows what she’s doing in this type of situation far better than we do.”
“Perhaps the question is whether the ends of Riva and Shira are the same,” Yod said gently.
“I can’t answer that,” Malkah said. “I have to trust my daughter.”
“I am armed,” Yod said just as softly. “Of course I myself am a weapon, but I have provided myself with help.”
“Illegal,” Shira said. “They better not catch us arming ourselves.”
“Is it legal to break into a base, kill five people and cripple two others?” Yod cocked his head, brows raised at her.
“A point well taken.” Still, she wanted to believe this initiative had nothing to do with the attacks. A corporation was a large entity, with many intrigues, layers of plotting and counterplotting. The most powerful integrated plans went askew in the hinterland of minor officials and major egos.
As they were leaving, Malkah hung a necklace on Shira. “If things turn ugly, twist the centre. It holds a powerful anaesthetic. It will knock you out along with everybody else, but not Yod. He can get you to safety then. Don’t play with it. It should be entirely effective inside the wrap.”
They took a town float car, one with capacity for carrying a load. The load was the small wrap tent and a sophisticated sensor-deadening device in a pole that would appear to be what held the wrap up. She wondered nervously where Nili and Riva had gone. Yod was excited by the float car. Although programmed to fly a car, he had never been up in the air. Float cars flew on automatic programming, but the programming could be aborted if you knew how. Under them the open land spread its rolling hills, covered with pitch pine, scrub oak, bramble, the occasional pale stripe of what had been a road. The ruins had long since been pilfered for any scrap of wood or recyclable metal or glass. On the horizon, the interdicted zone around the old nuclear plant blinked its warning.
The float car was preprogrammed to land the equivalent of ten city blocks outside Cybernaut. Cybernaut control expected Shira to land inside. “No, we will wait out here for the delegation from Yakamura-Stichen. We have a portable wrap we’ll erect.”
“This was not in the agreement,” said an affronted-sounding voice. We didn’t negotiate an outside meeting.”
“Agree or we’ll return at once,” Shira said. She was trying to sound strong and indifferent, but she suspected their sensors could detect her heart pounding on her breastbone. The roaring of her blood filled her ears. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth in panic. They would tell her to get lost. She was a tweenie ex-employee trying to push around a multi that owned perhaps a twentieth of the world. Time passed and passed. The float car slowed at her request, and they hovered over the spot where it was programmed to land, a large target hanging there.
“We’ll take the outside meeting under your portable wrap,” the second voice said finally. We’ll bring our security.”
“How many?” Yod asked.
“We count two of you. We will bring a party of eight.”
“I am the only security here. You can have one security.”
“One security is not acceptable. We have two negotiators. We will agree to bring in only four security, but that is final.”
“Agreed,” Yod said.
“They could be assassins,” Shira said, when the communication had terminated and the link was dead.
Yod smiled at her. “You are my only rose. I will protect.”
The floater landed. “I’m terrified.”
“I don’t feel fear. I feel… useful. Engaged.”
For an instant the image of Chet tossing David across the lab to smash into the wall came to her. Between them quickly they set up the wrap, turned on its monitoring system, slipped inside none too soon. A fast tank was moving towards them on its gel treads. The wrap was only the size of a large tent: barely seven feet tall, fourteen by twelve interior dimensions. Underfoot was the soil with its shaggy grass.
However, like most products of Tikva, the wrap was less simple than it appeared. In the centre pole Shira activated the sensor-killer. The wrap was of a pearly opalescence, not transparent like the town wrap, so that it could be used as a sleeping shelter. Through the open flap, they could see the fast tank disgorging eight people. The ninth, obviously the driver, remained sitting high on his tank, part in, part out. Fast getaway if required?
“We said four security and two negotiators,” Yod called in a carrying voice.
The leader, with the tall blond slightly hawk-faced golden-skinned look Y-S favoured for its executives and in Y-S business gear, a backless fine blue suit of filmy, billowy texture, turned on a throat mike to call back, “We’re only bringing the agreed-on number into your wrap. Our other two guards will remain outside to secure our meeting from raids.”
“What can we do?” she muttered to Yod.
The four ― two apes, two assassins, she would guess ― lumbered along, with the two Y-S execs within the square they formed. However, when they reached the wrap flap, they had to enter single file. One of the whip-lean assassins entered first, glanced around with his bright blue eyes like shiny metal. Then the exec who’d spoken; then what she realized from the lack of cosmetic shaping was probably a high-level techie, crammed into a backless suit and oozing out. Then two apes, security men the size of bears. Then another assassin, a woman whose topknot brushed the ceiling, a being of extremely long limbs, entered fiddling frantically with a necklace probably as menacing as Shira’s. “The sensors aren’t functioning. We’re blind,” she announced. “I recommend withdrawal.”
“Our sensors aren’t functioning either,” Shira said. “This is blackout for both sides. We’ll have to talk like normal people and make guesses. You called for this meet. What do you want?”
“Y-S misses you, Shira.”
“Who are you two?” The assassins and apes would never be introduced, of course. Then she realized who the techie was. “I recognize Dr Rhodes.” One of their top cybernetics men. Her tension screwed another turn higher around the peg of her spine. He did not meet her gaze. He was looking only at Yod.
The blond man spoke. “I’m Tenori Bell of the personnel department. Delighted to see you, Shira. Y-S wants you back.”
“Y-S took my son, gave him to my husband and shipped both of them to Pacifica Platform.”
“We’re prepared to offer you immediate posting to Pacifica.”
Her heart stumbled. For a moment she thought she would cry. Then her gaze came to rest on the two assassins, like traps about to spring shut, and on Dr Rhodes, whose stare never wavered from Yod. “After debriefing, of course.”
“Oh, purely formal.”
A little bout of mnemosine, and they would unspool from her brain everything about Tikva defences and Yod’s specs that they desired to know, leaving her only half there. “Same rating, same scale?”
“We’re prepared to raise you one and a half ratings, with equivalent scale.”
That translated into some travel privileges, access to the newest fertility techniques, a higher ed track for Ari, better housing ― although on Pacifica that meant only a bigger cube. If she ever saw Pacifica. How could she trade Malkah, whom these people had tried to kill, and Yod and Tikva for a nail paring’s chance to share her son with Josh? Could she believe them? “I must consider this generous offer carefully. When do you need my answer?”
“In the next five minutes,” Tenori Bell said pleasantly.
“I can’t decide that quickly. This is important to me.”
“In four minutes fifty seconds, the offer will be withdrawn. I urge you to act, while you can. Think of your son, lonely for his mother. The sooner you decide to return with us, Shira, the faster we can get the process underway to rush you to Pacifica.”
It was what she had dreamed of, that she would be given a chance for her son, but she could not accept. Dr Rhodes kept edging closer to Yod, who stood at parade rest behind her, quite conscious, she was sure, of the military message of his posture. He watched the apes and the assassins but also kept track of Dr Rhodes and Tenori Bell. Yod was a diver poised on the board over a pool, awaiting the right moment to execute a perfect back flip in. He longed for the fight with a single-minded yearning she could feel like a vibration. The talking bored him. He anticipated his time of action. Still, she trusted him, that he would do nothing to provoke what he wished to happen.
“A small facility such as Tikva cannot begin to compete with what Y-S can offer you. If you don’t wish posting to Pacifica, I am authorized to transfer both your ex-husband and your son back to the Nebraska enclave effective August one. We can’t offer the bonus satellite work provides, but that rise in your status by one and one half grades stands.”
“That’s very generous. But I need time. I have to talk to my family.”
“You have a very interesting family, Shira. Unfortunately we must have your decision in two minutes thirty-five seconds.”
The constant referral to her by her first name was calculated, just the way medical facilities behaved. Reduce her to childhood. False intimacy drains power. Her time readout wasn’t working in the damping cushion of the sensor-killer. She wondered how many of Yod’s functions were impaired.
“I have recently learned the profession my mother followed and why this may have affected my treatment by your personnel office.”
“‘Followed’? As far as we’re aware, no change has occurred. Do you know otherwise?”
“I know little about Riva Shipman. I haven’t seen her in eight years. I assume she’s dead.”
“Your time is up. What is your answer?”
“I told you, I cannot accept without speaking to my grandmother.”
“Either you will agree to come with us, or you will come with us anyhow. It’s very simple.” Tenori nodded to his security.
Before Tenori made that quick gesture, Yod was already moving. The first ape lay on the floor with his head twisted backward. His neck had been broken before anyone else moved. Dr Rhodes backed to the flap and unsealed it. He called to the guards outside. The woman assassin was advancing on Shira, while the remaining ape and the male assassin went for Yod. Dr Rhodes was still calling. From outside came the whine of laser weapons firing. Shira cringed, expecting the tent to melt around her.
The woman launched herself on Shira, seizing her by the right hand. Shira drew the resin knife left-handed, but the woman’s long leg, like the limb of a steel spider, darted out and kicked her wrist. She could feel the bone snap, and the knife went flying, right through the wall of the wrap. She tried to fumble for her necklace, but the woman was on her. She crashed to the earth. As her broken wrist bent, she blacked out. She came to as the weight of the woman lifted off her and the assassin arched backward unnaturally, bending until her spine snapped and Yod dropped her. He had a great rent in his side, exposing his biochips, through which colourless fluid leaked copiously, but the second ape lay mangled over the body of Tenori Bell.
Outside, someone screamed. She could smell cooked flesh and burning plastic. She dragged herself up, pulling with her functional hand on the pole and starting for the open flap. She had to see what was happening outside. Behind her Yod and the assassin were tangling. The assassin was flung back but twisted in the air and righted himself. Shira slipped past them. She saw Riva hit the ground outside, still firing, and then her mother vanished in a burst of fire from the fast tank.
Shira cried out, turning back. The surviving assassin came at Yod with a razor gun, a palm-sized weapon that projected a wire. Yod plucked it from the air, although it slashed his palm deeply. He did not bleed but leaked more fluids, and his circuitry lay bare. It was oddly mesmerizing. She heard laser fire behind her, and someone screamed. An explosion shook the earth, knocking her to her knees. She crawled out of the way of the struggle, grasping her broken wrist and looking for some weapon to use. Acrid smoke wafted in. Nili appeared at the door. She was covered with a dull brown paint that had scraped off in several places. Sighting with a laser pistol as if carelessly, she shot the assassin in the centre of his back.
“Out of here now. Put this on.” Nili held out a sec skin.
“I can’t use my wrist.”
Yod helped Shira into the skin. He asked Nili, “Did you dispatch the two outside guards?”
“Sure. We garrotted them. But the driver saw us when we came round to join in.” Nili was leading the way at a brisk trot. Shira was in great pain. She kept feeling as if she were going to faint. She realized she was bleeding from a cut in her thigh she had not felt. “Riva is dead,” Nili added. “The driver got her before I got him.”
Shira glanced around for Riva’s body, but the fast tank had created a huge smoking hole when it exploded. “Shouldn’t we use the float car?”
“They’ll shoot it down. I have an air bike in the bush. We had it delivered last night, and we camouflaged it before dawn. Faster.”
Yod picked up Shira and carried her. One of his hands was out of commission. He was still leaking and only partially functional. He travelled in a fast shuffling trot after Nili, the only one of them uninjured. They laboured up a hill and down the other side, where Nili pulled off a layer of dirt over a thin covering. Under it was a two-wheeled device on gel treads. “Get on. Move. We’re being followed already.”
Yod placed Shira on the riding column and mounted behind her, holding her around the waist against him. She felt herself slipping into darkness, tried to shake herself loose and then went under. The wild rocking of the bike shook her back into consciousness. Nili was driving full tilt, and it bucked and tossed. Her brown paint continued to flake in the fierce wind of their speed. “What’s that paint?” Yod asked. “What’s its function?” Although he was wounded and Shira assumed he felt pain, his voice had little inflection.
“It prevents registering on sensors. It makes you invisible to surveillance devices — except the naked eye. I’m surprised you can’t tell.”
Yod took up a fleck of the paint with his functional hand and slid it into a pocket. All that while he held Shira with his injured hand, although it would not close. “Half my sensors are dysfunctional. I am failing.”
