The Sardonyx Net (8 page)

“Cara,” said Binkie. “Immeld. Me. Amri. Timithos sleeps in the garden. You.” He opened the fifth door.
 

Behind it was a room, small and warm, wood-paneled, lit by a line of soft paper lanterns strung across the ceiling. There was a narrow bed in a wooden frame, and a round mirror on the wall. Dana stared at himself. He looked older than his memory of himself, thinner, with lines on his face that he did not recall, and wary eyes.
 

Binkie said, “You sleep here. Amri will wake you in the morning. I'll tell her to call you late.” He turned to leave.
 

“Wait—please,” said Dana. He felt lost. Binkie turned around. He gazed at Dana with sympathy mixed with a strange, tight defensiveness. “I don't—are you a slave?”
 

Wordlessly Binkie pushed up his sleeve to exhibit the tattooed crest, the blue “Y,” on his left upper arm.
 

“What did you do?”
 

Binkie said, “We don't ask. Slaves don't have pasts, or homes, or property. Or even their proper names.”
 

“They say that, but you don't have to.”
 

“What difference does it make? I could be an arsonist or an axe-murderer. I'm here. I don't want to know what you are.” He turned again to leave. Dana's legs would no longer keep him up. He sat on the bed. “Good night,” said Binkie.
 

“Good night,” Dana said to the other man's back.
 

He was alone.
 

He kicked off his shoes and pulled his feet up under him. The bed creaked as he shifted on it. He caught himself listening for footsteps.
 

It's over. It's all right
.
 

He leaned into the softness of the pillow and stroked his hand on the rich glowing grain of the headboard. He felt the soft fabric of the blanket. The hall outside was silent. He got off the bed and explored the room. It had a closet, empty, and a bathroom with a shower. He opened the door and looked out into the empty hall.
 

Night was the safe time, and Rhani had said he could sleep. He closed the door. He started to pull off his shirt, and stopped. He did not want to sleep naked. He took the blanket in both hands and wrapped it like a cocoon around him. The light control was on the headboard. He thumbed it. He curled on his side in the gracious darkness, listening to the steady music of his breath.
 

He waited for sleep.
 

Zed Yago spent his usual dreamless, untroubled night.
 

Waking, he lay motionless in the warm bed, watching the bright bands of sunlight climb the walls. The first few days off the Net everything on Chabad seemed transient, as if it might disappear when he took his eyes off it. He found himself staring at things and people, willing them to stay there. This room had been his place since childhood. His booktapes lined one wall. One closet held his clothes, and the other his ice climbing equipment: suit, hammers, axes, pitons. In one corner of the room was the wired human skeleton that he had used in medical school on Nexus; its skull was twisted to look sightlessly over one shoulder in a grotesque and impossible position. Zed guessed Amri had been cleaning it. His medic's case sat at its dangling, bony feet.
 

He swung out of bed and went naked to the doors of the terrace. He could see the blooming garden, misty with water arcing over it in hissing rainbows of spray. A dragoncat loped across a creeper. By a flower bed, Timithos coiled a hose. Zed pulled the glass door open. Heat poured through at him. The air was molten. Sweat prickled on his shoulders and down his sides. After three months away from it, even for someone born and bred on Chabad, the heat took getting used to. Zed breathed deeply. He wondered if it would be a waste of time to mention the threatening letters to Rhani yet again. Perhaps he was being an alarmist. She would laugh at him. Finally, stepping back into the cool, quiet house, he slid the terrace doors closed. It was an hour after dawn.
 

He dressed. He could hear voices downstairs: Cara and Immeld, chatting in the kitchen. He started down the stairs and met Amri on her way up, tray with breakfast fruits in hand. “I'll take it,” he said. Balancing it on one palm, he returned up the stairway and tapped at Rhani's door. “It's me,” he said.
 

“Come in!”
 

She sat in the wing chair. He put the tray on the footstool. She wore a jumpsuit of deep metallic blue, the Yago crest color, the color of Chabad's sky. It darkened the amber of her eyes to hazel. “Good morning, Rhani-ka.”
 

She lifted her face up for his kiss. “Good morning, Zed-ka.”
 

There were three printout sheets, covered with figures, at her feet. “What are you working on?”
 

She took a piece of fruit from the tray. “Dorazine. Binkie computed for me this morning our storage figures and our demand figures: what we will need to supply the Net, the prisons of Sector Sardonyx, and our own workers at the kerit farm for one more year. We do not have enough. Look.” Zed took the sheet she handed him. “I wrote to Sherrix days ago, the same day I sent you the communigram. I offered to pay double the current market price for dorazine, hoping to loosen the market.”
 

“You told me that when I called you from the moon,” said Zed. “That was also days ago.”
 

“And I expected to have an answer from Sherrix by this time.”
 

“You haven't.”
 

She shook her head. “She's never not answered me before.” Her shoulders hunched.
 

“Write again,” said Zed.
 

“Yes,” she said almost absently. “I can do that.”
 

Zed said, “What else is happening on Chabad besides a dorazine shortage?”
 

“Huh?”
 

“Marriages, births, deaths?”
 

She focused on him. “I'm sorry, Zed-ka. I was thinking ... and no matter how badly I've missed you, an hour after you come back from the Net, it feels as if you'd never been away. Deaths—Domna Sam. And one of Imre and Aliza Kyneth's children almost married, but it didn't come off. I forget which one. Imre was re-elected head of the Council. He suggested I do it but I said I wouldn't if it meant I had to live in Abanat. Imre and I had a fight about water rates. I won. Tuli opened a second shop.” Zed nodded. Tuli had been cook on the Yago estate for three years: a silent, clever woman. When her contract expired, she took her money and bought a shop in Abanat.
 

“Were things well for you?” Zed asked.
 

“I missed you,” she said. “I was busy. I went back and forth to Abanat a lot.” She rubbed her chin. “I could have used a pilot. Domna Sam kept sending a bubble for me. I think I spent more time with her than Ferris.”
 

Zed said, “I don't even know what Ferris looks like.” Rhani made a face. “I'm sorry I wasn't here to pilot you.”
Were you happy?
he wanted to ask.
Did you take a lover?
If he asked her the first question, she would only smile, and say, “
Of course
.”
 

He never asked about her lovers.
 

She said, “I have to go to Sovka.”
 

“Why?”
 

“I retired the old manager, and appointed a new one, Erith Allogonga. She was head of the birthing section. I want to see how she's getting along. And I'm concerned about those litter deaths.”
 

“Are you feeling nostalgic?” he teased.
 

She laughed. “For Sovka? Zed, one
couldn't
feel nostalgic for Sovka.”
 

Unable to restrain himself, he said, “You went there eagerly enough.”
 

It was an old sore between them. Rhani touched his arm with her palm. “Zed-ka. I was seventeen, and I was not asked if I wanted to go. I was told to go. I was frightened. I couldn't talk back to Isobel.”
 

“I know. I'm sorry I said it.”
 

“Shall I tell you more gossip? I can't think of anything more to tell. You'll have to ask Charity Diamos. Or I could have Binkie make printouts of the old copies of PIN.”
 

Charity Diamos was related to the Yagos: she was a vicious, malicious harridan and the worst gossip in Abanat. Zed choked.
 

Rhani laughed. “You talk to me,” she said. “Tell me about the trip. You've not yet given me the Net report.”
 

“It's on the computer, you can read it there.”
 

“No. I'd rather hear it from you.”
 

She sat with her head cocked slightly to one side, fingers clasped together loosely in her lap: it was her listening look. Zed picked up a piece of fruit. “All right,” he said. “The trip was uneventful until the end....”
 

Downstairs, in the quarters set apart for slaves, Dana Ikoro dreamed the sound of footsteps in a hall.
 

He came awake, sweating and cold. The room was very bright; the dappled brilliance of sunlight, not the desolate glare of artificial lighting. Someone was knocking on his door. A woman called his name; her voice soft through the heavy wood. He sat up. He was sticky. “Come in,” he called. A small blond girl came in.
 

“Hello,” she said. “I'm Amri.” She wore a soft light shift of red-and-yellow; she reminded Dana of a butterfly. She carried a pair of straw sandals in one hand, and a gray jumpsuit over her arm. “These are for you. Binkie says they should fit.”
 

Dana sat on the edge of the bed. “What time of day is it?” he asked.
 

“Two hours after dawn.” She had pale fine hair that fell to her waist and equally pale, near-translucent skin, an infant's skin. The shift was sleeveless; Dana saw the tattooed “Y” on her left arm. That meant she was a slave. He blinked, shocked. She looked barely fourteen; he couldn't imagine what possible criminal act she had committed. But she was here.
 

He took the clothing from her. “After you're dressed,” she said, “come have breakfast. The kitchen's at the other end of this hall.”
 

“Yes, I remember. Thank you,” he said.
 

Walking down the hall to the kitchen Dana experienced that unmistakable twinge in the head that says:
You have seen, done, smelled, tasted, been here before
. He puzzled out the
déjà vu
. He was sixteen, walking from the sleeping space to the eating hall in the Pilot's Academy on Nexus, wearing a uniform, a hundred unfamiliar terms and customs crowding his mind, his hair brushing the tops of his shoulders, shorter than it had ever been on Pellin. He hadn't wanted them to cut it. He liked his hair long. He closed his eyes abruptly, remembering
Zipper
, Russell O'Neill, Monk, Tori Lamonica, Nexus, the forest-crested hills of Pellin, the faces of his family—freedom, he thought. He wondered where his musictapes were now. He pictured some Net crew member riffling through them, listening to one, frowning in boredom, tossing them aside. “
Nothing of value, Commander
.” Inside his head he heard, like birdsong, a few swift, improbable notes of Vittorio Stratta's “Fugue No. 2 in C.” The gay ancient music drew tears.
 

He rubbed them out with the heel of his hand and went inside the kitchen. The walls were red wood; the floor was squares of brown tile. Binkie, Amri, and two women he hadn't met sat at a counter on high metal stools, eating.
 

Their faces did not change as they turned to look him over. Binkie said, “This is Dana. This is Cara Morro, steward of the Yago estate, and Immeld, the cook.” Cara was angular and brown, with silver hair that trickled down her back in asymmetrical ringlets. She had a pale scar on her left upper arm. Immeld was younger, jaunty, and talkative.
 

“I saw you come in last night,” she said. She pushed a platter towards him. “Have some food. There's a stool over there.” Dana turned, to find Amri bringing it to him. His feet dangled to the bottom rung. He picked fruit and cheese from the plate. “Are they awake?” said Immeld.
 

Amri said, “Zed took the tray from me to bring in himself.”
 

“Someone was in here last night.”
 

“That was Rhani,” said Amri. “She brought
him
something to eat.” She pointed at Dana.
 

“What time was that?”
 

“About three hours after sunset,” said Binkie. He said, ostensibly to Dana, “Immeld likes to know everything.”
 

“So do you,” said Cara tartly.
 

“Does anyone want more cheese?” asked the cook. No one did. She put the platter in a cooler. Casually she said, “What's new this morning?” She looked at Binkie.
 

“Nothing's new,” he said. “Rhani's working.”
 

“On what?” asked the cook.
 

“I don't talk about Rhani's work,” said Binkie. “You know that.”
 

Immeld chuckled, unabashed at her prying. “I just wondered.”
 

“How many more days before they go to Abanat?” asked Amri.
 

“Ten,” said Binkie.
 

“I want to go with them,” Amri said. She kicked the rungs of her stool. “I like Abanat.”
 

“I don't,” said Binkie.
 

Diffidently, Dana said, “What's the Chabad calendar?”