All of which was a bad line of thought at 0400h in a morning when an intrusion alarm had blasted him out of bed, and when—he had the increasingly sickening realization—official ears were almost certainly monitoring their family quarrel. It was in the manual that they didn’t, routinely, but he was never convinced they didn’t just sample from time to time, or that key words wouldn’t wake the system up, and if a burglar alarm at 0400h and a lengthy conversation with the burglar, contrary to the scenario he’d presented to security, didn’t do it, he didn’t know what would.
At least—at least the monitors must be used to windows into people’s private lives, and wouldn’t hold 0400h arguments with a relative too hard against him or her, per se. The fact he was meeting a family member against orders, and that there were rumors on the street, however—that was almost certainly going to send the transcript straight to Brazis’s desk. That would likely get Ardath herself tailed for months.
“Get out of here,” he said, thick-witted despite the strong caff, which by now was upsetting his stomach. “You’ve waked me up, I’ve got an early call, and now I’m not going to get any sleep and I’m likely to make stupid mistakes. Just go. We’ll talk about this when we’re not having a family argument.”
“You aren’t hearing what I’m saying. It’s not as simple as my disowning you.”
“I’m sorry about that. I can’t do anything else. Go. Or do I have to get dressed and walk you back to the street?”
A sniff. Ardath drew her constellations about her. “Go back to sleep. It’s clear you don’t care at all about our reputations.”
“Good night.”
Ardath’s eyes burned palest blue. “I am disowning you. I’m going to damn you to everyone for at least a week, and hope it works.”
“Go do that.” He could be kinder. “Shall I walk you downstairs?”
“No need.” She walked to the lift floor.
“Sam,” he said. “Down.”
Ardath vanished into the floor and the shadows below. He didn’t ask how she’d gotten in. Sam knew her voice. He’d identified her as family, as within certain long-established permissions. Unfortunately, Sam wasn’t authorized to turn off the alarm system: thatsystem wasn’t under Sam’s control.
He wished now he hadn’t said such cutting things to Ardath, especially when there might be eavesdroppers. She was what she was. He was what he was. They weren’t ever going to agree on lifestyles. She didn’t know he forever gazed outside the globe they both lived in. And she wasan artist, and a good one, an honest one. There was an importance, that the world have color, and movement, and controversy, for those who didn’t have a view and an obsession outside that globe. What price on that? What price sanity?
Her world, the world she’d give him, if she could, held no attraction for him any longer. It didn’t have the scale of the world below. And which of them lived in reality? He would give anything he had to turn up in Marak’s path and say, to, he imagined, Marak’s great surprise, “I’m Procyon. I’ve come down to stay.”
That wasn’t ever going to happen.
Though he might sincerely wish he could disappear down there, once information got to Brazis that his cover was halfway blown on the street. He’d tried to misdirect Ardath and her intimates even while counseling discretion, but he wasn’t sure he’d been successful in either effort. If word did proliferate on the street that he was a government slink, he might have to say good-bye to where he lived and how he lived. And if they were speculating on possible jobs high up enough to be running messages for the government, Project tap certainly had to be on the short list, and that wouldn’t make him much safer. His career was at risk, and he’d put Ardath in danger, asking her to defuse the rumors. God, it was Brazis who’d made him more public, it was Brazis who’d sent him to Reaux—but who was going to get the axe if his cover was blown?
Damn it all.
When he did get called on the carpet, as he was sure he would be, he’d plead he’d been waked out of sleep and confronted with an already-formed suspicion that he’d tried to deal with. That his sister was smart and, if warned, wouldn’t talk freely—that it was actually safer for her to know something, because she wasn’t talking to the family and she served as a rumor clearinghouse for a certain influential element on the street.
God, he wanted his sister away from Algol, for reasons he should have told her plainly years ago, when he left the Freethinkers.
She wassmart, however. She’d ask Spider and Isis what they thought about the accusations he’d made about Algol, and they wouldn’t have a high opinion of Algol, either, if they were honest, and if they’d kept their eyes open. They were older, far more street-wise than Ardath, having grown up unsheltered. They’d talk sense to her. Maybe a hint from him that their little goddess was in danger would encourage them to take a mutual stand.
If word did get out in the Trend that Ardath and certain others highly disapproved of Algol, that would rob him at least of his better-funded prey. But that scenario also worried him. Algol was dangerous in physical ways, and had no scruples about violence.
Ardath was no fool, however. She knew the hazards of feuds in the Trend. That fear had run all underneath her arguments for him to shove the job and get out of it. The more he rethought it, the more he was convinced she’d come to warn him, in her little performance, her pretense of naïveté, signaling him as hard as she could—even after he’d warned her about the bugs. She’d been trying to tell him his cover was already seriously compromised and that what she’d heard wasn’t just speculation from idle talkers. There already wasa problem. He was the fool, not Ardath.
Brazis having gotten him into this, Brazis might be inclined to take the fact she’d warned him, and give Ardath some consideration—if he could do whatever he was sent to do tomorrow morning. If he could bring Brazis whatever it was he wanted, then Brazis might be a lot more sympathetic, working withhis problem, rather than just dealing with it and sweeping him away.
And, always, there wasMarak to deal with, Marak, who would back him, unless Marak thought he was a fool.
So he daren’t, above all else, blow the assignment he had. He had to come back smelling of success and professional discretion so he could fix whatever Ardath had come to warn him about. Protect his life on the street. And protect Ardath, who would go to war for him, and who by no means should attempt it, against Algol and his ilk.
He looked at the cupboard clock. 0448h. He didn’t dare oversleep.
But dammit, he had to calm his nerves.
He was going back to bed. Lie horizontal. Try to relax his mind.
THE NIGHT AIR was still. The dust had settled. The sky was clear, sparkling with stars, despite Drusus’s warnings of fog and disaster. The ridges above them were shadow. The distant pans were ghost-white under the stars, a dizzy distance below their feet.
Marak stood at the starlit edge of the ledge and called out to the fugitive beshti— “Hai, ye, ye, ye!”
Lone voice in the night, provoking echoes. It was the call they gave out when the beshti were wandering. It reminded the fools of food, of sweet treats. On a good day it could call beshti in from the fields, for the rare sugar that could tempt the most recalcitrant old bull into reach of a halter.
He heard distant answers, likewise, lonely in the night, distinct from the echoes.
“By now they have no idea how to get back,” Hati said glumly, from her perch on the rocks nearby, which he was sure was the truth. Far easier to slide down the yielding sand than climb back up it. Their own descent had its perils. They kept careful track of the trail they followed, to be able to find their way back up again, in what might become foul weather.