“…Yeah, you should see, I’m down in the street watching this right now. No horseshit, these two guys with, like, a window-washer’s float pallet, goin’ right through this third-story window. I don’t see how they’re washing windows in the dark, d’you know? Oh, my God. I just heard a woman scream…!” With a faint smile, Vorpatril shut down his link to the Solstice emergency number.
Solstice Dome never really slept. Enough general illumination from the city lights gave adequate vision for the next task, even if the colors were washed out to a mix of sepia and gray, checkered with darker shadows.
“You first, Tej,” said Rish. “Careful, now. I’ll toss you the bags.”
Tej backed up a few steps for her running start and made the exhilarating broad jump to the next building. Three floors up. She cleared the ledge with ease and turned to catch the bags, one, two, three. Rish followed, loose garments fluttering as she somersaulted in air, landing on balance half a meter beyond Tej, motionless and upright like a gymnast dismounting.
Vorpatril stared gloomily at the gap, backed up quite a way, and made a mighty running jump. Tej caught his shoulders as he stumbled past her on landing.
“Ah,” he wheezed. “Not as bad as it looked. A little gravitational advantage, thank you, Planet Komarr. Almost makes up for your miserly day-length. You wouldn’t want to try that on Barrayar.”
Really? Tej wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare. And there was no time. Rish led off. As they made the second leap, the flashing lights of a dome patrol airsled were visible in the distance, closing rapidly.
Vorpatril balked at the next alley, half a dozen meters across. “We’re not jumping that, are we?”
“No,” said Tej. “There’s an outside stair. From the bottom, it’s only a block to the nearest bubble-car station.”
By the time they’d distributed the bags and walked the block, carefully not hurrying, everyone had caught their breaths again. The few sleepy-looking early, or late, fellow passengers crossing the platform scarcely spared them a glance. Rish twitched her shawl around to hide her head better while Vorpatril selected a four-person car, paying a premium for its exclusive use and express routing. He politely took the rear-facing seat, punched in their destination, and lowered the transparent canopy to its locking position. The car entered its assigned tube and began to hiss along smoothly.
The night was fading into dawn, Tej saw as the car rose on a long arc between two major dome sections. A shimmering red line edged the horizon beyond the limits of the sprawling arcology. As she watched, the tops of the tallest towers seemed to catch fire, eastern windows burning sudden orange in the reflected glow, while their feet remained in shadow. From a few lower sections, higher domes rose in a strange random spatter-pattern, catching gilded arcs.
Her fingers spread on the inside of the canopy as she stared. She’d never seen practically the whole of Solstice laid out like this, before. Since they’d arrived downside, she had only left their refuge to scurry out for work or food, and Rish hadn’t ventured out at all. Perhaps they should have. Their immobility had given only an illusion of safety, in the end. “What are those domes?”
Vorpatril swallowed a jaw-cracking yawn and followed her glance. “Huh. Interplanetary war as urban renewal, I suppose. Those are sections destroyed during the fighting in the Barrayaran annexation, or later in the Komarr Revolt. Making way for fresh new building, after.” He eyed her with tolerant amusement. “A real Komarran would have known that, of course. Even if they weren’t from Solstice.”
She clamped her teeth and sat back, flushing. “Is it so obvious?”
“Not at first,” he assured her. “Until one meets Rish, of course.”
Rish’s gloved hand pulled her shawl down lower over her face.
Several minutes and kilometers brought them to the business and governmental heart of the dome, an area where Tej had never ventured. The platform on which they disembarked was growing busier, and Rish kept her face down. They crossed the street and marched a mere half block till they came to a tall, new building. Vorpatril’s door remote coded them within. The lobby was larger than Tej’s whole flat, lined with marble and real, live potted greenery. The lift tube seemed to rise forever.
They debouched into a hushed, deeply carpeted corridor, walked to the end, and entered, through another coded door, another foyer or hallway and then a living room, with a broad view of the cityscape opening beyond a wide balcony. The decor was serene and technologically austere, except for a few personal possessions dropped at random here and there.
“Ah, no, look at the time!” Vorpatril yelped as they entered. “First dibs on the bathroom, sorry.” He broke into a jog, leaving a trail of clothing in his wake: jacket, shirt, shoes kicked aside. He was unbuckling his trousers as he called over his shoulder, “Make yourselves comfy, I’ll be out in a tick. God, I’d better be…” The bedroom door slid closed behind him.
She and Rish were left staring at each other. This sudden stop seemed even more disorienting than their prior panicked rush.
Tej circled the living area, inspecting a swank kitchenette that seemed all black marble and stainless steel. Despite its culinary promise, the refrigerator contained only four bottles of beer, three bottles of wine (one opened) and a half-dozen packets which the undecorative wrappings betrayed as military ration bars. An open box of something labeled instant groats graced the cupboards in lonely isolation. She was still reading the instructions on the back when the bedroom door slid open and Vorpatril thumped out again: fully dressed, moist from his shower, freshly depilated, hair neatly combed. He paused to hop around and shove his feet into his discarded shoes.
Both she and- hee, I saw that! — Rish blinked. The forest-green Barrayaran officer’s uniform was quite flattering, wasn’t it? Somehow, his shoulders seemed broader, his legs longer, his face…harder to read.
“Gotta run, or I’ll be late for work, under pain of sarcasm,” Vorpatril informed her, reaching past her to grab a ration bar and hold the package between his teeth as he finished fastening his tunic. He shoved the bar temporarily into a trouser pocket and seized her hands. “Help yourselves to whatever you can find. I’ll bring back more tonight, I promise. Don’t go out. Don’t make any outgoing calls, or answer any incoming ones. Lock the doors, don’t let anyone in. If a slithering rat named Byerly Vorrutyer shows up, tell him to come back later, I want to talk to him.” He stared at her in urgent entreaty. “You aren’t a prisoner. But be here when I come back-please?”
Tej gulped.
His grip tightened; laughter flashed in his eyes. He pressed his lips formally to the backs of her hands, one after the other, in some Barrayaran ethnic gesture of unguessable significance, grinned, and ran. The outer door sighed closed on sudden silence, as if all the air had blown out of the room with him.
After a frozen moment, she gathered her nerve, went to the balcony door, and eased it aside. Judging from the angle of the light, she would get an excellent view of Komarr’s huge and famous soletta array, key to the on-going terraforming, as it followed the sun across the sky, later. She’d never been able to see it from her own flat.
She’d been cowering in the shadows for a long, sick time, it seemed in retrospect. Every plan she’d ever been given had come apart in chaos, her old life left in a blood-soaked shambles far behind her. Unrecoverable. Lost.
No going back.
Maybe it was time to take a deep breath and make some new plans. All her own.
She ventured to the railing and peeked down, a dizzying twenty flights. Far below her, a hurrying figure in a green uniform exited the building, wheeled, and strode off.
Chapter Three
Tej and Rish spent their first few minutes alone scouting the exits. The luxurious flat had only the one door, but the corridor had lift tubes at either end, and emergency stairs as well. There was also the balcony, Tej supposed, but to be survivable escape by that route would require either antigrav or rappelling gear, which they did not currently possess. They next explored the interior space for any hidden surveillance equipment or other surprises; there either was none, or it was very subtle. The lock on the outer door was much better than average, and Rish set it with satisfaction, but of course no ordinary door would stop a truly determined and well-equipped invader.