Lady ghem Estif glanced upward. “Oh, no one will pick up anything through these walls.”
Crap, thought Ivan. Nonetheless, she turned the sputtering field back off.
Ivan narrowed his eyes in belated recognition. “Wait. I saw something like that before, back on Eta Ceta. When Miles and I had to go as the Barrayaran diplomatic representatives to the late Cetagandan empress’s funeral, twelve, thirteen years ago. The haut-lady bubbles. All the haut women traveled around in these float chairs, with personal shields a lot like that one.”
Lady ghem Estif looked at him in surprise. “Indeed. The biotainer girdles were made a symbol of haut status. Personally, I disapproved of fitting them onto the float chairs-robbing them of their original purpose in pursuit of display. Really, I do sometimes wonder if my old caste is becoming effete. I begin to believe I was well out of it. Young people these days, no sense of the right robust relation of form and function. And they call themselves artists!”
“So,” said Ivan, taken aback to have the formerly-settled insides of his head so abruptly rearranged, “the haut-lady bubbles actually started as biotainers? But they don’t work as suits anymore?”
“Oh, of course they still do that,” murmured Lady ghem Estif, and headed purposefully for the stairs.
Undine shrugged and picked up the nearest case, turning toward the hole in the wall. “Tej, Ivan Xav”-a warmer drop in her voice at his name acknowledged his volunteer status-“time to start hauling. Quickly, now.”
Tej dutifully picked up the next crate down, and Ivan, more dubiously, followed suit-its weight tried to pull his arms out of their sockets. What the hell should he be doing down here? It had been all too easy to get sucked into the general excitement and forget that, no, his aims were not those of the rest of the people in this place. Maybe some opportunity would come as he helped lug all this stuff through that damned twisty tunnel-dark and confined, true, but he’d hardly be alone. They’d be just like a line of ants, or termites, or one of those other Earth social insects in their little burrows. But once he’d carried his first load to the access well, he might lay hands on his wristcom again, and then-his eye fell on Tej-then he would have a real dilemma.
Amiri, pausing at the new doorway, called over his shoulder to his sire, “Do you think it will be more efficient to each carry these all the way, or pass them along?”
“Pass along,” Shiv replied without hesitation, also now lugging a case. “Space yourselves evenly as to time, though, not distance. Those switchbacks are going to make slow spots.”
Amiri nodded and stepped through.
Hell, thought Ivan. But he might still work his way back to the access well, just not as directly. Ivan was now almost as reluctant to leave this treasure vault, so barely explored, as he had been to enter it. If he could just-
Amiri stepped backward through the ragged oval aperture, his empty hands reaching out above his head. What was he doing, stretching? No one had yet had time to become that fatigued-
A total stranger with a stunner in his hand, trained on Amiri’s midsection, stepped through after.
Ivan’s heart jumped in his chest; he stumbled to a halt.
Then Pearl, who’d also stepped out to the vestibule, came through likewise walking backward. And then another stunner-armed man, much older, and a third.
Not ImpSec in plainclothes-Ivan wasn’t sure what subliminal signs his backbrain was processing, besides the general absence of Byerly Vorrutyer, though God knew he’d looked up close at enough ImpSec men in his life-but he was sadly sure of it. Ordinary garage security guards? No, they wore uniforms. Very gently, Ivan set down the case he was carrying on the nearest stack, to free his hands, and eased in front of Tej, who had stopped short in shock.
“Do you know what this is?” Ivan murmured to her, almost voicelessly.
“Ser Imola. Dada just hired him to be our carrier. But…”
But the stunners, right. Not a whole lot of doubt about which way they were aimed, either. With only the briefest hiccup, Ivan translated the Jacksonian carrier to the more forthright Barrayaran smuggler. It was a measure of the night’s distractions that Ivan hadn’t even begun to wonder how Shiv had planned to shift all this treasure off-world. The question would have occurred to him eventually, he supposed.
“Oh, hell,” said Shiv Arqua in a tone of boundless disgust, slowly setting down his own case. The stunner in the older man’s hand swiveled to point at him. “Imola, you damned fool.”
“I think not, Shiv,” the older man said affably.
Shiv rolled his eyes. “First of all, your timing is terrible. The least application of thought might have told you that the time to go for us would be tomorrow night, after we’d emptied the vault for you. And you could have caught us and the cargo both. I’ve wondered about you Komarrans ever since the Conquest, really I have.”
“Got the drop on you all, didn’t we? Tomorrow night, you’d have been more on your guard.” Imola glanced around the chamber. “Although I begin to think you were holding out on me after all. Maybe, after we send you on your way, we’ll come back and clear this place out by ourselves.”
“Oh,” breathed Shiv, his anguished glance darting over their assailants’ power weapons and wristcoms, “you won’t be by yourselves. I guarantee it.”
“What a sinful waste of an opportunity,” mourned Udine, sliding up behind her husband. “I could just cry.” Or spit, it looked like. Venom.
“Hello there, Udine,” said Imola, with a nod of greeting and a slight, prudent shift of his aim. “You’ve held up well, I must say. Shiv said you were along. He probably shouldn’t have mentioned you. It was just cruel, to tempt a man like that. Do you have any idea what House Prestene is now offering for Arquas, delivered to their doorstep? Individually or in bulk?”
“Less than your fifteen percent would have been,” said Shiv growled. “Now you’ll get nothing. And so will we.”
“Oh, no,” whispered Tej in Ivan’s ear. “I bet he wants to cryofreeze us. That’s how he smuggles people, to keep them from fighting back. Horrid!”
Ivan could see that temptation; Arquas all over the chamber were shifting about, trying to look unthreatening and not succeeding.
Pearl said uncertainly, “Should we make them stun us, to slow them down?”
“By all means,” said Imola, grinning. “Then we won’t have to listen to you complain. Your transport awaits-my ground-van will hold you all with room to spare. So convenient of you to arrange it for us.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Lady ghem Estif, in a loud but quavery voice. “All of you, just hold still. Someone might be hurt.” She emerged from the stairwell and made her way in a newly tottery manner toward the doorway. Her hand, held out, trembled like that of a frail old woman on the verge of collapse.
“Who’s that?” muttered one of the big goons backing Imola-a few cuts below even budget ninjas, in Ivan’s quick appraisal, but dangerous nonetheless when they were armed with distance weapons and you weren’t. One of them, he saw with indignation, held Ivan’s own good military stunner, no doubt lifted off the bench in the entry vestibule in passing. The grip of the cheap civilian model he’d traded up for peeked from a pocket.
“My grandmother,” said Amiri, suddenly watching hard. “She’s a hundred and thirty years old. You don’t need to hurt her or kidnap her-I bet Prestene doesn’t even have her on their list. She’s of no value to you! You leave her alone!”
“They don’t,” Imola began, then his eyes narrowed suddenly. “Wait, is that Udine’s haut-woman mother-”
His caution fell a moment too late. Ivan poised on the balls of his feet as Lady ghem Estif meandered up to the men and her shaky hand wandered to her belt. With a deep, spluttering snarl, her force-field sprang out at full power and spherical diameter, knocking one man off his feet and pinning the shrieking Imola up against the wall by the door.