A jaje waitress came trotting over, her dusky fur absorbing light so efficiently she was little more than a blotch of darkness with a pair of shining gold eyes. “Hard day?” Her voice was as soft and muted as her fur.
“Oh, yes. I think a cup of tea’s all I can manage.” She glanced at the menu again. “Uplands Red.”
“Ah. One of my own favorites. They do it right here, two pots and water on the edge, of boiling.”
“Well, would your bosses infarct if you sat a moment and had a cup yourself? spring for it.” She chuckled as the gold eyes narrowed and the small round ears flattened against the jaje’s skull. “Only renting a moment of your time. You can always walk away.”
“Why not.” The jaje waved a three-fingered hand. “It’s not as if we’re rushed off our feet right now.” A breathy sucking sound, jaje laughter. “If you come up with a tip, the time might be more fruitful.” She went gliding off.
Shadith took a sip of the tea and smiled with pleasure. “You’re right. Ah, that’s good.” She slipped the flake viewer from her belt pouch and set it on the table close to the edge where the tiny jaje could reach it. “I’m a bitty shovel in Digby’s Excavations.” She went through the patter she’d repeated so many times already. “… no friends, no connections, likely she’s not enjoying herself much these days.”
The jaje tapped on the viewer, examined the image with care, then shook her head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen her. And she’s unusual enough I’d probably have noticed. Too bad. Femmes on their own, even when they know what’s what, they can get in a mess of trouble. At least we jajes have our bond. And the home tree. Sometimes, though… Z-juice I hate that stuff. They got my bonds and me that way. We’ve a long line to swing before we get home again. You offering a reward?”
“I can go high as fifty gelders, higher I’d have to check with the client. I know what you mean. Had my own problems that way. I’m a lot older than I look, and a few years back I was so dewy I might have been just hatched. Ran into a guard on a transfer station who liked ’em young and scared. Tried to use Zombi on me. Ah spla!”
“What happened?”
“He ended in the garbage chute as molecular dust. Not my doing. Long story and complicated. Anyway, that’s when I met Digby the first time.”
The jaje shivered. “We had someone try it here a couple months ago. On this smuggler, at least that’s what the talk was. I suppose she got off with something the Kliu wanted. That’s who they said hired the ghoul. OverSec got real hot. The ghoul’s brain-stripped now and doing a term under Contract. Cheered my bond and me up no end when we heard that.”
“Wonder if she was someone I know. I’ve got several friends who fly the egg route. Caan?”
“Nah, that was her friend. Cousin. Lylunda-yeah, that’s it. Lylunda Elang.”
“Nah, her I don’t know. Take another look at the viewer. If you see someone like that who does things like spill her drinks in her own lap, give me a call. I’m at the Mimarose.”
“Poor tissa-la. Think you could make some dupes of this? My bonds are working several other Nodes. We could ask around.”
“Not a bad idea. All right if I drop them by later tonight?”
“My shift is over an hour after Node midnight. That’d be the best time.”
“I’ll see you then.” She finished the tea. “Nice break, but I’d better shift my feet some more.”
9
The Privacy Cell in Digby’s ship was a little bigger than a ciciset but not much, with the instrumentation completely insulated from outside contact. Shadith disliked the place intensely, but she had no illusions about OverSec’s intrusion into the outer areas of the ship.
Luck had kissed her today and she wasn’t about to waste time accepting its gift.
She keyed the scramble, beginning the recording with an explanation of the cover she’d arranged for the investigation. “I’m-going to have to stay until I finish this, though it shouldn’t take that much longer. In the meantime, I found a name for our smuggler and a reason for the Kliu’s being locked out of the Market. Lylunda Elang. Smuggler, apparently rather well known, though I haven’t come across her before. Find out all you can about her, especially about her home-world. The Kliu tried to Zombi her and missed. I suspect she headed for the deepest cover she could find, probably that homeworld.
“After I locate Adelaar’s apprentice, I’ll be taking the girl to University. I’ll check in with you there to see what you’ve come up with.”
She ejected the flake, sealed it into a drone, and started the canister on its way to its target. “Over to you, Digby. Now I go back to talking my way round the Nodes, keeping the cover tight.”
Shadith shuffled into her room at Mimarose, dropped into her chair, and tugged her boots off. She stretched out, wriggling her toes and groaning with the pleasure of letting her body relax. “Romance is dead,” she said aloud and giggled. “Triddas never mention how boring this is and what your feet feel like at the end of the day.”
She yawned, unclipped the notepad from her belt, and began scrolling through the list she’d bought from the Hub. There were two, no three small crewbangers that she hadn’t hit yet, on the Circle only by courtesy. She tapped a fingernail on the pad’s screen, frowning at the entries. Do them first, then try the Contractors?
Or leave them till the Labor Halls had refused to talk to her? They had that habit. She clicked over to the other list. Three Contract Labor Companies, each with its own niche. Factory and lab lineworkers. Techs. Unskilled for the low-end work where convict labor was cheaper than ’bots and easier to replace if it broke.
“If I were doing this by the numbers, I should have hit them first. Gahh.” The almost year she’d spent under Contract was not one of her happier memories, and facing down junior execs determined not to talk was a job she’d rather postpone forever. “Time is, Shadow my girl. Tomorrow morning. Well, at least I can have myself a nice drench in the fresher and a good long sleep.”
She pushed herself onto her feet and reached for the closure on her tunic.
The corn bonged.
Working at the closure with one hand, she tapped on the speaker. The screen was blank. “Shadith here. Who’s this?”
“Shadow, you know my voice.” Bisa. As close to whispering as she could get. Not that OverSec would let that stop them if they wanted to know who she was. “Want to talk.”
“Now?”-
“Yes. Outside where I work.”
Shadith rubbed at her eyes. “All right. Give me time to get there.”
“Don’t drag it. Twenty minutes and I’m gone.”
The shell was night-black and mostly invisible behind the gathering clouds; rain was scheduled for the next hour so most of the Circle was empty, the usual strollers either back in their ottotels or in their hutches or inside the shops waiting for the next flux of customers. The holoas flickering across the facades had gone dark. The only lights left were the pole lamps marching along beside the chainchair line. Shadith stopped the chair short of the Tav, crossed to the sidewalk and started along it.
“Over here.”
She followed the voice into a narrow alley, her reach identifying the woman and establishing that she was alone.
Bisa was standing in a shallow doorway. “Tell me the name of the client,” she whispered. “I have to be sure.”
“All right.” Shadith leaned closer, murmured in the woman’s ear, “Adelaris.”
“That’s the right one. Come on. She wants to see you.” Bisa moved from the doorway and started off along the alley, heading away from the Circle, into grubby shell slums where the argrav diminished rapidly enough to make walking difficult. The Nodes were, after all, just large irregular chunks of rock, mauled a bit here and there, shaved and prettied up where the customers were. The back blocks that only workers saw were a lot less appealing and the farther away from the business center, the worse conditions got.