Ms. Ochio's smile had vanished.
"Every room?"
"Well," Cind said, "I don't think we would be interested in all the bathrooms, unless they're something unique."
"Sorrow," the woman said. "That just won't be possible. The grounds... some of the outbuildings... the first and most of the second floor, and die library are quite open. We had one of the local garden societies tour a portion of the house just three weeks gone. You would be welcome to record them.
"But the rest of the building, particularly the residential areas upstairs? No. The Shahryar family is very protective of their privacy, I was told when I accepted my contract, and was given quite explicit instructions. So... if those are your plans, I fear you may have wasted your trip."
"Could you communicate with the family? To make sure?" Cind asked. "Oh yes. I forgot. Most reclusive. Oh well. Thank the powers I'm not working on piece rates."
She stood.
"Might I refresh myself? Then, perhaps, you'll show me, just for my own personal curiosity, the parts of the house that the public is allowed to see?"
"Pleasure. The facilities are just beyond the library doors," Ms. Ochio said.
Cind opened the door and stepped through. As she did, she flicked a small object back, onto the table, in front of the librarian, closed her eyes, and ducked, shielding her face against the blueflash.
Ochio had time to puzzle at the tiny ovoid—and then the bester grenade went off. She slumped. Two E-hours would pass before she came back to the world, completely unaware of the time loss.
Cind patted the woman down. No vital-signs indicator that would set off an alarm—she had bumped Ochio a couple of times entering the room and had been pretty sure she was clean. No com, no panic button, no nothing. Cind dragged her behind one of the sitting room's small couches.
Two hours.
Gun out, but half-concealed, she slipped out the door into the great house.
She looked at the library's doors. Maybe. According to the input on Kyes's computer, gotten from the debriefing of another of the Emperor's librarians, there'd be two sysop stations for it. One would be the central station for the library, the other was code-sealed and could access certain unknown files. Files privy to the Emperor-to-be.
If she had time, and wasn't blown by then, she would take a stab at a little intrusion. But that wasn't the intent of her mission.
She went up the stairs, ignoring a gravlift for fear it'd alert someone there was an interloper loose in the house, and headed for the top floor. From what Ochio had said, that would be the most likely place for what she wanted.
There had been nothing on the roof her preliminary overflight suggested might be a ‘cast antenna. So it would either be in a room or—she grimaced—tucked away somewhere under the mansion's eaves. Oh well. It would not be the first set of creepy attic critters she'd crawled through. If she still struck out, she would have to chance combing through the outbuildings. Which would mean a good shot at encountering security—in her overflight she'd seen uniformed guards walking the grounds.
She went through the mansion's top floor in a blur— checking/cover/checking in the blur of a highly trained security specialist. Clear... clear... clear...
All the rooms appeared quite innocent—furnished as if expecting the momentary arrival of the obviously extended Shahryar family and their equally huge staff of retainers.
Clean. Bright. Sparkling.
Cind went in a door, next to a stairwell curve, glanced around—Kholeric, this bedroom's got to be for the third-ranking apprentice scullery maid, and she'd have to be a little person, nothing interesting—and back out...
She stopped before the door could close.
Looked up and down the hall. At the stairs. Either whoever had laid this floor out was drunk, or else incompetent. Or else I did even worse at geometry than I thought. Back inside. No— the room was still too tiny for the amount of space it evidently occupied. Or maybe, she thought, this room's intended for somebody with a major anal fixation, because nobody needs a fresher that big.
The bathroom door was locked. Cind took two of the "nee-essary tools" from her purse. With the first, she swept the door and jamb. The little "bugeater" told her there appeared to be no security monitors on the other side. The second tool went against the pore-pattern "lock"—odd thing to lock the outside of a bathroom. The slimjim hummed, analyzed, and the lock clicked open. Cind pushed the door open. Y-reka.
The com station was elaborate, and automated. Cind ran through the checklist Freston had dummied up for her and, recorder humming, set to work. Not being a commo specialist, she wasn't sure she was getting what she came for—but the registry/ control/tracker for the antenna array, evidently secreted in another part of the house or estate, surely looked as if the com was "aimed" to receive a tightbeam signal from somewhere.
A somewhere that might be the Emperor's sanctuary.
She checked the transmitter nearby. It was completely automated, and she was afraid to mess with it.
Most likely the transmitter was intended to send out a "Don't come here" to the Emperor-in-transit if the mansion's purpose was exposed.
She had—she hoped—what she came after. And she'd left no trace, having plas-coated her fingertips and palms so that any dusting would produce no identifiable prints on the few things that she'd actually touched. She relocked the door behind her.
Now for some cake icing.
She still had just under an hour, and so far had heard no alarums and excursions from downstairs. If necessary, she could always drop back into the sitting room and blank Ochio for another two hours.
The antechamber was still deserted. Cind cracked the library doors. The huge gallery rose to an arched, clear skylight/ceiling. Fiches/reels/files and even books were stacked on the shelves that ran from the floor up ten meters to the ceiling. Now this, she thought, is the kind of library Sten would like to have. When this is all over. If this is ever over.
She looked for life. Nothing.
Cind went in. Near the door was one sysop station. Ochio's. Now where was the other? The one with all those interesting eyes-only files.
She spotted cables—cables, which meant someone was very worried about transmission security—that ran out through one wall.
Cind exited the library and found another unobtrusive room, this one with its wall in common with the library. She popped the door and went in.
Joy, joy, joy, she thought, looking at the computer station. I don't know what I am doing. When in question/Or in doubt/Run in circles/Hack and shout, and she sat down at the keyboard. A keyboard, for heaven's sakes. And the computer will be coal-fired, and the screen will be monochromatic. They laughed when I...
She touched a blank key. The screen lit.
RECEIVING. ENTER CURRENT DATE AND STATION.
Cind guessed as to the last, and hit keys. The date, and SHAHRYAR.
SYSOP LOGGED ON. ENTER CLEARANCE.
Oh clot.
Uh... Emperor. No. Empire. No. Oh. Wait a minute.
ENTER CLEARANCE. YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE ALARM.
The name bubbled up in her mind. Saying a small prayer, she keyed... RASCHID.
CLEAR. SYSTEM PRIVILEGE GRANTED.
No way. It could not be this easy. But:
REQUEST COORDS, TRANSMITTER TO SHAHRYAR RECEIVER. PLEASE WAIT.
A light began blinking.