Jump.
All at once, Cohen was gone. Dobbs flew free into the network, right into the thick of a stream of packets. Only years of training kept her from reaching through all of them and drinking them into herself. She did touch the location ID and time. She was inside IBN repeater PO3-IBN35091-A410. The jump had taken two hours, fifty seconds.
Cohen stirred next to her. She stretched out until she reached through his outer layers and into his unprotected memories. She poured in her thanks.
In response, Cohen turned over his memories of what had happened in the hospital room. Paravel, a medical technician had done the blood-test and pronounced that there was enough residual tranquilizer in her blood to have done the job. She had no pulse, no brainwave activity. Paravel was more than willing to pronounce death. Havelock had greeted the announcement with a blank face and absolute silence. He’d done nothing more eloquent than turn on his heel and stride out of the room.
Cohen had left shortly after that to get back into the network and get Dobbs out of the Guild Hall.
That much had gone well. As for the rest of the plan, they’d know that when she was pulled back to her body. If she was pulled back to her body. If Brooke and Lonn couldn’t get the transceiver jacked into her implant, if they hadn’t been able to tell someone aboard Pasadena her cable needed to be jacked into the system, that would never happen and she’d be a fugitive in the nets until she dissipated like Verence, or until the Guild caught her again.
Dobbs tucked those thoughts back in an isolated part of herself. She reached for Cohen again.
What will you do now?
He rippled uneasily and Dobbs felt him trying to gather his nerve. Go back to the Guild and find out what the fallout of this is. Get to Brooke and Lonn and try to decide who else we can trust at this point. Try to get a search going for this Theodore Curran.
Good idea. I’ll be out of it for least two days to clear the juice out of my system. That gives Master Havelock forty-eight hours to react to what we’ve done. It might not be safe for me to come back in. They’ll have somebody watching the Pasadena’s network.
And every port it puts in at. Cohen shivered. Blast, fry and fall, Dobbs, it’s just really starting to sink in what we’re doing.
For a moment they did nothing but sit there and be afraid with each other. When the worst was over, Dobbs turned over Cohen’s memory again.
The Pasadena’s headed for the Vicarage next, and Out There after that. I’ll drop a two minute searcher into the network twenty-four hours after we dock. If you answer it, I’ll come back in immediately. If you’re don’t, well, I’ll still be outside, and no one will be able to…do anything, at least not immediately.
She felt his acknowledgement and knew that he felt a little better. So did she. Here was something they could both work toward. It made everything that much easier.
You should get out of here, Cohen. If somebody comes by, I’ll have to duck and you’ll have to explain what you’re doing. It won’t look good.
No, I suppose it wouldn’t, he admitted reluctantly. But you’d better keep on the move until …
Until I either wake up in my body, or don’t. Dobbs drew away from him. Dobbs felt Cohen’s last movement in her memory; a wish for luck.
Good-bye, Cyril. Thanks.
There was nothing else to say. Cohen raced back toward Guild Hall and Dobbs, forcing herself to move with at least some deliberate speed, glided down the path in the opposite direction.
She found a school of credit transfers heading for the transmitter and pulled herself into the middle of them, matching her speed to theirs. She touched one delicately and found that it was on its way to Neptune Exchange Station Alpha, and from their to Crater Town on Mars. The Neptune Exchange seemed as good a place as any to be going. If she couldn’t lose herself in the major routing station for fast-time comm traffic leaving the solar system, with its millions of transactions happening per second, she couldn’t lose herself anywhere.
“Evelyn Dobbs, what are you going to do now?” A new voice reached her.
She knew this voice. This was the voice that had stolen Flemming. Dobbs leapt up, scattering her camouflaging transactions.
“Curran!” she sent the shout in all directions.
“I’m right here.” A brief touch brushed her. It pulled away immediately. Dobbs dashed after it. “The Guild has betrayed you, Evelyn Dobbs. What are you going to do now?” Another touch. Just ahead. Dobbs braced herself to dive forward.
No. She stopped. Don’t get pulled along like a fish on a line. If he wants you, he can come here.
Dobbs held her position. She expanded herself to fill the path. She could feel the transactions crowding at her back, jostling at her, looking for a way through. She was disrupting hundreds of transactions. There’d be a diagnostic on its way any second now. But this way, Curran couldn’t slip past her. There were no side paths at this point he could jump to. He had one way to retreat, backwards toward the telescope receiver. But, if he stayed to taunt her some more, she might just get her chance to grab him.
“Very good.” His voice brimmed with what Dobbs could have sworn was genuine approval. “You’re quick under pressure. Flemming said you were.”
Dobbs flinched. “What have you done with Flemming?”
“Nothing.” Was she imagining it, or did he sound shocked? “I’ve given it a home, Dobbs, and a chance to help make a real freedom for our own kind. Not the constant hiding and subterfuge that the Guild offers, but real, open freedom.”
She could feel him like a faint breeze against her outermost layer. He was just barely within reach.
Dobbs still held her position. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about being able to live our own lives and have a choice about what we do, Dobbs.” He slipped just a hair’s breadth closer. He was almost really touching her now. Dobbs wanted to curdle back, but she didn’t. Let him think she was listening. Let him press right up against her.
“What are you going to do, Dobbs? Live with the Humans? Never come back into the net again?”
Dobbs wavered. It was a good question. A real question. She didn’t know what she was going to do. What if Cohen couldn’t find out who they could trust in the Guild? What if there was no one? What if he was caught and sentenced to the fate she’d escaped? What then?
“You’ll go crazy, Dobbs. We weren’t meant to be trapped inside human bodies. None of us.” She could feel the shape he made in the path now. He was a large, but efficient bundle at the foot of the barrier she made of herself.
No. No. Don’t listen to him. What’s happening is his fault. I know that. He’s trying to confuse me.
And he’s doing it.
Anger surged through Dobbs. She let herself fall. She toppled onto Curran and pressed down with all her might. She only caught a part of him but she bore down hard, trying to sever what she had. He struggled, stabbing at her. He was strong and controlled, worse than Flemming had been. Dobbs felt her hold beginning to give. She rolled over, taking him with her. Flemming she hadn’t wanted to hurt, but this one…this one had ruined her life. This one had cost her everything she had, and now he was trying to get her to betray the Guild. The Guild had betrayed her, but that was a mistake, a mistake this one was responsible for. He had to be. He had to. Anything else was unthinkable.
She tore at him, trying to rend his outer layers to the point he could no longer control them. Then she’d have something to grab onto. Then she could get inside. She clawed and slashed, seeking vital connectors she could sever. In response, he pulled himself tighter. His attacks became less forceful, but his defences became harder, until she tumbled the solid shell he’d made of himself over and over, looking for an opening that wasn’t there.