Al Shei wrote out the call request and called up her account. Resit had dumped in more than enough credit. Al Shei sent a silent thanks toward her cousin and transferred enough for ten minutes to Ankara and her family’s home.
Be there, Ruqaiyya. Please, Merciful Allah, let it be your will that she is home.
After ten agonized heartbeats, the screen cleared and Ruqaiyya appeared against a background of gold and turquoise tiles. Like Al Shei, she wore a hijab across her face. Above the veil, her eyes were smaller and more lined than her Al Shei’s, despite the fact that Ruqaiyya was five years younger than Al Shei.
“Peace be unto you, Sister.” Ruqaiyya looked tired, Al Shei realized. No surprise there, considering, but it still worried Al Shei to see it.
“And unto you, Sister.” She replied. “I’m calling…I wanted to let you know I’ve seen Marcus.”
“Oh?” Ruqaiyya’s eyes brightened a little. “How is he?”
Al Shei hesitated, briefly considering a kind lie. No. Ruqaiyya’d hear it in a second. “Not well,” she said. “He’s under some hard charges. Resit’s looking into it, but I don’t know what she’ll find…” A tear glistened in Ruqaiyya’s eye. Al Shei’s palms were damp. She wanted to yell at Ruqaiyya, just like she’d wanted to yell at her husband. How could you do this to yourself! You were so proud, so smart! How could you stay married to him! How can you miss that scum! “He asked me to tell you he did it because he couldn’t stand the idea of coming back to you empty handed.”
Ruqaiyya’s shoulders straightened themselves. “Of course,” she said blandly. She thinks he’s lying. Al Shei glanced down at her own hands against the boards. She doesn’t trust him. Pity for her sister hit her hard. Pity for the pride which Ruqaiyya wore like her hijab and that wouldn’t let her, even now, break away from him. Merciful Allah, what that must feel like, to love the past and be marooned in the present.
Al Shei drew a deep breath. “‘Qai, we think Marcus has been duped into this. We’ve got some…fresh evidence that we might be able to use if we can confirm that the sources are sound.” Hope shone in her sister’s eyes and Al Shei sent a prayer of forgiveness up for the things she did not say.
“‘Qai, is Asil there? I haven’t spoken to him since I got into port, and Uncle Ahmet’s not telling me anything.” She spread her hands. “Truth to tell, O-my-sister, I’m going a bit insane up here from waiting.”
“Oh, Katmer,” Ruqaiyya’s eyes were suddenly filled with pity. Al Shei bridled against the sight. I don’t need sorrows ‘Qai, I need my husband.
Ruqaiyya twisted her hands. “Katmer, Asil has vanished. We can’t find him. There’s no records of his arrest or his confinement. Uncle Ahmet has shaken the Management Union up to the sky, and we still can’t find him.” She paused. “The security investigators are suggesting that he fled to avoid prosecution.”
Al Shei found she couldn’t get herself to move. Her tongue had frozen against the roof of her mouth. Her lungs were still pumping, she could feel them, but that was the only part of herself still in motion.
She forced her mouth to work. “You can’t mean that.”
“It’s true, Katmer. By Allah and the Prophet, I swear we’ve done everything we can. The finances office don’t even have any record of the officers they sent to arrest him.”
“They sent officers?” Al Shei gripped the edge of the board. “There were people? You saw them?”
Ruqaiyya nodded. “I was there. There were two men. Uncle Ahmet inspected their credentials. They stood in the communications room while Asil copied the transaction records they wanted to a portable board, and then they took him to a monorail car while Uncle Ahmet called three different lawyers to get down to the financial investigations office to meet them. They did, but Asil had never arrived. There was no record of anyone being sent out to get him.” She leaned forward. “Uncle Ahmet is in Geneva now, reporting the incident and pulling in every favor he’s got owing. He’ll find him, Katmer. All will be right yet. Just come home as soon as you can, Sister. He’ll surely be back by the time you get here.”
“Yes,” Al Shei heard herself say. “By the time I get there, certainly. Uncle Ahmet would not permit this to go on any longer.” She reached out and shut the line down.
She got up, opened the door on the privacy booth, and left it open. She walked through the bank hatchway, across the width of three cans and up forty-five levels to the berth holding the Pasadena, without seeing anything that she passed.
Katmer, Asil’s vanished. We can’t find him anywhere.
She knew what had happened. He’d been taken by the AIs. There was no one else who could do this. Botched computer records, unidentifiable people. Curran had him, or the Fools had him. One side or the other.
And she had thrown her one source of information off her ship.
Her eyes managed to focus on what was in front of her. She was in her own cabin. For a moment, she wondered how she’d gotten there.
“Intercom to Houston,” she said, sitting carefully down in her desk chair.
“Here,” his voice came back. “What’s the…”
She didn’t let him finish. “Lipinski, I need you to do a station search for me. I need you to find out where Evelyn Dobbs is. Right now, do you understand? Right now.”
“Aye-aye, Engine,” he answered. There was a puzzled note in his voice. “Are you…”
“Right now!” The force of her shout pulled her halfway out of her chair.
“Yes, Al Shei. Intercom to close.”
Al Shei collapsed back into the chair. Her shout was rang painfully in her ears.
With fumbling hands, she opened the drawer beside the desk and drew out the day book recorder. She touched the power key.
“Oh, Beloved, I’ve just heard what happened from ‘Qai,” she whispered into the mike. “I’m sure it’ll be all right. Uncle Ahmet is in Geneva and I’ll be on my way towards home tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll be all right. I love you, Asil and when you hear this… “ her voice faltered. “When you hear this…”
Something inside her soul snapped in two. The recorder slipped from her fingers. It bounced gently against the floor before it came to rest at her feet. Al Shei dropped her head into her hands and, slowly, hoarsely, she began to cry.
Where are you, Beloved? WHERE ARE YOU!
Dobbs grazed against the sensor data from her body. She’d been in the network fourteen hours now and hadn’t felt a twinge. Her flesh-and-blood self lay naked on its bed, breathing, absorbing nutrients, and, despite being fed intravenously, probably needing to evacuate its bowels. Verence had promised to come by and show her how to use the waldos to attach the proper catheters so she wouldn’t end up with an ugly mess in case she wanted to get back inside the body.
For most of those fourteen hours Dobbs had been with Flemming, Curran and two others, named Tombe and Shiff. They had exchanged information on the bank network and looked for the most important junctions. Dobbs had suggested that, before the randomizer matrices were set off, they stage a guerilla raid on some of the main bank transmitters on the Earth’s surface. It would be risky because of the security and the diagnostics, but if only one or two AIs went in, and they moved quickly, maybe using viruses take out the diagnostics while they shredded the transmitter processes, it would be a crippling blow. If the Humans worked out that this was part of an organized attack, they would assume it was an attack against the actual transmission-reception hardware, not one against the data being transmitted. It would be that much longer before anyone looked for the true source of the chaos and got together diagnostic programs that had a chance of creating problems for the AIs.