The moment he was clear, sweating and panting from the exertion, Arran pushed down the trap. Now an innocent–looking lighting fixture hung over the shower again.
"Why did you unlock the door!" she whispered angrily.
"Because a bathroom door locked from the inside with nobody there is an advertisement that there's another way out."
Worklights here and there provided a dim light, and soon they could both see — a little. The crawlspace they were in was only a meter and a half high — neither of them could stand up. Structural beams were hard to tell from air conduits, wiring frames, and exhaust shafts. Hop leaned over from the catwalk they were sitting on and pushing on a ceiling tile. It gave easily.
"We can only walk on beams and catwalks," he said.
"Wonderful. Do you know your way around in here?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Not right here, anyway. Capitol isn't the same anywhere. Nobody planned the remodeling over the last few thousand years. Good luck to us. Now will you tell me who the hell we're running from?"
She nodded. But Hop noticed that she was breathing too heavily, and her hands were trembling. She didn't say anything.
"What's wrong?"
She just shook her head and started to cry. Hop had seen her cry several times before, in pain, for effect, a play for sympathy. But this looked like real honest–to–goodness little–girl tears. Nothing controlled. She wasn't even beautiful or seductive as she cried. Her fans would be shocked. Hop reached over and touched her arm. A little human contact, he decided, might help. It didn't. She recoiled, turned away from him.
"Go ahead and cry, then," he said. "Just do it quietly."
"I am, dammit," she said. "Farl is dead."
And that explained it, at least well enough for Hop, well enough for right now. Farl Baak was the one relationship that Arran Handully had never looped; therefore it wasn't for sale to the public; therefore it must be real. And now he was dead, and her grief was also real.
"I'm sorry," Hop said.
She nodded, acknowledging his sympathy, and began to get control of herself. "Sorry," she finally said. "Sometimes things actually happen that aren't in the day's scenario,"
"Yeah. I'll spill a few tears for you sometime and we'll be even."
"Don't hurry," she said, and managed a faint smile. "From now on I promise to cope. I don't know where to go now, you know. I knew how to get here, but from here I have no idea."
"Who killed him?"
"A man, just one of the guards. I didn't know him. I went to watch the — questioning. With the probe. I couldn't believe it, Hop. Jazz Worthing lasted an hour and a half. No one has lasted fifteen minutes. An hour and a half. It was terrible. Like waiting for a deal to close in the other room, you know at first that it'll be simple, but when it takes longer, and longer, and longer, you begin to think that it's gone sour, that it'll never happen."
"But he finally broke?" Hop asked, not sure whether he was glad that Jazz had held out so long (the bastard traitor) or sick that he had suffered so much (I like him anyway, dammit).
"Yes. I was near the door. That's why I'm alive. The moment he named the man, the cockles went off, just like that. Farl didn't have a chance. Dead on the spot. A few others, too. As if it had been planned."
"But who was it? Who did Jazz name?"
"Didn't I tell you? Shimon Rapth."
Hop didn't know him, but remembered —"Hey, wasn't he the guy who was helping Baak figure all this stuff out?"
She nodded, and a flash of hatred crossed her face. "Looks like he was just trying to find out who his opposition would be. The guards were all his men, of course. They'll be rounding up the whole group, there are at least a hundred of us, maybe more —"
"You mean Jazz Worthing was working for this Shimon Rapth?"
"Looks like it, doesn't it?"
"But — that's impossible, I never even heard of him before. And why would he let them put Jazz through the probe, drive him insane like that —"
She shrugged. "Get rid of a possible future competitor, maybe. I don't know. I just ran."
"Why'd you come to me?"
"Farl was dead. I didn't trust anybody else in the group. I could have come here alone, I guess."
"I'm glad you didn't," Hop said. And then he got up — as far as he could, since the floor of the room above kept him from standing straight. He took Arran's hand. "Hang on. Let's not get separated in the dark. But if I suddenly fall down a hole, let go."
"Where are we going?"
"I told you, I don't know this area. I was born and raised — if you can call it raising — in the bottom levels of the stinkingest borough of Orem district, and we'd go into the crawlspace all the time. The only way we could stay out of the reach of the constables and Mother's Little Boys."
"Then there might be criminals here?"
"In this district?" Hop chuckled as they walked gingerly along the catwalk. "In this district all we'll meet is dust. Every district is absolutely sealed off from every other. Including the crawlspace."
"Oh," she said. They came to a ladder. Hop leaned on it, looked up. He could see light above — dim, but light.
"Up," he said. "You first."
She started to climb. When they got to the next level up, she stopped.
"What're you stopping for?" he asked.
"Don't we get off here?"
"No, of course not. Do you think we'd ditch them by just changing floors? If they're serious about rounding up everybody from your little group, they'll seal off this whole district. Check anybody coming and going, and spot you the first time you use your credit card. We've got to get out of this district."
"But you said they were all sealed off —"
"Just keep climbing. There's a way out, and it's up. This ladder's part of the exhaust system, and the exhaust system leads to the surface."
"And what then?"
"Maybe we'll think of something on the way."
And so they climbed. Following the exhaust vents meant hours of squeezing through narrow spaces, climbing ladders to dizzying heights before the great vents leveled off again, bellying through inches of dust in foot–high crawlspace. They were filthy and exhausted a few minutes after they started. They stopped three times to rest. Once they stayed long enough to sleep. And then they came to a place where huge steel girders stretched above them, and the vents plunged suddenly upward to a heavily girdered metal ceiling. For the first time, except on the ladders, they could stand up straight.
Arran looked around. The light was still dim, but it was obvious the space around them was huge — much larger than any hall they had ever been in, and interrupted only by the rising vents and the huge steel shafts that apparently supported the roof.
"It looks very strong," Arran said.
"You should see it where the ships cradle. Makes this look like foil."
"What's outside?"
"We'll soon see," Hop said. "Better lie down and rest again. The next part's going to be hard."
"As if it had been easy up to now," Arran said, lying down willingly enough. They lay on a large vent, and the rush of air pouring through it made the surface vibrate. "I heard," Arran said, after a while, "that you can't breathe the air out there."
"A myth," said Hop. "You can breathe it. You just can't breathe it for very long."
"What'll we do?"
"We'll go along here until we find the end of the district. The sealed–off wall. Then we'll go up the nearest vent and try to get across to a vent on the other side of the barrier. The air isn't really dangerous. The real danger is the sun."