Most office buildings had conference rooms. So did this one, but they were called interrogation rooms instead. Kwame Daniels opened the door to one of them. Annette went in. In a loud, formal voice—everything that happened in there went onto video—he said, "Miss Klein, I would like to ask you if you recognize any of the persons seated here."
She'd cleaned up. She wore stylish business clothes instead of the outfit the manor had given to its slaves. Her blond hair didn't hang limp alongside her head any more. It rose in fancy curls. She had makeup on now. Without a doubt, though, she was Birigida, or whatever her real name was.
And, without a doubt, the man sitting beside her was a lawyer.
Annette sighed. "Yes, I recognize the woman."
"Thank you," the detective said. "And where did you last see Bridget Mallory?"
"Is that her name? I never knew what it was," Annette said.
"The last place I saw her was a manor that used slaves. It was in Madrid, or what's Madrid here. I don't know what alternate it's in. I don't think it's one that Crosstime Traffic visits, but I can't prove that."
"This is all a put-up job," the lawyer said. "If this person was a slave at this place, and if my client was a slave there— which she does not admit, not at all—what's the difference between them? That this person has bought immunity from prosecution by testifying against my client? That won't play well with a jury. We've seen it too often."
Kwame Daniels smiled a most unpleasant smile. "There is another difference, Mr. Nguyen." He turned to Annette. "Do you want to tell him, Miss Klein, or shall I?"
"I'll do it," Annette said. "I was a slave there because I got captured and kidnapped while I was working for Crosstime Traffic. The raiders didn't know I was from the home timeline. They took me to Madrid in that alternate, and the man who bought me took me to the manor I talked about. Miss, uh, Mallory was a slave there because she, uh, volunteered."
Bridget Mallory turned white, or possibly green. Under the harsh fluorescents in the ceiling, it was hard to tell. Detective Daniels threw back his head and laughed. "How do you think a jury'll like that, Sam?"
It didn't faze Sam Nguyen. Lawyers got paid for not letting things faze them. "What you say here and what you say in court under oath may be two different things," he said. "Besides, while it is illegal to make other people into slaves, it is not illegal to be made into a slave."
Annette had wondered about that. Wanting to be a slave might be sick and twisted and disgusting. Was it against the law? She had no idea. Up till a few months ago, she'd never imagined she would need to worry about it.
"Nobody's talking about charging her with being a slave, Mr. Nguyen," Daniels said. Annette wondered what he thought of this. His ancestors hadn't wanted to be slaves, but they got brought to America anyway. He went on, "But she dealt with people who took slaves. She paid money to people who took slaves. She worked with people who were slaves and didn't pay for the privilege. She knew they were forced into slavery, too. And she didn't say a word about any of it till we found out about it from Miss Klein here. How many different conspiracy charges do you think will stick?"
"You can bring conspiracy charges. Whether you can convict . . . You don't know how a jury will decide any more than I do." Nguyen was a cool customer. Whatever Bridget Mallory paid him, he earned his money.
But she turned and spoke to him in a low voice. Annette couldn't make out what she said, but he shook his head. She spoke again, more insistently. This time, Annette could hear her: "What will my name be worth after the reporters and the Net ghouls get their hands on this? Let's make the best deal we can. She was—"
Her lawyer held up a hand. "Whatever she was, you don't say it with the recorders running. You don't do anything with the recorders running till we have a deal. Got that?"
Bridget Mallory nodded. Annette hadn't dreamt she could sympathize with the blond woman, but she did. Her folks had had to sneak her to the airport in the wee small hours so she could go to Seattle. Too many stories had already said too much about what happened to her while she was a slave. Too much of what those stories said wasn't even slightly true. She'd had her picture splashed all over the Net, TV, and the papers. She didn't like being recognized wherever she went.
Maybe it was just as well she wouldn't be starting college for a while. By the time she did, maybe some of the fuss would die down. She didn't want people staring at her all the time. It would make her feel like a freak.
She sighed. It was probably too late to worry about that. People were going to recognize her. Aren't you the one who . . . ? She wondered if she'd be hearing that for the rest of her life. Maybe she would, because she was the one who. . . .
"You will be cooperating with us, then, Ms. Mallory?" Daniels asked.
Sam Nguyen started to say something, but she gestured for him to stop. She nodded. "Yes," she said. She sounded tired.
"All right, then," the detective said. "If you are, you'll need to talk to the people above me. We'll get that started now, if you don't mind." Bridget Mallory nodded again. Her lawyer looked unhappy. Annette understood why. Daniels wasn't giving her a chance for second thoughts. Once she started talking, turning back would be next to impossible.
"Please come with me, then," Kwame Daniels said. The blond woman and the lawyer got up. Before the detective led them away, he turned to Annette. "Wait right here, please. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Okay," Annette said. The door closed behind the others. She didn't like being alone in the interrogation room. It felt almost as lonely as waking up in slavery every morning. This wouldn't last long, though. That. . . That might have lasted forever.
When Detective Daniels came back, he was grinning. "I hoped putting her face-to-face with you would crack her," he said. "We get her testimony, we get your testimony, we get all the electronic evidence . . . They've recycled a lot of files, but they couldn't get rid of everything."
"It'll be an open-and-shut case as soon as they find the alternate where the manor is," Annette said.
Daniels shrugged. "You'd know more about that than I do. Not my line of work."
"Well, I didn't want this to be my line of work, either," Annette said. "You don't always get what you want, do you? Sometimes you just get what you get, and you have to make the best of it."
"Welcome to the world of grownups, Miss Klein," Daniels said soberly. "You'd be amazed how many people never figure that out. I deal with folks like that every day."
The slavers had thought they could get what they wanted and not have to pay for it. If they hadn't bought somebody from the home timeline, they would have been right. Oh, sooner or later they probably would have made another mistake—how could they help it? But it might not have happened for years.
Or it might not have happened at all. To this day, nobody knew who nuked Damascus in 2033. The Israelis? The Iraqis? The Turks? Rebels inside Syria? Some people even said the USA did it, though the bomb didn't come in on a missile. No one had ever claimed responsibility. If there were any survivors from the people who did it, they'd be old men and women now. Hard to imagine keeping quiet for more than sixty years, but they had— unless they were all radioactive dust.
Detective Daniels broke in on her thoughts. "I'll take you to your hotel now, if you want me to."
"Yes, please," she said.
"If I were you, I'd order room service and disconnect the phone," he said. "You've got to figure the reporters will work out who you are and where you're staying."
"I was hoping they didn't know I was here," Annette said in dismay.
"Well, it's a free country. You can hope whatever you want to," Daniels answered. "That doesn't mean you'll get it."