And finally there was the one she had hoped for, a courteous greeting from ser Tallen of the trade mission, recalling the night’s summons and leaving a number where he might be reached: the address was that of a city guest house…considering Newhope, probably the only guest house.
She keyed the same message to all but Tallen. NOTED. I AM PRESENTLY ARRANGING MY SCHEDULE. THANK YOU. R.S.M.-m.
To Tallen: AT TWO, MY RESIDENCE, A BRIEF MEETING. RAEN A SUL.
She cleared that with the police at the gate, lest there be misunderstandings; and reckoned that it would be relayed to ITAK proper.
And a brief call to ITAK registry, bypassing automatic processes: Max and Merry were legally transferred, even offered as a company courtesy; she declined the latter, and paid the modest valuation of the contracts.
Supply: she arranged that, through several local companies…ordered items from groceries to hardware in prodigious quantity, notwithstanding borderline shortages. Fruit, grain, and sugar were in unusual proportion on that list…distressing, to any curious ITAK agent who investigated.
To the nine neighbours of Executive Circle 4, the same message, sent under the serpent-sigil of the Family: TO MY NEIGHBOURS: WITH EXTREME REGRET I MUST STATE THAT AN ATTEMPT ON MY LIFE MAKES NECESSARY CERTAIN DEFENSIVE MEASURES. THIS CIRCLE MAY BE SUBJECT TO HAZARDOUS VISITORS AND ACTIONS ON THE PART OF MY AGENTS MAY NECESSITATE SUDDEN INCURSIONS INTO NEIGHBOURING RESIDENCES. I REFUSE RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVES AND PROPERTY UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. IF, HOWEVER, YOU WISH TO RELOCATE FOR THE DURATION OF MY STAY ON ISTRA, I SHALL BE HAPPY EITHER TO PURCHASE YOUR RESIDENCE OR TO RENT IT, WITH OR WITHOUT FURNISHINGS. I SHALL MEET ANY REASONABLE PRICE OR RENT WITHOUT ARGUMENT AND OFFER TO BEAR ALL EXPENSES OF TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT RELOCATION IN A COMPARABLE CIRCLE, PLUS 5,000 CREDITS GENERAL COMPENSATION FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. KONT’ RAEN A SUL HANT METH-MAREN, AT 47. POISE EXPECTED.
Then she settled back, shut her eyes and rested for a few moments…set herself forward then, having begun the sequences in her mind.
Kontrin-codes. Kontrin had set up worldcomp and intercomp, and maintained both. There were beta accesses, in a hierarchy of authorisations; there were many more reserved to Kontrin, and some restricted to specific Houses, to those who worked directly with specific aspects of the central computers at Alpha—with the trade banks or the labs or the other separate agencies, which met in Counciclass="underline" the democracy of the Family, the secrecy that kept certain functions for certain Houses, making Council necessary. Meth-marens had had somewhat to do with establishing Alphacomp in the very beginning—in matters of abstract theory and majat logic, the mathematics of the partitioned hive-mind: translation capacity, biocomp, and the dull mechanics of warehousing and hive-trade; but Ilit had had the abstract interest in economics.
Merely to enter worldcomp or even intercomp, and to touch information of beta’s private lives…any Kontrin could do that. Trade information was hardly more difficult, for any who knew the very simple codes: locations of foodstuffs, ships in port, licenses and applications for license. It was all very statistical and dull and few Kontrin without direct responsibility for a House’s affairs would bestir themselves to care what volume of grain went into a city.
She did. Hal Ilit had realised, perhaps, the extent of her theft from him; perhaps this shame as much as the other had prompted him to turn on her. Certainly it was shame that had prompted hire to try to deal with her on his own, a man never experienced in violence.
He had been in most regards, an excellent teacher.
And the Eln-Kests, according to the statistics on record, had not been lying:
There was a periodic clatter in the next room, the rattle of dishes. Jim was probably at the height of happiness, doing what his training prepared him to do. It irritated her. She ordinarily carried on some operations in her mind, and could not to her usual extent, whether through preoccupation or because of the extraneous noise: she posted them to the auxiliary screens and checked them visually.
The rattle of dishes stopped. There was silence for a time. Then it began again, this time the moving of chairs and objects, a great deal of pacing about between.
She threw down the stylus, swore, rose and stalked back to the main rooms. Jim was there, replacing a bit of sculpture on the reception hall table.
“The noise,” she said, “is bothering me. I’m trying to work.”
He waved a hand at the rooms about him, which were, she saw now, clean, dusted, well-ordered. Approve, his look asked, and killed all her anger. It was his whole reason for existence on the Jewel.
It was his whole reason for existence anywhere.
She let go her breath and shook her head.
“I beg pardon,” he said, in that always-subdued voice.
“Take a few hours off, will you?”
“Yes, sera.”
He made no move to go; he expected her to walk away, she realised, being the one with a place to go. She thought of him at breakfast, absolutely still, mental null…agony, she thought. It was what the Family had tried to do with her. She could not bear watching it.
“I’ve a deepstudy unit upstairs,” she said. “You know how to use it?”
“Yes, sera.”
“If you can’t remember, I’m going to make a tape that says nothing but Raen. Come on. Come upstairs. I’ll see whether you know what you’re doing with it.”
She led the way; he followed. In the bedroom she gestured at the closet where her baggage was stored, and he pulled the unit out, while she located the ’bin bottle in her cosmetics kit and shook out a single capsule.
He set it up properly, although he seemed puzzled by some of the details of it: units varied. She watched him attach the several leads, and those were right. She gave him the pill, and he swallowed it without water.
“Recreation,” she said, and sorted through the second, the brown case, that held the tapes. “You’re always free to use the unit. I wish you would, in fact. Any white tape is perfectly all right for you.” She looked at him, who sat waiting, looking at her, and reckoned that no azi was capable of going beyond instructions: she had never known one to, not even Lia. Psych-set. They simply could not. “You don’t touch the black ones. Understood? If I hand you a black one, that’s one thing, but not on your own. You follow that?”
“Yes,” he said.
They were black ones that she chose, Kontrin-made. The longest was an artistic piece, participant-drama: a little cultural improvement would not be amiss, she thought. And the short one was Istra. She put them in the slot. “You know this machine, do you? You understand the hazards? Make sure the repeat-function never adds up to more than two hours”
He nodded. His eyes were beginning to dilate with the drug. He was not ht for conversation—fumbled after the switch, in token of this. She pushed it for him.
There was delay enough for him to compose himself. He settled back, folded his arms across his belly, eyes glassy. Then the machine began to activate, and it was as if every nerve in his body were severed: the whole body went limp. It was time to leave; the machine was a nuisance without the drug, and she never liked to look at someone undergoing the process—it was not a particularly pretty sight, mouth slack, muscles occasionally twitching to suggestion. She double-checked the timer to be sure: there was a retreat function, that could be turned to suicide—dehydration, a slow death as pleasant or as terrible as the tape in question; it was not engaged, and she turned her back on him and left, closed the door on the unit and its human appendage.