paused at a corner, then took up a position against one wall. Kendi moved out of the people stream to observe him.
Sejal underwent a minor transformation at the corner. He stood straighter and a look of cool indifference dropped onto his face. A slight smile stole across his lips, and he hooked a thumb in his pocket. Kendi furrowed his brow and halted between two stalls. What did Sejal do on the corner all day? And what had the goons in the alley been after him for? Wasn’t Sejal afraid they’d come back?
Most of the passers-by ignored Sejal, as he ignored them. But finally a man who looked to be in his late forties approached Sejal. They conversed at length, and Kendi’s heavy stomach tightened. This was how the encounter in the alley got its start. This time, however, Kendi didn’t see any heavies moving in.
Sejal and the man walked up the street together and Kendi followed, more curious than ever. Eventually the pair entered a seedy building Kendi recognized as a cheap hotel. Kendi, in fact, had brought rent boys here to establish underworld “credentials,” and the place rented rooms by the hour for those who were so inclined.
The implications for Sejal’s presence there were obvious.
“He can’t,” Kendi whispered. But even as he said it, he knew Sejal could. It explained the too-small clothes and the time spent posturing at the corner. The alley goons must have been representatives from the local houses wanting to “discipline” a freelancer who was moving in on their territory. Kendi stared at the hotel in shock, wondering how he could have missed something so obvious. Why hadn’t Ara told him? He couldn’t imagine she didn’t know. Maybe she’d figured Kendi already knew about it or had forgotten to mention it after his arrest. A lot had happened and it may have slipped her mind.
Abruptly Kendi’s gorge rose, and he barely managed to make it to an open sewer grating before the contents of his stomach came up. The crowd made a hole around him but kept on with business.
After the nausea passed, Kendi hauled himself to his feet and managed to stagger to a spot on the sidewalk where he could watch the hotel. He still felt a little sick. He also felt a great deal of outrage.
Balance, he thought. Balance and moderation. Anger will not help here.
And why was he so angry? What was it to Kendi? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen this sort of thing before. He had paid for rent boys himself.
Yes, but they had been adults, consenting and willing. And they had been before Kendi’s arrest and his sentence to time in the Unity Kendi pushed the thoughts away. According to the Unity records Ben had conjured up, Sejal was sixteen, old enough to be considered an adult on many worlds. The man had not forced Sejal into the hotel, and Sejal was, presumably, being paid.
Still, it bothered him. He sat on the sidewalk and fidgeted. He was considering seeing if a nearby stall owner would sell him something to take the sour vomit taste out of his mouth when Sejal’s client emerged from the hotel. Kendi blinked and checked the time on his ocular implant. Only thirteen minutes had passed.
That was fast, he thought. Most people want to take their time with Kendi’s stomach abruptly tightened. What if the man was one of those sick monsters who got his erotic kicks out of strangling or stabbing people? What if Sejal was lying dead or injured in that hotel room?
Kendi was scrambling to his feet when Sejal emerged from the hotel. As Kendi watched, Sejal took up his customary position on a nearby corner. Within moments, a woman approached and they went into the hotel together.
Business is good today, Kendi thought, suddenly cynical.
The woman left twenty minutes later with Sejal exiting a few minutes behind her. Sejal went back to the corner and, ten minutes after that, went back inside with another woman.
Okay, this is weird, Kendi thought, curiosity piqued despite his other emotions. What’s his game?
Six men and three woman in Unity guard uniforms pushed their way through the market crowd and stormed toward the hotel. Kendi bolted upright. It was a raid.
“Mother, a call’s coming in for you,” said Ben’s voice over the intercom. “It’s Chin Fen.”
Ara sighed and tapped the console in her quarters. “Thanks, Ben. Patch him through.”
A moment later, Fen’s wrinkled face appeared on the console screen. His expression showed suppressed glee. They exchanged greetings, and Ara was a bit surprised when Fen got straight to the point.
“I did some checking on Vidya and Sejal Dasa,” Fen told her. “And I thought you might like to know what I found.”
“Definitely,” Ara replied. “What’d you dig up?”
Fen briskly cleared his throat. His manner was no longer that of a lovelorn puppy. He had instead become an efficient colleague. Ara wondered briefly if he had realized that she didn’t find obsequiousness attractive and was now going for professionalism.
“Vidya Dasa doesn’t exist much of anywhere,” Fen said. “The earliest record I could find of her goes back only sixteen years ago, when she moved into her current apartment. She registered a birth certificate for one Sejal Dasa. That’s pretty much it-no tax forms, no employment listings, not even a shopping excursion. I only found a few sporadic mentionings of her in other people’s records-mostly her son’s-but no real information on her. She’s lived at her current address for sixteen years, she pays her rent on time, and that’s it.”
“Doesn’t she pay access charges for the network?” Ara asked. “What about utility bills?”
Fen shook his head. “Network and utilities are part of her rent. If she logs onto the nets, she does it with a pseudonym that I haven’t been able to track. I’d say she’s going out of her way to make herself as invisible as possible. And there’s more.”
“What?”
“I said there isn’t a record for her that goes back further than sixteen years. This isn’t too unusual. The Unity annexed Rust twenty-odd years ago, and a fair number of records were partially wiped or destroyed during the… transition.”
Nice way to put it, Ara thought sarcastically.
“However, Vidya is an unusual name, so I ran it. Twenty-eight women, counting your Vidya, are or have been registered on Rust with that name. All but five have continual records that go back before the Unity Annexation. One of those five is listed as no longer living on Rust. Two of the five are listed as dying several years after Vidya Dasa’s earliest record, so they aren’t her unless your Vidya kept up a double life. One more of the five Vidyas was sold into slavery and her current owner is still paying taxes on her. The fifth one-Vidya Vajhur-disappears from all records about seven months before Vidya Dasa pops up.” Fen leaned forward. “It looks like Vidya Vajhur decided to disappear and become Vidya Dasa. She kept her original first name, I think, in case she ran into someone who knew her. It’s easy to explain a change of last name, but a change of first name is more awkward.”
Ara flashed back to the time she ran across Chin Fen in the registry office and the relief she felt that Ben hadn’t changed her first name for her forged Unity paperwork. For a dreadful moment she thought Fen was on to her, but she quickly discarded the idea. If Fen knew she was a spy, he would have reported her by now.
“I can see that,” Ara said aloud. “Do you know why she changed her name, if that’s what she did?”
Fen hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said, reluctant to admit that he had failed on this point. “But I can tell you more about Vidya Vajhur. She’s a lot more interesting than Vidya Dasa.”
He paused, and Ara, restraining her impatience, gestured for him to continue.
“It’s going to cost you,” Fen said slyly.
Alarm bells went off in Ara’s head, but she kept her face calm. “Fen,” she said carefully, “I’m doing all right, but I’m not rich. I can probably come up with-”
“Not money,” Fen interrupted. “Time.”
“Time?”
“On a seapad leaf.” Fen grinned mischievously. “I’ll tell you what I found if you agree to one walk at sunset on a seapad leaf. Deal?”
Ara tapped her feet on the floor. She hadn’t expected this, not from Chin Fen. Did he have a backbone after all? Ara thought a moment. Fen was trying to order her around, and that really rankled. She didn’t really need Fen’s information at this point, now that she had what was probably Vidya’s real name. Ben could probably learn more than Fen had. On the other hand, using Fen to search didn’t carry a prison sentence, and it really wouldn’t do to waste what had turned out to be an excellent contact within Rust’s bureaucracy.
“Deal,” she said with a forced smile. “What’d you learn?”
Fen matched her smile. “Vidya Vajhur was a cattle farmer. She was actually born on Earth, though her
