he said.
'Let me get ahead of her, then. Once you see me signal, do what we rehearsed.'
Harenn trotted through the light crowd of shoppers until she was well ahead of Mallory. Then she stopped to admire a display of blue roses in a florist shop window while she activated the camera in her ocular implant. A tap on her earpiece opened a communications link with the Poltergeist.
'I am recording visual,' Harenn said, 'but you should watch as well in case I miss something.'
Harenn turned and saw Bedj-ka among the people a little way to Mallory's left. Mallory herself was about ten meters away from Harenn, strolling casually in her direction. Harenn scratched her nose and Bedj-ka nodded. Abruptly, he dashed up to Mallory and all but slammed into her. She staggered. Bedj-ka tugged at Mallory's jacket, then with a laugh vanished into the crowd before she could react. Harenn watched carefully. Several other shoppers turned to stare as well.
Mallory regained her balance, her expression startled and surprised. Quickly she patted a tiny pouch on her belt, then she spun to see if she could spot Bedj-ka. A man approached and said something to Mallory, but she shook her head, refusing his apparent offer of help. Then she opened her shoulder bag, rummaged through it, and quickly checked her shopping bags and parcels. Apparently satisfied with what she found, she closed the bags again and, with a shake of her head, wandered off through the crowd again. Harenn moved to follow.
'The belt pouch?' Harenn said.
Harenn nodded in private agreement. If Mallory thought her pocket had been picked, she would check for her most important possessions first. Identification and cashcards were all easily deactivated and replaced, but the same could not be said of her computer key, and Mallory's instincts had made her check for it right away.
Mallory continued on her way, and Harenn continued to follow. Bedj-ka, she knew, would head back to the ship. It would be too risky to keep him at the shopping center in case Mallory spotted him and grew suspicious.
In quick succession, Mallory visited a toy store, two clothing stores, and a candy shop. She emerged from each, sometimes with more bags, sometimes not. The woman clearly liked to shop. Harenn was trying to figure out how this bit of information could work to her advantage when Mallory ducked into a department store. Harenn followed, able to remain inconspicuous in the larger store.
Mallory browsed aimlessly among various clothing displays. Harenn grew bored. The whole thing seemed pointless, and the longer Harenn continued to shadow the woman, the more likely it became that someone would notice. But then the continual guilt she felt about rescuing Bedj-ka first overtook her again, tightening her stomach and forcing her to keep at it.
The store smelled like fresh cloth, and the customers were all human. Mallory paused to try on a series of straw hats, none of which suited her coloring or clothing style, then ambled onward to look at a display of key rings. She held up one shaped like a little silver cat, then put it back.
Or seemed to.
Harenn blinked. Had she seen correctly? To the casual observer, it would appear that Mallory had put the key ring back on the display rack, but Harenn had been watching carefully and was sure she had seen Mallory palm the key ring. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later when Mallory strolled away and casually dropped a hand into her pocket. Harenn hurried to catch up, but paused long enough to check the key chain display. She saw no silver cats.
All traces of Harenn's boredom vanished. This was quite the fascinating the development. Had it been a unique event? Or had Mallory been shoplifting all day? Harenn suddenly wished she had risked following Mallory into some of the other shops.
Harenn's ocular implant flashed a message across her retina. Memory full, it said. To continue recording, please empty memory cache. Harenn had forgotten to turn off her implant's record function. Harenn did so and turned her attention back to Mallory.
Mallory headed back to the main mall area. Harenn held her breath as she left the store. Would security pounce on her? Most stores were outfitted with AI cameras that watched customers unceasingly and untiringly, looking for exactly this sort of behavior. One of them should have noticed Mallory's move and notified security. But Mallory calmly crossed the threshold into the mall. No alarms sounded, no security guards appeared on the scene. Harenn narrowed her eyes. How had she fooled them?
Harenn remained behind Mallory, hoping against hope that Mallory wasn't done for the day and planning to head back home. With a heavy sigh audible even at Harenn's distance, however, Mallory shifted her parcels around and entered a food court. She bought a plate of noodles and sat down to eat at one of the empty tables in the middle of the court, where food smells from a dozen different worlds and cultures clashed into a melange of scents both spicy and sweet. More humans strolled by. Aliens were few and far between in this sector, as the stores were geared primarily toward products humans used. Harenn waited patiently until Mallory finished eating. She rose, gathered her parcels, and continued on her way, Harenn trailing unobtrusively behind her.
Eventually, Mallory entered another clothing store, this one specializing in leather goods. The fine smell of suede wafted over Harenn, who pretended interest in a pair of boots while never once taking her eyes off Mallory.
Mallory looked at a leather coat, several belts, and a red leather corset before slipping a pair of gloves into her bags and striding nonchalantly toward the door. Again, no one raised a fuss as she exited. Harenn stayed right behind her, and a few minutes later got to see Mallory lift a small case of makeup in another department store.
Harenn's mind raced, examining possibilities and discarding them one by one until she settled on something she thought might work. She tapped her earpiece and called Ben.
'I know how to get Mallory's key,' she reported. 'But you must move quickly. Listen… '
Rafille Mallory emerged from the bookstore barely restraining a smug smile. Two bookdisks, recently liberated from their shelves, nestled in her jacket pocket. A touch of excitement thrilled through her. All day she had been lifting various objects from different stores and not once had she been caught. She had even paused in one store to chat with a security guard who remained completely unaware that Rafille was carrying several hundred chits worth of liberated goods. The idiot.
The sense of excitement continued, and Rafille allowed herself to grin for a moment. She needed this. Her job was deadly dull-overseeing security for a bunch of captured slaves was no big deal, occupying only a small part of her attention every day. There was no challenge there, not when Roon's indoctrination program was operating fully on schedule. Eventually, the Silent drones wouldn't want to leave, would believe that their true place in the universe was in Roon's little enclave. She didn't know if the Alphas believed Roon's claim about being able to enter the Dream without drugs. She didn't much care, actually. People were so gullible, so willing to believe in miracles, it had apparently never occurred to any of them to question what he said. Roon wasn't even Silent, and how would they react to that?
Rafille checked her pocket. The jammer was still there. Now that had been a challenge, coming up with a device that would temporarily disrupt from a distance the AI programs that watched the stores. A part of her felt like she was cheating, but she still had to avoid the store security guards, both the ones in uniform and the ones in plain clothes. And it was almost impossible to beat the AI programs. Rafille wanted a challenge, but she wasn't stupid about it.
She checked her ocular implant. Time to go home. Her feet were tired, and the packages were growing heavy. She was just turning away from the bookstore when heavy hands landed on her shoulders from behind.
'Excuse us, ma'am,' said an unfamiliar male voice, 'but I'm afraid we need to talk.'
Rafille's heart wrenched inside her chest. She wrenched her head around and stared at a man and a woman, both dressed in simple suits. The man was tall and thin, with dark skin. His companion was only slightly shorter, with blond hair and bland features. Each of them had a hand on her shoulders.
'What's this all about?' she gasped, though she was dread certain she already knew.
The man flashed an identification holo. 'Security, ma'am. You'll have to come with us now.'
'But I didn't do anything,' Rafille spluttered. Her heart was now beating fair to shake her blouse, and the bookdisks felt very heavy and conspicuous in her pocket.
'I don't think we should discuss that here, ma'am,' the woman said. 'If you'll please come with us?'
They had her dead to rights. A hundred different scenarios flashed through her head. She could make a break for it. She could throw the packages into their faces and then make a break for it. She could pretend to faint. She
