Because cyberspace was a favorite hunting ground for the super-mashini of the Security Forces, they avoided electronic contact whenever possible. Instead, they had oaths, secret meetings, symbols. Their key symbol was the looped cross of ancient Egypt, thecrux ansata -the sign of life.
Kuli wore a crux on a cord around his neck; at meetings he took it out for all to see. The girl, Dyeva noted with amazement, had the symbol tattooed on the palm of one slender hand. Why didn’t the senior members of the cell force her to have it removed?
People had often told Dyeva that she had icewater in her veins. That wasn’t true: her emotions were intense, only deeply buried. Right now anger and alarm were stirring deep beneath her mask like face.
Did her life, to say nothing of the lives of trillions of human beings, depend on these amateurs, children?
The dark woman, who called herself Lata, brushed a hand across her brow and said, “The essential thing is to speed our visitor safely on her way. And I must tell all of you something I learned last night. The theft of the wormholer has been discovered and there have been arrests.”
“Arrests?”demanded Dian, in a scandalized tone. “Of someone Iknow?”
She seemed to think that the polizi had no right to arrest members of a secret organization merely because it was bent on annihilating the existing world.
“No,” sighed Lata. “Fortunately for you. That beast Kathmann and the polizi drugged and tortured both the guards and the people who were responsible for technical maintenance of the wormholer. Thus they learned that one of the scientists had been involved in the theft. Thank god, the device had already been turned over to another cell, and the poor man who talked didn’t know their names or where it is at present.”
The two young people seemed paralyzed. Zet was turning his head from side to side, looking at the furniture, the fresh fruit. Dyeva had no trouble reading his mind: theglupetz had suddenly realized that he could lose all this by playing at conspiracy. Some day, she thought, if he thinks about it long enough, he will realize that he may lose much more.
“I will go with you,” said Dyeva, rising and pointing at Lata, apparently the only one of the gathering with any sense. “You will conduct me. I must not stay here longer and endanger these heroes of humanity.”
Zet looked relieved at the news she’d soon be gone; Kuli and Dian were still absorbing the news of the arrests. He was stunned, she indignant.
“Oh, but the people who were tortured-they’re martyrs!” she exclaimed suddenly and burst into tears.
“Yes,” said Dyeva, “and by this time they are also corpses. Death is the reward the technicians of the Chamber hold out to their victims. I will be packed and gone in five minutes if you will lead me,” she said to Lata.
“Of course,” said the dark woman, and Dyeva hastened to the room where she had slept to gather her kit.
Later, in Lata’s hovercar, Dyeva asked her how she had come to join the movement.
“I despise this world,” Lata said quietly. “It’s a gutter of injustice and pain. Nothing will be lost if this world suddenly vanishes at the word of Lord Krishna. Of course, if we manage to undo the Troubles, success will cost us our own lives. That is the splendor of Crux. If our movement did not demand the ultimate sacrifice I would not have joined it.”
Another Old Believer, though Dyeva, only this time of the Hindu type. And I was brought up a Christ- worshipper, and the boy Kuli is a Buddhist. Are we all remnants and leftovers of a dead world? Is that why we wish to restore it? “What are you thinking?” asked Lata.
“Wondering why the movement contains so many Old Believers.”
“Oh, I think I know. It’s because we want to undo the death of our faiths. So many people simply stopped believing after the Troubles. They said to themselves, There is no God. Or, if there is and he allows this to happen, I do not care about him.”
Dyeva glanced at her curiously. They were entering the airspace above Ulanor and Lata paid frowning attention to the traffic until a beam picked up her car’s blackbox. For an instant Dyeva had a powerful urge to continue this conversation, to talk about things that had real meaning. Then she remembered that the less Lata knew about her, and she about Lata, the better for both of them.
“We all come to it for different reasons,” she said guardedly, and silence followed. The little car revolved above the Worldcity, bearing two women who hoped to change it into a phantasm that never had existed at all.
Stef and Dzhun were having breakfast in a teashop deep in the Clouds and Rain District. Half the customers seemed to recognize Dzhun, and she waved and blew kisses to them. She had scrubbed off her white working makeup and with it had gone her nighttime pretense of lotus delicacy and passivity.
She looked and was a tough young woman to whom life had not been kind.
“Wild turnover last night,” she said to a red-haired eunuch who had stopped by the table to shriek and fondle her. “I did ten guys.”
“Oh my dear,” said thesisi, “I do ten on my way to work.”
“Seems you’ve got some catching up to do,” Stef told Dzhun when thesisi had moved on.
“Oh, he’s such a bragger. And old, too. When I’m his age I’ll have my own house and instead of bragging about doing ten guys I’ll be doing one-the one I choose.”
“And that one will be me.”
“Only if you get rich,” said Dzhun candidly, buttering a bun. “I’m tired of being arobotchi, a working stiff.
I’ve got a senator on the string now, Stef, did I tell you? Soon you won’t be able to afford me at all.”
She dimpled as she always did when saying unpalatable things.
“Is that why I’m buying you breakfast?”
“Oh Stef, I’m just needling you. I love my poor friends, too. Look, why don’t you take me to Lake Bai for a week or two? Get a cabin. I won’t demand a villa. Not yet.”
“Unfortunately, I’m on a big case right now. One that might even save your life.”
Dzhun stopped eating and stared at him. “You’re telling the truth?”
“Believe it. When the payoff comes, it’ll be as big as the case. Then we’ll go to Bai. Get a villa, not a cabin.”
Stef spoke with the calm assurance he employed when he was in a state of total uncertainty. The investigation was dead in the water. The arrests had not led to the wormholer. IC still hadn’t come up with a make on Dyeva. Mashini were combing passenger lists of recent arrivals from the off worlds-voiceprints, retinographs, DNA samples-turning up nobody with a record, nobody who fit the profiles. Stef’s local contacts had nothing to offer.
“What’s it all about, Stef?” asked Dzhun.
“Never mind. The case is a be header. It’s nothing you want to know about, so don’t ask. It’s a security matter and it’d be a hell of a shame if the Darksiders came and carted off a butt like yours to the White Chamber.”
Their voices had fallen to whispers. Dzhun’s face was so close that Stef’s breath moved her long eyelashes. A delicate scent clung to her kimono, some nameless off world flower, and the drooping faux silk disclosed the roundness of her little breasts like pomegranates. Stef could have eaten her with a spoon.
“I won’t say anything,” she promised. “If anybody asks what you’re doing, I’ll say that you never tell me anything.”
Stef leaned back and sipped the bitter green tea he used to clear his head in the morning. Effortlessly, Dzhun put her whore’s persona on again, screaming and waving at a friend who had just entered the teashop. Towering over the crowd, the White Tiger of the Nile headed for their table.
She and Dzhun kissed and Selina sat down, nodding at Stef.
“Hell of a night,” she said to them and the world in general. “I did a dozen guys.”
“Oh, Selina,” said Dzhun. “Honey, I do a dozen on my way to work.”
Yamashita clapped his hands and bowed to announce himself to thefromazhi -the big cheeses. It was the morning meeting of the Secret Emergency Committee that had been formed to deal with the wormholer theft.
Yama’s boss, Oleary, Deputy Controller of the Lion Sector, grunted a welcome, adding, “You know these people, I’m sure.”
Considering that he was talking about the Solar System Controller, her deputy the Earth Controller, her Chief of Security, and Admiral Hrka of the Far Space Service, that was inadequate to say the least.
The SSC was Xian Xi-Qing, a small woman with a parchment face, tiny hands and dull gold and jade rings stacked two and three to a finger. She was famous for many things, her three husbands, her stable of male concubines, the ruthlessness and cleverness that had kept her alive and in power for decades.
She glared at Yama and demanded abruptly, “We’ve heard from Kathmann. At least he’s caught somebody.
