“That’s just the first installment,” Galler said, “and the inquiries are scattered. The rest will be coming in over the next few hours.”
Heikki nodded absently, scanning the closely printed listings. It was more secure to do things that way, even if it did make her job more tedious. Still reading, she felt her way to the couch and settled herself there, reaching into her belt for a marker.
“You’re welcome,” Galler said, with a sweetness that matched her own. Heikki glanced up, momentarily abashed, but managed a shrug.
It took her most of the day to work her way through page after page of freight listings. Most were obviously unsuitable—the cargo was either too valuable not to be carrying the most advanced electronic seals as well as the standard railroad locks, or carried loose, like grain or seed crystal, or toxic enough to make riding with it impossible. By the end of the day, however, she had marked a dozen or so cargos that might be suitable, and flipped back through the pages to study them more closely. Two she eliminated at once: both left the station just after a shift change point, when the loaders would be entirely too alert. Three more were crossed off when she noticed that the shipper was either Tremoth itself or one of its subsidiaries. Another five were hard-pack cargo, each item packed in its own individual inner crate. Possible, she thought, but hardly comfortable. Still, with any luck that sort of sacrifice won’t be necessary.
She sighed, scanning the remaining listings. All were acceptable, and she lacked the experience that would help her pick out the most likely. Two left at mid-shift, the other three closer to the end of the time: that’s as good a way as any to decide, she thought, and flipped through the pages again. One, bolt fabric on the last leg of its journey from the mills on Jericho to manufacturers on the Loop, was scheduled to load and leave at about the time the loaders should be taking their mandated break. If I know dockers, Heikki thought, they’ll see the point in hell before they’ll give up one nanosecond of their personal time. That’s the run we want.
“Galler?”
“Yes?” Her brother appeared with an alacrity that belied his bored tone of voice.
“I think I’ve got one.” Heikki held out the sheaf of papers, folded now so that the freight run she had chosen lay at the top. “This is what we want.”
Galler took the pages from her, studied it dubiously. “If you say so.”
I do say so, Heikki thought. She said, “It leaves tonight, too, late but not so late we won’t have a crowd to cover us going into the Station Axis.”
“Well and good,” Galler said, “but what do we do once we get there?”
Heikki grinned, enjoying her brother’s uneasiness. “Leave that to me.”
They left for the Station Axis toward the end of the third shift, when the mid-class shopkeepers were closing down their operations and the mainline data clerks were ending their eight-hour day. They fit in well with the slow-moving crowds, Heikki thought, boarding the omnitram, last of three, that would take them into the lower levels of the Axis. Her pale overvest and shift matched the clothes worn by a dozen other women sitting on the tram’s lower deck, and Galler’s moderately tailored suit did nothing to call attention to them. Even so, it took all of Heikki’s concentration not to glance around at every stop, scanning for securitrons. She fingered the toolkit Galler had tucked into her pocket, and hoped it would be more use than her knife. At her side, Galler bent over a lapscreen, data lens to his eye as though busy with last minute work. At the second stop, Heikki frowned, and then leaned over to murmur in his ear, “It would be more convincing if you turned it on.”
Galler looked up, startled, then blushed deeply. He flicked a switch, and the status light came on in the machine’s side panel; he adjusted the screen image with a sweep of his hand, and returned to his apparent industry. Heikki controlled the desire to giggle, and stared instead out the tram’s nearest window.
The crowd changed as the tram drew closer to the Station Axis, partygoers, amateur and professional alike, mingling with higher-status businessmen on their way to the trains. There were still enough midrange workers to hide them, Heikki thought, and saw Galler frown.
She glanced over her shoulder involuntarily, and saw nothing, but her brother was still frowning. She jostled him deliberately then, and leaned forward as if to apologize.
“What’s wrong?”
Galler made a face. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew, that’s all.”
I hope you’re wrong, Heikki thought, and leaned back in her seat. In spite of her best intentions, she could not keep her eyes from roaming around the car, scanning each unfamiliar face for some sign of recognition. She saw none, and relaxed against the hard plastic just as Galler said softly, “No.”
Heikki looked at him, and he shrugged slightly, head down as though he were concentrating on his lapscreen.
“It is him.”
“Has he seen you—recognized you?”
“I don’t know.” The frustration in Galler’s voice was barely under control. “I don’t—I can’t tell.”
“So pretend you don’t see him,” Heikki said, and wished with all her heart that she had more effectual advice to give.
Then, at the next-to-last stop, Galler gave a sigh of relief, and Heikki looked sideways past him to see a tall man with thinning hair making his way down the tram’s narrow steps. “Is that him?” she asked, and Galler nodded.
“So he didn’t see you,” Heikki said, and in that moment the stranger glanced back toward them, his eyes fixing briefly on Galler before he turned away and lost himself in the crowd. Or did he? she wondered, and said aloud, “Who was he?”
“Another liaison for Tremoth,” Galler answered, and Heikki made a face.
“So we have to assume he did see you. What then?”
Galler shrugged, annoyed, and Heikki waved the question away. Of course he couldn’t answer, not in this crowd, she thought, and anyway I don’t really need him to tell me. There’s not a lot of places we could be going on this tram except the Station Axis, so we have to assume the securitrons will be alerted when we get there. And that means following plan two. Wonderful. I just hope half of what Sten said—was it only three days ago?— was true.
The tram slowed, grinding to a halt against the worn bumpers of the lower Axis platform. This was the lower-class section of the Station, the transit platforms that served the employees of the railroad and of the companies that served it. Most of the people filing off the tram would be night clerks, Heikki thought, handling freight. The others would be heading for the cheap but trendy—and often dangerous—clubs that lay below the main Axis, or simply going on a walk through the entrance plaza, dreaming of wealth they would almost certainly never achieve. She let herself be carried along with the crowd toward the wall of transluscent mosaic that formed the exit, as always a little surprised by the sameness of the people here and on all the other Exchange Points. She was aware that Galler was close behind her, his lapscreen closed and slung now over one shoulder, but she did not look back until they had passed through the automatic doors into the Rotunda.
Overhead, an immense lens of pressure-tested triglass admitted light from the artificial strip-suns of the entrance plaza, its color transmuted by the lens to an oddly amber shade. It was a stormy color, vaguely unnerving, and people did not linger in its circle, pausing only long enough to find their direction on any one of the dozen display kiosks before setting off decisively. Heikki stopped just outside the ring of strongest light, pretending to study a kiosk displaying a gaudy series of nightclub advertisements, and waited for Galler to join her.
“Such taste and discernment,” her brother’s voice said at her shoulder, and Heikki did not bother to hide her grin.
“I thought one of them might be to your taste.”
“No, thank you,” Galler answered, with austerity. “Now what?”
Heikki glanced up toward the triglass lens, feeling the familiar vertigo as its shape distorted distance as well as light, giving the illusion of far more height than could possibly be there, then looked away. “Follow me.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned toward a cluster of unnumbered corridors that led off to the right.
“Those are employee access corridors,” Galler said uneasily, and held his lapscreen more tightly.
“I know,” Heikki answered, with what she thought was commendable nonchalance. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her vest, however, loosening the plastic knife in its sheath. The back corridors of any train station were always dangerous, filled as they were with any station’s least skilled, and most exploited, workers; anyone who wasn’t part of one of the rail unions was considered fair game. “If your friend saw you,” she said
