“We are.” He touched the door open and bowed for me to go first. Out in the corridor he offered me his arm. A gentleman and a forger, I gathered.
We took a lift to a Mercati Boulevard lock, and walked the street arm in arm, a decorous couple considering that Spider kept glancing at my uniform as though I were not quite dressed for my part. We descended through the levels, and around G I became aware that Spider was … well, becoming aware himself.
“Anything wrong?” I asked him.
“No, what could be wrong?”
“You keep looking around. I thought I was the tourist.”
“Ah, well,” said Spider. Then he said, “There are some people down here I’d be better off not meeting.”
His arm, still in mine, seemed to have stiffened to wood. I said, “Do you go through this every time you come down past G?”
“Go through what?” asked Spider.
“Spider, if it makes a difference—” I lowered my voice. “—I’m armed. I know I’m not supposed to be—”
“So am I.” His voice was curt, as though he were not quite comfortable with having a lady he was escorting tell him that she was armed. I did think that he needed to know, however, so I added, “It’s a Wender-three, relatively accurate over fifty meters, and then it dissipates, so it’s perfectly safe—”
“All right, all right.” After a minute he said, “Thank you.”
We began climbing a walkway to a side street. I said, “If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”
“So,” said Spider, “you’re a Graykey.”
I shut up.
He said, “Fascinating subject, the Graykey. Do you know there was another Graykey on the Diamond about a hundred years ago?”
“Eighty,” I said under my breath. I was looking down at my feet by then.
We reached a door, and Spider stopped. There was no bell or alert light visible; it looked as though the quarters on this street had once been storage rooms. A lot of places below G were like that. Spider knocked. He said, “Are you here on your own, or does Tal have your contract?”
“I’m here for my own purposes,” I stated. This was a true statement as far as it went.
Spider opened his mouth as though to say something else, but then the door swung wide and a tall, stocky man grabbed Spider in a bear hug that made me feel for a weapon before I saw it was friendly. “Spider! Sweetheart! Where the hell have you been? It’s been months!” He pulled Spider inside as they balanced precariously, both grinning, though Spider with more embarrassment.
“Is this your friend?” asked the stocky man.
“Yes,” said Spider when he could talk. “Keylinn Gray, this is Howard Talmadge Diamond—Falstaff of yesterday.”
“Miss Gray,” said Howard Talmadge, bowing. He took my hand and kissed it with due ceremony; not a practice followed among the commoners of the Three Cities.
“Heavens,” I murmured, feeling the tingle up my arm. They usually called me “Tech Gray” here, but I wasn’t about to correct him.
The room, I saw when I could look around, was pleasant and comfortable, but clearly makeshift. Crates served as tables, with brightly patterned cloths thrown over them; lamps had been brought in, for the overhead lighting was scarce—lamps with sculptured bases and colored tops. It was all of a piece with the manual door; a jerry-built sort of nest, upgraded to live better than it was meant to.
And there, in a dark comer, was someone else. A man sitting in a chair with wheels, I’d never seen such a thing—another conceit of furniture design? He wheeled himself out and extended a hand. “Miss Gray,” he said, and I placed my hand in his. He kissed it also, only bowing his head, for he did not stand up.
His kiss, like his appearance, was less dramatic than Howard Talmadge’s; he was thinner and somewhat older, and right now he looked more tired.
Spider said, “Keylinn, this is Dominick Potiyevsky.”
“Hello, Mr. Potyevsky.” This was the polite way to meet nonranked civilians, Spider had said.
Spider tossed Howard Talmadge a package wrapped in paper. “I brought a present,” he said, and flopped down in a chair.
Talmadge sighed in relief. “Thanks, my friend; we’ve been waiting.” He carried the package to Dominick Potyevsky and dropped it in his lap. “You’re excused,” he said firmly to Mr. Potyevsky, and the latter smiled and wheeled away into a back room.
He didn’t do that as though he were playing, I thought abruptly. It was more as if he really couldn’t walk— where had I come, to the dark ages? And even if the loss of mobility were temporary—a chair with wheels? What was the point? He’d never make it down the walkway.
Talmadge said, “It’s been getting worse. I appreciate this, Spider, I wish you’d let us do something for you.”
“Please,” said Spider, pushing away with his hands while his feet did a little dance of embarrassment.
Talmadge turned his smile on me. “So this is the young lady who likes historicals. How did you enjoy our Henry-four?”
“Very much. Especially the fat fellow with the beard.”
His smile was eloquent; now it suggested that if I were lying, it was a charming thing to do. “Have you seen much Shakespeare?”
“We do some at home. Tell me, do you always do it that way? Traditional format?”
“In general. Unmodified, with subtitles, that’s the usual—but then, there are a lot of people who can’t read, you’d be surprised; so we slip in a modified version every few years for them. More fun, in some ways—the laugh comes when you speak the line, and not when the titles come up .., they’re not always timed just so. Especially if the title-runner’s been at the bottle too early.” He smiled and added in a booming voice, “One ha’penny of bread to this intolerable deal of sack.” He said it in Oldstyle English, and Spider looked left out. I laughed. “A linguistic sophisticate, I see. Where’s ‘home,’ if I may ask, Miss Gray?”
“I’d prefer to be called Keylinn, if that’s all
