As he was about to erase the plans and go in search of her, however, his eye was caught by a red-lined access route leading from the vast assembly hall, through a narrow sideway, and thence downward into blankness.
“Query,” he asked. “What’s here?” indicating the vacant space.
Files was silent. A red light flickered at the bottom of the Files access, one which told him he was about to receive assistance whether he wanted it or not. Abruptly, Jacent flicked off the access and left the room. He was barely in time. Behind him the unit came back on, and a querulous voice asked, “Who just used this access? Enter your personal code at once!”
Damned officious, interfering … Even in the library back on Heaven, he had sometimes had a librarian materialize out of nothing to ask why he wanted to know this, why he wanted to know that. It hardly ever used to happen, not when he was much younger, but in the last few years it had begun happening all the time! Files seemed to be getting very touchy about questions to do with certain things. Early times, mostly.
He stood hidden at one side of the doorway, peering up and down the corridor. In both directions monitor lights came on, waiting for him to pass, waiting to identify who was here, who might have used that access. There were just too damned many things one couldn’t do in Tolerance, and asking the question he had just asked was obviously another of them. So, if it was forbidden to ask what lay below the old barracks, what was going to happen to Metty when she got back to the Great Rotunda or wherever and started screaming for help? Hah? When she told someone, anyone where they’d all been? When she mentioned names? What was going to happen to all of them then?
Nearby was one of the almost invisible doors giving access to the servants hall. Jacent slipped through and up a twisting ramp. “I wasn’t involved,” he rehearsed as he wound his way back to his personal quarters via ways reserved for Frickian flunkeys, corridors which were not, so far as he knew, monitored at all because no one cared where servants were, where servants went. At least, not Frickian servants, because Frickians, as everyone knew, were incapable of conspiracy or rebellion. If he didn’t let Files see him leaving the area, Files wouldn’t know who had asked that particular question.
Of course, this meant he couldn’t offer to help Metty. If he told her, then Files would know who’d been looking up the plans. Perhaps … perhaps in a day or two, when things settled down. Jum wouldn’t starve in a day or two.
Where the servants hall intersected the corridor to his own rooms, he waited until a talkative crowd came by, then joined it as though he had been part of it all along, laughing, chatting, finding out where they’d all been for the last watch, what they’d been doing. If necessary, he’d say he had been with them. If asked. Only if asked.
When Metty had left the others, she had run toward the monitoring center, or rather toward the storage area that lay beneath it. The center itself was two levels above, and there were shift mates on duty today, people she knew, people who could raise the alarm and get a search party together. Asking for help would mean being found out, of course, which would mean some form of discipline, and she didn’t look forward to that! Nonetheless….
Jum was such a fool. He didn’t have sense enough to just be scared. He always had to put a brave face on everything, even when it was just stupid to do it. He’d been the same as a little boy, always facing up to bullies bigger than he was, always determined to fight or die. He’d probably gone back, by himself, needing to prove he could! Poor little muggins. That’s what their mother had always called him. Her little muggins. “Take care of him, Metty,” she said when Jum first came to Tolerance. “Take care of him.”
And what had she done but gone and lost him! Ahead of her she could see the paired red doors that led into one of the Files storage levels. Beyond them were the lifts, people, help.
Around her, the air shifted horribly, as it had done in the old barracks. She staggered, feeling an abrupt, agonizing pain in her hip. She put her hand on it and drew it away wet. Bloody.
Damn, she’d run into something.
The pain came again. Worse.
She looked down. Blood was flowing, soaking through her clothing, pouring out of her.
She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out but froth, pink froth.
She gasped. No air. No air at all. The pain was everywhere, in both hips, in her shoulders. Everything was going black.
She fell, sprawling, gurgling, flopping on the floor, unable to get up. Her right leg twitched, jerked, tore away at the hip, and moved away. She could see it moving away, like something tugged at the end of an invisible string. She tried to scream and couldn’t get it out. Then the left leg. She saw it go, tugging away. Then the arms, one at a time. Blood poured out. Her chest still heaved. Her mouth still moved. She kept trying to call someone, beg someone….
Then darkness came down and it was all gone.
Her body parts lay quietly on the dusty floor, like the parts of
