A Few Good Men (35 page)

I’m paranoid, right? It’s a perfectly logical outcome of my upbringing. So I went all the way to the topmost level, then shimmied along the wall, in the deepest shadow, to the backmost parked flyer. And then I got out my burner, and was just pointing it carefully at the gen lock—no that won’t cause the flyer to spring open, but it allows you to get your fingers in there and jiggle it open, when the most imperious whisper this side of a Good Man’s council room sounded.

“Stop.”

I stopped. Not because the whisper was that commanding—all right, maybe that, a little—but because down here if I didn’t stop, I might well be stopped with a shot through the head.

Then I spun around, quickly, using my fast-movement ability, and pointed the burner.

“Oh, for the love of heaven, Lucius. Stop that, too.” Abigail was on broomback, about ten feet from me, and looking—somehow, despite goggles and hood—furious. She hadn’t put on her oxygen mask. But even so, how someone can look furious, when all you can see of her is a bit of pointed nose, a little pointed chin and a slightly too pressed together mouth, all of this ten feet away and in semidark, I don’t know. Then again, she did look like Ben, and I used to read Ben pretty well.

As I clumsily lowered the burner, she flew nearer, dismounted, clipped the broom to her belt, and glared up at me in a way that, had she been taller than I, would have had me cowering and covering my head. “Stupid,” she said.

It was a final pronouncement, and yet it had a sort of indulgent tone, like an adult’s comment on a toddler’s embarrassing and endearing mistake. “You can’t burn the genlock without killing the alarm first,” she said. “You’d have had the whole street on us in another minute.”

“These things are alarmed?” I said.

“How can you not know that?” She sounded exasperated.

“Uh. I’ve been away for fifteen years,” I said. Pointing out that even before that my flyer theft experience was somewhat limited seemed rather beside the point and also, in this particular circumstance, I suspected it would diminish me in her eyes. I mean, what was I supposed to say,
I used to pawn jewelry so I could buy stuff instead of stealing it?
It seemed downright paltry and cowardly of me, in retrospect.

I didn’t even want to imagine in what circumstances Sam Remy’s second oldest Daughter, brought up in a mansion, belonging to the upper crust of the seacities—even if her brother and sister had introduced her to their broomer lair—had stolen flyers.
Training, I imagine,
Ben said in my mind.
The Sons of Liberty are always prepared for a fast getaway, even if it involves a little violation of someone’s right to property. Well, stands to reason, when it’s a matter of life.

“Were you trained in flyer theft?” I asked.

Abigail gave me an odd look over her shoulder. Then nodded, and I didn’t seem to have the heart to tell her I wasn’t talking to her. Ben smirked in my mind, and I didn’t want to know. Between training weekends in the wilds of the continents and training in stealing flyers—and what more, targeted assassination?—it was no wonder he’d had so many
family weekends
. Or that he arrived back from them so exhausted. Had I been blind? The odd thing was that I’d never even suspected he was playing me false with another man, much less with a whole organization.

Abigail brought something out of her pocket that she touched to a very precise point outside the flyer. “Electronic disruptor,” she said. Then she pointed a burner at the lock and burned it, but instead of putting her finger in and tweaking the opening mechanism, she pulled some other gadget out. I didn’t dare assume that she was just afraid of putting her finger in there. I assumed she knew something I didn’t know—that perhaps the locks had changed markedly since the last time I’d had occasion to do this.

In fact, I waited till the door had been opened, and until she went in, before I tried to follow. Only to get unceremoniously pushed aside, as she carried out something that looked like a white ceramite box and set it on the ground as though it were fragile. Then she jumped into the flyer, and I just managed to jump in after her, before she sat behind the controls and pushed the door closing button.

“What makes you think you’re coming along?” she asked, glaring at me, as I squeezed myself into the too-small navigator seat and shut my seatbelt.

“What makes you think I’m not?” I said calmly.

“Because there isn’t evidence that Nat is at Coffers,” she said, as she took the flyer out, manually, on a perfectly smooth course out of the tunnel/alley and into the greater space, tilting slightly to aim at the space between the arms of the spider, and talking all the while, “and even if he is, we don’t know that they haven’t set a trap for us. And if they’ve set a trap for us, there is no reason for you to risk yourself.”

“There is every reason,” I said.

She took us through the spider, and I realized I’d been holding my breath, when I started breathing on the other side. And then
she
asked me the same personal question her father had asked me.

“You’re not too old to have your mouth washed with soap.”

She gave me a sideways look with lowered lashes. “That,” she said, “is hardly an answer.”

“That,” I answered in the same tone, “is none of your business, and besides it’s seriously unflattering to your brother. Is that the only reason anyone would want to rescue him?”

“No.” She seemed to think about it. “I have reasons to rescue him. There’s any number of people who have reason to rescue him. I just don’t see any reason why you’d be willing to risk yourself, unless—”

“No,” I said. “If you must have a plain answer, we’re not. I don’t even think he likes me. But then you’re being unflattering to me, if not to Nat. Why shouldn’t I want to rescue him? He’s saved my life at least twice, and probably more, at serious risk to himself. And he’s your father’s son, and I would prefer not to distress your father. And a million other reasons.”

“I see,” she said, and frowned as she turned forward. “So you’re saying it’s considerably more serious than that.”

I refused to rise to the bait, not least because I had not the slightest idea what she meant. If she meant my feelings for Nat were serious, then she’d missed the part where I didn’t even know if he liked me, and I sure as shooting didn’t know if I liked him. But if she meant my rescuing him was a serious endeavor, based on deep thought and moral beliefs, then she was right. Instead I said, “Do you even know where Coffers is? Do you have directions? And you’re missing the entire reason I wanted to come in alone. It was so that you and other people who have lives worth living wouldn’t get hurt or killed.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The horrible heartbreak of being healthy, wealthy and one of most powerful men in the world. Sure, you have nothing to look forward to. And of course I have directions. I’m young. I’m not mentally damaged.”

Which was a severe misestimation, if she thought she could lecture me in the way she had been without suffering any reprisal. But I didn’t know how to answer her. I couldn’t explain that I’d felt like I had nothing to live for, and that, in fact, I had deserved death for fifteen years. And I surely could not tell her that I didn’t expect to be wealthy or powerful by the end of this war we were about to start. Not if we won. And I hoped we won anyway.

Instead I stayed quiet, trying to think of a way to get rid of her, but I also couldn’t think of a way to do that safely. Oh, sure, I could highjack the flyer by main force, make her land and push her from it. But first subduing her would be nearly impossible without permanent damage. And second, if—as I suspected—Nat had been captured more because of his nearness to me than for his guilt in Max’s supposed death, then Abigail was at equal risk, wandering around the streets of some other seacity. And third, because the damn woman would probably steal a flyer, come after me, and probably get to Coffers before me and alone, when I couldn’t protect her.

After a while of flying, tensely, her hands clenched on the steering stick, her fingers hovering on the keyboard, she sighed and relaxed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a pretty rude question, though you know, all the servants think—” She gave every impression of biting her tongue. “And it was none of my business, but I was trying to . . . If you got mad at me, maybe you’d ask me to let you out and maybe . . .”

“And maybe you could go to the jail and get yourself killed alone?”

“This would be different from what you’re trying to do?”

I shook my head. “I’m bigger. I’m older, and I have more experience of prisons.”

She giggled. It was sudden, and I think like my impulses to laugh out of turn, completely unexpected. Then she shook her head. “Being locked in a cell for fourteen years doesn’t show you how to escape.” Then she looked contrite, almost immediately. “I’m sorry. But, I had training and weekends of exercising for war and experience of live fire.”

“Live fire?”

“Exercises, mostly. Our young people—”

“Your brother said young men.”

“All our young people, though it’s gender segregated,” she said. “We train for war. We always knew war would come.” She paused, and added, “If we were lucky.”

So, Ben had been going away for weekends to sleep on frozen ground and be burner-shot at and all the while I had no idea. I must have been the most oblivious young man in the world.

“But this is not war,” I said. “Not a frontal attack. I mean—what we’re about to do.”

“You do know,” she said, “that the Sons of Liberty . . . that is, you do know that we have engaged in these before, right? And that I have taken part in this kind of raid before?”

I didn’t. But I could believe her, watching her fly. “I take it you disabled the tracking mechanism on this and we’re not transmitting our location to every traffic control tower we pass?”

“Part of the reason to steal the flyer in Deep Under is that they don’t have those mechanisms in them. Think about it, stands to reason. They’re almost as illegal as illegal broomers. They don’t want their purchases or their errands traced.”

“And the ceramite box you took out?”

“Oh, that? Remote bomb. They could have blown us up once they’d figured out the flyer was missing.”

I started to think I wasn’t prepared for this. Or at least that she was more prepared than I was. But I’d be damned if I admitted it.

“I know where the entrance to the sewer is,” she said. “On the side scarp of the island. But we’ll have to park the flyer on the beach, and it might be discovered. In which case we’ll need other plans for escape.”

I grunted. There really wasn’t much else I could do. This woman had all the plans and everything under control, and all I could do was let her take charge. Fortunately I didn’t have to like it. Even more fortunately I was sure my meager talents would be requited somewhere along the line in some humble capacity.

Into Hell

Just before she hid the flyer behind an empty warehouse on the shores in Shangri-la, I asked her, “Did you follow me? Out of the lair?” Because even if we’d had the same idea at the same time it would take a marked coincidence for us to take the same direction out of the lair, let alone for us to end up on the same level and trying to steal the same flyer.

She nodded. “I was right behind you, though I was coming out on my own. But I saw you talk to John. He told us which way you’d gone. I only delayed to go back in and get your broom. Otherwise I’d have overtaken you earlier.”

Which was the first time I realized she had two brooms clipped to her belt. It just goes to show you how confused I’d been back in Deep Under, with her staring at me like that, and ordering me around.

Now, she stood up, unclipped my broom, handed it to me. “You’re going to need it,” she said. “The entrance to the sewer is not even underwater at high tide. The rest of the time it’s up there. And at any rate it’s on a sheer wall that ends in the sea.”

She pointed around from where we were.

The only way I can describe Shangri-la is as a ramshackle type of seacity. Most of the other seacities had been started as high-tech havens—places where the skilled and the productive went to hide from increasingly more dysfunctional states, which made skill and productivity impossible. For those who’ve read twentieth-century literature and happen to have the same tastes as Sam who sent me books in prison, they were all sort of a sea-based Galt’s Gulch. In fact, the Rainers’ city was called Galt, and I suspected it came from that.

But of course that wouldn’t be all. Tax laws weren’t the only laws to be evaded. A number of seacities had sprung up that specialized in less savory forms of freedom—those where all forms of prostitution or flesh trade were permitted, including those that would result in the death of one partner; those in which drugs even more dangerous than oblivium were made and consumed as a matter of course; those in which gambling and shady money operations were based; and those like Shangri-la, which provided all three in one big mess of lawlessness.

These seacities were mobile, propelled by motors beneath the waterline. Their erratic course would make it difficult for them to be tracked and caught when their activities became too obnoxious. And for almost a century they’d been the scourge of the seas, eventually becoming too obnoxious even for their laissez-faire sister seacities, which had joined in a league to take them down.

Most of those seacities had been destroyed, bombed into oblivion, their assets and their human population dispersed or obliterated. But not Shangri-la. It had somehow been claimed wholesale by Liberte, and it had been anchored permanently.

The prostitution business and the money laundering had been stopped, or at least sent underground, but the drug manufacturing continued at a blistering pace, under the aegis of St. Cyr. And it was distributed through Good Men channels throughout the other islands. Nominally illegal, the laws against drug production were enforced so erratically that drugs were everywhere and, of course, it allowed for population control and for discouraging or diverting the less conforming members of society. I suspected in a healthy society drug use would be less destructive, but in a society that destroyed its young, drugs of the more extreme kind became a way out of life.