Carnival-SA (34 page)

“No,” Elena said. “The genetic engineering, though. If we could prove that, we wouldn’t even have to have her killed.”

“So all we have to do is find a genetic lab so well hidden nobody in Penthesilea knows where it is.”

“You’ve never had to find an illegal drug lab?” Elena said. “Somebody always knows. I just wish Lesa were here.”

“Out of danger?”

“To help find it. Security directorate is what she does.”

21

LESA KNEW HER WAY THROUGH THE BUSH. UNARMED, barefoot, injured, and clad in the rags of city clothes, she managed to stay ahead of the pursuit for almost twelve hours, through the afternoon rain and well into the evening of the long New Amazonian day, until the sounds of voices faded and the only man-made sound she heard was the occasional distant, echoing signal by gunfire, followed by a crescendo of animal complaint.

She regretted not having a bush knife most of all. A gun would have been nice, and it chafed not to have her honor at her hip, but a knife would have made travel infinitely easier. It also would have left a defined trail, of course, but crawling under still more thorny wire-plant, her scratched hands and forearms swelling with infection, she didn’t think she’d care. At least the tender redness was likely just her own skin flora; most New Amazonian bacteria didn’t like the taste of Earth meat any better than did the New Amazonian bugs.

Once the sun was up, she had managed a good bearing, though that wasn’t much use without a reference point. Then, for lack of options, she had headed east. If the Right Hand hadn’t brought her too far from Penthesilea, she’d find a coast in that direction. And if they’d transported her any distance—well, this looked like home jungle, and if it wasn’t, something was very likely to eat her before she starved. Unlike the “insects” and the “bacteria,” some of the larger New Amazonian life had absolutely no objection to the taste of mammal. And fexa were quite territorial.

In any case, it was bound to be a long walk.

At least she could entertain herself as she picked her way over borer-addled trunks and through drapes of waterlogged vines by trying to decide how she was going to explain to Vincent that she’d left Kusanagi-Jones behind.

The conscious edge of her brain wasn’t helping her anyway. What she needed was the inner animal, the instincts tuned to shifts of light and the cries of big-eyed, ringtailed treekats awakening for the night and the black-and-violet, four-winged Francisco’s macaws settling down in their roosts. She thought about fashioning weapons, but that would take time, and her advantage right now was in staying ahead of her pursuers—well-armed men who knew the lay of the land.

She did pick up a stout branch, green and springy. It had a gnawed, pointed gnarl at the base where it had been disarticulated by a treekat after the infestation of bugs in the heartwood. The smaller twigs had withered since it fell, but only a few rootlets protruded; she stripped them away, broke the slender end off, and found herself possessed of a serviceable three-foot-long club. The rich scent of loam rose from under her denting footsteps, and insectoids scurried from overturned litter. She made an effort to walk more lightly, picking past clumps of moss that would show her footsteps, hopping between patches of wild carpetplant that flourished where sunlight managed to pierce the canopy in long, flickering rays. It wouldn’t bruise, even when she jumped on it, and it beat sticking to game trails. Those would lead pursuit right to her.

She needed to find a place to bed down for the night.

Lesa had slept rough before, but she had no illusions about her odds of surviving a night in the jungle unarmed, without shelter, and without daring to build a fire even if she had the wherewithal to do so. It might keep off animals, but it would be as good as a beacon to the Right Hand. At least being dive-bombed and picked clean by sirens or strangled by a fexa would be quick. She found a crevice under a fallen log big enough to cram herself into, heaped leaf litter under it to conserve warmth, and hauled a drape of living wire-plant over the top to serve as a barricade to any wandering animals, savaging her hands further in the process. She picked the thorns out of her palms with her teeth, and dropped them in the cup of a rain-collecting plant among wriggling tadpoles so the water could help hide the scent of her blood.

The pungent stinging scent of wire-plant sap would serve to conceal her own body odor. She crammed herself into her impromptu shelter as dusk was growing thick under the trees, controlled her breathing, and resolutely closed her eyes.

Kusanagi-Jones sighed and tugged idly at his shackles, galling his wrists and pulling at the shallow knife cut on his forearm. He didn’t shift either the three-centimeter-thick staple they were locked to or the beam behind it. Apparently better bondage equipment had arrived during the night. And when he’d been lying on the ground in the center of camp, flat on his back from the paralytic agent the insurgents had used to bring him down, he’d seen several more good-sized shelters all overhung with holographic and utility fog camouflage. At least two aircars had gone out after Lesa. The entire camp was under a false rain-forest canopy, all but invisible from the air, probably protected by IR and other countermeasures. Coalition technology. Which also explained how they’d managed to shut down his wardrobe. Miss Ouagadougou wasn’t the only Coalition agent on the ground here.

Somebody was running guns.

And the nasty, suspicious part of Kusanagi-Jones’s mind—the one that tended to keep him alive in situations like this—chipped in with the observation that he and Vincent hadn’t been trusted with the information. Which told him that they weren’t the primary operation in this theater. They were the stalking horse. And the real operation was an armed insurrection. Who’d miss a couple of disgraced old faggots anyway? And if Vincent happened to get himself killed in theater by enemy action, it wasn’t as if Katherine Lexasdaughter could complain, no matter how much pull she had with the Coalition Cabinet. Which made sense of yesterday’s unutterably stupid grab for Vincent in Penthesilea, too. It gave the Coalition one more big black check mark in the
invade New
Amazonia
column to present the Governors.

At least he was more comfortable now. They’d permitted him access to a privy, and the shackles gave him enough slack to stand, sit, or even stretch out on his back if he crossed his arms over his chest—and enough slack to kick the “food” they’d brought him almost far enough away that he didn’t have to smell charred flesh every time he turned his head.

The water, he’d drunk; it was clean, and there had been plenty of it, and if they wanted to drug him they didn’t need to hide it in his rations when another dart would work just fine. He had tried a few bites of the bread, but there was something cloying about the taste and texture that made him suspect it contained some ingredient he didn’t care to consume.

He’d wait. He wasn’t hungry enough for it to affect his performance, yet. It was best that Lesa had escaped. She had a better chance of getting back than he did, and a better chance of being heard when she did so. And Kusanagi-Jones was safer in captivity anyway. Less likely to be raped or tortured—and they hadn’t tried anything yet, though he wouldn’t bet his ration number on it—and more likely to survive the experience if they wanted to use him to extract something from Vincent.

He wouldn’t be held as a bargaining chip, though. Not if they were already receiving Coalition aid. Presuming they knew who they were receiving it from. Which was presuming a lot. He shifted again, wishing he could rub the torn skin under his manacles or his cut shoulder. His docs weren’t dependent on the power supply of his watch or his wardrobe; they used the kinetic energy of his own bloodstream to power themselves, a failsafe that kept them operational as long as his heart was beating. And they were doing an acceptable job of preventing infection, and even speeding healing, but the wounds could hardly have itched more.

Another damned irritation, like the hunger and the dehydration making him light-headed in the heat. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the post, and tried to think as Vincent would. What purpose would holding him serve? What was he doing alive?

There was the obvious answer. Bait.

“You know,” Kusanagi-Jones said to the air, “he really only brings me along so they’ll have someone to take hostage.”

He was bait. A hook in Vincent. Because the Right Hand had missed Vincent, and the Right Hand was taking aid from the OECC. And if anything happened to Vincent, while Katherine Lexasdaughter couldn’t very well take the OECC to task for it, she could certainly demand some kind of retaliation against New Amazonia for so carelessly disposing of her son. And if she didn’t, the Coalition could. Vincent’s abduction and death was probably a good enough excuse that the Governors would allow the OECC to go to war against New Amazonia. And if anybody in the Cabinet suspected that the recalcitrant leader of the Captain’s Council on Ur was plotting with a bunch of hysterical and heavily armed Amazons, the death of Katherine’s son at the hands of such might be seen as a good enough way of putting an end to any revolutionary alliances.

And wasn’t it just a damned shame that Lesa had already left, and Kusanagi-Jones didn’t have any way of transferring that particular startling deduction to Vincent.

He could reconstruct the scenario easily enough. Lesa had followed Katya, caught her about to join Stefan and the rest of the revolutionaries, and Katya’s controller had taken Katya “hostage” with a weapon they both knew was loaded with stun capsules, but which Lesa would think lethal. After Kusanagi-Jones rode to the rescue, Katya had had the presence of mind to establish herself on the winning team by incapacitating her colleagues…until Kusanagi-Jones let his guard down long enough to get shot in the back like a rookie. And the Right Hand had seen a chance to reset its trap for Vincent. Kusanagi-Jones closed his eyes again, settled his shoulders against the unfinished wood of the beam, and tried to ignore the pain in his shoulder enough to nap. It looked like he’d be wanting to escape after all.

He dozed intermittently through the heat of the afternoon. His disabled wardrobe dragged at his body and trapped the heat against his skin, raising irritated bumps, but the docs were working well enough to seal his wound. Occasional shadows across the gap under the door told him when he was observed, and the sweat rolled across his forehead and down his neck to sting his eyes and his cuts. He didn’t think they’d unsecure him after dark, and was surprised when, as the light was failing, the chain around the doorpost finally rattled and slid. A moment later, the door cracked open and a big silhouette filled the frame.

The door shut behind it and Kusanagi-Jones heard the chain refastened by someone outside.

“Michelangelo,” the man said, as Kusanagi-Jones was still blinking his eyes to refocus them after the light.

“I am truly sorry about this.”

It was Robert. As he approached, Kusanagi-Jones pushed himself up the post, determined to meet him standing.

He found the apology somewhat specious, but this didn’t seem the time to explain. So he grunted, and considered for a moment how best to absorb the injury if it came to blows. But instead, Robert crouched just out of range of Kusanagi-Jones’s feet and began pulling things from the capacious pockets of his vest. He laid them on the floor, bulbs of some cloudy yellowish fluid and three pieces of unfamiliar fruit. One was knobby and purple-black in the dim light, the other two larger and creamy yellow, covered in bumps that reminded Kusanagi-Jones unpleasantly of his current case of prickly heat.

“I brought something you can eat,” Robert said, without rising. His shiny black boots creased across the toes as he balanced lightly, the insteps and toes daubed with clotted mud. Bloused trousers were tucked into the tops just below the knees. His head jerked dismissively at the flat leaf Kusanagi-Jones had shoved as far away as he could. “I didn’t expect they would have taken any care about it.”

Robert edged the offering forward, while Kusanagi-Jones watched, feet planted and chained hands hanging at his sides. He kept his eyes on those creases across the toes of Robert’s boots, and not on the hands, or on the food. Or, most important after the endless heat, the liquid.

“What’s in the bulbs?” he asked when Robert had pushed them as close as he meant to and settled back on his heels.

“Dilute bitterfruit. Electrolytes, sugars, and water. Factory sealed, don’t worry.”

“Can’t exactly pick it up,” Kusanagi-Jones said, moving his hands enough to make the shackles clank. Robert folded his arms over his knees and looked up, mouth quirking, the faint light catching on the scars that marked his shaven scalp. “Don’t you know how to juggle? Use your feet.”

Kusanagi-Jones sighed. But he knew how to juggle.

He leaned against the pole, angled one leg out and braced it beside the offerings, and used the ball of the other one to roll the first bulb onto the top of his toes. Then he planted the second foot, shifted his weight, and used the first to flip the bulb into his hands.

Robert applauded lightly, so Kusanagi-Jones lifted an eyebrow at him and angled his body from the waist, a bow amid clanking. Then he raised his hands to his mouth, the cool, sweating bulb turning the filth on his palms into mud. He tore through the stem with his teeth. The beverage was an acquired taste. It stung his mouth like tonic water. It might be nasty, but it cleared his head. He drank slowly, so as not to shock his system, and then retrieved the second globe the same way as the first before he said anything else to the patient, motionless Robert. “So,” he said, weighing the soft-sided container in his palms, “what price charity?”

“No price.” He hesitated. “If you gave me your promise of good behavior, I could see you moved to better quarters.”

“Don’t pretend concern for my welfare.”

“I am concerned,” Robert said. “We’re freedom fighters, not barbarians. And I’m sorry your arrival here was so rough. It was improvised. They were under instructions not to harm you or Vincent, or Lesa.”