Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator (19 page)

And now Taneem saw what she should have spotted in the first
place. He wasn't pulling off his own real skin but merely a flap of
something that
looked
like skin.

And as the flap came free, she could see several small, flat
objects embedded in the flap's underside.

Neverlin had warned Frost to search Harper carefully. It looked
like Frost hadn't been careful enough.

The strip of false skin extended nearly the entire way from
Harper's wrist to his elbow. He finished pulling it off and laid it
beside him on the bed, then spent a minute vigorously rubbing the real
skin that had been covered by the patch. Switching arms, he removed
another strip of skin from his right forearm and laid it beside the
first.

Again, he took a moment to rub at the arm where the strip had
been. Then, removing a slender item about as long as one of Taneem's
claws from the first strip, he stood up.

And headed directly toward the room's air grille.

Taneem was back up into a crouch in an instant, easing her way
backward down the duct as quickly as she dared. Before she had made it
to the next corner she could hear the faint sounds as Harper began
unfastening the screws holding the grille in place.

She made it to the corner and backed around it, not stopping until
she was completely out of sight of Harper's room. "Alison!" she
whispered urgently.

"What is it?"

"I think he heard me," Taneem said, feeling scared and thoroughly
miserable. It was like her first time in the air ducts all over again.
"I'm sorry—I made some noise when he started peeling off his skin, and
now he's opening the grille—"

"Slow down; slow down," Alison cut her off. "What do you mean, he
peeled off his skin?"

"On his arms," Taneem said. "Only it wasn't real skin. Only I
didn't know that, and I gasped, and now I think he's coming in after
me."

"Okay, just relax," Alison soothed her. "First of all, he's way
too big to get anything but his head into the duct. Can he see you
where you are right now?"

"No," Taneem said, feeling her heart slowing down a little.
Looking down at her paws, she saw that the extra blood from her
panicked reaction had turned her gray scales black. "No, I'm around a
corner."

"Good," Alison said. "Now tell me: did he jump up and head for the
grille as soon as you made your noise?"

From the direction of Harper's room came the faint sound of the
grille being pulled free of the duct. "No, he finished pulling off the
skin first," Taneem said, lowering her voice a little more. "Then he
took out something from the inside of one of the pieces and came over
to the grille."

"Then I think you're okay," Alison said. "Just hang there a minute
and listen."

Taneem nodded, feeling herself calming down. If Alison wasn't
worried, she probably shouldn't be, either. The scales on her paws, she
noticed, were starting to go back to their usual gray.

For a moment there was silence. In her mind's eye Taneem saw
Harper with his head sticking into the opening, looking both ways down
the duct.

She flicked her tongue out a few times, tasting the mixture of
human and unidentified scents flowing through the ducts. Some Earth
animals, she'd read in the
Essenay
's encyclopedia, could smell
or otherwise sense fear and anger. Distantly, she wondered if a
properly experienced K'da could do the same.

And then, she heard the sound of the grille being put back in
place. Another minute of scratching as the bolts were replaced, and
then all was silent again.

She waited another minute, just to make sure. "Alison?" she
whispered. "I think he's done."

"He didn't spot you?"

"No."

"Good," Alison said. "Okay. I want you to look back around the
corner—carefully—and tell me what you see."

Taneem frowned. What could there possibly be to see besides an
empty duct?

But Alison knew about these things. She must have her reasons.
Moving forward, Taneem eased her head back around the corner.

The grille, as she'd guessed, was indeed back in place.

But the duct was no longer empty.

"There's something there," she said, frowning even harder. Was
that what she thought it was? "I think—Alison, he's put the two strips
of skin into the duct."

"That's what I thought he was up to," Alison said, sounding grimly
pleased with herself. "He got the stuff in past Frost okay, but didn't
want to risk getting caught with it on him.
Literally
on him,
in this case."

"What
is
it?" Taneem asked, eyeing the strips with a
mixture of fascination and distaste.

"Let's find out," Alison said. "Why don't you scoot over there and
grab them?"

Taneem felt her whole body go rigid. "
What
?"

"Keep your voice down," Alison admonished. "What's the big deal?
You sneak over, you pick up the goodies, and you get out. Couldn't be
simpler."

"But what if he
sees
me?"

"He won't if you're careful," Alison said. "Come on, Taneem. If
this is something he doesn't want Frost and Neverlin knowing about, we
definitely want to take a look."

Taneem curled her tail into a grimace. "All right," she said with
a sigh. "I'll try."

She edged around the corner and down the duct. There was no
reaction that she could sense. Her heart pounding again, she eased up
to the grille and peered through it.

Harper was lying on his back on the bed, one arm across his chest,
the other resting across his eyes. Without taking her own eyes off him,
she scooped up the two flaps of skin and retreated hastily back down
the duct. "I've got them," she whispered to Alison.

"Great," Alison said. "Find a safe place to talk, and let's check
them out."

Having already had one narrow escape, Taneem was in no mood to try
for another. She therefore made her way to the very back of the ship,
to the very end of the air duct system, where she could taste no humans
or Brummgas nearby.

Finding a spot midway between the air-pumping room and a darkened
machine shop, she laid her new prizes out in front of her. "All right,
I'm ready," she said.

"Good," Alison said. "Describe the items for me."

Taneem leaned close, studying the flaps of skin with the light
from her own glowing silver eyes. "First are two small, flat pieces of
plastic. The end of one of them has a funny sort of shape, like a sort
of squished
X
."

"Does it look like it would snap open into a square shape if you
opened it up?"

Taneem frowned. Then she saw what Alison meant. "Yes, it does,"
she said. "The other piece of plastic is just flat."

"Screwdrivers," Alison identified them. "Probably started out as a
set of three, only Harper used the crosshead one on the grille. What
else?"

"Two small half cylinders that look like they fit together to make
a complete tube," Taneem said. "There's another tube, a solid one, that
looks like it would fit inside the other one."

"Anything there that looks like needles?"

"I don't see—oh yes, there they are," Taneem corrected herself.
"They're on the other flap. There are five of them."

"Knockout needles, with either a hypo or a spring-load launcher to
deliver the goods," Alison said. "Harper certainly came ready for
trouble. What else?"

"Two wide, flat, round containers," Taneem said. "Also a flat tube
sort of like the one you have for your toothpaste."

"Any writing on either of them?"

Taneem looked closer. "The tube says 'akid well putty.' "

"
Acid
well putty?
A-c-i-d
?"

"Yes," Taneem said. "Acid well putty. The round containers say . .
. they just say 'keyhole.' "

"Beautiful," Alison murmured. "Thank you, Mr. Harper. Grab
everything and bring it back here. We're in."

"I don't understand," Taneem said as she tucked the strips of skin
under her forelegs and headed down the duct toward Alison's lifepod.
"How can you put a keyhole inside a container?"

"This isn't a normal keyhole," Alison explained. "It's an
acid-based paste that's supposed to be able to eat through any normal
door material. You're supposed to set it over the lock where it'll
either expose the mechanism so you can get at it or else eat away the
bolt itself. Hence, keyhole."

Taneem winced. "It sounds dangerous."

"It is," Alison confirmed. "It can eat human flesh even faster
than it eats doors. But if you know what you're doing it can get you
out of a tight jam."

"I thought you could get out of the lifepod any time you wanted,"
Taneem said, frowning. "Or did we take it because we don't want Harper
getting out of his stateroom?"

"Actually, right now we don't really care what Harper does or
doesn't do," Alison said. "What
we
want is a way to get you
back in here with me."

Abruptly, Taneem understood. "We can use the acid against the duct
wall!"

"You got it," Alison said. "You saw how relatively thin the metal
was where you popped into the duct. That's because the lifepod acts as
that part of the ship's outer hull. We shouldn't have any problem
making a hole big enough for me to stick a couple of fingers through."

She was right. Following Alison's directions, Taneem first
squeezed out a semicircle of the putty beneath the spot where the acid
was to go. Then she half-turned the acid container's seal and nestled
it against the wall with the putty holding it in place.

The smell, once the acid started working, was incredibly strong.
Midway through the operation Taneem had to retreat down the duct and
wait near one of the grilles.

By the time Alison called her back, five minutes later, it was
finished. The acid had eaten away the metal of the duct, leaving a
small hole between it and the lifepod. Again at Alison's instruction,
Taneem folded the flaps of skin and their remaining contents and put
them gingerly into her mouth. Alison stretched two fingers through the
freshly made hole, and Taneem slithered up her arm and back onto her
body.

Taneem had barely made it onto Alison's skin when she leaped out
of the girl's shirt collar. In the same motion, she spat the two folds
of flesh onto the deck. "Ackleh!" she gasped, trying to drive the taste
from her mouth.

"That good, huh?" Alison said, stepping around her and retrieving
the flaps.

"No, that bad," Taneem said, wiping her tongue back and forth
across the inside of her teeth. "It tastes like real flesh."

"It is," Alison said. Her voice was calm enough, but Taneem
noticed she was taking care to touch the flaps only with her
fingertips. "You take a sample of someone's skin, grow the right-sized
strip in a lab, then paste it back over his own arm or leg or whatever."

Taneem shuddered. "Why would anyone do that?"

"For exactly the reason Harper did it: so you can sneak in your
goodies without anyone spotting them." She began prying out the
remaining items, again touching the skin as little as she could. "A
good scanner will pick up any synthetic you try to use. This way, they
can even pull a DNA sample from the fake skin and it'll match up with
any other samples they take."

"It's still disgusting," Taneem said. "Is this a common practice?"

"It's a very
un
common practice," Alison said. She removed
the last item and began folding the empty skin strips together. "Harper
obviously has access to some very sophisticated and expensive
equipment."

Taneem thought about that as Alison took the roll of skin to the
lifepod's disposal container and pushed it through the opening. "But
why would the Patri Chookoock go to so much trouble?" she asked.

"I don't know," Alison said, stepping to the sink and washing her
hands. "But your question assumes Harper is genuinely working for him."

"You don't think he is?"

Alison shrugged. "I find it hard to believe one of Braxton's top
bodyguards would turn traitor as easily as Harper makes it sound," she
said. "And this"—she gestured to the collection of items she'd taken
from the fake skin—"looks a lot more like Braxton's budget than the
Patri's."

"Do you think Braxton sent Harper to find Neverlin?"

"That's certainly the logical assumption," Alison agreed.

Taneem pricked up her ears. There had been something odd about the
way Alison had said that. "Are there other possibilities?" she asked.

Alison smiled. But it was a slightly brittle smile. "There are
always other possibilities," she said. "But there's no point in trying
to dig too deeply into this. Don't forget, we don't even know for sure
that Harper's not exactly who he claims to be. His little bag of tricks
could be some game the Patri's pulling on his allies."

"Because they're only allies of convenience," Taneem murmured.

"Exactly," Alison said.

"What about us?"

Alison frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Are
we
only allies of convenience?" Taneem asked, her
eyes steady on the girl.

Alison seemed to brace herself. "We're genuine allies, Taneem,"
she said, her voice low and earnest. "More than that, I hope that we're
friends."

"I hope that, too, Alison," Taneem said. "Because I trust you."

Alison laid her hand on the K'da's head. "I trust you, too,
Taneem," she said. "We have to, you know. Because we're all we've got."

"I know," Taneem said softly.

"And we're going to get through this," Alison continued. "Come on;
let's get something to eat."

She turned toward the supply cabinet. "And after that," she added
over her shoulder, "you can tell me your impressions of Harper,
Neverlin, and Frost."

"And the Valahgua?"

"Yes," Alison said grimly. "Especially the Valahgua."

They were on their way to the
Foxwolf
's Number One weapons
bay when Jack felt the sudden change in the air around them.