Venus Rising (25 page)

Gaidar was sitting on the edge, his feet
already in the muck. He took both of Narisa’s wrists in his. She
took a deep breath and slid off the edge, feeling his great
strength as he lowered her into the oozing pit until she could run
her fingers along the slippery underside of the ledge and he
carefully let her go. A moment later Suria, her disgust at the
pit’s contents overcome by Gaidar’s threat to kill her, slipped
slowly down beside Narisa. Gaidar followed, hanging on to the ledge
long enough to smooth out any visible finger marks along its
edge.

“Turn your face away from me,” he whispered.
“There will be a splash when I come down.”

A moment later Narisa felt moistness wash up
the back of her head into her hair. The pit was warm and thick, and
solid objects kept bumping against her legs and feet. The smell was
so bad she thought she would faint from it.

The three of them moved as far back beneath
the ledge as they could possibly go, and waited while the door
above them was unlocked. Footsteps squished on the muddy surface
just above their heads. Lights flashed across the pit and onto the
ledge that surrounded it.

“If they came in here, they are in the pit,”
said a voice, “and drowned in it. There is no sign of them.”

“They must have taken the other corridor,”
came a second voice. “Let’s hope the group searching it finds them.
I don’t want to tell Leader Tyre his prisoner is gone.”

“He’s more likely to be upset about his
latest woman being gone. Imagine sharing your wench with a Cetan.
That is a serious indignity. I wonder what he’ll do to her when he
finds her?”

One of the men above them made a nasty noise
and spat into the lake and they both laughed. The footsteps moved
away. The door slammed shut.

“Don’t move yet,” Gaidar cautioned almost
soundlessly. “There’s an old Cetan trick.”

For a long time there was no sound but the
bubbling of the pit. Then the door opened again.

“Anything?” It was the first voice they had
heard.

“Not a sound. No movement.” That was the
second man, and Narisa realized he had been standing just above
them all the time. “I thought that trick might draw them out, if
they believed we had both gone. If they were here, they are dead.
We may as well go see what the other search party has found. Remind
me to order those hinges fixed.”

The door closed again, and again Gaidar made
them wait for what seemed to Narisa an eternity. At last he paddled
out from under the stone ledge and looked around.

“They’ve gone,” he whispered, “but be quiet.
They might have left a guard outside the door. That’s a Cetan trick
- to pretend you’ve gone and then come back again, but Cetans do it
twice. These men are lazy.”

“Perhaps it’s the smell that drove them
away,” Suria suggested sourly.

Gaidar did not answer. He was heaving himself
up onto the ledge. Once there he pulled the two women out.

“Look at me.” Suria held out her
slime-covered hands, then tried to wring out her clothing. “I’ll
never get clean again. I can’t walk in these clothes.”

“Would you rather be dead?” Gaidar asked
rudely.

“She has a point, Gaidar,” Narisa
interrupted. “Our clothes are so weighted down with dirt from the
pit that it will be hard to move quickly. And they’re dripping, so
if you plan to walk along this ledge to the opposite side of the
cave, we will leave a clear trail for anyone to follow.”

“What do you suggest? A bath and clean
clothes?’1

“I know what I’m going to do.” Suria
unfastened the top of her garment and let it drop, then pulled down
her trousers. She kicked both into the pit. She was still very
dirty, but in her underclothes she could move more easily.

Narisa followed suit, tossing jacket, scarf,
and dress into the lake, but like Suria, retaining her boots and
undergarments. Gaidar looked at them, his golden eyes lingering a
little longer over Suria’s luscious curves than on Narisa’s slimmer
figure.

“How are you going to walk through the
Capital unnoticed once we get out of here?” he asked.

“I’ll worry about that when we do get out,”
Suria told him pertly. “I suggest we hurry. All exits from Leader
Tyre’s house must have been covered by now, and it probably won’t
be too much longer before someone thinks of the sewer outlets.”

Gaidar nodded approvingly and pulled off the
servant’s garments Kalina had sent for him, retaining only his
boots and a loincloth that barely covered him.

Even coated with grime, his tall figure with
the massive shoulders was impressive. Narisa noticed Suria looking
at him. Well, why not? Poor Suria had only had Leader Tyre to look
at for a long time. Gaidar was a good deal more manly and
attractive, and the way he looked at Suria suggested something more
than mere admiration. Narisa shook her head in amazement at her own
thoughts. A few weeks ago she would never have dreamed of approving
the pairing of a woman of the Jurisdiction with a Cetan.

Narisa left them to follow her and led the
way along the ledge, heading toward the far side of the pit. They
had to walk carefully because at intervals along the ledge there
were gaps in the stone, inlets where more sewage entered the
pit.

“I think this cave serves more than one
building,” Gaidar said, “so we may be outside the Leader’s house
already. It may be that his men are prevented by law from following
this system beyond his own house. Let us hope so.”

Just opposite the door where they had entered
the cave was another door, this one of smooth, heavy metal, which
spanned the outlet channel from the pit.

“There is no way we can open that,” Suria
said.

“No, but we can swim under it.” Narisa
pointed to the space between the surface of the sewage and the
bottom of the door. “I wonder what we will find on the other
side?”

Suria shrank back. “I don’t want to go into
that vile mess again.”

“Then stay here and rot.” Gaidar was into the
pit and edging his way along the side of the outlet channel. “It
isn’t very deep. I can stand here. It doesn’t matter what is on the
other side, Narisa. I’m going on.”

Narisa did not want to re-enter that lake of
sewage any more than Suria did, but she could see no other choice.
Sooner or later Leader Tyre’s guards would come back to the cave in
search of the fugitives they had not found. She would rather drown
in sewage than be caught by them. She got into the outlet channel
beside Gaidar. Suria joined them.

“It’s nicer here than in Leader Tyre’s bed,”
she explained. “Don’t look at me so scornfully, Gaidar. I never
went to him willingly, but if I hadn’t pleased him, I would not
have been able to get into your cell and free you. Nor would I have
known that he planned to have you killed tonight, and Tarik and his
family, too.”

Gaidar did not respond, though Narisa thought
the hard expression on his face softened a little. He went to the
metal door and felt along its edge with one hand, then ducked under
it. A moment later his arm appeared beneath the door, motioning for
them to follow him. Narisa and Suria went under the door
together.

They came out into a brightly lit,
white-walled room. The sewage from the cave flowed through the
channel where the three of them stood, then downward into a round
pool in the center of the room where gleaming silvery metal
machinery poured chemicals into it. A series of open metal walkways
crossed the room at several levels. There was a man standing on one
of the walkways, apparently checking the processing sequence. His
back was to them; they were as yet unseen.

Gaidar pointed to a metal ladder set into the
wall of the channel beside them. The ladder extended upward out of
the channel and along the chamber wall to meet each of the walkways
high above them.

“The only door I can see,” Gaidar said in a
low voice, “is that one, just past the man on the walkway. There is
no way out at our level. We have to climb up there.”

“We can’t cross on that level without being
seen,” Narisa objected. “The man will see us and give an
alarm.”

“We could do it,” Suria whispered, “if we
climb all the way to the top of the ladder and cross on the walkway
above him. Then we could drop down on top of him.”

“Or fall into the vat of chemicals and sewage
below. Still,” Gaidar said, considering, “it’s a good idea. We
should go up the ladder one at a time. You first, Narisa.”

She began to climb, finding it a slippery
business with her hands and feet wet from the pit. She went up
slowly and carefully, not daring to look toward the man on the
walkway, just setting one hand and one foot at a time on the
ladder, up and up and up until she began to think the ladder would
never end and she must be spotted soon.

At the top at last, she pulled herself onto
the open walkway and crawled behind the railing, trying to make
herself smaller. She moved along the metal grid that was the floor
of the walkway to let Suria crouch beside her. Gaidar came last,
and at his nod, Narisa began to run, still crouching, toward the
center of the processing room. It was there that the walkway they
were on crossed the lower one. At that spot they would have to drop
to the lower walk, overcome the man still standing on it and then
get to the door they could see at the far end of that second
walkway.

Narisa stopped thinking about whether they
could do it or not. She cleared her mind of fear and worry and
concentrated on the steps she would need to take to get the job
done. Rigorous Service training had taught her to function this
way, and she sensed that Suria, directly behind her, was doing the
same thing. They came to the middle of the walkway.

“Suria, you find the exit from the plant,”
Gaidar whispered. “Narisa, keep the way clear for her.”

He disappeared over the side of the walkway.
Narisa went to the other side of the walkway and dropped over the
edge, holding on tightly to the metal grid on which she had been
standing, her legs dangling into empty air. She heard a shout, and
glancing downward saw Gaidar wrestling with the man who had been
standing below them. She let herself fall to the lower level,
landing hard on another metal grid floor. She bruised her knee, and
it hurt badly, but she had to get out of Suria’s way so she could
jump, too. She pulled herself upright, hanging on to the railing.
Suria hit the floor of the walkway beside her and rolled nearly to
the edge.

Someone had heard the noise. Another man was
coming toward them from the doorway they had to use. Narisa forgot
her sore knee.

“I’ll stop him,” she told Suria. “You get
past us and find that exit.”

She stood up before the oncoming man, her
arms spread wide. He stopped for an instant, shocked at the sight
of a filthy, nearly naked woman standing on a walkway high up in
the processing room. During that brief hesitation Suria brushed
past him and ran for the door at the far end of the walkway.

“Wait!” The man turned, uncertain whether to
go after Suria or confront Narisa.

Narisa solved the problem for him. She gave
him a hard push that bent him backward over the railing, and she
kept on pushing. The man let out a cry and tumbled from the
walkway, his fingers grabbing at the grid floor as Narisa herself
had done a few minutes before.

“Help me!” he cried, his eyes wide with fear.
Below him the processing vat bubbled softly.

“Help yourself,” Narisa told him. “Work your
way along the grid a few feet and drop down to the walkway at the
next level. You can save your own life if you want.”

“Stamp on his fingers,” Gaidar advised,
breathing hard behind her. He had left his own opponent unconscious
on the walkway and he bore a few scrapes and bruises.

“I won’t kill him,” Narisa said. “He hasn’t
hurt us. It’s not his fault we are here.”

“If that’s what you want, I won’t disagree,
but let’s not stand here arguing.” Gaidar gave her a
none-too-gentle shove in the direction of the door, and Narisa
began to run toward it. They came off the walkway into a small
white room just in time to see Suria punch a short, heavy-set woman
in the jaw, knocking her unconscious.

“You fight like a Cetan,” Gaidar complimented
her.

“I had to do it. She had a weapon and was
going to call for help.” Suria rubbed at her sore knuckles. “I
found some coats in the next room. We can at least cover ourselves
with them.”

The coats must have belonged to the three
workers they had met. Suria took the short one, which was much
bigger around the body than she was. Gaidar tried to squeeze his
bulk into the largest one and split it down the back. Narisa’s
wrists stuck well out of the sleeves of her coat.

“We look like the beggars from the outskirts
who come into the city each day to find food or work,” Suria said.
“And we smell terrible. No one will look at us for more than a
glance. It’s a perfect disguise.”

“Have you discovered how to get out of here?”
Gaidar asked.

“I have. I checked the computer. The only
personnel here were the three workers we met. I have cut off the
communicator and rearranged the program for the doors so once we go
out and seal one, they will all stay closed until tomorrow
morning.”

“Good.” Gaidar beamed at her, then glanced at
the woman on the floor. “I’m glad you are not my enemy, Suria.”

After their desperate flight, they expected
to be stopped on their way out of the sewage processing plant.
Instead they simply walked through the main gate and made their way
along the back streets of the Capital.

It was growing dark, and a chill wind blew
dust and loose refuse into the air. Narisa, her undergarments still
damp, drew the coat more closely across her chest and shivered. No
one bothered them. They looked too poor for anyone to rob them, and
they stayed well away from the main streets, which were brightly
lit. Once or twice they thought they were lost, but Suria’s
knowledge of the Capital was extensive, and she had a good sense of
direction and soon found their way again. They came without
incident to Almaric’s house and walked along the wall to find the
garden entrance.