“I was. We’ll talk when we get to your room. I’m making it safe for us now.”
They gave me a bugged room? Eric began cursing through his teeth. The Vitae first, now the Unifiers. Who do these people think they are?
The car traveled three kilometers’ worth of tidy city blocks and finally parked itself in front of a three-story, brown brick building built like an abstract sculpture made of uneven blocks. The silver cables of access elevators stretched between its widespread wings. The car door raised itself and Eric picked up his bundle. As soon as he stepped onto the pedestrian walkway, the car door closed itself up and the vehicle drove itself away.
A second car pulled up in the spot his had vacated. Eric looked back automatically and saw Schippend heave himself out of the vehicle.
“Sar Born,” he puffed. “I have your IDs, Sar.”
Schippend held out four flat squares of shiny polymer embossed with his name, the location of his ship, and his arrival date. One was labeled for access to public transportation, one for the libraries and other public buildings, one for automatic access to communications networks outside his ship, and one for drawing on the credit he’d been required to transfer to a May 16 account.
Eric tucked the squares into his tunic pocket and sealed it. “Thank you for your help, Sar Schippend.”
“I apologize for the delay.” Schippend’s eyes glittered. “Madame Chairman frequently makes things difficult for people who don’t give her her own way.”
“Does she?” said Eric carefully.
“And if she is making things difficult for you, Sar Bora, I’ll be glad to help you leave May 16. Immediately.”
Eric’s back stiffened and he wasn’t able to keep his surprise from showing. He also couldn’t help noticing the greedy look in Schippend’s little blue eyes.
“Thank you for the offer, Sar Schippend,” Eric said. “I’ll have to consider it.”
“I am on the public lines, Sar Born. One is open for you.” Schippend climbed into his car and was gone.
Garismit’s Eyes! Eric rolled his own toward the heavens. “Anyone else?” he demanded. The street remained quiet, except for the traffic rushing past.
The hotel did not have a main doorway. Instead, the hatches for six separate access elevators faced the sidewalk. Eric slid his ID card into the labeled slot and a door opened to let him inside. He watched the shiny, gold walls as the elevator rose for about thirty seconds, glided sideways, then forward, then rose again. He did not touch the key that would have turned the cabin translucent and allowed him to see the panorama of the City of Alliances spread across its perfectly flat field.
When the door opened, it led to a comfortably furnished room, about twice the size of the common room on the U-Kenai. Instead of a window, the outer wall was taken up by an elaborate comm center, with all its keys labeled in three different languages.
“Very nice.” Eric dropped his pack on a table.
He sat in the comm screen’s chair and tried not to squirm while it adjusted to fit the contours of his body. He opened the line to Dorias’s home space.
The screen filled with the blur of shifting colors cut by rippling, horizontal lines that was Dorias’s idea of a self-portrait.
“Hello, Teacher Hand,” Dorias said, and the lines jumped, matching the frequency and intensity of his voice. Dorias had never completely dropped Eric’s title. You taught me I could make my own choices, Dorias had said. I choose to remember your earned name.
“Hello, Dorias. I hope you’re doing well,” he added with more than a trace of irony to his tone.
“Quite,” replied Dorias blandly. “Better than you are, I think.” He paused. “Eric, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Eric slumped and the chair undulated against his spine. “I’m sure Madame Chairman didn’t give you any reason to be alarmed about what might happen once I got here.”
“Teacher Hand, that is unfair.”
“Is it?” asked Eric bitterly. “Your friend is a schemer and a fanatic, Dorias.”
“Of course she is,” replied Dorias calmly. “It’s fanatics who get caught up in events like this. Normal people know when to give up and go home.”
“Thank you very much,” Eric muttered.
“You were the one who told me the power gifted were trained to be fanatics in the Temple.”
“I know. I know.” He sighed. “What are you doing here, Dorias? What could you possibly want with these people?”
“They’re the only ones around who have even a small chance of making an effective block against the Vitae. They are interested in establishing a permanent, open communications network. If I help Ross with … Family matters … she works on making sure that network is one I can use and the more space there is, the more chances there are that there’ll be others like me found, or made.”