Reclamation(73)

In some ways it would be safer to do this aboard the U-Kenai, but from there it would be harder to hide the point of origin for his signal.

Eric opened a flap on his tool belt and laid a pair of small screwdrivers and a delicate knife on the floor. Then he sat cross-legged in front of the board and did nothing for a long moment but study the circuits. Some of the major blocks were labeled. Some were color coded. He noted with a certain amusement that the Unifiers were using a coding system derived from the Vitae’s public standard.

He located four of the major transfer points. After that, it was only a few minutes’ work with the knife and the screwdrivers to splice a quartet of cables into the existing system.

He looked back at the squirming chair in disgust and dragged a single-phase seat over from the table and sat down in it.

He retrieved the box and plugged the free ends of the cables into its sockets.

Perivar had made this box. As soon as he had been able to pick himself up off the deck where Tasa Ad and Kessa had died, he had ordered Dorias to ransack the ship’s data-holds and gather together anything and everything about its owners. Fighting the sickness spreading from his wounded arm, he had taken the readings from Kessa and Tasa Ad as they lay dead on the deck. He had almost lost their chance of escape, but he knew he’d need their retina and finger scans, their DNA echoes, and their images. When he and Eric had ducked the other runners and climbed aboard the U-Kenai, Perivar had dumped all that information into this box. Eric remembered how he had paced between the airlock and the common room while Perivar bent over the box, selecting, organizing, creating. Eric laid his hand on Dorias’s carrying case and, for the first and last time, he pleaded to the Nameless for a Skyman. Perivar jacked the box into the comm board and, using the ship’s intercom, sent orders to Cam to get the U-Kenai under way. The android verified that the orders came from its owners and obeyed.

When Eric got onto Schippend’s line, Schippend would not see him. His screen would show him Tasa Ad standing a little in front of Kessa, who would be hanging back to act as his backup and advisor. Just as they had appeared when they lived. He could scan their retinas, if he had the equipment, and verify the DNA records of their arrival and registry on May 16. As far as the network was concerned, they were alive and well and in residence in the City of Alliances. Eric could view the runner’s images on the box’s display screen and control them with a touch.

Their projected behaviors had been so like what he had seen from their living counterparts, Eric had once asked Dorias to analyze the processes inside the box to see if he could find any sign of independent consciousness in them. He still did not know what he would have done if Dorias had said yes.

Eric cradled the box on his lap and, with one hand, called up the public directory to trace the open line Schippend had reserved.

Schippend’s face appeared on the main screen, and he was obviously none too pleased to see a pair of strangers on his screen. “This is a reserved line, and I …”

Eric touched the image of Tasa Ad and said, “Your pardon, Sar Schippend.” on the box’s display, Tasa Ad’s head inclined smoothly. “I just wanted to be certain that I would reach you,” he went on. “We have a mutual acquaintance, I believe. Sar Eric Born.”

Schippend stiffened. “Sar Born is no acquaintance of mine. I was assigned to clear his planetside IDs. That’s all.”

“He told me that you also offered to help him leave the planet if things got … difficult for him.” Tasa Ad’s face took on a knowing smile. Perivar had done a great job programming the body language. Not surprising, Eric supposed, since ghosts had been his specialty as a revolutionary.

Eric tapped the screen over Kessa and mouthed the words for her. She straightened up. “Or if Madame Chairman made them difficult.”

“What do you want?” asked Schippend.

“Credit,” said Kessa. Eric touched Tasa Ad and gave him his lines.

He waved his sister back. “If there’s someplace you or your employers want Sar Born to be, or not to be, we can take care of it for you.”

Schippend’s expression became wary. “And how is it you can manage that?”

“We are the ones who gave him passage off his home-world,” said Tasa Ad. “He owes us for a few things.”

“And we owe him,” added Kessa darkly.

“I need to clear this line,” said Schippend.

“Of course. We can be contacted at this space.” Eric cut the line, leaned back, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait for long. The box screen lit up in less than a minute. Text lines spilled across it, reporting that Schippend was running his checks. He was making sure that Tasa Ad and Kessa had actually landed, that they had been checked in and verified. As long as he looked in the May 16 network, all his calls would be routed to the ghost box. If he started checking outside, he would find that Tasa Ad and Kessa had vanished six years ago. And then Kessa would just explain that being driven underground was what they “owed” Sar Born for.