“Keep your voice down,” he cautioned. “Nope, I’m not expecting trouble. This should be a smooth operation, a piece of cake. ‘Jenos Idanian’ is clean, ‘cause I only used him to open the account and deposit the money. He should be laser-proof. But, baby … I learned long ago to always plan for trouble.”
“Okay,” she said. “What do you want to plan for?”
“That’s a big city, a big world,” Han pointed out, just as the shuttle kissed the upper edges of the atmosphere. “If anything happens and we get separated, I want to set up a meeting place.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said. “Where?”
“The only address I know, ‘cause I memorized the location a long time ago, is a bar called ‘The Glow Spider.” That’s where I’ll be contacting Nici the Specialist,” he said, keeping his voice very low, but not … quite … whispering. Whispers drew attention, Han had learned long ago, where low-voiced conversations did not.
“That’s the guy who can get people IDs so perfect that even the Imperials can’t detect them?”
“Yeah. He’s got contacts with the people in the Imp offices who actually make the IDs. They’re perfect, trust me. Okay, so it’s Nici the Specialist. He hangs out at The Glow Spider. Got that?”
“Nici the Specialist. Glow Spider,” she repeated. “Where is it?”
“Level 132, megablock 17, block 5, subblock 12,” Han recited.
“Memorize that perfectly. This world is a maze, Bria.”
Silently she repeated the location to herself over and over, until she could say confidently, “I’ve got it.”
“Good.”
When they reached the “surface”—the rooftop landing field where the shuttle landed—Han left Bria with their scanty luggage while he went over to an automated tourist center to get information and directions.
He and Bria needed an inexpensive place to stay while he prepared for the entrance examinations for the Academy. Han planned to rent a cheap room for the duration.
When he came back to Bria, she saw that he had a palm-sized locator computer. “How much did that cost?” she asked, eyeing it worriedly.
Their funds from the sale of the Ylesian yacht were running low.
“Only twenty,” Han said. “This world’s too easy to get lost on, I figure.
All I gotta do is enter our destination, like this …” Squinting with concentration, he entered, “Level 86, megablock 4, block 2, subblock 13…”
“What’s that?”
“The place where I got us a room for tonight,” Han answered, not looking up. “And … there!”
Directions from their present location appeared on the screen. “First, we take the turbolift down to level 16 …” Han muttered, looking around.
“There!”
They headed for the sign marked TUROLIFT.
Once aboard the lift, Bria gasped at the precipitous drop. They fell ˇ . .
and fell …
“Like being in space,” Han said uneasily. “Almost free fall …”
“My stomach doesn’t like this,” Bria gulped.
Fortunately, the turbolift slowed as it reached its destination. Bria staggered off, looking slightly green.
“Now to find megablock 4 …” Han mumbled, still concentrating on his little gadget. “Then we’ll go down again …”
Once out of the turbolift, Bria looked around her in wonder and growing claustrophobia. Everywhere buildings loomed over her, so high she had to crane her neck to see their tops. The tops of many of them supported another rooftop, probably like the one she was standing on.
Even though it had been bright (but chilly) daylight up on the landing pad, here it was dark and warm. No air seemed to move in the duracrete and transparisteel canyons between the buildings. She heard a distant rumble of thunder, but no rain reached her, and she had no way of telling whether the storm was above her or below her.
Occasional unbarricaded airshafts broke the permacrete on the rooftop, and about a hundred meters away, Bria could see the abrupt line of demarcation at the end of the pavement. Evidently a thoroughfare ran at the deepest levels.
She walked over to look down one of the airshafts and, after one brief glance, staggered back, head spinning and her palms crawling with vertigo.
She glanced around, saw no one near her, then dropped to her hands and knees and crawled back to peek over again. As long as she wasn’t standing, she thought that the dizziness might not be too bad.
Nearing the edge of the lip, she held on with both hands and peered down the airshaft.
The airshaft went down and down and down. It was amazing, frightening, to imagine her body falling down that seemingly bottomless expanse, helplessly turning and twisting in midair.