Chapter 13
Tuzan blinked in momentary surprise at his reflection in the canopy of his aircar. He still wasn’t used to seeing the man he’d become. The man he might have been had his life stayed in the safe, conservative starlane his traditional parents planned for him and his sister.
A midrange synth voice spoke from the aircar’s console. “Destination in two minutes.”
“Thank you.” He disengaged from traffic control and took control of the aircar. Most of his acquaintances laughed at him for treating AIs and comps like humans. The courtesy comforted him, even if it didn’t matter to them.
After landing on the huge multi-tenant building’s rooftop airpad, he took the token and let the huge flitter stacker store his vehicle. With his bag slung over his shoulder and his hooded rain cloak over it, he probably looked like a walking tent. Just like everyone else in Ridderth.
As he waited for the lift, he used his wristcomp to check in so the building’s security AI would refrain from sending killbots after the janitor.
The office suite he’d chosen for his afternoon meeting was currently vacant, awaiting the post-tenant cleanout that one of his many companies would be doing. In the building’s official security records, his new biometrics correlated with a low-level supervisor who’d be training a new employee.
The suite’s doors opened to his token and passcode.
With a bit of prodding, the wallcomp turned up all the lights to full spectrum.
A quick pass through the space proved that, fortunately, the previous tenant had left the offices, freshers, and kitchen area empty and undamaged.
He could name more than a few cleanouts where the next step after notifying the owners had been to call the police.
Since he was early, he draped his damp cloak on the built-in table, then dropped his bag on the kitchen counter. Safer to wipe off the table than to trust the noise level of the solardry near the entrance.
He sent his ordinary-looking fleet of tiny flying cameras to document the suite’s conditions. In the janitorial business, good records kept everyone honest. As he’d learned long ago, it was entirely too convenient to blame the outside cleanup service for the bad behavior of inside employees.
While the cameras worked, he pulled out an ordinary-looking stack of mid-sized cleaning bots and arrayed them on the floor, unpowered for now.
The almost invisible earwire adhered to his jawline sounded a distinctive tone in his ear. He tapped it and said the name of his company.
“Fifteen minutes.” Samara’s voice sounded as calm as ever.
“Confirm.” He tapped the earwire again to disconnect.
He collected his cameras, copied their recordings with his percomp, then sat on the kitchen floor to keep himself from fidgeting.
Samara Akaramides was the only person he still knew who’d been in Ridderth for the bloody inception of Ayorinn’s forecast. They’d once been comfortable old friends, but no longer.
It was partly his fault. The exotic sensualist persona he wore for the public had a core of truth — he had romantic feelings for multiple people of all genders, and relished physical intimacy.
He was usually in charge of his heart and his desires, but not with Samara.
In the last couple of years, an invisible seed of love had disconcertingly taken root and grown.
He hadn’t found the courage to tell her.
Then she’d discovered a minder technique that should have been impossible. She could gift permanent minder-type mental shields to anyone. Even non-minders.
And with that, she was no longer just one of hundreds of millions of active-duty Minder Corps staff across the galaxy who secretly hoped Ayorinn’s Legacy was true, or just one of the hundreds of thousands who did their small part to make it happen.
She’d become an irreplaceable key to the Legacy’s success.
Shields protected important and critical people from telepaths, including the CPS’s deadliest hunters and interrogators. Her method also worked with minders who had zero shielder talents. People like him.
As far as the CPS Minder Corps knew, she was an average, mid-level shielder and a low-level telepath.
She loyally supported the CPS’s agenda and never flunked a health audit that checked to see she took her enhancement drugs religiously.
Her public personality and off-duty social life were monotonously mundane, only relieved by the occasional dinner out with friends.
Even that had stopped nine months ago when she’d nearly been caught.
She’d just given shields to the ex-Jumper now known as Soleil Benoit to protect the many secrets the woman carried.
Such as a full copy of the hypercubes of raw, uncensored health data now plaguing the CPS.
Plus, knowledge of Tuzan’s secret network to help minders escape the CPS Minder Corps.
And thanks to Neirra Varemba, the memory of a possible cure for the progressively debilitating waster’s disease that killed ex-Jumpers well before their expected lifespan.
Soleil had become another key to the Legacy’s success.
Samara had already left the diner’s back room while he was just finishing erasing Soleil’s memories of how she got the shields. Josh, Soleil’s lover, had stepped in unexpectedly. Then they’d all been attacked by a freelancer after a lucrative bounty.
Tuzan had managed to get out a telepathic warning. Samara had ambushed and subdued the attacker, but not in time to prevent Soleil from being kidnapped. Fortunately, those new shields kept her alive long enough to later escape.
The attacker turned out to be an active CPS employee, a sifter in a different division from Samara’s. From the attacker’s mind, they’d learned the CPS had a new secret program of rewarding selected staff for spying on their coworkers. Any of Samara’s coworkers could be another spy.
Between Samara’s hidden top-level healing talent, Tuzan’s cleaner talent, and a trusted friend with twister talent, they’d erased a few of the freelancer’s memories and twisted the rest to convince him he’d eaten bad food, vomited in the alley, and gone home to sleep it off.
Killing him would have brought more attention, not less.
After that, Samara refused to socialize with anyone outside the CPS. It was the only way to protect her friends from showing up in amateur spy reports.
As a result, he hadn’t seen her in person for months. They’d resorted to clandestine arrangements that put them close enough for telepathy. He didn’t know how she felt about it, but he hated it.
For the carefully vetted shield appointments, he arranged a new, plausible location each time.
Administrator Akaramides had legitimate reasons to go to an autotailor, a flitter repair shop, or the private fresher at a new gym she was trying out.
All she had to do was show up, implant the shields, and leave.
He took care of erasing any memories of her and the location, and used his own telepathy to teach the recipient how to use the new shields.
He didn’t mind that the recipients suspected he’d done it himself.
His own implanted shields assured that even the infamous Skullrippers, the CPS’s ultimate interrogation team, couldn’t get the truth out of him before he died.
Universe willing, he’d take them all with him through the gates of quantum hell when he did.
Samara had asked for today’s meeting because she said she wanted to see the results of his makeover in person, not just via holo. Despite the security risk, he’d agreed because he worried that she had no one to care for her.
Right on time, Samara sent him a telepathic nudge to tell him she was in the lift capsule on the way to his door.
A flutter of nerves hit as he climbed to his feet and pushed his cloak farther back on the table to make room. He hadn’t designed his new look to please her, but his heart hoped it would.
He rolled his eyes at himself as he walked to the suite’s front door. Unrequited angst was for the young and hormonal.
When he sensed her approach, he opened the suite’s doors. She stepped inside, her body language hunched. He closed and sealed the doors behind her.
She pulled off the distortion hood and stuffed it into the upper pocket of her straight, shapeless coat.
Her eyes rounded as she looked him up and down.
He turned a slow four-point pivot, then faced her again, arms wide. “Well?”
Amusement lit up her face. “You know very well you’re beautiful.”
He gave her a saucy smile and cocked a come-hither hip in her direction. “Yes, I most certainly am. Come see the kitchen.”
From his bag on the counter, he pulled out the controller for the waiting cleaning bots and activated them. They took a moment to connect, then went off in search of small debris and damage to repair.
“I already cleared the suite with tech-detector cameras, but the tech suppressors in the bots will keep it that way.” He leaned against the counter. “How long do you have?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.” She smiled primly as she shed her coat and laid it next to his cloak on the table. “It seems I went to the wrong building. I only realized once I parked the flitter and took the lifts that I must have selected the wrong coordinates. I shall be embarrassed all afternoon.”
No time for playful banter, then. “You’re looking well. Are you?” Her dark-hued conservative suit and multi-braided crown of iron-gray hair were part of her camouflage. The old-fashioned cosmetic style made her look stuck in time.
“I am, thank you.” She tested the table, then perched on the edge. “I have news.”
He waved a hand in invitation. “Spill.”
“Subject Three signed on with an exploration expedition that leaves in two days. As long as she doesn’t break the test meter you sent her, it’ll still send us copies of her results whenever it can.
But the telepathic compulsion to not talk about her health will probably wear off long before the return date.
If the CPS notices...” Her jaw tightened as she shook her head.