A medunit floated through the Y-shield. It was a kind she’d never seen before, even back when Liver towns had medunits. A small arm with a patch shot out toward her: another tranq. Lizzie leaped onto the sleeping platform, grabbed the medunit, and yanked it up with her, upending it and hoping to hell that she was holding it so that no ’bot arms could reach her. And that the alarm it was undoubtedly sending to the building system had no people around to answer it.
“Open medical comlink!” she yelled at it, and recited Dr. Aranow’s AMA code, just as she’d dipped it from his personal system. God, it had to open! The thing was a medunit, wasn’t it? It had to be linked to official records.
“Official medical link open,” a female voice said calmly. “Recording. Go ahead. Dr. Aranow.”
“Link me with my home system!”
“This unit is not equipped to do that. You have opened an official medical link recording channel. Please proceed.”
“Fucking damn!” Lizzie yelled. What if the unit activated physical defenses? She started to reel off the security overrides she’d dipped on various government systems, all of them, hoping one would open the channel that she knew was possible, must be possible, even official donkey links always had back doors to allow the system to be used for something besides what it was designed for…
“Link opened,” the female voice said, and a moment later a male voice: “Yes, Dr. Aranow?”
Jones. Dr. Aranow’s house system. Lizzie took a deep breath to calm herself.
“Jones, please tell Dr. Aranow he has an emergency call from Lizzie Francy.” She continued to hold the medunit as far away from her body as she could, even though it had stopped trying to slap her with a tranq patch. “Ms. Lizzie Francy.”
“Dr. Aranow is not currently available. Would you like to record a message?”
“No! Don’t… I mean, I need him, me! Link with his personal system!”
“I’m sorry, this system cannot do that on outside orders. Would you like to record a message?”
She didn’t have a high-priority link, and this patch-pushing ’bot wouldn’t have the ability to create one. Now what?
“Please respond in the next fifteen seconds. Would you like to record a message?”
“No!” Lizzie said desperately. “Let me talk to the doctor’s sister!”
“Just a moment, please.”
And then a weak, frightened voice, “Hello?”
“Ms. Aranow!” Suddenly Lizzie couldn’t remember Jackson’s sister’s name. She could see her, slim and elegant in her flowered dress, holding Dirk in her arms, tears running down her pale terrified face. Lizzie could even remember the sister’s personal system’s name—“Thomas”—and, of course, all the access codes. But she couldn’t think of the donkey girl’s first name. “Ms. Aranow, this is Lizzie Francy, Dr. Aranow’s… friend. With the baby. I’m in jail in Manhattan East Enclave! Please tell Dr. Aranow and Vicki Turner right away to come get me, it’s an emergency!”
“In… jail? With… with the baby?” Ms. Aranow started to say.
The medunit suddenly started to push toward her, some sort of time-delayed follow-through, the ’bot arm again snaked out with a tranq patch… “Tell the doctor! Tell Vicki! Come get—”
The medunit bucked with a sudden urge of energy. The patch connected with Lizzie’s wrist. Immediately blackness took her; she didn’t even see the medunit float out of her grasp to hover beside her body, slumped half on the platform and half off.
Theresa lay trembling in her bed. That Liver girl was in jail. With her baby.
She saw, as clearly as if she gazed at the walls of her study and not of her rose-pink bedroom, the newsgrid holos of Liver babies, crippled and crumpled and starving and dying…
No. She was being ridiculous. Lizzie’s baby wasn’t dying. That baby was Changed. But the little thing was in jail, in a cell someplace, and something had happened to its mother to cut off the comlink like that. Had somebody hurt Lizzie Francy? And the baby?
Theresa had never seen a jail. But she’d watched history holos, and movies. Jails in those were filthy, horrible cells that smelled bad and held dangerous people who hurt other people. But surely jails weren’t like that anymore? The cleaning ’bots wouldn’t let them stay filthy. But the rest…
She sat up against her pillows. The sores on her hands and body had closed up. She could eat, and talk, and even walk a little, with crutches. She’d had a floater, but Jackson had sent it back because, he said, using the floater didn’t help rebuild her muscles. Twice a day the nursing ’bot coached Theresa through the physical rehabilitation software. But getting up was an effort, and feeling her hairless head made her cry. Jackson had removed all mirrors from her rooms. Much of the time, Theresa lay in bed and spoke notes, hours of obsessive notes, to Thomas. About Leisha Camden. About the Sleepless. About Miranda Sharifi.
She spoke to her system now. “Thomas, have Jones place an emergency call to my brother at Kelvin-Castner!”
“Of course I will, Theresa.”
But it was Cazie, scowling and rumpled, who answered her call. “Tess? What’s wrong? Why the emergency call?”
“I need to speak to Jackson.”
“So you said. But why?” Cazie drummed her fingers on an unseen table. Her black hair needed combing, and there were smudges under her eyes. She looked distracted and upset. Theresa shrank back against her pillows.
“It’s… private.”
“Private? Are you all right?”
“Yes… I’m… yes. It’s about somebody else.”
Cazie’s gaze suddenly focused sharply. “Who else? Did a message come for Jackson? This isn’t about Sanctuary, is it?”
“Sanctuary? Why would Jackson get a message about Sanctuary?”
Cazie’s gaze veiled again. “Nothing. So who’s the message from?”
“What about Sanctuary?”
“Nothing, Tessie. Listen, I didn’t mean to snap at you, when you’re so sick. Go back to sleep, pet. Jackson’s in the middle of an important meeting here and I don’t want to interrupt him, but I’ll tell him you called. Unless there’s something important you want to tell me, so I can pass it on to him?”
Theresa looked into Cazie’s eyes. Cazie was lying to her. Theresa knew it—how? She didn’t know. Yes, she did. Theresa had pretended to be Cazie, and now she could tell when Cazie was pretending. A shift in her voice, a look in her golden eyes… Jackson was not in a meeting. Which meant Cazie was keeping Theresa away from Jackson. As well as away from something about Sanctuary. And Cazie had never liked Jackson’s helping that girl Lizzie and her baby…
“N-no,” she faltered. “Nothing… important. Just a message from… from Brett Carpenter. That man that Jackson plays tennis with. About a match.”
“But you said it was an ‘emergency.’ ”
“I… I guess I just wanted to talk to Jackson. I’m kind of lonely.”
Cazie’s face softened. “Of course you are, Tessie. I’ll have Jackson call you the minute this meeting is over. And I’ll come by tonight to see you. I promise.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“Now you rest like a good girl and get all better.” The link blanked.
“Thomas,” Theresa said. “Newsgrid flag, last twenty-four hours. Anything on Sanctuary.”
She didn’t need the flag. The screen lit up with current news, and Theresa watched the holo of Sanctuary blowing up, listened to the shocked newscaster, saw the simulation of the missile’s path, heard President Garrison’s angry denunciation of the nuclear terrorists who had not yet named themselves.