The man paced angrily. “Well, you just be damn sure all the ways out are covered. Those gardens are all connected.”
Another pause. “Got the sniffers on? Cameras? Good. You guys mess this up, I’ll…” He let his voice trail off into a growl.
He gave the room one last look and unlocked the magnetics. A man with a blood-soaked sleeve stood outside, just within view.
“You’re drippin’, stupid,” the knife-carrier said. “Hold that arm up high and get away from here. Send a cleanup crew, too.”
The other man said, “Where’d he-”
“Knew I shouldn’t have you on this one. Goddamn amateur.” The knife man left at a run.
All this had seemed to take forever. Seconds ticked by as Hari held onto a ceiling tile with all his strength.
In darkness he was lying across support struts directly over a soothing booth. He could see down through a narrow slit. From below, he hoped, the slit was the only sign that the ceiling had been pushed up, a square dislocated. He could see the scuff marks on the top of the booth, where he had climbed up and knocked the ceiling tile out of its clamps.
Now he had to hold the thing in place. His hands were starting to ache from gripping it.
Below he saw a leg and foot enter the refresher, turn, walk out of view. Someone else, a backup team?
If the tile slipped away from him, anyone below would notice the noise, see the dark slit widen. Maybe it would get away from him completely and fall.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on his fingers, willing them to grasp. They were numb now. Getting worse. Starting to tremble.
The tile was heavy, triple-layered for acoustic privacy. It was getting away from him, he could feel it. Slipping. It was going to
The feet below walked out and then came the swish of the door closing. Its lock clicked.
He did not will it, but his fingers let the tile slip. It smacked the floor loudly. Hari froze, listening.
No click of the door lock reopening. Just the soft slur of the air circulators.
So he was safe for a while. Safe in a trap.
Nobody knew he was here. Only a thorough search would bring any trustworthy Imperials this far from the Lyceum area.
And why should they? Nobody would notice that he was missing right away. Even then, they would probably think he had simply gotten fed up with the Council and gone home. He had said as much to the Minister for Sector Correlation.
Which meant the assassins could quietly search for hours. The knife carrier had sounded systematic, determined. He would inevitably think of checking back here, starting over on the trail. There were probably scent-snoops they could muster. And by now the array of cameras throughout the palace would be looking for him.
Luckily there were none in the refresher. He climbed down, nearly slipping on the curved top of the soothing booth. Getting the heavy ceiling tile back up into place took agility and strength. He was puffing by the time he replaced it above the refresher. He lay along the struts and got the tile secured again.
He lay in the darkness and thought. Dors’ palace map popped up in his eye on command, its colors and details more vivid in the gloom. Of course it showed nothing as utilitarian as this crawl space. He could see he was deeply embedded in the Lyceum’s fringe areas. Perhaps his best bet would be to walk boldly out of this refresher. If he could reach a crowd…
If. He did not like leaving his fate to chance. That included the strategy of lying here, hoping they did not come back with snoopers that could sense him up here.
Anyway, he knew that he could not simply do nothing. That was not in his nature. When patience was needed, fine-but waiting did not necessarily improve his odds.
He looked off into the murky space. Gloom stretched away. He could move around up here. But which way?
Dors’ map told him that the Gardens of Respite Cormed an artful tangle around the refresher area. No doubt the competent assassins would have ushered away any potential witnesses outside the window of this refresher room.
If he could somehow get far enough into the gardens…
Hari realized he was thinking in two dimensions. He could reach more public areas by moving up through a few layers of the palace. Outside this refresher room, down the hallway, Dors’ map showed a lift shaft.
He got his bearings and peered in that direction. He had no idea how an e-lift fit into a building. The map simply showed a rectangular enclosure with a lift symbol. But a burning fear made his muscles clench and fret.
He started crawling that way, not because he knew what to do, but because he didn’t. Upright cerami-form studs provided support and he had to be careful to not knock ceiling tiles out of their mounts. He slipped and jammed a knee into one and it gave threateningly, then popped back up. Dim threads of phosphor glow seeped between the tiles. Dust tickled his nostrils and coated his lips. He was getting dirty with the grime of millennia.
Up ahead a blue gleam came from roughly where the lift should be. As he drew closer the going got harder because ducts, pipes, optical conduits, and cross-joints thickened, converging on the hallway. Long minutes passed while he threaded his way among them. He touched a pipe that scorched his arm, a searing jolt so surprising he almost cried out. He smelled burnt flesh.
The blue radiance leaked around the edges of a panel. Suddenly it flared, then died again as he edged closer. A sharp crackling told him that an e-cell had just passed in the lift. He could not tell whether it was going up or down.
The panel was ceramo-steel, about a meter on a side, with electrical ribbons attached at all four sides. He did not know in detail how an e-lift worked, only that it charged the carrier compartment and then handed the weight off among a steady wave of electrodynamic fields.
He got his feet around and kicked at the panel. It held but dented. He kicked again and it loosened. He grunted with the effort of a third, a fourth-the panel popped out and fell away.
Hari brushed aside the thick electrical ribbons and poked his head into the shaft. It was dark, lit only by a dull radiance along a thin vertical phosphor which tapered away into obscurity, both above and below.
The palace was more than a kilometer thick in this ancient section. Mechanical elevators using cables could not serve even small passenger lifts like this one, over heights of a kilometer. Charge coupling from the shaft walls to the e-cell handled the dynamics with ease. The technology was aged and reliable. This shaft must be at least ten millennia old, and smelled like it.
He did not like the prospect before him. The map told him that three layers above him were spacious public rooms used to process supplicants to the Imperium. He would be in safe company there. Below were eight Lyceum layers, which he must assume were dangerous. Easier, certainly, to climb down-but also farther.
It would not be that tricky, he reassured himself. In the shadowy shaft he saw regular electrostatic emitters sunken into the walls. He found a strand of electrical ribbon and poked into one. No sparks, no discharge. That checked with his sketchy knowledge; the emitters went on only when a cell passed. They were deep enough to get his feet halfway into.
He listened carefully. No sound. E-cells were nearly silent, but these ancient ones were also slow. Was the risk of climbing into the shaft that great?
He wondered if he was doing the right thing, and then a voice far behind him said loudly, “Hey! Hey there!”
He glanced back. A head stuck up through an open panel. He could not make out features, but he did not try. He was already rolling awkwardly over the last cross-beam beside the shaft wall, twisting, thrusting himself out into the air. He felt downward with his feet, found an emitter hole, and stuck his foot into it.
No discharge. From memory he felt for another hole. His foot went in. He slipped over the casing, holding on tight with his hands.