The young man pondered his screen for a moment longer—too long, surely, Heikki thought, for a simple inquiry. “Is Galler in?” She allowed her voice to sharpen slightly, and was rewarded by a swift glance from under the young man’s lashes.
“I’m very sorry, Dam’, I can’t seem to get a precise answer from his department. He seems to be out of his office….” His voice strengthened slightly. “They say, if you’d care to go to the inner lobby, they’ll have an answer by the time you get there.”
Heikki frowned, and one of the touts stepped up to the pedestal. Probably, Heikki thought, in response to a private signal, and she eyed him discouragingly.
“If you’d follow me, Dam’, I can show you the way.” The tout smiled ingratiatingly, showing good teeth.
It was too late to draw back now. Heikki smiled more moderately, and nodded. “Very well. But I hope they’ll have found him by then. I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your valuable time.”
The young man behind the pedestal nodded back, but the tout’s smile widened. “No trouble at all, Dam’, in fact, a pleasure.”
Heikki murmured some proper response, suddenly wary. This was not the way the major corporations generally treated miscellaneous visitors, especially ones who could not claim to be on the usual admittance lists. She followed the tout across the lobby, and past a discreetly armed securitron into the maze of corridors that made up the office complex. As they passed more security stations, her suspicion hardened into certainty. The man she followed was more than a mere tout; the securitrons were too respectful for him to be anything except one of their men. The ordinary workers, keyboarders, data clerks, and so on, were even more respectful, and Heikki could feel a cold knot of fear growing in the pit of her stomach. She put it aside as best she could, all too aware that she had made a mistake in coming here to find Galler. If anything ever wanted discretion, she began, and shoved self-reproach away as well. There was no time for that now; what mattered was to get out of this with as little fuss as possible. She glanced to either side, painfully casual, trying to memorize the twists and turns of the corridors, but knew with a sinking sensation that she would never be able to retrace her steps unaided.
The tout brought her at last to one of the circular inner lobbies, this one presided over by a young woman in a severely cut suit. She looked up at their approach, her thin face at once wary and annoyed, and the tout said silkily, “Good morning, Shen. Dam’ Heikki here is looking for Galler. Is he about?”
The young woman’s face did not change as she looked down at her board. “I believe Ser is mistaken—” She broke off abruptly, a faint line appearing between her brows. “I beg your pardon, dam-i-ser,” she said, after a moment, and there was an odd reluctance in her voice. She looked at Heikki, still frowning slightly. “The secretary has gone to get him—he’s out of his office right now. If you’d be so good as to wait… ?”
Heikki nodded, and the young woman smiled directly at the tout. “And there’s a message for you, Ser. Tynmar would like to see you directly.”
That was unequivocal, Heikki thought, and glanced sideways just in time to see the tout smooth a frown from his face. “Thank you, Shen. I’ll leave Dam’ Heikki in your capable hands.”
“Of course, ser,” the young woman said demurely, and looked down at her console.
Heikki waited until the lobby door had closed behind the tout, then, doing her best to keep the edge of fear from her voice, said, “Can you tell me if Galler’s here, please?” She heard the sharpness in her tone anyway, and hoped Shen would take it for a businesslike haste.
“One moment, please,” the young woman answered, her fingers busy on her keys. She looked up then, her work complete, all traces of the polite mask wiped from her face. “Galler isn’t here. He’s vanished, about a week ago.” She looked at her screen again, and shook her head. “They’ve called security, all right. Oh, don’t worry, I’ve put on the privacy screen.”
Heikki started to swear, then swallowed the words unspoken. There was no time for that, only for the right question, and then, maybe, a way out. “Why are you telling me this?” It could be a trick, after all, a part of her added silently, that would be very like the corporations….
“I worked for him for three years,” Shen answered, her expression old behind the heavy paint. “He was a good boss. I don’t know what happened, but he knew something was going wrong, and he told me I might expect you.”
Heikki’s mouth twisted, but she bit back her automatic response. He always knew how to punch my buttons…. She said instead, “You said security’s on its way. Is there another way out?”
Shen hesitated, then reached for the keyboard of a secondary screen. “Maybe—there’s always the fire tubes, but they’re alarmed. I don’t think I can cut them from here.”
“How far?” Without waiting for an invitation, Heikki came around the barrier desk to look over the other woman’s shoulder. Shen shifted her screen, pointing to a red line on the suite’s plan.
“The entrance is through the inner office, opposite the media wall. It comes out on the fourth level piazzetta, near the shopping concourses. But it’s all alarmed—”
“How much time do I have?” Heikki interrupted.
“Ten minutes, no more.” Shen gave a crooked smile.
“They figure I can keep you busy that long, and they won’t have to alarm the rest of the office.”
“Sa.” Heikki tugged at her lower lip, studying the plan. The Exchange Points maintained a standard escape system in case of fire, but the alarms that monitored unauthorized use were less standardized. There was a chance she could fox those alarms, if they were of the simple models she understood…. Not that there was any other choice. She smiled, briefly and without humor. Under any other circumstances—if anyone else had been involved—she would have chanced a private arrest, refused to answer questions and protested it to her lawyers, maybe even filed a harassment suit of her own. But there were too many unknowns here, too many ways she could hurt not just Galler, but herself and Santerese as well. Malachy’s advice had been to stay well away from Tremoth until the situation had settled a bit—and I wish to hell, she thought, I’d followed his advice.
Almost without conscious volition, her finger was tracing the course of the fire tube. As Shen had said, it debouched onto one of the busy shopping squares. It would not be difficult to lose herself in the crowds once she’d left the tube, not difficult in fact to get out of the tube—if she could deactivate the alarms. And even if she couldn’t, the crowds and the panic that any alarm would set off would help cover her escape. Odds on, she thought, this could work. She glanced at the data lens she still clutched in the palm of her hand, triggering the chronodisplay: seven minutes left.
“You said you didn’t know what happened to Galler,” she said, and held up her hand when the other woman would have agreed. “Do you know where he is, or how to contact him?”
“No.” Shen shook her head. “The only thing I know is, he annoyed some higher-ups over some contract job. Something outside the usual channels. There’s a man named Slade, a troubleshooter—he’s the one Galler was really worried about.”
“But why?” Heikki said involuntarily, and made a gesture of apology when Shen shook her head again.
“I’m sorry, Dam’ Heikki—”
“Sorry, talking to myself,” Heikki interrupted. She looked around the lobby again. “Where’s the nearest tube entrance?”
“Through there,” Shen said, and pointed to a half-closed door in the wall behind her desk. She smiled again, lopsidedly. “That’s—that was Galler’s office. I’ll tell them you wanted to wait there, that way I won’t get into trouble.”