“Thank you,” Heikki said, and started past her.
“He was good to work for,” Shen said, so softly that Heikki could pretend she didn’t hear. She pushed through the door and into the dimly-lit space. It was smaller than she had expected, most of the space taken up by the media wall and its peripherals, and by an enormous data block. Lights were still flickering across its multiple faces, and Heikki hesitated for an instant, glancing at her lens. Four minutes left—not enough for a search, damn it, she thought, and without thinking reached for the block controls. There were disks in nine of the twenty drives; she popped them all, and stuffed the disks into the pocket of her belt. Only then did she turn her attention to the emergency exit.
The heavy door, an airtight hatch more like an airlock’s outer seal than something you’d find in an expensive office suite, was hidden behind a painted screen. Heikki pushed that aside impatiently, and bent to study the lock. It was a type she recognized, and her spirits rose for the first time that day. The lock mechanism was designed to operate separately from the alarm, to allow for inspection; the trick was to find the codes that disabled the trigger. She frowned over it for a moment, then fished the data lens out of her belt, adjusting the bezel to an analyst setting. It was designed to pick up callcodes from the communications system, “reading” the tones as the system itself would, and translating them into numbers—not precisely an illegal function, Heikki thought, setting the lens against the box above the tiny number plate, but one the use of which required a certain amount of discretion. She studied the mechanism for a moment longer, then took a deep breath and pressed all the numbers in rapid succession. She hit the cancel button before the signal could go through—the alarm gave a gasping rattle, and subsided— and lifted the lens away. As she hoped, four numbers glowed in its depths: the key to the system. Or so she hoped. She smiled to herself, wry-mouthed, and pressed the four buttons. There was a moment of silence, and then an orange light flared above the lock. The system was disabled.
Heikki sighed, and depressed the latch, swinging back the heavy door, but paused long enough to pull the screen back across the opening. With luck, that would buy her a minute or two more, she thought, and tugged the door closed behind her.
The escape corridor was dimly lit, the lights amber and spaced several meters apart. Heikki blinked hard, and stretched out one hand to the wall, feeling her way along the padded surface until her eyes had adjusted to the light. According to Shen’s plans, the tunnel ran directly along the firewall that formed the edge of the office suite, with only one sharp bend just before the exit into the piazzetta. She kept her hand on the wall as she increased her speed, her footsteps dulled by the thick flooring, looking for the turn that marked the exit. She did her best to move quietly, straining her ears for any sign of pursuit, but the only noise was her own steps, and the rasp of her breathing. Then at last the tunnel turned, and ended abruptly in another heavy door.
There was no lock box on this side. Heikki swore under her breath, and crouched to examine the mechanism more closely. Sure enough she could just see the wires that led through the sealant into the release bar, but there was no way to reach them from this side of the door. And why should there be, after all? she thought, and reached under her skirt for her knife. This part of the system would be tested from the outside, not from within. She pried at the seal, scraping for the wires, but the opening was too narrow. Then, distantly, she heard a voice shout something indistinct: Tremoth’s securitrons had figured out where she’d gone. There was no time left for finesse. She sighed, sliding the knife back into its sheath, and depressed the lock release. Instantly, the alarm wailed, a strident, two-toned siren, loud enough to hurt the ears, and the door swung outward, letting in a wedge of bright blued light from the piazzetta’s artificial suns. She blinked, blinded, but stumbled out onto the harder tile, blinking hard to clear her sight. Green clouds danced in front of her, obscuring all but the vaguest shapes; from a distance, she heard someone shout, and then the shrilling of a securitron’s whistle. She swore, ‘pointer manners forgotten, turned blindly to her right, where the maze of shops should begin, and felt someone grasp her left arm just above the elbow. She turned instinctively into the hold, her right hand coming up in the proper counterblow, and that too was blocked and held.
“My,” a too-familiar voice said in her ear, “haven’t you made a mess of things.”
CHAPTER 9
Heikki let herself be drawn away from the whooping alarm and the confused shouts, stumbling on suddenly uneven tiles. Then she was pushed through a door into darkness, and then through a second door into the subdued lights of a side tunnel. A hand snatched at her turban, pulling it loose, and Galler said, “Must you wear precinct clothes? You stand out like a sore thumb.”
“I work in the precincts,” Heikki said, and grabbed back the strip of cloth. Her sight had cleared now; they stood in one of the deliveryways that ran between the blocks of shops, the passage empty now except for neatly flattened and stacked piles of used packaging. She folded her turban as small as possible, grimly aware that Galler was right, her clothing was conspicuous, and then, changing her mind, wound the strip of cloth around her waist in imitation of a fashionable nuobi. It would help hide her own belt, with its many pockets, too. She shook her head vigorously, then ran her fingers through her tangled hair, trying to shape it into something resembling a style. Galler frowned, and fumbled in the pockets of his well-cut jacket until he produced a length of black ribbon. Heikki glared, but took it, and bound her hair into a short tail, then stooped to fasten all the clasps of her shift. That closed the walking slits, narrowing the skirt to a fashionable silhouette, and Galler nodded grudging approval.
“Better, anyway,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. “Come on.” He started down the deliveryway without looking back.
Heikki made a face, but followed, enough in control of her temper to recognize necessity. “What the hell were you doing there?”
Galler glanced back, a cherub’s smile playing on his lips. It was an expression that rarely failed to drive Heikki to attempt homicide. This time, however, she controlled herself with an effort, and repeated her question.
Galler’s smile broadened. “Waiting for you.”
“And if you knew I was going to be there,” Heikki said, her voice thin with anger and the need to suppress it, “why did you let me run myself into that trouble?”
Galler shrugged. “I needed to. Did you, by any chance, pick up the disks that were in my machine?”
Heikki’s jaw dropped, and then she closed her mouth firmly over her first response. He had known she would do it, he had known—had assumed, after twenty years of almost no contact between them—that she would take the time to steal his disks, and, worse, he had been right. “No,” she said deliberately. “Are you crazy? Why would I do a thing like that?” She was savagely glad to see his face fall.
“It would have been useful—” Galler began—betrayed, Heikki thought, into an unguarded utterance?—and then cut himself off. He said, with an attempt at his earlier manner, “Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. You always were too honest, Heikki.”
“Not a family fault, I see,” Heikki murmured, and was rewarded by a single angry glance before Galler had himself under control again.
“But profitable, you must admit.” They were almost at the end of the deliveryway, and he took a deep breath, stepping out onto the main street.
Heikki followed, grateful for the crowd of pedestrians that swallowed them instantly. This was one of the major markets, specializing in gems; the pedestrians were uniformly well-dressed, the professional dealers in expensive, casual clothes mingling with and deliberately indistinguishable from the tourists who moved slowly along the promenade, stopping now and then to gawk at the merchandise displayed on the shops’ window screens. There were corporate hacks as well, but not so many of them, and most of them wore their uniforms with a difference that suggested they were of sufficient rank to ignore the house rules. A bit above my usual company, Heikki thought, automatically matching her pace to that of the people around her.