There was more cultural variation in San Francisco than on this entire planet. She made the muscles of her face relax one by one.
“The nondisclosure policy is not negotiable, by permanent directive,” the receptionist said cautiously. “Killing or excruciating myself or any of our other associates here will not alter this; the policy is set at higher levels, to whom we are of little consequence.”
Sally schooled her face and glanced aside at Teyud. The Thoughtful Grace made a very small gesture with two fingers of the hand resting on her sword hilt: Don’t push it.
“I’m more interested in the person who employed the three … associates of your cooperative,” Sally said grimly.
“We will inform you of the identity of the third party for a fee of 2,750 monetary units, with financing available on the following terms at an interest rate of …”
“No nondisclosure clause?”
“No, none was purchased. This was an imprudent excess of thrift that increases the probability of suboptimal results from the client’s perspective! Note that we will include a nondisclosure agreement with you for a modest additional fee of—”
Ten minutes later they were back on the street, and Sally was looking at the name and address written on a scrap of paper-equivalent.
“What do we do now?” she said.
Teyud smiled. “As to our course of action, we engage in reconnaissance, then attack.”
Here I am, invading Harvard with fell intent. Or maybe Oxford.
Even by the standards of Zar-tu-Kan, the Scholarium was old. Old enough that it hadn’t originally been under a dome, or laid out whole in one of the fractal-pattern mazes Martians had gone in for under the Crimson Dynasty. They’d improvised during the Imperial era as it grew; now the reduced students and staff rattled around in buildings that ranged from the size of her apartment block to things bigger than the Solar Dome in Houston or the Great House of People’s Culture in Beijing; the bigger ones were mostly garden now, and they were all linked together by tunnels below and translucent walkways etched in patterns like magnified snowflakes above.
Sally suppressed a start as she saw herself in a reflective patch of one of them. She and Teyud wore student robes—slightly threadbare and gaudy—and Scholarium-style masks. Hers was a Spinner-Grub, modeled on the pupal stage of an insect used for textile production—a freshman style, and something of a dry joke in local terms. Teyud’s was a jest of her own, a delicate golden mask representing the face of a Thoughtful Grace sword-adept … which she actually was. Here it could mark someone studying the martial arts, or military history. The fact that most people wore masks and clothing that covered everything to the fingertips made sneaking around in disguise much easier.
And Teyud had a rather ironic sense of humor. When Sally mentioned the fact, she nodded slightly.
“More. In their origins, the Thoughtful Grace were Coercives concerned with maintenance of rule and regulation deference … what is that Terran word …”
“Police,” Sally said quietly.
“Yes. And now I am pursuing a similar function, particularly for you.”
She chuckled slightly. Sally didn’t feel like laughing; it was a bit too personal.
“And so I still serve Sh’uMaz, in—metaphorical mode—a way,” Teyud said, and touched the Imperial glyph in the forehead of her mask that represented that concept. “Even though I am not in the service of the Kings Beneath the Mountain.”
Sh’uMaz meant Sustained Harmony, the program and motto of the Tollamune emperors. The Eternal Peace of the Crimson Dynasty was a nostalgic memory on Mars now, but there was some undertone in Teyud’s voice stronger than that.
A section of the walkway curled downward in a spiral like a corkscrew. They slid down it in a way practicable only because the gravity was a third of Earth’s, then walked out into the space under a dome. The buildings around the edge were wildly varied, but most of the identifying glyphs bore variations on the beaded spiral that signified tembst. This was the science faculty, more or less.
Pathways of textured, colored rock wound through the open space, interspersed with low shrubs and banks of flowers. Colorful avians flew or scurried about. One of the birds stopped and hovered before her face.
“Food?” it said hopefully.
“Buzz off,” she replied, and it did.
Students sat or sprawled along the pathways and planters and benches, arguing or reading or occasionally singing. Apart from the eternal atanj a few played games that involved throwing small things with bundles of tentacles that tried to snag your hand. You won by catching the tip of a tentacle and whirling the … thing … at the next player. If it missed, it scuttled back to the one who had the next turn.
She couldn’t understand why anyone here would abduct a Terran biologist for his knowledge; Martians were simply better at it, and Tom had come to this planet to learn himself. That left something on the order of I need a lab rat with a particular genetic pattern as motivation. Which meant that anything could be happening to him.
Anything at all.
“Information,” Teyud said smoothly to a passerby. “Knowledgeable Instructor Meltamsa-Forin?”
The student had a mask whose surface mimicked something that had a swelling boss of bone on its forehead.
“Ah, Meltam the Neurologically Malfunctioning,” he said.
Or Meltam the Eccentric or Meltam the Mad, she translated mentally.
“Identity, function?”
The student pointed to one of the buildings. “Be prepared to listen to exquisitely reasoned arguments from faulty premises.”
“Specialty?”
“Agri-tembst, with a more recent subsidiary field in Wet World biotics,” the student said. Grudgingly: “In the latter, he has considerable data. Though the subject is arcane and of little immediate utility, it has some interest.”
He tilted his head and left, having comprehensively dissed a professor. Under other circumstances, Sally would have found it humiliating: the glyph on the building he’d pointed out was roughly translatable as Veterinary Science. Of course, it also meant Engineering Malfunctions and Their Remedies.
“Tom was kidnapped by veterinarians?”
The building itself was old enough that it had high, arched windows, filled with foam-rock aeons ago. Most of it was included in the later dome, but a tower reared high above, a smooth stone cylinder that flared outward at the top like a gigantic tulip.
“Ah,” Teyud said. “Yes. A straightforward entry has limited possibilities. But there are alternatives available.”
“What alternatives?”
“There are advantages to being of the Thoughtful Grace genome, which compensate for the increased caloric intake necessary.” She frowned in thought and ate another flower. “In your terms … I am owed favors and have serious mojo with the local Coercives in the service of the Despot.”
“They’ll intervene?” Sally said, surprised and pleased.
“Not directly. But … off the books.”
“I would have preferred a high-altitude insertion with directional parachutes,” Teyud said a few hours later. “There is a small but calculable risk of the airship’s being spotted.”
“No,” Sally said; that was less impolite in Demotic.
The blimp was very nearly silent; the engines were panting—literally—because they’d pulled it into a position upwind and were now drifting with the breeze quietly and slowly toward the Scholarium. Zar-tu-Kan passed below the transparent compartment in the belly of the dirigible, less stridently bright than a Terran city from the air, a mystery of soft glow and points of light. It was cold, well below zero, but the robes and undersuit were near-perfect insulation. Only the skin across her eyes was exposed, and that only until …