When she was finished, she erased all memories and logs from the ’face. She had been wearing fingercaps, so no genetic information was on the keyboard, and for any genetic traces found elsewhere, she had established a reason that any ’Cocker would readily accept.
A moan escaped from the bed area. Bridget ban frowned, because Pulawayo should not be coming out of the hypnosis on his own. She dashed across the courtyard, around the fishponds, and between two thick pillars carved to resemble tree trunks, coming to the mound of cushions and drapes on which the Director lay.
Pulawayo was still under, but his mouth opened and closed slackly and his throat, loose in sleep, struggled to form sounds. Talking in his sleep, she thought. He must be dreaming.
But the ’Cocker dialect was built of lazy lips and throats, and Bridget ban’s implant began to make sense out of the moans, helping her to hear them in Gaelactic.
“Where did you go?” the Director said. “Why did you leave me?”
Bridget ban had been leaning over the bed to hear better. Now she stood straight in alarm, thinking furiously. He couldn’t have come out of it. “I needed to use your facilities,” she temporized. “Go back to sleep now.”
“He is asleep. Why did you ask him about the access codes?”
Him? It was eerie enough to be conversing with a sleeping man. To hear him speak of himself in such a detached fashion reminded Bridget ban of old Die Bold tales of “spooken” that could take over your body. Each New Year’s Eve, with other Die Bold children, she would dress in terrible and frightening costumes, pretending to be already possessed and trusting to professional courtesy. The practice was taken less seriously than in Settlement Days, but the recollection came on her so suddenly and so completely that for a moment she almost ran in terror from the house. Only her iron control kept her at the bedside long enough to realize what must have happened.
“He was going to give me that information in the morning,” she said. “Hush. You sleep, too. That was quite a ride we had. You must be tired.”
“I’m not tired; but, oh, you were so good. And your clothing—that was a nice compliment. I don’t want them to hurt you.”
“No one’s going to hurt me.”
“They’ll be waiting outside, on the street to the maglev. He suggested it. He said the secret was worth the risk.”
“What secret?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll remember when he wakes up, I suppose.”
Of course. The paraperception. Awake, both halves of the brain would be cross-talking. Right now she was talking to Pulawayo’s emotive-perceptive half, but naturally they gave both hemi spheres access to the speech center.
Note to self: when interrogating a paraperceptic, be sure to hypnotize both halves.
Gently, she calmed the frightened half of the brain. Then, speaking into the right ear, she told the other half that he’d had a confused dream, and he would forget it when he awoke. She described their lovemaking as more passionate than it had been, and played to his fantasies by telling him she had worn her Hound’s uniform and they had played dominance games. She told him that she had left an hour before the current clock time. She told him they had kissed at the door.
There. The memories most easily recalled are the ones that we wish we’d had. If he remembered from his other half that she had left the bed during the night, he would ascribe that to her female needs.
Then, surrendering to an impulse, she pulled up the right eyelid.
The eyeball was rolled back in its socket, moving in a slow rhythm.
She pulled up the left eyelid.
And it was looking right at her.
“Good-bye,” she told the left ear. “You were wonderful. I shall never forget you.”
It was a small lie, and she needed the gratitude and cooperation of that half.
It was night and the street was shrouded in darkness broken by the pools of light created by the lamps. Most of the houses were dark blocks set into the night. A few, at this late hour, showed pale lamplight behind shades and curtains. A distant hiss marked the Hilliwaddy River where it spilled over the rocks in its descent from Polychrome Mountain. The wind stirred the trees into whispered excitement.
She had reached the corner and had turned onto Olumakali Street leading to the maglev station when she smelled them.
Two of them, waiting in the shadows between two of the houses. Under that tree.
(Is that her) she heard one whisper.
(She’s a tourista, in’t she?)
(But they said she’d be wearing some kinky sort of clothing. A “uniform.”)
She was passing by them now, pretending she couldn’t hear or smell them. She remembered the brawny ’Cockers she had noticed now and then. Peacock was ruled by custom, not laws. They didn’t have policers. They had enforcers.
She wondered if they knew what a Hound could do? There were only two of them.
Or were there?
She continued to listen as she drew away.
(That wasn’t her.)
(Wait. She’s passing under the streetlight. We’ll get a better look.)
(Red hair. That’s her alright. Call Kerinomata and tell them to come up the street. We’ll follow her down.)
They came out of the shadows with a silence remarkable for their size. She did not turn around to look at them. Four, she supposed. Two behind, two ahead. That made the odds not quite even. But she ought not simply kill them. She had come to Peacock Junction to track the phantom fleet, not to create a diplomatic incident between Peacock and the League. On the other hand, if she let them attack her, every Hound who heard of it would come straight to the Junction, and there would be no stone left atop another.
(Here comes Kerinomata. We got her…)
“Hey! Where’d she go!”
In the lightless interstice between two streetlamps, Bridget ban had leaped aside, leaving a pair of sandals standing in the walkway behind her—as if she had simply evaporated in place. Wooden soles would make noise when running and silence now was worth any price. Fleet as a whippet, she sprinted between two darkened dwellings into a shared greenery behind: trees, a fishpond, several beds of colorful flowers, a stone garden. As she ran, she gathered her srong up and tucked it into her waistband. Now, it was a short skirt, and her legs were free. She bounded over the pond, ran a few steps along a bench, and—up!—over a hedgerow of fat-leafed oily plants.
And down—in another back garden, again shared by several houses. She crouched, knees bent, fingertips lightly touching the grass like a runner poised for the gun, and listened. A whistle in the distance, on the block she had come from. Was this a world where people pulled the shutters closed when they heard such sounds at night? Or one where they ran to their windows and spied on the dark with comm units clutched in hand?
Long hours in the training room now returned interest a hundredfold. She sprinted out to the next street, where she paused, sniffed, listened, looked. Nothing. Across the street, and repeat the process over to the next street. Could she run fast enough to put herself outside the radius of what they would consider a reasonable search area? How far to the next maglev station?
No. Forget that. They’d be watching the maglev stations.
She paused, panted, looked around the neighborhood.
A large hulk of a building stood in midblock, like a rock among soap bubbles. The walls were rough, unfinished granite and bore in front a colonnade whose pillars seemed the least bit too wide and short. It appeared more lasting than the evanescent homes around it; more serious than anything the frivolous ’Cockers would build. Its stolid facade bespoke an earlier epoch in the planet’s history. If other buildings of this ilk had ever squatted along this street, they had long since been demolished and replaced.