"Gravs off," Joat said. They all felt a buoyant lightness as they switched over to planetary gravity, about four-tenths standard. "Connections on."
There was a slight subliminal difference as the ship plugged into stationside power and life-support. Joat took a deep breath. "Time to hit dirtside," she said.
Time to find Uncle Nom.
The representative of Yoered Security looked bored as he lectured. He was a slight dark man with a small clipped mustache that looked as if it had been painted on his upper lip, dressed in a utilitarian dark-brown coverall. A few assistants stood behind him, one in a suit of powered armor; the visible ones looked as if they were close relatives-which they were. Yoered Family had started off as a crime "family" planetside, and moved out of the Central Worlds sphere several generations ago. They married in-clan… a standoffish bunch.
"Right, you've probably heard this before, but listen carefully anyway," the enforcer said. "This is Rohan. Yoered Family owns Rohan and everything on it. We have rules; you obey those rules, and you can get what you want here. First rule: nobody offers offense or violence to a member of our Family. Punishment-death."
He made a gesture. Behind him the wall flashed to holo; it showed an iron cage hanging by a chain from a massive oak tree in the underdome. Inside it was a human figure, incredibly emaciated, like a skeleton held together by strips of dried gristle. It moved…
Joat swallowed as the image disappeared. The enforcer went on:
"Second rule: no stealing, no destruction of clan property, no unauthorized assault, no welching on debts. Punishment-penal servitude." He smiled, a neat, contained little expression. "You may have noticed how clean we keep things?"
The three from Wyal looked around. The waiting room was extremely tidy, with an almost painfully scrubbed look. The only messy things in its broad expanse were some of the other spacers.
The security operative gestured again. This time the holo showed a man operating a vibroscrubber machine along a walkway. He was naked except for a brief pair of shorts, and a thick pain-compliance collar around his neck. Haunted eyes turned towards the pickup for a second, and then the man's body jerked, muscles crawling under the skin. He gave a thin scream and turned his attention back to the task. Joat had never seen anyone working with such concentrated attention.
"That was a thief." The security man smiled more broadly. "Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't a tight-butt sort of place. You can get anything you want here, if you can pay-or anyone. You want to cut someone, just challenge them to a duel-the Family puts it on the holovid and takes a cut on bets. Want someone dead? You buy a license and hire a Family assassin; standard rate, one hundred fifty thousand credits, with extras depending on the target."
The smile never touched his eyes. "You can even get privacy, within the doors of your lodgings. Standard rate, one hundred and fifty thousand credits down and twenty thousand per standard month. Everything else is under constant surveillance-every corridor, every cargo line, every bar, every bathroom, every closet. Nothing gets by us. And yeah, by the way, we don't go in for all that evidentiary stuff. We arrest on suspicion, narcoquiz, and sentence the same day. No appeals." More teeth showed. "So enjoy yourselves, ladies, gentlemen, beings. Do a profitable business. But watch it."
"All functional," Rand confirmed.
"Good equipment," Joseph said judiciously, slipping the tiny button into his ear. "As good as the Naval Intelligence material we got from the military aid package."
"Sure it's not readable?" Alvec murmured. The other two heard him twice, a chorus-of-angels effect from the air and from the little transmitters tucked into their ears.
"I'm modulating it through the internal power lines," Rand said. "The encryption code is jiggered to look like the sort of random fluctuations you get there."
"Excellent," Joat murmured. "I know the virtual reality net here is legendary, Rand, but I need you to spend some time trying to crack Ciety's computer."
"I have a sense of responsibility, Joat," Rand said testily. "You programmed it into me. But you can make good contacts in V.R., so I intend to start there. I should have some news for you on your return."
"Just remember the expense," Alvec warned.
"Our expenses are being covered by CenSec," Rand reminded them. "I intend to take full advantage of that. Even if they will not pay the fine, they can be billed for ordinary outgoings."
Alvec's face went thoughtful, then lit up. Like a kid in a bakery told he can have six of anything he wants, Joat thought.
"Fardles," Joat said in awe. "I forgot!" She hoisted a travel case containing the Crown rubies, still disguised in their laser crystal boxes.
"Rand is right," Joseph said. "We must not become distracted. Amos's life is in the balance, and with it the well-being of my people."
"Yeah, sure, of course," Alvec said to his departing back. "But that doesn't mean we can't go to dinner. It wouldn't be right not to take advantage of CenSec's generosity just a little."
"They'll expect it," Joat assured him.
"They do things in person here, the old-fashioned way," Joseph said, slightly surprised. On Bethel, virtual presence was all the rage-newly risen from stagnation and backwardness, the Bethelites put a premium on modernity.
"Would you trust the public net, here?" Joat asked.
Joseph grinned, although his eyes remained wary. "You have a point."
That was logical, given that a moderately talented tech could produce a holo of anyone doing or saying anything and no one could tell the difference between an actual recording and one that had been faked. Therefore all transactions were real time, face to face, with multiple witnesses. Offices might be obsolete elsewhere, but not here.
Ciety's was located in a quiet neighborhood; just off the underdome surface, which was the prestige area on Rohan. They walked through eerily elongated groves of trees, past flowerbeds and greenswards, beneath the clear dome and the blue sky that was the great banded jewel of the gas-giant. Despite the growing tension that knotted her stomach, Joat was still struck by the beauty of it, and the air of quiet and peace. Nursemaids and children were the commonest strollers; she saw a dog make a long dolphinlike low-gravity leap after a ball and pinwheel off through the air…
"The Family do themselves proud," Alvec said sourly. "Who says crime wouldn't pay if the government ran it?"
Joseph looked about. "I am surprised the Central Worlds tolerate this," he said.
"They won't forever," Joat said absently. "But it's a big galaxy. If they mopped up the Yoered Family now, they'd just be replaced by someone younger and hungrier and cruder. Eventually the frontier will move out past this area, and the Family will go legitimate or move again to get outside the sphere of settled law.
"This is it," she said.
They walked through a tall archway carved into the rock of the crater wall; the blast doors that would seal it in an emergency were hidden behind the glowing mass of bougainvillea that carpeted the walls of the corridor behind. It was wide enough to be a street, but only slow floater platforms passed them, and a scattering of well-dressed pedestrians. No bars or sex shows were advertised here. Every office presented an inscrutable face of one-way glass adorned with a discreet sign announcing the name, but not the purpose, of the business within. No doubt that explained the sense of being somewhere very expensive.