Chapter Six

Planet Rust, City Ijhan, Patrol Guard Station #4972

Stone walls might a pris’ner make,
But psyche binds the slave.

—Travil Garr, Poems from a Merchant

The door fell shut with a crash. Ara glanced around to take in her surroundings—tiny room, two chairs bolted to the floor on either side of a table, and probably no end of hidden surveillance devices. A sign read The Unity Punishes Only the Deserving. Kendi sat in one of the chairs, head in his hands. Ara sat down across from him.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Get me out of here,” he whispered hoarsely.

Ara nodded. “I’ve arranged to pay the fines. It won’t be long.” She reached across the table and grasped one of his hands. Kendi’s skin looked like it was coated with ashes. His eyes were bloodshot, a half-healed cut slashed one forearm, and the hand that Ara wasn’t holding shook slightly. He squeezed her hand with a thin smile before looking down at the table again. Outrage filled Ara’s heart at his condition of her student.

The last two weeks had been filled with anxiety. When Kendi had failed to check in, Ara had waited twelve tense hours before initiating a search. Trish and Pitr tried scouring the Dream for his presence on Rust, but an active search through the Dream for Kendi’s real-world mind and body ran the risk of alerting Unity Silent to their presence—a bad idea for a group of undercover monks trying to snatch up a Unity citizen—and the need for stealth hindered their movements. In the end, Ben and his hacking skills had met with success. Even so, it had taken ten days to locate Kendi in jail and six more to negotiate the Unity’s bureaucracy and arrange to pay Kendi’s fines. Chin Fen and the connections he had made over the years had been a great help, Ara had to admit, and she had lied her way through several lunches with him. Now Kendi sat before her, bruised and beaten. His hand was cold in hers.

They sat like that for a long time, wordless, teacher and student, until the door finally ground upward.

“Let’s go,” boomed the guard.

Kendi got up and shuffled toward the door, head down. Ara followed, gritting her teeth and trying not to glare at the guard.

Don’t get anyone angry, she told herself. You’re getting what you want. That’s all that counts.

They made their way through the chilly prison. The corridor was windowless and only dimly lit by heavily-shielded bulbs in the ceiling. Ara kept her eyes resolutely ahead. She refused to glance at the tiny cells crammed with people or acknowledge the heavy smell of poor sanitation of men, women, and children all thrown in together. There was nothing she could do for these people. There was no point in looking at them. But she couldn’t block out the heart-rending sounds they made, the pleading cries that filtered between the bars.

Another door lead them out of the prison area and into the office area, a huge open place filled with regimented rows of gray metal desks. A constant rumble of voices, clattering keys, and metallic-voiced computers pervaded the background, and the air smelled of disinfectant and body odor.

At one of the desks, Ara thumbed more paperwork and listened grimly as an official informed them that as a convicted criminal, Kendi would be assigned a spot on a work detail list for the Unity as part of his sentence. Two hundred kesh ensured that Kendi’s name would be mysteriously absent from the work list.

At last they reached the main desk. Four receptionists directed traffic, and on a long row of benches sat various people in emotional states ranging from agitation to apathy. Ara’s jaw was sore from grinding her teeth and biting back harsh words. A familiar figure waited on one of the benches for them, and Kendi’s bruised face brightened immediately.

“Ben!” he said, and Ara laid a hand on his arm.

“Wait,” she murmured. “We aren’t out of this until we’ve cleared the building.”

Kendi checked himself, but Ara didn’t miss the look he shot at Ben, as if the young man were a rescue pod in hard vacuum. Part of Ara bristled. Although Ben had tracked Kendi down on the nets, Ara had arranged for his release, and now Kendi was all but ignoring her.

On the other hand, I don’t feel about Ben the same way Kendi does, she thought wryly. I wonder if Kendi knows how transparent he is?

Ben gave Kendi a small smile and patted his shoulder as the three of them exited the patrol station.

Outside, hazy clouds covered the sun, but the air, as usual, was mild. The sidewalk was crowded. A pair of slaves washed windows near a pile of broken concrete. Another group of slaves dug into the exposed earth beneath the cement. They did not, Ara noticed, have power tools, and their clothes were ragged and filthy. An overseer in a red uniform watched them, energy whip in hand.

The little group trotted quickly up the street. After they turned a corner, Ara ran a small scanner over all three of them.

“No bugs,” she said. “We can talk.”

“Thank all life!” Kendi burst out, ignoring the odd stares he gathered from passers-by.

“Are you hungry?” Ben asked.

“Starving.”

Ara looked at him, and then, with a glance at the crowded street, drew him into an empty doorway. “You’re looking awfully cheerful for someone who was so depressed a minute ago.”

“That was an act,” Kendi replied. “Mostly. In order to keep other...people off my back, I acted crazy. Manic-depressive. Most of the people in there are afraid of lunatics. You showed up during my depressive phase.”

“And now you’re manic?” Ben commented dryly.

Ara shook her head, still worried. Despite his explanation, she didn’t like Kendi’s cheerfulness. It was too sudden, even for him. Kendi was a child of open spaces, someone who coped with extended voyages by spending long hours in the Dream. A fortnight in a Unity prison must have been a nightmare of the worst kind.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” she said. “And you can tell us what happened.”

“I found him,” Kendi said.

“Who?” Ara asked.

“The kid. The one we’re looking for. I found him.”

Ara caught her breath. “How? Where is he? What’s he—”

“Mother,” Ben interrupted firmly. “You just said that Kendi needs to eat. I agree.”

Ara’s first impulse was still to ignore Ben and ask Kendi more questions. A glance at Kendi’s ashen face, however, destroyed that idea.

“You’re right,” she said. “I got carried away. Food first, questions later.”

“Back at the ship?” Ben asked.

Ara nodded. “Safest place to talk.”

oOo

An hour later, Kendi, newly showered and in clean clothes, sat on his bed. Harenn sat next to him, methodically probing his wounds with fingers and medical scanner. Ara occupied the room’s only chair and watched intently. Kendi winced under Harenn’s ministrations but didn’t cry out.

“You’re barbaric,” he growled.

“The Australian aboriginal tribes,” Harenn said, “are reputed to have a superhuman ability to withstand pain. I assumed this is why you refused painkillers. You do not have this ability?”

“That was before the whites tainted us,” Kendi said. His voice was still too cheerful for Ara’s taste.

Harenn ignored him. “Your concussion has healed, as have the bruises and the cut. You have cracked no ribs. There is really nothing for me to do except give you pain medication, and you do not wish this.”

“What about the boy?” Ara said from her chair. Her worries about Kendi would have to wait.

Kendi explained about the alley, the fight, and the Unity patrol. “So I was arrested,” he finished. “The kid must have taken the time to search my pockets and grab the drugs. Otherwise I would’ve been in really deep cabbage.”

“And you were not before?” Harenn muttered.

“I want to be clear on this,” Ara said. “The boy possessed you.”

Kendi nodded. “I felt that little shift you always get after someone else leaves your mind, but I hadn’t let him in. It was a possession—or something very close to it. What’s amazing is that he must have hit the patrol at the same time. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten away. That’s three people all at once, and two of them weren’t Silent.”

Ara gnawed her lower lip. The situation frightened her more with every passing moment. There was someone out there who could take over the mind of an unwilling person—more than one person, in fact. There was no recorded instance of a person with such an ability in the entire history of the Dream. How many people could this boy control? Six? A dozen? An army?

If, in your opinion, this child would pose a threat to the Confederation...

“Why did he not possess the men who attacked him?” Harenn asked. Her dark eyes were half-closed above her opaque blue veil. It made her look sleepy.

“I think he was going to,” Kendi said. “Then I showed up.”

A knock came at the door and Ben entered with a tray. Kendi’s head jerked around and Ara almost rolled her eyes. She knew about Ben and Kendi’s breakup, of course. She knew that Ben had done the breaking. But when she’d pressed for details, Ben had refused to give them. Ara gave a mental sigh. Ben was like his mother—too tight-lipped for his own good.

Ben handed Kendi the tray. Delicious smells of spiced beans and honeyed bread wafted up from the dishes. “Jack’s talking to a buyer,” he said. “So I made you lunch.” He looked around for a place to sit and, seeing none, took up a spot on the floor.

“You cooked?” Kendi said, genuinely impressed. “Wow.”

Ben shrugged. “Someone had to. I hope it’s okay.”

Kendi tried a bite and smiled. “It’s great. Though anything would be better than the slop I’ve been eating lately. Not,” he added hastily, “that this is anywhere close to that. I mean—”

“Shut up and eat, Kendi,” Ben laughed.

“Have there been other disturbances in the Dream?” Kendi asked.

“Yes,” Ara said. “Silent all over the galaxy are frightened. Gretchen also managed to strike up a conversation with two Unity Silent without letting them know who she was. They’ve felt the boy’s presence, and they suspect his power goes beyond normal Silence.”

“Hell,” Kendi muttered.

“They haven’t narrowed his location to Rust,” Ara concluded, “but they are looking.”

“How do we find this boy, then?” asked Harenn. “Before the Unity does?”

“I’ll go back to the red light district,” Kendi said, mouth full. “None of you knows what he looks like.”

Bad idea. Bad idea. “The guard will be watching for you,” Ara warned.

“So?” Kendi countered in that maddenly cheerful tone. “My fines are paid. I’m not on a work list. They can’t do anything to me.”

“Except follow you, harrass you, and re-arrest you under trumped-up charges like they did the first time.”

“I don’t see any other way,” Kendi breezed. “In fact, I can start looking tonight. I feel fine.”

The hell you say, Ara thought.

“Make a composite drawing on the computer,” Harenn said. “That would be simple enough. Ben could put this image into our implants and set the computer to scan for the child. Then more of us could start looking.”

“Good idea,” Ara said, shooting Harenn a grateful look.

“But—” Kendi began.

“Get to it as soon as you can.” Ara got up and moved for the door. “We can all fan out tonight. If anyone finds him, I want you to follow him. Find out where he lives. If you can get close enough, plant a tracer on him. It’ll be easier to persuade him to come with us if we know something about him. Kendi, you stay here and rest after you do the composite. That’s an order.”

“But—”

“I thought getting the child into our hands was highest priority,” Harenn interrupted. “Why aren’t we simply snatching him off the street?”

“The boy can possess the unwilling and non-Silent, Harenn,” Ara replied levelly. “How far do you think a kidnaping attempt would get?”

“Stun him,” Harenn countered. “Once he is on the ship—”

“He could possess the entire crew,” Ara finished. “Wouldn’t that be fun? He needs to come of his own free will. Let’s move out. Kendi, composite. Then rest.”

She left, all but towing Harenn behind her.

oOo

Kendi watched the door slide shut. It didn’t clang like the...other doors. Ben moved to the chair and Kendi kept a wary eye on him. After a moment he realized it was because he was afraid Ben would steal his food.

“Was it bad?” Ben asked.

Kendi looked up. “Was what bad?”

“The prison.”

“It was what you’d expect.”

“What happened in there?” Ben pressed.

“Nothing important,” Kendi replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Kendi, don’t you think you should talk about—”

“Suddenly you’re an authority on talking?” Kendi snarled. Ben flushed and Kendi felt instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’m not angry with you. Thanks for finding me.”

“I couldn’t leave you in jail.” Ben ran a hand through thick red hair. “You think the boy’s a relative, don’t you?”

Startled, Kendi swallowed a mouthful of beans and gave a shrug. “Maybe.”

“Don’t lie,” Ben admonished. “The only time I see you this excited is when you think you’re on the trail of your family. Kendi, please don’t get your hopes up. You know what the odds are, don’t you?”

“I always get my hopes up,” Kendi said, more sulkily than he’d intended. “Sometimes it’s all that keeps me going.”

“I just don’t want to see you hurt, okay?”

“Don’t get on my back, Ben,” Kendi warned.

Ben got up. “Fine. You should make that composite.” He pulled a dermospray from his pocket. “I brought this up from the smuggling compartments. I figured you’d want it. Do the composite first, though.”

He set the spray on the bed next to Kendi and left. Why had he snapped at Ben like that? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Maybe I can make it up to him, he thought. Send him flowers? And chocolates too, fresh from the hold.

An image of Ben surrounded by thousands of red roses and with satin boxes of chocolate piled at his feet popped into Kendi’s head. He began to laugh and found he couldn’t stop. Guffaws echoed about the spartan room. With a great deal of snickering and snuffling, he got himself under control. Kendi wiped his streaming eyes, feeling strangely tired. His ribs ached.

Better do the composite, then, he thought.

Kendi got to his feet. A headache was gathering, and the thought of a fat dermospray full of painkillers was unbelievably tempting. Painkillers, however, would interfere with the drugs he needed to enter the Dream later. Gingerly he sat down at the terminal, called up an artist’s program, and set to work. Half an hour later, the kid’s startling blue eyes stared at Kendi from the screen beneath loosely-curled black hair.

As he finished, he became aware of the unyielding ceramic walls around him. The ship seemed to wrap itself about Kendi in a confining cocoon. The Outback and its wide-open spaces called. He uploaded the composite into the ship’s computer and sent Ara notification that he was finished. Without waiting for a reply, he shut down the terminal and picked up the spray Ben had left him.

Slowly and painfully, Kendi undressed, got out his spear, positioned it under his knee, and set the dermospray against his arm. Thump. Colors swirled behind his eyes, and he found himself in the cool darkness of his cave. He was about to begin dancing around the spiral that would carry him to the surface when he paused. Another cave entrance lay off to one side. After a moment’s consideration, Kendi plucked a burning torch out of thin air and went in.

The second cave was enormous, large enough to contain a good-sized ship. It made an empty space around Kendi that swallowed the slight sound of his footsteps. A pile of wood lay in the center of the cave, and Kendi tossed the torch onto it. The wood caught and blazed brightly. Far overhead, a hole let the smoke out.

The fire illuminated smooth, dry walls. This was not a living cave with water dripping from walls and ceiling. Water would have ruined the paintings.

The walls were covered with them. Livid colors leaped gracefully across stone and traced history as they went. At the bottom of one wall squatted a pregnant woman in labor. Further along, an infant that bore a strong resemblance to Kendi crawled across a floor. In other pictures, the baby crossed into childhood and adolescence. In the background, various adults made worried faces about their steadily declining contact with their ancestral traditions. They pooled their resources to buy passage on a colony ship to re-establish tribal ways on the planet Pelagosa. Kendi and his family went into cryo-sleep.

A thousand marks painstakingly scratched into the stone stood for the passage of a thousand years. Kendi also felt it stood for the loss of a thousand Real People. The next picture showed slipships, invented while Kendi’s family and the other colonists slept, overtaking the slower-than-light colony ship and landing at Pelagosa to set up colonies of their own. Governments rose and fell back on Earth, and people forgot about the dozens of colony ships still patiently coasting through space.

Another picture. A slipship crept up to the colony vessel. Slavers boarded and took control. A line of chained Real People trudged up to the auction block.

Another picture. Kendi’s owner gave him a blood test and discovered Kendi was Silent, a term Kendi had never heard before. The man put Kendi up for resale at a quick profit.

Another picture. A short, round woman touched Kendi’s shoulder. Kendi entered the monastery on Bellerophon, entered the Dream, studied navigation and piloting.

Met Ben.

Kendi gave himself a shake. He hadn’t come down here to meander through the past. A pile of roots and other plant material lay near a water bag. Kendi chewed different roots and mixed the resulting paste with water on a flat stone until he had a palate of several colors. Using his fingers, he drew figures on the wall with the cooling paint. He detailed his arrival on Rust, the time in the market, his encounter with the strange boy.

The Unity guard.

Kendi’s hands trembled and he faltered before he could draw the details of his arrest. The cave wall was chilly beneath his fingertips. Abruptly, he felt restless, hemmed in by the cave. He had to get out, get out now. He shook the paint from his hands, trotted out of the side cave into the main cavern, and danced his way up the spiral to the outside world.

The Outback spread before him, free and wide and open. Hot air moved over his body. The falcon screamed a greeting and Kendi waved. Voices, many more than normal, buzzed and whispered on the wind, but Kendi ignored them. The falcon plunged to earth and changed into a kangaroo. Kendi whooped and took off running, long legs flying over the sandy earth. The kangaroo bounded alongside, easily keeping pace. Kendi ran and ran beneath the pure golden sun.

A slight vibration tremored under his soles. Kendi instantly halted. The earth was shaking. The kangaroo shifted back into falcon shape and took off screaming for the skies. Tiny stones danced around Kendi’s toes and his bones vibrated. Before he could react further, the ground ahead of him cracked and split with a sound like a hundred thunderstorms. Earth dropped down into the crevice, as if the supporting ground had vanished. Kendi backpedaled, heart pounding, adrenaline singing through his veins. He should leave immediately, but letting go of the Dream took a certain amount of concentration, impossible to achieve when the earth beneath his feet was crumbing into nothing. Kendi managed to spin and sprint. The crumbling ground followed him. Earth loosened beneath his soles, and Kendi forced himself to put on an extra burst of speed.

He felt the minds as he ran.

Thousands of mental voices cried out as the earth shifted and fell away. Each particle of earth, each stone and pebble, was Kendi’s symbol for the minds that made up the Dream, and so many of them plummeted into the cracked ground. Kendi had no time to wonder what was happening to them. He could only run.

The tremors stopped. Kendi slowed his pace and cautiously turned. Earth and air lay perfectly still. The falcon circled in the sky above Kendi’s head. He caught his breath in stunned amazement. About fifty paces behind Kendi stretched a wide canyon, one so wide, Kendi could barely make out the opposite side.

Warily, Kendi crept on hands and knees to the edge of the canyon and peered downward. Nausea rocked him, and he flung himself flat on his stomach so he could feel the solid ground beneath him. The bottom was far away, and it was a seething black. Kendi couldn’t tear his eyes away. The canyon had no floor. Instead, a roiling blackness shifted and quivered. Uncertain tendrils crawled up the canyon walls like hungry tentacles before sliding back down again. The smell of rotting meat and moist graveyard dirt wafted upward. Then a long, low wail made of a hundred voices keened upward. The sound tore across Kendi’s nerves like icy fingernails. Kendi clapped his hands over his ears and forced himself to roll away from the canyon’s edge. The wail and smell faded, but the canyon remained.

Kendi lay panting on his back. The heat pressed down on him, and he let it bake the fear away. He could never cross that canyon, even if he could manage to create a bridge long enough. Not with that reaching, wailing blackness below.

“In the name of all life,” he whispered to the sky, “what is it?”

He rolled to a sitting position at what he hoped was a safe distance from the canyon. This was not good. Travel and distance in the Dream were based completely on the perceptions of the Silent. This meant that Kendi would not be able to talk to any Silent who, in Kendi’s mind, lay on the other side of the canyon. Kendi’s forehead furrowed. The canyon did not exist. There was nothing ahead of him but rough Outback terrain.

The canyon remained.

Voices of other Silent babbled on the breeze, and Kendi knew they were experiencing the same thing he was. He considered trying to contact someone to ask if they knew what had happened and why, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he stretched his senses, searching for signs of the boy.

Nothing. Kendi drummed nervous fingers on his thigh. That didn’t seem right. The canyon was still there, which meant that the person who had created it must still be in the Dream. If the boy—Kendi’s nephew—was causing the problem, he should still be in the Dream, and Kendi should be able to feel his thought patterns. But he felt nothing.

Kendi picked up a handful of dirt and let it trickle hypnotically through his fingers. They had to find the boy and Kendi had to know if he was a relative. The idea that his family was still out there somewhere, treated as property and denied their place as free citizens used to make him frantic with worry. Over time, that had become a part of him, a desire carved into his soul like a stream carving its bed through rock. Kendi reached for another handful of earth, and his hand closed over something hard and cylindrical. Startled, he looked down.

It was an iron bar.

oOo

 “Tattoos! Color yourself with a tatoo!”

“Come see my dresses! You, madam—I have just the thing for you!”

A crate of chickens clucked passers-by and a baker’s pans clattered as she set out her sweet-smelling wares. A light haze over the sun kept the air balmy and pleasant. In the center of an intersection stood a marble statue of Premier Yuganovi, leader of the Unity. Ara stood out of the flow of traffic, ignoring merchants and scanning faces. Somewhere out in that mess were Trish, Pitr, Gretchen, and Harenn, all armed with Kendi’s composite. She wished they could show the boy’s picture around and make inquiries, but she didn’t want word to reach the kid that someone was looking for him. He’d probably drop into a hole somewhere and they’d never find him.

Ara flicked another glance at the image on her ocular implant. Kendi’s composite was good, and it shouldn’t be hard to miss this kid. On the other hand, they were talking about a city of several million people, thousands of whom were in the marketplace. Ara tried to scan the faces in her immediate vicinity without appearing to stare. Even though there was a good chance the computer would spot the boy before she did, Ara couldn’t help but look. Around her swirled the sounds and smells of the crowded market. Meat sizzled on open-air grills, chains clattered on old-fashioned pedal bicycles, and people shouted to one another in a cacophony Ara would have found delightful if she hadn’t been so worried.

It wasn’t just that the boy’s power had been proven beyond any doubt or that Ara would have to decide whether he should live or die. She was also worried about Kendi. He had spent two weeks in a Unity prison and it was clear the experience had been horrifying. And in behavior that came straight from a psychology textbook, he refused to discuss it.

And as Irfan said, “The real world becomes the Dream,” Ara mused.

Maybe Ben could worm it out of him. She’d have to talk to him later about it. Right now, she had a job to do.

Ara patrolled the market, quickly establishing a pattern. She would find a vantage point and examine passing faces for several minutes, then move on to another spot. After three hours of steady walking, she paused to wolf down something bland and crunchy wrapped in soft bread for supper. Her calves and feet ached from all the walking, and she was sure bruises were forming on various parts of her body from elbows and knees of passers-by. One of the disadvantages of being short was that people tended to run over you if you weren’t careful. It was also damned difficult to get a good look at faces without standing on tiptoe.

Her implant flashed for her attention. Ara jerked her head to the right, and her implant drew a red outline around a figure just up the street. She caught her breath. Facial features, eyes, hair. He was even slouching against a wall like Kendi had reported. Ara tapped her earpiece.

“I’ve found our friend,” she subvocalized. “I’m looking right at him.”

“Where are you, Mother?” Pitr’s voice replied in her ear.

Ara looked around. She had no idea. There were no street signs or landmarks. “Not sure. There are a lot of people selling clothes and cloth around here, and I just passed several electronics merchants. I saw a statue of the Premier a while ago.”

“Hold on,” Pitr said. “Let me link up with Ben so we can figure out where everyone is.”

“I was just down where you are now, Mother,” Trish piped up. “You’re about four blocks from the red light district. I can be there in twenty minutes, if the crowd lets me.”

“I’ve got you all triangulated,” Ben’s voice broke in from the ship. “Gretchen’s closest. Go to your ocular implant, Gretchen, and I’ll overlay directions for you.”

Brief pause.

“Got ‘em” Gretchen said. “Give me ten minutes.”

“Hold it,” Ara said. “He’s moving. Stay linked everyone.”

The boy meandered down the street, hands in his ragged pockets. Ara dodged around an old man with a basket and hurried after him. Her lips pursed with determination. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight no matter what.

“You’re moving south, Mother,” Ben reported. “Gretchen, you’re coming in from the east. If you hurry, you might be able to get on the street ahead of him.”

“Dammit!” Gretchen snarled. Ara winced and put a hand to her ear. “One of those passenger bikes collided with a wheelbarrow. A crowd is gathering and I can’t get through.”

Ara twisted and ducked her way through the crowd and up the street. The boy had long legs, and his casual saunter was Ara’s brisk trot.

“You’re almost at the edge of the market, Mother,” Ben said. “You should be seeing regular streets soon.”

Ben was right. Up ahead, Ara made out ground cars zipping through an intersection. The boy reached the corner and stopped there. He took up his customary slouch against a wall. Ara halted as well and scrutinized the boy more closely. No electronic shackles clamped his wrists or ankles and he wore no collar around his neck. Ara cursed silently. Unless his master was extremely permissive, the boy was free. He would have to be persuaded, not bought.

A pair of guard marched by and Ara faded back. The boy seemed to ignore them completely, but she saw he was watching them from under half-closed eyes.

Ara tried to think. How should she approach him? She didn’t want to frighten him off, but she didn’t want to lose him, either. Two tiny transmitters nestled in her pocket and she could probably plant one by “accidentally” bumping into him. On the other hand, if he figured out what she was doing, it would probably destroy all hope of a working relationship. Maybe she should just try to strike up a conversation. But how?

Ara sighed. It was so much easier to do this in a slave market. You pointed, paid, and took the person home. It took a while to convince some slaves that the Children of Irfan were actually setting them free, but all in all it wasn’t that hard.

And how would Irfan have viewed this? she thought tartly. A Mother Adept whining to herself that the job will take some effort.

Chastised, Ara decided to simply watch the boy for a while to see if she could gain any clues about how to approach him. It would also give Gretchen and the others time to catch up.

A long, dark ground car drove up to the curb and one mirrored window lowered itself a few centimeters. The boy sauntered up to it. The window lowered further and he leaned inside. Ara noticed that his ragged clothes were definitely on the tight side and many of the rips seemed strategic.

“Uh oh,” Ara said.

“What happens, Mother?” Harenn asked. “I have met Gretchen and we are coming.”

“Ben,” Ara subvocalized hurriedly, “hack into the nets and find out who owns a ground car with registry number—” she squinted “—H14 dash 35J. Hurry!”

“On it.”

“What is it?” Gretchen asked.

Ara stepped up to the street. The boy was still leaning into the car and couldn’t see her, though she was barely three meters away. For a brief moment she considered trying to plant a transmitter on him and almost instantly decided against it. He might notice. Plant one on the car? No. Any car that expensive had disruption devices for just such an occurrence. She scanned the street instead.

“Ben, are there any cabs in the area?” she asked.

“I can’t check that and find the registration number at the same time, Mother.”

“Mother Adept, what’s happening?” Gretchen demanded.

“I think our boy is a...working lad,” Ara murmured. No cabs were in sight.

Harenn spoke up. “So pick him up and offer to pay for an hour or two. What is such a problem?”

The boy backed out of the window. The car door opened and he climbed inside.

“Shit,” Ara muttered.

“The car is registered to Melvan and Xava Yshidra,” Ben said. “Do you want their address?”

And then, by a miracle, a cab turned a corner and buzzed up the street. Ara waved frantically and it stopped. The other vehicle slid smoothly into traffic as Ara leaped into the cab.

“Glory to the Unity. Stay behind them,” she said, pointing. There was no way in hell she was going to say Follow that car.

The driver, a raw-boned woman with blond dreadlocks, obeyed without a word. As they drove off, Ara caught a glimpse of Gretchen and Harenn emerging breathlessly from the market.

“Do you want the address, Mother?” Ben repeated. “And do you still want me to find a cab?”

“Not yet and no,” she subvocalized. “Gretchen and Harenn, I’m in a cab and I’m following the boy. He’s in another car.”

“We saw,” Gretchen said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Stay where you are,” she ordered.

The electric engine on the cab was nearly silent, meaning the driver could probably tell that Ara was carrying on a quiet, one-sided conversation. However, she gave no sign she heard or understood. Ara liked that. She peered forward, never letting her gaze stray from the car they followed.

The car made a right turn, then another right, and another. Her quarry was going in a big circle. Ara imagined the car had a sound-proof partition between driver and passengers to afford a certain amount of privacy for their...activities. Ara wondered whether it was Melvan or Xava who was in the back seat with the boy. For all she knew, it was both.

They passed the original street corner and Ara resisted the urge to wave at Gretchen and Harenn. Are settled back in her seat to think. The boy was obviously a prostitute. This didn’t bother Ara. It made her job easier. As Harenn had pointed out, she could simply proposition him and use the opportunity to talk. But Kendi had said the local houses didn’t tolerate freelancers. How had he gotten away with it?

Ara drummed her fingers on the gritty handrest. The cab’s interior was worn and dirty. A small sign informed her that a network link was available for a surcharge, and a muted vidscreen set into the back of the driver’s seat showed a local newscast. A second sign said that slaves must prove their owners had granted permission for them to ride in a cab and they must pay in advance. A third sign said, You Are Safe with the Unity.

What if the men in the alley had been enforcers? That would make sense. One of the houses may have gotten wind that the boy was turning tricks and sent a couple of goons. Ara wondered if they were still in prison.

The ground car drove up to the same curb and the boy exited. Ara told the cabbie to pull over and let her out. Ara paid the fare and climbed out just in time to see Gretchen bump heavily into the boy. Harenn, a few steps away, watched from behind her veil.

“I’m so sorry,” Gretchen said with uncharacteristic politeness. “Goodness me, I almost knocked you over. Are you all right? Glory to the Unity.”

“Yeah, yeah, glory,” the boy replied. “Don’t touch me, lady.” And he hurried away.

Ara trotted up to her. “You didn’t touch him flesh-to-flesh, did you? Did you plant a transmitter?”

“No, and what do you think?”

“Got him,” Ben said. “You don’t have to run now.”

Ara gestured to Gretchen and Harenn. “Fan out. Harenn, since he hasn’t seen you, I want you to cross the street and get ahead of him. Gretchen, you stay a little further behind, and I’ll get closer. Pitr, follow as best you can and be ready to stand by. Trish, either grab a hotel room or go back to the ship and get into the Dream. Find us and follow us so you can whisper at people. Watch for the boy there, too, and for anything else that’s strange.”

“On my way, Mother,” Trish said.

“Got it, Mother,” Pitr said.

“Yes, Mother,” Harenn and Gretchen said in chorus. The three of them took up their positions and headed up the street in silent pursuit.