Sleep won’t come now. Nikki lies on the floor next to Amber, watching her chest gently rise and fall, listening to her occasional moans of unconscious distress. She feels heavy-limbed, sluggishly aware of her exhaustion, but while she drifted off before, that was because she was in a state of resignation. Like the guilty man in the cell, her mind had allowed itself to shut down, knowing there were no immediate decisions to be made.
Candace’s call changed all that. Nikki has spied a glimmer of hope, albeit only for delaying her capture, but it is enough to give her an edge again. She lies there and waits, her mind a storm of questions and replayed incidents, none of it cohering into anything useful. All that matters is that she is still free, concealed down here in the realm of the invisible.
She watches the clock slowly tick its way towards when she will have to leave, increasingly concerned that Zola has still not returned. Why is she taking so long? she wonders, worrying that when she does come back, it will be with a posse of Seguridad.
No, she assures herself. Zola herself has too much to lose from that. Except that giving up Nikki could be a valuable bargaining chip if Zola was seeking to negotiate the restoration of her status.
Then she hears Zola’s voice approaching the nook. She’s talking to someone, an older voice, male. Nikki sticks her head out cautiously to check. Sees she’s talking to this bearded guy. She can’t get a clear look at his face and she sure doesn’t want him getting a clear look at hers.
Zola is bringing Jabra back here to talk to Nikki about Amber and Slovitz.
Not good.
But then they part ways at the corner, Zola coming this way, the bearded guy heading off towards another row of pods.
“She’s sleeping,” Zola observes with some relief.
“I need to get moving now,” Nikki says quietly, standing up. “I got a call. Did I hear you talking to somebody? Was it Jabra?”
“No, I haven’t seen him. That was Otto. He was supposed to be doing a cleaning shift in the Axle but they’re running ID checks, so he’s had to duck out. Some big security alert. Is that why you’re here?”
“It’s related, yes.”
“I hope I haven’t kept you.”
“Not at all. Listen, Zola, I’ve been looking into this Leonard Slovitz. Seems the guy went back to Earth right after he came here and dumped Amber. I’m going to chase this down for you, okay?”
“That would be … I would owe you, Nikki.”
There is deep sincerity in her expression, but also an element of fear in her acknowledgement that she would be in Nikki’s debt: concern as to how Nikki might want a favour returned. Nikki must have seen this look a hundred times before without it really hitting home. She doesn’t like what she’s seeing.
She puts a hand on Zola’s arm.
“No, honey,” she tells her. “You don’t owe me shit.”
Nikki picks her way carefully back through the narrow channels between the decades-old plastic pods. She is in sight of the hidden door back out into Garneau station when she sees someone step through it. It is a bearded man of Middle-Eastern appearance. Their eyes lock before she can get her head down. His name displays as “Hannes Jensen,” but she has no doubt that this is Jabra.
Nor has she any doubt that she has just been made. He will have spotted her face in news feeds, recent shots taken only hours ago. He has seen her identified as Hayley Ortega and won’t be buying it any more than she believes that he is Hannes Jensen. They both know they are each looking at someone with a hacked lens, and in his case it will be confirmation that she is precisely who he thinks.
She considers her options and realises that it’s not a disaster. If he reports her as sighted here, then that could work in her favour, because all going well she will be off Wheel One in about forty-five minutes.
But when did it ever all go well?
Nikki steps out of the hidden door and into the light stream of travellers heading up to street level from the static station. She still has the coveralls and cap on, keeping her head down as she makes her way towards where she has arranged to meet.
Candace said she would be at the junction of Garneau and Young, but Nikki doesn’t take the most direct route. Instead she slips down a parallel passageway and circles back so that she can scope out the situation, verifying first that Candace is there and more importantly checking that nobody else is. She feels disloyal doing this, given what Candace is risking for her, but she can’t take any chances.
She doesn’t see Candace, but she doesn’t see any Seguridad either. There is nobody in uniform on the street, and she is pretty confident she could spot any who were in plain clothes, as there’s very few of them worth a damn as police officers.
She isn’t going to stand out there in plain sight, however.
She is holding her position in the alley when she gets a call request: a reply from Leonard Slovitz.
Nikki answers, and is surprised to hear a woman’s voice: the delay enough to indicate that she is speaking from Earth.
“You sent out a message to my brother. It came to me off a relay.”
“Your brother is Leonard Slovitz?”
“That’s right. I’m calling because I can’t get a hold of him. What’s this code amber? Do you work with him?”
“I was under the impression your brother had returned to Earth. Are you saying he hasn’t?”
“Absolutely not. He hasn’t been back in two years, but if he was coming back, this is where he’d be. He doesn’t have a house down here any more. I’m getting concerned. I usually speak to him pretty regular and I haven’t heard from him in days.”
“I may have gotten my lines crossed. We work on different wheels,” Nikki tells her.
Nikki terminates the call shortly after. She feels bad about adding to the woman’s worry, but suspects she’s right to be concerned. The guy hasn’t just bailed from Seedee, he’s gone on the lam since he got to Earth.
She sees Candace approach from the direction of Gutierrez. Nikki steps out of the passage and intercepts her before she reaches the junction. They stop and stare at each other for just a moment, like they’re not sure what to say. Then Candace steps forward and pulls Nikki into an embrace, kissing her on the cheek.
Nikki hasn’t experienced a sensation like this for as long as she can remember, hasn’t felt someone give her affection. Sex yes, but not this: this is warmth. This is caring. She’d forgotten what it feels like.
Candace is looking all dressed up. Nikki’s never seen her look so good, and not merely because she’s such a welcome sight under the circumstances. She’s carrying a travel bag from which she produces a flight suit. The suit is for Nikki, so she looks like the pilot and Candace the passenger. Taking a shuttle between wheels is an expensive option, exercised only by the rich and the Quadriga elite, hence Candace scrubbing up to look the part.
That is only the beginning of their cover, however.
“I told Bjorn you’re a VIP who’s been on a hush-hush visit to Wheel One and doesn’t want to be seen going back, whether via the Axle or even through normal passenger channels. He’s supplied us with today’s live access codes for Dock Seven.”
Nikki doesn’t see any Seguridad, but she still holds her breath as they approach the entrance and the codes are transmitted. The doors open without delay and they proceed briskly but without conspicuous hurry into the shuttle bay.
Nobody looks at her twice. It’s business as usual: people loading and unloading from the shuttle that’s already in place, others getting ready to serve the next one incoming, which will be Nikki’s ticket out.
She sees the manifest administrator inspecting a crate, checking the details with a cargo handler. That’s when she remembers why the date of Slovitz’s departure rang a bell: Lind’s bullshit story. Maybe it wasn’t bullshit after all.
Lind said a capsule left Heinlein with nobody in it. Maybe it was so that nobody could testify that a certain passenger wasn’t on board. In which case Slovitz hasn’t gone on the lam by bailing to Earth: he’s spent a fortune making it look like he has and effectively rendered himself invisible on Seedee. But why?
From here in the bay she can look up through the canopy and see the next shuttle approach. It disappears out of sight, heading beneath them to the outer side of the wheel, where it will invert and ascend to the dock on a platform.
“There’s been a lot of new faces sniffing around Mullane,” Candace says. “They’ve been asking questions about you, offering cash. They were wanting to know who owed you money.”
“So they know about Giselle?”
“Everybody knows she owed you and was planning to book. I mean, wasn’t that the point?”
“What do you mean?”
Candace takes a step away, her face suddenly stony.
All of the dock workers turn as one, abandoning what they were doing and moving in to surround Nikki. Except they’re not dock workers. They’re Seguridad.
“You killed Giselle to send out a message,” Candace says. “Well, we all got it. And this is our reply.”