Burning Bright

He took the side stairs down to the second floor, paused on the balcony to look down into the building’s open lobby. As he’d feared, a pair of men in docker’s clothes were standing by the main entrance; a woman whom he recognized as belonging to C/B Cie. warehouse security was standing beside the main information kiosk, one hand cupped loosely over the controls. He frowned, narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t see if she was using a tap. All the more reason to hurry, he thought, and turned left, walking along the short end of the building, staying close to the wall where he was less likely to be seen from the lobby floor. There were no public terminals here, and a quick scan of the directories showed no names he knew. That left the general mail system, with its kiosks on every floor at each corner of the building. He lengthened his stride, found the nearest kiosk, luckily unoccupied. It was set into a small alcove, partly screened by a sculpture of panels of sequensa-covered fabric, and he began to hope that he might have time to contact Chauvelin after all.

He glanced over his shoulder, saw no one except a secretary at the far end of the corridor, and quickly fed cash slips into the system. This was no time to use his money cards: it would be like shouting his presence to everyone who might be watching. He had just enough; the system lit and windowed, and he slid the datablock out of his pocket. The jacks and cords were standard, and he plugged the thin wire into the mail system’s receivers. It wasn’t perfect—for one thing, he had far less control over who would ultimately receive the information than he would if he were able to use the regular networks—but it would have to do. He touched the codes that would connect him with the ambassador’s house, and the system flashed back at him: CONNECTION NOT POSSIBLE, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

“Fuck it.” Ransome stared for a fraction of a second at the little screen, hit the codes again. The screen went blank, and then the same message flickered into view. He’d been suckered: the woman at the main kiosk wasn’t bothering to tap the mail system; instead, she was interrupting it, blocking any transmission that he tried to make, and she was bound to be tracing his location at the same time. He stared at the screen, feeling the seconds slip away. It was too late to get away, his own mistake had seen to that; the only thing he could hope for was to dump the information somewhere where Chauvelin could find it. Maybe his home systems, if he couldn’t reach Chauvelin himself in time. He killed that sense of panic, forcing himself to think clearly, dredged the emergency codes out of his memory. He had bartered for them almost two weeks ago, eons on the nets, but they were Lockwardens’ codes, and the Lockwardens were notoriously conservative. He typed them in, making himself work carefully: he would only get one chance, if that. The screen went blank again, then lit, presented him with an open channel. He suppressed a cheer, and hit the codes that would dump the entire contents of the datablock to a holding node, one of a thousand secure datastores that laced the nets. The block whined softly to itself, the seconds ticking past, and then the screen cleared. He started to type a mailcode, allowing the datastore itself to transfer the information to Chauvelin, but heard footsteps on the stone floor behind him. Too late. He touched a second series of illegal codes, saw the screen fill with trash, effectively destroying his trail. Lights flickered across the datablock, warning him that its contents had been permanently erased. He sighed, and heard a woman’s voice behind him.

“Na Ransome.”

He turned slowly, not wanting to provoke anything, and found himself facing a wiry woman—not the one who had been working at the kiosk in the lobby. She had a palmgun out and ready, half hidden by her hand and body, invisible to anyone working in the offices along the corridor. A much bigger man stood just behind and to her left, screening her still further from the offices. He wore a bulky coat that could hide a dozen weapons. Ransome looked to his own left in spite of himself, in spite of knowing better, and saw another pair—dockers, this time—moving toward him along the cross corridor.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” the woman went on, her voice low and even.

“Someone like Damian Chrestil?” Ransome asked, but she didn’t flinch.

“Someone.” She beckoned to him with her free hand, the palmgun still leveled. “Someone who prefers to keep this tidy. If you’ll step this way.”

Ransome hesitated, but there was no real choice. I’m too old—and not sick enough yet—for a suicide leap, and I was never good at fighting. He spread his hands, showing empty palms, and stepped carefully away from the mail kiosk.