Margaret Ball - Disappearing Act

- Chapter 1

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Chapter One

Tasman

Maris idled along the broad walkway of Fourteen, admiring the window displays, admiring her own

reflection in the windows, and keeping one eye on the target, several shops ahead of her. She really

should have had all her attention on the target—but top-level ladies never moved that fast, and it wasn't

as if Maris had all that many chances to sashay along the shopping aisles of Fourteen as if she were a

toppie herself, somebody who belonged there. Johnivans had fitted her out good for this expedition, too,

and she just couldn't pass up the chance to see herself looking like a real toppie. Her bodysuit was used,

of course, but at least it fit proper and she'd insisted on passing it through the sonic cleaners until only a

few indelible stains bore witness to its previous owner's life. The turquoise and fuchsia spiral stripes still

had plenty of glitter to them. And over that she had draped a sarong of real pseudosilk, purple with a

border of gold sequins, whose artfully careless knot had cost her half an hour's sweating concentration.

If it weren't for the unruly dark curls held back with a twist of bright orange silk, Maris thought, she

wouldn't know herself—and even those weren't half bad for the current job, one of the toppies' current

fads was for "natural"-looking hair that they zapped with electrocurlers to get the effect of a careless

mop. In fact, the target's hair looked very similar . . . though she probably shook the artificial curls out

into sleek, shining folds at the end of the day instead of struggling through them with a comb. Maris

glanced ahead to see if she could tell the difference between electrostimmed curls and her own messy

hair, and saw only a gap where the target had been standing a moment ago.

Her insides sank; she felt as dizzy as if the gravity had failed and sent them all into free fall. Losing a

target while she mooned over hairstyles and the clothes in the shop windows . . . Johnivans would never

forgive her! Worse, she'd never forgive herself for having failed him like this. After all he'd done for her,

to screw up on her very first real important top-level assignment . . . Maris moved forward as quickly as

she dared, trying to look like a toppiegal in a hurry instead of a panicked scumsucker who was way, way

above her proper depth, glancing into each shop in search of a short, slender woman with black curls

over a shiny silver bodysuit. Not in the candied fruit stall, not trying on sandals, not . . . she could have

disappeared into the fitting rooms behind this display of resort sarongs, but the instinct that made Maris

such a good lookout told her no, not there, this target wasn't here to shop for fancy clothes any more than

Maris herself. She had been idling along, looking in the shop windows but not really

interested . . . meeting someone? But where—ah, a narrow walkway opened to the left between two

shops, probably a service passage, and a thread of silver had snagged on the decorative stucco of one

wall. She must have ducked through there, must have had an assignation behind the shops; something

funny there, exactly what Johnivans would be interested in. Maybe Maris could redeem her moment's

lapse of attention and do even better, get close enough to overhear what they were saying; Johnivans had

taught her that once people got into a conversation they stopped really looking. She sidled flat along the

shop wall, stepping as delicately as a moth in case some sound betrayed her presence. She couldn't see

anybody in the gap at the far end of the service walkway. Good, they weren't looking back for her—but

something felt subtly wrong—and before she could figure out exactly what, she was flying through the

air to land in the shadowy space beyond the walkway.

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"I might consider letting you go," said a quiet, amused voice somewhere above the weight that pressed

her face down into the gridded surface of the walkway, "if you tell me a sufficiently interesting story."

The fall had knocked the air out of her and the knee holding her down wouldn't let her get a decent

breath, but Johnivans' patient training was there like internal steel to support her when all else failed.

Stay in character, never stop watching for a break, don't waste energy kicking yourself over past

mistakes. What would a real toppie think was happening?

"Don't be a fool," Maris gasped. It was hard to sound haughty and sarcastic when you could barely

breathe, but she gave it her best shot. "You can't mug people this close to the shops. Let me up now and

I'll give you a break, I won't call the guards until you've had a few seconds to get away."

The grinding pressure in the middle of her back eased. Could it be working? Small, strong hands gripped

her shoulders and flipped her over. Maris stared up into a face eerily like hers—olive skin, black eyes,

tangled mop of black curls—and worked on getting her first good breath of air in what seemed like

forever. "You look as Sarossian as I am!" the woman exclaimed. "What— How . . . ?" She bit her lip,

considering. "Well, even Saros breeds its traitors, I suppose. Right, then. If you really want to call

Security," she said, "this is your best chance. You do that, and we'll both show ID, and I'll apologize for

the unfortunate misunderstanding, and . . . well? You're not calling for help. Funny, I thought not—"

Maris had used the unexpected breathing space to do something far more practical than calling for

guards who would slap her into a holding cell just for being this far top-level without proper ID.

Working one foot flat on the floor for balance, one hand under her for propulsion, she shot upward and

sideways, banged her head into the other woman's nose, got extra leverage by planting an elbow in one

of the soft curving breasts outlined by that slick silver bodysuit, and corkscrewed out of the target's

hands. She was on her feet and headed for the maze of service tunnels behind the shops while the target

was still cradling her aching breast, lost herself deeper in the tunnels than any toppie would venture,

took long-unused maintenance ladders and dusty passages where the codes on the security doors hadn't

been checked in years, and didn't stop to catch her breath until she was well down on Thirty, in a place

nobody but Johnivans' people even knew about anymore.

For all the sixteen-or-so years of Maris's memory this quarter of Thirty had been ignored by the toppies.

Once, years ago, she'd been told that a chance meteorite strike smashed the loading dock beyond repair.

These days, newbies credited Johnivans with personally bombing the dock to create a "useless" space

inside Tasman for the Hideaway, but Maris had doubts she would never express. Not that it mattered,

one way or the other. Whether or not Johnivans had caused the original destruction, who else would

have been clever enough to take advantage of it the way he did? His hackercrackers had twiddled

Tasman's database so that half the level was no longer on anybody's clean-and-check rota, changed a

few security codes on the outer doors to discourage anybody wandering by, and—within the space that

was left, Johnivans had made a home for his people.

Most of Thirty had been left the way Maintenance abandoned it: comfortless bare stockrooms and

loading stations, chill with the knowledge of the deep, black, infinite coldness that was just the other

side of the airlocks and walls. Anybody doing a routine check would trip a dozen alarms in this outer

area before they got to the chambers where Johnivans stashed the good stuff; they'd die in the traps he'd

had set long before they could penetrate to the heart of the Hideaway, the long room where Johnivans

housed and fed his people.

Even dreading the confession of her failure, Maris felt her heart lift as she entered the Hideaway.

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Topside was new and exciting, but everything here spelled home: the cavernous spaces walled and

floored in a patchwork of mats and carpeting and spoiled silks from rich men's baggage, the sharp motes

of dreamdust floating like a blue cloud in the air, the rich scent of food being heated on the warmers that

Johnivans had placed everywhere to ward off the chill of Outside.

The usual crowd was there: Herc and Little Makusu sharing a glowing tube of dreamdust, Nyx posing in

yet another fantastic garment pieced from fragments of damaged brocade and velvet, Ice Eyes and Keito

the Fingers playing with one of Keito's fantastic constructions of mirrors and holograms. The usual

huddle of skeletal bodies, gang buddies who'd dreamdusted themselves to the point they no longer

bothered to eat and would shortly die with those dreamy smiles on their thin faces, moved languidly on a

pile of cushions in the far end of the space. Johnivans never stopped anybody killing himself with

dreamdust or poptoys; he said those who chose to do that stuff weren't worth saving.

But Johnivans himself wasn't there.

"Look at this, Maris!" Keito hailed her. "I fixed the glitch, now the Thief and the Lady orbit each other,

like so." He pushed a movable panel and glass changed to mirror; hidden wires clanged together, and

two figures sculpted of light appeared in the center of the ragged sphere and began a stately dance

around each other.

"It's wonderful, Fingers," Maris said with sincere appreciation. "You could be a toppie artist—your

pieces are better than anything I saw in those snobby stores on Fourteen."

Ice Eyes raised his eyebrows. "I'm the artist here," he announced, "an artist of the Light Touch. This

stuff of Keito's is just play. Here's your scarf back."

Maris put a hand to her head, then joined in the laughter as Ice Eyes bowed and handed the wisp of

bright silk back to her with a flourish. "But, Ice, it's cheating to distract me with Keito's holotoys! You

don't have those when you go collecting."

"Don't need 'em," Ice Eyes protested, "toppies are slow and stupid."

"Not all of them," Maris said, remembering what she'd come to report. "Where's Johnivans?"

"The question," said a slow, cold voice behind her, "is, where's the target you were supposed to be

following? Did you lose her, or just decide to take a little vacation from your assignment?"

Maris turned and dropped to one knee. If groveling and contrition would save her from the worst of

Johnivans' wrath, she didn't mind. She deserved it. "Worse," she admitted with her eyes fixed on the

pointed red toes of his boots.

"There's something worse than disobeying me? You never cease to surprise me, girl."

Maris lowered her head until her forehead touched the top layers of carpet scraps. Dust tickled her nose,

made her want to sneeze, and the acrid hint of Little Makusu's dreamdust tempted her with the promise

of oblivion. "She tumbled to me following her."

"Get careless?"

"I must have—but I don't know how! I'm the best at follow-me-target, Johni, you know that, we've

played it all my life, even you can't tell when I'm tracing you . . ."

"Hmm. So that makes you the best?"

"Nobody else here could track you through from Twenty-four to Twenty-one when you tried us, could

they?"

"So if you're so good, who persuaded you to be not so good at it this time? Hmm?" A foot on Maris's

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head underlined the question.

"Nobody! I swear it. She's just—better than anybody we tracked before—or maybe she's got better tech.

You said she was asking Little Makusu about smuggling pro-tech onto Kalapriya—well, wouldn't it

make sense that a tech smuggler would have the best equipment for herself?"

She could tell Johnivans was considering this point seriously when the weight of his foot quit grinding

her face into the carpet. Maris dared a glance upward and saw him frowning, but no longer angry. Not at

her, anyway. She'd become expert at reading the signs.

"Nobody could pay me enough to dub on you, Johni," she insisted. "You know that. I owe you

everything—do you think I've forgotten so easily? If I'm not one of Johnivans' people, I'm working the

corridors, I'm nobody, I'm dead. You saved me from that and I'd never dub on you. Not to save my own

life, certainly not for anything a damned toppie could wave at me!"

Johnivans' frown of concentration smoothed out into the broad smile that lit up her universe. " 'Course

you wouldn't, Maris. I know that—I was just testing you, see? Now stop rolling on the carpet, you'll get

your nice outfit dirty!" Strong hands lifted her up. Maris felt safe and protected again inside the strength

of those arms, the warmth of Johnivans' smile. If he forgave her, if she was still one of his mates, then

nothing else mattered. Sure, she'd blown the assignment, and she'd do whatever dirty, boring job he gave

her as penance—but it didn't really matter. The tech smuggler might have outsmarted her, but Johnivans

would outsmart the smuggler in turn. He always did.

* * *

"Do you think the target turned Maris?"

"No chance! Maris is yours. I think this woman outsmarted her, just like she admitted." But a slight

frown lingered on Little Makusu's face.

"Maris," Johnivans remarked, apparently to the empty space in the middle of his private chambers, "is

good. Bunu good; I trained her myself. So . . . either the toppie turned her, or . . . Maybe she's smarter

than she looks."

"Maris?"

"No, moron, this wannabe tech smuggler. At first I thought she was bunu dumb, trying to start her own

racket without paying her specs to me first, but now I'm wondering. Maybe she's got serious backing,

just wants to ID who's running the game here so she can have us taken out. We need to know more."

"Want me to bring her here?"

"No. Take her to the Maus-hole. If you can."

"If I can!"

The warm smile lit up Johnivans' face. "Just kidding, Little M. But seriously now . . . take some help.

Keito the Fingers, maybe Daeman if he's not too crazy today. Remember, she got round Maris. I don't

want any of my people approaching her alone. And after you've stashed her," he added, "find out where

she's bunking, and send Fingers to check out her quarters. I want as much background as we can get

before I start questioning her. And one other thing . . ."

"Don't mention the op to Maris," Little Makusu said. "Just in case."

"Bunu right!"

* * *

Calandra Vissi could hardly wait until she got back to her suite on Five to compose and code her

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message back. Strictly speaking she shouldn't be sending anything at all, since what she had at this point

was hardly vital information—but it was something, after all these days of dropping hints and

broadcasting suggestions until she began to doubt there actually was a smuggling organization on

Tasman for her to check out. But logic said there had to be. Tasman was an artifact of FTL travel, a

miniature artificial world created at a point where converging singularities in the geometry of space

made it extremely inconvenient not to have a nearby world for docking and refueling and transshipping

passengers and cargo. Hence, Tasman—expensive, with its thirty levels of living and working quarters,

its inability to produce anything for itself beyond the most basic hydroponics required to keep the air

healthy. Expensive beyond words, when you considered the cost of shipping every single component,

foodstuff, and other necessity from some distant world.

The only thing more expensive would have been not having Tasman, being unable to use this marvelous

area of converging singularities except by laboriously docking two ships together for cargo exchanges.

That debate had been argued out in Calandra's great-grandparents' time, and Tasman had paid for

itself—with docking and toll charges that everybody complained about, but everybody paid—within a

generation.

Almost everybody, anyway.

In the early, bare-bones days Tasman could not possibly have housed a smuggling operation (unless it

was run by the officials in charge of customs and excise, Calandra noted, having been trained to consider

all possibilities). Now, four generations after the world had first been placed here, it had been added

onto and improved beyond recognition. The core levels, One through Three, comprised a luxury world

with every comfort that could be imagined to keep staff happy and slow down turnover, because it was

much more expensive to train new maintenance and customs staff and ship them out than it was to

provide the existing workers with synthetic lobster dinners, the latest holos, virtual tours by the current

holostars, and anything else that could amuse people stuck on a world with no open spaces. The levels

immediately around the core were equally luxurious, resembling nothing so much as a huge shopping

mall that radiated out from Four's top-level stores with plush carpeting and discreet fountains all the way

down to the crowded walkways and mass-market chain stores of Fourteen. Nothing cheap, of course; it

didn't pay to import cheap goods to Tasman. Still, Fourteen didn't hold much to appeal to someone like

Calandra. But it was nearly the lowest level open to the public—Fifteen and Sixteen were drab service

areas frequented mostly by staff members bent on saving every penny of their salaries for the future, and

from Seventeen down to the outer skin, the only comfortable areas were the lift tubes that led directly to

the passenger bays, surrounded by dull and chilly storage and maintenance areas. So Fourteen was the

best place, Calandra figured, for her to troll for contacts with the smugglers that had to be operating on

Tasman by now.

Logic insisted they had to be there. In general: No place with so much wealth, tangible and intangible,

pouring through it could be immune from crime; and history taught that excessive tolls and customs

always generated smuggling. In particular: Kalapriya bacteriomats that didn't pass through the

Federation's rationing and control system were coming from somewhere—and Tasman was at the only

singularity point reachable from Kalapriya. However the black-market bacteriomats were being

distributed, they had to pass through Tasman, and somebody there had to know how it was done.

Somebody who was already unethical, or he wouldn't be distributing black-market bacteriomats;

somebody with the power to divert and conceal shipments of things that had to be moved in special

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climate-controlled, airtight containers; somebody who already had contacts on Kalapriya; somebody, in

short, who could be expected to leap on the offer of a partnership smuggling prohibited technological

luxuries onto Kalapriya.

The only trouble was, you couldn't look up "Smuggling—Tasman/Kalapriya" on the netbase and expect

to find an informative entry; nor could you insert an offer of partnership into the ceaseless stream of

public service announcements and commercial advertisements that clogged Tasman's main info channel.

You had to be subtle, come at it sideways, think like a criminal. Drop hints, let it be known in the right

quarters that she just might have certain devices that would be guaranteed to sell for a high price on

Kalapriya if only she had a way of bypassing the Barents Trading Society's checks on all incoming

cargos. And who knew what were the "right quarters"? Calandra had reasoned that there must be an

underworld to Tasman and that the bacteriomats must be coming through that way, because all her boss's

extremely discreet audits of Tasman's records showed no hint of any fiddling with the data. But in the

last few days of bar-hopping and casual chatting and dropping hints Calandra had begun to wonder if

Fru Silvan's delicate computer inquiries had missed something, if they should be checking out the

highest levels of Tasman rather than the lowest.

And she really didn't want to go on to Kalapriya without the slightest hint of where to look.

So it had been a great relief when the girl started following her, some time that morning, and an even

greater one when she passed up several perfectly good chances to steal Calandra's shopping bag. Even a

credit chip left carelessly on the countertop while she turned her back and haggled with the jeweler

hadn't attracted her shadowy follower. The girl had to be from the unknown gang she was trying to make

contact with; there was simply no other logical explanation.

And she'd gotten away.

But that didn't matter, Calandra reassured herself. At last she had some progress to report! If her

carefully casual inquiries had attracted somebody to investigate her, then logic was right and there was

at least one strand of the web she was seeking here on Tasman. Pull on that strand, and she might find

out enough to guide her investigation on Kalapriya itself . . .

Mulling over her next move, she forgot to check her proximity sensors—they were mostly a nuisance in

a crowded public area anyway, she'd had to pay the closest attention to pick out the one faint blip that

showed a repeated pattern behind her and gave that girl's presence away. And she hardly noticed when a

sharp angle of joined corridors took her out of the main stream of foot traffic for a moment.

A sharp push between her shoulders made her stumble forward, putting her arms up to protect her head

from hitting the tiled wall—but the wall fell open before her, and just before the world went black

Calandra registered, too late, the red flashing lights of her sensors screaming Attention, watch out,

somebody's getting much too close.

* * *

The first thing she knew was that it was cold; the second, that her head was exploding. No. It just wanted

to explode, to get away from the pain, little shreds of Calandra flying out away from the aching center

into the cold . . .

"She's awake," said someone. "I told you I din' hit her no harder'n I had to."

"Shouldn'a hit her at all," said a different voice in the same slurred accent Calandra had learned to

associate with Tasman lifers, the ones who came and stayed and generally held the worst crew positions.

Staffers had their leaves on their home worlds, their three- and five- and ten-year rotations, kept ties with

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home. Lifers . . . her brain was wandering.

"Doesn't matter, she'll be plenty awake for Johnivans to talk to." There was a nasty laughter behind that

voice, a mocking accent on talk that made Calandra shiver despite her pretense of unconsciousness.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, watch this—" and a burst of pain flared up Calandra's right arm, coming from the hand, the

middle finger bent impossibly far back until there was a snap and her stomach lurched. She moaned

then, couldn't help it, and gave up the pretense of unconsciousness. Had to look, anyway, to see if her

finger was still there—it was, but the angle made her feel sick again. Better not to look, then.

"Bright girl," said the man with the cold, mocking voice. Calandra studied him through half-closed lids,

pretending to be dazed from the blow. Maybe not pretending, I'm not functioning all that well. Dark

golden skin, black eyes with a hint of an oriental fold, broad shoulders. Not too big to tackle, if he were

alone. He wasn't; the owners of the other two voices were looking over his shoulder. "See, it's not a good

idea to lie to us."

"Didn't—" Calandra managed in a voice whose wobble dismayed her. She sat up slowly, hissing with

pain when she accidentally moved her right hand.

"Oh, yes. Pretending to be out when you're not, that's a lie, that's no bunu good. Don't need another

lesson, do you? Thought not. Learn fast, do you?"

"Daeman, Johnivans said not to question her till he was ready," protested one of the others, a slender

youth with bright green hair in a fashionable topknot.

"D'I ask her anything, Little M? I'm not bunu questioning her. Just getting her ready. Want her in the

right mood, don't we?" The broad-shouldered man—Daeman?—smiled down at Calandra with a mad

sweetness in his eyes that terrified her. Sane criminals I can maybe talk my way around. This one's not

sane. "In case you're wond'ring, lady, the right mood is cooperative. Totally bunu cooperative. I gotta

tell Johnivans you're a quick learner, don't I, that you don't need no more lessons in how to talk to the

boss? Or do I?" he mused. "See, I like teaching, and seems like you'd be a good student. What do you

think?"

"I think you started right, but you're making a mistake with the threats," Calandra said, looking at

Daeman but pitching her voice toward the two behind him, who might possibly be sane. "Your boss and

I have mutual interests. We need to talk."

Daeman giggled. "Oh, yes. You'll talk! You'll sing if we ask you real bunu nice, won't you, toppie lady?

You know how nicely I c'n ask? You wanna demonstration?"

"Daeman." The boy with the green topknot touched the big man's arm. "Let her wait here, think it over.

You scared her enough, Daeman. You're scared, aren't you, lady?" His eyes fixed on hers, sending some

message. What? Never cower to bullies, it only encourages them. But did that hold for madmen?

Probably not.

Calandra lowered her eyes and blinked rapidly, as if trying to blink away tears. "Y-yes," she said, and it

wasn't hard to sound weak and scared. "Please don't hurt me again."

"Not before Johnivans gets here," Daeman said with that high-pitched, frightening giggle. "He likes to

be sure, know what I mean? You think about that now, toppie slut. We'll have us a party when Johnivans

is ready."

And on that, unbelievably, they left. The door hissed shut behind them and Calandra drew a long breath

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that shook with grateful relief. With those three watching her, the only advantage she could get over

them was pretending to be weak and hurt and too scared to resist, waiting for them to relax so she could

make a move. Alone, she had a lot more advantages. Start by getting out of this place? She briefly

considered staying for the promised meeting with their boss, what had they called him? Johnivans? Not

worth the risk. She did want to talk to him—but not on his territory, with him thinking she was his

prisoner, and certainly not with that mad Daeman anywhere around. All right then. No telling how long

she had, and there could be cameras hidden even in this barren, steel-walled cell. What was it,

anyway—part of a corridor? Leaning against a cold wall, head lolling as if she were half unconscious,

Calandra closed her eyes, thanked the land spirits of Saros for the Diplomatic Sector's tradition of

thoroughness, and called up the implanted database that held maps of Tasman. Using a recent implant

like this always gave her a headache; spikes of pain flared between her eyes, vanished and recurred

while she scanned sectional maps of the outer layers. Yes, a corridor leading to one of the disused

loading docks. Of course, an area neglected like that was a natural breeding ground for a criminal

underclass. And the partition doors originally built in as barriers against accidental breaches of the skin

still worked; she'd just seen Daeman and Little M and their friend leave through the one to her left.

Probably a better idea to take the one to her right, then, assuming it didn't open on deep space. No, that

was all right; the maps showed that none of the corridor partitions led directly to a loading dock. Two

sets of double doors with an air space between, that was what she had to look out for—avoid those and

she'd be all right. With the maps in her head, she didn't need to worry about being spaced—only about

avoiding Johnivans and his friends. Especially his friends.

The other problem with new implants was their slowness to respond; it took time to grow the neuronal

connections that let the hint of a thought of moving a small muscle trigger the right commands in the

silicon part of her brain. Calandra had to blink twice, hard, to get the cross-sectional maps floating

through her vision to change to a 3-D walkthrough beginning just where she thought she might be. And

then it was a crummy threedie, jerky, lacking any of the detail that would allow her to select this

particular corridor partition from any of the others in the dead area of Level Thirty. There was only one

way to test her guess, and it would give her away if anyone was scanning. She would just have to hope

that underworld criminals weren't as efficient as Diplomatic Authority.

Standing wasn't quite as easy as it should have been; that knock on the head? No matter, a little sway

and stumble was quite artistic really, should convince anybody watching the hypothetical hidden camera

that she was merely moving aimlessly about. Three hesitant steps took her nearly to the right-hand

partition door, the one Daeman and his friends hadn't used. Calandra leaned against the door as though

the effort of moving had exhausted her. Hell—her body hid one hand from view, but it was the right

hand, which she didn't particularly want to use just now. No help for it; turning in a circle to put her left

hand between her body and the security keypad would definitely look purposeful and alert a watcher.

What am I complaining about? I've still got four perfectly good fingers on that hand. Okay, so using

even one finger awakened pain demons that flew up the nerves of her arm keening and wailing disaster.

Tough. The pain wouldn't kill her, wouldn't maim her, couldn't even keep her from accessing her new

implants. She couldn't be sure that would be true of whatever Johnivans and Daeman might be planning

to do to her.

A roll of her eyes upward and a twitch of her right eyebrow got the damned threedie walkthrough

unstuck, let her scan through codes until she spotted the list she wanted, the corridor codes for Level

Thirty. Earthlady of Saros, if ever I poured wine from my cup for you, let it be the first one I try!

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Third code out of ten; not enough to make her feel securely under the Earthlady's protection, but not bad.

And knowing which code worked also told her exactly where on Thirty she had to be. Just two more

corridor cells and an inconspicuous ladder door could get her to Twenty-nine, then to Twenty-eight and

higher, where there would be legitimate crew. Could the smugglers actually have been careless enough

to leave that way out unguarded? Probably—after all, they don't know I carry all Tasman's security

codes in the top left corner of my forehead. Not that the new chip was literally there, but that was where

the headache had centered.

Diplomatic School emphasized, over and over, that probably wasn't good enough if you had any way to

improve your odds. Calandra wiggled her right foot and felt the comforting thickness of the very slightly

raised heel. Slip the dazer out now, to have in her hand when she went through the door? Or take her

chances on this door, and hope she had time on the other side to get her weapon out?

She might be able to get at it now without alerting anybody. Calandra let herself slide down the wall,

careful not to put any weight on the now unlocked door, and tucked her feet under her as she sat. The

heel had been designed to let an agile woman casually finger the recessed print-pad and slip the dazer

out with a single gesture that looked as if she was just easing a tight shoe.

An agile woman with a fully functioning right hand.

Oh well—in three seconds, when she went through that door, anybody watching her would already

know something was off. Calandra wriggled to cross her legs in front of her, pressed her right thumb

into the print-pad, and awkwardly slipped the catch and pulled out the dazer left-handed; stood up in a

smooth flowing motion that she owed not to Diplo School but to Madame Petropolous's Dance Class for

Preteens; and pushed the door open with her right elbow, holding the tiny dazer in the palm of her left

hand with the nozzle just peeking between two fingers and her thumb on the firing pad.

Another barren corridor section, this one with shipping crates piled along the inside wall. No shouts, no

alarms—dared she take time to investigate even one of those tempting crates? By the time she got free

and could come back with station authorities, any bacteriomats concealed in those crates could have

been spaced—there to her right were the double doors leading to the defunct Loading Bay B7, plastered

with faded stickers bearing the usual warnings: No Exit, Danger, Unsecured Area, Authorized Personnel

Only, Vacuum-Rated Protective Gear Absolutely Required. All of which might or might not mean that

the second, exterior set of doors to the loading bay had been damaged in the collision that wrecked B7;

if Tasman Civil Authority was like any other set of bureaucrats Calandra had encountered, they would

rather slap warning tapes all over the doors than actually test or fix anything. The one thing she felt sure

of was that the smugglers would be well equipped to dump anything incriminating on a moment's

warning.

If there was a sealed bacteriomat transport canister in one of those crates, and if she could get it to—not

to Tasman Central Authority, they might be involved, unlikely as it seemed—back to her boss on

Rezerval, then she would have more than redeemed the carelessness that allowed the smugglers to trap

her. Calandra squeezed the dazer, resetting it to separate metal from metal rather than neuronal

connections, and cut a careful seam round the four sides of the topmost crate. She caught the toppling

metal side with her right forearm, just managed to get it to the floor without a betraying clang, set her

dazer on top of the crate and rummaged through the packing pearls one-handed. Little pink and green

and blue packing pearls flew out with every motion and swirled around her head, too light to succumb to

Tasman's artificial grav fields. Somebody was going to have fun cleaning those damned pearls up; she

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Ball,%20Margaret%20-%20Disappearing%20act/0743488539___1.htm (10 of 21)27-12-2006 20:07:52

Margaret Ball - Disappearing Act

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