Victory Conditions Read online

  She tucked her head into his shoulder. “Daddy—”

  “Hush, child.” He felt the same as always, the big warm shoulder, the broad strong hands gentle, comforting, as they supported her. She lifted her head, seeing through a blur of tears her mother’s white face, a shaking hand pressed against one cheek. “Don’t be scared, little bird. You’re safe with me. Your mother’s just upset.” He turned to look at her, facing Zori away from her mother. “Now, my dear, don’t you see you’ve scared the child?”

  She relaxed into his arms. From behind her, her mother’s voice, no longer high and tense, but once more the cool voice she expected, said, “Zori, I’m sorry if I scared you. Your father is quite right. But you should not be running to the kitchen for treats between meals. I’ll speak to Estelle.”

  “Oh, let the child have a cookie,” her father said. With his thumb, he gently lifted her chin, wiped away the last tears. “Cheer up, little bird. If I say you can have a cookie, even your mother has to agree.”

  “Of course,” her mother said. “One of the plain—”

  “Chocolate,” her father said. “One of the special ones. This time.”

  The chocolate cookie had melted in her mouth, the flavor so rare and tantalizing that she had not noticed anything odd in the sleepy feeling, the softening of memory’s sharp edges. Until now.

  She could hardly breathe, as that and other memories long buried unfolded and changed her known past. “I’m scared,” the girl said.

  “I’m Zori,” Zori said. “Hi, Scared.” It was all she could think of, in the turmoil, but the girl’s face relaxed for an instant and she giggled.

  “That’s silly…my name’s Hordin. But I am scared. Why aren’t the peacekeepers here?”

  “I don’t know,” Zori said. “Maybe—”

  At that moment, the loudhorns the peacekeepers used blared from near the back door. “Everyone: hands on your heads. Stand where you are. Do not attempt to run.”

  “We aren’t standing,” Hordin whispered. “Can I just hold your hand?”

  Zori didn’t want to be seen any sooner than necessary; this was as good an excuse as any. “Lie down,” Zori said. “I’ll lie down with you.” With any luck, they’d think she was protecting the child, that both were hurt. Just how did someone feign unconsciousness, anyway? Her eyes kept opening as she heard the shuffle of feet, the voices demanding ID, the other voices trying to explain and being told to save it for the court. Customers and staff were being moved toward the front of the place, away from the back door.

  Very shortly, she was looking up at three peacekeepers in full riot gear, their face shields pushed back. “Are you hurt?” one of them asked her.

  “I—I fell,” Zori said. Always tell the truth when you can, her father had said. “I think I’m just…just bumped around…” She pushed herself up to sitting, and shook her head when he offered her a hand up, turning instead to Hordin. “Can you stand up now, Hordin?”

  “This your child?”

  “No, ser. I fell over her; I was worried about her. I don’t think she’s badly hurt, though. We tried to crawl into a safe place, but there wasn’t one…”

  The one with more marks on his riot vest sighed. “These two aren’t part of it, but we’ll still have to take ID.”

  “My name is Hordin Amanuse, and we live at 342-A, branch 3, twig 27,” the little girl said. She too was sitting up, her lower lip trembling. “I…I don’t mean to be impolite…” Tears tracked down her face, through the dust and streaks of food from the floor.

  Zori put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, Hordin. No one’s blaming you.”

  “You know her, then?”

  “No, ser. I fell over her, when I was trying to get away, and then I thought she might be hurt, so…we introduced ourselves.”

  “I said I was scared, and she said I’m Zori, hello Scared, and then I said that’s silly and told her my name,” Hordin said. Her hand in Zori’s no longer trembled; her tears were drying. “She was nice to me. I didn’t want her to leave and she held my hand.”

  “That’s very good, serita. Can you stand if we help you?”

  “I think so.” With the peacekeepers’ help, both of them stood.

  Zori looked down at her clothes and shook her head. “What a mess. Hordin, we both need a change of clothes.”

  “And your name, sera?” The peacekeeper’s tone was perfectly polite, but implacable.

  “I’m Zori Louarri,” Zori said. “And when you’ve found Hordin’s parents or guardian, I need to talk to you.”

  He smiled down at her. “Surely you aren’t going to tell me you started this riot…”

  “No, ser. But I do know something which you should know, not for a child’s ears.”

  “I’m not just a child,” Hordin said, pulling her hand out of Zori’s.

  “Of course not,” Zori said, in concert with the peacekeeper. She went on, looking directly at Hordin. “But you know there are things that must be confidential. It is that kind of thing. It would be rude to speak it here.”

  “Oh.” Hordin looked thoughtful a moment, then nodded.

  “Were you here alone, serita?” asked the peacekeeper.

  “Yes, ser,” Hordin said. “Mama let me come to get a soda but I was supposed to come home right away. Only there were grown-ups who got angry and started a fight, and the lady who brought my soda said come with her, and she brought me here and was going to call my family, only then all these people came in the kitchen…”

  “We’ve contacted your family,” the peacekeeper said, tapping his head to indicate a skullphone. “Your mother is on her way. If you’ll just go out front with Willem…do you need Sera Louarri to come with you?”

  “No, ser,” Hordin said. “Peacekeepers are our friends.” She smiled at Zori. “Thank you, sera, for letting me hold your hand when I got scared. My mama will want to thank you, too.”

  “It was my pleasure,” Zori said. “Be well, Hordin.”

  The other peacekeeper took Hordin’s hand and led her out of the kitchen.

  “Well, sera?”

  “I came here—with my family’s permission and an escort—to have an ice cream with a young man in my class at school,” Zori said. “We were to meet at 1945. I was a few minutes late—there was congestion out front—so I came through the back way. Just as we came in sight of the back entrance, I saw three men carry out someone strapped to a litter. Unconscious. It was my friend. I tried to stop them but my escort pulled me back—for my safety, I thought, but then when I wanted to call my friend’s guardian, he told me not to.”

  “I’m not sure what—”

  “Ser, please. My friend should have had two escorts with him—his guardian insists, because they were attacked elsewhere. I saw his escorts come out, after the men who took him were out of sight—”

  “Carrying him?”

  “No. In a vehicle with a SANITATION logo on the side.”

  “You’re sure it was your friend?”

  “Of course I’m sure…ask his—where are his escorts? Didn’t they speak to you?”

  “What’s his name, sera?”

  “Toby Vatta. His guardian’s Stella Vatta, of Vatta—”

  “Yes, I know who Stella Vatta is. Sera, I think we’d better get you home; we can interview you later—”

  “No.” That came out louder than Zori intended; from his expression he found it rude. “Excuse me,” she said. “I intend no discourtesy, but please, listen to me.” He nodded. “My escort—my father insists on an escort in the evenings—there was something wrong about him. He didn’t just stop me from intervening when those men took Toby. He told me I could not call Toby’s cousin—Sera Vatta—and he reached for his weapon—”

  “Your escort is dead,” the man said. “He appears to have shot one of the boy’s escorts, and then the other shot him. I cannot speak more about that; the survivor is being interrogated. I would have thought, though, that your escort thought he was protecting yo
u—and even if he wasn’t, your parents are still—”

  “Please,” Zori said. “Please forgive my interruption; no discourtesy was intended. I think—I think my father did it—had it done—”

  “What did your father do?”

  “Took Toby.”

  “You think your father had the boy kidnapped just because you and he are friends?”

  “No. Because he invented the shipboard ansible that can communicate with system ansibles.”

  The man’s expression hardened. “I think you had better speak to my supervisor.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” Zori said, though she was beginning to feel very shaky indeed.

  He escorted her to the front door, provided a privacy hood, and handed her to another peacekeeper who opened the door of a squat vehicle. Inside, she joined four others, all shrouded in privacy hoods like hers, and in moments they were moving. No one spoke; Zori tried to use the time to sort her thoughts. What had really happened? What did she think it meant?

  Did she really think her father was guilty of…whatever had happened to Toby? Just because the escort had made that move? Just because of that flash of memory in the kitchen?

  And where was Toby? And what was happening to him? She felt her shoulders jerk and tried to still them. She couldn’t help Toby directly…she had to wait, had to talk to the right person, say the right things.

  Toby never quite lost consciousness and the long dark tunnel that engulfed him at O’Keefe’s shortened and spat him out into awareness that he was swaddled in a wrap held tight by restraints. He tried to speak, but he could not move his jaw or his tongue. He could not even move his eyes; he stared almost straight up at the inside of a vehicle of some kind.

  A face moved into his line of vision, a face he did not recognize. “Comin’ to, are you? You’ll find you can’t move.”

  If he couldn’t move, if they had paralyzed him, how was he breathing? All at once he was conscious of something in his throat, of pressure on his chest.

  “You can’t see it, but you’re on a respirator,” the man said. “Just keep that in mind, boy: if we turn it off, you die.”

  He wanted to say something, explain to someone that it wasn’t his fault, that he had done everything he was supposed to…but he couldn’t. Stella would be frantic. Did she even know? Where were his escorts? Where was Zori? Was Zori also a captive? Hurt? Would Stella blame Zori when she found out he was missing? He had to do something—he had to—

  The vehicle he was in stopped with a jerk. The men—he could now see their bodies when they leaned over to unhook his stretcher from the vehicle—worked in silence, swiftly. One of them laid a jacket over his face, blinding him; he could just see light through the weave of the cloth. He told himself to think, to observe, but he heard nothing identifiable: the men’s breathing, the steady rasp of his own breath forced in and out by the respirator, the softer friction of their clothing as they lifted him out of the vehicle. They carried him through a door—he heard it open and shut—and along what he thought was a narrow corridor, from the sound of their feet.

  When the man pulled the jacket off his face, Toby saw a bright light directly overhead, painfully bright. The man leaned over him again and sprayed something on his eyes; his vision blurred, but that did not dim the light enough for comfort. “That gel protects your eyes from drying, if you’re interested. The paralysis won’t wear off for hours; you’re safe enough here. When you move, the instruments will tell us, and we’ll have a little chat…have a pleasant evening.” His laugh was anything but pleasant; he moved out of Toby’s view, and from the scuff of feet and the sound of the door closing, Toby assumed they’d left and locked him in.

  He had a few moments of panic—what was going to happen to him? To Zori?—but with the suddenness of a switch being thrown, it vanished, replaced by the familiar alert concentration he felt when working on a new technical problem. Was it something in the drug they’d given him? Shouldn’t he still be too scared to think? Rafe had said something about that, about the ability to wall off the fear and think through problems. Toby tested that with a math problem from that morning’s class. Whatever this detachment was, it wasn’t simply inability to think.

  If he could think, he should be able to get himself out of this somehow. Would his skullphone work? Not without being able to use the tiny muscles in his throat. Could he detect surveillance in the room with his implant? He started testing that. Obligingly, his implant produced a wireframe display of the room, with little red dots where instruments were located. That included the surface on which he lay, a medical sensor pad measuring vital functions.

  What was it telling them? His implant also monitored his vital functions. Respirations controlled at twelve per minute, heart rate eighty…faster than his own normal. Normal temperature, blood chemistry…Toby would have frowned in concentration if he’d been able to. Last semester’s chemical database was still in his implant. It displayed the structure of the molecules that held him captive.

  And how to break them apart, as well, in the implant’s biochemical hierarchy. But the room’s sensors would tell his captors if he moved. They would come back…that could be worse. Maybe patience would be the best tactic here. Stella would find him…someone had to know by now he was missing. He refused to think about the alternative, but he could not help thinking of Zori. Of course she wasn’t—she hadn’t—but the same men who had captured him might have captured her, and Stella wouldn’t be as concerned about Zori. He had to get free and make sure Zori was safe.

  Meanwhile the light boring into his helpless eyes hurt, hurt more and more with every boring minute. So did the tube in his throat.

  Maybe his implant could at least fox the medical pad? His implant told him that the medpad’s data report function was hard-cabled to some external location, with safeguard functions to detect RF interference in the usual ranges. Yet the data collection function needed RF sensitivity to the electrical emissions of his own body. He could interfere there, at the source, at least as long as his implant’s transmissions matched the parameters the medpad had been programmed to pick up. He queried…feeding the merest trickle of power to the external channel…and the pad responded, reporting a fictional heartbeat. That worked; excitement made his heart speed up. He hoped his captors would think it was from fear and pain.

  The light boring into his eyes, the choking feel of the tube in his throat, had to be fixed next. He had access to his implant’s biocontrols. That meant access to conditioned sleep, pain management for both acute and chronic pain, even complete sensory decoupling. That came with major warning flags: not a good idea.

  But interfering with pain signals from his eyes and throat seemed safe enough. Immediate relief. Toby felt a burst of confidence. Now what? Control the entire medpad output. If he could do that, then he could deconstruct the paralyzing drug most of the way without revealing changes in metabolism.

  Toby defined the parameters and instructed his implant to insert them into the datastream. Then he damped his throat’s sensitivity to the tube even further. If he could break down the paralyzing chemical, the first natural movement would be a gag reflex and a blink, something the video surveillance would pick up. He had to appear to be paralyzed right up to the moment he was ready to take on whatever came next.

  Then he set to work on the chemical problem. Could the reaction products from breaking down the paralyzing drug counteract the effects of hours of immobilization? Strength, agility, what else? Zori, his emotions said.

  “You what!” Stella felt a wash of icy terror and white-hot rage meet in the middle of her head; she wanted to fly into pieces. And she must not.

  “He was abducted,” the escort said. His voice was strained; he was a mass of bruises, scrapes, cuts. “And yes, sera, I know we have given you ample cause for anger; Duirman is dead, died in his defense, I hope you will remember—”

  “When I have time to remember,” Stella said, “I will honor his sacrifice. Right now Toby is in dan
ger—”

  “We are searching for him,” the Station Security officer said. “We have a good description of the abductors and the vehicle from Zori Louarri—”

  “Her!” Stella said. “I knew there was something—”

  “Sera, she has been most helpful. She told us to contact you at once; she has refused to return to her parents’ home and wishes to see you.”

  The last thing Stella wanted to see was a hysterical teenage girl in love, whether she was guilty of anything else or not. “I don’t have time—” she said, but the man was already nodding at the door.

  Zori rushed in. “I have to see you,” she said to Stella. “You have his dog. You have to get his dog.”

  “Rascal? Why?”

  Zori nodded. “He told me about it, about his dog at home, where he came from. It could follow scent; it could find anyone it knew. Rascal can follow his trail and find him. They won’t think of that; we don’t have any other dogs on the station.”

  Stella wondered for a moment if it could work, and then shook her head. “Zori, not all dogs can track. I don’t think Rascal’s that kind of dog—dogs bred to follow scent are a different breed.”

  “But Rascal loves him!” Tears glittered in Zori’s eyes, and Stella heard the barely voiced “Just like me” as the girl burst into tears. “We have to try,” she sobbed. “We can’t just let him disappear—what if they put him in a ship, take him away—”

  “It is a dog, sera,” the Security officer said. “Isn’t it true that dogs can track individuals through cities, even?”

  “Some dogs,” Stella said. It was at least an idea, better than some. She patted Zori’s shoulder, feeling at least sixty. “Zori, you really should go home—”

  “I—I can’t,” Zori said. “I think my father—I told them—”

  “Sera Louarri has made accusations against her father,” the officer said. “Until those allegations are resolved, it would be better for her to have no contact with her parents.” He gave Stella a meaningful look; it took her a long pause to catch on.