Cryoburn

Chapter Eighteen

Ted Fuwa, the old cryofacility’s putative owner, turned out to be more or less what Miles had expected—a big, harried man in his late forties who looked as if he’d be more at home on a construction site than in a conference chamber, even one so strange as Madame Suze’s quarters at midnight.

A less-expected presence was the consulate’s local lawyer, an alert, composed, compact woman, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair, who stood barely taller than Miles himself. Kareen, Miles was unsurprised to learn, had persuaded her to come here after hours. Madame Xia stared back at him with at least as much covert interest, as the source of the increasingly bizarre stream of legal questions she’d been fielding for the past week or so from her formerly staid and routine client. Miles trusted she was having her accumulated curiosity satisfied tonight.

Miles missed Vorlynkin, told off to stay with Sato and her children, and Suze wasn’t happy that Tanaka had been called away to deal with some medical crisis, so he supposed the shifting sides, however you counted them, were still evenly matched. Suze and Tenbury versus Mark and Kareen, Miles as unruly witness with Roic his silent partner, the attorney throwing in comments and questions now and then that gave everyone pause, and Fuwa versus everyone, although Miles wasted little sympathy on him.

Madame Suze folded her arms and stared hard at Mark. “You still have given me no guarantees whatsoever about future provisions for the poor.”

“I’m not running a charity, you know,” Mark returned, irritably.

“I am,” snapped Suze.

“Yes, but for how much longer?” asked Mark. “Sooner or later, and more sooner than later, I think, it would be your turn to go downstairs. And you would lose control of this place in any case. Tenbury and Tanaka might hold things together for a while, but after that—what?”

“It’s what I was waiting for,” put in Fuwa, a bit mournfully. Suze shot him a scornful look and sat up straighter in her big chair, as if to imply he’d be waiting for a while yet. Miles was less sure. Suze’s skin bore more than a little of that pallid slackness that was the harbinger of decline. One couldn’t say she glowed with health, not even in her irate stress.

“If the Durona Group doesn’t step in,” said Mark, “the inevitable end game is that this place will go to the city or the Prefecture, or to Fuwa. And in either case, patron intake stops. The life of one person isn’t long enough to see this venture out.”

“Although that might change in the future,” Kareen observed.

“Or cryofreezing will become obsolete technology, and this whole demographic mess Kibou has created for itself will be naturally swept away,” said Mark.

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Miles thoughtfully. “If people start getting frozen at eight hundred instead of eighty, the game will still go on, just set to a new equilibrium. Although at eight hundred, it’s hard to guess how people will think. At twenty, I could not have imagined myself at almost-forty. I can’t imagine eighty even now.”

Suze snorted.

Mark shrugged. “That will be for them to decide, however many decades or centuries from now. I expect death will still be cheap and always available, doesn’t take high tech.”

“During the initial transition period,” Kareen said, wrenching things back from this flight of speculation to the practical present, “treatment actually will be free, if the subject is willing to sign up for the experimental protocols and give the legal releases. And anyone coming in can give their own permissions.” Not needing, this implied, any cooperation from Madame Suze and company. “I expect the Group will prefer to have a few more healthy live subjects to start on, before tackling the more difficult complications from death trauma and cryorevival. Although they’ll certainly want data on those as well.”

Suze growled. Tenbury scratched his beard.

Kareen regarded her fingernails, looked up, smiled. Miles wasn’t sure if anyone else caught Mark’s small gesture, two fingers held out and then curled once more atop his stomach. The pair had the good-cop-bad-cop routine down to an art, Miles thought with admiration, and it would be a naïve observer who concluded that all the bad-cop ideas came from Mark—or the good-cop ones from his partner, for that matter. Kareen continued serenely, “The Durona Group will be doing a lot of local hiring, if this goes through. For example, if you, Madame Suzuki, were to sign up for the first round of protocols, and they proved to work as well as we hope, the position of Director of Community Relations could be made open for you. Which would put you in place to work on these problems on an on-going basis, right from here. This is all too complex to be solved in a night, but that doesn’t mean it’s too complex to be solved ever.”

“Buy me off with an empty title? Oh, as if I haven’t seen how that works before!”

“What you make of it could be largely up to you,” said Mark, sounding as if he didn’t care one way or another. “But in three years, when all those chambers below stairs are emptied out, it may be a whole new situation, here. Employment would keep you in the center of things, with real input.”

It wasn’t the future Suze had set her mind to; Miles fancied he could hear her imagination creaking with the strain of change, like a gate almost rusted shut. Almost. She said querulously, “What about the rest of us?”

“Tenbury, I’d hire tonight,” said Mark readily. “We’ll be wanting a Director of Physical Plant first thing—the place certainly needs significant upgrades and repairs, starting from the laboratory core outward. We’ll likely”—he flicked a glance at Fuwa—“need a local contractor. Medtech Tanaka as well, Raven vouches for her. The rest on a case-by-case basis. I do require competence. Certification can be arranged.”

Suze glowered in suspicion. Tenbury raised his hairy eyebrows.

The lawyer, Madame Xia, put in smoothly, “By the tacit contracts argument, Ms. Suzuki is the tacit proxy holder for all who have been frozen here, and can give blanket protocol permissions for all who entered here under her care. I believe I can make this argument work for the city adjudicator, since the city doesn’t want the liability for several thousand destitute cryo-corpses.”

“Not even if the city could register their votes?” asked Miles. “Seems to me that would be enough to swing a city election, if not one on the Prefecture or planetary level.”

“I think I could guarantee—or at least plausibly suggest—expensive legal challenges about that, which the adjudicator would not relish.” The lawyer smiled quietly. “Unless disunity among the petitioners forces the matter to go before a judge, in which case I cannot guarantee the outcome, because at that point the issues will become public and political. I actually spend most of my working time keeping my clients out of court.”

“Public and political sounds like a job for Madame Sato’s group, or something like it,” Miles said. “I regret that we didn’t snatch the other two members of her committee while we were at it. We’d have them now.” Although an attempt to carry off three cryo-corpses from NewEgypt’s coffers would certainly have taken more time, and might have gone less luckily.

“Client confidentiality has certain limits, Lord Vorkosigan,” Xia warned him. Kindly, he thought.

“Diplomatic immunity?”

“Works for you. Not for me. But in this event, with criminal charges certainly coming down on NewEgypt, there may be legal ways to wrench Mr. Kang and Ms. Khosla away from their captors. Subpoena them as witnesses, for starters.”

Miles tilted his head in appreciation. “If one could keep them from being destroyed by NewEgypt en route.”

“That would be an important consideration in designing the approach, yes.”

Mark pointed. “Kareen, put her on retainer.”

Xia smiled warily. “My plate at work is actually rather full. I was only able to come here tonight because it’s after hours.”

“Partner or employee?”

“Me? I’m one of three associates in the galactic business law department of my firm. We work under a partner.”

“The Durona Group will certainly be needing full-time local legal advice,” murmured Kareen. “Perhaps we should talk instead about salary… later.”

Xia waved this away, provisionally. “In any case, Ms. Suzuki, I’d invite you to think about what is the better long-term practical result for your patrons. You serve one community; this technology has the potential to serve the planet. If the—”

An echoing boom from outside rattled the windows. Roic shot to his feet and peered into the night. “What t’ hell… ?”

“That sounded awfully close,” said Xia uneasily.

“Was that us?” said Madame Suze. “Tenbury…”

“Could be the plastics fabricator next door,” said Fuwa, joining Roic. “Though I can’t think what they’d be doing over there at this hour. Or something from the street… collision?”

But with the municipal traffic control net here, collisions were vanishingly rare, Miles had thought.

“It’s hard to tell the direction,” said Tenbury, craning his neck as well.

“Go up on the roof and look,” directed Madame Suze.

Tenbury was halfway out the door when Miles’s wristcom chimed, emergency secured channel. Vorlynkin. Not good. Miles found himself on his feet without remembering standing up. “Vorkosigan here.”

“Lord Auditor.” Vorlynkin sounded winded. “An arson team—I counted four men—just put a fire bomb through a ground-floor window of the heat exchanger building. Asterzine, I think—it was a two-part liquid fire-starter, anyway.”

“Call the local fire guards!”

“Already did, sir.” The cadence of Vorlynkin’s language was reverting to old military training, Miles noted in passing. “Police, too. They should be here in moments.”

“Good man.”

“I’m looking now to see if there are more intruders. Haven’t spotted any so far. I’m fairly sure there’s no one left in the exchanger building—can’t speak to under it.”

“Keep this channel open.”

“Right, sir.”

Miles wheeled to find everyone staring at Fuwa, who stared back in horror.

“It wasn’t me!” the contractor practically wailed. “Not this time! Why would it be me, now? I’m about to get rid of this mess!”

“My exchanger towers!” cried Tenbury, starting for the door again. “If they go down, everyone’ll start to thaw!” Suze grabbed his sleeve.

“My exchanger towers!” cried Fuwa. “My facility!”

“Tenbury.” Madame Suze shook the custodian’s arm, for emphasis. “Tell everyone you see, get out of the buildings and assemble on that patch of open ground in front of the intake building. I’ll wake up and warn everyone on this floor.”

The front of the patron intake building was on the opposite side of the four-building complex from the fire-so-far, a map of the layout burning, so to speak, in Miles’s mind’s eye. So the arson had occurred as far as possible from the intake building, and the people now in it. This stank of diversion.

“Should we go to Vorlynkin?” asked Roic, jittering like a horse at the start of a race.

“No. To Leiber. Anything interesting will turn up at Leiber.”

Roic’s eyes widened as he took in the implications; Miles didn’t have to spell them out. “Ah.”

“Suze, we’ll go warn them in the intake building,” Miles added.

Madame Suze, already short of breath and with her hand pressed to her heart, nodded and said, “I know Vristi Tanaka is on the second floor. I think she just started a cryoprep.”

“We’ll get the word to her, as well as to our people.”

She waved thanks and tottered out, Xia going with her in support and asking shrewd questions about where else all the sleeping residents were to be found at this hour. Tenbury sprinted ahead of them. Miles and Roic followed, turning in the opposite direction for the nearest stairs.

Through the office doors, Miles glimpsed Mark and Kareen braking Fuwa, one at each elbow providing a combined resistance that plainly surprised the big man, as he was yanked backward almost off his feet.

“Fuwa-san,” Mark began in his most urbane voice, “let’s talk fire sale.”

Jin staggered up the last flight of stairs, puffing, lugging Nefertiti. For no discernable reason, she’d shied and bolted back past him in the alley below the exchanger building as Vorlynkin had disappeared around the corner, and Jin had caught her on a lucky tackle. Well, it had seemed lucky at the time. The sphinx seemed to have at least doubled in weight since then. She growled continuously, and shed fur and feathers on his shirt, but didn’t try to scratch him.

“Get the door,” Jin wheezed, and Mina nodded and swung it wide. It was labeled, on this side, Fire Door: Do Not Block. So did that mean it would stop a fire? Jin hoped they weren’t about to find out.

Nefertiti wriggled some more, and finally lunged from Jin’s sweaty, failing grip just as they made it down the corridor to the recovery room, so Jin was at least able to spill her into this more confined area. Leiber-sensei, who was slumped in a battered folding chair staring anxiously into space, jerked upright at their entry.

“I thought you went to get rid of that thing!” he said, eyeing the sphinx with disfavor.

His mother sat up in her bed. “Jin? Mina? What’s going on?”

“It was ninjas, mommy!” Mina declared breathlessly. “We saw them! They set fire to Jin’s hideout!”

“What?”

“It was not either ninjas,” said Jin impatiently. “It was just some stupid guys dressed in black stuff.”

“Was that anything to do with the strange thump we heard through the walls a few minutes ago?” asked his mother.

Jin nodded. “It was even louder close up. Consul Vorlynkin said it was some kind of liquid fire-starter.”

His mother gasped. “How close were you?”

“We were on top of the roof, looking right down at them!” said Mina. “The fireball was all orange and black!”

Leiber-sensei stood up and gripped the back of his chair, looking very uneasy.

“Where’s Raven-sensei?” said Jin. “Vorlynkin said we were supposed to tell him about the fire, and then do what he said.”

“He went down to the second floor to help Medtech Tanaka with a cryoprep,” said Leiber-sensei.

Jin’s mother slid out of bed and came to the wall of her booth, standing with her hands pressed against the glass. “Jin, maybe you’d better run downstairs and tell them what’s going on. Was the fire spreading very fast?”

“We couldn’t tell yet.”

“Maybe I’d better find a room with a window and look,” said Leiber-sensei.

“Where’s Stefin gone?” asked their mother. “He was supposed to look after you two!”

“I think he went to look for more ninjas,” said Mina.

She touched her hand to her lips. “Isn’t that the sort of thing that Armsman Roic fellow is supposed to do?”

“He’s probably with Miles-san,” Jin called over his shoulder, heading toward the door again. “Mina, don’t let Nefertiti get out!”

Leiber-sensei followed close on Jin’s heels. And then cringed backward as the door was kicked open from the corridor side. Mina shrieked.

So did Nefertiti. “Foes, foes!” she screamed, flapping madly around the room and up onto a table.

Oh, Nefertiti, you’re so right, thought Jin, backing up as Chief Hans and Sergeant Oki shouldered into the recovery room.

The pair seemed out of breath, and angry, and much, much bigger when looming vertically than when they’d been laid out on the floor of the garage office, drooling as they snored. They’d changed their clothes from the rumpled blue medical smocks they’d worn earlier, and were now dressed in uniformlike gray trousers and heavy cloth jackets, with equipment belts and big clumping boots, but without any insignia or name tags or identifying markers.

“There you are, you stupid turd! Finally!” growled tall Hans to Leiber-sensei, who’d backed up against a table and turned pale.

“What the hell… ?” said broad Oki, staring around at their audience. “What are these kids doing here? That jerk Akabane didn’t say anything about kids.”

“Never mind, just grab him.”

Oki strode forward and did so, yanking Leiber-sensei around, doing something with the policeman’s baton he carried in his hand, and hauling the scientist’s arm up behind his back. Leiber-sensei yelped.

“Let him go!” cried their mother through the glass.

Hans’s head turned, and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll say what the hell! It’s that bitch Sato! They must have woken her up. Isn’t this the jackpot! Grab her too, Oki!”

“You’ll have to. My hands are full,” snapped his companion. Leiber-sensei tried to resist by going limp, and almost succeeded in slithering out of his captor’s grip, but Oki jerked him upright once more, freed the hand with the baton, and slapped it with a loud electric pop against Leiber-sensei’s thigh. Leiber-sensei yelled really loud. With a surprised gasp, Oki flinched and almost let him go, as the electric jolt evidently traveled through his victim’s body and bit his gripping hand. But he renewed his clutch before the shuddering scientist could escape it.

Hans strode toward the booth and hit the lock control; the door slid back, and air puffed out.

“No!” said Jin, panicking so much that his vision blurred. “She’s not supposed to come out yet! She’ll get sick!”

“She’s going to be a lot sicker when Akabane gets done with her,” Hans snarled. He lunged for their mother, who hopped up and across the bed, and almost made it around the end to the door and freedom before he lunged again, caught her by the arm, and swung her against the glass wall with a sickening thud. He manhandled her out of the booth, stumbling, her long hair tumbling down all over.

“No, you can’t have my mommy!” screamed Mina. “We just got her back!” She grabbed the folding chair, flopped it shut, and swung it as hard as she could. She might have been trying to hit the security chief in the stomach, but Mina was pretty short, and her aim was rather blind, as she whirled around. Instead, the chair legs took him square in the crotch—but not quite hard enough.

He bent over, saying really horrible words, but didn’t let go of their mother’s arm. With his other fist, he backhanded Mina, who fell on her butt, crying. Their mother tried to kick him, more accurately than Mina had, but she was barefooted and frighteningly breathless. “How dare… you touch… my children, you… horrible murderer!”

Remembering the blood running down Vorlynkin’s face, Jin dodged around the table where Nefertiti stood stiff-legged, wings flapping, fur on end in a dark ridge running down her back, tail lashing, and shrieking incoherently. He grabbed her up and flung her at Oki, who was closest. The wide man yelled, waving his snapping and popping stick but only connecting with wing feathers, which scorched with a dreadful stink. Nefertiti leaped off him, shredding his jacket but only getting in one shallow bleeding scratch on his thick neck. Leiber-sensei broke from his grip, though. The scientist lurched and limped, dodging out of the way of the swinging baton.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Hans. “Akabane didn’t say we’d have to capture a damned tribe!” As Jin made a head-down rush with some wild idea of head-butting him in the stomach, Hans shoved their mother away hard, so she fell and skidded on the floor next to Mina, who scrambled to reach her. The tall man grabbed for Jin instead, catching him by the hair and swinging him around. Jin yelled, tears of pain starting in his eyes. He heard a strange snick by his ear, and looked down cross-eyed to glimpse a steel blade at least fifteen centimeters long glint past his face and lodge below his upraised chin.

“Everybody, freeze!” bellowed Chief Hans.

Everybody did. Hans added impatiently, “Not you, Oki!”

“Hans, no, he’s just a kid!”

“After the day we’ve had, don’t push me.”

The belief and terror in Oki’s face convinced the others that this was no bluff as nothing else could have, Jin thought. He could feel the edge pressing into his skin, and strands of hair popping from his stretched scalp.

“All right,” said Hans. The big chest against which Jin was now pressed heaved for air, and maybe for balance. Could the big man actually be frightened, too? That was a weird thought, and not reassuring. “Behave, all of you, or I’ll cut the damn kid’s throat, got it? You, quit wriggling!” He shook Jin’s head back and forth by the hair.

Jin’s mother, still on the floor, glared up cold and furious, but said in a voice sharp with dread, “Jin, hold still!”

Jin could see Leiber-sensei swallow. The limping sphinx had taken refuge in the shadows under a table, where she crouched and mumbled piteously, “Foes, foes, hurts, aowt, hum, hurts!” That, and people breathing, were the only sounds in the windowless room.

Hans straightened. “That’s better. Now, you, kid, stuff your hands in your pockets.” Jin, after a glance at his mother, complied. “You, Sato, stand up. You too, Doctor, and put your hands on top your head. Sato, take the mini-bitch by the hand with your right hand. Now, you’re all going to march out in file, and Oki with his stick will keep you all in line. Set it on high, Oki!”

The broad man gulped, nodded, fiddled with the control in the base of the handle.

“Now, you all follow Oki out the door and turn right. Sato first, Leiber next, then me.”

Their mother, her face utterly still and intent, grasped Mina’s hand convulsively; they both stood up together. Her bare feet moved soundlessly on the floor, her padded robe flapping around her calves. Mina, sniffling and scared, trotted alongside. Leiber-sensei would have looked silly with his arms up like that, as if he were playing some toddler’s rhyming game about touching your nose and ears and head, if he weren’t so grim and pale and shivering. Jin waited for the grip on his hair to slacken, the knife edge to press less deeply, so that he could twist away and run, but the big fists holding him didn’t ease.

They followed the others out into the corridor, Jin’s feet barely touching the floor as he was yanked along, and turned right. They took maybe three steps toward the end stairs.

A bellow from behind them, Armsman Roic’s deep voice: “Halt!”

Chief Hans whirled, still holding Jin in front of him. Up the corridor from the other end-stairs strode Roic-san, with Miles-san running at his elbow and Raven-sensei sort of dodging behind him. Roic raised his right arm, something in his fist too blurred for Jin’s pain-teared eyes to make out. His expression was very strange, cool and remote, like no expression at all.

Jin felt his captor flinch. The knife edge bit harder. Hans yelled back, “You again! Drop that damned stuh—”

A white light flared from Roic-san’s hand, and a strange buzzing noise. The world, or maybe it was Jin’s head, seemed to explode in a jagged shower of colored rain. The rain turned black, and drowned him deep.