Dragon and Liberator

CHAPTER 14

As always, Taneem took her rime, checking each grille as she passed. As always, her excessive caution proved largely unnecessary. Now that the Essenay had been docked and the immediate crisis was over, both crew and passengers were relaxing again. Certainly none of them seemed to have the slightest interest in the air ducts running along above their heads.

During her most recent investigation of the ship, just after she and Alison had escaped from the safe, Taneem had noted that most of the forward cabins were occupied by Brummgas, usually four to a room. Now, with all the aliens having been sent to the Foxwolf, their places had been taken by human Malison Bang soldiers.

Still, even through the confusing mix of other human scents wafting through the ducts, it didn't take her long to find Harper's new home.

Back in the office, both Harper and Neverlin had mentioned Harper's desire to rest. But as Taneem eased an eye around the edge of the grille, she discovered he wasn't resting at all. Instead, he was walking slowly around the room, his hands running gen-tly over the walls and furnishings, his head moving back and forth as he looked closely at everything.

His movements seemed strangely familiar. Taneem frowned, trying to figure out why.

And then it hit her. Just as Alison had done on their very first visit to this ship a month ago, Harper was searching for hidden microphones and other spy devices.

Carefully, Taneem settled down into a comfortable position inside the tight fit of the duct. This would, she knew, take some time.

It didn't take as long as she'd expected. Within fifteen minutes Harper had finished his sweep. Still looking around as if making sure he hadn't missed anything, he took off the white uniform jacket he'd been given and sat down on the edge of the bed.

But he didn't lie down. Instead, he rolled up his shirtsleeves past his elbows, exposing his forearms. Holding his left arm close to his eyes, he placed the fingernails of his right hand against the inside of his left wrist.

For a moment nothing happened. Harper held the pose, his fingertips making small movements against the skin as if he were scratching some delicate itch.

And then, to Taneem's horrified astonishment, he peeled the skin straight back off his arm.

Taneem gasped, her tail twitching violently in reaction. The tip hit the inside of the duct, giving off a muffled metallic clang.

Harper's head jerked up, his right hand still gripping the flap of skin. His eyes darted around the room, his face suddenly grim and deadly.

Taneem froze, afraid to breathe. For a long minute Harper continued his visual sweep. Then, to her relief, he lowered his eyes again to his forearm. Resettling his grip on the flap of skin, he continued pulling it away from his arm.

And now Taneem saw what she should have spotted in the first place. He wasn't pulling off his own real skin but merely a flap of something that looked like skin.

And as the flap came free, she could see several small, flat objects embedded in the flap's underside.

Neverlin had warned Frost to search Harper carefully. It looked like Frost hadn't been careful enough.

The strip of false skin extended nearly the entire way from Harper's wrist to his elbow. He finished pulling it off and laid it beside him on the bed, then spent a minute vigorously rubbing the real skin that had been covered by the patch. Switching arms, he removed another strip of skin from his right forearm and laid it beside the first.

Again, he took a moment to rub at the arm where the strip had been. Then, removing a slender item about as long as one of Taneem's claws from the first strip, he stood up.

And headed directly toward the room's air grille.

Taneem was back up into a crouch in an instant, easing her way backward down the duct as quickly as she dared. Before she had made it to the next corner she could hear the faint sounds as Harper began unfastening the screws holding the grille in place.

She made it to the corner and backed around it, not stopping until she was completely out of sight of Harper's room. "Alison!" she whispered urgently.

"What is it?"

"I think he heard me," Taneem said, feeling scared and thoroughly miserable. It was like her first time in the air ducts all over again. "I'm sorry—I made some noise when he started peeling off his skin, and now he's opening the grille—"

"Slow down; slow down," Alison cut her off. "What do you mean, he peeled off his skin?"

"On his arms," Taneem said. "Only it wasn't real skin. Only I didn't know that, and I gasped, and now I think he's coming in after me."

"Okay, just relax," Alison soothed her. "First of all, he's way too big to get anything but his head into the duct. Can he see you where you are right now?"

"No," Taneem said, feeling her heart slowing down a little. Looking down at her paws, she saw that the extra blood from her panicked reaction had turned her gray scales black. "No, I'm around a corner."

"Good," Alison said. "Now tell me: did he jump up and head for the grille as soon as you made your noise?"

From the direction of Harper's room came the faint sound of the grille being pulled free of the duct. "No, he finished pulling off the skin first," Taneem said, lowering her voice a little more. "Then he took out something from the inside of one of the pieces and came over to the grille."

"Then I think you're okay," Alison said. "Just hang there a minute and listen."

Taneem nodded, feeling herself calming down. If Alison wasn't worried, she probably shouldn't be, either. The scales on her paws, she noticed, were starting to go back to their usual gray.

For a moment there was silence. In her mind's eye Taneem saw Harper with his head sticking into the opening, looking both ways down the duct.

She flicked her tongue out a few times, tasting the mixture of human and unidentified scents flowing through the ducts. Some Earth animals, she'd read in the Essenay's encyclopedia, could smell or otherwise sense fear and anger. Distantly, she wondered if a properly experienced K'da could do the same.

And then, she heard the sound of the grille being put back in place. Another minute of scratching as the bolts were replaced, and then all was silent again.

She waited another minute, just to make sure. "Alison?" she whispered. "I think he's done."

"He didn't spot you?"

"No."

"Good," Alison said. "Okay. I want you to look back around the corner—carefully—and tell me what you see."

Taneem frowned. What could there possibly be to see besides an empty duct?

But Alison knew about these things. She must have her reasons. Moving forward, Taneem eased her head back around the corner.

The grille, as she'd guessed, was indeed back in place.

But the duct was no longer empty.

"There's something there," she said, frowning even harder. Was that what she thought it was? "I think—Alison, he's put the two strips of skin into the duct."

"That's what I thought he was up to," Alison said, sounding grimly pleased with herself. "He got the stuff in past Frost okay, but didn't want to risk getting caught with it on him. Literally on him, in this case."

"What is it?" Taneem asked, eyeing the strips with a mixture of fascination and distaste.

"Let's find out," Alison said. "Why don't you scoot over there and grab them?"

Taneem felt her whole body go rigid. "What?"

"Keep your voice down," Alison admonished. "What's the big deal? You sneak over, you pick up the goodies, and you get out. Couldn't be simpler."

"But what if he sees me?"

"He won't if you're careful," Alison said. "Come on, Taneem. If this is something he doesn't want Frost and Neverlin knowing about, we definitely want to take a look."

Taneem curled her tail into a grimace. "All right," she said with a sigh. "I'll try."

She edged around the corner and down the duct. There was no reaction that she could sense. Her heart pounding again, she eased up to the grille and peered through it.

Harper was lying on his back on the bed, one arm across his chest, the other resting across his eyes. Without taking her own eyes off him, she scooped up the two flaps of skin and retreated hastily back down the duct. "I've got them," she whispered to Alison.

"Great," Alison said. "Find a safe place to talk, and let's check them out."

Having already had one narrow escape, Taneem was in no mood to try for another. She therefore made her way to the very back of the ship, to the very end of the air duct system, where she could taste no humans or Brummgas nearby.

Finding a spot midway between the air-pumping room and a darkened machine shop, she laid her new prizes out in front of her. "All right, I'm ready," she said.

"Good," Alison said. "Describe the items for me."

Taneem leaned close, studying the flaps of skin with the light from her own glowing silver eyes. "First are two small, flat pieces of plastic. The end of one of them has a funny sort of shape, like a sort of squished X."

"Does it look like it would snap open into a square shape if you opened it up?"

Taneem frowned. Then she saw what Alison meant. "Yes, it does," she said. "The other piece of plastic is just flat."

"Screwdrivers," Alison identified them. "Probably started out as a set of three, only Harper used the crosshead one on the grille. What else?"

"Two small half cylinders that look like they fit together to make a complete tube," Taneem said. "There's another tube, a solid one, that looks like it would fit inside the other one."

"Anything there that looks like needles?"

"I don't see—oh yes, there they are," Taneem corrected herself. "They're on the other flap. There are five of them."

"Knockout needles, with either a hypo or a spring-load launcher to deliver the goods," Alison said. "Harper certainly came ready for trouble. What else?"

"Two wide, flat, round containers," Taneem said. "Also a flat tube sort of like the one you have for your toothpaste."

"Any writing on either of them?"

Taneem looked closer. "The tube says 'akid well putty.' "

"Acid well putty? A-c-i-d?"

"Yes," Taneem said. "Acid well putty. The round containers say . . . they just say 'keyhole.' "

"Beautiful," Alison murmured. "Thank you, Mr. Harper. Grab everything and bring it back here. We're in."

"I don't understand," Taneem said as she tucked the strips of skin under her forelegs and headed down the duct toward Alison's lifepod. "How can you put a keyhole inside a container?"

"This isn't a normal keyhole," Alison explained. "It's an acid-based paste that's supposed to be able to eat through any normal door material. You're supposed to set it over the lock where it'll either expose the mechanism so you can get at it or else eat away the bolt itself. Hence, keyhole."

Taneem winced. "It sounds dangerous."

"It is," Alison confirmed. "It can eat human flesh even faster than it eats doors. But if you know what you're doing it can get you out of a tight jam."

"I thought you could get out of the lifepod any time you wanted," Taneem said, frowning. "Or did we take it because we don't want Harper getting out of his stateroom?"

"Actually, right now we don't really care what Harper does or doesn't do," Alison said. "What we want is a way to get you back in here with me."

Abruptly, Taneem understood. "We can use the acid against the duct wall!"

"You got it," Alison said. "You saw how relatively thin the metal was where you popped into the duct. That's because the lifepod acts as that part of the ship's outer hull. We shouldn't have any problem making a hole big enough for me to stick a couple of fingers through."

She was right. Following Alison's directions, Taneem first squeezed out a semicircle of the putty beneath the spot where the acid was to go. Then she half-turned the acid container's seal and nestled it against the wall with the putty holding it in place.

The smell, once the acid started working, was incredibly strong. Midway through the operation Taneem had to retreat down the duct and wait near one of the grilles.

By the time Alison called her back, five minutes later, it was finished. The acid had eaten away the metal of the duct, leaving a small hole between it and the lifepod. Again at Alison's instruction, Taneem folded the flaps of skin and their remaining contents and put them gingerly into her mouth. Alison stretched two fingers through the freshly made hole, and Taneem slithered up her arm and back onto her body.

Taneem had barely made it onto Alison's skin when she leaped out of the girl's shirt collar. In the same motion, she spat the two folds of flesh onto the deck. "Ackleh!" she gasped, trying to drive the taste from her mouth.

"That good, huh?" Alison said, stepping around her and retrieving the flaps.

"No, that bad," Taneem said, wiping her tongue back and forth across the inside of her teeth. "It tastes like real flesh."

"It is," Alison said. Her voice was calm enough, but Taneem noticed she was taking care to touch the flaps only with her fingertips. "You take a sample of someone's skin, grow the right-sized strip in a lab, then paste it back over his own arm or leg or whatever."

Taneem shuddered. "Why would anyone do that?"

"For exactly the reason Harper did it: so you can sneak in your goodies without anyone spotting them." She began prying out the remaining items, again touching the skin as little as she could. "A good scanner will pick up any synthetic you try to use. This way, they can even pull a DNA sample from the fake skin and it'll match up with any other samples they take."

"It's still disgusting," Taneem said. "Is this a common practice?"

"It's a very uncommon practice," Alison said. She removed the last item and began folding the empty skin strips together. "Harper obviously has access to some very sophisticated and expensive equipment."

Taneem thought about that as Alison took the roll of skin to the lifepod's disposal container and pushed it through the opening. "But why would the Patri Chookoock go to so much trouble?" she asked.

"I don't know," Alison said, stepping to the sink and washing her hands. "But your question assumes Harper is genuinely working for him."

"You don't think he is?"

Alison shrugged. "I find it hard to believe one of Braxton's top bodyguards would turn traitor as easily as Harper makes it sound," she said. "And this"—she gestured to the collection of items she'd taken from the fake skin—"looks a lot more like Braxton's budget than the Patri's."

"Do you think Braxton sent Harper to find Neverlin?"

"That's certainly the logical assumption," Alison agreed.

Taneem pricked up her ears. There had been something odd about the way Alison had said that. "Are there other possibilities?" she asked.

Alison smiled. But it was a slightly brittle smile. "There are always other possibilities," she said. "But there's no point in trying to dig too deeply into this. Don't forget, we don't even know for sure that Harper's not exactly who he claims to be. His little bag of tricks could be some game the Patri's pulling on his allies."

"Because they're only allies of convenience," Taneem murmured.

"Exactly," Alison said.

"What about us?"

Alison frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Are we only allies of convenience?" Taneem asked, her eyes steady on the girl.

Alison seemed to brace herself. "We're genuine allies, Taneem," she said, her voice low and earnest. "More than that, I hope that we're friends."

"I hope that, too, Alison," Taneem said. "Because I trust you."

Alison laid her hand on the K'da's head. "I trust you, too, Taneem," she said. "We have to, you know. Because we're all we've got."

"I know," Taneem said softly.

"And we're going to get through this," Alison continued. "Come on; let's get something to eat."

She turned toward the supply cabinet. "And after that," she added over her shoulder, "you can tell me your impressions of Harper, Neverlin, and Frost."

"And the Valahgua?"

"Yes," Alison said grimly. "Especially the Valahgua."