Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle

4

"THE LOOP is a fake, Hop," Jazz said, with feeling.

Baak chuckled. "Should we enlarge the image for you? Show you the fingerprints? It's not fake. Jason Worthing is up to his ears in a plot to help someone — this mysterious person who controls the Cabinet — take over somec, and with it the government, not in the subtle way he now controls it, but openly, overtly, taking the reins of power himself. And I don't think I'm the only one who objects to someone playing around with my somec. I like the thought of being immortal. So does everybody else."

Jason said again, now sounding more tired. "The loop is a fraud."

Hop shook his head. "You can't fake a loop, Jazz. I know you. And that was you."

"You know me, but you don't know what that loop means," Jazz insisted.

Baak swung himself off the bed again, where he had reclined during the playback of the loop, and walked over to Jason. "Actually, Jazz, Arran's little cup didn't contain enough to kill you. Remember, the ritual she offered you required only a little sip. It would have put you to sleep long enough for us to get you here, where I can find out from you the one thing that nobody knows right now."

"I don't know anything that you don't know," Jason said wearily.

"You know one thing, Jazz. You know who is supposed to walk out when you hold out your arm in that loop. You know who our enemy is."

Jason shook his head.

"Don't worry, Jason. We don't expect you to volunteer the information. When the probe gets through with you, you'll have so little mind left that you won't even notice when we kill you." Baak waved to the guards and they pulled Jason out of the room.

Before the door slid closed behind them, though, Jason called out, "Don't believe it, Hop!" Then silence.

Farl Baak looked at Hop with raised eyebrows. "He must value your opinion very highly, Mr. Noyock, to want so badly for you to deny the evidence of your own eyes."

"Maybe," Hop said.

"Now we have a problem, Hop. What to do with you. You're a witness, unfortunately, and there could be serious legal repercussions to what happened today. Shimon Rapth and I have a lot left to accomplish, even after we find out from your ex–client who our enemy is."

"My enemy, too," Hop said.

"I'm glad you feel that way. Unfortunately, Hop, there's always the risk that you might suddenly feel a rush of loyalty to the bastard whom you've served so well during the last few centuries, and we can't afford to have you wandering around, able to tell people what you know. You understand?"

"I'd rather you didn't kill me," Hop said, amazed to discover that he could say that calmly. Baak laughed.

"Kill you! Of course not. You'll just be my guest here for a few days. We aren't animals, Hop. At least we try not to be. Arran will show you to your room. Unfortunately, we'll have to lock the door behind you, but that can't be helped. We happen to know that you're a wily old devil, and there's a strong risk of you sneaking out if we don't bar the door." Baak laughed again, but it was a friendly laugh, the kind of laugh that a good man laughs when he's been worried for days, but now knows that things are going to work out well for him. Hop found himself feeling almost at ease.

Arran led the way down a short hall to another room. It was almost as plush as Farl Baak's own. The guard waited outside as Arran went in with him. She touched his arm as he stood surveying his surroundings.

"Hop, I'm sorry I almost killed you there in the hiding place. I was fighting for my life."

"All in a day's work," Hop said. "You aren't the first."

"What I'm saying, Hop, is that we were both forced into doing things we usually wouldn't do. By Worthing. I don't think we have to hate each other."

"Are you looping this?" Hop asked.

"No," she said, looking a little angry.

"Well, I am," he said, and smiled. "I have an exclusive. I'll give it to you for your birthday."

She smiled back. "I was never born. Friends?"

Noyock shook his head. "Let's just say, temporarily not trying to kill each other. Let me decide what to believe about Jazz."

She looked ceilingward, but turned to leave. As she did, it occurred to Noyock that these people were basically decent. But, he reminded himself, they were also dangerous. (Never trust a woman who knows where to kick, my father always told me.)

"Can I ask you a question," he said.

She turned and faced him, and waited.

"What is a probe? What will it do to him?"

She shook her head. "It's fairly new and completely illegal and I don't know much about it. A scientist who is with us invented it."

"Who is us?"

"Just a few of us who believe that somec should be shared fairly. According to law. And this may not sound very plausible, coming from me, but we think it should be given only by merit. Not for money at all."

"Damned stupid idea," Noyock said. "I'd be dead now if that were the system when I came up out of the slime."

"Well, there are some advantages to the system now, that's true. But the main thing is that we've got to stop this man, whoever he is, from getting control of the Sleephouse. He'd have us all, then."

"So it does boil down to self–preservation, in the end."

"Who said it didn't?" she retorted. "But you may be surprised to learn that sometimes even the rich and famous have consciences."

"Jazz Worthing has a conscience, too," Hop mused.

She laughed at him.

"I know him," Hop said. "You don't. Something doesn't fit in all this."

"Well, believe what you want, Hop. All I know about Jazz Worthing is that he's sadistic and a traitor to humanity. Sorry if you like him, but when the probe finds out who the enemy is —"

"Jason won't tell it. He can take more pain than —"

"It isn't pain —"

"He's immune to all the drugs — they do that the week they enter the Service —"

"It's not drugs, either. The inventor told me that it's like bright, dazzling lights that suddenly come and go from many directions. Only instead of lights, it's brain waves, like the recorders in the sleephouse. It's like pouring different mindsets into your brain, distracting you, driving you crazy, breaking down all will to resist. You tell anything. You respond to anything. It's just too many surprises inside your own head."

"And does anybody recover?"

"We're not altogether sure. We've only used it a few times, and nobody has, if they stayed under for very long. If Jazz Worthing resists for very long at all, then he'll lose his mind." She patted Noyock's arm. "Think of it this way. Your friend won't even notice when he's killed."

"Thanks a lot."

"Sorry, old man." It didn't even sound like an obscenity when she said it. She left, and the door was locked behind her.

Hop went to the bed and lay down. The probe worked by surprise. It really would have a tough go with Jason Worthing, then — Hop couldn't remember ever seeing Jazz surprised at all. It was the same in all the loops — whatever the enemy did, Jazz always seemed to know just a hair in advance. He always spotted the ambush at the last moment. It made for great loops.

Even today. Even last night. Jazz had known the drink was drugged. He even seemed to know without asking —

Hop got up and turned on the loop recorder's playback. It was an excellent model, and the figures were almost a quarter size — excellent for a portable. It started with the duel. Hop jumped it forward. The crowd, panicking. Jazz picking up Arran. Knocking Kapock aside. Hop stopping to pound Kapock into the ground, then following Jazz to the exit.

Noyock watched closely, then. He tried to see when Jazz heard the answer from Arran about where the hiding place was. He couldn't find it.

Breaking down the door. The library, and Jazz throwing Arran down and breaking her rib. Then. It had to be right then, and Hop took the action at tenth–speed, volume on full, close–up on the two heads, now larger than life–size. Jason, incredibly slowly, saying "Where's the door?" Hop moved around, stared at Arran's lips.

They did not move. She was nearly unconscious. She did not make a sound at all.

He shifted back to normal size when the holo showed Jazz walking away, straight to the two books. The door opened as Jazz pulled on something.

Arran hadn't told him a thing. Hop sat, numbed, as the loop went on; turned down the volume when it became annoying; flipped off the machine when it finally stopped. Jazz knew things that hadn't been told to him. The only place he could have found out about that door was from Arran's mind.

(Be reasonable. If Jazz really is a traitor, he'd have sources of information.)

But he knew other things. The poison in the glass. How could he have learned about that forty years ago, before he left? And Hop knew for a fact that Jazz found out nothing after he came back to the planet. Unless he found it out in the ship before he disembarked. He might have...

Jazz as a traitor or Jazz as a Swipe. If I can choose between them, Hop told himself, I'd rather he were a traitor.

Or would I? Hop remembered all his association with Jazz, from the beginning. The young starpilot, eager, enthusiastic, itching for battle. That couldn't have been an act. And what change had there been since then? A gradual maturing. There was no time that Jazz seemed to show any change at all. When did he turn traitor? When did he start to plot? Noyock couldn't believe it.

But Jason Worthing a Swipe? That was even harder to believe. But the glass, the door, the inside information he seemed to pluck from midair. Even the battle with Kapock, seeming to know every motion before he made it.

And Jazz had even told him he was a Swipe. Noyock had assumed he was joking. Wasn't he?

Back and forth, back and forth, like a tennis duel, Noyock thought, and eventually he slept.

He awakened to the sound of the door opening. His first thought: they've come for me. He stiffened on the bed, prepared to struggle, though he didn't know what he could hope to accomplish.

But the hands that touched him were gentle. Insistent, but gentle. And the voice saying, "Hop, wake up," was Arran's.

"Is it morning already?" he asked.

"Shut up. Come with me, fast. Don't talk."

She sounded frightened out of her wits. Hop got up and followed her as she led him out into the hall and through a large meeting–room. She stopped only long enough to say, in a barely audible whisper, "Do you know how to kill an armed man?"

"Sometimes," Hop answered, wondering if he still remembered how. It was one thing to take Fritz Kapock from behind and by surprise — quite another to face a man who was pointing a cockle at you.

"Now's the time," she said. She pushed a button and a door slid open. A guard was standing on the other side, already turning to see why the door behind him was opening. There was a laser in his hand. Hop didn't stop to wonder why Arran was having him kill one of the men on her side. He just let the reflexes from his boyhood take over.

He finished with the guard by breaking his neck. In retrospect, Hop had the sickening knowledge that he had won only by a hair. Oh well, he thought. Better close than not at all. Still, when this was over, he'd have to lose weight. Get back in shape. This could kill him.

"Come here!" Arran hissed at him, and he came.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"There's no time." He followed her down the corridor. They went into a bathroom and closed and locked the door.

"Who's chasing you?" Hop asked.

"We only have a couple of seconds," she said. "In the shower, the ceiling light. Can you reach it?"

He could reach it. She told him to push it up. It gave fairly easily, then swung back, out of the way. Arran immediately stepped into the shower and reached for the opening. Hop helped her up. When she was through the trap, she hissed down at him, "Come on up, quickly, they'll be here any minute, and I don't know how many people know about this way."

But Hop didn't go into the trap door. Instead he stepped to the bathroom door and unlocked it.

"Hop, don't!" she hissed, frightened. But he didn't leave. He just left the door unlocked and climbed back into the shower and, with a great deal of difficulty hoisted himself up into the opening in the ceiling. Once there, it was hard to find a way to get his legs up through the opening. He could hear shouting down the corridor the way they had come. Arran heard it, too, and started pulling and tugging at him. "You're not helping one damn little bit," Hop said impatiently, and she left him alone as he finally got his weight up far enough to let him turn around and pull his legs up.

The moment he was clear, sweating and panting from the exertion, Arran pushed down the trap. Now an innocent–looking lighting fixture hung over the shower again.

"Why did you unlock the door!" she whispered angrily.

"Because a bathroom door locked from the inside with nobody there is an advertisement that there's another way out."

Worklights here and there provided a dim light, and soon they could both see — a little. The crawlspace they were in was only a meter and a half high — neither of them could stand up. Structural beams were hard to tell from air conduits, wiring frames, and exhaust shafts. Hop leaned over from the catwalk they were sitting on and pushing on a ceiling tile. It gave easily.

"We can only walk on beams and catwalks," he said.

"Wonderful. Do you know your way around in here?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Not right here, anyway. Capitol isn't the same anywhere. Nobody planned the remodeling over the last few thousand years. Good luck to us. Now will you tell me who the hell we're running from?"

She nodded. But Hop noticed that she was breathing too heavily, and her hands were trembling. She didn't say anything.

"What's wrong?"

She just shook her head and started to cry. Hop had seen her cry several times before, in pain, for effect, a play for sympathy. But this looked like real honest–to–goodness little–girl tears. Nothing controlled. She wasn't even beautiful or seductive as she cried. Her fans would be shocked. Hop reached over and touched her arm. A little human contact, he decided, might help. It didn't. She recoiled, turned away from him.

"Go ahead and cry, then," he said. "Just do it quietly."

"I am, dammit," she said. "Farl is dead."

And that explained it, at least well enough for Hop, well enough for right now. Farl Baak was the one relationship that Arran Handully had never looped; therefore it wasn't for sale to the public; therefore it must be real. And now he was dead, and her grief was also real.

"I'm sorry," Hop said.

She nodded, acknowledging his sympathy, and began to get control of herself. "Sorry," she finally said. "Sometimes things actually happen that aren't in the day's scenario,"

"Yeah. I'll spill a few tears for you sometime and we'll be even."

"Don't hurry," she said, and managed a faint smile. "From now on I promise to cope. I don't know where to go now, you know. I knew how to get here, but from here I have no idea."

"Who killed him?"

"A man, just one of the guards. I didn't know him. I went to watch the — questioning. With the probe. I couldn't believe it, Hop. Jazz Worthing lasted an hour and a half. No one has lasted fifteen minutes. An hour and a half. It was terrible. Like waiting for a deal to close in the other room, you know at first that it'll be simple, but when it takes longer, and longer, and longer, you begin to think that it's gone sour, that it'll never happen."

"But he finally broke?" Hop asked, not sure whether he was glad that Jazz had held out so long (the bastard traitor) or sick that he had suffered so much (I like him anyway, dammit).

"Yes. I was near the door. That's why I'm alive. The moment he named the man, the cockles went off, just like that. Farl didn't have a chance. Dead on the spot. A few others, too. As if it had been planned."

"But who was it? Who did Jazz name?"

"Didn't I tell you? Shimon Rapth."

Hop didn't know him, but remembered —"Hey, wasn't he the guy who was helping Baak figure all this stuff out?"

She nodded, and a flash of hatred crossed her face. "Looks like he was just trying to find out who his opposition would be. The guards were all his men, of course. They'll be rounding up the whole group, there are at least a hundred of us, maybe more —"

"You mean Jazz Worthing was working for this Shimon Rapth?"

"Looks like it, doesn't it?"

"But — that's impossible, I never even heard of him before. And why would he let them put Jazz through the probe, drive him insane like that —"

She shrugged. "Get rid of a possible future competitor, maybe. I don't know. I just ran."

"Why'd you come to me?"

"Farl was dead. I didn't trust anybody else in the group. I could have come here alone, I guess."

"I'm glad you didn't," Hop said. And then he got up — as far as he could, since the floor of the room above kept him from standing straight. He took Arran's hand. "Hang on. Let's not get separated in the dark. But if I suddenly fall down a hole, let go."

"Where are we going?"

"I told you, I don't know this area. I was born and raised — if you can call it raising — in the bottom levels of the stinkingest borough of Orem district, and we'd go into the crawlspace all the time. The only way we could stay out of the reach of the constables and Mother's Little Boys."

"Then there might be criminals here?"

"In this district?" Hop chuckled as they walked gingerly along the catwalk. "In this district all we'll meet is dust. Every district is absolutely sealed off from every other. Including the crawlspace."

"Oh," she said. They came to a ladder. Hop leaned on it, looked up. He could see light above — dim, but light.

"Up," he said. "You first."

She started to climb. When they got to the next level up, she stopped.

"What're you stopping for?" he asked.

"Don't we get off here?"

"No, of course not. Do you think we'd ditch them by just changing floors? If they're serious about rounding up everybody from your little group, they'll seal off this whole district. Check anybody coming and going, and spot you the first time you use your credit card. We've got to get out of this district."

"But you said they were all sealed off —"

"Just keep climbing. There's a way out, and it's up. This ladder's part of the exhaust system, and the exhaust system leads to the surface."

"And what then?"

"Maybe we'll think of something on the way."

And so they climbed. Following the exhaust vents meant hours of squeezing through narrow spaces, climbing ladders to dizzying heights before the great vents leveled off again, bellying through inches of dust in foot–high crawlspace. They were filthy and exhausted a few minutes after they started. They stopped three times to rest. Once they stayed long enough to sleep. And then they came to a place where huge steel girders stretched above them, and the vents plunged suddenly upward to a heavily girdered metal ceiling. For the first time, except on the ladders, they could stand up straight.

Arran looked around. The light was still dim, but it was obvious the space around them was huge — much larger than any hall they had ever been in, and interrupted only by the rising vents and the huge steel shafts that apparently supported the roof.

"It looks very strong," Arran said.

"You should see it where the ships cradle. Makes this look like foil."

"What's outside?"

"We'll soon see," Hop said. "Better lie down and rest again. The next part's going to be hard."

"As if it had been easy up to now," Arran said, lying down willingly enough. They lay on a large vent, and the rush of air pouring through it made the surface vibrate. "I heard," Arran said, after a while, "that you can't breathe the air out there."

"A myth," said Hop. "You can breathe it. You just can't breathe it for very long."

"What'll we do?"

"We'll go along here until we find the end of the district. The sealed–off wall. Then we'll go up the nearest vent and try to get across to a vent on the other side of the barrier. The air isn't really dangerous. The real danger is the sun."

Of course Arran knew what the sun was. It was the nearest star, and the source of all of Capitol's energy. She had never seen it. "Why is the sun dangerous?" she asked.

"You'll see," he said. "I can't describe it — just don't look at it! And whatever you do, don't let go of my hand. If the sun isn't up we're coming right back. At night we'd probably freeze to death in the winds and get lost to boot. So we'll wait for sunlight"

Silence for a few moments, and then Arran laughed softly. "Funny. I never think of Capitol as having winds. Just drafts. Just little breezes from the vents. Capitol is a planet after all."

"The surface is the worst desert you'll ever find, though. Any interference with our food supply or energy sources, and it'd be a desert down below, too. Sleep."

They both slept. When Hop woke, Arran wasn't beside him. He got up quickly, looked into the dimly–lighted distance for her. She wasn't too far away — sitting at the edge of the huge exhaust duct they had slept on, off toward the ladder they had climbed to reach it. Hop walked toward her. His steps were muffled by dust and the distance of the walls — no echoes here. But she heard him a few steps off, and turned to look at him. Wordlessly she waited until he came to the edge and sat down beside her.

"A long way down," he said. She nodded. "Ever been this close to the surface?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I woke just now without a toothbrush," she said. "I couldn't bathe. I couldn't go to the wardrobe and choose what I would wear for the day. Nobody's coming to call."

"You've got problems," Hop said. "I've already missed about fifteen appointments, and Jazz's latest tape isn't ready for distribution. It's costing me about a thousand a minute just to sit here."

"What will we do, even when we get to another district?"

"You're asking me?"

"We can't use our credit cards. They'd track us down in a moment."

Hop shrugged. "Maybe they aren't looking for me. Maybe I can use mine."

"And maybe not."

Suddenly there was an abrupt change of pitch in the hum of the air passing under them. "What was that?" asked Arran.

"Maybe eight thousand people flushed their toilets all at once in this district. Maybe fifteen thousand people turned down their thermostats. Maybe there's a fire."

"I wonder what Capitol looked like before," Arran mused.

"That's a strange thing to wonder."

"Is it? But there must have been a time before men came here. What did the first colonists see?"

Hop laughed. "A virgin world, ready for raping."

"Or perhaps a home."

"What is this, a lifeloop? Nobody talks about home in real life," Hop said.

"Nobody talks about home in lifeloops, Hop," she said, a little annoyed. "Nobody has used the word in thousands of years. But we keep it in the language. Why?"

Hop shrugged. "Everybody says, ‘I'm going home'."

"But nobody says, This is my home. Come in.' We live in flats. We walk through corridors. We travel in tubes. What would it be like to live out under the sky?"

"I hear there are bugs."

"A huge park."

"Well," Hop said, "that's your solution. Go to a colony. Get on a colony ship, and your troubles are over."

Arran turned to him, horrified. "And go off somec? Are you crazy? I'd rather die."

She got up and walked back toward where they had slept, and Hop joined her. They looked around at the two patches where the dust had been largely cleared away by their sleep. "Nobody's ever going to believe this," Hop said. "Here I was, alone with Arran Handully for hours on end. We slept together, and not only did I not try to make love, lady, I didn't even have my loop recorder going."

"Thank God."

"Let's go."

They went to the opposite end of the duct, where it turned a ninety–degree angle and shot upward to the distant ceiling. A thin, spidery ladder crept up the shaft. They both stood and looked upward for a few moments, and then Arran said, "Me first?"

"Yeah. Try not to fall."

"Just don't tickle my feet."

And they began to climb. Their muscles were still cold from sleep; at first they climbed awkwardly, slowly, carefully. After a short while, though, they settled into a rather quick rhythm, hand–foot–hand–foot, the motion carrying them endlessly upward. Once Arran spoke, saying, "How many kilometers to go?" The speech broke her rhythm, and she missed a step, and for a mad moment she felt herself fall. But her hands never left the side shafts of the ladder, and her foot caught on the next rung down. From then on neither of them spoke.

At last the rhythm slowed down again. There are only so many rungs of a ladder that untrained, weary bodies can climb. "Stop," Hop said. Arran took a few more steps and came to a halt.

"Tired?" Hop asked.

"Are you?"

"I think maybe yes;"

"Can we rest?"

"Sure. Just lean back and doze off."

"Laugh laugh. I'm too tired to be amused."

"Keep on going."

It was not long after that, though, that they reached their destination. It was a small platform built onto the side of the duct. The ladder kept going up, but Hop told Arran to climb up only a little way and stop. She did, and Hop stepped onto the ledge. There was only one handhold, beside a door that was too short to use comfortably. It was latched shut, and a wheel had closed the seal.

Arran climbed back down until she was even with the ledge. "How do we know we can get out of the vent?"

"We don't. But I'm betting that Capitol's surface arrangement is the same everywhere. And even though I was raised on the other side of the world, I'm betting that I can get through the screens the way I used to."

"And what if there isn't a vent down to the other district?"

"They channel all the exhaust vents from the same prefecture into the same general area, so that other areas can be kept relatively clear of smoke. I say relatively, of course, because it gets pretty smoky. Now on the other side of the door the air is pure poison. All that comes out here is the absolute crap that the filters couldn't clean and recirculate. Poison means don't breathe."

"How long?"

"Till you get out of the duct. So take a good big breath before you go in here. And don't look down in the shaft. If you think it's bad here in the dim worklights, you ought to see how it looks with all the fires of hell sending smoke up a sunlit shift."

"What if the sun isn't up?"

"Then we go back down and wait."

Arran cursed. "I hope the sun is up," she said.

"All right, count to ten after I go through. Then hold your breath and come through. There'll be a ladder on the other side of this door. Stay on the ledge on the other side just long enough to close the door. We don't want to set off any alarms."

"Got it. Now let's hurry." she said.

"Let me have time to psych myself up, all right? Do a chicken middle–aged man a favor." Hop stood and counted to fifty, wondering why the hell he was counting. Then he took hold of the wheel and spun it until the seal was opened. A thin trail of smoke came in around the edges of the door. Hop flipped the two latches. The door slowly swung open, inward, and the smoke jumbled through the opening, falling mysteriously down toward the deep darkness they had climbed from. Through the door, sunlight made the smoke brightly gray, with black wisps here and there. Arran was immediately aware of a revolting stench. She looked at Hop with a disgusted expression, and Hop grinned back, took a deep breath, and swung through. She could hear the faint sound of his feet on the ladder.

Carefully, she stepped onto the ledge, took a deep breath, and then ducked into the smoke and passed through the door. She reached over and swung the door shut fastening only one latch (good enough for what we need, she decided) and then began to climb. She could hardly keep her eyes open — the smoke stung terribly, and tears flowed. I'm not even acting, she said in her mind. Tears without acting; pain without pretense. What an education in theater I've been getting these last few days.

(I want to breathe, she felt her lungs demanding air.)

She scrambled on up the ladder, and suddenly bumped into something with her head. It was Noyock, and she wondered what the hell he had stopped for. But a moment later, she heard a clanking sound, and Noyock was up and out of the way.

As she came out, almost totally blind from the smoke, she felt Noyock's hands on her shoulder, helping guide her. A moment later she was standing on the surface.

"Breathe now, but stay low," Hop ordered, and Arran breathed, then coughed. They were not in the thick smoke of the vent, but the atmosphere itself was thick as shower fog, and smelled hideous. She could open her eyes a little more now, however, and she watched as Hop swung the screen back down and latched it.

"Hold my hand," Hop said, taking her and starting to pull her along. "And stay low."

She noticed her feet were hot. "My feet are hot," she said.

"Be glad you're wearing shoes," Hop answered.

There was a constant breeze coming from the right. Abruptly the breeze turned into a tremendous gust that for a moment lifted them both off their feet. Hop landed standing; Arran did not. She skidded along the surface of the metal, knees and one hand holding her up, and Noyock hung onto the other hand and tried to keep her from sliding. The gust abated as quickly as it had come, and Noyock yanked Arran to her feet. She was gasping from the heat of the metal on her hand and knees, the scraping the metal seams had given her.

Just behind the gust, the air cleared noticeably. Suddenly the bright gray sky turned white, and the metal dazzled in sunlight. It completely blinded Arran. She closed her eyes, and tried to keep her balance as Noyock dragged her along. The heat of the sun on her head was intense; and then, just as quickly as the air had cleared, the smoke closed over them again, and Arran could open her eyes. She touched her hand to her hair — it was scalding hot.

And then they were at another exhaust vent, the smoke pouring up darkly. Noyock took Arran's hand and made her hold onto the mesh of the vent. "Hang on and don't put your head in the smoke," he shouted, and just then the wind came up, blowing the smoke mostly away from them, but almost tearing Arran's hand away from the screen. Noyock hung on with one hand, while with the other he fiddled with the latch. Just as the gust died, he tossed the door open.

"Count to ten, take a breath, and follow me!" he shouted, and Arran nodded. Then Noyock disappeared down into the smoke.

I'm too tired, Arran thought. Her feet were burning hot from the metal; her eyes were in agony from the smoke of the atmosphere; her knees and hand hurt terribly; and her side, where the ribs hadn't had a chance to heal properly, ached deeply. Worst of all was the exhaustion, and she wondered why she was trying.

Can't think that way, she told herself, as she swung over the edge and began to climb down the ladder. But as she descended she thought of how restful it would be just to lean back into the smoke, falling out of sight into soft oblivion. She began to speed up her descent, stepping every other rung, her hands only skimming the sideshafts of the ladder.

"Arran!" somebody called from above her. "Arran, you passed me! Come back up!"

Air, she thought. I need air very badly.

"Arran, just five meters up. Climb up."

Have I stopped? I stopped. I must have stopped when he called me.

"Move, before you have to breathe! Move!"

I'm moving, aren't I? Aren't I still climbing?

"Can't you hear me? I've got the door open here! Just a few meters up."

Dammit, I'm climbing. I need air.

"Lift your right foot and put it on the next rung."

Foot. Yes.

"Come on, now the left foot! That's it, keep coming." And slowly Arran climbed up to where a strong hand grabbed her arm, pulled her slowly to the right. She couldn't see in the smoke. Who was it? She brought her face close to him. Noyock. Ah, yes. She opened her mouth to speak to him, took a deep breath, and then began to cough violently. Someone — must be Noyock — pulled her through a door, forced her hands to hold a thin handrail. Couldn't hold the handrail, she decided. Had to cover her mouth as she coughed. Impolite not to cover your mouth when you cough.

Inhale again? Clean. She sighed. Her lungs still stung, and her head ached painfully. She was flat against a metal wall, covering her mouth with her hands. Behind her she could feel Noyock's body, and arms around her on both sides, holding the handrail, keeping her from falling backward. She opened her eyes. They still smarted, but she could see. Beside them, an open door still let smoke pour into the dimly–lighted interior of the space under the ceiling.

"I won't go in there," she said.

"You don't have to. You just came out."

"I did?" Oh, yes, I did. "Am I safe?"

"You are if you'll only take hold of the handrail. I've got to close the door before the smoke alarms go off. Do you have it?"

"Yes."

"Both hands."

"Got it."

Noyock inched away from her and reached through, closed the door, spun the seal, latched the latches.

"How are you feeling?" he asked Arran.

"Really sick. My head aches."

"You breathed in the exhaust duct."

"Did I? Dumb. Dumb, that's all."

"Dead tired, that's all. But we've got to go down before you can rest. All right?"

"I don't want to go anywhere."

"You're going to, though."

And so he helped her to the ladder, and this time they went down virtually together, Noyock's feet only a few rungs below hers, so that his head was at the level of her waist as they slowly descended the ladder.

It took forever.

"Stay awake," he kept telling her.

"Sure," she kept answering. And finally something changed, and he wasn't behind her, and then his hands lifted her off the ladder and laid her gently down on the heating duct.

She woke in near darkness, the air cool and musty, but clean compared to the atmosphere outside. Her head still ached, her knees smarted, and her eyes were dully tired as she opened them. But she was breathing, and felt better. Than what? Than she thought she should.

"Awake?"

"Alive. I didn't worry about anything else."

"Head?"

"Aches. But I can breathe."

"Hungry?"

She hadn't thought of it until he asked. "I could eat a person."

"I'll stand back."

"What are we going to do?"

"Get something to eat. Stay here."

"I'm coming with you," she insisted, trying to get up. But a pain shot through her from her head down her spine and she changed her mind. "I'll keep the home fires burning," she said. After he left, the darkness became overwhelming and she slept again.

"It's morning," a cheerful male voice said, and for a moment Arran was confused, and began speaking in character. "Morning, already? How can it be morning, and we just barely went to bed?" Her voice was seductive. But when she rolled onto her side (enhances cleavage, her manager had always reminded her) she realized she was dressed, and on a hard metal surface; more important, she was stiff and sore, with a headache. But the worst of the pain had dissipated while she slept. Noyock leaned over her, holding a bag of ragaway and another bag, this one cold and filled with —"What?"

"Milk."

"Do they still make that?"

"The only place I could make a pull was in a school lunch room."

She nodded, and he helped her sit up. "It's hard to believe I worked that hard," she said, "and there wasn't even a loop of it."

Hop laughed and looked around as she put her mouth to the nipple on the milkbag and drank a little. He walked away as she ate the ragaway, and didn't return until after she had finished and was lying on her back, looking up into the darkness.

His footsteps were muffled by dust, of course, but she heard him long before he arrived. "How do you feel?" he asked softly.

"I feel like getting the hell out of here," she said.

"Which brings us to the next item of business," Hop said. "I'm pretty good at pulling a living out of Capitol without a credit card — but you get pretty damn hungry that way, and you're competing with a lot of other people."

"Thieves? I never knew there were thieves —"

"At your level? Not many. Thieves can only afford to prey on the poor, Arran. The rich have Mother's Little Boys to protect them. The thieves have to live in the walls in the foulest boroughs. And I learned my trade in childhood — I doubt you'd catch on fast enough to keep from getting caught on one of your first pulls."

Arran smiled wanly. "It didn't occur to me that if I couldn't live honestly, I'd actually have to live dishonestly."

"There's another alternative," Hop said. "You could hook."

"Hook?"

"Whore."

"Oh my. Not even looped, I assume?"

"It pays very badly. And I'm not in love with the idea of being a pimp."

Arran laughed. "Do it on a loop in front of billions of eyes and it's an art. Do it in a dirty little room with no audience and it's a filthy career."

"If it's any consolation, I'd see to it the room was clean."

Arran shook her head. "If it's the only way. But Hop, that's the part of my job I hated worst. Do you realize that in four hundred years the only time I ever made love was to Farl? And he even preferred little boys."

"Well, you know that leaves us with only two other alternatives. One is to turn ourselves in."

"Throw ourselves on the mercy of the court."

"Not renowned for being particularly clement, especially when someone in a position of power has a vested interest in a guilty verdict. The other alternative, Arran, won't sound much better. The colonies."

"Are you joking?"

"Was it funny?"

They sat in silence, Hop making little balls of dust by allowing the last dregs of milk from Arran's milkbag to drip slowly out.

"You can't take any money into the colonies, can you?" Arran asked.

"You can't take somec, either, which is more to the point," Hop said.

"But what would you do when things got boring?"

"Stay awake and be bored," Hop answered. "You actually wouldn't lose any real lifespan, of course. Somec doesn't add to your lifespan. Just stretches it out over a few centuries."

"I know, I know. But it means that only three wakings from now, I'd be dead."

"That is what it means."

They sat for a while longer, and then Arran slowly got up. "I feel very old right now," she said, trying to make stiff muscles respond. "Dance exercises just don't prepare you for climbing kilometers of ladders."

"Have you made up your mind?"

"Yes," she said. "But of course that has no bearing on your decision. You can stay alive as a thief."

"You're going to the colonies, then?"

Arran shrugged, moved away a little. "I really don't have any other choice." She laughed. "I was getting bored with the life of a looper, anyway."

"Then I'll go with you."

"To the colonies registrar?"

"Yes. And then to the colonies. If you don't mind, I'd like to petition to be sent on the same ship with you."

"But why? You may not even be wanted, Hop. The colonies are like suicide."

"Whither thou goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy god, my god."

"What in the world did that mean?"

Hop walked to her, put his arm around her waist, and began leading her in the direction of the nearest ladder down. "My mother was a Christian. That's from the Bible."

"A Christian. How quaint. What world are you from?"

"Here. Capitol."

"A Christian on Capitol! How unusual! And what did it mean?"

"It's from an old story that Mother told us a lot. I got very bored with it. It's about a woman whose sons die and her daughter–in–law still won't leave her. She just figured, I supposed, that like it or not their fates were wrapped up together."

"Do you really think our fates are wrapped up together, Hop?" Arran said, awkwardly, no hint of the famous Arran Handully, Seductress.

"I'm not a fatalist. I want to go where you're going."

"So have a hundred billion other men," she said, and now the actress was in her voice again.

"I always thought you were a disgusting, cheap little tart," Hop said, mildly.

Arran stiffened, and stopped walking until Hop removed his arm. "Thank you," she said icily.

"Watch out for where this duct ends," Hop said, still calm. "It's a long drop."

"I can see perfectly well," Arran said.

"I was right, too, you know," Hop said. "That's all you've been for the last few centuries."

Arran didn't answer. They reached the edge, and Noyock swung easily down to the ladder. Arran followed.

"A pretty damn good cheap little tart," Noyock added, sounding very casual. "Very well worth the price of admission."

"Haven't you said enough?" Arran asked. But Noyock couldn't hear the famous Arran Handully anger. Only an unaccustomed tone. On another woman, it might be considered well–disguised pain.

"Have I?" Noyock said. "We get off the ladder here. It's just a step backward onto this catwalk."

"I can see it."

"I was just trying to tell you," Noyock said, lifting her down from the ladder by her waist, "that I didn't fall in love with what eight billion other men fell in love with."

"What a freethinker you are," Arran said, and they walked one behind the other along the catwalk.

"Watch your head," Noyock said, and they ducked as they passed under a floor. Now they had to walk stooped again, and below them the ceiling of a borough of flats stretched out for kilometers in either direction, until the dim worklights disappeared entirely in the dust and the distance.

"What I fell in love with," Noyock said, "was the kind of woman who could accept reality and decide to go to the colonies, giving up everything, without a qualm."

"I keep my qualms to myself."

"Three days ago I never would have believed someone who told me that Arran Handully would be capable of making the roof passage."

"Neither would I."

"And now it's discovery time, boys and girls," Hop said, imitating the nasal twang that always came on the daily school broadcasts. Arran laughed in spite of herself.

"What a cheerful sound," Hop said. "We get out here."

He knelt on the catwalk, reached over, and pulled up a section of ceiling tile. The room below was empty.

"Don't know how long it'll last," Hop said, "but this room is empty."

He dropped down through the hole, then helped Arran as she lowered her legs through. "Pull the tile back after you." Awkwardly, she did so, and when she was on the floor, Hop jumped up and adjusted it deftly with one swift pass of his hand, so that it set firmly into place.

"How can we get back in there?" she asked.

"You come out of the crawlspace through ceilings. You go into the crawlspace through exhaust ducts. What a sheltered childhood you must have had. Still want to find the nearest Department of Colonization?"

Arran nodded, then looked at her filthy clothing. "We look rather conspicuous."

"Not here," Hop said, and they opened the door and stepped into a corridor. Arran had never seen poverty before — now she had ample opportunity to look. Her clothing was the dirtiest she could see, but there were many shabbier costumes on the grim–faced people who passed. No one looked at them. They just threaded their way through the corridors until they reached a main passage.

Three ramps later, they saw the lighted sign of the Department of Colonization.

"Home sweet home," Hop said.

"Shut up," Arran answered, and they headed for the sign.

"Chatter?" said a newsboy, with a gossip sheet in his hand. "Buy Chatter."

Hop brushed him aside, but Arran stopped and took a paper from his hand.

"Four and a half," said the boy.

"Wait a minute," said Arran, impatiently, using her can't–you–servants–ever–remember–your–place voice. "Look at this, Hop."

Hop looked. The item of interest was headlined: "Cabinet Minister Slain in Lover's Quarrel."

The subhead said, "Shimon Rapth jailed. Says he killed ‘for love of Arran Handully'."

The story went on to tell how Shimon Rapth had confessed to murdering Farl Baak because he had alienated the affections of Arran Handully, who was even now secluded in her huge apartments, refusing all visitors.

"That doesn't look like very accurate reporting, does it?" Hop said.

"Shimon Rapth is arrested," Arran said.

"You certainly have distilled the most interesting aspect, haven't you?" Hop said in his most congratulatory tone. "Now pay the boy for the paper."

"I don't have any money. Just a credit card."

"I take credit cards, ma'am," said the boy.

"Not hers, you don't," Hop said. "Nor mine, either. So here's your paper and good luck selling it to someone else."

The boy's curses followed them on their way to the Department of Colonization.

"If Shimon Rapth isn't the man who was behind the coup —"

"He has to be," Arran answered, disturbed. "The probe. Under the probe, Jazz Worthing said —"

"Jazz Worthing is a man of many gifts. Ignore what he said under the probe. If Shimon Rapth wasn't the man you were out to stop, then who is?"

"Does it matter?" Arran asked.

"A little bit. It might be a friend of ours. It especially matters because whoever it was, he won."

"We're here." They went into the reception room. They ignored the advertising and headed straight for the desk.

"Would you like to register for a colony?" asked the beaming receptionist.

"We would. An agricultural planet."

"A bit of the farming blood, eh?" she asked, cheerfully. "We have just the thing, a little planet called Humboldt."

"Put away Humboldt, lady, and show us something that didn't have to be terraformed."

A bit miffed, the receptionist pulled out another folder. "Before we go any further, sir and madam,

I will have to have your credit cards in order to get your aptitudes from the computer. You may not be suited to agricultural work at all."

They gave her their credit cards, which she slid into the terminal on her desk. Then they discussed the merits of Cecily, a new colony 112 lightyears away. They were still discussing it when a dozen of Mother's Little Boys came in from all the entrances to the reception area and put them under arrest.

"What for?" Hop demanded.

"Preventive detention," said the apparent leader of the faceless security men. Hop grimaced at Arran. "That means it's political. Confess to everything. It saves time."

She looked at him with frightened eyes. "Can they do this?"

"Can you stop them?" Hop asked, and then smiled at her, trying to give her confidence. As if he felt any himself. They were led away — but not out into the corridors. Instead they were taken into a door that said, "Employees Only," and Mother's Little Boys took them deeper into the Department of Colonization.