Ilkodremin was one of the major manufacturing cities on Nexus; from the air its roofs glittered blue with solar panels. Rafe took a tram directly to his first call, the manufacturer of commercial ovens he had noted at Flasic's Bakery Supplies, and entered into a long discussion that became an unsatisfactory negotiation about the availability of their ovens offworld, the possibility of sublicensing the plans, and other details he hoped would bore anyone doing surveillance.

In the afternoon, it was the manufacturer of a machine that turned out small cylindrical snacks filled with minced spiced fruit, but that, too, led to no contracts being signed, since Rafe specified a filling that was incompatible with their machine.

The next morning, he was off on another regional transport, headed away from what he thought of as his target area, to the tropical seacoast city of Maresh. A small specialty manufacturer there had, he explained to the apparently bored waiter at dinner, a reputation for innovative small-batch designs.

The small specialty manufacturer did indeed have such a reputation; the company's designer was also one of the very few people on the planet outside his own family Rafe felt he could trust. The connection was accessible if anyone looked, but decades old. Lissa had been a student at the same school where he'd been sent.

He watched her scowl over his list of requirements, wondering if she'd remember the simple code they'd used in school. If not, he'd try something else. Her frown deepened; she shook her head once as if to dislodge a fly. Then she looked at him, straight-on as she always had.

"Genson Ratanvi. From...Cascadia."

"Quite so," Rafe said. He let his face relax for an instant, Genson's expression of stuffy disapproval shifting, he hoped, to the crooked smile she'd remember. From her change in expression, just as quickly suppressed, it seemed to work.

"These specifications...will be difficult," she said. "Expensive."

"I hope not too expensive," Rafe said, back in Genson's persona. "It is because of your known expertise and reasonable prices that I came here at all. Maresh is hardly on the beaten track."

"It can be quite pleasant," she said.

He smiled, Genson's smile and not his own. "Perhaps you could show me? A dinner, maybe?"

She stiffened a little. "I don't usually socialize with clients, Ser Ratanvi. I'm sure Ser Bannat would be glad to show you around—"

"But I was hoping you—" He cocked his head. "I don't mean to give offense, you understand. It is the habit of we Cascadians to maintain politeness; there would be no...nothing to object to, in that way. It is just that I would prefer you to Ser Bannat as you are the person who would be involved in the design of any machines, should we come to agreement on price."

"I see," she said. "Perhaps you'll excuse me a moment..."

"Of course," he said. "May I wait here—?" The design studio, with its files of projects. "Or would you prefer I wait in the public area?"

"I won't be long," she said. "You can wait here."

Rafe refrained from stripping the data out of any files, since Ratanvi would not have done so, and in a short time Lissa returned.

"My boss has agreed to let me leave early today, Ser Ratanvi, and he's given me permission to entertain you on the company account. I'll just make a reservation at—you do like seafood, don't you? Spicy?"

Something fishy, yes, and yes, he was hot where security was concerned. They were agreed on that. "I'm so sorry," Rafe said. "But something I ate when I landed from the spaceport is still causing me trouble. If it could be something very mild instead?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "Our regional cuisine is known for its spice blends, but I can certainly find a place with good, but blander food."

And either no scans—or no scans she couldn't fox.

"I hope you will pardon the liberty," he said, "but you have beautiful hair."

She touched the red-gold of it and grinned. "Now don't start, Ser Ratanvi. You promised no offense."

"Understood," Rafe said.

The sights of Maresh included, as Rafe remembered from his childhood vacations, the long, rocky promontory forming one side of the harbor, where the seabirds nested in summer. Now, in autumn, only a little of the sickening stench remained, but it was enough to keep most people far away. Lissa led him out to the very tip, where the waves sloshed noisily at the rocks, to watch the lights dancing on the waters of the bay.

"So," she said, when he finally nodded, having checked everything he could check. "What's going on?"

"My family's disappeared," he said. "And someone put a trap on the old home number. Have you heard anything about a shake-up in ISC?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "Not a shake-up...I don't pay attention unless it's something dramatic, you know."

"You do know ansibles have been out all over, don't you?"

"Have they? Where?"

She sounded sincere. "You really didn't know?"

"No...our customers are mostly local to this system, and the others are nearby. How bad is it?"

"Generalized failure. Happened almost simultaneously."

"Sabotage." No doubt in her voice at all.

"Yes."

"And you're still working for the same firm?"

"I can't answer that," Rafe said.

"I see." He suspected she saw more than was convenient. She started to speak, stopped herself, and dropped back into the old lingo. "Pretty evening on the water, isn't it?"

He, too, had seen the light from the little boat, distinguishable from all the other lights dancing on the water by the vee it left behind.

"I think perhaps we should go back," he said. He turned and offered her his arm. "You've been a most gracious hostess and guide, my dear, but this damp air can't be good for either of us."

"About the contract," Lissa began, taking his arm and moving slowly back toward the city.

"I will call on your employer tomorrow," he said, as stuffily as possible. "Tonight is not the time. But you may assure him that your services were perfectly satisfactory."

The next day, he shook his head at the estimate Lissa's employer gave him. "I'm sorry...I believe that is beyond our budget, though I will keep this in mind."

"You won't find a better price," Ser Bannat said. "Not for what you want; it's quite complicated."

"Possibly too complicated," Rafe said. "I will tell them back home. Apologies for possibly wasting your time."

"No problem," Ser Bannat said. "But if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment." He left the room.

Rafe had a last few minutes' chat with Lissa, and took a chance, asking her if she had kept in contact with anyone he might have known, anyone near Pittville in particular. She had cut herself off from the others in the school, she said, except for two girls who had also made it through university. "You might not remember them," she said. "Colleen and Pilar—both two years younger than me."

"Just barely," Rafe said. He had their images stored in his implant; he had more about the old school than anyone suspected, but this was not the time to brag.

"They made it through university, too," Lissa said. "Colleen married, then it fell apart, then she married again. She and her second husband live about eighty kilometers from Pittville, but I don't think they ever go that way—she's always talking about their summer cottage down on the coast. They have three children; she does pottery. Pilar's an attorney, specializing in family law. She never married, never had a partner that I know of. She lives in Pittville. Colleen lived with her for a while after that first marriage broke up; she might still know people there."

"You have been most kind," Rafe said. "Thank you for your time and hospitality." Her employer was coming back down the hall; Rafe smiled and thanked him as well before leaving.

His next trip took him by train along the coast to Marrn; there he transferred to the line that ran up between rounded green hills to Pittville. On one side, the town looked peaceful and idyllic; on the other, the gaping hole for which the town was named lay raw and red as a wound.

Pilar Metris had an office in a building full of professionals: attorneys, accountants, land surveyors. Rafe did not intend to confide in her; he hadn't known any of the younger girls well. The woman who came out to greet him from an inner office looked nothing like the girl's image in his implant. Dark, elegant, and hard-faced, she looked him up and down as if he were an animal for sale.

"You're a foreigner; you should know that I don't handle international disputes."

"I did not come for representation," Rafe said, "but for general advice. Your receptionist has my credit deposit for an hour of your time."

She grimaced. "Come in, then. Explain."

"I am in food service," he said. "We—the professional organization I belong to, of food service managers—are looking for a location for our triennial convention. We prefer not to be in urban areas, but within an hour of a transportation hub. I was hoping you could advise me whether there is anything in this part of the continent that might suit. I came to a barrister—an attorney, I believe you call them—" She nodded, her face now less hostile, merely intent. "I came to you," he went on, "because I thought you would be more likely to know of any legal barriers to an interstellar gathering of considerable size, and any local legal difficulties that might arise with advance contracts."

"What size?"

"For the triennial, that would be five to six thousand. For one of our smaller conventions, such as the annual local regional, which includes all of the Moscoe Confederation and Nexus Group, only about two hundred. All this is contingent on restoration of ansible communications, of course. Not the regional, because we and you both have working ansibles, but the big one...well, I haven't been able to contact friends back at Allray or Sallyon for almost a standard year."

"I see. I'm afraid there's nothing suitable here—or within hundreds of kilometers—for your large convention. We do have several recreational and retreat centers in the hills to the northeast; for business people, I would think Green Hills Conference Center or Chelsea Falls Conference Center would be best. The others are either summer facilities for children or sporting complexes. Should you need to book facilities with one of the conference centers, I'll be glad to guide you through the contract process."

"Thank you," Rafe said. "You've been most kind and helpful. I will look up the conference centers—I presume they have listings—"

"Oh, yes," she said. "But I would expect both to be booked up for the next two years; they're very popular." She cocked her head. "How long will you be staying in Pittville, Ser Ratanvi?" That had a slight edge. Had Lissa contacted her? Lissa might.

"A few days," he said. "My stomach does not like constant travel; I find I need to pause now and then and recover."

"I see. Well, if you need any further assistance while you're in town, by all means ask me."

Rafe spent the rest of the day as a travel-weary businessman might be expected to. He ate a bland meal, went for a walk in the mellow afternoon light, and settled into his room for the evening. The deskcomp connected him to the advertising for both conference centers. Chelsea Falls, northwest of the mines, had two pretty waterfalls in a gorge. Rafe set up a bounce relay with care; he wanted any number he called to connect as if he were in Central instead of here in Pittville. Then he contacted the number given. He spoke to the desk clerk, inquiring about future vacancies, and expressed his regret that they had no space at the time of the regional convention. Its communications codes included the relay sequence, but the originating codes were nothing like the ones he'd noted.

That could be faked, of course. Or his parents might be held in some private residence, in which case...he shook his head and called Green Hills with the same inquiry.

As the numbers came up, he had trouble keeping his voice steady in the Cascadian accent. The same originating code...the right sequence of communications nodes. He forced himself to finish the conversation with the clerk—so sorry, no, the date of the convention could not be changed to fit Green Hills' only vacant slot—and closed the contact breathing hard. He closed his eyes briefly, willing himself to calmness. From here on, he must be even more careful.

The structure was listed as the Green Hills Conference Center, owned by the Green Hills Development Corporation. Who owned Green Hills? Rafe, flat on his belly on the edge of a vast grassy space, had not been able to winkle that out of the local databases without risking the question being noticed. He stared across the bowl to the cluster of buildings surrounded with shrubs and trees. One large, three stories at least, the cupola to a small tower peeking out of the trees. One with the extra-large ventilator hoods that suggested a large, institutional kitchen. Small buildings, hardly more than cabins, placed haphazardly around the margin of the wooded space. And beyond, surrounding the buildings, the mown grass. Clear field of fire, up to the tree line, where dense forest surrounded the facility. Here it was a mix of evergreens and deciduous trees now dropping leaves like flakes of gold and bronze with every puff of air.

Two roads in: the staff entrance a narrow, one-lane blacktop bordered by hedges—the only cover across the grassy circle. The public entrance, a generous two lanes edged with bedding plants, all copper and bronze at this season, ended in a small parking area. One vehicle sat there. By its thermal signature, it had been in place for at least six hours.

And the whole place was thick with detection equipment in all modes. If he had not found, and suppressed, one of the section command nodes two hundred meters back, not even his chameleon suit would have kept him safe. The command node's instruction set was ISC security standard, proof that someone involved was ISC—or that ISC's security had holes all through it, another depressing thought.

A white van came into view on the servants' road. Small, any lettering or logo on its sides hidden by the hedges from his viewpoint. It moved at a moderate pace and disappeared behind the cluster of buildings. Rafe extended his probe into the security command net, careful not to tickle any of the internodes, but he could not reach anything useful. The elements within his reach could give him enhanced audiovisual of their detection arc direct to his implant, but nothing more.

The staff parking areas, he already knew, were surrounded by buildings, out of sight of the perimeter or underground. In a benign setting, this might be to keep any utilitarian objects out of view of customers who expected total elegance. Here, such caution seemed sinister. No legitimate enterprise needed this level of security, of secrecy.

Something moved; he saw sunlight flash...it was a glass door opening. Tiny figures exited the building, three of them. Two were in gray coveralls. Rafe increased the magnification in his eyepiece. Not just coveralls, but camouflage battledress, its surface now inactive. The third figure wore business clothes...but atmospheric instability made wavering patterns in Rafe's eyepiece; he could not see the face clearly enough to be sure of an identity.

That third figure went to the parked vehicle and entered it; after a moment the vehicle moved, leaving by the public road. The two uniformed figures stood together, watching, then turned back to the buildings and entered the largest.

An hour later, another white van entered the area along the service road. He could still see no logo, thanks to the hedges. It—or its twin—reappeared quickly and stopped partway to the trees, blocking the service road. Rafe boosted his visuals; the sun was going down, and long shadows dimmed his view of the road. A short time later, a second white van emerged from the trees near the buildings, followed by a third. The first van moved ahead, on into the trees, followed by the other two; Rafe dared not tap into the perimeter security to see if it went all the way to the public road.

He lay there another three hours. Nothing moved in the compound; no lights came on. Were his parents still there? Had they ever been there? Were the three white vans benign—transportation for cleaning or maintenance crews prepping the facility for another conference—or something else?

By midnight, he was out of the woods, undetected as far as he knew, and back in Pittville, his disguise restored in the cab of the rental car.

"Did you enjoy your drive, Ser Ratanvi?" the doorman at the hotel asked when Rafe had turned the car in.

"It's very pleasant country," Rafe said. "Especially, I would think, at this time of year. The trees where I live are all evergreen."

"You should see it in spring, when the trees are in bloom," the doorman said.

The next morning, Rafe went back to Pilar's office, and this time the receptionist smiled at him. "You are having a pleasant time, Ser?"

"Indeed, yes, though the resorts are all booked up for next year, as Sera Metris said they might be. I have just a few more questions for her, if she is free."

"It will be a short time, but then, yes."

Rafe pored over the local business directory, trying to think of some way to ask what he needed to ask without breaking character. There simply was no way that even his supple imagination could devise...

When they were alone. Pilar looked at him, one corner of her mouth pulled in, "Ser Ratanvi, I perceive that you are not entirely what you seem."

"Lissa," Rafe said, to see what she'd do.

"Lissa...was not my year. I didn't have much to do with the younger girls."

"No. You were younger."

She scowled. "That time is over. I don't talk about it."

"Nor do I, but some things are never over."

"So what do you really want, Ser Ratanvi-in-food-processing?"

"A name," Rafe said. "Which an attorney might have."

"And if I choose not to cooperate? If I think this is something for law enforcement?"

"Then my family will die," Rafe said. "If they aren't dead already."

She gazed at him without a change of expression for a long moment. "You are serious."

"Completely."

"They...were rich."

"Yes."

"Powerful."

"Yes."

"And you think they're in danger. Why?"

"I would rather not tell anyone who doesn't have to know," Rafe said. "I believe the danger is extreme."

"You want to find them...rescue them?"

"I need to find a reliable person who does that sort of thing."

"Hostage extrication," Pilar said. "Very dangerous, very much a specialty. There are three firms I know of, assuming you don't want to go to the authorities—since you haven't, I'm safe to assume."

"That's right," Rafe said. "If their disappearance isn't public knowledge, there's a reason, and the authorities could be involved."

"You have asked me if I will serve as the local contact should your association decide to hold its annual conference here," Pilar said. "That is all you have asked me. I asked for a retainer. You paid it; you will pay it when you leave. A name you might know: Gary."

Gary. Rafe remembered exactly one Gary they had in common, the older boy who had made his life hell for two years of his incarceration at the school.

"The best reputation on the planet," Pilar said. "It's a respectable company providing general and special security services."

"Gary?"

Her mouth quirked. "As it happens, I have his personal contact numbers. Here." She scrawled something on a plasfilm strip. "And now, I believe our business is finished. My receptionist will be glad to take care of the retainer."

"Thank you," Rafe said.

Pilar shrugged. "Lissa was kind to me, and to Colleen. And I have to admire someone who cares about a family who dumped him into that hellhole. Mine can rot, for all I care."

In the outer office, Rafe paid the retainer. He decided to wait until he was away from Pittville to call Gary...in fact, he would call while in transit to his next stop. He caught the afternoon train back to the coast, then the night train to Balcock, the nearest city with a commercial airport. The night train had a full directory; Gary's firm came up, with an office number instead of the ones Pilar had given him. And the firm's office was in Balcock...why there and not Central, he wondered. Which number to call? Well, Ratanvi would have no reason to call a security services firm...he called the private number. He was not surprised when the link icon lit a security bubble.

"S'Gary," said a male voice. It didn't sound like the old Gary, but it had been fifteen years at least.

"Pilar gave me this number," Rafe said. "Lissa mentioned me to her."

"I don't play games," Gary said. "Whatever you're—"

"The door to the steam tunnel could be opened from the other side only with a key," Rafe said. The worst night of his life had been spent on the wrong side of that door. Silence, now. Finally, a gust of air huffing out.

"This wouldn't be that rich boy, would it?"

"Yes," Rafe said. "I need to hire an expert."

"Expert in what?"

"Retrieving stolen valuables."

"Where are you?"

"On a train to Balcock."

"You know where our corporate HQ is?"

"Yes."

"Don't go there. Check into a hotel—the Dorset Arms or the Seaview. Name?"

"Genson Ratanvi."

"Good...grief. Cascadian, by your accent. Well, Ser Ratanvi, we'll meet tomorrow to discuss your business. Shall we say ten of the clock?"

Rafe left the station in the morning crowd, and didn't notice anyone following him. He checked into the Seaview—which, despite its name, had only one narrow slice of sea view, and that only from rooms on the right front corner. His room, fifth floor back, looked out onto a parking lot and the blank wall of another building. That suited him. He had slept little; his mind kept churning through the possibilities, most of them grim. He forced himself to eat something for breakfast.

Promptly at ten, the deskcom buzzed; he told the desk clerk that yes, he was expecting a visitor and please send him up.

Despite himself and the years between, Rafe's stomach tightened when he opened the room door and faced Gary. Whatever he'd been doing in the intervening years, Gary had not let himself go: he was as fit and muscular as he had been in his late teens. Almost a head taller than Rafe, massive shoulders in a well-fitted suit, he looked like the tough he was. Or had been. He looked Rafe up and down after Rafe closed the door behind him.

"I hope that's not your real belly," he said.

"I am here in the person of Genson Ratanvi, food service manager," Rafe said, in his Cascadian accent. He let one of his knives slip into his hand and turned his hand so Gary could see it. "But underneath..."

"You're the same snaky kid you were before. I suppose that's good." Gary moved to the room's easy chair and sat down. He opened his briefcase and pulled out an array of gear that Rafe recognized as scan detection and stealthing equipment. For a moment or two, Gary said nothing as he set this up and turned it on, Then: "So...what do you need?"

Rafe settled into the desk chair. "My parents and sister—my whole family—have disappeared. I can't find my sister's husband. She may be pregnant, or she may have a baby—I've been away for years; I'm not sure of the date she was due. The house is empty but not looted, and there's a police guard out by the gate. The private house line has a trap on it. My father's private number is supposedly out of service. There's been no word publicly...I think they've been abducted; I don't know by whom. Or for sure, where they are, I think I know where they were until the day before yesterday."

"And what do you want from me?"

"I want to find them and rescue them, of course. Pilar says you're the best on the planet. I want you to help me. I was going to do it myself, but if something went wrong—"

"You're crazy," Gary said. "No one person—no two people—can extricate hostages if the captors are at all competent. And from what you say, they're professional quality."

"I have to—"

"You have to use your head, Rafe. You asked my advice. Listen to it. You're talking three, four hostages, right? Two seniors—"

"They're not senile!"

"I didn't say they were. But they're not going to be as resilient, as physically capable, as younger people. And a young woman who may or may not be pregnant, may or may not have a child—"

"I don't know—"

"And that's a problem. And you also don't know if any of them were injured in the original snatch, and you don't know why law enforcement isn't on this loud and clear. It's serious gray, if not black, and you aren't qualified to know what it's going to take."

"I—"

"Rafe. Sit down and listen. This is my specialty; if it were yours, I would know that. So it's not. You know covert stuff, I'll grant that; I have no doubt you've done things on the dark side. I have no doubt you're brilliant with any kind of communications or surveillance gear. But you do not know what it takes to extricate hostages, and I do."

"So do it, then."

"Just like that." Gary shook his head. "You show up again after...however many years it's been, and it doesn't matter except that we've been out of touch and I have no idea if you're still worth a damn."

"As a killer?" Rafe asked.

"As someone I can trust to pay the bills," Gary said. Rafe opened his mouth, but Gary raised a hand to silence him. "Oh, yeah, we all knew you were a rich kid, good for any amount of money. And what I heard was you were still a rich kid, getting remittance from papa as the price of staying away. That doesn't sound like someone I want to trust with the lives I'm responsible for."

Rafe tried not to glare, remembering Gary as someone who had never, to his knowledge, accepted responsibility for anyone else. "Responsible," he said, testing that.

"Yes," Gary said. His mouth worked as if he might spit, but he didn't. "Things you didn't know, rich man's son. There were other kids I took care of back then. There are men I take care of now."

"You didn't—"

"Do a thing for you for the first year. That's true. You were a cocky little squirt, Rafe; you had all that rich-man's-son gloss all over you, and I hated the rich for good reason. I wanted to see that gloss come off, see if you were worth anything underneath. And you surprised me. You were. Then you left...and I don't know this Rafe."

Rafe shook his head. "Too much time between. Too many things happened. It'd take weeks to catch up, if we ever could, and I don't have that time."

"Think you're tough enough to force me?"

"Might be. But that's a waste of time, too. I have more important things to do than prove myself to you, Gary. If you don't want the mission, say so. I'll go somewhere else."

This time Gary did spit, with the same precision Rafe remembered from their youth. "You won't find any better than me. You'll just get in more trouble." He gave a sharp head shake. "I am an idiot, because I'm going to trust someone I know is a snake to the backbone, and I swear, Rafe, if you cross me, I will stake your snaky vertebrae to the hottest griddle in hell, one by one..."

"I don't want to cross you," Rafe said. "I want to get those people out safely."

"Those people...not your family?"

"If I think of them that way, I can't think," Rafe said. He heard the tremor in his own voice and struggled to control it. Gary had no respect for weakness.

Gary shrugged. "Whatever helps you give me what I need for the team."

"Which is?"

"Info and money. I'm assuming you still have unlimited funds..."

Rafe shook his head. "Not at the moment. My account's not available. I don't have access codes for the family accounts, let alone the corporate accounts. That's part of the problem. I can get into my personal accounts locally, but that will be obvious to anyone watching, and I know someone is."

"Tell me," Gary said.

Rafe described the experiences he'd had in the past days, from the phone surveillance of his family's numbers to the difficulty with accessing his accounts. "I should've been able to transfer funds from the deposit account to my alias's without a hitch; I'd done it before. Financial transactions are supposed to be secure, anyway. It's one of the selling points for financial ansibles. This time a team of ISC security personnel showed up at the hotel, and I barely got away."

"So how were you planning to pay for my services?" Gary asked.

"My alias has accounts on Cascadia, and ansible service between here and there is still functional. I don't know if it's enough until you give me a price, though. If it is, then you'll work through a dummy corporation selling baking equipment—"

"Baking equipment?"

"My alias is a food service manager," Rafe said. "I've been all over the planet looking at food processing equipment—commercial ovens, specialized snack production equipment, and so forth. There's suspicion, but so far I think the bad guys are convinced that my alias is a real person with someone trying to use his identity."

"I don't come cheap," Gary said. "What we do is dangerous work, and my team are all well aware of the risk. I have to provide sufficient medical coverage and death benefits to recruit reliable, skilled team members, as well as training facilities and equipment."

"So how expensive is not cheap?"

"There's a per diem or a per mission rate. Per diem seems lower, but you have to understand that it includes the pre-extrication time necessary to assemble, brief, and train the team for this specific task, as well as the time needed for the mission itself. That's always more days than the customer expects, though I give the best estimate I can. Per mission is much higher, but it's a turnkey price. Doesn't matter how long it takes; I absorb any overage."

"How long do you think this would take?"

"Don't have enough data yet. You say they've been moved from Green Hills...that's good, because a setup like Green Hills is very difficult. We have to find the new location, assess it, plan a route in and out, train the team on any specific problem areas, and so on." Gary spat again. "I don't take credit; we have expenses up front and I got stung a few times early on when I trusted someone. But I can see you're in a bind. If you can come up with a substantial down payment, I'm willing to trust that you or your family will pay the balance afterward."

Rafe felt a tiny burst of warmth. "You're that sure you can get them out."

"I didn't get the reputation I have for failing, Rafe." Gary grinned. "I can't exactly give you references, but I can say that we've had only one failure in the past six years, and only two before that. Out of...quite a few cases."

"So tell me what the down payment is," Rafe said.


T he funds transfer from Cascadia went through without a hitch and without—so far as Rafe could tell—arousing any interest from ISC security. With great care, he and Gary routed funds through several company names, and Rafe filed contracts for the manufacture of commercial ovens and food production machines with the relevant offices, and applied for export permits "upon completion of design & manufacture of these machines." As far as Rafe could tell, this seemed sufficiently dull to arouse no interest here, either.

In the meantime, Gary had put his own intelligence-gathering team to work on the problem of location. His files revealed that Green Hills Development Corporation was distantly owned by ISC's Nexus II local development division, along with a string of other resort and retreat properties.

"By talking to various travel agents, we've been able to determine which ones are scheduled for events when," Gary said. "If your parents' captors are corporate, as you suspect, they'd be able to find holes in the schedules and move your family from one resort to another. Most of the places are fairly secure—it's what clients pay for, after all. If we're lucky, this is how they're being held, and we'll locate them in a few days."

"How long do you think they're being kept in each place?"

"Don't know yet. The gaps in the schedules range from a weekend—probably not time enough to move in hostages and move them out again—to sixty days or more, for the hunting lodges. Did you ever stay at one of these places?"

"We went to resorts sometimes, but I don't know if they were part of this list," Rafe said. He looked down the printout Gary had handed him. "Bel Ara, yes. That was the first time I saw a tropical reef. But you've marked it off—"

"It's one of the busiest. All-year use by conventions, corporate training sessions, and so on. Vacant at most for three days, or during tropical storms. What about the ones marked in green?"

Rafe shook his head. "My father may have gone to one of these—I see they're mostly hunting or fishing lodges—but I didn't."

"I think they're the best bet," Gary said. "You said your family was snatched a maximum of three weeks ago, judging by the condition of the house and the plants. Green Hills had an opening starting about then, but a series of religious meetings is starting two days after you think your family was moved out. That's the kind of thing a retreat center can't cancel without people noticing. Maybe they hoped whatever they wanted would happen in that time, but just as likely it was planned as a short-term holding site."

"Still a lot of places to look," Rafe said.

"And a lot of tools to look with," Gary said. "I've got long-term surveillance data to play with. Want to see?"

"Always," Rafe said. The files Gary opened astonished him. "What made you start keeping all this?" he asked, looking at a summary graph of the previous three years' satellite data on travel patterns.

"The need to find people," Gary said. "You'll have noticed that this algorithm allows me to filter out all scheduled traffic—" The graph changed. "—and then to spotlight specific areas. Here I'm entering the locations of the ISC-owned resorts with gaps of thirty or more days in their schedules." The graph changed again. "The colors show total traffic in the past three years...file that...and now for this year..."

Rafe, watching the lines and colors shift, was more impressed than he wanted to admit. Gary had always seemed like a big dull-witted bully. "Big" and "bully" might be true, but not "dull-witted." Rafe wondered how many other misjudgments of character he might have made—and how much those misjudgments mattered in this crisis. The planetary schematic turned, showing the other hemisphere.

"Now let's match the traffic to the schedule gaps," Gary said. He reset the parameters, and they watched the schematic redraw itself. "Now that's interesting..."

"What?" Rafe wasn't sure which colors went with which meaning now.

"There." Gary pointed. "High-latitude hunting lodge specializing in ice bear trophy hunting in winter and wildlife ecotourism in summer. Normally it's vacant this time of year—too cold for summer tourists, migratory birds have left, and the ice bears haven't migrated down yet. But you'll notice..." He touched the controls again. "Ah. Yes. Traffic there a week ago, and since, and I'll check the infrared data on the next satellite pass."

"You can access the security satellites?"

"Nothing tricky about that; I have a license," Gary said. "Law enforcement doesn't mind as long as I'm not extricating criminals from their prisons. I don't do that; it doesn't pay enough." He turned to another console. "And while we're waiting for that, let's see what else we can find out about...what do they call the place?...Aurora Adventure Lodge."

Another visual came up, this one a developer's rendition of the site. Against a backdrop of a lake, with mountains beyond, a glacier peeking between them, a massive log structure surrounded by smaller log cabins was rendered in bright colors, windows framed in white and bordered by green shutters. Flower baskets festooned the eaves, and more flowers overflowed planters on the deep porch.

"This must be for summer tourists," Gary said. "Terrain's not bad." It was treeless, lumpy with huge boulders scattered here and there, cut by streams emptying into the lake.

"Above timberline?" Rafe asked.

"Yeah," Gary said. "But plenty of cover in those rocks. If we control the airspace and aerial surveillance—and we will—we can get very close without being detected. Weather's the possible problem here. It's late autumn; the first winter storms should hit any time."

"So how soon can you do it?"

"I still don't know enough. We need to know if they're really there—that it's not a decoy—and how many people are guarding them."

Access to Aurora Adventure Lodge, its website said, was by "the incredibly scenic" train from Brygganha to the high-altitude station at Dobst, from which the train went on to Pergyn, on the far side of the plateau. Dobst Station was just that: a small prefab building with a snack bar, toilets, a ticket counter, a left-luggage room. Beside it was the station staff's dormitory, and adjoining was a bare-bones hostel for high-country hikers. At Dobst, the site went on, Aurora Lodge guests were met with "a seasonally appropriate vehicle" and transported some eight kilometers to the lake. The summer vehicle was motorized; the winter one appeared to be a horse-drawn sleigh.

The website map showed "public hiking trails" well away from Lodge property, touching the lakeshore kilometers away from the Lodge. "Private hiking trails" led from the Lodge down to the lake and along its shore, up from the Lodge to the glacial margin, to various fishing spots and scenic overlooks. All were color-coded "for the use of Lodge guests only." The property was secure, its brochure said, from all types of intrusion, physical and electronic; the perimeter barriers were "top of the line."

"They're not, actually," Gary said, leaning back in his chair. "They'll certainly stop a curious hiker, or a criminal who'd like to sneak in and pretend to be on staff while robbing guests, or the casual everyday kind of commercial snooping." He leaned forward again, deep in another site. "The latest version of their perimeter security was installed...almost two years ago. Reputable company in Brygganha, main concern ice bears in winter and nosy tourists in summer. Good products, but not the best; that cost too much. I know Stani; he supervised installation, and he's good."

"So..."

"It's more difficult than some jobs we've done, but not impossible."

"When will I meet the others?" Rafe asked.

"Meet them? You're not going to meet them."

"But—"

"Rafe, for the hundredth time—! You are not part of this op. You cannot be part of this op. You are a client, like any other client. You must not be seen to have any connection whatever with what we're doing; it's bad enough that you aren't out there continuing to look for food processing equipment, or being the businessman on vacation chatting up beach girls or boys or something."

"I can't just—"

Gary's look stopped him. Rafe took a deep breath, then another. When he looked down, his left hand was shaking slightly; he went on breathing, willing it to stop. When it was steady, he looked up.

"I'm being an idiot," he said.

"You're being a client," Gary said with a shrug. "Clients are like that."

"I don't like thinking of myself—"

"—as just like everyone else? That hasn't changed, at least." Gary punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Don't worry, son; you aren't like the others except in being anxious and tense and entirely too eager to jump in and help. But part of our security, and yours, and your family's, is a nice thick, tight wall between my people and you. You have no idea what will happen after we get them out—"

"You said after —you really think—"

"After we get them out, yes. Yes, it's doable, and yes, we'll do it. If you don't muck it up in the meantime. Now—what was your original itinerary? How long did you plan to stay on Nexus?"

"Not this long," Rafe said. "I planned to visit Dad, find out what was up with the ansibles, see how the land lay, and then—"

"Did you have a reservation?"

"Yes, but now—"

"You have to use it."

"No! I can't leave the planet not knowing—"

"Rafe, you have no reason not to leave—your persona doesn't, I mean. If you don't leave you'll arouse suspicion—you already have."

"But—"

"Do you have anyone outside who would act as your office manager or CEO or whatever and send you orders to stay?"

"Er...no." Stella might, if he explained it to her, but he hadn't explained it before he left Cascadia, and he could not trust even secured ansible transmission now.

"Then you have to go. If you can sneak back in, that's fine, but you have to go, in that persona. It will make our job, and your family, much safer."

Intellectually, Rafe knew Gary was making sense, but he did not want to leave. If something happened while he was away, something that his presence could have prevented... "I'm sure I can work something up, something believable—"

"What, break a leg? That's no bar to travel, as you know—"

"I know. I'd need to be in a hospital or locked up—" Rafe stopped. From Gary's expression the same thought had come to him. "I don't suppose—"

"You wouldn't like it," Gary said. "Lockup isn't much more fun than school was."

"It wouldn't be the first time," Rafe said.

"You're kidding."

"No. Not on this planet, but—I do know my way around a jailhouse."

"Something local," Gary said. "Something you could get out of, probably. Just to tide you over, hold you onplanet until your ship's taken off and the op's started."

"I don't even know what gets you temporary incarceration here anymore," Rafe said. "And it can't be with ISC security, or something that a local would report to them."

"Right. On the other hand, they—or someone higher up—has to know that you're behind bars or something else legitimate, so there's an explanation for your not catching your ride out."

"I guess I could get sick," Rafe said.

"It's harder to find cooperative doctors and hospitals than cooperative law enforcement," Gary said. "No, don't look at me like that. I'm on their side now, and favors go both ways. I'm just thinking which one to call."

"May I make a suggestion?"

"I may not take it."

"Of course not. But a traveling businessman, like my persona, is apt to become...lonely. He could misunderstand, perhaps, local customs."

Gary snorted. "A Cascadian?"

"Polite amorous insistence is still amorous insistence. And it depends so much on the attitude of the person receiving the attention, whether it is unwanted or not. Such a person might come to understand, at a convenient time, that the incident resulted from a cultural misunderstanding..."

Gary shook his head. "Rafe, you are even more devious than you were. But yes, that's a possible scenario, and I suppose it suits you better than a false accusation of theft or conspiracy."

"Since I expect to be guilty of the conspiracy, at least, before this is over, yes."

Gary's directions led Rafe to a mountain village straight out of the tourist brochures. Up a narrowing valley on a steep winding road, mountains already snowcapped looming closer and closer above...to the picturesque hotel with its wide porches on three sides, the big airy rooms looking out on nothing but scenery.

Genson Ratanvi thought it was charming, and said so. Rafe allowed his persona's gaze to linger just a little too long on the young woman at the desk when he came down to inquire about places to eat in the village. Then, instead of going to eat right away, he headed for the bar Gary had told him about.

Inside, it was like every other small-town bar Rafe had seen. Noise aspiring to music came from speakers on one side. Two women of a certain age leaned across the bar, chatting; at a table in the corner, three men eyed him as they went on with whatever conversation they'd been holding. One of the women, a redhead, looked up.

"Want something?" she asked.

Rafe compared her to the description Gary had furnished and ordered a drink; he handed her the marked bill.

"You're not from around here," she said.

"No," Rafe said. "From Cascadia. I am sent by my company to find a supplier of food processing equipment."

"Here?" asked the blonde.

"Well...not exactly." Rafe sipped his drink. "I have been here on your lovely world for many days, and I needed a break. It is lonely, you know, traveling so far from home at the holidays."

"Holidays?"

"At home," Rafe said, "It is the festival of trees. We put lights in the trees and walk among them." Cascadians did that, anyway. He had done it once, just to experience what Cascadians claimed was the ineffable spiritual power of trees. What he'd felt was chilly and damp from the wet branches dripping on his head. Now he leaned toward the woman and fell easily into the role Gary had given him.

"We don't worship trees here," the redhead said. "But I know what you mean about being lonely."

From there the conversation moved swiftly to the necessary conclusion, both he and the redhead having the same goal. She offered to show him around; he agreed.

On the way up the street to the high end of town she suggested a trip to the town's dairy center, empty at this time of day. Rafe agreed. They spent a pleasant fifteen minutes or so in the hay barn, settling on who would do what, and then Rafe walked back to the hotel alone. They might have enjoyed more, but an essential part of the agreement was that no biological evidence should be produced.

"I understand your concern, Ser Ratanvi," the man in the green uniform said an hour later. "And I mean no disrespect to either your system of origin or yourself. But when we have a complaint—"

"But it wasn't me," Rafe said, thickening his Cascadian accent. "She must have made a mistake. I'm a Cascadian; I would never offer insult to anyone. It's against our culture. And I have tickets. You've seen them."

The man's name tag read SLY LILYHANDS, which seemed entirely too strange, but his subordinates—two of them—addressed him formally as Lieutenant Lilyhands without so much as a twitch of the mouth. He sighed now, obviously a little out of patience with the stubborn foreigner. "Ser Ratanvi," he said a little more slowly. "It is the policy of our government that if a person is detained from travel for an official inquiry, the transport company must refund the price of the tickets or offer equivalent transportation later. You will not be out the cost of the tickets."

"That's something." Rafe pouted. "But it is a disgrace even to be mistakenly thought to have committed such a heinous act. If my company finds out—"

"They will not find out from us, unless you are in fact guilty," Lilyhands said. "Now—if you will agree to make yourself available, and not attempt to flee the community, I will simply retain your identity information." He tapped the ID folder he had taken. "Otherwise, I'm afraid it will be necessary to take you into custody. And I hope you realize that this is a courtesy to a foreign...guest...and that our laws would allow me to take you into custody no matter what your demeanor."

Rafe nodded. "I understand. It is indeed most kind of you to allow me to remain in...more congenial surroundings." He bowed a little, in the Cascadian manner.

Lilyhands laughed. "It was your congeniality that may have gotten you into trouble. A little less congeniality and a little more circumspection would be advisable. Now—you understand that no commercial transportation will be available to you without current ID, is that clear?"

Rafe nodded. "But must I walk everywhere, then?"

"No. Your money is good on local public transport. This applies to long-distance transport only." Lilyhands handed back Ratanvi/ Rafe's jacket, the business case, and a little bowl containing what had been in Rafe's pockets: the hotel room key, the small change. All but the ID case.

"Thank you, again, for your generous handling of this unfortunate situation," Rafe said, in Ratanvi's plummy voice. "I apologize for my remarks earlier—it was just the surprise of being accused of such a thing."

"No offense taken," Lilyhands said. "Just settle in for a few days as we straighten this out. The local judicar is on vacation, but she'll be back in ten days or so, and then—and maybe by then the young lady will have changed her mind."

At the hotel, it was clear that his room had been searched; Rafe didn't bother to check for newly planted surveillance gear. He was sure it was there, but it didn't matter. What he ached to know—and could not find out without risking his cover—was whether Gary's contact was Lilyhands or the woman. Or both. Both would make sense, especially if false claims against tourists were part of an established scam of some sort.

He fell asleep, somewhat to his own surprise, on sheets scented with some flower—a few petals clung to a pillowcase—with the window open to let in a draft of cold air off the mountains behind the city. He had nothing to do until Gary contacted him—if Gary contacted him—and he might as well sleep.

Two boring days later, Rafe had chatted up the hotel food service manager, who complained about the inadequacies of the hotel's automated kitchen machinery, and the town's only baker, a Luddite who insisted on doing everything by hand. Rafe felt that he had done all he could to establish himself as a genuine food service professional. Everyone in town knew he was stuck there, and most of them thought they knew why. The redhead turned her back on him when he came into the bar; other locals glared. Rafe himself was tired of wearing Ratanvi's plump suit and the disguising facial pads that made him look, to himself, like a constipated rodent.

Another day dragged past. Rafe had walked up the street on one side of the noisy creek, and back down the street on the other side. Though a brightly colored tram trundled up to the first ski lift station and back, Rafe preferred to stretch his legs in town. He needed nothing in any of the few shops, though they were fully stocked with anything a tourist might want, the owners having changed out the summer stock for winter: sweaters, caps, gloves, fur hats and jackets. He had nothing to do. It was like being in deep space, in FTL flight, isolated from anything interesting, except for the smells. His nose wrinkled as a small herd of cattle appeared at the head of the road, up the mountain.

Every day, Lieutenant Lilyhands appeared at the hotel, paused for a polite greeting, and then walked back to the station.

Rafe wondered how much longer he could stand this without going crazy. He had finally given up walking the street over and over, and spent hours sprawled in a swing on the hotel's porch, staring down the valley. Far away, sunlight twinkled on moving vehicles, where the regional roadway and railway ran together for a few miles, sharing bridges across the Meltorn River.

The car was a kilometer up the valley before he registered it. By now he knew the usual ones: the regional post van, bright blue with buff stripes, that came every day, the eight vehicles that left in the morning and returned in the evening from jobs away in the valley, the grocery truck that came every other day to the hotel and restaurants and bars. This car was different. Rafe took his feet off the little table and looked more closely.

The car went past the hotel and stopped in front of the nearest bar. Gary got out and went into the bar without glancing at the hotel. Lilyhands, on his morning walk through the village, nodded to Rafe on the hotel porch and stopped into the bar, as usual. He came out and walked back to the hotel.

"I do believe, Ser Ratanvi, that your accuser may have made a mistake; she seems willing to retract her accusation. On the other hand, I really must have the judicar's permission to release your identification documents. So I remind you that you cannot travel on any commercial vehicles"—the slight stress he placed on 'commercial' went with a twitch of his mouth—"and while I do not feel compelled to forbid your traveling outside the town limits with a friend, I must remind you that your identification will stay in my custody until the justice has put her stamp on the file."

"That's very kind of you," Rafe said, adding Ratanvi's stiff little bow.

"I might just mention that there's a fellow in the bar now, someone I personally know, who says he's willing to take you into town for a short time. I realize that a foreigner might not be willing to just go off with a stranger, but you may find it easier to contact your office back home, let them know what's going on and when you'll be back, from a communications center like Brygganha, which is where this fellow's headed. It's up to you, of course."

"That's very kind," Rafe said again. "I should—I need to contact the office, you're quite right, and also to make another reservation. I should talk to him perhaps?"

"I can tell him you're willing," Lilyhands said. "If you want to settle up with the hotel..."

"How very kind of you," Rafe said, bowing again. "I believe I shall take the assistance of this kind stranger, if you will excuse me."

The hotel clerk accepted his money; Rafe rolled his belongings into his duffel and was waiting on the hotel porch when Lilyhands came back with Gary and solemnly introduced them to each other, with a warning to Gary that Ser Ratanvi was on no account to be allowed to use commercial transport without proper identification, which he, Lilyhands, retained.

"He is not a criminal," Lilyhands said slowly, as if Gary needed a full explanation. "There was a misunderstanding, and I do not wish to make difficulties, but the judicial process must be followed. When the judicar comes back, I am sure that his documents will be released."

"I will take care of him," Gary said.

"You have my thanks," Rafe said, with a final bow before he climbed into Gary's vehicle.


"T hat was a very interesting experience," Rafe said as Gary negotiated the tight curves on the way down the valley.

"I've stashed nervous clients there before, some of them unwillingly," Gary said. "People likely to interfere with the op, cause me trouble..." He looked sideways at Rafe. "Truth be told, I did consider just leaving you there until afterward, but I was afraid you might bolt. Lilyhands is good, but I'm not sure he's your match."

"He's not," Rafe said. "But I wouldn't have bolted. You don't need to be worrying about me." His tongue probed the edge of a cheek pad. "Can I get out of character now, or should I stay Ratanvi awhile longer?"

"Stay until we're through Istelhaut. There's a rail station there, a busy one. Buy a ticket to Brygganha, board the train, get off at the first stop. I'll meet you there."

"What about ID?"

"They don't check ID on the suburban part of the line. And you can use this in the ticket machine—" He handed over a small ID chip. On it, Rafe saw his own image, with a different name: Oliver Pierson. Address: 6713 Av. Rets, Apt. 1407.

"It's a valid address," Gary said. "Shouldn't be a problem in a quick inspection, if they even ask. Which they won't."

Rafe went into the train station—as busy as Gary had said, and why was that?—and bought his ticket from a machine that evinced no interest in who he was. It probably had a visual recorder—certainly the station had a number of them—but how often were such records checked? He found the right track and bought himself a snack from one of the vendors. When the gate opened for his train, he boarded with a crowd of others, pushing his ticket into the automated reader. No one in uniform appeared on the short ride to the first stop, where he got off along with at least fifty others and pushed his way out of the exit turnstiles. He didn't spot Gary at first; it wasn't the same vehicle but a utility van, with MARRIN & SONS, CUSTOM DOORS AND WINDOWS on the door. Gary was apparently reading a newsfax like half the other drivers in the lot, his face partly hidden with just enough profile showing for Rafe to recognize.

"Get in back," Gary said as Rafe neared him. Rafe said nothing, but climbed into the back of the little van. Gary drove off and after a short distance said, "Now you can change. Clothes for you are in the blue duffel. Be sure to wear the cap, and come sit by me when you're done. Bring the mugs that are in the rack behind my seat."

Rafe changed quickly, stuffing Ratanvi's paunch, cheek pads, and clothes into his own duffel and putting on the contents of the blue one. Programmable long underwear, lightweight body armor, a loose turtleneck that concealed the armor's gorget, a set of arm and leg sheaths, already loaded with knives—Rafe slid them out to check before putting the sheaths on—shoulder and back holster with the firearms to put in them, a striped jumpsuit to fit over all that, and a cap that—when he felt carefully—had reflex armor sewn in between its cloth layers.

He glanced around the van's interior. Neatly racked and secured tools and other equipment. Two multipaned windows and a door were secured in racks toward the rear, with an obvious invoice taped to the door.

He clambered forward. They were moving along a road lined with light industrial buildings: building contractors, plumbing supply, weatherstrip manufacturing, and the like. The mugs racked behind Gary's seat had the logos of a local drive-through eatery; Rafe picked them up and twisted between the seats to settle in beside Gary and put the mugs in the forward drink holder as a much larger vehicle roared past.

Gary also wore a striped jumpsuit with a logo panel on the breast. "Everything fits?" he said, not taking his eyes off the road.

"Like you measured me," Rafe said. "Changed your mind about having me along, I see. I take it we expect trouble?"

"Trouble pays my bills," Gary said. "I always expect it, though I do my best to avoid the worst of it. Still, if I let you get killed, where's my money coming from? Yeah, your father's rich, but my contract's with you." He negotiated a sharp turn in silence. "About the other—you behaved yourself, Lilyhands said. And it occurred to me, if this is an ISC inside job, as you think, then your expertise may be useful. As long as you do what you're told." That with a warning glance. "You can still use stickers as well as firearms, right?"

"Right," Rafe said. His stomach felt far more uneasy than the vibration of the van warranted.

"We have food in the van," Gary said. "If you're hungry."

"Not really," Rafe said.

"I need you in condition," Gary said. "You're going to be helping Sid with the communications; I can't afford to have you groggy. You look sick. What's the problem?"

"I'm just tense," Rafe said. "I get this way."

"Well, don't barf in my van. Try some crackers."

"In a bit," Rafe said. He watched the terrain to their right. Up there—ahead, off to the right—his family were imprisoned by...by whom, exactly? He still wasn't sure. And how were they doing? He tried to imagine it, then tried not to. His background gave him too many pictures of such things, and it was all too easy to put his father's face, his mother's, his sister's, into those images. "How far in this van?" he asked.

"South side of Brygganha," Gary said. "Three to four hours, if conditions don't change. We're delivering the windows and door there. You don't say anything, just follow orders."

Rafe had never been to this part of his home world; his family home was on the far side of the continent, and they had vacationed mostly in the tropics. Now he saw mountains, ever more mountains, lifting higher and higher, and the sea visible on the left, bright as a mirror. The sun sank westward; gulfs between headlands appeared far to the north as traffic thickened and the usual urban-suburban mess closed in around them. Gary turned into a fenced yard, backed up to a loading dock, and hopped out. Already the yard was dim, the late sun blocked by a taller warehouse across the road.

"Got those windows," he yelled up to the man on the dock. And to Rafe, "Come on, kid, get out here and help."

Rafe climbed down and went to the back of the truck. Gary was already up on the loading dock, opening the van's back doors. The man on the loading dock had gone back inside for a wheeled dolly; Rafe climbed up to stand beside Gary. When the man came back, they eased the windows and door onto the dolly, and the man wheeled them into the light.

"Close up," Gary said to Rafe. "Then get in the cab and wait." Rafe closed and locked the back doors, jumped off the loading dock, and climbed back into the cab. Whose windows and door? Was this Gary's other job, making custom windows and doors? Another truck came in the gate, now with lights on. Rafe slumped down in his seat like any lazy helper, cap tipped forward. Footsteps crunched past him; someone tapped on the window. He looked up. Gary beckoned.

"Sid's going to drive from here. I'll be with the rest of the team. It's about another hour, hour and a half, to our base for this op." Gary waved and turned away; someone Rafe had never seen had opened the other door and was already climbing in.

"Understand you know something about surveillance and com," Sid said. Rafe couldn't tell much about him except that he was dark and lean.

"Something, yes."

"Gary said he knew you back when," Sid went on. "Just so you know, I didn't, so I got no reason to trust you and I'll kill you if I think you're ruining the op. That clear?"

"Clear," Rafe said.

They said nothing more for the remainder of the drive, and it was dark by the time they reached the far side of the city. Sid proved a careful, skillful driver; he attracted no attention, and Rafe did his best to project bored relaxation. As traffic and lights thinned out on the road north—Brygganha, Rafe recalled, was the northernmost large city on the west coast—the air grew markedly colder. Sid made no move to turn on the van's heater; Rafe touched the controls of the programmable underwear. Finally, Sid turned off the main road onto a secondary, and then another, always moving toward the mountains and climbing; it grew colder yet. They came to a cluster of vacation cottages overlooking a stream, and Sid pulled into a lean-to shelter. Before Rafe could say anything, he had touched a control on the dash, and Rafe felt the van shudder...then blackness rose around them as the van sank down into the ground and something thudded closed overhead. A jerk, a faint whine, and then lights came on.

The underground garage held three trucks, the van, and several smaller vehicles; it had room for more. Sid drove the van off the lift, parked beside the trucks, and sent the lift back to the surface.

"Come on," he said to Rafe. "You come with me."

Rafe climbed out. "Do I need my stuff?"

"Might as well. Don't worry about the rest; someone else will unload it."

Rafe grabbed his own duffel and the blue one his present costume had come in, and followed Sid's directions through two massive doors and down a corridor; Sid stayed behind him, which Rafe understood all too well.

"In there," Sid said finally. Rafe opened that door, hoping it was not a cell in which he'd be locked for the next few days. Instead, it was a control center, banks of displays curving around a central space furnished with a round table and four swivel chairs. "Your stuff can go in the corner there," Sid said. "Have you eaten?"

"No," Rafe said.

"I'll call the kitchen," Sid said. "Pick a chair. Your headset's number two. The op schedule's on the table—the blue folder."

Rafe dropped the duffels in a corner and tried out all four chairs, just to annoy Sid, who didn't seem to care. He picked one that felt just that bit better than the others—it would matter after hours in it. Sid, meanwhile, had called for "two meals" on what appeared to be an ordinary household intercom. Rafe picked up the blue folder. Now, at last, he'd know how Gary had organized the op. His brows went up almost immediately...it started as what he'd have done on his own, but quickly went beyond that. He didn't know it all; he hadn't done this kind of work himself...

Someone knocked on the door; Rafe didn't look up, but he heard Sid move across the room, open the door, and mutter something. A tray landed in front of him on the table. "Here," Sid said. "Eat up. It's going to be a long ride. We've got twenty minutes to eat and whatever."

Rafe peeled back an opaque film and found a pile of sliced meat, a fresh salad, and a stack of some kind of cookie. His stomach growled; now he was hungry. Sid ate, too, shoveling in slices of meat as if it were his last meal. "I hope protein doesn't make you sleepy," he said finally. "My metabolism loves it."

"I'm fine," Rafe said. He felt completely awake, fully alive, as he always did before something started.

"Toilet's in there," Sid said, jerking his head at the room's only other door. "No other exit, and I wouldn't try breaking through the ceiling if I were you."

"I wasn't thinking of it," Rafe said.

The displays showed, singly and in combination, the locations of surveillance satellites, the location of aircraft, trains on the railway, and other "items of interest." Rafe found himself looking at a live infrared image of Aurora Adventure Lodge from a high-altitude drone: advanced software had already presented an outline of every room, with labels so far as were known, and the little blobs that represented heat were easily located. The chimney in the main lodge emitted a bright white spot with wavery pattern of colors around it.

"Your temps are on the side panel," Sid said. He wore a headset with two different mike attachments, now both pushed aside. "Can you keep an eye on the HAWATS as well?"

"HAWATS..." Rafe looked at the other screens.

"High-altitude weather satellite. Second screen on your right. At its current settings, it's not a problem even though it'll be scanning the area in about a half hour, but if someone tweaks its controls, it can change its parameters, and we need to know if that happens. Watch for a blue flashing light on the bottom of that screen, and if you see it, let me know and read off the numbers that will display."

"Can do," Rafe said. "There's a small heat source leaving cabin eight and heading south..."

"Probably a guard taking a pee," Sid said. "Let me see—" He rolled his chair over and looked at Rafe's screen. "I'll tell the guys."

"It's hotter than the other single blobs," Rafe said. "Someone took their jacket off?"

"Could be." Sid pulled one of the mikes forward. "Airtrans flight twenty-one, be advised there's a wild animal detected south of the runway..."

"Airtrans?" Rafe asked.

"Just in case," Sid said. "It's a charter cargo outfit."

Gary came into the command center a few minutes later. "Sid?"

"Fine, boss. He hasn't tried anything."

"Good. Rafe, if you've followed the plan, we're on page eleven now, line four. Two minutes from drop. No signs of trouble so far. That outlier you spotted—still there?"

Rafe looked. "There, but cooler...cooler than the other outside heat sources."

"Let me see." Gary moved in close to Rafe's screen and hit some controls. A plot appeared on the screen instead of the image he had been seeing. A curved line, dropping from left to right, with dots not quite on it, but parallel. "That's...interesting."

"What?" Rafe said.

"The plot is how fast an unprotected human body will chill to infrared detection at the air temperature on site. The dots tell me that someone is out there without adequate clothing. And whoever it is isn't moving very fast." He looked again. "Not at all in the last twenty minutes. That's not likely to be a guard. Rafe, you don't have any fancy communications method the rest of us don't know about, do you? Did you reach one of your family and tell them to get outside?"

"No," Rafe said. "I haven't tried to contact them—not since that first night I told you about, anyway. But do you really think one of them got out?"

"Barring your intervention, if I were guessing, I'd guess one of them was allowed to escape, to raise false hopes, and they'll reel him or her in shortly. Let whoever it is get really cold, hypothermic, confused, and then—"

Rafe repressed a shudder. On his screen, now back to its original form, a string of tiny dots like sugar grains appeared, then disappeared.

Gary turned away, talking now into his mike. "Confirm drop-one. Confirm drop-two." To Rafe he said. "Did you get that on IR?"

"Yup," Rafe said. "Didn't last long, though."

"Not supposed to. They've all got a heat patch on for drop, then it's off. Our drone picks it up; a satellite would have to be damned lucky."

"I've got Red One," Sid said. Gary nodded. Rafe felt his dinner turn to a solid lump in his stomach. He looked along the bank of screens. The weather satellite, HAWATS, had not deviated from its path, and no blue light flashed. But on the next screen, which Sid had told him nothing about, four icons suddenly appeared: two orange triangles and two red squares.

"Gary," he said. "What's that?"

Gary glanced where Rafe pointed and huffed out his breath. "Well, well, well...someone wants to join the party. That's someone setting out from the regional emergency response headquarters—someone must've called an alarm. Rafe, widen your field...is there a forest fire or something?"

Rafe moved the controls. Now he could see the heat emissions from those vehicles, but no heat source between them and Aurora. "Nothing I can see. They're moving a fair clip—they have to be aircraft—"

"They are. You have identification routines—"

Rafe found the right controls and the IDs came up—each craft's registration number first, and then its type.

"Personnel carriers, two of them, and two ground attack—"

"Thirty more seconds and we'd have had their com cut off," Gary said. Sid, Rafe noticed, was muttering into both of his mikes, presumably letting the teams know what was coming. "Well, it's always something. Let's see now." He pulled up a third chair and moved to the console at the end. "Baker tango: four buns in the oven."

Now Rafe saw more emissions on his screen, this coming in from the southwest. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak Sid said, "Those're ours. Look at your other plot—they're green squares. Gary—we've got their com."

"I need Aurora's ID code," Gary said. "It's not the one that's in the record...Rafe, do you have a clue what a code starting with BTR might be?"

"Secure ansible access," Rafe said. "It's an ISC sequence; it'll be eighteen digits and letters, changed at least daily by a random generator. What time is it?"

"Two minutes to midnight," Gary said. "Why?"

"It'll roll over at midnight. Change your time signature and transmit any eighteen digits and letters; if you're questioned, point out that the system just changed it..."

"Gotcha." Gary did that, then began talking into his mike. "Poppyseed, this is Aurora guardhouse...we goofed...yes...perimeter malfunction, just like you said it probably was."

Rafe switched channels so he could hear both sides.

"Ice bear?" asked a masculine voice.

"No, not an ice bear, just one of my guys who didn't turn in time, hit the perimeter, and didn't want to admit it. We owe you fuel allowance; I'm really sorry about this."

"It happens," the same voice said. "Want us to do a flyover just to be sure he was telling the truth this time?"

"We don't want to pay for that much fuel, Poppyseed. I've got guys out there now patching the wires. You can if you want to, but I've logged the time of this call."

"Whatever you say. Poppyseed out."

The icons turned and headed back east.

"Cooperative fellows," Gary said. "Wonder if they'll stay cooperative or if...yup, someone decided to tag a little extra flight time."

One of the ground assault craft had slowed, and now, dropping to near ground level, turned back toward Aurora.

"Perimeter's clear," Sid reported. "Blue's on it; Blue Three is looking for the outside blip; we're not getting any thermal from ground level. Red's going in."

Rafe felt cold.

"Laggard's getting reamed by his boss," Gary said. "He says he wants to check something he saw...he's flying awfully low and there are large rocks out there..."

"Go ahead," Gary said. Moments later, a thermal bloom lit Rafe's screen.

"What was that?" Rafe said. "Did you have stuff on the ground?"

Sid laughed, unpleasantly. "Don't need it."

"But did you—"

"World's full of rocks for idiots to bash themselves on if their onboard scan freezes up," Sid said. "He should have followed orders."

"They're coming back," Gary said. "Couldn't miss that flash. But they're convinced it was pilot error. They're coming to pick up pieces, not look for black hats. The other assault plane's going in; they've sent for medical. Handy, if we need more than we think."

"Red's in," Sid said. "Resistance...neutralized. Two females found locked into cabin eight...transmitting images. Rafe, are these the right people?"

Rafe stared at the screen...he hadn't seen any of them in years, but that was clearly his mother, despite the bruises and black eye. The other...might be his sister. Must be her. "Yes," he said, trying to hold his voice steady. "Mother and sister. The baby?"

"No baby," Sid said. "And no male. Blue team's looking but they haven't found him. The whole place is secure now."

"Can I talk to M—to my mother?"

"Not yet," Gary said. "We're not done yet. I don't want to risk it."

"Weather's deteriorating," Sid reported. "Rafe, give me a readout on the HAWATS."

"Temperature's dropping below freezing, frozen precip—sleet changing to snow, flurries at first and steady within an hour, accumulation to sixteen centimeters by morning..."

"We've got to find that outlier or he's dead," Gary said. He spoke into his mike. "Blue Leader, you've got weather moving in; we want you all out of there before it closes down...find that outlier or we'll have to leave whoever it is..."

"No!" Rafe said, half rising. He froze then: Sid, without moving from his place, had pulled a weapon and had it centered on his forehead.

"Sit down," Gary said. "Malcolm's not going to leave him if he can find him, but I'm not going to risk the team having to stay there, in case this mess is run by someone with enough clout to call in heavy stuff on a fixed location."

Rafe's heart hammered in his chest; he sat down. "I just—"

"Sid, put it away. He's not going to do anything."

Sid shrugged and slid the weapon into its holster. "Blue's still looking. He's not where he was, and it's a mess of boulders, lots of hollows and things."

Rafe sat rigidly.

"Patch Rafe to Blue's channel, too, Sid," Gary said. "Rafe, if that's your father, do you have any idea where he'd go? Would he be trying to hide? Would he try to disguise a thermal signature?"

"You said he's hypothermic, by the earlier scan," Rafe said.

"Yeah, but before that. Would he have had a strategy? Did he have any cold-weather or high-altitude experience? We need to narrow the search parameters."

Rafe tried to remember. "He did go hunting—I don't remember exactly where, but it was in the fall or winter. Not trophy hunting, really—or, he never brought trophies home. It was more to spend time with his peers, I think. Uh...we used to go for hikes when I was a little boy—I do remember being caught out in a storm with him once and he said get on the downwind side of some rocks, hunker down..."

"What was the wind direction when you first spotted that outlier?"

"Um...southeast..."

"So he'll have gone to the west side—also more cover from the lights, if he was trying to get farther away—and now he's on the drift-exposed side."

"Blue, look on at the west side of boulders, any hollows—"

"How big is your father?" asked a voice in Rafe's earbug.

"About a centimeter shorter than me," Rafe said. "That makes him...one meter eight, maybe?"

"Close enough. He'd curl up?"

"I don't know," Rafe said. "I think—"

"Wait—" A confused noise, then. "We found someone—dammit! He's really cold. Stiff. Not responding."

"Is he—?"

Gary turned. "The rule with hypothermia: they're not dead until they're warm and dead. Our people know how to handle it."

"Here's the video," Sid said. "Is that your father?"

The gaunt, gray, battered face, stiff as a corpse's, looked nothing like his father except for the familiar scar above his right eyebrow.

"Yes," Rafe said. He could not say more.

"First team's airborne with two females," Sid said. "Original course is not feasible; they'll go the alternate route..."

"Close to that fire—"

"Second team's loading...second team's away."

"Where are they going?" Rafe asked. "I want to be there when—"

"Security first," Gary said. "Pay attention to your station."

His station. Rafe dragged his mind back to the assignments he'd been given. The HAWATS satellite moved serenely on its orbit: no flashing blue lights, no sign that it was doing anything but tracking the winter storm moving across the landscape below. No other unidentified blips on the other screen.

He, Gary, and Sid kept watch; Gary and Sid both muttered into their mikes occasionally, but Rafe had no live circuits. He wanted to argue, but he knew it would do no good. A half hour later, Gary took his earbug out.

"Current status. The bad boys will be here for interrogation in a couple of hours. Your family have been transferred to long-range transport—a mobile medical facility that will be damned near impossible for whoever did this to locate. You have a choice. You can stay here with me and observe the interrogation, or Sid will take you to a transfer point; you'll meet your family in a secure location."

Much as he wanted to get his hands on those who had held and tormented his family, his first priority had to be their safety—and letting them know he was here and ready to do anything that had to be done.

"I'll go to my family, then," he said. "Where—"

"Rafe, I'm sorry; I can't tell you. This whole op has had some parameters neither of us knew about."

For a moment, his gut knotted into an icy ball. Was Gary betraying him?

"You don't expect a clandestine snatch to have a connection to the regional militia...if you're thinking this started with something internal to ISC, I'd be looking very far up the chain of command. Very far." Gary cocked his head. "You have any ideas yet?"

"There's a senior VP who's now listed as acting CEO," Rafe said. "I'd have to look at him, though it's hard to believe—"

"Lewis H. Parmina," Gary said.

"You know him?"

"I know of him. It's my business to know something about people at that level—"

"So you would have researched my father—"

"Of course. And before you get your back up, I asked you all those questions because I needed to know what you knew. And to double-check my data." He paused; Rafe said nothing. Gary went on. "Parmina, now...very interesting fellow. You know he was adopted?"

"Adopted? No."

"Yes. His official public bio mentions it; he's proud of rising from humble origins, apparently. I've found another source with more details. He was one of a group of children found alive on a derelict spaceship—he was very young, barely more than a toddler, like most of the others. There were no adults on the ship; the presumption was that they'd been taken by slavers who didn't want to bother with the children. It was an ISC repair ship that found them; since the ship's AI was ruined, and its beacon nonstandard, the children were put up for adoption through the company's own internal site. The Parminas both worked for ISC; they took Lew and a girl. The girl died young; the Parminas died when Lew was in university."

"Did he kill them?"

"The girl, certainly not. He was only about seven; she was older, and she contracted whitefever while off at camp one summer. The parents...I never looked into it, tell you the truth. It was an accident, is what the report says. He went to work for ISC shortly after that."

"When I was a child," Rafe said, "I remember meeting him at the office. My father wasn't CEO yet; he was somewhere far up in the hierarchy, though I don't recall what. Lew was his personal assistant. When I got out of that place—" He still hated to say the name. "—when I went to college, Lew used to come talk to me. My father was so angry, he said. He tried to give me advice."

"And he ended up a senior vice president, in line for the top job," Gary said. "Very convenient, having the CEO's son disgraced and out of the picture."

"I can't believe—"

"Oh, come on, Rafe. Surely you don't have any lingering pockets of naïveté. Yes, there are exceptionally talented orphans who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rise like oil above the common water. But in our culture? Where everyone knows that birth matters, especially in the upper echelons?"

"I never heard anything against him," Rafe said. "He had that smooth polish all successful climbers have, but that means nothing."

"What I find interesting," Gary said, "is that I can't find any flecks on the gloss. Other than a daughter with psychological problems, that is. Was that you, by the way?"

"Me? No, I had nothing to do with her. I suppose he wanted me kept away as a bad influence."

"Or because you might notice things," Gary said. "She has never...what is the phrase?...lived up to her potential."

"What does this have to do with...?"

"With your family? Little. With Parmina's...a lot, I suspect. There's also his wife. Good family—a social climb for him, but he was already well up in the company at that point, and obviously on his way. As a girl, a lively girl, not exactly wild but definitely headstrong. Finished university and graduate school, was headed, her family thought, for a career in genetic engineering. And then she fell in love with Parmina and married and...her older brother says the lights went out. She's a social paragon now. She hardly sees her own family."

"So you think he's the villain."

"My research shows the man is ruthless in business, seriously into micromanagement and control, and a master planner. There certainly could be someone else—perhaps someone who wanted to detach your father from Parmina—but Parmina has all the characteristics necessary to pull something like this. If he thought your father was softening toward you, might bring you home and install you in Parmina's place—"

"That wouldn't happen," Rafe said.

"It's what he thinks, not the reality, that drives him," Gary said. "So my point is, I don't want to transport you directly to your parents, not this instant. We need to be sure the op wasn't compromised at all; we need to keep all the clients safe. Can you be patient a little longer?"

Rafe struggled for a moment, then managed a tight smile. "I am patience on a tombstone," he said.

"As long as it's the right person under the tombstone," Gary said.