Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

“Yes,” said Jin, lifting the cage he was lugging to show them off. “Jinnie and most of her children.”

“Handsome,” said Vorlynkin, inspecting Gyre, chained to his perch, from a prudent distance. “How do you keep it from eating your chickens?” Galli and Twig, released from their transport box by Lieutenant Johannes, ran past his knees, flapping their wings and squawking, then slowed to stare in apparent amazement at the grass patch before them, warm and green-smelling in the noon sun.

“Well, the big ones sort of defend themselves. I had to keep Gyre chained to his perch when the chicks were littler. I’ll have to keep him chained here anyway, till he figures out this is where he belongs.” Jin watched as Armsman Roic, with due care, unloaded a stack of terrariums onto the shelf they’d brought from Jin’s refuge. Tucked up against the back of the house and sheltered by its eaves, concealed by the house, the tall stone garden walls, and all the trees and bushes, the shelf and its contents would be almost as safe as in his tent-shelter at Suze-san’s.

“Cats and mice together as well?” Vorkynkin went on. “What next, lions and lambs?”

“Rats,” Jin corrected austerely. “Though I wish I might have a lion… ! Anyway, Lucky’s too old and lazy to bother the big ones, and I keep the little ones in cages with tops.” He looked around with satisfaction. “Now that I have all my creatures back, you can keep Lady Murasaki,” he told Mina generously.

She made a face. “But Lucky’s half mine. Because she wasn’t yours to start with, you know, even if you did steal her away.”

“I saved her from Aunt Lorna,” Jin reminded her.

Lucky curled around Vorlynkin’s ankles, rubbing her chin to scent-mark him as her new property and leaving a trail of hairs plastered to his formerly-tidy hakama trousers. He bent rather absently to scritch her spine, and she arched shamelessly under his hand.

Mina addressed him anxiously, “Oh sir, can we keep Lucky inside? Till she knows this is home? Cats do get lost, you know!”

Looking down into Mina’s upturned face, Vorlynkin said reluctantly, “Is she housebroken?”

Mina nodded vigorously. “I can fix her cat pan in my room!”

“The washroom off the kitchen would likely do as well,” he told her. “You and Jin… well, yes, I expect it will be good for you and your brother to look after her.”

Miles-san strolled past. “All shipshape here, Jin? Then I need Johannes back.” He added to Consul Vorlynkin, “We’ll be in your tight-room for a time. A lot of detail-work still to do.” At his gesture, Roic rose and took up what seemed his accustomed place at his shoulder.

“Is your scheme going to fly, then?” Vorlynkin asked. Miles-san nodded. Vorlynkin grimaced.

Miles-san returned a wry smile. “Flexibility, Vorlynkin. That’s the key.” He trod indoors, swinging his cane. Jin and Vorlynkin stared after him.

Vorlynkin voiced Jin’s own half-formed thought: “Was that supposed to be reassuring?”

Roic figured midnight would have been the right time for a body-snatching expedition, possibly in the middle of a thunderstorm. Among other things, an electrical storm might help account for any power-flicker anomalies they left in their wake. But there were no suitable cold fronts predicted any time soon, and so Roic found himself, Raven, and m’lord, with Johannes driving the lift van again, turning in at the impressive entrance of the NewEgypt facility at high noon. It was only in Roic’s imagination that the dog-headed statues flanking the main gate seemed to follow them with their painted eyes.

Johannes was armed with a couple of little floral arrangements in water tubes and a script, but he wasn’t called upon to deploy either; the human gate guard waved them right through.

“What t’ hell,” said Roic.

“It’s visiting hours,” said m’lord mildly. “They aren’t going to harass their patrons’ kin, nor their potential future customers coming in for their tour, at this time of day. This isn’t a military installation. All NewEgypt security has to worry about is theft—which is more likely to come from an employee—vandalism, which isn’t likely to occur in broad daylight, and maybe something like the N.H.L.L.—who would probably wait for that midnight thunderstorm you wanted. Seems like their style, somehow.”

Roic settled back with a disgruntled, “Huh.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his somewhat-too-tight hospital uniform, XL , scavenged by Raven and Medtech Tanaka, possibly from the same source as some of their medical supplies now laid in and waiting back at Madame Suze’s. M’lord wore a similar set, XS , a bit too loose, with the sleeve and trouser ends rolled up. Raven’s set fit perfectly. Johannes was dressed in what Roic had been assured were unexceptionable Kibou street clothes, tidy and middle-class.

The van slipped past both the pyramid-topped building’s lobby, fronted by an inviting faux-Egyptian garden with stone sphinxes, and the sign pointing to the loading docks for pre-frozen patron intake, hidden on the more utilitarian backside, then on around to a discreet side entrance meant for employees.

“All right, this is where we unload,” m’lord said. “Don’t look hurried, but don’t waste time.”

Trying not to look hurried, not to mention harried, Roic helped Raven open the back of the lift van and slide out the float pallet. A stack of boxes, emptied of their medical supplies, concealed the long shape in what Roic thought of as the freezer bag beneath. The body bag, designed for short-term transport, would, if left sealed, keep its contents at cryo-temperature for a couple of days, Raven had explained to him. Roic had to grant, it was a hell of a lot less bulky and eye-catching than a portable cryochamber. Johannes drove off to find the visitor parking and wait, and m’lord led the pallet and its handlers inside through automatic doors that parted for them without protest.

M’lord checked the holomap on his wristcom and led off through a succession of corridors. They encountered a trio of gossiping employees and an elderly couple, clearly visitors, on their way to the cafeteria that Roic smelled in passing, but none spared the pallet a glance. Roic carefully did not look back. Two more turns and a short ride down a freight lift tube, and they were pacing along an underground corridor that stopped at a double door, the first locked barrier they’d encountered.

M’lord opened one of the boxes, whipped out his special tool kit, ImpSec standard issue with upgrades, and knelt to the electronic lock. He muttered unreassuringly, “God, it’s been a while. Hope I haven’t lost my touch…” He puttered for a minute or two, while Roic jittered and kept glancing over his shoulder, and Raven looked bland. The doors parted so soundlessly, Roic was taken by surprise. M’lord looked smug. “Ah, good. I’d hoped not to leave any evidence by damaging the lock.” He waved them through like some demented mâitre d’hôtel escorting diners to the best table in the room, and closed the doors gently again when the pallet had passed through.

The new corridor was much darker. And, Roic was surprised to see, unfinished, which made him worry about encountering workmen, but he supposed a construction crew would have lights that would warn them. Beneath the pyramidal building lay three sub-levels. Around the core stack of utilities on each level, four concentric corridors extended outward in squares, with radial connecting halls at the midpoint of each side. Too regular to be called a maze, it nonetheless seemed to Roic that it would be easy to get turned around down here. So just how disturbing it had been to m’lord to be lost for hours in a true maze, with no light?