Harry Turtledove - In High Places

"Don't thank us yet. We haven't done anything," Pedro Olivo said. "But we will. You can count on that. We will."

"You may want to monitor your computers for people dumping data," Dad said. "You may want to do that as soon as you can, too."

"Yes." Luisa Javier nodded. "A lot of people will be scrubbing their systems, won't they? Well, they can try." There was a never-ending race between programs that erased and overwrote data and ones that read what had been erased and written over. Annette didn't know which side was ahead right now. Someone like Luisa Javier would have to.

"Some of the people involved in this—this filth will be in high places." Pedro Olivo looked as if he wanted to spit. "To try to save themselves, they will say you are lying."

"If you move fast enough, you can catch them," Annette said. "They have a base in Madrid in the alternate where my family was working. You should be able to get evidence there. And they've got the manor in that other alternate. I don't think there are any proper Crosstime Traffic people in that world. If you go there, though, take lots of people, and take guns."

Pedro Olivo spoke harshly in Spanish. Luisa Javier answered in the same language. Then she sighed and turned back to Annette. "This is going to cause Crosstime Traffic a lot of trouble, you know," she said in English.

"I thought of that," Annette said. TV and the Net and newspapers liked nothing better than blowing the lid off corporate shenanigans. She couldn't imagine anything much juicier than this. Exploiting the natives from who could say how many low-tech alternates, masters—and slaves—from the home timeline, murders . . . "But those people caused me a lot of trouble. I'm just lucky I wasn't stuck there for good."

"Yes, I understand that," the head of security said. "I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into, that's all." Her cell phone rang. She listened, then went, "Thanks," and put it away. She looked at Annette. "They're at that building. The chamber isn't there, but they've got evidence it stops there. And they've arrested somebody who I think is the man you got past before you came here."

"Didn't he run?" Annette said in amazement.

"Sometimes people are stupid," Luisa Javier said. "Sometimes they're smart—for a while. Not smart enough, usually, though, and not for long enough. Now it's payback time." That sounded more vengeful than Annette felt most of the time. Today? Today she liked it fine.

230

After Khadija disappeared, the people who ran the manor tried to act as if everything were normal. Maybe they even made most of the slaves think so. Not Jacques. Maybe the way they'd grilled him made him notice changes in routine more than he would have otherwise. Or maybe the guards just weren't so good at hiding how worried they really were.

They kept going up and down the stairs to the subbasement room where the transposition chamber came and went. They hadn't done that very much when things were running smoothly. They didn't look happy when they came up, either. Something down there was wrong, badly wrong.

Jacques was tempted to ask the guards what it was. He fought the temptation. Fighting temptation was supposed to be a virtue. Jesus and Henri would have approved of it. That wasn't why he did it, though. He didn't want to make the guards pay special attention to him again. The last time they did, he'd got away with one needle stuck in his arm. He had the feeling he wouldn't be so lucky if they glanced his way again.

Going out to work on the road seemed a relief. The guards swaggered and strutted. "Let's see the savages bother us now," one of them said. "This time, we taught them a lesson they'll remember for years."

No doubt he was right. But the locals had done damage here, too. The almonds and the olives and the vines and the rest of the crops would be a long time getting over their raid. If this were an ordinary farm, one that depended on what it grew, Jacques would have worried about going hungry. But it got food from elsewhere, as it got people from elsewhere.

Or it had. Jacques wasn't so sure it did any more. By the way the guards kept going down those stairs, maybe things had stopped coming. Did that mean just food? How much ammunition for their repeating muskets did they have? If the locals tried attacking again, could the guards rout them so easily? If they couldn't, what would happen then? Nothing pretty—Jacques was sure of that.

But he was also sure the locals wouldn't be back right away. For all he knew, they were still running. The copper-skinned tribes across the Atlantic couldn't face the muskets and cavalry the Muslims and his own people were using against them. The fight here was even more unfair.

For all the guards' bluster, Jacques wasn't the only slave who saw things had changed. "Why are they frightened?" Dumnorix asked him when none of the men in mottled clothes stood close by. "They took you in. They did things to you. What did you learn?"

He wanted to rise up against the guards. Jacques saw that right away. Dumnorix was a warrior, first, last, and always. If he saw a chance, he would fight—and he was looking for that chance.

"You know how you came here?" Jacques said. Dumnorix nodded. Jacques thought hard before he spoke again. He and Dumnorix didn't have enough words in common to make talking about the transposition chamber easy. "They, uh, bring things here in that box."

"Yes, yes." Dumnorix sounded impatient. "And so?"

"If that box is, uh, broken, then they cannot bring things," Jacques said. "Cannot bring . . ." He broke down. Dumnorix didn't understand about bullets. In a lot of ways, he was a savage himself. Jacques tried again: "Cannot bring arrows for thunder-sticks. Cannot bring food."

Dumnorix's eyes were the blue of a lake under a summer sky. They flashed fire now. "We can take them!" he said. His hands tightened on the handle of his shovel till his knuckles whitened. It might have been the neck of the guard he hated most.

"Jesus and Henri, be careful!" Jacques whispered. "They still have, uh, arrows." He hoped Dumnorix was following him. The redhead would get himself killed if he didn't watch out. He'd get a lot of other people killed, too. "For all I know, more will start coming tomorrow, too."

"Maybe." But Dumnorix didn't believe it. Jacques could see that. Those fiery blue eyes flicked towards a guard. "They don't think they can get more. Otherwise they wouldn't be so worried."

He might have been right. Even if he was, what difference did it make? "They aren't worried about us," Jacques said. "They're worried about enemies from their own people."

"So much the better." No, Dumnorix wasn't listening. All he could think of were battles—battles with him as a hero, as the hero. "We can take them by surprise."

"How?" Jacques asked. Dumnorix waved that aside. It didn't bother him a bit. Jacques wanted to take his own pick and bash the redheaded man over the head. He wondered if even that would help. He wondered if anything would.

When Annette got back to the United States, all she wanted to do was pick up the pieces of her life. She knew she would have to start at Ohio State a year later than she'd planned. Mom and Dad had made sure she could do that. It wasn't her fault she'd missed the start of the semester. She'd learned some things at the manor she never would have at the university. Whether they were things she wanted to know . . .

She wondered what she would do with herself till fall semester rolled around again. That turned out not to be a problem. Wondering, in fact, turned out to be foolish. Every police agency in the country seemed to want to talk to her.

It had been snowing in Ohio. When her plane landed in Seattle, it was raining instead. Variety, she thought. A cop met her in the baggage-claim area. She would have recognized him as a cop even if he weren't holding a sign with her name printed on it. He was built like a slightly undersized linebacker. He wore a suit that would have been almost stylish five years earlier. He looked like a man who'd seen too many nasty things, and who knew he would be seeing more.