Decisions, decisions.
"I"m keeping count, you know," said Chris.
The Doctor picked up a dark-brown fedora. "Hmm?"
"And this is the twenty-seventh shop we"ve been in."
The Doctor popped the hat on his head. "What do you think?"
"It doesn"t go with what you"re wearing," Roz pointed out. She was sitting on a padded seat nearby, wearing a red and purple dress and a pair of sandals.
She was also wearing an enormous, wide-rimmed straw hat, festooned with bird-of-paradise feathers. The price tag hung down in front of her face. She flicked it away. "And since you never wear anything else, you"d better buy something that matches."
The Doctor stood in front of a full-length mirror, fingering the crumpled material of his clothes. "I don"t always wear the same thing," he protested.
"What, you"ve had that jacket cloned?" said Roz.
"It"s not the number of shops I mind," said Chris. "So much as the fact that neither of you ever buy anything."
Roz waved a red and grey sleeve at him. "What about this jacket?"
"I like like this jacket," protested the Doctor. this jacket," protested the Doctor.
Roz put a finger to her lips. Chris looked around. A shop robot was meandering up to them, rolling on a single ball under its conical base. "You want jackets?" it murmured.
"Hats," said the Doctor.
"We got hats. What do you want?"
Chris sat down, sighing, as the Doctor and the robot got into a complex argument about synthetic rabbit felt. At least he hadn"t been stuck with carrying the shopping bags, since there weren"t any.
He looked at the printed map of the galleria, feeling his heart sink. It took up more than a block of the overcity. There were 229 five hundred shops. More than a hundred of them were listed under clothing, footwear and millinery clothing, footwear and millinery. "I"m doomed," he said.
"No," Roz was explaining to another of the robots. "What I want is genuine leather. Yes, these shoes are lovely, but I want actual tanned dead animal skin. Upstairs? Chris, can I borrow that map?"
He pa.s.sed it over. "I"m definitely doomed," he said.
The Doctor wandered over as Roz was putting the outrageous feathered hat back. "And a good thing too," he said. "That"s far more Benny"s style than yours. Would you believe that robot had never even heard of Jimmy Stewart?"
"Do you think we"re attracting enough attention?"
"Why don"t you buy that hat?" said the Doctor.
"Where now?"
"Imports, apparently," said Roz. "The only way to get genuine leather shoes is to have them sent over from the Crow Nation."
"Bison leather?" said the Doctor.
"Apparently."
"Here we go again," said Chris, trailing after them.
Groenewegen"s department store filled twenty floors of the galleria, crammed with merchandise, music, mirrors. On floor seventeen there was a beautiful vase, not an antique, but a new work of art.
They took the escalators up from the headwear department on floor six, pa.s.sing through scents and bathroom accessories. Roz identified the smells almost subconsciously as they rode those moving stairs. Sandalwood, rose, lavender, smoke, peppermint, frangipani.
It was like being inside a HeadStop sim. So much sensory input you won"t be able to think, they promised. Guaranteed to shock that monkeymind. Your head will stop or your money back.
She could picture the vase, made from electrically fired silicon, some new technique from the colonies. Swirls of hot blue colour trapped in gla.s.s so clear it was almost invisible.
Up through music, sabasaba clashing with the Hithles. Roz had tried a few of those HeadStops after Martle had died. After she"d killed Martle. She"d tried a lot of things in those heavy days 230 before she"d found Doc Dantalion and his memory-cutting knife.
Anything to replace the worn, jumping and stuttering sim of the moment she"d thrown that vibroknife, puncturing his eye, his skull, his miserable crooked life.
The vase, in a hundred pieces, like an eggsh.e.l.l. She could see it so clearly, now, riding up and up towards the roof, where the light would break in, letting the light in, cutting through her skin to let the light in, like having her excised memory forced back in by Dantalion, smiling an insect smile.
She couldn"t move. She couldn"t breathe. She could breathe, but only through one nostril. She needed to open her mouth. She wanted to use her hands to pry her mouth open so she could get a decent breath, but she couldn"t move.
She could move, rolling over, blood pouring down her face.
Her head was surrounded by pieces of gla.s.s, blue and clear.
"Here," said the Doctor. He handed her a clean hanky.
"s.h.i.t!" she said, catapulting off the floor and feeling her neck, her head still full of the image of cutting, slicing through the tough walls of the vein and artery in her throat.
"It"s all right," said the Doctor. He was quivering with energy, pale as a ghost. "Chris! Look for someone with a matching nosebleed."
"I"m on it," said the boy. "I see her!" He pushed through the crowd.
Roz looked at the vase. "Don"t worry about it," the Doctor said.
"It"ll go on my credit card. Chris will be pleased."
"What?"
"We bought something."
Chris pushed through the crowd, using size and determination to get people out of his way. He broke free of the circle of onlookers.
There! The girl he"d spotted, fighting her way through the crowd with panicked movements knocking people and shopping bags flying. Chris thundered after her, shouting "Stop thief! Stop thief!"
The girl glanced back she was so young, no more than sixteen! and hurled herself down a narrow pa.s.sageway. Chris 231 pa.s.sed a VIEWING AREA sign as he followed her, stumbling over a cleaning robot.
The girl ran smack into a crowd of tourists, standing about in a cool blue lounge, staring out at the overcity. She looked back once more. Chris saw a flash of dark eyes, desperately afraid.
"No!" he shouted.
The girl hurled herself at one of the great rectangular windows.
She bounced off the hypergla.s.s, flung backward into a row of chairs. They scattered in all directions as the girl tumbled down.
Chris was running up when someone else grabbed her. The girl kicked and screamed, but couldn"t get loose.
It was Iaomnet. She looked at Chris. He looked at her.
"Oh no!" they both shouted. "Not you again!"
An extremely nervous truce found them sitting in Iaomnet"s rented apt half an hour later, the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin still unconscious after the double-eye had pressed a Sleepybye derm against her neck.
It was a low-level, grungy room. The Doctor had sent Chris to the level"s common room to filch enough chairs for all of them.
"You were following us," said Roz.
Iaomnet shook her head. "I"m off your case. I was following her. Suspected Brotherhood operative."
"You know about them?" said Chris, surprised.
"Of course. Not much, but we know they"re there."
The a.s.sa.s.sin was asleep on the narrow bed. A thin girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, with pale skin and tightly curly hair.
Iaomnet tilted back her head, pinched her eye open, and used a retinal scanner. "Right," she said. "I"m going to run this through records. It"ll take a few minutes."
"Wake her up," said the Doctor.
"You don"t want to give her a second chance."
"No," said the Doctor. "This won"t work if she"s unconscious."
He took something out of his jacket pocket. It was an insect no, Iaomnet saw, it was a bot in the shape of an insect. Like a moth. "What is it?" she said.
"A shutterfly."
"You didn"t get that at Groenewegen"s," said Roz.
232.
"No. I appropriated it from a couple of JayJaxians who were trying to extract a psi embryo from me."
"Huh?" said Chris. "When did that happen?"
"Oh, ages ago," said the Doctor. "It"s a long story. I thought I"d better keep it handy. The JayJaxians use it for interrogating telepaths."
"I"d prefer a standard interrogation," said Iaomnet.
"I"m sure she would, as well," said the Doctor. "Wake her up."
Iaomnet screwed up her mouth, thinking about it. "Give it a try," she said. "But she"s my collar, all right?"
"She doesn"t go with what you"re wearing," said the Doctor, as Iaomnet pressed another derm against the girl"s neck.
The a.s.sa.s.sin blinked, shaking all over. The shutterfly lifted from the Doctor"s hand, electric wings sparkling as it came to life.
It settled on his forehead for a moment. He closed his eyes, folding his hands in his lap, and suddenly relaxed, so completely and utterly that he almost fell out of the chair.
The shutterfly lifted back into the air. The a.s.sa.s.sin was just coming around, sitting up, trying to get her bearings. Iaomnet drew her stunner. The instant she got her act together, she"d be dangerous again.
The shutterfly jumped on to the girl"s face. She shouted with surprise and flapped her hands at the thing, trying to knock it off.
It crawled around the back of her head as she s.n.a.t.c.hed at its wings.
She went stiff, suddenly, and fell sideways on the bed. Iaomnet craned her neck. The shutterfly was settling down on the back of the girl"s neck, its glittering wings folding.
She had a horrible, sudden vision of the thing pushing one of those tube-tongues into the girl"s brain.
Kuleya found herself in some kind of house. A very old-fashioned house, all wood and rugs and staircases. It reminded her of the boss"s house Don"t think about that!
"You catch on quickly," said someone.
233.
She spun. It was the Doctor. She hurled the biggest orchestra orchestra strike strike at him she could manage. at him she could manage.
He caught it with some alien technique she didn"t recognize, the blast of sound swirling around him like lightning and earthing into the carpet.
"This could easily become tediously lengthy and symbolic," he said, "so let"s not mess about."
Kuleya had had training to deal with this sort of thing. She thought hard of the desert, the place where she"d grown up, the water reclamation plant where her father had worked.
"Tch, tch, tch," said the Doctor. "You don"t define the environment. I do." He walked towards her.
"Stay away from me!" said Kuleya. She didn"t like the pitch of her voice. "I"m just a kid, you leave me alone!"
"Just a kid," said the Doctor, "fourteen years old, sold to the Brotherhood..." He tipped his head to one side. "When you were seven. You manifested psi powers early. Or did they track you down through a genetic database, and pick you up before you even began to read minds?"
Kuleya screamed and ran up the stairs.
"Got her," said Iaomnet, looking at her DataStream. She paused. "Got her twice."
"With a retina pattern?" said Chris.
"Zanape Kuleya," said Iaomnet. "Deceased. Died seven years ago, at the age of seven, in an industrial accident. And Tsitsi Kuleya, indentured colonist."
"Identical twins?" said Chris.
"No. Not with a retina pattern. Guess who Ms Kuleya is indentured to."