Trickster. Part 4

Which was why Gretchen had to show up with a wad of gum in her mouth and a toolbox in her hand.

Gretchen set the pad on the desk and pretended to click computer keys while the pad did its work. She was getting nervous. Vince Mays could walk over and check out what she was doing at any moment, and getting her a.s.s off the farm would be problematic if she were discovered. Gretchen shot Mays a covert glance, but he seemed more interested in his own screen than in hers.

"Don't forget the copycat," Ben reminded her.

Swearing softly, Gretchen fished a flat, black box from her toolkit. Red lights skittered around the edge when she pressed the activation b.u.t.ton. After a moment, a small screen displayed the message, Two hundred fifteen local frequencies detected Two hundred fifteen local frequencies detected, along with a list of numbers. Please indicate which frequency you wish to copy Please indicate which frequency you wish to copy.

Gretchen ran a stylus down the entire list to select all of them. Working Working, the screen said. Gretchen set the copycat back in her toolbox and turned back to the computer pad. It was still breaking into the mainframe. Her hands were shaking now and she forced them back into steadiness. She peeked at Mays. He was looking directly at her. Gretchen's mouth went dry around the gum.

"What?" she asked.

"Just wondering what you're up to over there," Mays said with a smile. "Will it take long?"

"Shouldn't."

"Maybe I can help." He started to get to his feet. Gretchen's heart leaped into her throat. If he got a look at her screen, he'd see she hadn't even logged in yet and would know something was up.

"Nuh uh." She held up both hands, partly to indicate negation and partly to block his view of her screen. "Company policy. If I get help from someone who isn't a Compulink employee, the union will have conniptions."

"Funny," Mays frowned. "I've helped Compulink people before."

"New policy." Gretchen rolled her eyes. "You know how bureaucrats and bean counters get."

"Around here everyone's a bean counter," Mays said with a grin. At Gretchen's blank look, he added, "Cocoa beans?"

Gretchen forced a laugh, though she was ready to bolt for the door. "Guess I'm not very quick on the uptake today." She blew a gum bubble to cover the pounding of her heart. What the h.e.l.l was taking Ben's program so long? "I better see what trouble I can get into on your network, then."

She turned back to her terminal, pretending to work but actually holding her breath. Mays didn't come up behind her. After a moment, she snuck another peek. His attention was back on his work.

At last--at last-- last--the pad flashed. The holographic screen on the terminal flickered and Gretchen found she had root access.

"Got it," she murmured. "And next time you should be doing this, Benny-boy."

"I would have," Ben said in her ear, "except I'm the only one who knows how to tap the communication system and reroute Markovi's calls. Okay, here's what you do next."

As Ben spoke, printed instructions scrolled across the bottom of Gretchen's eye--her ocular implant at work. She did as instructed, accessing the section of the mainframe that oversaw the farm's automated equipment and uploading a single program. Then she downloaded several files of information and she reached into her toolbox to check the copycat.

"Both jobs are done," she muttered to Ben. "I'm on my way out."

"Great job," he said. "I'll tell Kendi."

"You're all set," Gretchen announced to Mays and held her pad out to him. "Be a pal and thumb this service acknowledgment, would you? The company doesn't care who thumbs the thing, and I don't want to track down that guy Markovi again."

"Sure thing." Mays pressed his thumb to Gretchen's pad and his hand brushed hers. "It's about lunch time," he added, looking straight into her eyes. "You want to catch a bite or something?"

"Yeah, sure." Mays turned back to his computer with an air of "nothing ventured, nothing gained" and Gretchen let herself out of the room, heart pounding again. A few moments later, she was back in her groundcar and winding her way back to the entry gate. Slaves continued their work among the cacao trees, and Gretchen wondered if one of them was Bedj-ka. A grubby boy who was loading a gravity sled with seed pods paused in his labor long enough to wipe the sweat from his face. Gretchen found her appet.i.te for chocolate had disappeared. At last she reached the entry gate.

The dashboard computer chimed and Gretchen jumped, certain she had been discovered.

"Thank you," chirped the computer, "for visiting Sunnytree Farms."

Gretchen slapped the screen to shut it off and sped back toward the city. Once she was a safe distance away, however, she pulled onto an empty side road and peeled the Compulink sign off both car doors. She tapped one corner of each sign, and both promptly erased themselves. This procedure she repeated with her Compulink holobadge. It vanished, leaving behind a blank chip. Then Gretchen skinned out of her jumpsuit, revealing ordinary s.h.i.+rt and trousers, and sprayed the cloth with the contents of a small flask. The jumpsuit disintegrated into dust which blew away in the slight breeze.

Safely anonymous and sure no one was following her, Gretchen drove into the city, returned the groundcar to the rental company, and took a bus back to the s.p.a.ceport. But only when she was safely aboard the Poltergeist Poltergeist did she finally breathe a sigh of relief. Gretchen trotted into the galley--she felt she deserved a shot of something that would burn all the way down--and found Lucia working at one of the tables. A set of slave bands, one shackle for the wrist and one for the ankle, lay open on the table in front of her along with a set of microtools. did she finally breathe a sigh of relief. Gretchen trotted into the galley--she felt she deserved a shot of something that would burn all the way down--and found Lucia working at one of the tables. A set of slave bands, one shackle for the wrist and one for the ankle, lay open on the table in front of her along with a set of microtools.

"Did you get the frequency?" Lucia asked.

Gretchen set the copycat on the table. "Got a couple hundred of them, along with the tracking files. It's your happy job to figure out which frequency the right one."

"Not a problem." She reached for the copycat with her scarred hands. "It'll take me a couple hours, but it's just tedious, not hard."

"Better you than me." Gretchen stretched. "When does everything go foom foom at Sunnya.s.s?" at Sunnya.s.s?"

Lucia switched on the copycat. "Two days. Then the real fun begins."

"Your technician said this bug was fixed!" Markovi roared. "What the h.e.l.l's wrong with your piece-of-s.h.i.+t company?"

Gretchen kept her head down and her cap pulled low as she and Lucia opened the back doors of the van. Ben had already exited from the driver's side. Markovi's face was beet-red beneath blond hair. Joe stood behind his boss, doing his best to loom threateningly and succeeding nicely.

"Don't worry, sir," Ben said placatingly as he shut the van door. It had a Compulink logo emblazoned on it, and the trio of "troubleshooters" all wore blue Compulink jumpsuits, caps, and holo-badges. Ben's little chip had rerouted Markovi's frantic call, allowing the Children to answer Sunnytree's summons in Compulink's place. "We'll track down the problem and fix it right away."

"You G.o.ddammed well better!" Markovi snarled. "I've got six dozen hands who can't work because the G.o.ddammed sprinkler system keeps spraying G.o.ddammed fertilizer every G.o.ddammed ten minutes."

"Are your hands all right?" Ben asked. "Raw fertilizer will cause burns after--"

"Don't you think I know that?" Markovi snapped. "My hands are all sitting G.o.ddammed idle in their G.o.ddammed quarters, and they'll have to stay there until the G.o.ddammed problem which your G.o.ddammed company said was G.o.ddammed fixed. I'm more worried about those cacao trees. They're G.o.ddammed delicate, and too much fertilizer will kill them, you understand me? G.o.ddammed kill kill them. I'll sue Compulink for every G.o.ddammed credit you've got!" them. I'll sue Compulink for every G.o.ddammed credit you've got!"

Ben nodded, and Gretchen wondered if he was suppressing an urge to punch the man right in the middle of his G.o.ddammed face. G.o.d only knew Gretchen wanted to do it. Not only did the man enslave children and yell at people, he had permanently ruined her taste for chocolate. The last, in Gretchen's mind, justified capital punishment.

But Ben only made soothing noises at Markovi while Lucia and Gretchen clambered down from the rear of the van and grabbed hold of an enormous crate, also decorated with the Compulink logo. The tool belt around Gretchen's waist made an unfamiliar weight and a heavy flashlight banged against her thigh. She kept her cap low and face down in case anyone recognized her as the original technician, though if that happened, Gretchen would simply claim that she had done the original job to the best of her ability and was now on the team that would unsnarl the problem. It would be a better bet than trying to explain away a disguise if anyone saw through it. Harenn, of course, had wanted to come along the moment Ben intercepted Markovi's frantic call, had even been willing to remove her veil, but Kendi had vetoed the entire idea.

"You're emotionally too close to the entire affair, Harenn," he had said, "and you might not make good decisions--like trying to throttle Markovi again. It'll have to be Ben, Lucia, and Gretchen." And in the end, Harenn had agreed.

Lucia tapped a pad mounted to her side of the crate and the container floated upward two or three centimeters, allowing her and Gretchen to guide it out of the back of the van. Once clear of the rear doors, the crate drifted toward the ground and hovered just above the gravel driveway.

Ben waited for a pause in Markovi's tirade. "We'll take care of everything, sir," he said. "We have enough parts in that crate to build you an entirely new system if we have to, free of charge."

"Just fix the G.o.ddammed glitch," Markovi growled.

"Of course, sir," Ben said meekly.

Markovi stormed toward the office building, leaving his goon behind. Ben turned to him. "So can you show us the equipment we need to look at?"

Gretchen, of course, remembered where everything was, but she didn't want to call undue attention to herself.

Joe folded his arms. He loomed almost a full head taller than Ben. "Computer equipment or sprinkler equipment?" he said in a heavy voice.

"Both," Ben replied. "Once we fix the computer, we'll have to give the sprinkler system a once-over to make sure everything's okay."

Without a word, Joe turned and walked away. Ben shot Gretchen and Lucia a glance before hurrying after him. The two women gave the crate a shove, and it slid easily forward. They guided it into the huge equipment barn Gretchen had visited and toward one of the equipment bays. Pipes clanked and gurgled, and pumps chugged steadily.

"All the sprinkler equipment goes through here," Joe yelled over the noise. "The equipment mainframe is through that door." He pointed, and Gretchen recognized the room she had worked in earlier.

"Got it!" Ben yelled back. "Thanks! We'll get right to work!"

Joe gave a curt nod and left. Gretchen, who was bent over the crate, let out a sigh of relief. Ben took hold of her arm.

"Go!" he shouted. "We'll keep things busy down here!"

Gretchen gave a smart salute and trotted out of the equipment bay, tool belt and flashlight dragging at her hips. Once the equipment noise had faded, she tapped her earpiece.

"Myra?" she said.

"On-line," said the Poltergeist's Poltergeist's computer. computer.

"Track copied frequency 'Bedj-ka one' and upload tracking information to my ocular implant."

"Working," said the computer. A moment later, a small red arrow popped into Gretchen's field of vision along with a digital readout that said, 107 meters 107 meters. The arrow pointed to Gretchen's left. Lucia's copycat had worked as advertised, detecting and copying all the broadcast frequencies used on the farm--including the one that tracked the movements of the individual slaves. Like most slave-owners, Sunnytree used slave shackles and a computer to keep its slaves from escaping. Each set of wrist- and ankle bands continually broadcast its whereabouts to the main computer and delivered a debilitating electric shock if the wearer left the boundaries of the farm. Most wristbands also monitored conversation, delivering punis.h.i.+ng shocks if the slave spoke words such as escape escape or or revolt revolt. Lucia had isolated Bedj-ka's frequency and uploaded it to the Poltergeist's Poltergeist's computer. computer.

Gretchen, figuring that the slaves probably weren't housed in the equipment barn, hurried toward the exit. The arrow slowly turned until it was pointing down and the numbers went up, telling Gretchen that Bedj-ka was a hundred and thirty meters behind her now.

Outside, Gretchen paused a moment to let her eyes adjust to the hard sunlight. The smell of cacao tree mulch and cacao blossoms hung heavily on the air. The edge of the green, leafy cacao tree grove was about fifteen paces ahead of Gretchen, and she caught sight of a bunch of metal pipes rising up from the ground. A moment later, liquid sprayed from the tops of the pipes and Gretchen caught the sharp scent of chemical fertilizer. Markovi's glitch.

No one else was in sight. Markovi had said the hands--slaves--were all in their quarters, and Gretchen guessed the office staff was all inside with the air conditioning. Sweating beneath the golden sun, she trotted around the perimeter of the equipment barn until the arrow pointed straight ahead and the number ticker informed her that Bedj-ka was only seventy-three meters ahead of her. A concrete pathway lead to a series of what appeared to be large white bunkhouses, and Gretchen a.s.sumed they were the slave quarters. The arrow steered her to the second bunkhouse. Gretchen shut off the tracker, then rapped on the whitewashed door. It opened on a middle-aged man with a whipcord body and a leathery, burnt-in suntan. A silvery band encircled his wrist.

"Yes, Mistress?" he said.

Gretchen tried not to grimace at the man's deferential tone and the t.i.tle he had bestowed on her. "I'm part of the team that's here to fix the sprinkler and fertilizer system," she said. "We need a runner to help us out, and Mr. Markovi told me I could find a kid named Jerry here. He's supposed to come with me."

"Yes, Mistress." The man vanished into the bunkhouse. Gretchen tried to peer inside, but the interior was too dim to make out more than shadows and shapes. She did get the sense of a large s.p.a.ce filled with what were probably bunk beds. Snores and grunts issued from the room, indicating that many of the slaves were taking advantage of their enforced idleness to catch up on lost sleep. Gretchen, who had grown up in South Africa on Earth, remembered reading about Apartheid in history cla.s.s and times when workers who were slaves in all but name learned to sleep standing up on long bus rides to and from their jobs. You caught sleep when you could.

"Here he is, Mistress," the man said, pus.h.i.+ng a boy out into the sunlight and closing the door. Gretchen looked down at the kid. He was short, barely coming up to Gretchen's breastbone, with dark eyes and a headful of straight black hair. Thin build, sharp nose, fine-boned face. Gretchen put his age at nine or ten, despite his lack of height. The boy met Gretchen's gaze for the briefest of moments before dropping his eyes to his ground.

"Jerry?" Gretchen asked. She had to be certain this was the right boy.

"Yes, Mistress," he said quietly. "Yatt said you need a runner?"

"I do. Jerry, are you new to Sunnytree Farm?"

He glanced up at Gretchen in puzzlement. "Yes, Mistress. I haven't even been here a month. If you want someone else as a runner, someone who knows the farm better, I can go get--"

"No, that's all right, Jerry," Gretchen said. "Let me see your hands, please."

Even more puzzled, Jerry held up his hands, palm up. Blisters mixed with calluses, and his nails were broken and dirty. Gretchen took hold of both his wrists for a moment, then let him go. No Silent jolt, but she hadn't been expecting one. The Despair had robbed her of that.

"Walk with me, kid, and quick," she ordered, and headed back toward the equipment barn. The boy hurried to keep up.

"Mistress?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't have a lot of time to explain," she said, "so listen hard. I stuck a chip to your shackle when I grabbed your wrists. It broadcasts a silence loop to the farm's computer so it can't monitor what we're saying."

"Mistress?" the boy said hesitantly. "I don't understand."

Gretchen reached into her jumpsuit and fished out her gold medallion. It was a risk to wear it, but experience had taught Gretchen that the medallion often convinced suspicious slaves faster than mere words. "Do you know what this stands for, Jerry?"

The boy halted and stared, forcing Gretchen to stop as well. Awe mixed with excitement on his face. "Everyone knows what that is. You're a Child of Irfan."

"That's right," she said, tucking the medallion away again. "I'm here with a couple other members of our order to get you out of here. You game?"

"But--but I'm not--" he hesitated, clearly afraid of her reaction "--not Silent. Not anymore. That's why they sold me."

Gretchen's heart twisted in sympathy and she struggled to keep her voice steady. "Your Silence doesn't matter to us, Jerry. You You do. Are you in or out? I need to know now." do. Are you in or out? I need to know now."

"In," the boy said to Gretchen's relief. She wouldn't have to bring up his mother to convince him. Kendi had told her to save Harenn for later, if possible. No sense in overwhelming the boy.

"Then let's get moving," Gretchen said, hurrying down the path toward the equipment barn again. "We don't have a whole lot of time."

"How are you going to do it?" the boy asked. "Do you have a plan? Are you going to kill the master?"

"Never mind the details," she said, "and no, we aren't planning to kill anyone."

"Oh." The boy looked disappointed. "Will it take long? Are we going today?"

"No, it won't, and yes, we are. Now come with me and don't ask so many questions. We'll tell you everything you want to know, but later."

They rounded the corner of the barn--and came face-to-face with Joe. Gretchen only barely managed to avoid slamming into him. The boy dodged behind Gretchen with a gasp.

"What are you doing out here?" Joe demanded. "And what's with the kid?"

Gretchen's heart thudded hard, but she managed to keep her face expressionless. "We need a runner, one who knows the farm," she said. "So I co-opted one of your hands. We didn't figure you'd mind."

Joe frowned. "We run a tight s.h.i.+p here, lady. This kind of thing needs to be--hey! Aren't you the tech that came by to fix the sprinkler glitch in the first place?"

"That's me," Gretchen said. She drew her flashlight from her belt and tapped herself on the chest with it. "Corporate HQ says the fix-it program had some bugs--a glitch within a glitch. What are the odds, hey?"

"I don't like this," Joe growled. "That man and that woman coming here to ask about a hand we just bought, then this glitch pops up and I catch you running around with the same kid those two were asking about. I better call Mr. Markovi."