Goddesses Part 5

A stream of liquid ran from beneath the truck, splas.h.i.+ng black against the street. Tanya waved at the anonymous bulk of the driver. Across the street, Pa.s.sion was screaming What the f.u.c.k is that noise?

Cody s.n.a.t.c.hed the helmet off. Her heart felt like it had melted into her arteries, a pounding starfish in her chest. Oh no, oh no. She stared at the looming shapes of furniture in the dimly-lit room. She hadn't remembered the truck in years and years. Maybe it had felt too dangerous to remember. Oh G.o.d, ohJesus. Her palms were sweating.

Just a few seconds after the truck had pa.s.sed her eyes had started burning. She ran into the house and threw up. Pa.s.sion was screaming outside, shooting his gun. Cody lay on the broken tiles of the bathroom floor and cried, she felt so sick, until mama came home and moved her into bed. She didn't say anything about the truck and its stinky pee, because she should never have been out on the sidewalk.

Carefully, Cody lay the helmet on the cus.h.i.+on beside her. Wade was snoring softly in the bedroom. The antique clock on the mantle was ticking, ticking.

What had gone into the street that night? And on other nights, what had spilled from the kitchen drug labs? From the ubiquitous activity of auto repair? From the city's fights against rats and roaches? What had trickled through the soil, into the ground water, returning through the faucet of the kitchen sink?

Splash of clear water into a plastic cup held in a little girl's hands; the dry tang of chlorine in her throat.

There had been toxins in her body that killed her daughter. Cody had always a.s.sumed it was her fault, that she'd been incautious on a job, that somehow she had poisoned herself; but what if it wasn't so?

Her lips pressed together in a hard line. Any hazardous substance report generated by the cleanup of Victoria Glen would be kept confidential by the redevelopment company. She'd be able to gain access only if she could offer compelling evidence of on-site injury, and that was doubtful. She'd only lived there until she was ten, until Mama got her the scholars.h.i.+p to Prescott Academy. Cody had left for boarding school and never had come back.

So there was only one way to learn what ten years on Victoria Street had done to her. She would have to take on the job herself.

IX.

Rajban was up early. Michael found her in the kitchen when he woke, peeking into cabinets with all the stealth and caution of a kid looking for treasure but expecting to find a tiger. "Good morning," Michael said. She jumped, and the cabinet door banged shut. Her hands were already soiled with the gray dirt of the courtyard. Michael sighed. She certainly had an affinity for gardening.

Ignoring her fright, he beckoned to her to come to the sink, where he showed her how to slide her hands under the soap dispenser. The sensor popped a spray of soap onto her palm. She lathered it, carefully imitating Michael's every gesture. Water came from the tap in a tepid spray, like a stolen column of soft rain. Michael dried his hands, Rajban dried hers, then together they made a breakfast of papayas, bread, and yogurt.

After they ate, Rajban disappeared into the garden while Michael readied himself for work. Last of all, he picked up his shades. The Terrace glyph waited for him, surrounded by a pink query circle. He linked through. "Anybody there?" No one answered. He left the link open, confident someone would check back before long. Next he put a call through to m.u.t.h.aye, but she didn't pick up either. A moment later, the house announced a visitor at the door.

"Ooh, company," Ryan said, as the line to the Terrace went green.

Etsuko sounded puzzled. "Who is that?"

"No ID," Ryan muttered. "Pupils dilated, skin temperature slightly elevated. He's nervous."

"Or angry," Etsuko said. "Be careful, Michael."

"Hey," Michael said as the house repeated its announcement, this time in Hindi. "Good morning and all that. Back again, huh?"

"Been waiting all morning for your shades to activate," Ryan agreed. "You have to understand-your life is so much more interesting than ours. Now hurry up. Go find out what he wants before my next appointment."

Michael summoned an image of the visitor into his shades. "So I guess it's not m.u.t.h.aye at the door?"

"No, mate. No such luck. A local gentleman, I should think. Looks a little stiff, if you ask me."

Etsuko snorted. "By your standards, Ryan, anyone could look stiff."

Rajban slipped in through the French doors. Michael sighed to see that her hands were dirty again. Some of the dirt had gotten on her face. Still, she looked at Michael with eyes that were brighter, fuller than they had been only yesterday. Then she looked at the door ... hoping it was m.u.t.h.aye too? Come back to visit her as promised.

"Say," Ryan said. "Maybe she knows the guy."

"Right." After all, someone had to be looking for Rajban, regardless of what m.u.t.h.aye said. A brother, perhaps? Someone who cared. Michael slipped the shades off and handed them to Rajban, motioning that she should put them on. Tentatively, she obeyed. For several seconds she stared at the scene, while her mouth twisted in a small hard knot. Then she yanked the shades off, shoved them into Michael's hands, and ran for the courtyard.

Ryan said, "Women react that way to me too, from time to time."

No one laughed.

Michael stared after Rajban, dread gnawing like a rat at his chest. Despite m.u.t.h.aye's words, he had envisioned only a happy reunion for her. What would his role become, if her family demanded her back, and she refused to go?

Stop guessing.

He slipped the shades back on and went to the front door. "Hark. Open it."

The stranger in the alcove was tall and lean, like a slice taken off a fuller man, then smoked until ithardened. His black hair was neatly cut and combed. His dark eyes were stern. They remained fixed on Michael through a slow, formal bow. "Namaste."

"Namaste," Michael murmured, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise. There was something about this man that set him on edge. The intense stare, perhaps. The unsmiling face. The stiffness of his carriage.

Smoked and hardened.

"I am Mr. Gharia," the stranger said, in lilting but well-p.r.o.nounced English. "And you, I have been told, are Mr. Fielding. I have come to inquire about the woman."

Michael felt stubborness descend into his spine, a quiet, steely resistance learned from the heroes of a hundred old cowboy movies. "Have you?"

Vaguely, he was aware of Etsuko muttering, "Gharia? Which Gharia? There are dozens in the census, approximate height and age ..."

Mr. Gharia apparently had a stubborness of his own. He raised his chin, and though his head came barely to Michael's shoulder, he seemed tall. "It is improper for this woman to be residing within your house."

Michael had never taken well to instructions on propriety. Remembering the look of fear and distaste on Rajban's face as she fled to the courtyard, he ventured a guess, and dressed it up as certainty, "This is not your woman."

Mr. Gharia looked taken aback at this discourteous response; perhaps a little confused, but by his reply Michael knew that his guess had been correct. "I am a friend of the family, sir."

When Michael didn't respond to this, Gharia's tone rose. "Sir, a widow deserves respect. This woman must be returned immediately to her family."

A widow. So her husband was dead. m.u.t.h.aye had said he'd left home a full year ago. Michael had a.s.sumed he'd gone for treatment, yet now he was dead. Did Rajban know? Had anyone bothered to tell her? Thinking about it, Michael felt an anger as cool, as austere, as shadows under desert rock. "This woman has no family."

"Sir, you are mistaken."

"The family that she had cast her out like useless rubbish."

"I have come to inquire about her, to be sure she is the woman being sought."

"She is not that woman," Michael said. "She is a different woman altogether."

"Sir-"

"You would not have me put her on display, would you? Now sir, good day." He stepped back, allowing the door to close.

Gharia saw what he was about. "It doesn't matter who she is!" he said quickly. "Any Hindu woman must be shamed to be kept as a wh.o.r.e. It is intolerable! It-" The door sealed, cutting off Gharia's tirade with the abruptness of a toggled switch. "Christ," Michael muttered.

"Nice show," Ryan agreed, but his voice was somber. "Michael, this isn't a game you want to play.

Etsuko's IDed this Gharia fellow. He's a religious activist-"

Michael's palm sliced through the air. "I don't care who he is! The Indian const.i.tution promises equal rights for women."

"It's a piece of paper, Michael." Etsuko's voice was softly sad. "In a far-off city. Women like Rajban are subject to an older law."

"Not anymore. m.u.t.h.aye said she would come up with a shelter for Rajban by today. If the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can't find her, they can't hurt her."

But if they did find her? Rajban was already a woman ruined, simply by being inside Michael's house.

He jumped as the lights flashed, and a soft alarm bonged through the residence. Locks clicked. The air-conditioning system huffed into silence. "Perimeter intrusion," the house informed him. "Michael Fielding, you will remain secured inside this residence pending arrival of Global Shear security. Arrival estimated at three minutes fifty seconds." It was the same feminine voice the house always used, yet it didn't sound like the house anymore.

"Where is Rajban?" Michael shouted.

"Identify the person in question?"

This was definitely not his house. "Rajban. A girl. She's been ... she's stayed here for a day or so-"

Ryan's voice cut in: "The courtyard, Michael."

Michael dashed for the courtyard doors. His hand hit the latch, but it would not move. He tried to force it, but the door held.

Through the gla.s.s, he saw Rajban crouched on the path beside a freshly worked bed of earth, the little hoe in one hand. She gazed up at the courtyard wall. Michael looked, to see Gharia leaning over the top.

It was eight feet of smooth concrete, but somehow he had climbed it, and from the Shastri courtyard, too. Now he leaned on his chest, the breast of his s.h.i.+rt smudged with dirt, his dark brows pulled together in an angry scowl. Michael had only a glimpse of him, before he dropped away out of sight.

Again Michael tried the latch, slamming it with all his weight while the house instructed him to "Stay away from all doors and windows. Retreat at once to the interior-"

"Who the h.e.l.l am I talking to?" Michael interrupted.

"Easy," Ryan muttered. "Cool under fire, boy. You know the chant."

The house answered at the same time: "This is Security Chief Sankar. Mr. Fielding, please step away from the door. You must remove yourself from this exposed position immediately-"

Rajban had seen him. She was running toward him now. She threw herself on the door latch, while Michael tried again to force it from the inside. It would not budge. Rajban stared at him through the gla.s.s,her dark eyes wide, confusion and terror swimming in her unshed tears.

"Sankar!" Michael shouted. "Unlock this door. Let her inside now-"

"Mr. Fielding, please remain calm. The door will not open until the situation is secure. Be a.s.sured, we will be on-site momentarily."

Michael bit his lip, swearing silently to himself. "Is Gharia still out there, then? He's after this girl, you know. Not me."

"Negative, sir. Raman Gharia has fled the scene. He is presently being tracked by a vigil craft-"

The drone aircraft that watched the house. Of course. The security AI must have seen Gharia climbing the Shastri wall....

"Well, if Gharia's gone, then you can open the door. Sankar?"

A helicopter swept in, no more than fifty feet above the wall. Rajban looked up at it, and screamed.

Michael could not hear her through the sound-proofed gla.s.s, but he could see the terror on her face. She pressed herself against the door, covering her head with the new sari m.u.t.h.aye had given her while her clothing licked and shuddered in the rotor wash. First one man, then a second, descended from the helicopter, sliding down a cable to land in the courtyard garden.

"This probably qualifies as overkill," Ryan muttered.

"Sankar!" Michael shouted. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

No answer.

The helicopter pulled away. The two men on the ground were anonymous in their helmets and s.h.i.+mmering gray coveralls. The first one pulled a weapon from a thigh holster and trained it on Rajban.

The second sprinted toward the wall where Gharia had appeared. Cras.h.i.+ng through the half-dead plants, he launched himself at the concrete face, and to Michael's amazement, he actually reached the top, pulling himself up to gaze over the side, in a weird echo of Gharia's own posture. He stayed there only long enough to drop something over the wall-oh, Mrs. Shastri was going to love this-then he slipped back down into the garden, landing in a crouch. A weapon had appeared inhis hands, too.

"Net gun," Ryan said. "Launches a sticky entangler. Nonlethal, unless it scares you to death. Michael, I had no idea you were this well protected."

"They're bored," Michael growled.

"Do say."

"Explosives negative," Sankar informed him, through the voice of the house.

Now both net guns were trained on Rajban.

"Leave her alone," Michael warned. "Sankar, I swear-"

"Situation clear," Sankar announced. The man by the wall stood up, sliding his weapon back into its holster. The other did the same. He slipped his visor up, revealing a delighted grin. Michael recognized Sankar's handsome face. "Quite an adventure, eh, Mr. Fielding?"

The door lock clicked. Michael slammed the latch down, yanking the door open, so that Rajban half fell into the living room. He started to reach for her, to help her up, but she scuttled away with a little moan of terror. He turned to Sankar, ready to vent his fury, but he found the security chief praising his man for a job well done.

"Absolutely by the book!" Sankar was saying in a suitably masculine voice, quite a jolt after the feminine voice of the house. With his gaze, Sankar took in Michael, too. "Mr. Fielding. This has turned out to be a minor incident, but we had no way of knowing that when the perimeter alarm sounded. It is essential that you remain inside in such situations, away from doors and windows. If explosives had come over the wall-"

"Then Rajban would have been killed," Michael said softly. "All I asked was that you unlock the door to let her in."

Rajban had gone to hide behind the sofa. Michael could hear her softly weeping. Sankar frowned at the noise, as if it did not fit into any scenario he had ever practiced. "This woman, she is not the housekeeper registered in our security files. Have you changed employees?"

"No. She's not an employee. She's a guest."

"A guest? All guests should be registered, Mr. Fielding. Without a profile, we have no way of discriminating friend from enemy." He said this matter-of-factly, without a hint of judgment. Well, Sankar was a modern man, educated in California, Michael recalled. What the boss did was the boss's business, no doubt.

Michael sighed, letting the edge of his anger slip away. "You're right," he conceded. Global Shear security protocol was strict and effective. "So take her profile now. She's a waif, just a little girl, without home or family. And that's all she is, Mr. Sankar. I want you to put that in your profile too."

X.

Rajban plunged her hoe into the hard earth of the garden bed, prying up chunks of clay. Grief sat in her stomach like heavy black mud, but it was not grief for her husband. It was for herself. Now she was widowed. She had no home. She would have no sons. Brother-in-Law had sent her away.