Mirror Dance

He wondered how far his palm would take him. He slipped into Qui

Trying to follow them gave him an almost instant headache. This was no ballasted and gimballed vid pick-up, no steady pan, but rather the jerky, snatching glances of real head movements. He slowed the replay to watch himself in the lift-tube foyer, a short, agitated fellow in grey camouflage, glittering eyes in a set face. Do I really look like that? The deformities of his body were not so apparent as he’d imagined, under the loose uniform.

He sat behind Tonkin’s eyes and walked with him through the hurried maze of Bharaputra’s buildings, tu

If there’s any clue, it has to be earlier. He started the program again from the parting in the foyer. The third time through, he slowed it down and took it step by step, examining each. The patient, finicky, self-forgetful absorption was almost pleasurable. Tiny details—you could lose yourself in tiny details, an anesthetic for brain-pain.

“Got you,” he whispered. It had flashed past so fast as to be subliminal, if you were ru

He looked up to find Bothari-Jesek watching him. How long had she been sitting there? She slumped relaxed, long legs crossed at booted ankles, long fingers tented together. “What have you got?” she asked quietly.

He called up the holomap of the ghostly buildings with Norwood and Tonkin’s line of march glowing inside. “Not here,” he pointed, “but there.” He marked a complex well off-sides from the route the Dendarii had traveled with the cryo-chamber. “That’s where Norwood went. Through that tu

Bothari-Jesek sat up. “Is that possible? He had so little time!”

“Not just possible. Easy! The packing equipment is fully automated. All he had to do was put the cryo-chamber in the casing machine and hit the keypad. The robots would even have delivered it to the loading dock. It’s a busy place—receives supplies for the whole complex, ships everything from data disks to frozen body parts for transplants to genetically engineered fetuses to emergency equipment for search and rescue teams. Such as reconditioned cryo-chambers. All sorts of stuff! It operates around the clock, and it would have had to be evacuated in a hurry when our raid hit. While the packing equipment was ru

“So the cryo-chamber is sitting packed on a loading dock downside! Wait’ll I tell Qui

“I …” he held up a restraining hand. “I think …”

She looked at him, and sank back into the station chair, eyes narrowing. “Think what?”

“It’s been almost a full day since we lifted. It’s been a half-day and more since we told the Bharaputrans to look for the cryo-chamber. If that cryo-chamber was still sitting on a loading dock, I think the Bharaputrans would have found it by now. The automated shipping system is efficient. I think the cryo-chamber already went out, maybe within the first hour. I think the Bharaputrans and Fell are telling the truth. They must be going insane right now. Not only is there no cryo-chamber down there, they haven’t got a clue in hell where it went!”

Bothari-Jesek sat stiff. “Do we?” she asked. “My God. If you’re right—it could be on its way anywhere. Freighted out from any of two dozen orbital transfer stations—it could have been jumped by now! Simon Illyan is going to have a stroke when we report this.”

“No. Not anywhere,” Mark corrected intently. “It could only have been addressed to somewhere that Medic Norwood knew. Someplace he could remember, even when he was surrounded and cut off and under fire.”

She licked her lips, considering this. “Right,” she said at last. “Almost anywhere. But at least we can start guessing by studying Norwood’s perso

“I’m not any kind of officer-type. I hate the military.”

“Miles loves field work. He’s addicted to adrenalin rushes.”

“I hate them. I hate being afraid. I can’t think when I’m scared. I freeze when people shout at me.”

“Yet you can think… . How much of the time are you scared?”

“Most of it,” he admitted grimly.

“Then why do you …” she hesitated, as if choosing her words very cautiously, “why do you keep trying to be Miles?”

“I’m not, you’re making me play him!”

“I didn’t mean now. I mean generally.”

“I don’t know what the hell you mean.”

Chapter Ten

Twenty hours later, the two Dendarii ships undocked from Fell Station and maneuvered to boost toward Jumppoint Five. They were not alone. An escort of half a dozen House Fell security vessels paced and policed them. The Fell vessels were dedicated local space warships, lacking Necklin rods and wormhole jump capacity; the power thus saved was shunted into a formidible array of weapons and shielding. Muscle-ships.

The convoy was trailed at a discreet distance by a Bharaputran cruiser, more yacht than warship, prepared to accept the final transfer of Baron Bharaputra, as arranged, in space near Fell’s Jumppoint Five station. Unfortunately, Miles’s cryo-chamber was not aboard it.

Qui

“I won’t leave Miles!” Qui

“Look,” Bothari-Jesek hissed, Qui