The Writers' Circle

4. Vajora

Lana  left for Vajora on a high speed maglev the next morning, going out of Sitaali for the first time since her mother took her to the country as a child.  The journey was associated in her memory with her mother's endless attempts to catch her father with one of his other women, so Lana refused to look up through the window to be reminded of those tension filled hours, and never saw the two shadows following apace and so far overhead that if anyone had seen them they would have said it was a pair of much smaller birds travelling much lower.  She didn't know, but they were there to protect her from her other pursuers, who would stop the progress of their missing engineer if they could but find her. 

Lana had already decided that once she got to Vajora she would buy herself a limited new wardrobe more suitable to local Vajoran tastes, and, having successfully blended herself into their society to avoid detection by her father or his agents, would live from that point onwards in the cheapest room she could find on the reserves that she and Dorian had once set aside to start a family.  If she failed to find either the troubadours or a clue as to their whereabouts some time in the next month she would get herself a temporary job to fund a journey around the other three cities in an attempt to track them down before they started their next tour of performances.  

She hoped it wouldn't take that long.  She hoped she wouldn't have to go back to Sitaali and find something to do with herself until they turned up on the promenade again nearly a year from now.    

Vajora was a bustling commercial centre where, she suspected, many of the young Sitaali business men and women that she had spent the last three years creating would end up.  Its more expensive and densely packed construction, with daring upright architecture made the sea front tower blocks of Sitaali look chaotic, squat and sleepy.  Where here, she thought, among the dull and uniform rickshaws that cluttered the streets with their constant activity, would a troop of travelling misfits find space for peace until the spring?  

She searched tirelessly, walking each of the hundreds of city blocks on a day by day basis, stopping to go in each of the cheaper looking shops and asking all the friendlier looking faces, but to no avail.  

It started to feel like a hopeless task, and she was beginning to think that Luke had been mistaken.  It had crossed her mind many times that this Sarah he had mentioned might have lied to him - might have wanted to make sure that he would never find her if he came looking for her.  Maybe Sarah, like Lana, hadn't liked his darker-natured friend.

On a relatively warm October afternoon that baked its way through her rain soaked coat and left her feeling unusually tired, Lana returned early to her favoured pavement bistro where braziers burned between the tables and the kind of fresh sea food that was commonplace in Sitaali could be ordered from a large and comprehensive menu that was the only one of it's kind in this land-bound city.  She found a vacant table on the road side fringe of the seating and was starting to ponder whether to have crab or shrimp dalgetti, when a voice interrupted her musings.

'Would you mind...?'

'Not at all.'  She politely removed her legs from under the two-seater table and turned her side to it, as was the Vajoran thing to do when obliged by lack of space to share such a small personal arena with a stranger.

She looked up briefly at her new companion and then settled again to reading the menu after exchanging a brief smile and courteous nod.  He was young and handsome, but Lana's trade made her more inclined to study the evidence of other people's eugenics than to feel a flutter of excitement at his attention.  

He wasn't an original, she noted, more of a typical A-line-dark, with a perfectly symmetrical well formed masculine face, and a dark complexion with well behaved black hair that would probably always be thick and only grey obediently in a symmetrical and distinguished pattern from the temples.

'You're not from around here, I see,' he ventured, slightly nervously.

Lana looked up through her brows at him but didn't answer him straight away.  Vajorans were never blonde.  They also tended to be darks rather than reds like her, so it was more a statement of the obvious than any intelligent or lucky guess.  And Vajorans, though polite and extremely tolerant of one another, didn't talk that much either, unless they already knew a person - at least, they tended to keep themselves to themselves unless they were very drunk, which was usually how they got to meet one another in the first place.  It had fascinated her that so many business meetings were held so late at night in any place where alcohol was plentiful, and where a prelude of heavy drinking was obligatory.

The A-line didn't look as if he'd been drinking, and anyway, it was too early for that.

'No.'  It was the kind of dead end response she hoped would make him shut up and eat without disturbing her again.  

'Look, I'm sorry about this, but I. er. I was asked to seek you out?'

Lana stared deeply and aggressively into his eyes for the truth - all semblance of the polite Vajoran restraint she had quickly learned to adopt completely erased.

'Who by?' she demanded suspiciously.

'A friend,' he said uncertainly, as if her reaction had been rather a surprise to him.

'What friend?  You mean my father?'

She was drawing attention. Well-to-do Vajorans on tables around them were starting to glance in her direction.

'Er. no,' he whispered, glancing quickly to either side of himself and flashing a reassuring smile.

'Who then?'

'You advertised, a few weeks back?'

Advertised?  Why yes, she had placed a tiny and extremely expensive plea in the Vajora Daily, and had got nothing but a few strange cranks calling her for several days afterwards.

'You wanted to be re-united with the fire dancers?'

'They don't know me to call me "friend", so your cover's blown.'  Lana smiled a sweet but false smile at him in a way that should definitely have ended the conversation.

'Look, I'm sorry - there's been a misunderstanding.  Ballera asked me to come and fetch you.'  He got up and hesitated before leaving the table to deposit a scrap of paper carefully under the salt shaker to stop it from blowing away.  'She was the woman you met on the beach, in case you're wondering?'

Lana forced herself to ignore the offer as if he wasn't there, until she was certain that he'd left and wasn't watching her any more.  Then she stood and placed the menu carefully back on the table, using the same salt shaker to weigh it down for the next person, and deftly palming the note before leaving rather hungry.  

She took a meandering route through several crowded places back to her room, where, over a honey sandwich hastily made from the remnants of her scantly supplied cupboard, she scrutinised the 3D map of the location on her flexcreen.  What the A-line had given her was a set of old world coordinates which she had discovered, after a bit of wrestling with the Wave and it's resistance to using anything old enough to once have travelled on the Web, pinpointed a small dip in the landscape at the fringe of the citisphere to the north of Vajora.  There was nothing very notable about the dip except that it was right on the edge of the civilised area, and there was a small lake or large pond at it's centre.

Though it was the kind of place that she might have expected to find the troubadours, it was also one of several such places.  The A-line, whoever he was and whatever his reason, could have chosen this little pond at random from some ten or so that she counted with ease and within a few seconds in that general vicinity.

She lay back on the bed to snooze a while, remembering then that she had offered a small reward to the person who could give her any information that would lead her to them, although the A-line hadn't looked as if he needed any money - a successful businessman to the core; dressed in his sleek fine-cloth suit and wearing an expensive shirt that was finished with diamond studded cuff links of gold.  

A few heavy sighs later she was just beginning to drowse when someone started knocking very quietly, almost apologetically, at the door.

She stiffened and swung her feet to the floor.  If this was her father working to interfere once again, perhaps to bring her home kicking and screaming like a naughty child,  the A-line would by now have had enough time to get a photo of her to him for confirmation that he had found the right woman.  She was tempted not to answer, but... 

'Who is it?'

...and was surprised by the anxious tone of her own voice.

'Service ma'am - you have a personal delivery to sign for.  I can take it back down to reception if you like, where you can get it in the morning, but the man was insistent that I bring it straight to you. God only knows why.'  

The last part of what he said was a muttered personal thought that she wasn't supposed to hear, but which piqued her curiosity.  Who, if anyone, knew that she was here, and what would anyone have that was so important that so much trouble should be taken to get it to her?

She scrambled off the bed, remembering to turn her flexcreen to face away from the door before opening it to one of the penguin suited hotel porters.  Held in the pinch of his right hand he dangled the beautiful peacock feather shawl that the old woman had offered her on the beach.

'He said you'd understand, and maybe take it back to "her" at the place he told you about earlier?'

She could tell from the loose look of his face and the tone of his voice that he was mystified by the message, and that because it meant nothing of any significance to him, was trying hard to remember the exact words he should say.

'Thanks,' she said, and took it from him, slipping a 10 quot gift card from her pocket into his hand to make him grin stupidly and disappear.

Lana sat down on the bed again with the shawl glistening luxuriously across her lap.  She fingered the hem - stitched very carefully and painstakingly by hand.

There was something about the secretive way the A-line had approached her that unnerved her slightly.  He must have been watching her for several days to know where she was living, what room number... her name, even.  She had been careful about revealing herself to anyone; even taking care to purchase a third transceiver under the name of "Cathy" to take the calls resulting from the advert.

Feeling the chill of the air coming through the open window, Lana got up to close it, looking out into the darkness of the satin night and directly at the unseen hawk crouching in a nest of his own warmth;  flattened down to the rooftop opposite her view.  

				*

Sashil shut his eyes, and then peeped very carefully through one before fully opening them again.  Lana had drawn the curtains, though he could see her still in the tiny shard of a gap where they didn't quite meet at the top.

So, she thought she was having trouble remaining hidden.  If only she knew, he thought, if only she knew!

From their point of view, the "troubadours" as Ballera had spuriously dubbed them, had been having far greater problems trying to ensure that the ISC continued to fail in their attempts to locate their missing genetic engineer.  

The day that Lana left Sitaali she had been followed a few hours later by agents previously unknown to Sashil.  They weren't human, at least, they weren't as human as they appeared to be.  Their minds had been closed to him behind the visceral veil that a telepath would normally associate with the presence of an animal.

Whatever the ISC had done to them was both barbaric and blasphemous - against the Word of any man's God in the sense that they had bridled and enslaved the intellect of a sentient being by the whip of an artificially narrow set of powerful animal instincts.  He and Tigoli had recognised very early that they were what normal humans would call "drones", even though such creatures were only supposed to exist in cheap second rate horror-based comics.

However, and despite all the scrapes that Lana had unwittingly obliged them to invisibly carry her through, all was quiet at the moment, so once the last of the curtains facing him where closed, Sashil was at last able to do something he had been itching to do for over an hour.  

He slowly stood like a stiff old hen, instinctively kneading the old concrete surface with his long-taloned toes and stretching the entirety of his sinuous legs.  This had the effect of raising his body vertical and sending a tingle right up his spine, reaching the axis of his wings and sprinting up his neck, so that the process was as irreversible as a sneeze.  He restrained the slow extension of his wings to get the maximum pleasure and relief, then flapped them twice; sending the shards of grit that he had inadvertently loosened with his talons raining off the rooftop down into the street far below.  He saw, but had no choice other than to yield to the urge to shake himself violently like a wet dog until the shiver subsided back down his spine and left him through the tail; fluffed and ready to sit back down again for another several hours in the large warm patch he'd preserved for himself on the icy roof.

It was as he settled down again, and as he peered over the edge of the roof to see where the grit might have fallen, that his attention was caught by a certain fizzing in the back of his brain and simultaneous arrival of six late rickshaws bearing a group of that number to the steps of Lana's hotel.

The inner eyelid that protected his large and very powerful eyes from the wind had been starting to close, but were suddenly wide open.  He sprang to stand and capture a clear view of the top sides of their faces as they jogged in unison up the steps into the bright light of the entrance.  In the few seconds it took them to go inside, Sashil was fully awake.

...TIG...

A movement on the roof of the hotel betrayed the presence of the second hawk scrambling to his feet.

...What...?

...DRONES...!

...Cliff Hanger...?

...They're in the building...

...Shit...

...MOVE...!

...On it...

Sashil leapt gracefully into the air, wings spread wide, traversing the street on a level and coming to grasp the sill of an open window into an unlit room with such panache that not a sound was heard, nor any movement perceived as sylph-like he transformed to slip his naked self past a sleeping pair and out into the corridor, dashing down the stairs to Lana's level, while aware of the ominous flashing green arrow that indicated a lift was rising to meet him there.

...Got 'er...

It was Tigoli - signalling that the most difficult part of his operation was already complete.

Now Sashil just had to hope... yes!  The porter had left the key beneath the mat in the corridor as he had been handsomely paid to do every night from the outset.  The lift was three floors away and rising as Sashil slipped into Lana's room and lunged light-footed for the bed where she lay, not long asleep and blissfully unaware of the emergency.

Tigoli entered the hallway from the other end bearing a young dark haired woman from one of the other rooms draped limply across his arms as if she was a precious roll of the finest silk.  He stumbled slightly on the corner of the mat that Sashil had lifted for the key, but recovered and rushed into the room bearing his living cargo to the bed where he dumped her without ceremony before leaping back to shut the door tight just as the lift arrived.

He dived over the bed, rolled to his feet, grabbed the scarf and Lana's flexcreen from the bedside table and then dived again through the open window, taking feathered form, recapturing the scarf and flexcreen in his toes, then swinging upwards into the night as Lana's door burst open.

A face appeared, looking out at the sky, then closing the window and the curtains on the shadowy scene of a violent struggle.

...You don't think they'll hurt her do you...?

...Who is she...?

...Random choice - like we agreed - no prejudice...

Sashil hesitated to answer, then looking down into the upturned and unconscious face of the girl dangling by a single arm from his strong one handed grasp he thought;

...What's done is done, Tig - for Rusaar's sake...

The answer came back hesitantly like a quiet prayer.

...For Rusaar... ...and for all the nations of Aluna...

Neither of them thought to each other for a short while, till they had respectfully subdued their feelings of disquiet at the considered consequences of their actions.  

Presently Sashil felt Tigoli's mind unwind several notches to a more normal level of alertness - felt his attention searching for them across the face of the hotel.  He saw through Tigoli's eyes Lana's blanched form hanging from Sashil's hand; naked, pale and white in the light leaking upwards from below her in the street.

...There you are!  To coin two walker phrases in one go; Bloody hell, Sash - that just about takes the biscuit.  She can't STILL be asleep down there, can she....?

Sashil pulled gently upwards, bending his arm and raising the limp form of his fragile human cargo till her face was close enough to his for him to see the delicate movements of her dreaming state and transmit the vision to Tigoli as an answer for his question.  Lana was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. So tiring was her relentless search for the troubadours, that not even the cold of the night could penetrate to wake her.

...She's heavy, Tig - you got your toe guards on yet...?

...Wait a second - they're just leaving...

The drones were running out of the front door and down the steps of the hotel as he spoke, bearing a wriggling but silent body that was tightly wrapped and tied in a thick black blanket.  They vanished into the night at breakneck speed.  Like any other animal they wouldn't stop until they had reached a place of safety.  

He hoped that they might not realise their mistake until they handed her over to their ISC masters.

...Shall we get her back to bed before my arm drops off...?

...Coming...

				*

Between them they cleared the mess left by the kidnappers and re-arranged Lana's things as closely as possible to the original layout, and then together they stood gazing down on her before leaving just to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything crucial.

Tigoli knelt beside the bed and carefully ran his fingers through the fine hair sprouting from Lana's temples.  He'd spotted a small black feather lodged in her curls and he stood again to hand it to Sashil with a slight smirk on his face.

...Eyelash.  Yours, I believe...?

Sashil put the flexcreen he had just been examining back down and wafted the avian clue out of his way.

...We must go.  She set her alarm to go off in half an hour...

...That's not much sleep...

...We shall encourage her to catch up later...!