Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

he hasn’t answered me.”
    “I’m sure they have the site locked down,” Torkild said.
    “But link communications?” she asked.
    “I’d be shutting down everything but the emergency links,” he said in his lawyer voice. “You don’t want rumors to start and you don’t want the wrong information to slip out.”
    Like the fact that everyone else who attended the governor-general’s speech might be dead.
    Her stomach clenched.
    Her father couldn’t be dead, he just couldn’t. The cruel irony of dying on Anniversary Day aside, he wasn’t the kind of man who just died. Not even in a situation like this.
    “Come on,” Torkild said, and his grip on her tightened.
    She couldn’t tell if he was disgusted with her. She hadn’t answered him, she hadn’t even tried to answer him, she just looked up at him like a dazed child, the way she had done when her mother had died and he had shown up at the house. Dazed, terrified—not at all the same woman who had led a train car full of people onto the unstable platform near the bombed-out section of Armstrong.
    Torkild walked directly toward the screens, and Berhane tried to pull back. Didn’t he see where he was going?
    He slipped behind one of the full-sized screens, touched the wall, and a door she hadn’t seen before opened. As it did, a sign flashed across her vision:
    Earth Alliance Lounge. No Admittance Without Clearance .
    She stopped, and pulled him back.
    He turned, a frown on his face, then nodded. “It’s okay,” he said. “I have clearance.”
    Lucky him.
    He led her inside.
    The lounge smelled of oranges and wet feet. The weird stench made her eyes water.
    The door closed behind her, and as it did, she realized that this room, while smaller than the main luxury terminal, was still quite large. It was filled with dozens of people she recognized—big-shot lawyers, diplomats, and some lower level government officials.
    Some were talking to each other, but most were slightly hunched, clearly communicating on their links. A handful watched the screens ringing the room.
    Images on those cross-cut between the police working on the crime scene outside O’Malley’s, a still shot of Arek’s strangely stonelike visage, and that panicked shot of Nelia Byler, clutching a gurney.
    Several Disty sat cross-legged on top of tiny tables. There were even more Peyti in this lounge than there had been in the main terminal. These Peyti all sat at tables and tapped on devices held in their sticklike hands. They at least seemed familiar.
    Because some of the other aliens didn’t.
    She wasn’t sure she had ever been this close to a group of Rev. They were unbelievably huge, pear-shaped, and had more arms than she could easily see. She’d read some history of the Rev, of them using their size and extra limbs to intimidate humans, and she finally understood it.
    The smell near the door came from the cluster of Lynisians near the door. They reeked of oranges, something they ate in large measure (and used as cologne) whenever they came to human-based communities. Oranges weren’t available on Lynae.
    Most humans kept a big distance from the Lynisians, partly because they were loud, but also because their appearance was uncomfortably strange. They had tentacles poking out of the top of their torsos, like long, out-of-control hair, but at the end of the tentacles, they had hands.
    Two long limbs on either side of their torsos ended in faces, which made them very hard to look at. Often one of the limbs would be upside down by human standards, talking to a compatriot’s face that was in the same position.
    She had had a class with a Lynisian, and he’d required three chairs so that he could lift his faces upright to watch class interactions.
    She hadn’t been able to look at him then, and she couldn’t look at this group now.
    Torkild had let go of her arm. He was marching forward to a group of empty, plush, blue chairs in the center of the room.
    She stopped following. It