Lise, DM Arnold [bearly read books .TXT] 📗

the library she wandered and sat before the mediascreen.

Lise turned on the news broadcast and saw images taken from hovering aircraft. She could see the crowd of novonids being processed by the deputies, and the trucks and other vehicles on the streets inside the Zone.

Then came a report of a weapons cache discovered at the abandoned hotel, along with more explosives. The deputies had been fired upon from the hotel and were in the process of securing it when the guns had been discovered. Several novonids had been killed. She wondered if Tagg was among them.

Another report showed the collapsed security pylons and the bombed-out Safety Building. A dozen deputies, several civilians and some jailed arrestees had been casualties in the explosion.

She turned off the screen and paced. Here she was, alone in a house of luxury. She dared not leave it, not with tensions as high as they were. There was nothing she could do but wait.

Lise climbed the stairs to Thom's bedroom and stepped onto the balcony in order to watch events unfold in the Zone. Sporadic sounds of small-arms fire snapped and popped above the distant hubbub and the whine of turbines. Rotary-wing aircraft hovered overhead.

Then, she heard turbines approaching. They were quite close and then they shut down. She recognized the sound as that of Thom's Drumm speedster. The car door slammed and she heard footfalls in the house.

She ran to him. “Thom! Thom! Do you know what's going on?”

“Of course I do. This is terrible ... terrible. Lise -- I've been meeting with the prefects. The white community is divided on this. The owners are up in arms -- they don't want to see this...”

“See what?”

“They're planning on demolishing the Zone.”

“Demolish it?”

“Start at one end and burn it down, flatten it, turn it into an open field.”

“Thom -- what about those sent back into the Zone. What'll happen to them?” He turned from her. “Are they going to burn the unregistereds with the buildings?”

“They want blood. They're still counting casualties from the Safety Building.”

“Those are innocent people, Thom. My mother is among them. She didn't do ANYTHING, Thom! It's Mott and his gang who are to blame.”

“They can't separate them from the rest. Lise -- I can't talk now. I'm doing all I can ... we're doing all we can. I'm hoping cooler heads will begin to prevail.”

Dusk fell and Vyonna became eerily quiet. Lise strolled the terrace. Other than aircraft hovering over the Zone and sweeping it with floodlights there was no activity. The streets outside the zone were deserted from the extended curfew.

“Lise!” Thom approached her. “Lise -- I have to go out for a while.”

“But the curfew... That's right. You're exempt.”

“I'm apt to be gone most of the evening.”

“I'll be all right. I was going to bed soon anyway.”

He turned and headed back into the house. Lise stepped from the terrace, closed and locked the doors leading to it and climbed the stairs to the guest room she was using. She undressed and lay on the bed, her hands laced behind her neck and closed her eyes.

Sleep didn't come. She thought about the situation in the Zone, of her mother, of the unregistereds, of what Thom said about destroying it. And, the children. How could you differentiate children of registereds from unregistereds?

Lise tried to drive these thoughts from her head. Slowly she banished them, closed her eyes and drowsed.

The thoughts returned and awakened her. She sat up, unaware of the time. Now, she was wide awake. Perhaps a stroll outside would help her clear her head.

She unlocked the doors to the terrace and stepped out. Aircraft still hovered over the Zone, flashing their floodlights. Then, something blinked in the corner of her eye.

Her gaze shifted to the right, to where the wild pomma gave way to the cycad woods. She saw it again -- a sparkle of red light. Then again, closer, and again closer yet. She realized what it was.

Someone was walking the same trail she had walked earlier in the day. Whoever was carrying a hand-held infra-red lamp and using it to activate the wands to find the trail.

Lise crouched low to conceal herself behind the terrace wall. She peered over it to see if she could discern the figure. No -- she couldn't see, but she could hear footfalls on the steps leading up to the house.

She moved to another spot on the terrace and crouched low. From this spot she could glimpse the back doorway leading into the house. The figure approached. She let out a sigh of relief upon seeing Thom's bald head as he used his passcard to open the door and step inside.

Then, she realized -- it wasn't a white head she had seen but a green one. Someone -- a novonid -- had walked from the Zone, from where the old hotel stood -- from Mott's domain, to Thom's house. Lise wondered if perhaps Thom were brokering a truce between the strikers and the city.

One thing for sure -- she didn't like the idea of a strange novonid man in the house. She remembered what Thom had said -- that she wasn't his first novonid woman. Perhaps his association with the green community was closer than she had imagined.

Lise thought it prudent to shut herself in the guestroom until morning. Back there she crept, latching the terrace doors behind her. Once in the guest room she closed and secured the door. Then, she flopped on the bed and with effort forced herself to sleep.

Dawn's light roused her. She figured out how to operate the shower in the guest room bath and dressed in fresh shorts and bandeau. The house was deserted again, and Thom's car was gone. She wondered how much longer this would go on.

After carrying water to the terrace garden she flopped on a sofa in the living room and switched on the mediascreen. The state of emergency was the topic of the news broadcasts. It was organized confusion, she thought.

The dissonant whine of the Drumm roadster's dual turbines approached and quieted. Lise heard Thom tread into the house and head for his office. She followed him there.

“Thom -- who came in last night?”

“What?”

“Last night -- I ... heard someone come in.”

“It was me.”

“No, Thom. It was a novonid. I glimpsed what looked like a novonid coming into the house.”

“No, Lise. You must've dreamt it or imagined it. Last night I was in contact with some of the insurgents...”

“Mott's gang?”

“Call them what you want. I got home very late.”

“So it was only you?”

“Of course, Lise -- only me.”

She pressed her hand above her breast. “That's a relief. Maybe all this has me seeing things. I couldn't sleep thinking a strange man was in the house.”

“You are perfectly safe here.”

“I worry about mother.”

Thom opened his arms and she fell into them. “I'm worried about her, too. I'm worried about everyone in the Zone, Lise. It's why I can't talk now. I have to find something and then I have to be on my way.”

“Okay... I know they're in capable hands.”

Thom kissed the top of her head. Then, he rushed from his office and down the stairs. She heard the turbines of the Drumm whine up and then fade into the distance.

Back into the house she wandered. The combination of anxiety and boredom was beginning to bother her. Last night bothered her. Her dreams were never so vivid as the sight of the green man mounting the steps, and she was sure she hadn't imagined it. Or, had she? Sometimes she would rouse from deep sleep. In half-sleep she would be unsure of her surroundings and objects took on different forms. With Rayla trapped in the Zone things weighed heavily on her mind.

She needed something to distract her. She wanted to do something -- anything, but what? Gather more seeds for the garden?

XVI

Lise stepped back onto the terrace and watched the Zone. It would be sundown soon. A blast came from the old hotel. Flames began to emerge from the windows and soon the whole building was engulfed. It's started, she thought. The burning of the Zone was underway.

She sat at a portable mediascreen and entered her mother's call number. The call connected. “Mother,” she said, “are you all right?”

“Yes, for now,” Rayla replied. “People have been in and out using my mediascreen -- most of them in the same situation as me.”

“Do you mean a problem with the registry?”

“Yes -- they are legal, registered novonids who didn't show up on the master list. The owners are complaining but the authorities aren't doing anything about it. They're using us, Lise. They plan to demolish the zone, starting at one end and working toward the other. They think if we feel the heat then we'll turn Mott and his gang over to them.”

“Thom said that Mott and his gang won't surrender without a general amnesty.”

“You know what I think Mott can do,” Rayla replied. “The squeeze is on and we're the ones caught in the grip. Lise -- my battery is getting low. Like I said, people have been using the mediaphone to call their owners. I'll have to recharge it tomorrow.”

“I'll call again, Mother.”

“Lise...”

“What is it Mother?”

“I love you, Lise.”

“I know you do, Mother. I love you, too.”

“It's hard for me to say it. I don't know why and I never said it often enough...”

“Mother -- you said it each and every day we were together. I never doubted it.”

She heard her mother sniffing back tears. “Good bye, Lise.” The call disconnected.

She returned to the guest room and locked herself in. The night crept slowly as she lay, sleepless on the bed. Well after midnight she heard the sound of someone climbing the steps to the house.

Lise crept onto the terrace and saw what she had seen the night before -- a green figure unlocking the door and admitting himself into the house. Tonight, she was wide awake and knew she wasn't imagining things. She crept to the lower level and heard the sound of water running coming from behind the locked door.

The water sounds ceased. She heard movement and regarded this as her cue to hide.

Lise ducked into the stairwell and under the steps. She could just glimpse the mysterious, locked door. It opened and Thom stepped out, leaving the room dark. He locked the door with a passcard and turned toward the stairs. She watched him trudge up one flight of stairs and then another. His bedroom door closed.

She sat under the stairs, her heart pounding, as she assimilated what she had seen. The difficult part was believing it. A green man had walked into the house, into the locked room and Thom had emerged. There was no doubt that Thom was impersonating a novonid.

Lise crept from the stairwell and silently ascended the stairs to the guest room. She lay in the dark, eyes wide open and sorting through what it meant. Why was Thom doing this? Was it to broker a truce between white officials and the insurgents? Was this how he could meet with Mott? The thought this was his mission comforted her.

But, she recognized a problem with this explanation. If this was his mission, then why the locked room? Why the secrecy? Why the skulking in the middle of the night? There was another possibility. Her mind wanted to reject it, but couldn't. Night time was Mott's time -- between bedtime and the dead of night was when Mott held court in the Zone. What if Thom WAS Mott?

Lise needed to know. Did Thom, Lord Bromen -- a man she loved, the inheritor of a lordship granted five hundred years before and a scion of Varadan business and society -- lead a double life and have as an alter-ego a renegade novonid named Mott?

Shadows lengthened in the afternoon sun. Lise approach Thom's library. She could see him at his desk, manipulating his mediascreen. “Thom?” she said.

He looked up. “Yes, Lise?”

“I'd like to feed tonight. You haven't had your dinner. I thought we could share some