Trickster by Steven Harper Page B

the exchequer. Without Silent to handle the transactions in the post-Despair galaxy, very little interplanetary banking was taking place, and the population of a fair number of planets, including Drim, was in the middle of a "don't trust the banks" frame of mind. There was also a very real dread that some currencies would collapse. Many financial institutions had closed their doors, fearing bank runs. As a result, physical money had quickly become the norm again. Kendi liked that. It used to be that the decent hotels and restaurants looked askance at anyone offering hard cash instead of electronic transfer, meaning undercover Children either had to set up electronic accounts under false names--risky--or patronize the sort of places that didn't care how you paid as long as you paid--distasteful. Nowadays, Kendi could pay hard freemarks to the fanciest place in town and be just another cautious socialite.
      Kendi passed the waterfall and thumbed open the double door to the suite he had rented. The place was bright and airy, with a large outer sitting room, two well-appointed bathrooms, and four bedrooms. Enormous windows looked out over the cityscape. Although the suite sported its own holographic generator which allowed guests to add artwork or chunks of outdoor scenes, no one had been able to agree on a decoration scheme and Kendi had finally shut the system off entirely. As a result, the place was rather plain, done in simple greens and browns.
      Ben had appropriated part of the sitting room as a work area, and he had hooked up his own computer to the hotel's network. The man himself was hunched over the keyboard, clothes rumpled, red hair tousled. In other words, looking perfectly normal. Lucia stood behind Ben's chair, one hand on the Irfan figurine around her neck. The holographic display above the desk showed text and pictures.
      "What's going on?" Kendi demanded without preamble.
      Ben hesitated. Lucia looked perfectly calm, but Kendi felt his whole insides screw up with tension. Bad news, that's what it was all right. Otherwise they'd come right out and say it.
      "Well?" He strode to the desk. "Just tell me. Or do I have to read it for myself?"
      "It's bad," Ben said finally.
      "I'll go see what Gretchen is up to," Lucia murmured, and quietly withdrew into the room the two of them shared. Kendi's legs went weak.
      "Ben, what is it?" Kendi asked. "I can't handle suspense. Just say it. Did you find them? Are they . . . are they dead?"
      "I don't know," Ben replied. He reached up and took Kendi's hand. "Ken, I found a series of news stories. A firm called DrimCom--the Com is short for Communication --encountered a . . . loss. It used to own twenty-odd Silent slaves, but only two of them came through the Despair with their Silence intact. One's a man, the other's a woman."
      "My family?" Kendi asked.
      "Yeah. I have their holos. Want to see?"
      Kendi leaned forward despite his fear. "You know the answer to that."
      Ben tapped a key and the text vanished. The head of a woman in her mid-twenties appeared. She was beautiful, with large brown eyes, skin darker than Kendi's, and sharply-defined features that included a firm chin. Kendi touched his own chin when he saw her. "Martina," he breathed.
      Another hologram appeared beside the first, one of a man in his thirties. The resemblance to Kendi was unmistakable, except for the striking blue eyes. Sejal had similar eyes, and Kendi had once suspected Sejal--wrongly--of being Utang's son. Kendi's throat thickened. The last time he had seen his brother and sister they had been fifteen and ten, respectively. Now they were adults.
      "I managed to break into their medical records, including their DNA scans," Ben said. "I ran a comparison. All three of you have the same mitochondrial DNA, which means you're siblings. It's definitely them."
      Kendi's heart was racing and he tightened his grip on Ben's hand. "You said there's bad news."
      "Yeah." Ben ran