Hot Sleep- The Worthing Chronicle - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,37
a way to get his legs up through the opening. He could hear shouting down the corridor the way they had come. Arran heard it, too, and started pulling and tugging at him. "You're not helping one damn little bit," Hop said impatiently, and she left him alone as he finally got his weight up far enough to let him turn around and pull his legs up.
The moment he was clear, sweating and panting from the exertion, Arran pushed down the trap. Now an innocent - looking lighting fixture hung over the shower again.
"Why did you unlock the door!" she whispered angrily.
"Because a bathroom door locked from the inside with nobody there is an advertisement that there's another way out."
Worklights here and there provided a dim light, and soon they could both see - a little. The crawlspace they were in was only a meter and a half high - neither of them could stand up. Structural beams were hard to tell from air conduits, wiring frames, and exhaust shafts. Hop leaned over from the catwalk they were sitting on and pushing on a ceiling tile. It gave easily.
"We can only walk on beams and catwalks," he said.
"Wonderful. Do you know your way around in here?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Not right here, anyway. Capitol isn't the same anywhere. Nobody planned the remodeling over the last few thousand years. Good luck to us. Now will you tell me who the hell we're running from?"
She nodded. But Hop noticed that she was breathing too heavily, and her hands were trembling. She didn't say anything.
"What's wrong?"
She just shook her head and started to cry. Hop had seen her cry several times before, in pain, for effect, a play for sympathy. But this looked like real honest - to - goodness little - girl tears. Nothing controlled. She wasn't even beautiful or seductive as she cried. Her fans would be shocked. Hop reached over and touched her arm. A little human contact, he decided, might help. It didn't. She recoiled, turned away from him.
"Go ahead and cry, then," he said. "Just do it quietly."
"I am, dammit," she said. "Farl is dead."
And that explained it, at least well enough for Hop, well enough for right now. Farl Baak was the one relationship that Arran Handully had never looped; therefore it wasn't for sale to the public; therefore it must be real. And now he was dead, and her grief was also real.
"I'm sorry," Hop said.
She nodded, acknowledging his sympathy, and began to get control of herself. "Sorry," she finally said. "Sometimes things actually happen that aren't in the day's scenario,"
"Yeah. I'll spill a few tears for you sometime and we'll be even."
"Don't hurry," she said, and managed a faint smile. "From now on I promise to cope. I don't know where to go now, you know. I knew how to get here, but from here I have no idea."
"Who killed him?"
"A man, just one of the guards. I didn't know him. I went to watch the - questioning. With the probe. I couldn't believe it, Hop. Jazz Worthing lasted an hour and a half. No one has lasted fifteen minutes. An hour and a half. It was terrible. Like waiting for a deal to close in the other room, you know at first that it'll be simple, but when it takes longer, and longer, and longer, you begin to think that it's gone sour, that it'll never happen."
"But he finally broke?" Hop asked, not sure whether he was glad that Jazz had held out so long (the bastard traitor) or sick that he had suffered so much (I like him anyway, dammit).
"Yes. I was near the door. That's why I'm alive. The moment he named the man, the cockles went off, just like that. Farl didn't have a chance. Dead on the spot. A few others, too. As if it had been planned."
"But who was it? Who did Jazz name?"
"Didn't I tell you? Shimon Rapth."
Hop didn't know him, but remembered - "Hey, wasn't he the guy who was helping Baak figure all this stuff out?"
She nodded, and a flash of hatred crossed her face. "Looks like he was just trying to find out who his opposition would be. The guards were all his men, of course. They'll be rounding up the whole group, there are at least a hundred of us, maybe more - "
"You mean Jazz Worthing was working for this Shimon Rapth?"