Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [73]
M'lord checked the holomap on his wristcom and led off through a succession of corridors. They encountered a trio of gossiping employees and an elderly couple, clearly visitors, on their way to the cafeteria that Roic smelled in passing, but none spared the pallet a glance. Roic carefully did not look back. Two more turns and a short ride down a freight lift tube, and they were pacing along an underground corridor that stopped at a double door, the first locked barrier they'd encountered.
M'lord opened one of the boxes, whipped out his special tool kit, ImpSec standard issue with upgrades, and knelt to the electronic lock. He muttered unreassuringly, "God, it's been a while. Hope I haven't lost my touch . . ." He puttered for a minute or two, while Roic jittered and kept glancing over his shoulder, and Raven looked bland. The doors parted so soundlessly, Roic was taken by surprise. M'lord looked smug. "Ah, good. I'd hoped not to leave any evidence by damaging the lock." He waved them through like some demented mâitre d'hôtel escorting diners to the best table in the room, and closed the doors gently again when the pallet had passed through.
The new corridor was much darker. And, Roic was surprised to see, unfinished, which made him worry about encountering workmen, but he supposed a construction crew would have lights that would warn them. Beneath the pyramidal building lay three sub-levels. Around the core stack of utilities on each level, four concentric corridors extended outward in squares, with radial connecting halls at the midpoint of each side. Too regular to be called a maze, it nonetheless seemed to Roic that it would be easy to get turned around down here. So just how disturbing it had been to m'lord to be lost for hours in a true maze, with no light?
They turned in at the next connecting spoke; m'lord's lips moved as he counted off side branches, then set in a smile as the core stack hove into view. Another pause, while m'lord weaseled his way into a locked electrical access panel, did some careful counting, and nodded. They then went out another spoke and turned right into one of the corridors, this one completed, dimly lit with utility lighting and lined with loaded cryo-drawers.
"This doesn't look so fancy," Roic murmured.
"These are the cheap seats," said m'lord. "If you want to be filed away behind faux mahogany and brass fittings-or gold, I'm told-NewEgypt can supply, on the upper levels."
Even down here, a lot of the drawers had small holders set in the walls beside them for odd little personal offerings, including tiny bottles of wine, wrapped snacks, or burned-down stubs of incense sticks. Most common were flowers, mostly plastic or silk but sometimes real ones-some fresh, some brown and drooping sadly from their dried-out water tubes.
"Here," said m'lord, stopping abruptly. He craned his neck at a drawer at the top of the stack. "Read off the number, Raven."
Raven recited a long alphanumeric string, twice.
M'lord checked carefully against the data on his wristcom. "This is it."
The disguising boxes then found another use, as m'lord filched one to boost him to a convenient height to examine the drawer lock and attach his ImpSec-special door opener to it. "All right," he murmured, climbing back down. "When the lights go out, make the switch."
He unshipped his own hand light and trotted off.
Raven issued Roic a pair of insulated medical gloves, donned a pair himself, and bent to unseal the