Finding the Jewel Read online

  I’ll pass, Ari told herself firmly. Especially with the look/touch field in place.

  The look/touch was her own invention—well partly anyway. She had modified a holo projection field so that it produced tangible effects as well as visual ones. It was hidden in the fake prison ID she’d paid to have implanted in her skin so the metal of the ID would mask it completely. Her other failsafe—the one she was counting on to get both herself and Jak out of BleakHall once she found him—was hidden there as well.

  Of course she had to get to him first, before she could use it.

  “My Lady,” Hannah begged again. “Please, please reconsider! BleakHall is full of big, violent males and you are female. What will they do to you when they find out what you are?”

  “They’re not going to find out,” Ari said firmly. “Believe me, Hannah—I have a foolproof disguise.”

  “My Lady, just cutting your hair isn’t enough to hide your beauty!” her maid protested.

  Ari laughed. “Oh Hannah—you always did look at me with a fond eye. I’m nothing special and believe me, right now I’m glad I’m not. But I’m not just talking about cutting my hair. Look…”

  Reaching up to the hollow of her throat, she tapped lightly at the top of the triangular prison ID tag. The ID was coded to respond only to her DNA and inside it was the tiny bead which housed the look/touch projector. Ari felt rather than heard the hum and a prickling sensation ran down her body from her clavicles to her crotch.

  “I don’t understand, My Lady.” Hannah looked at her blankly. “What do you mean? What should I be looking at?”

  Ari looked at herself in the mirror but she was still wearing her dressing gown—dark blue silk, belted at the waist. It had been a present from Jak last Winter Solstice when the tulsa crop had been especially good.

  “Oh, well of course you can’t tell with this on,” she said. Taking a deep breath, she unbelted the gown and shrugged it down around her waist. “Now look,” she told her old maid.

  “My Lady?” Hanna stared at her blankly, her seamed and wrinkled face bewildered. Then her watery blue eyes widened and she gave a little gasp. “My Lady what have you done to yourself? Where are your breasts?”

  Ari stared down at the flat, male chest the look/touch projected. Her breasts were nothing remarkable—they were teacup-sized with dark pink nipples that tended to be more puffy than Ari liked. But now they were completely invisible—hidden by the illusion of a scrawny male chest with nipples that were small copper disks, flat enough to make the walls jealous.

  “They’re still there,” she assured her maid. “You just can’t see them.” Of course, if someone was to grab at her chest, they would be able to feel the soft, pillowy mounds of her breasts. Ari wished it wasn’t so but she hadn’t had time to perfect the top part of the projection as much as she’d wanted to—she’d been working too hard on the bottom half which was arguably the most important part.

  She parted the robe further and looked into the viewer. There, plainly visible, was a male shaft. It was small and soft, curled like a sleeping worm against her thigh but it was there—and in more than just sight. The look/touch manifested an actual fleshy organ between her thighs which fit over her own pubic mound and hid her vagina from sight completely.

  The organ wasn’t completely functional—it was mostly hollow for one thing and so was unable to become erect. That was fine with Ari, though—she didn’t need to get a hard-on—she just wanted to look like a male and she needed her disguise to be utterly believable. Which it was—she was certain. Since the fake shaft fit over her cleft so tightly, she could even urinate standing up if she had to—the shaft acted like a kind of funnel.

  She had shaved her mound to make the fit perfect and tried it out only that morning—it definitely worked. The texture of the skin felt a little strange—too slick to be real since it was, after all, only a solid holo projection. But the look of it was perfect and that was all she needed.

  “Oh, My Lady!” Hannah’s eyes grew so wide they looked likely to swallow her wrinkled face and she took a staggering step backward. “What…what have you done?” she gasped, her hands fluttering weakly. “You…you…this isn’t right! I used to change your nappies as a baby and I know you don’t…you can’t have a…a…”

  “It’s all right, Hannah!” Seeing how upset the old maid was getting, Ari quickly tapped the prison ID and turned the look/touch off. At once her breasts and mound came into view, though she quickly covered them with her blue silk gown. “See? I’m fine,” she assured her maid who still looked like she didn’t know whether to scream or faint.

  “How…what…?” Hannah shook her head, clearly bewildered. “How did you do that? Is it something you cooked up in that lab of yours?”

  “It is.” Ari didn’t even try to keep the pride from her voice. “I call it a look/touch—it’s a solid holo projector. See, when you bend the light beam just the right way and treat it with a cadmium stream—”

  “Please, My Lady, none of your science talk.” Hannah waved as though shooing a fly. “You know it only makes me confused. Well…so that’s how you plan to sneak into BleakHall. I must say, it’s awfully convincing.” She shuddered.

  “Thank you—I thought so too.” Ari grinned. “So you see, Hannah, I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “How, My Lady?” the maid protested. “Just because you look like a male doesn’t mean you won’t be attacked. You’re so small and those awful males they keep locked up in that place are so big.”

  “One of those males is Jak, which is why I have to go,” Ari reminded her. “And size doesn’t matter so much. You know Jak’s been teaching me Ton-kwa self defense for years. I can take on an opponent twice as large as me and throw him.”

  “Maybe in the sparring ring, My Lady,” Hannah objected. “But never in a desperate, awful place like BleakHall! They won’t obey the rules there—there’s no referee to stop the match if things get too rough. And what if more than one attacks you at a time? Oh…” She brought her faded apron up to her eyes and began to cry. “Oh Goddess of Mercy, what will you do then?”

  Ari felt a sudden cold chill go down her back. What would she do if she was attacked by multiple assailants at once? Hannah actually made a very good point.

  Resolutely, she pushed the fear away.

  “That’s not going to happen, Hannah,” she said firmly. “In fact, I’ll probably barely be in the prison for an hour. All I have to do is get in and find Jak. The moment I can touch him…”

  Grabbing the old nurse by her arm, she touched her Prison ID again, rubbing the lower point of the triangular metal plate in a specific rhythm. At once a glowing golden bubble enclosed them both and they began to float upward.

  “My Lady!” Hannah gasped, grabbing for Ari’s hand. “What—?”

  Once more Ari rubbed her ID, turning off the switch hidden beneath it. The bubble popped noiselessly and they fell the inch and a half they’d floated back down to the flagstones.

  “Oh!” Hannah stumbled and would have fallen to her knees if Ari hadn’t caught her. “What was that?”

  “A tribian transport bubble,” Ari said. “It cost me almost all the profits Jak had saved from his last three harvests but I don’t think he’ll mind if it works. When it works,” she corrected herself quickly.

  “But how…how does it work? If you can tell me without getting too technical, My Lady,” Hanna added quickly.

  “I think I can manage.” Ari smiled at her. “The transport bubble is a solid lightbeam sphere just big enough for two. It can be deployed at any time and as long as you’re out in open air, it will take you straight up into the sky.”

  “It…it will?” Hannah still looked shaken. “But then how…?”

  “Don’t you see?” Ari asked. “I’ve just got to get to Jak when we’re both outside—probably in the exercise yard, which I know they have because I’ve studied the plans of the prison. Then the two of us float up…up…and away to a remote life support craft I’