Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Silence. Shit, I’d let myself go.

  “Cory . . .” Her eyes were wide. A tear slid down her cheek “You didn’t mean that, did you? You couldn’t possibly take up with her could you?”

  Oh, how the memories flooded back of how insanely jealous she’d been when we just started going out and someone mentioned Inaru.

  “It is not about her. It’s about us. I’m stressed and there are dangerous things afoot, so you’re not getting the best response out of me right now, but since you’re pressing me for an answer, I’ll tell you as it is, much more bluntly than I wanted: This—us—is not going to work. My life is in Barresh, and you want me to come to live here permanently. I—”

  “I said I’d come.”

  “Eva, please. I’m no regular diplomat and you know that. You’re much better off finding yourself a man who agrees with your father and who is happy to host dinner parties.”

  “But I love you, Cory.” A tear trickled down Eva’s cheek.

  I let a silence lapse.

  “You know, Eva, I don’t think you do. You love a person you think is me. You love me as you want me to be, not as I am. It’s the same for me. You dream of me being a perfect Nations of Earth diplomat. I dream of you heading my household in Barresh. Neither of us is going to fulfil the other person’s dream.”

  A further silence. Eva sniffed.

  “Eva, you have a lot of love to give, but I am not the man you want to give it to. Step into the world and enjoy yourself. You’re young—you have plenty of time. Don’t wait for me.”

  She said nothing, crying silently. I felt a stab of guilt. It was a bugger of a thing to have happened like this, and I had known people were watching when I kissed Thayu, and I’d still let myself go.

  “I’ll get Telaris to take you home.”

  “I can get home by myself.”

  Abruptly, she turned and ran for the door.

  I heaved a sigh and sat down on the bed. What a mess.

  Thayu shut the door and crossed the room, silently settling herself on the desk. After a long and heavy silence, she said, “That is the woman who is contracted to you?”

  I nodded, not meeting her eyes.

  “What did she want?”

  “To see me.” To a Coldi, that would sound strange. A person did not love the subject of a contract and would not seek them out for pleasure. “Tell me, Thayu, she wasn’t wired at all?”

  “Not her.”

  “Renkati sent her the images of . . .”

  There was no emotion in her eyes, no sign of understanding or sympathy. No sign that she even remembered that crazy kiss.

  I breathed out heavily. My job didn’t lend itself to relationships, least of all with her. Soon, Nicha would be back and I’d best not interfere with Nicha’s contract.

  She pushed herself up. “Well, that was all a scare for nothing, then.”

  Then she left the room, too.

  I lay awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling.

  22

  A RATHER STRANGE procession boarded the train in the morning. I had persuaded the guards to dress less conspicuously, but that didn’t take away from the fact that two of them were dark-skinned and very tall, and they still had to wear sunglasses to hide their green eyes, and that the others all had peacock hair and included a woman more muscled than an Earth champion weightlifter. Earth clothes fitted them poorly. Only Ezhya Palayi looked remotely normal. At least his clothes fitted him, but his hair gave him away. He sat a little apart from the rest of the group, fiddling with a comm unit. Something to be taken care of at home no doubt.

  I sat and stared out the window, where green fields whizzed past under a leaden sky. I was exhausted, my eyes gritty. I kept seeing Eva’s face, and wished there had been more time to talk to her, wished there had been the opportunity to break the news gently, if such news could be broken gently. It was all my fault. I should never have let myself be lulled into thinking I could adapt to her world.

  I had deceived her; I had not done the right thing with her, and I couldn’t possibly, ever, make up for it.

  Guilt cut deeper with Melissa Hayworth’s continued silence. When I decided sleep wasn’t going to happen, I scanned the news services, but found no trace of her. She had a network diary—untouched since the day that fateful article had been published. Had she lost her job because of me? Was she hiding from Renkati?

  One point of light had been a message from Nicha saying he would meet us as soon as we came back from York. Again, this made Thayu happier than she should have been. I couldn’t stand to look at her, and I couldn’t stand not looking at her, and each time I did, my guts turned to mush.

  It was raining by the time we came to York. A minibus taxi took us to the Dawkins Centre, a low building on the outskirts of town surrounded by green paddocks and grazing cows.

  Before going up the stairs to the entrance, I checked with security. “All still fine?”

  Evi gave a single hand signal. He fiddled with something in his pocket. “There are agents all around, Delegate. Very noisy here.”

  “Meaning?” I glanced at Thayu.

  She gave a shifty glance at the other guard, and avoided returning my look. “I think we want to be out of here as soon as possible.” She used formal pronouns.

  While we walked up the stairs, I felt irritated with myself. She hadn’t been this formal with me for a long time. I could, of course, just ask her what her relationship with Nicha was. I had to face the fact: I was too much of a coward to hear the answer. I didn’t want to think about her with Nicha. Hell, I was jealous even before I had taken her to bed. And I had no time for this crap right now, but my mind churned and my heart ached and I knew I had lost her.

  We were already in the foyer, a light-filled room with floor-to-ceiling windows. The receptionist gave us a wide-eyed look. First at Thayu, then at me, and then at the rest of the party filing into the foyer, then back to me, her gaze raking my gamra outfit. I knew that look; I could almost hear her think a human in chan clothing. . . .

  I stepped up to the counter, placing my hands on the wood in a Coldi gesture—show them your hands; they’ll know you mean no harm. “I need to speak to Mr Scott.”

  “Dr Scott, you said?” Redness creeping into her cheeks, she reached for the phone, dialled and listened. “Dr Scott is on a call.”

  “Good. Then he’s here. Where can we find him?”

  She met my eyes, a touch of defiance coming over her face. “You need an invitation from one of the scientists to get in.”

  “Let’s just say the invitation comes from Dr Elsi Schumacher.”

  She sat up straight, her face closed. “I don’t know who or what you are and what you’re doing here, but I don’t appreciate jokes like that.”

  “It isn’t a joke. My name is Cory Wilson, delegate to gamra. What I want to ask Dr Scott is of vital importance for Nations of Earth and for peace in this part of the galaxy. Now let me talk to him, please.”

  I could play the pompous-arse role if I wanted.

  The secretary swallowed, then glanced at the others, who formed a black-clad wall between her and the exit. “I’ll let you in, not all of them.”

  “They come with me. If it pleases you, I’ll leave two guards here.” To make sure you don’t let in anyone else.

  Another short silence; she licked her lips. “Very well.”

  She stumbled up from her chair, grabbing a keycard from the desk.

  The glass door slid open for her.

  I gestured to Telaris and Ezhya’s male guard. Wearing translators, they would have heard that two of them were meant to stay behind. They placed themselves on either side of the glass doors while the receptionist led the rest of us into the corridor.

  We passed closed doors with high voltage warning signs, and open doors into rooms full of equipment in dust-free encasements. The odd worker sat behind a screen.

  At the end of the corridor, we entered a light-filled room in which the centrepiece was an ova
l conference table. Each of the chairs around it faced its own little screen. A holo-projector stood idle in the middle.

  More equipment lined the perimeter of the room. There were also two partitioned offices.

  In one of these offices a man worked behind a large screen displaying a map of lines and circles. He was about fifty and wore a washed-out jumper over thin shoulders. He had more hair on his chin than his head.

  The receptionist said, “Dr Scott, there are visitors for you.”

  One look at me and my party and the man reached for the comm unit on the desk. Thayu leapt into the office faster than I had ever seen her move, and slammed her hand on the unit before he could pick it up.

  The man tried to push her away. “I’ll call the police!”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said in a low voice. I walked into the office. “We only need to talk to you, nothing more. Mind if I sit?”

  I sat down when Dr Scott said nothing, and added to the guards in Coldi. “Jam this room; shut the door.”

  Evi moved to the door, shutting it in the receptionist’s face; Ezhya’s female guard took a reader from her pack and put it next to one of the computers in the main room. A touch of the screen, and it came to life. Thayu crouched next to her, thumbing her reader while studying the display of one of the machines in the cabinet.

  Ezhya Palayi leaned casually against the doorframe.

  Dr Scott’s face had gone pale. “If you are looking for any of Dr Schumacher’s data, you’re too late. It’s all gone.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  In the conference room, Thayu went to work. Tables and lists scrolled over the screen of her reader. Every now and then, she keyed something into her translator, or spoke a few words with the guard.

  Telaris remained by the door, a patient obsidian statue.

  I waited.

  Dr Scott sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. Every now and then, he threw a dark glance at me, or at Ezhya.

  Silence lingered.

  Deleted material could be restored easily enough. If Special Services or the police had been here, which in all likelihood they had, they knew this, too. The material hadn’t been in Danziger’s office, Special Services didn’t have it; I had a feeling we wouldn’t find it here, either. With each minute that passed, the chance that someone would come into the building’s foyer and discover the receptionist more or less under siege increased. We had gotten unnoticed out of Danziger’s office yesterday, but we were pushing our luck to do so again.

  I rose from the chair and went into the meeting room.

  “Thayu? Find anything?”

  She turned, and a brief expression of sympathy flickered across her face before it became professional again. She shook her head.

  I paced to the door, turned on my heel and paced back again. “How much longer do you need?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know that we’ll find anything. How much longer do you want me to keep looking?”

  Glancing at Dr Scott, still with his arms folded in his office, I decided in a split second. “Don’t bother. Keep whatever you have there running. Do you have that damaged report here, the one you’ve been trying to fix?”

  She nodded.

  “Then come into the office with me.”

  Without a word, she took her reader and followed me, her face still so unemotional. At my gesture, she placed the reader on the table in front of Dr Scott.

  While she turned on the projector and opened the report, I said, “I have a question regarding some material we have been able to restore.”

  Dr Scott tightened his arms closer about his chest. “I don’t comment on a colleague’s unpublished work.”

  “I understand you and Dr Schumacher got on well?”

  “That’s none of your business. Flash Newspoint and their rubbishy gossip. Elsi is dead. She can’t defend herself.” His voice wavered.

  “I appreciate that and your privacy, but I thought that if you were friendly with your colleague, you might be interested in something that could clear her name. It’s in everyone’s interest to understand what happened.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Gamra. I’m Cory Wilson.”

  “The one who was in the office with President Sirkonen?”

  “The very one.”

  “And now you come to ask about Elsi’s work?” He pushed himself off the desk, looking wearier. “I thought they’d finished with that. Taken it all and gone. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s bad enough Elsi was killed for this, and I’m sick of suggestions that I had anything to do with it. I didn’t.” He backed further away.

  “Dr Scott, I’m not coming to investigate or accuse anyone, least of all you. Those matters are up to the police. My concern is with the information that went missing at the same time your colleague did. My employer on this mission is the government that has paid for this information, and would like it back.”

  “Then you’ve come for nothing, because they’ve already been here and have already looked.”

  “Who?”

  He shrugged, his face a mask of defensiveness. “Some of those . . .” He glanced at Thayu.

  “Chans?” Oh, how did I hate the feel of the word in my mouth.

  “Yes.”

  My skin crawled at the hatred in his voice.

  “They found nothing, just like the police found nothing and you will find nothing.”

  “Yes, I understand, but we actually have some of the information that went missing.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  I touched the screen and activated the holo-projector. “We don’t have all the data, but we need your help in interpreting what we do have.”

  Displayed on the crystalline screen was one of the maps with its pretty fields of blue, green and purple. Just like Thayu’s hair.

  “This is one of the maps we’ve been able to retrieve.”

  Dr Scott reached out for the reader and scrolled over the map. I thought some of the defensiveness left his face. “I remember this. Elsi came to show it to me. She said she had never seen a more dramatic trend in her life. Very significant and sustained. This map represents rainfall? Oh yes, I see it does.”

  “Increased rainfall?” I asked, aware that Ezhya at the door listened intently to every word.

  “Oh yes. In this case, if I remember correctly . . .” He scrolled through the next map, which resembled the first, and the next one, then frowned. “That’s strange. It doesn’t appear to be here.”

  “The data was damaged,” I said, keeping my voice neutral, and hoping Dr Scott would go on.

  Which he did. “There was another map which was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen, showing the distribution of a greenhouse gas, sulphur hexafluoride. At the edge of this continent here. . . ,” he pointed, “. . . was a large red spot, indicating a huge concentration of it, and then in the next measurement, it had lost about a third of its size. Where is this?”

  Ezhya didn’t miss a beat. “Crystal Wastelands. The crater.” He spoke Coldi, and I translated. “It’s a meteorite crater on Asto.”

  Dr Scott studied the screen a bit more, his frown deepening. “Is there any industry in this place?”

  “There is industry on the planet, but not here. No one lives in this area.”

  “No surprises in that. Anything alive couldn’t possibly breathe this air. There wouldn’t be enough oxygen in it.”

  Ezhya confirmed. “No one comes near the Crystal Wastelands. Many have tried. Some of the desert kids go there. Apparently, they ride boards on the air in the crater. It is dense and grey and makes their voice go funny. If they fall off they die.”

  I translated for Dr Scott, who nodded. “That sounds like sulphur hexafluoride all right. It’s the heaviest gas known. When you put it in a tank, it looks like water. You can float things on it. We only know it as an artificial product. Production requires free fluorine gas, which is one of the most
reactive substances known.”

  Asto, I knew, was extremely rich in fluorides.

  Dr Scott stared at the screen again. “It’s also the strongest greenhouse gas we know. It doesn’t break down, because it doesn’t react with anything much. Its effects last for at least twenty thousand years.”

  I thought I understood. In some way, the gas had formed in the crater when the meteorite hit, and wasn’t being formed anymore. “So this work shows that it’s running out, or running down, or whatever—disappearing in any case?”

  “So the data seems to suggest.”

  “And that causes an increase in rain?”

  “Probably. Most importantly, though, it would cause a significant drop in temperature.”

  “How much?” Ezhya’s voice sounded harsh, stressed, I realised.

  I translated.

  “Hard to say without having all the data,” Dr Scott said.

  “If we provided him with new data, could he tell us?” Ezhya asked again, his eyes meeting mine.

  I translated.

  Dr Scott turned and looked directly at Ezhya. I cringed. “Do you think I want to sign my death warrant?”

  Thayu stirred, staring at the screen of her reader, then glanced at me, “With permission, mashara advise that we move.” There was an undertone of urgency in her voice. I’d have to come back to Dr Scott later.

  I rose from the table. “Thank you for your time, Dr Scott.”

  Ezhya’s female guard opened the door and strode into the hall.

  I followed, trying to keep up with Thayu. “What’s the matter?”

  “We have two identities incoming.”

  “Close by?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who are they?”

  Renkati.

  The receptionist met us in the corridor to lead our group back to the foyer. Evi and the other guard still waited there. Thayu spoke to them in a low voice. They pulled out readers and compared screens. There seemed to be a disagreement about what to do.