Mirage

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “Yes,” Mia said. “I--”

  “Stop,” Ariel said, standing. Bogard fell silent. She stared at the screen. “That last name...”

  “Tro Aspil,” Bogard said.

  “Tro... but he survived...”

  “The wound depicted,” Bogard said, “is not consistent with survival. The shot entered the throat and severed the carotid artery.”

  “Then...” Ariel went to her datum.

  “What is it?” Mia asked.

  “Should I continue?” Bogard asked.

  “Hmm?” Mia glanced up at the robot. “Compile the list for future reference.”

  “You captured three of the assailants and...?” Derec prompted.

  “Yes, I did. Well, Bogard captured two of them, but--”

  “How did Bogard perform?”

  “After I gave him a new priority, perfectly. I couldn’t have apprehended those men without it.”

  “Then...” Derec looked at Bogard self-consciously. “How do you explain the failure?”

  “I’m not sure--”

  “I built Bogard, Agent Daventri. Senator Eliton is dead. I need to know what happened.”

  “I see. Yes, you should know. Frankly, I had intended to ask you that question. When--” She gave Bogard an apprehensive look. “I’m not sure we should talk about this in Bogard’s presence.”

  Derec nodded. “Bogard, have you completed compiling the list of casualties from this recording?”

  “Yes, Derec.”

  “Stand down, then, please.”

  “I cannot do that, Derec. I am still responsible for Agent Daventri’s safety.”

  Derec frowned briefly, then shrugged. “Should any of the subject matter we’re discussing present potential operational difficulties for you, alert us.”

  “I will do that, Derec.”

  Derec smiled. “Bogard will know better than any of us when it’s in trouble.”

  Mia felt uneasy. “I attempted to get a full report from Bogard last night. The part about Senator Eliton is absent from its logs.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s elsewhere, but it’s there. At some point I’ll have to run a complete debrief on all Bogard’s systems to get at it, but it means that its system is working the way it should. Please, go on.”

  “When the explosions began, Bogard immediately enshielded the Senator. That left us free to confront the assault. But it came so suddenly and unexpectedly--you train for the possibility, but nothing can prepare you for the reality. The casualties, the explosions, the panic--what do you do first? Our training says to get the people we’re supposed to protect out of harm’s way as soon as possible. There was nowhere for them to go. We couldn’t get them to safety. Then... then my teammates started going down. I tried to return fife, but for all I know now I may have shot nothing but images. Or I may have shot innocent spectators. There was too much all at once.”

  Mia swallowed thickly, aware now of the stinging in her sinuses and eyes and the faint quiver in her stomach.

  “I remember turning to see if anyone was covering the Spacers. I saw Bogard retract from around Senator Eliton and head for Ambassador Humadros. Senator Eliton stepped backward--”

  “Stepped or stumbled?”

  “Stepped... as if he was ready to be abandoned... but he still looked surprised...”

  “And?”

  “And Ambassador Humadros went down before Bogard reached her. It reversed itself to return to Eliton at the same time I started toward him. Then Senator Eliton... went down.” She wiped at her nose, embarrassed. “Excuse me, I’m not--”

  “It’s all right. This isn’t a normal day. You’re entitled.”

  Mia sniffed, then looked at him, suddenly angry. ”Am I entitled to fail? I don’t think so.”

  “How did you fail?”

  “I did not protect my assignment.”

  Derec waved his thumb at Bogard. “There stands several million credits of technology a hundred times faster and more alert than you could ever be. It failed.”

  “There has to be a reason.”

  Derec nodded. “Exactly.”

  “But--” Mia caught herself and held back. In an instant she lost the sense of recrimination that had been building in her all day and had nearly overwhelmed her just now. Not entirely, she could sense it still within, but it was at arm’s length again, manageable. Perhaps it would get worse later. Perhaps it would come and go for the rest of her life. It was a simple truth Derec had handed her, and it sabotaged the guilt she felt... at least for the time being.

  It’s not, she thought, so much my failure as it is someone else’s success... temporary success.

  She cleared her throat. “I see. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Avery.”

  “Derec, please.” He looked at Bogard again. “So the question is, why did Bogard abandon Senator Eliton? You said Eliton had ordered Bogard to protect Humadros, but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I need to take Bogard back to Phylaxis to debrief it.”

  Mia felt herself tighten up inside. She glanced at the robot. “I shouldn’t travel yet--”

  “You only need to release Bogard from its priority and turn it over to me.”

  Mia would not meet his gaze. “I--I’m not comfortable with that, Mr. Avery.”

  “Not--” Derec caught himself when she looked away. “Please understand me, Mia. Bogard has data necessary to this--this investigation. The only way I can get at it is to do a full debrief and reset.”

  “Bogard is the only reason I’m still alive. I can’t--”

  “You’re in the Auroran Embassy. What’s going to hurt you here?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s just it. I do not know. Until I can walk on my own and defend myself, I just--I can’t release Bogard to you.”

  “Agent Daventri--”

  Mia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. A very. I can’t. Please don’t press me further on this. Maybe in a day or two…”

  “There’s another problem,” Derec said. “Bogard right now is unaware ofa discrepancy in its memory. Its behavior is conforming to its program, but there is discrepancy and eventually the self-diagnostics are going to tumble to it. When that happens, Bogard will hunt it down even if it means tearing its own programming apart to find out what the problem is. Bogard could easily destroy itself. That’s why debrief is important. More so because it involves a personal failure on its part.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Don’t tell me anything. Release Bogard--”

  “No.”

  Derec jerked back as if she had slapped him. “How long do you want to wait to find out what happened to Senator Eliton?”

  “You can figure that one out,” Ariel interjected, returning from her datum console. “The question I want answered is how can a dead diplomat board a shuttle back to Kopernik Station to take passage on a starship bound for Aurora?”

  “You’re sure it’s not an error?” Derec suggested.

  Ariel scowled. “That was my first thought. But last night when I spoke to Benen Yarick, one of the junior members of the Auroran Legation, she mentioned Tro. I replayed our conversation and she listed him among the fallen. But he was on the list of survivors I had from the embassy comptroller’s office. One or the other had to be wrong. Perhaps Yarick only saw him injured, not killed. I checked the embassy transit office and found a passage booking for him on the shuttle that lifted this morning at four-fifteen for Kopernik. I sent a query to confirm his arrival at the station. The confirmation also verified that Tro Aspil boarded the liner Corismun at one-ten local time.”

  “It could still be an error,” Mia said. “It was chaos afterward.”

  “That’s what I want to find out.” Ariel tapped a code into her com.

  “Trina Korolin.”

  “Ms. Korolin, this is Ariel Burgess. Sorry to bother you again.”

  “No bother. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wanted to make sure everything was still on for tomorrow’s meeting and to
check a couple of details. The rest of the survivors are leaving tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I--I’m sorry we’re all turning out to be such--”

  “No, don’t. This was extraordinary. I can’t blame anyone for wanting out.”

  “That’s... kind of you...”

  “I was curious, though. Tro Aspil has already left. Was there a reason he needed to depart before the others?”

  “Tro...” There was a long pause. “You’re joking, aren’t you? Tro died.”

  “But I have a transit record for him through the embassy.”

  “I don’t care what you have, Ms. Burgess. I saw Tro die. He--his neck exploded. He bled to death in the middle of us.”

  Ariel widened her eyes. “I’m sorry. This is an inexcusable error. My apologies. I’m glad I asked. I--”

  “When they loaded him into the ambulance, he was dead. He died with his eyes open, Ms. Burgess. I tried to shut them. They wouldn’t close, they just kept... staring...”

  “Ms. Korolin, please. I am very sorry. This was a transcription error, obviously. Perhaps it was for his remains?”

  “No, all the bodies have been sequestered by the authorities pending autopsy. We were told it may be weeks before we can ship them home.”

  “I see. Well. Thank you, Ms. Korolin. I’m frankly a little embarrassed about this.”

  “Don’t be. I apologize if I spoke inappropriately. I just--it hasn’t been easy since...”

  “Will you be up for tomorrow? Would you like to postpone?”

  “No, not at all. I need to get on with this. If I wait another day, I might change my mind.”

  “I understand. In that case, I’ll let you get back to your privacy. Thank you for your time.”

  “Thank you.”

  The connection broke and Ariel turned back to Derec and Mia. “I didn’t know the bodies had been sequestered.”

  “It’s standard procedure, Ariel,” Mia said. “Even for foreign nationals, They’ll be at the Sector morgue, attached to the Reed Hospital Complex.”

  Ariel nodded.

  “So if,” Derec said, “Tro Aspil died, then who is on the way back to Aurora?”

  “We need to verify that Tro is the one who did die,” Ariel said.

  “Then,” Mia said, “you need to get into the morgue. Normally, I’d be able to get you in, but right now I’m not one of the living myself.”

  Ariel looked up, almost grinning. “I think I can arrange that.”

  _

  FIFTEEN

  The Civic Morgue occupied a sublevel, well below the main hospital complex in Reed District. Its innocuous façade could have been easily missed--a plain metal door with an ID scanner to its right, a plain sign above the lintel. No other vehicles were in the small lot when the embassy limo pulled in.

  Derec stepped from the limo and tugged at the hem of the formal jacket Ariel insisted he wear. It did not quite fit and he kept pulling at the sleeves and shrugging as if to ease the tightness out of his shoulders. He had been glad she had lacked the rest of the suit that went with it.

  A second door was set into the wall a dozen or so meters from the visitors’ entrance, one large enough for ambulances. The space hummed with a deep background noise from above. The place was unadorned--bare metal, struts and sheeting and harsh lights. Derec could not even find graffiti, as if by unspoken agreement no one intruded upon the area.

  Ariel led the way to the entrance, carrying herself with confidence, as if she did this all the time. Derec still wondered whom she had called for the authorization to get in here, but all she gave him was a secret smile as she had dug through a closet for the jacket. She stopped at the door and slid her ill into the scanner.

  “Speak your name and business, please,” a tinny voice requested. Bored, monotone, human.

  “Ariel Burgess, Auroran Embassy, authorized survey of Spacer bodies.”

  Derec heard the slight hesitation on the last word, but did not look at her, keeping his hands clasped behind his back and acting the part of an ambassadorial aide.

  “I have clearance for one person,” the voice said. “Who is with you?”

  “My aide, Massey.”

  “I repeat, I have clearance for one visitor.”

  “Check embassy protocols. All embassy personnel of representative or liaison status are permitted one aide in the conduct of any official business.” She sounded just as bored as the unseen caretaker, with just a hint of impatience. Derec admired the act.

  He imagined the person on the other end punching a terminal for information on the proper regulations, looking for anything that would get him dismissed or reprimanded, and probably wondering why tonight someone like Ariel Burgess had to show up to make him think about his job.

  “Acknowledged,” the man finally said.

  The scanner extruded her ill and the door slid open.

  “Massey?” Derec asked sardonically.

  Ariel cocked her eyebrows at him but said nothing. She led the way into the morgue.

  The reception area was a long, cramped chamber, bracketed by the cubicle where the night attendant worked on one end, and the doorway into the morgue proper at the other. Between them were two rows of booths containing com and datum terminals. The light, though standard, seemed oddly inadequate; the upholstery was dark, dark green, the floor a dingy grey, and the walls pale green. Even here Derec caught the aseptic scent of chemicals and a metallic tang, subtler and somehow worse than typical hospital odors.

  The attendant looked up from his desk to give them a disgruntled look, then returned his attention to whatever he had been doing before Derec and Ariel had disrupted his peace of mind.

  Ariel slid into the nearest booth and Derec stood at the edge of the seat.

  “I have the batch number,” she said.

  “Batch?”

  She gave him a wry look, then tapped commands into the terminal. Derec let his gaze drift over the walls and ceiling, looking for eyes or ears, realizing even as he did so that they would not likely be obvious. He glanced at the night attendant, who ignored them pointedly.

  “You don’t think they’re overstaffed here, do you?” he asked.

  “According to the log, there are two doctors on duty tonight and three orderlies.”

  Derec leaned closer to read over her head. “As long as we’re here, why don’t we see...”

  “I’m checking,” Ariel said. After several seconds she gave a surprised “Huh!” and sat back. “They’re all in the same lab.”

  Derec studied the screen. There were eight labs, each with its own storage. He read down the list Ariel had pulled up and saw all the names from the Union Station incident appended to one lab--Number Six.

  Ariel stabbed another key and a chit extruded from a slot beside the screen. “Please follow the guidon,” a small voice told them from the terminal.

  The chit glowed green in her hand.

  The door into the lab area opened on their approach. A strip along the floor pulsed green, leading the way down the long, wide corridor past door after numbered door until the green chit Ariel held turned red.

  She inserted the chit into the slot next to the door, which slid aside.

  Derec could not define the smell. A hybrid of medicinal sterility and stale air, mingled perhaps with his own preconceptions of a necropolis--decay, wet stone, mustiness. But he saw nothing damp; the room was metal and plastic, and nothing here rotted.

  The room reminded him of nothing so much as a library, with neat rows of cabinets, each drawer a number matched to a manifest, the contents awaiting study. For a moment he imagined himself lying in one of these files, still and empty of life, a shape, unconnected to anything he had ever done. He shuddered.

  Another door led to the lab where the autopsies were performed. He shivered again, heavily.

  Ariel stood before a datum set at in the right-hand wall from the entrance. Derec joined her.

  “I’ve got the manifests,” she said absently, scrolling slowly through
the names. She was in the Cs.

  “Aspil, right?” Derec reminded her.

  “Um... yes.” She scrolled back to the beginning of the list. “Row three, number Five D.”

  Derec followed a pace behind. Ariel moved slowly now and Derec thought he understood. Reluctance, ill-ease, sadness. She had known this person, differently than the others, a few of whom she had met but none that had meant more than a brief bio on a publicity jacket and maybe a drink while talking inconsequentials. Even Aspil she had not known well, she had told him, though she knew him well enough that it made a difference. They had met at the Calvin Institute on Aurora. She had spent three days with him giving orientation on Institute policy regarding export of robots to Settler colonies. Three days--business, dinners afterward, time for personal conversations. Sufficient to make him more than just a face and a name and an assignment. A week later she was on a ship to Earth, with other things filling her attention, and she had given Tro Aspil no further thought until his name had come up on a list of the dead.

  She strolled down row three, reading numbers. The drawers were stacked six high. Somewhere around here, Derec thought, there must be a lifter platform. But “D” was at shoulder height. Ariel stared at the plain grey square, the number in black in the center.

  Derec almost reached for the button. Ariel’s hand shot out and stabbed it. She stepped back as the drawer ex tended.

  The naked body lay beneath a transparent canopy. It looked artificial, skin the wrong color, eyes closed too tightly, hair too neat and stiff. A wound puckered halfway down the neck.

  “It’s Tro,” Ariel said, her voice small and controlled.

  “Then who took his flight back to Aurora?”

  “I don’t know.” She pressed the button and the drawer withdrew, back into its slot. She gazed at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then turned away. “What other discrepancies are there?”

  She went back to the datum where the manifest remained on the screen.

  “What the...” she hissed.

  Derec looked over her shoulder.

  “Mia Daventri,” he read. “But--”

  “All the bodies from Union Station are here. That’s what I meant when I said they stored them all together.”

  “Mia wasn’t killed at Union Station.”