Asimov’s Future History Volume 9

by Isaac Asimov

  PRISON NOT POSITION! TRY, CONVICT, AND JAIL ELITON

  “Eliton . . .”

  “Please, Ariel.”

  She continued on.

  Suddenly, a few people focused on her.

  “—Spacer—”

  “—Auroran—”

  “—tinhead advisor—”

  “—Burgess!”

  Hofton placed a hand at her back and gently urged her forward. They reached the gate to the shuttles. Hofton leaned past her and handed a card to the attendant.

  “Yes, Ambassador,” the woman said. “Go right through.”

  Ariel hesitated. “What is this?” she asked, gesturing at the crowd.

  “Clar Eliton is supposed to be coming through here today,” the attendant said flatly, as if that explained everything.

  “I see,” Ariel said. “Thank you.”

  She walked up the ramp.

  “I no longer trust the authorities to protect someone like yourself,” Hofton said. “Forgive me if I exceeded my position.”

  “No, that’s fine. Eliton is coming through here?”

  “I understand he’s being shipped out. He’s been given an appointment. The Terran government wants him offworld.”

  “I haven’t been keeping track. I didn’t realize he was so . . . controversial.”

  “I think ‘hated’ is the word you want.”

  Ariel grunted. “I suppose there isn’t much worse than breaking a trust.”

  “Oh, I think so. Breaking a trust that gets people killed.”

  Ariel looked back at Hofton, but as usual his face was stonily unreadable. Just before she looked away, though, he cocked one eyebrow at her.

  At the head of the passageway a small car waited. Hofton tapped a code into the little vehicle’s processor. “Have a safe trip, Ambassador.”

  “Don’t overstay your welcome here.”

  “I’m already timing my departure. As soon as Ambassador Setaris is done with me, I think I’ll be following you.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.”

  “Oh, by the way.” He pulled a disk from his jacket pocket. “A partial analysis of the grass you asked me to have assayed. There are some peculiarities, but apparently it’s not much more than some rare Terran grasses. I’ll continue having it analyzed if you like, there may be something more to those peculiarities. Lack of time, though—”

  “Thank you. I understand.” She took the disk and tucked it into her own jacket. “See you on Aurora, Hofton.”

  He bowed again.

  Ariel stepped into the car and sat down. A canopy snapped into place and the car started up its magnetic track. She strained to keep Hofton in sight as long as she could.

  Coren found messages waiting in his office at DyNan headquarters when he returned from the funeral. One was a note from Ariel. He left it unopened, thinking he knew what it said and not wanting to deal with it just now. The second was from Inspector Capel, inviting him to visit his offices—sooner rather than later. A third was from Lio Top, one of Rega’s lawyers and his former campaign manager during his run for the senate. The last two got attention first: Willis Jay, the biologist he had given the grass samples to, and Shola Bran, current security supervisor.

  He tapped Shola’s code. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Boss, I—” The voice-only comm frustrated Lanra sometimes; he could not see faces, only guess from vocal inflection the state of mind of the person on the other end of the link. He had necessarily gotten fairly good at it—like now, he heard self-consciousness and embarrassment, hesitancy—but he never felt certain of his judgment.

  “Come see me,” he said quickly, and broke the link. He tapped Jay then. “You have something for me, Doctor?”

  “You should drop things off for me to do more often, Mr. Lanra,” Jay said. “I haven’t seen anything quite so interesting in a long time. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to come down to see this.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  Shola rapped at his door and he waved her in. She approached his desk with visible reluctance.

  “Sit,” he said, then waited till she did.

  “Boss, I don’t know how—I mean—”

  “What security arrangements did Rega request in the last couple of months?”

  “That’s just the problem. He refused security. He said now that he no longer threatened anyone in government, he didn’t need it.”

  Coren considered. “Well, that’s not unlike him.”

  “But you always knew when to listen to him and when to ignore him. I didn’t know how to handle that.”

  “Rega never permitted personal surveillance in his residence. That was always a standing policy.”

  “And you always abided by that?”

  “Absolutely. So if you’ve been beating yourself up because you think you should have done something, stop. Rega was stubborn, obdurately independent, and the most private person I ever knew. His company, his rules. What do you think you should have done?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s been on my mind. I don’t know how to shake it.”

  “You shake it. You never forget it, but you do your job. You figure out what happened and how to prevent it from ever happening again. You find out who did it.”

  Her eyes narrowed sharply. “Who did—what?”

  “Rega was murdered. You didn’t think that was natural, did you?”

  “No, but—”

  “What have you been doing to follow up?”

  “We did a survey of his apartments, went through his personal transaction logs to find possible witnesses or perpetrators. I’ve started talking to all employees who had any contact with him since he ended his election bid. The usual.”

  “Good. Then your job right now is to keep me posted on your progress.”

  “You are back, then?”

  “I am most definitely back, and we will find out who did this.” He watched her for several seconds while she thought over what he had said. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” She stood. “Thanks.”

  “If it helps any, there probably wasn’t anything I could have done, either. You’re not at fault.”

  She managed a forced smile before she left. Coren leaned forward and began entering instructions into his desk system. In seconds he discovered that his oversight program was still in place. He directed it to copy Shola’s files extending back to the day Coren had quit Rega Looms, then to identify and copy the related files of other operatives working with her on Rega’s death. That would take some time to get around Shola’s private safeguards.

  He opened Lio Top’s message, then: “Coren, I need to speak to you regarding Rega’s last will and testament. Call me earliest, please.”

  “What will?” he said caustically. His daughter dead, Rega Looms had no other family, and damn few people Coren could think of would merit any posthumous aid from him. Maybe he intended to set up a board of directors or a trust or a grant program—

  “Later,” he snapped out loud, and left the office.

  He made his way back to the organics lab.

  An assistant led him to Jay’s private office, adjacent to his laboratory. Odd, almost plastic smells permeated the air, undercut occasionally by something more pungently organic.

  “Oh, good,” Jay said when he saw Coren. He stood and came around his desk, gesturing casually for Coren to follow.

  The lab proper was a long room divided by several worktables, each bearing a collection of devices only a few of which Coren recognized.

  “That grass has turned out to be a very interesting subject,” Jay said, leading Coren to the last worktable. “Do you know much about organic biology, horticulture, gardening . . . ?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “I would be surprised if you did. Most Terrans know next to nothing about organic anything.” He sighed wearily and tapped a screen on the table. “Here.”

  Coren stepped around the table to stand beside Jay. On the screen he saw a complex molecule, the v
arious components color-coded in blues, reds, and bright oranges. One set, though, was a hard, metallic grey.

  “This is the chlorophyll molecule I extracted from the sample. Normally, in plant cell biology, you’ll find magnesium here as a reactive element—the chloroplast, the part that contains this, is like our own hemoglobin, you know what that is? Good. Instead of iron, like we use, plants use magnesium.” Jay pointed at the gray sections. “This is where the magnesium ought to be, bonded to the nitrogen atom.”

  Coren waited. Jay seemed to be contemplating the image on the screen. “And what do we have instead?” Coren prompted.

  “Beryllium. It still promotes photosynthesis, but I’m having a hard time explaining why beryllium is here instead of just good old-fashioned Mg. There is magnesium present, but it’s bonding to a complex silicate instead of nitrogen. It’s acting as a connector, bridging between the silicate and the chloroplast. The silicate is causing some odd reactions in the RNA, too, which may be why there’s beryllium. If so, the RNA is acting atypically, but . . .”

  “Colloquial translation?”

  “Well, this grass is partly made of glass, to put it simply. There’s a variety of silicate compounds falling out of some of the internal interactions, but a few organic anomalies, like cyanophosphates and so forth. I can’t say that they actually do anything—it may be that this is all byproduct.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, when you see traces of peculiar inorganic ions in constructs like this, it’s usually an indication that a secondary process is at work, something external.”

  “Silicate. Glass. What might that indicate?”

  “Well . . . something we played around with a while back, but Rega canceled all the projects. I’m not sure what all the specifics were, but it had to do with terraforming.”

  Coren blinked. “As in reshaping environments?”

  “Exactly. Part of the Settler program.”

  “DyNan was involved in that?”

  “Long time ago and not very deeply. This reminded me of some of it, though. But I’m not sure yet. I wanted to show you what I had so far.”

  “What about the grass itself?”

  “Oh, it’s a variety of Terran grass . . . um . . .” He went to another screen and read briefly. “Eragrostis curvula . . . that’s the closest form I came up with. Pretty much extinct in the wild, we keep a lot of it in greenhouses and in data storage. Originally indigenous to continental Africa.”

  “Was it exported?”

  “I could find out. It’s a hardy species. It’s possible your sample is a variation redesigned for a nonTerran environment.”

  “Keep working on it, would you?” Coren asked. “I’d like to know more about it.”

  “It’s more interesting than anything else I’ve been doing lately.”

  “Which is?”

  “Nothing. I think Rega was planning to shut the department down. Six months ago the last project I had was canceled.”

  “What was it?”

  “Recombinant fluorine extraction. We were looking for a way to increase hydraulic pressure in some of our heavy lift waldoes. The idea—”

  Coren held up a hand. “Another time. Thanks.”

  Jay flashed a crooked grin. “I’m very popular at dinner parties, too, for my scintillating conversational topics.”

  Coren laughed and left the lab, more puzzled now than before he had entered.

  “Silicates,” he muttered.

  Lio Top kept offices outside the DyNan compound. Her company offices were neatly-appointed, comfortable, ideal for casual meetings, but she never, as far as Coren knew, did any work in them.

  He took the fast walkway beyond DyNan into the posh café district just north of the compound. He stepped off in a large circular space, its levels tiered and receding, giving it the look of an amphitheater. Statues alternated with holographic abstract displays around the rim of the plaza. Coren breathed in the rich mix of smells from several restaurants as he ascended stairs to the fourth tier.

  Lio Top’s office sprawled behind a transparent wall that gave her a view of the entire circle. Soft apricot-tinged light filled the low-ceilinged interior.

  “Coren, good,” she called from behind a large, glass-topped desk. She stood and came to greet him. “Thanks for coming so fast. Can I get you a drink?”

  “Sure. Nava?”

  Lio raised an eyebrow and went to her bar.

  “Your message was a bit cryptic,” Coren said. “What do I have to do with Rega’s will?”

  “As it turns out,” Lio said, pouring a tall glass of turquoise liquid, “more than I would have guessed. No living relatives anymore, he had to do something. Knowing Rega, I expected the whole thing to go to his church.”

  “It isn’t?”

  She handed him the glass. “That would be telling. You and everyone else will have to wait for the official reading, day after tomorrow. But I did have instructions outside of the will concerning you.” She returned to her desk and fetched a disk, which she pressed into his free hand. “There.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea. My instructions were to, and I quote, ‘put this directly into Coren’s hand the minute you see him in the event of my demise.’ I’ve done that. I have no knowledge of its contents.”

  Coren looked over at the desk. “Shouldn’t you have kept this in a safe or something?”

  “I did, until you sent word that you were coming over. I kept it in the secure pouch you gave me. That thing is a pain to open.”

  Coren smiled appreciatively. “You’re his lawyer and you didn’t look?”

  “I’m not his primary attorney,” she protested. “I just ran his senate campaign and took care of his public relations issues. Sil Vanderbo is still principle attorney, and he’d have a nervous breakdown if he’d known about that. If I’d pried and looked at it and he had found out before I handed it over to you, he’d have had my license.”

  “I think you underestimate your position with Rega. He would never have trusted you to manage his campaign if you were just one of the stable.”

  “Oh, I don’t underestimate myself, don’t you worry about that. I think I was probably his third or fourth most trusted counsel. Pretty high up, considering he employed nearly two-hundred-fifty attorneys. But I never held any illusions about my limits, either, and as long as he kept Sil on retainer I knew I’d never get any higher up the ladder.”

  “Vanderbo approved you to manage the campaign, you know.”

  Lio looked at him, clearly surprised. “I didn’t. I suppose I should have guessed, but . . .”

  “Lio, what happened? I saw the autopsy report. After I . . . left . . . what happened?”

  Lio sat on the edge of her desk and folded her arms. “I wish I knew. He sealed himself off from everyone. I suppose it was a week or so after you—after.” She frowned. “He was very hurt by what you did.”

  “You seem to be the only who knows what that was.”

  “I was handling your severance. Four days into it, he changed his mind. He never explained himself. Not like it was his habit to do so, but I’d never known him to keep a disaffected employee before. If they quit or he had them dismissed, he never trusted them again. No second chances.”

  Coren slipped the disk into his pocket and sat down. “And after that?”

  “I thought it was exhaustion. He gave instructions to several department heads, gave me that disk to give to you, then locked himself in his residence. After a couple of weeks he began issuing orders again, almost always by comm. Occasionally he’d call someone to his residential office for a private meeting, but they all claimed they didn’t see him then, either: he conducted everything via intercom. I thought—we all thought—that this would be the way he’d come out of it. But then all communications ceased last week. When no one heard anything for three days, Shola took it on herself to investigate. She found his body.”

  She didn’t mention that, Coren thought, covering his expr
ession by taking a drink.

  “Did anyone else get a special disk?” he asked.

  “Can’t say. That was the one I was told to deliver. Other attorneys may have received similar instructions. I haven’t asked.”

  “But I imagine Vanderbo did.”

  “He wouldn’t be worth his reputation if he hadn’t. I doubt he’ll tell you anything, though.”

  Coren shrugged. “Depending on what this contains, I may or may not ask him.” He finished his drink and stood. “Did you ever trace the blackmail?”

  “The threat that made him withdraw from the race? No. He found it on his desk one day, already delivered, with no record of who brought it or where it had come from.”

  “Someone had to have delivered it.”

  “Surveillance showed nothing.” She slid off the desk to her feet. “Of course, if he had ever allowed for real surveillance . . .”

  “He wouldn’t have been Rega then.”

  “I suppose not. But he might be alive now.”

  Coren went to his private office, on the fourth floor of an older building in the Infant District near the Southwest Corridor of D.C.

  The first surprise Coren found on the disk was that it contained a full holographic recording. Rega Looms, tall and almost austerely thin, bloomed before his desk.

  “Coren.”

  Coren glanced down at the desktop. A request for confirmation showed on the monitor attached to the reader.

  “Yes, Rega,” he said.

  The disk, through the AI in the desktop, identified his voice, and the recording proceeded.

  “I owe explanations,” the image of Rega continued. “To whom, I’m not sure. Perhaps to Nyom, but it’s too late for that. I doubt she would ever have listened anyway. So I’ll make them to you and trust that you will know what to do with them.

  “Twenty-five years ago—a little more than that, really—I had a son, a fact you discovered, much to my dismay. You’re very good at what you do, Coren. Sometimes I wish you weren’t so good, but that skill has been useful to me and it would be incredibly dangerous to me were it employed by my competitors. I’ve never questioned your methods or censured you in any way, though I’m sure you think I would if I knew what you did to serve my will. I find it safer to keep you in my employ, despite any possible ethical conflicts, than to let someone else use those same skills. My thinking may be faulty and my ethics dubious in this instance, but I’m following instinct rather than principle.