by Isaac Asimov
“I never found any of the services adept at style or sensitivity.”
“How did you get down?”
“I’m a baley.”
She thought for a moment. “That crashed drone two weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“I heard no one survived.”
“No one else apparently did. I heard others. There were survivors of the crash. I haven’t seen any of them since.”
“Standard,” Tilla said. “I don’t think any baleys have grounded, intact and free, in over a year.” She drew a deeper breath. “What was that, stim?”
“New variant, yes.”
“I’m going to crash hard?”
“You’ll sleep.”
“That would be a change.” She pushed herself straighter. Her color was a bit better. “What I’ve got is entirely local and there are no known antigens. Kru keeps trying to find something, but . . .”
“Kru is native?”
“As much as anyone is here.”
“Who’s your contact in the blockade?”
“We were going through a Commander Reen, head of Internal Security. But I got the distinct feeling that someone was intercepting his communications. We started routing through a secondary blind, codenamed Ixpess. Then Filoo killed Dressl and the rest of us got sick.”
“Why did Filoo kill him? Does he know who you are?”
“No. We’d all have been killed if he did. Dressl . . . he made the greatest mistake of any agent in the cold.”
“He got involved?”
“The black market situation here is obscene. Two thousand percent mark-up on essentials, but you can get pleasure items for almost half market value. It drains community reserves, saps the will, and chokes the people. You’ve been dealing ’biotics to blend in? Then you know what the cost factors are. And none of it’s pure, it’s all cut, which is worse than none at all. Dressl got angry, tried to step in and do something. The rest of us went to ground, but then we contracted one of the tubercular variants. It works faster on some than on others. Polen died three weeks ago.”
“When were you cut off?”
“Just after Dressl died.”
“You’re sure Filoo didn’t know who you were?”
“No. I think it was a mistake. Dressl’s death got reported—a lot of death notices do get transmitted offworld, even if there isn’t a response—and somebody stupidly assumed it meant the whole team was terminated. Well, they turned out to be right, but . . .”
“I’ve seen that kind of assuming before. We were always lectured about that, though, and the lecture never seems to take.”
“To assume,” Tilla quoted, looking ceilingward in mock reverence, “is to make an ass out of u and an ass out of me. Since thee is like me and I am no ass, then who could that mean?”
Masid laughed softly. “Do you still have your comm?”
“Of course, but I don’t have the recontact codes—”
“Let me take care of that. Tilla, I need a briefing. What is going on here?”
She looked at him sadly. “Do you have a lifetime? It might take that long to understand it.”
“Can you give me the academy version?”
“I’ll try. Did I hear right? You brought coffee?”
“The real stuff. From Verita.”
“Oh, my. Then I will do my very best for you.”
Mia finished her workout and went gratefully to the shower. The strenuous routine did little to stop the insanely cascading thoughts.
Was Reen’s presence at Jons’ cabin a coincidence?
He had questioned her about any unusual items found in Corf’s cabin. At the time, nothing had struck Mia as odd about it, but now, having seen Reen with a book tucked under his arm, leaving Jons’ cabin . . .
She toweled her hair dry and dressed. Everything was circumstantial. It seemed ridiculous to think that Reen was part of anything illegal; he was such a by-the-code officer, so strict and formal, that he sometimes seemed more robot than human.
Dressed, Mia went to her office. Her body felt warm and ready after her exertions, joints loose, muscles pleasantly stressed. Only two junior lieutenants were on duty in the security operations room this shift, neither of whom worked directly with her. She passed through, taking in the status displays, and entered her small private workspace.
For several seconds she sat at her desk, staring at its surface—the control contacts, the readouts, the screens extruded in a kind of semicircle facing her—and, seeing nothing, her vision turned inward. She had been on the blockade for slightly over ten months now, in this department, and had spent almost all that time running from one leak in the embargo to another, never quite finding the controlling authority that caused those leaks in the first place. Not really that different from the way it was on Earth, but her expectations had changed upon arrival. She had thought—based on no evidence or received wisdom, just an assumption—that it would be easier to do her job here. After all, ninety-five percent of the personnel were military, there was a clear chain of command, everyone stationed on the blockade knew their duty, maintaining discipline was one of the primary principles of life here rather than just a by-product of haphazard law enforcement—
And with each new leak, her frustration grew. Sometime in the past six or seven weeks, Mia Daventri had decided that, in fact, it was worse here than in a civilian population. The orders of the day, rules of engagement, standard protocols, and uniform codes of conduct gave those who chose to a clear and well-marked path through which to violate the mission. The near-dictatorial power the officer corps possessed made it simpler for smugglers and black marketeers to avoid the plainly visible pitfalls. While the process of arrest and conviction was simpler, the trade-off was in a higher success at evasion by the criminals.
It made no sense on the surface. It was, as one of her instructors had put, counter-intuitive—a real pisser.
So, she thought, fixing her attention on the desk, I should stop behaving like a military officer and start doing my job like a cop . . .
She had two messages in her comm buffer. Mia touched the ACCEPT. The first was from Sturlin.
“I may have a line on those items we discussed,” she said. “See me.”
The second had no address. When it opened, a string of alphanumerics flowed across her screen.
“What the . . .”
She immediately initiated a trace. Within seconds, on the screen beside the comm message, a chain of communication ports spread from her desk, back through eight receiving ports on the station itself, and finally out to a relay satellite in geostationary orbit above Nova Levis. She recognized the satellite, and the moment she did she understood the nature of the message.
“Impossible,” she muttered, and ran it through a decryptor.
It still came up nothing but gibberish. Except for the last line: “Down the rabbit hole and back up into the garden.”
Mia blinked, baffled. Then she checked her personal code book.
Someone new had just arrived . . .
Mia cleared the screens and filed the message in her personal cache. Then, slowly, she began a time-consuming process of composing, encrypting, and transmitting a message back to Earth, to an address she had not used since arriving here. She had kept it in reserve, hoping she could do this job without using resources which she was not altogether certain were at her disposal. Time now to find out if she still had any friends back home.
* * *
Masid sat by the narrow window and stared out at the night shadows in the atrium. At least, what should have been an atrium, filled with hanging baskets of green and flowering plants, had they ever managed to complete the plan for the building.
He had too much to think about and no certainty at all that he could do anything with the conclusions he might draw. Tilla had talked for nearly two hours, exhausting herself. She had asked for more stim, but Masid did not want to kill her or in any way hasten her inevitable death.
She was dying, there wa
s no denying it. Whatever disease had taken root in her was inexorably eating her lungs to shreds, along with her bronchial passages, her esophagus, and had begun attacking her heart. He found traces of infection in her lymphatic system and her spleen was useless, resulting in a wildly erratic platelet count. She bruised at the slightest touch.
Since the blockade, she explained, Nova Levis had been swallowed by a series of opportunistic infections. Within two months the black market had shifted from selling food and clothing and luxury items to selling palliatives and pharmaceuticals. Oddly, the inflated prices on ordinary objects had dropped down to below previous market levels, as if the dealers were offsetting the costs with the profit from the drug trade, doing the beleaguered and dying citizens a kindness.
Everything came out of Nova City, the first Solarian port on the planet. How it got through in such quantity, Tilla did not know. But, she had stressed, there were no shortages. In anything. Clothing, food, building materials, comestibles—everything was readily available, albeit sometimes at outrageous prices. Everything except medicines.
“I’m sure even those are in sufficient supply,” she had said, “but that’s their milk, that’s the source of their income.”
Nova City lay nearly a third of the way around the planet. It had been the Solarian precinct from the beginning. That’s where I need to be, then.
But how?
Masid stared out at the nighttime, wondering how long he had before infection took him and he became useless. The augment Anda had given him no doubt gave him more time than he might have had, but even Spacer immune tech had limits. Tilla did have a synthesizer and it still worked. She agreed to let him use it to increase his own supplies. Maybe he could get Filoo’s attention by outselling him and the other dealers.
That could get him dead.
Or hired.
He wondered if the message he had encrypted using Tilla’s old code and his own NAE—New Agent Established—would get to anyone who would believe it. He had not told Tilla what he suspected, which was that for her entire team to have been cut off and classified as deceased on the basis of one member’s demise meant someone on the blockade, in a position to make such a decision, was part of the problem. His code was intended for the deep cover agent in the security division, whoever that might be. If he got no reply, then he would at least know how wide spread the corruption went.
It also would mean that he had to operate completely alone.
Masid Vorian was accustomed to operating alone, cut off from immediate support. But this time he felt the isolation.
I could die here, he thought. Then, despondently: I could die here without accomplishing a damn thing . . .
He listened to Tilla’s labored breathing and tried to come up with a plan that avoided either of those likelihoods.
Chapter 12
COREN FOUND THE cubicle he wanted in the cramped Baltimor Law Enforcement quarters and knocked on the open door. Inspector Capel looked up from his screen, then gestured for Coren to enter the small office. Coren closed the door and sat down.
“Thanks for getting me the TBI reports,” Capel said. He waved at the screen. “They aren’t complete, are they?”
“Would you expect them to be? No, they aren’t, but what I got was relevant to our concerns.”
“ ‘Our concerns.’ That’s a delicate way to put it.”
“It’s a delicate business we’re in—in its own way.”
Capel smiled briefly. “You intelligence people like euphemisms too much.” He straightened. “Have you eaten lately?”
“No.”
Capel grabbed his jacket and motioned for the door. He reached across his desk and touched a couple of contacts, then led Coren out of the precinct.
He took Coren to a home kitchen. Amused, Coren grabbed a tray and followed Capel through the line. He took a plate of what appeared to be meatloaf covered in thick gravy and a bowl with a creamy, ivory-colored mound of something that might have been based on mashed potatoes. There was ample bread, though, and in spite of years of dining at private establishments, Coren had never lost a fondness for home kitchen bread.
The chamber was sparsely occupied at this hour, so Capel easily found a table away from any other people. His own tray was near overflowing with plates and bowls and he carried an entire loaf of bread in his free hand.
“Believe it or not,” Capel said as they sat down, “I come here for the bread.”
“I thought for the ambience.”
“Hah-hah. Very amusing. But nobody surveils a home kitchen. So, in a sense, you’re right.”
Coren broke his own bread in half and dipped one end in the gravy. He chewed thoughtfully and washed it down with water. “About as I remember it.”
“When was the last time you ate like this?”
“You might resent me if I tell you.”
Capel shrugged. He picked up a fork and began eating quickly. Coren chopped his “meat” with the edge of the fork. He took a bite of the ivory mound—mashed potato analog; as he expected, and not as bad as he remembered.
“Okay,” Capel said after a few minutes. He did a casual inspection of the kitchen. “So your cyborg has actually come forward to claim an inheritance from Looms. Will it stand up?”
“He is—was—Rega’s son. Genetically, he can make his case.”
“Why haven’t the TBI arrested him yet?”
“They tried. He has a very good attorney who has kept him out of custody and is arguing that the ‘person’ at the Petrabor warehouse and his client are not the same.”
“Will it hold up?”
“I don’t see how, but the only real charge that can be brought against him would be for baley running. The deaths of TBI agents at the warehouse are unwitnessed and therefore circumstantial. There was a second cyborg that was taken on Kopernik Station, so a good argument can be made that we misidentified Gamelin. It’s complicated enough that he might just pull it off. He’s certainly being well-funded.”
“Who? The Hunter Group?”
“That would be my guess,” Coren said. “If you could get a warrant, we could look at his finances and establish that.”
“I’ll try. I think I can persuade a judge that this relates to three or four unsolved murders, especially your old partner Damik. Who’s Gamelin’s attorney?”
“Hovis Vlib.”
Capel’s eyes slid shut. “Damn. I’d say that establishes a funding source right there. Vlib used to represent Alda Mikels.”
“Used to?”
“After Mikels was indicted this last time for baley running and conspiracy to commit murder, Vlib actually dropped him. My guess is, Vlib works for the people Mikels hoped would save his butt.”
“The Hunter Group.”
Capel nodded and resumed eating.
“What about the murder of Rega Looms?” Coren asked. “I think all your warrants should be covered under that investigation.”
“You would think. However, it’s being declared a suicide.”
Coren started. “How?”
“Traces of ammonia fluoride were found in his system.”
“That accounts for the broken and crushed bones?”
Capel cleared his throat. “The autopsy report is being sealed. I might possibly keep this an open file, but be prepared for the whole thing to be buried. You tell me Hovis Vlib is representing the cyborg, then I tell you that a lot of credit is being spent to turn Looms’ death into a suicide. A path is being cleared for Gamelin to take control of DyNan Manual Industries.”
Coren did not taste the rest of his meal.
The Hunter Group . . .
Coren sat in the dim anonymity of an expensive bar, a whisky on the table before him—his fourth. His thoughts came slowly, with a cottony quality that seemed to give them physical substance.
Ariel Burgess and he had established that the Hunter Group was the legal face of an offworld consortium of black marketeers. Pirates. That label amused him, bringing to mind as it did the i
mage of bloodthirsty corsairs attacking helpless merchant ships in deep space. But the media loved it and had instilled the label in the public imagination. And why not? In a very real sense, they were pirates. They stole, they dealt in slaves, they undermined the legitimate currency of interstellar traffic, they frightened people.
The list of corporate ties, shadow companies, subsidiaries, and related holdings had brought together a dizzying array of players once they had begun looking at Hunter. Ultimately it had even compromised the Solarian ambassador, Gale Chassik, who had been recalled. The Solarian mission to Earth currently operated only with a few Keresian bureaucrats; paperpushers with less and less to push. Coren wondered if a new ambassador would be appointed, or if all the allegations of connections between Solaria and Nova Levis and baley running would make that impossible.
That problem is now Aurora’s, he thought.
He missed Ariel already and it had only been a week. Soon enough she would be on Aurora, and he doubted if he would ever see her again. He wished she were sitting across from him now so he could spin theories with her about all these connections.
He swallowed a mouthful of whisky. Somehow the taste of home kitchen food product refused to wash away, even under the onslaught of expensive liquor.
After speaking to Capel, he had called Lio Top. The conversation had been short and depressing, which had prompted him to have a third and now a fourth drink. Lio estimated that Gamelin, now Jerem Looms, if he could establish consanguinity, could push through a challenge and revision of Rega’s will within another six days. That meant he could probably take control of DyNan and all its assets a mere three or four days after that. Which meant, finally, that Coren had ten days to prove Jerem had murdered Rega.
Ten days. With practically any other human on the planet that was more than enough time to prove nearly anything. But Rega had been different. He had rejected all common forms of personal security, all passive surveillance, and all passive recordings. There would be no records available from any legally recognized source. So far, Coren had been unable to find anyone in the company who had even seen Jerem before the aborted reading of the will. Everything he had was circumstantial.
