The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1

by Arlene F. Marks

  “Check again. The man I knew was a correctional officer at Dearborn Detention Center, Block C, from 2380 to 2385. His real name could have been different than the one I knew him under.”

  O’Malley worked his compupad for a couple of minutes, then handed it across the desk so that Drew could inspect the seven biofiles he’d sifted out of the database. None of the images was the face of his friend. Not one was even close. And if the murder victim couldn’t be identified using Earth’s databases…

  “What about the murder investigation?”

  “The file wasn’t as fat as you were hoping it would be,” O’Malley apologized, handing him a datawafer. “No snaps, just the Medical Examiner’s report, a membership list for a group called Earth for Terrans, and an order from District Council to halt the investigation, dated three days after your departure from Earth.”

  So much for Romero’s promise. Using Drew’s ID as a starting point, Gluckstein’s search of the databases would have hit the same dead end as O’Malley’s did. And Truman and Lupo’s investigation records had either been wiped from the system or prevented from reaching it.

  That left Earth Intelligence. Patel was supposedly an EIS operative, but the only commitment that organization had made was to look into the activities of Earth for Terrans. If the EFT could be turned and exploited, Patel’s death would probably be written off as nothing more than the cost of doing business, regardless of who had actually killed him. This was possible only because Drew Townsend, with his thoroughness and his tenacity and his passionate desire to get justice for his friend, was now safely tucked away out of sight and out of mind on Daisy Hub.

  Checkmate.

  Townsend exhaled noisily and leaned back in his chair. “Thanks, O’Malley,” he sighed.

  “I can put a watchdog on this, boss,” the other man offered. “The Hub’s net can alert us if Patel or the murder get mentioned in any future updates.”

  “I’m pretty sure they won’t be. Thanks for your trouble — I appreciate it.”

  O’Malley opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it. With a nod of acknowledgement, he got to his feet and left Townsend sitting alone, staring at the datawafer as though by concentrating hard enough he could read it with his naked eyes.

  He was still at his desk, reading the M.E.’s report and regretting his decision to open the file, when the sound of the tube car door signaled that he was no longer alone.

  Wordlessly, Lydia dropped into a chair across from his and stared at him until the silence together with the feeling of eyes boring into the side of his face became too much to ignore, and he finally turned his attention away from the screen and met her sympathetic gaze.

  “We’re worried about you,” she said. “Rob told me about your friend. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Leaning forward, she informed him in a low, urgent voice, “You’ve just lost someone twice — first when he was murdered and again when he was wiped from the InfoCommNet. Nobody on Earth is lifting a finger to find out who killed him and you’re stuck out here with no way to do it yourself. Drew, I know a lot about grieving. Trust me, you are not fine!”

  Inwardly, Townsend cursed. This was not the time to be revealing weakness. “Okay,” he snapped. “You’re right — I’m not fine. I’m feeling angry enough to punch a hole in the bulkhead with my fist. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “It’s a start. We’re not bits of data in a computer, Drew, and we’re not defined by the labels assigned by monolithic organizations like the Relocation Authority. We’re real, warm-blooded Human beings, with emotions, and when we suffer a terrible loss, we need to allow ourselves to feel it so that we can accept it and get on with our lives. Bruni Patel meant a lot to you. Maybe you need to stop looking for answers on that datawafer and start finding them inside yourself.” And without saying another word, Lydia got to her feet and left.

  Drew glanced at the M.E.’s report — ID inconclusive, cause of death inconclusive — and felt something sharp and warm rising in his throat. Lydia was right. Bruni Patel was nowhere on that document. Townsend would have to look for him elsewhere.

  ***

  A box of tea, a jar of curry powder, a tin of chocolate paste, vacuum-sealed bags of dried figs and shredded coconut, a bottle of amber-colored maple syrup — this was all that remained of Bruni Patel. As Drew gently removed each item from his trunk and placed it on top of the dresser in his bedroom, he tried to conjure a remembered image of his friend’s face. But all he could see in his mind’s eye was the ruined features of a pale and eyeless corpse.

  Bruni Patel had been his best friend, maybe even his only friend. He had shown an angry young man what was possible and had helped him to reach it. Drew owed him everything that was good about his life. Now Bruni was gone, and nobody seemed to care. And, worse, Drew was having trouble visualizing what he looked like before he was murdered. It was like losing him for a third time, and that was just too much to bear…

  At last, in the privacy of his quarters, Townsend sat on the edge of his bed, dropped his face into his open hands and let his tears flow. When they finally ran dry, the heavy weight he had been carrying around inside his chest felt much lighter, and he was able to see the foodstuffs lined up along the top of his dresser for what they really were. Drew gathered them up and carried them to Fritz Jensen in the caf.

  At dinner that evening, there was a special dessert: chocolate layer cake with fig jam filling and coconut frosting, enough to serve every member of the crew a generous portion. When asked where the ingredients had come from, Jensen simply pointed in the direction of Townsend’s table. It was probably just his imagination, but the resulting smiles and waves of gratitude seemed to fill up an empty space inside him.

  Chapter 29

  Townsend had never been good at waiting. He could do it if he had to, but it took a degree of effort that he resented. Normally, once he had worked out the details of a plan, he was like a greyhound at the starting gate, impatient to run.

  That was how he was feeling right now. The meetings and briefings were all done. Everyone knew the part he or she would be playing in the mission to Zulu. Townsend as strategist was no longer required, and Townsend as mission coordinator had nothing to do until the team was on its way to the target. All that remained was the waiting, and he hated waiting, especially when he was the only one doing it. That was when he started second-guessing himself. His mind was never at rest, hadn’t been since he was a child. In times of forced idleness, it reexamined decisions already made, problems put aside, plans set in motion. It criticized and analyzed, and made him wonder whether he could have done things better, sooner, faster, and with at least a decent chance of success. It painted worst-case scenarios and made him doubt himself, and in his current situation, self-doubt was something he simply couldn’t afford.

  Drew craned his neck and saw the top of Lydia’s blond head bobbing beyond the wall of filing cabinets beside his desk.

  “Lydia, I need the most recent crew status report,” he called out.

  “It should be on your unit,” she replied. “I transmitted it this morning.”

  Unable to think of a way to draw her into conversation that didn’t make him sound either incompetent (I can’t work the InfoComm. Come talk to me.) or pathetic (I’m assailed by uncertainty. Come talk to me.), he sighed and pulled up the report on his screen.

  Most of the crew, it revealed, were busy getting ready for the show. O’Malley was on K Deck with Hagman, Tate, Flanagan, and DeVries, installing the sound system. Other teams had spontaneously formed to take care of the lighting and build the stage and specified sets. Ruby had put herself in charge of Teri’s costumes. Even the Doc was helping out, making props. And there was a backup band, presumably hand-picked by Teri and led by Soaring Hawk, rehearsing on A Deck.

  “Soaring Hawk plays an inst
rument?” he wondered aloud.

  Lydia poked her face around the corner of the farthest filing cabinet. “Tenor sax,” she informed him, adding in a playfully scolding voice, “and if you’d joined the party instead of sequestering yourself the last time the Krronn paid us a visit, you’d know that. Hawk has picked a name for them, too — The Daisy Hub Powwow. It’s kind of catchy, don’t you think?”

  They’d all gone stage-crazy. So much for Khaloub’s morale problem, Townsend thought as he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head indulgently. “Tell me, is anyone working on the mission?”

  Lydia sighed and flopped down into a seat across the desk from him. “The mission?” she echoed, brow furrowing and head tilting in a parody of puzzlement. “The mission…” She spoke slowly and licked her lips, as though the words she was pronouncing had left a taste behind and it was the taste that finally jogged her memory. “Oh, right! The mission. Let’s see. Jason Smith is on L Deck with Spiro and Dev, learning how to use the paintbrush, just in case. When they’re done, Dev and Hawk are going to set up the jamming gear on L and J Decks and the vidcams on A Deck, as you ordered,” she continued. “Gavin is in his quarters, looking over the schematics for the Ranger station. He’s asked not to be disturbed. Meanwhile, Ruby has discovered the joy of sequins, and Rob’s probably finding creative ways to avoid climbing ladders.” She made a wry face.

  “He’s afraid of heights?” Drew guessed.

  “Only in the presence of gravity. Unless you plan to add Yoko to the team, I believe that’s everyone.”

  “Everyone except Nestor Quan.” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He’s not available for missions,” she told him flatly. “Our Disease Control Officer spends all his time being invisible.”

  “What?” Drew started erect in his chair, smelling a con in progress. But Lydia’s smile was broad and open, and she had so far kept her earlier promise to be truthful with him. “Why invisible? Because he’s not supposed to be here?”

  “Actually, he is. He was apparently posted to the Hub when Angel of Death broke out in our sector about five years ago. The biodata arrived, but the man never showed up. Well, protocol aside, you and I both know why and how people get sent out here. I waited for an error correction from the Relocation Authority, never received one, and figured that Mr. Quan had somehow found a way to give them the slip.”

  “So you just left the name on the crew manifest?”

  “Sure, why not? If they think he’s on Daisy Hub, they won’t be looking for him anywhere else. And for good measure, every once in a while I send a report over his name to Disease Control back on Earth,” she said, confirming Drew’s worst fears by adding gleefully, “Wherever he is, I hope he’s having as much fun as I am.”

  Townsend closed his eyes for a moment, his heart dropping as his imagination leaped into overdrive. “Who else knows about this?” he demanded urgently. “O’Malley?”

  She shook her head. “Just me. And Jovanovich, I guess. Or maybe not. When I told him about the biofile arriving, he was in Med Services. The Doc had dosed him rather heavily with pain medication, so I don’t know whether he actually heard me.”

  Probably not, thought Drew grimly, but it was a safe bet that the Doc had been somewhere in earshot at the time. That would go a long way toward explaining her reaction to Quan’s name earlier on.

  So, they had a ghost on the Hub. An ‘invisible man’, according to Lydia. Most of the crew were completely unaware of his existence. Drew hoped that Lydia’s theory was correct: that Disease Control hadn’t questioned any of her forged reports because they honestly believed the transmissions were coming from Daisy Hub’s assigned DCO, and that the real Nestor Quan was tooling around in alien space somewhere, enjoying his freedom. Because the only other explanations that fit the facts were disturbing to contemplate.

  First, it was possible that someone had fabricated this identity and planted it on the Hub. Like the Meniscus Field generator and the paintbrush. Like Drew Townsend himself. They were all there to further someone’s hidden agenda. Whose purposes might it serve to have Nestor Quan’s biofile aboard Daisy Hub? Not Earth Intelligence’s, he was certain, nor SISCO’s. In either case, Drew would have been briefed about the shell identity. Quan had to have come from one of Earth’s Authorities — Relocation or Space Installation. Or perhaps there was an agency even darker than the EIS, infiltrating Earth’s outposts and no doubt delighted to have found a creative, unwitting ally in Lydia Garfield. That was assuming, of course, that she was unwitting. Drew felt a chill trickle down his back and decided he really didn’t want to go there. Not yet.

  The other possibility, equally painful, was that there had in fact been two deaths aboard Daisy Hub, one years earlier and one just intervals ago. The investigator in Drew Townsend immediately began sketching possible crime scenarios. Disease Control Officers were itinerant, regularly patrolling the inhabited planets in their sector; Quan would normally have spent most of his time away from his base of operations. However, the Hub would have been the first place he certified as plague-free, so the entire crew should have known who he was — unless he was killed before anyone but his murderer even knew he’d arrived. It could even have happened on Zulu.

  More loose ends. As if Townsend didn’t have enough to keep him awake at night!

  Chapter 30

  It was show time. Townsend stepped off the tube car on C Deck and looked for Lydia at her station. She waved. He nodded. And his gut kept right on twisting. Damn. He’d hoped that having her there as back-up would calm his nerves.

  Drew had run literally hundreds of cons, but never one involving this many people. Now, the stage was built and the band was in final rehearsals. Teri was humming non-stop, overjoyed at returning to showbiz (and U-Town). The interference field surrounding K Deck and surveillance cams on A Deck had been thoroughly tested and pronounced ready. The incursion team had spent days doing sims in the SPA room and felt prepared for any contingency. Lucas Soaring Hawk had performed a complete overhaul and tune-up of Devil Bug’s Human-made components, and had put the PLS suits, toolkits and paintbrush aboard. O’Malley had downloaded all the necessary programming and data for the mission into a compupad. And now it was Townsend’s turn. Drew sat down at his desk, stared at the blank screen of his InfoComm unit, and felt a chill wrap him like a blanket.

  In detention, he had once seen an old flat-screen video of a novelty act that used thousands of dominos, placed on edge so that as each one fell, it would knock over one or two more. It had taken hours for the artist to arrange the dominos and about three Earth minutes for all of them to fall over. The dominos had been plaincoated so that as they fell, seen from above, they created a replica of a famous painting by some French artist, either Monet or Degas, he couldn’t recall exactly. But as he watched, the thought that had kept running through Drew’s mind the whole time was how powerless the artist was once those dominos began to fall. If even one of them spun the wrong way, the entire act would fail, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to salvage it.

  That same thought was running through his mind again, only this time, Drew was the artist. His dominos had all been carefully positioned, awaiting the flick of a finger that would set the con in motion. The only sure way to prevent failure was to walk away and leave them all standing. And that simply wasn’t an option. Never had been.

  “Lydia,” he sighed, “hail Zulu, please. I need to speak with Bonelli.”

  There were comm relay satellites sharing orbit with Zulu and Daisy Hub. As he waited for Lydia to set up the connection, Drew remembered something Ruby had said to him the day he and Teri had arrived on Zulu: “They don’t call it the Zoo for nothing, and some people get along with animals better than others.” Drew had never thought of himself as an animal-lover; but the timing was right and the mission had to take priority. Always, he reminded himself firmly, the mission had to come fir
st.

  “Captain Bonelli on-screen, Drew,” Lydia announced. “I’m sending the signal to your unit.”

  Drew had prepared himself to face the Ranger in a variety of moods. Friendly Bonelli. Arrogant Bonelli. Wrathful Bonelli. Disgusted Bonelli. Never had he expected to see the face that now appeared in front of him.

  Bonelli’s left eye was purple and swollen almost shut. His lip was cut, and his nose had definitely been broken again. Drew stared at him for a long moment, speechless. The Ranger finally broke the silence, in a voice that nearly made Drew wince, it sounded so weary. “Well?” he sighed. “You’re the one who called me, Townsend. Is there something we can do for you?”

  “Actually, Captain, there’s something we’d like to do for you.”

  Bonelli’s lips twitched briefly. “Does it involve an explosive device and an escape pod?”

  Not that the thought of blowing up Zulu had never crossed Drew’s mind. The EIS had trained him well. They would not have sent him out here if they weren’t confident of his ability to take whatever actions were necessary, up to and including the destruction of Daisy Hub itself, in order to accomplish his mission. Naturally, he hoped that matters would never spiral that badly out of control. But the pragmatist in him recognized that if the time ever came for desperate measures, destroying the Zoo might be a useful, not to mention an extremely soul-satisfying, thing to do.

  With an effort, Drew cleared the fiery image from his mind. “This is on the level, Bonelli. You know that we have a former singing star on our crew manifest. Teri Martin.”