Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  Mac could still use the spymaster, but not if she continued her activities without monitoring.

  Armed guards moved about the station, poking their noses into odd places and returning to General Jake’s old quarters. Someone had escaped their notice.

  He knew they looked for him. But that search came from Control, seeking ways to find him with maintenance bots and heat signatures. Both methods he could override.

  Number Seven had not the knowledge to perform such tricks. He didn’t know the secret ways around the station as Mac did. Number Seven had to hide more openly.

  Mac zoomed a camera in on the new crews. Dregs. Admiral Marella had cleared out the unemployed, drunks, and petty criminals from other stations to fill the ranks of Jake’s staff. Why? Did she want Jake to fail as commander of this station?

  Knowing the admiral as Mac had come to know her, he suspected something deeper. He scrolled through the entire list of new employees, their work records and criminal history. A pattern of sameness showed throughout. Nine out of ten profiles had been faked.

  Who were these people?

  An idea popped into his head, and he stared at two faces in particular. They looked familiar. He’d seen them on Labyrinthe Prime before the family had built Labyrinthe VII. He’d observed the newcomers closely on the original space station and decided they were spies for the CSS. Spies trying to gain complete plans of Labyrinthe Prime (the model for every succeeding station) so they could build their own for the CSS.

  Every one of the new employees worked for Admiral Marella.

  Perhaps a midnight visit to the spymaster was in order. After he found Number Seven.

  Mac watched the new maintenance crew dismantle a power plant for a three-wing section due to open soon. Ah, that one with the blue stripe down the seam of his trousers carelessly threw pieces to the deck. And the one with a red bandanna covering his baldness cleaned the same piece over and over, looking busy, accomplishing nothing.

  Then he saw a woman in a shapeless gray overall sneak behind a partition. She leaned heavily against the bulkhead while she drank from a flask secreted in a pocket.

  Those three had legitimate records of frequent job changes, covered-up arrests, and time in something called rehab. If Mac bribed them to talk, he couldn’t trust their information.

  He shifted his attention to the common room on the dormitory level. Six men and women gathered around a table with the gaming cards humans seemed so fond of. They played a game called poker. Mac watched for a long time, learning some of the rules while he observed the players. Two men played with only half their attention, the other half-fixed on a holovid of a ball game. One woman and one man looked serious, studying their cards and their opponents with care and equal attention. The other woman and man sweated and constantly counted their “chips.” Gambling addicts.

  Mac had seen similar traits in nearly every race that frequented any of the Labyrinthe stations. The games changed. The color of the money varied. The addiction remained.

  Now he knew who he could bribe with money for their next game. He also knew which people would report his bribes to Admiral Marella and which would not.

  His plans fell into place.

  By the time he was done, Jake would hand him the station out of sheer frustration (provided they got the propulsion system working properly before the station broke orbit and drifted into infinity). Admiral Marella helped him with every incompetent slackard she brought in as staff.

  But Mac would not assume his rightful place as master of this station until he found Number Seven and shipped him back to Labyrinthe Prime for humiliation and demotion.

  “If I were Number Seven and needed to hide from General Jake, where would I go?”

  The answer came to him.

  “In plain sight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Doc Halliday, I wonder if your databases included anything about the Squid People?” Sissy asked. She’d found the physician in her office a few doors away from Gregor’s room. Talking to the logical and practical physician seemed the best way to find sanity and clarity. Sissy made her routine visit to Adrial. She left her more confused than enlightened as to why and how she had chosen the ill-fated pilots to bring her to the First Contact Café.

  “Funny you should ask,” Mariah Halliday said. “I was just looking them up myself. I think the only way General Devlin is going to let me do an autopsy on them is if I bombard him with information he doesn’t have.”

  Sissy swallowed her distaste at the thought of willingly carving up the dead for study.

  “I ask because I believe they deserve a funeral. I’d like to put together a ceremony based upon them and their culture, to honor them, to make a record of their passing.” Sissy bowed her head, already composing prayers and hymns in her mind.

  “That’s nice of you. Come here and look what I found.” Doc Halliday beckoned for Sissy to scoot the extra chair up beside her at the desktop terminal.

  “It seems we are not the first to encounter the Squids,” Sissy mused as she scanned long columns of data and detailed views of the computer interfaces, complete with labels for the different icons. “What’s that?” She pointed to a tiny image, not so different from the simple glyph of Harmony.

  “The label says translator,” Mariah said peering closely and squinting her eyes. “I think it’s supposed to represent some kind of fish.”

  “What happens if we touch it?”

  “Don’t know. This is a recording of the computer, not the actual one.” She touched the miniature line drawing. Nothing happened.

  They both shrugged and moved on.

  “Whew,” Mariah breathed through her teeth, creating a muted whistle. “Someone touched that icon during the recording. Look at this!”

  “A journal?” Sissy asked. A string of numbers separated by a period centered across the top of the page. Then lines and lines of text, followed by a slightly different string of centered numbers and more text.

  “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  They both leaned closer, reading the personal diary of the navigator, the female of the pair.

  Mariah scrolled to the beginning. They shared the loneliness and quiet despair of this loving couple, living out their days drifting from rim world to rim world, carrying whatever cargo they could. In every port they sought, hopelessly, for any rumor of any others of their kind. With each journey they became more and more aware of their own mortality.

  “How sad.” Sissy wiped away a tear. “They knew months ago that this was their last trip.”

  “Yeah, and it’s the same pair that brought Adrial here. This recording was made after the crash.” Mariah grunted. “I think I need to tell General Jake we have this.” She reached for the comm icon.

  Sissy stayed the older woman’s hand. “Before you give him the opportunity to confiscate this, will you send a copy to my terminal?”

  “For you, yeah, I will. I know you won’t abuse this data. And . . . Laudae, I’d like to attend whatever service you perform for these people. They deserve our respect.”

  “Yes, they do. Our scientists also need to eventually look at this, and the ship. They had their own version of Badger Metal long before humans thought of it.”

  “And they didn’t start to die off in large numbers until they changed to our Badger Metal for their hull plating. I wonder if something in the manufacturing process of Badger Metal is human specific.”

  “The Squids began dying off at the same time they lost track of their home world,” Sissy added. “We all need a home planet to ground us, to strengthen our ties to our Gods, to complete us.”

  “You might have something there, Laudae Sissy. Something as scientific as it is spiritual. There’s a reason humans have always terraformed their new homes. We evolved on Earth in sympathy and symbiosis with the planet.”

  Sissy cocked her head in question.

  “Every plant, animal, and mineral that evolves together on a world has a piece of eac
h and all of those things in its makeup. We need the entire web of life to survive and thrive.” Mariah kept her gaze on the journal. She tapped the entry that bemoaned the loss of the coordinates of the Squids’ home. “When we move off-world, we lose some of those pieces. Parts of us die, never to be replaced or regrown. By moving out among the stars, we begin our slow death and devolution.”

  “Are humans dying too?” Sissy whispered in absolute fear.

  “Not yet.”

  “But we too will one day go extinct, like the Squid People.”

  “Probably. But not for a while yet. We’ve been smarter than some races. We’re still grounded on Earth and return frequently. We take big chunks of home with us and plant it wherever we go. Even here. The gardens use real Earth as a planting medium and seeds from home to grow our food.”

  “I think I need to go walk my dogs in the gardens.”

  “I’ll tell Jake where he can find you.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t accept having your caste mark lauded? It’s an honor, a distinction. Special!” Gregor screamed at the Media person standing beside his bed. He couldn’t bring himself to look directly at the ugly black bar of a caste mark.

  That one had belonged to the poor, the outcasts, criminals! The Media should have a Professional green triangle. They’d worn that caste mark proudly for generations. But since Sissy had revealed the original Covenant Tablets that made the Media a separate and independent caste, they’d all reverted to the ugly mark of the disposables.

  Thankfully the man had left his obnoxious hover cam outside in the corridor. Gregor didn’t care what his name was and hadn’t asked.

  “A ruling from the head of my caste, My Laud.” The man bowed respectfully. The center of his unremarkable brown hair had thinned. His unremarkable light brown eyes closed. His pale clothing seemed to blend into the walls. Few would notice him in a crowd. Fewer would find him if he didn’t want to be noticed. A perfect reporter. “The Media must remain independent and loyal to the truth without interference. Therefore no augmentation of our caste marks. And we all must have our marks upgraded to the black bar.” He smirked.

  “I will not accept that,” Gregor said. He pursed his lips, thinking, planning. His thoughts whirled in circles. Never, not once in fifteen years as HP of Harmony and her six colonies, had anyone defied him so completely. And never so politely.

  “The original Covenant establishes the Media as separate and independent, so that we are obligated to report the truth to all of the people,” he said blandly, with a pleasant smile.

  “What is your name, young man? I will notify your superiors of your impertinence.” Pressure built in Gregor’s chest as he ground out each distasteful word. He hated Big Johnny, the head of the caste and owner of the Harmony City Broadcasting facility. He hated dealing with him. Hated what he stood for. Hated his defiance that began long before the Media obtained separateness of caste.

  The machine beside Gregor began beeping, rapidly.

  His breathing sharpened.

  “You will obey me, or I will break the Media, as I will break all the changes initiated by Laudae Sissy.”

  “My name is Simon da Samuel pa FCC,” the man said upon another cursory bow, still smiling. “Feel free to repeat this entire conversation to the head of my caste, verbatim. I have it recorded.” He held up a small device no bigger than his palm.

  “I’ll have your head . . .”

  “You’ll have nothing but a casket and a funeral if you don’t calm down,” Doc Halliday pronounced from the doorway. She bustled to the array of machines around Gregor.

  “I shall leave you to the kindly ministrations of the physician.” Simon da Samuel bowed again, deeper this time, and backed out the door to his waiting hover cam.

  “Kindly, my ass,” Gregor cursed.

  “My Laud, that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me,” Doc Halliday said sweetly. “Now I’m going to increase your tranquilizer dosage and your vasodilator until your readings get back closer to normal. You may feel a little sleepy.”

  “Not yet. I need to make some notes about that obnoxious man.”

  “All reporters are obnoxious. It’s part of their job.”

  “But . . .” Gregor drifted into an agitated twilight sleep. He thought he was awake, feeling his muscles twitch and his fingers itch to write down something important. He couldn’t remember what.

  A part of him dimly noted the physician answering a hail and darting away without adjusting his medications back to lower levels.

  Mac turned his attention to the few Labyrinthians who remained on station. All had shifted loyalty from the Corporation to General Jake. Which one was Number Seven?

  He needed to view each worker up close to differentiate. Quickly he powered down his observation post and plotted a route to the most likely center of Labyrinthian activity.

  Sixteen. He counted a mere sixteen (an unlucky number, there should be a multiple of seven) big-eared, brown-cloaked housekeepers scattered about, doing their jobs, making notes to pass on to General Jake later.

  None of them was his brother.

  An oddly gaited worker disappeared down a spiral staircase beside a lift to an unused level. He noted that the lift platforms moved too quickly. They did not complete the entire circuit of that wing. Had General Jake managed to replace the single construction lift with the triple conveyance that traveled a single gravity section and allowed safety bulkheads to close at the top of each?

  The upper levels were fully accessible. Something was hidden in the lower, heavy-G levels.

  Mac dared not use the lift or the open staircase to follow. But he knew other ways to access those levels.

  His detour took too long. The worker had more than enough time to walk down those stairs to the levels below the lift circuit, complete his business and return without Mac seeing any of it. He cursed in his father’s language of chitters and pops that he hadn’t brought a portable computer—too easy to lose it and give General Jake or Pamela Marella access to the entire network.

  Hurrying as fast as his eight limbs could take him through the narrow shafts and unused maintenance tubes, he paused when he spotted the worker using a parallel maintenance tube to drink long from a flask and then catch a nap.

  Mac could no longer hear the lift operating. He’d reached the second HG level of this wing that had no designation.

  Darkness and shadows. His infrared vision registered anomalies. He had to risk exposure and discover the truth here.

  As silently as he could, he opened the grating and climbed down the wall, head down, nose flaring for scent information.

  He reared back.

  Death.

  He smelled death. And not a clean one.

  Three cautious steps forward and he faced the truth. Number Seven hung from an exposed water pipe, a noose strangling his fleshy neck. His tongue lolled black and swollen. His glazed eyes stared blankly into the beyond.

  A scrawled note in CSS standard hung on a placard from his shoulders. “Murderer!”

  Too late. He’d come too late by hours to save his brother from an ignominious death. This was the execution of a criminal who had caused five deaths through negligence.

  Five deaths that Mac had caused through his manipulations to make his brother look more slackard than he was.

  The chatter of bright voices on the stairwell brought him out of his numb shock.

  Sissy’s six acolytes arranged themselves on the spiral. Six more in pink peered down from the level above. They stared at him, eyes wide in horror, mouths opened in silent screams. The oldest grabbed a comm unit from her pocket as her gaze riveted upon him.

  Mac ran away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sissy paced Jake’s office, the small area off the conference room where he was supposed to be but never was.

  “Where is he?” she called to Mara in Control from the comm unit on the desktop.

  “At the other end of his comm unit,” came the disembodie
d voice. She sounded busy and harassed.

  Sissy still didn’t like remote communication across short distances, though she used it often enough on the station. At home her family happily visited their friends and family to share the news, borrow tools and clothing, or just to enjoy the company. In the crowded apartment complex attached to the factory, nothing and no one was ever far away.

  At Crystal Temple, everyone used the telephones rather than chance invasions of privacy, or any sort of intimacy—except for casual sex initiated in the nude swimming pool.

  “I need to talk to him face-to-face, Major Mara,” Sissy insisted.

  “Hit the blue button on the comm unit, My Laudae. It should summon him directly.”

  “Thank you, Mara. I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “Not to worry, My Laudae. I always have time for you. Would that ship captains demanding precedence in the flight path spoke half so politely.”

  “I’ll let you get back to them, Major Mara. And if any of them are from Harmony, tell them I said for them to mind their manners.”

  “Will do, My Laudae,” she said with enthusiasm.

  Sissy glared at the touchpads embedded in the desktop. The blue button seemed to glare back at her, daring her to interrupt Jake in his demanding job. Reluctantly she pressed her thumb against the blue spot, the same color as a Noble’s robes.

  “What?” Jake growled almost immediately.

  Sissy jumped back in surprise, almost expecting him to appear before her, like a holovid—another innovation she couldn’t quite accept. They were too real; she liked watching flat screens and knowing that distance and time, and often reality, separated her from the portrayal.

  “Jake, it’s me,” she said hesitantly.

  “Sissy, what’s wrong?” He sounded anxious. “Are you safe?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, puzzled. Why wouldn’t she be safe? “I’ve just come from Adrial and Doc Halliday. I have some information.”