“Yes, I can understand,” Susan lied. “Thank you for thinking of me.” And then she pushed the door closed.
“It started in this panel,” said the maintenance guy. His name was Larry and he had been on the station for more than a decade. Larry loved his work. Out here, he said when Richard asked, my job is a real challenge. You gotta be creative, you know? And you gotta be right. We’ve never lost any ship that’s left here, and we’ve never gotten any complaints about our work later on. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.
Richard somehow found that enthusiasm reassuring. Reassuring enough to join Larry inside the burned-out section of the Presidio. It smelled of smoke and melted plastic. His nose itched with a constant urge to sneeze. He breathed shallowly through his mouth because he had a hunch if he started sneezing, he wouldn’t stop.
“See, right here,” Larry said, pointing at a mass of blackened something-or-other, “there’s one of those design flaws I mentioned. Nothing that would trigger on its own, but something that could be taken advantage of.”
He explained it in rather technical language that Richard was surprised he understood. It sounded so simple, and yet he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
“But this thing had been burning for hours when we found it,” Richard said. “All the warning systems had been shut down.”
“And the environmental system tampered with,” Larry said. “The oxygen mix had to have been low here. There wasn’t a lot of fuel for this fire, and there should have been. Also, this ship has a built-in system for putting out fires. It would have vented the atmosphere and isolated the area. It did none of those things.”
“Is that easy to tamper with?” Richard asked.
“For me, sure,” Larry said. “For you, not so much.”
“So someone who knew the ship’s systems,” Richard said.
“Most ships’ systems,” Larry said. “You have to know what’s standard, what’s unusual, what’s expected, and what’s normal.”
“So someone who worked on the ship,” Richard said.
Larry smiled. “Probably not. You guys were a week out, right?”
Richard nodded.
“That’s plenty of time for someone to study the specs and figure out how this ship worked. Provided that he already had a base of knowledge on how ships in general worked.”
“Could they time it?” Richard asked.
“Meaning what?”
“So that we were close to Vaadum when it happened?”
“Sure,” Larry said. “That was the only smart way to do it. Unless your saboteur wanted to die along with everybody else. Or planned to take an escape pod. Of course, no one did. The pods are all here. I assume all your passengers are accounted for, too.”
“Yeah,” Richard said. “They’re all here. On the station. With us.”
Nothing like murder to make a man stop procrastinating. After Hunsaker watched Anne Marie Devlin use one of the robotic carts to take Kantswinkle’s body to the infirmary, Hunsaker got his tools and finally fixed the lock on Kantswinkle’s room. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he had done this before Kantswinkle had arrived, he would have prevented her death. Then he would have had to deal with her the next two days while the Presidio was being prepared. That thought made him shudder—and made him feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault that she was dead. . . .
Except that no one seemed to like her, she was difficult to deal with, and if he had to pick someone to murder in this small group of stranded passengers, he would have chosen her. Which made him shudder even more. Had she died because of who she was? Or because of how she acted? Or because of the room he assigned her?
That last thought got him to find his staff (all two of them) and have them clean some of the other rooms, the ones with the limited environmental controls. Then he moved five of the passengers—Bunting and his roommate, Janet Potsworth and Lysa Lamphere, and Susan Carmichael.
The first four had left their rooms willingly. Then he had gone to see Carmichael. He’d knocked, and she didn’t answer. So he knocked again, harder. The door flew open, and Carmichael stood there, looking bleary. She’d struck him as the kind of woman whose hair was never out of place, and yet all the strands stood at odd angles with some kind of violent-ooking red mark on the side of her face. It took him a moment to realize that she had a pillow impression on her cheek, and her hair was mussed from the blankets. Clearly, Susan G. Carmichael was a messy sleeper, even if she was never messy awake.
She didn’t want to be moved. She nearly slammed the door in his face, but he stopped her, and told her that if she stayed here, there was a good chance she’d end up like Agatha Kantswinkle.
Then Carmichael frowned. “What happened to Agatha?” she asked.
He peered at her. She really and truly did not know. “She’s dead,” he said.
Carmichael closed her eyes for a minute, sighed, and leaned against the doorjamb. “I suppose she was murdered,” she said tiredly.
“Yes,” he said.
Carmichael opened her eyes. They were a vivid blue. “I suppose it was too much to ask the murderer to stop killing once we got off that damn ship.”
“I suppose,” Hunsaker said, not knowing quite how to respond.
“He’s going to run out of victims, and that will call attention to him,” she said. She sounded angry, as if it personally affronted her that the murderer kept killing even though she didn’t think it wise.
“I don’t think he minds the attention,” Hunsaker said. “Can I help you get your things?”
“There’s not much,” she said, indicating the purchases she had made earlier sitting on top of the chair. “I can get them.”
Still, he took a pair of shoes and a blanket, just because he suddenly felt that he needed to be useful. Not that he hadn’t been useful. He’d been more useful today than he had been in weeks, maybe months. He’d repaired locks on four doors, including Agatha Kantswinkle’s (and then he sealed off that damn room, maybe forever), he’d gotten a whole bunch of rooms cleaned, he’d gotten the kitchen staff up and running again, and he actually had people in his hotel. Until they killed each other off, of course.
He left the door to her room open, since someone on his staff would be up here shortly to clean, fix this lock, and close off this room. No one was going to be in the older rooms, not while there were murderers on board.
“Did she suffer?” Carmichael asked as he led her down a flight of stairs, through a corridor, and into the newer—and, once upon a time, more hopeful—wing of his hotel.
He looked at her. She actually seemed concerned. No one had asked this question before. He hadn’t even asked it when he’d been talking with Anne Marie, and he probably should have.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly—or as honestly as he dared. It took time to suffocate. If the death was merciful, she would have passed out like Lysa and then stopped breathing, but if it wasn’t, she would have been gasping for air—
Although, he realized, had she had trouble breathing, all she had to do was step into the corridor and get far enough away from her door. She would have been able to clear her lungs, and maybe even get help.
“I suspect she didn’t suffer at all,” he added, now that he’d thought about it.
Carmichael grunted, which surprised him. He would have expected a “thank heavens” or some other kind of reassured remark. Instead, she sounded almost displeased.
“Did you know her well?” he asked.
“No one knew her well,” Carmichael said. “No one wanted to.”
“Oh.” He would have suspected as much. “What about the other people who died? Were they unpopular too?”
“What’s it to you?” she asked.
He flushed. He usually wasn’t that nosy. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just wondering.”
“Murder really shouldn’t be the subject of casual conversation, now should it?” Carmichael asked.
“I guess not,” he said, re
fraining from pointing out that right now, the conversation wasn’t as casual as she seemed to think. After all, three people had died on the ship, there had been a fire, and now another person had died. Not that casual a conversation. Maybe even relevant.
They stopped at Carmichael’s new room. He unlocked it for her and went in first, feeling a slight surge of adrenaline as he took his first breath. Would he always feel that now in his guest rooms? Would he always be afraid that a single breath could kill him?
“Well,” Carmichael said, following him in, “it’s not quite as pretty as the other room, but it does look newer.”
He hadn’t thought of the other room as pretty, although it had personality, which this one lacked. This one was like all the other rooms in this wing: big enough for a large bed, a table, and two chairs, as well as an entire wall dedicated to in-room entertainment, if someone wanted to pay a premium price.
He didn’t ask Carmichael what she wanted. He figured she could charge it to her bill if she decided she needed entertaining. He didn’t want to be near her any longer. He set her shoes and blanket on the floor, then backed out of the room. She didn’t seem to notice. She was putting her clothing on top of the table as he left, as oblivious to his presence as a rich woman was to a robotic cleaner.
He hurried down the steps and back to the front desk, feeling unsettled. This group of people was beginning to frighten him. He had no idea when he’d be rid of them, either. The ship had to be repaired or some other ship had to come here and get them out of his hotel.
For the first time in a very long time, he missed having some kind of security on the station. Someone other than the burliest member of his staff threatening the guests with increased fees—which was usually enough to calm them down, since Hunsaker already had control of their accounts.
But he didn’t want to threaten anyone here, because who knew how they would react? He didn’t want to think about it—any of it. Instead, he focused on a cleaning schedule for the vacated rooms. A cleaning schedule and a repair schedule. Time to make sure all the locks worked properly and all the equipment was tamper-proof. Time he started doing his job. Again.
Hideous man. Odious, actually. Who did he think he was to discuss other people’s deaths as if they were entertainments? Susan Carmichael sat on the bed in her new room, wide awake now, wondering if she would ever sleep again.
Agatha dead, here and not on the ship. That had shaken Susan as much as figuring out that Remy’s death hadn’t been suicide. Not that the thought of a suicide in the room next to her hadn’t disturbed her, too. Any death would have bothered her. But the murders, the fire—somehow she had gotten it into her head as they fled onto Vaadum that they would be safe here, that their long nightmare was over.
She propped her pillows against the headboard and leaned her head back. She could feel the muscles in her back, so tight that any movement hurt. She didn’t like this room. The other one had the illusion of safety. She had gotten that room when she still believed that the outpost would be much better than the ship. Now she knew it was no different. A limited group of people trapped in a limited amount of space. There was nowhere to run, no way to escape. The ship was incapacitated, and—so far as she could tell—the Presidio was the only ship on the station.
Did the locals (what should she call them? Station rats?)—did they have a way to leave? She wasn’t sure about that either, but she should probably find out. She had been under the impression that Vaadum was one of the only safe stops between here and Commons Space Station.
But she didn’t even know how far Commons Space Station was from here. Maybe she could convince someone to take her there. Or to hire a ship and have it come and get her out of here.
Of course, some of the others would want to join her, and that wouldn’t work, because one of those others might be the killer. She needed a way to defend herself. She didn’t have one, at least not yet. And now she wouldn’t be able to sleep again. She needed to stay awake, stay vigilant, should anyone try anything. Susan pulled her knees to her chest. She needed a plan.
She just wasn’t sure where to begin.
The captain had found a spot in the bar, toward the back under the dim lights. Richard had to cross most of the room—which smelled of beer and sweat and spilled whiskey—to realize that the captain had five empty glasses in front of him. Richard sighed.
The captain was a small man, former military—but with which army in what war, Richard had never asked (it was none of his business—and he’d learned, through his mother, politics was the most deadly business in the entire sector). The captain had run his ship on a tight schedule. He and the other two pilots had separate eight-hour shifts in the cockpit.
Richard had been hired on to do the menial work that had nothing to do with flying the ship—keeping the passengers happy, making sure that the lower decks were spotless, maintaining the robotic cleaners and cooks. The food on the ship wasn’t spectacular, but it hadn’t been advertised that way. There were ships that made this run that were all about food, food every few hours, food from every culture in the sector, food as rich and varied as the passengers themselves.
But this ship hadn’t been a cruise so much as a passenger vehicle. It took people from here to there in a modicum of comfort, with as little fuss as necessary.
Until the first death, Richard had mostly dealt with trivial complaints—broken entertainment centers, malfunctioning avatars in the gaming area, the occasional sudden (and, he thought, humorous) switch to zero-g in a toilet. Agatha Kantswinkle had tried his patience—her bed was too soft, the equipment near her room too loud, the cooking smell from the galley too strong—but he’d had the leeway to move her twice, and her final cabin seemed to suit her more than the others, which had cut the complaints to about half of what they had been.
He’d settled in for a flight filled with irritations and hard work, but he knew once he got to Ansary, he’d be done with real work and he’d have money for the first time in months. He had vowed not to get that low on funds ever again.
Now, here he was, unpaid and trapped on a space station that had at least one killer on board.
He peered at the captain. The man was staring blearily into his glass, as if he could read information written on the bottom of it. The captain was the one man Richard knew wasn’t behind any of this, for two reasons. The first was circumstantial—the captain had been with Richard during the first two killings. If the captain had been involved he would have to have had a collaborator, and the captain never consulted with anyone.
The second reason was more practical—the captain owned his ship. It was part of a franchise operation, and he got paid per passenger for the entire trip. If the ship was full, he made a hefty profit. Half full, he made some money. Empty, and he’d go bankrupt or have to get out of the business. Richard could understand someone who wanted out so badly that he would destroy his own ship. But he couldn’t understand doing it while paying customers were on board, nor could he imagine doing it with fire. There were so many other, much simpler ways.
Richard sat down across from the captain, jiggling the tabletop. The glasses clanked together, but it still took a moment for the captain to notice him. Or at least to acknowledge him.
“Care to toast the end of my career?” the captain asked, lifting a glass.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Richard lied.
“Ship’s not reparable,” the captain said.
“Yes, it is,” Richard said. “I talked to them.”
The captain shook his head. “Not flying that thing anywhere. Half the lower deck’d be unusable, it’d smell, and the environmental systems are whacked. Not safe. Least not by our standards.”
By that, he meant the standards of the company he worked for.
“So are they sending a replacement ship?”
“Two weeks,” the captain said. “Maybe. Or we can hire onto someone else’s ship. Have to ask the passengers. What’s left of them.”
“T
wo weeks?” Richard asked.
“Coming from Ansary. We’d go back to the Dyo System. We’d be back where we started. Not that it matters. I get to have a hearing. Like it’s my fault they let some murderous nutcase onto my ship.”
“You didn’t check the manifest?” Richard asked.
The captain glared at him. Or tried to. It wasn’t that effective a look, considering how wobbly his head was and how bloodshot his eyes were.
“What’m I supposed to do? Turn away paying customers with spotless records? Of course I checked. Not an idiot. Or didn’t think I was.” The captain sighed. “Someone’s trying to destroy me.”
Which was a distinct possibility, one Richard hadn’t thought of. “Does someone hate you that much?” he asked.
“You mean besides me?” the captain asked. “Oh, hell, I don’t know.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Richard said.
“Sent that first body into space,” the captain said. “Didn’t turn around then and there. Shoulda brought everyone back.”
“We thought it was a suicide,” Richard said. “And when the other two deaths happened, we were closer to Commons Space Station than to the Dyo System. It would’ve taken a week to go back to Ynchyn.”
This nightmare trip started in Ynchyn.
“Seems logical, doesn’t it? They don’t train you for this kinda thing, you know. Maybe I shoulda confined everyone to quarters.”
Richard nodded. After all, that had been his initial suggestion—or at least, his suggestion after the second murder. Ignatius Grove, a professor, heading to a new job at some prestigious university in the largest city on Ansary. The man taught mathematics of all things, and he had died when the flesh in his throat had a growth spurt, shutting off both sides.
Everyone would’ve thought that a freak death as well, particularly since Ignatius Grove and Agatha Kantswinkle spent each meal complaining about their various food allergies, if Richard hadn’t seen that particular form of murder before. He knew that there were little nanosomethings that could activate the growth mechanism in the flesh. If swallowed, the nanosomethings invaded the throat. No one had ever done studies to see if any of them made it to the stomach or if that would’ve made a difference if the throat hadn’t closed first.
Asimov's Science Fiction 01/01/11 Page 18
