She spoke the release sequence, gave the signal for the computer to proceed at once—before she had a chance to change her mind—and lay back in her chair.
She had not been able to force herself to place the sensor cups over her own eyes. Although that omission ruled out any possibility of derived reality, she felt that she had to watch every movement of his body. If he somehow broke the tape and came toward her . . . His eyes were hidden by sensor cups, but she knew the exact moment when he became conscious. There was a brief jerk upward of his head, and before it seemed possible he was flexing his arms and legs, testing his bonds.
The most frightening thing was his silence. He did not grunt, or groan, or ask, "Where am I?," as Lola felt sure she would have done. Instead, he rapidly dipped his head down and to one side, to bring his mouth into contact with the tape holding his wrists. His teeth were already tearing the broad strip free when the rest of the drugs hit home. Lola shared his dizziness through the telemetry, and felt a sudden and disorienting burst of rage.
"Relax, Jinx Barker." She watched closely as his body came upright and he slowly leaned back in the chair. The tension went out of his muscles. So far, so good—she had physical control.
The next stage would be more difficult. If she probed too hard and drove him beyond sanity, she could share the descent into madness. "Jinx Barker, I am going to ask you a series of questions. Do not be afraid to say that you do not know an answer, or cannot answer. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"I am Lola Belman. Were you going to kill me after we left The Belly of the Whale?"
"Yes."
"Why?" (Bad question: Even under the influence of powerful drugs, a human could offer self-serving answers. Anything that she asked should permit only a simple yes or no reply.) "Ignore that question. Did you expect to enjoy killing me?"
"Yes."
The calm certainty of the reply came with a deep, visceral rush of sensual excitement. It made Lola shudder, but she forced herself to go on. "Were you going to kill me simply because it would give you pleasure?"
"No."
"Were you ordered to kill me?"
"Yes."
"Tell me the name of the person who ordered you to kill me."
"Alicia Rios."
The answer threw Lola into a spin. She had expected the name of a sick and angry patient, or perhaps someone close to a patient, like the boyfriend of the man who had committed suicide. But Alicia Rios? She had to grope around inside her head before she could even identify the name. That was the person at the party, the tiny, exquisite woman with dark hair and eyes, whom Jinx Barker had identified as a member of the Saturn exploration families. Alicia Rios had walked up to Lola and examined her closely. That had seemed odd at the time, but why would a woman who hardly knew Lola want to kill her? It made no more sense than that Jinx Barker would try to kill her.
Or as much sense. If Jinx were working for Alicia, then maybe Alicia . . .
"Did Alicia Rios receive her instructions to have me killed from someone else?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think she received her instructions from someone else?"
"Yes."
"Do you know that other person's name?"
"Yes."
"What is the name?"
"Jeffrey Cayuga."
Things had gone from perplexing to ludicrous. At least Alicia Rios had a face to go with the name. Cayuga was certainly a name—a famous name, from the first human Saturn expedition. But that had been Jason Cayuga. Jeffrey Cayuga, his descendant, hadn't even been at the First Family party—he had been off on some expedition, millions or billions of kilometers away. Lola felt sure that she had never met him in her whole life.
One more try.
"Did Jeffrey Cayuga receive his instructions from someone else?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think he received his instructions from someone else?"
"I don't know."
Dead end. She would have to abandon the yes-and-no technique, even at the risk of being misled. "Do you know why Alicia Rios was interested in me?"
"Yes."
"Tell me why."
"Because of information that you had obtained as a haldane."
Progress. "Was it information that I had obtained from one of my patients?"
"Yes."
"Which patient?"
"Bryce Sonnenberg."
Lola had sensed the answer before it came. Sonnenberg's case had baffled and tormented her for weeks, but she knew nothing in him or his past that might explain murder.
"Were you instructed by Alicia Rios to find out about Bryce Sonnenberg?"
"Yes."
"And were you—" Lola faltered. The next step seemed so logical, yet so preposterous. "And were you instructed to kill him, also?"
"Yes."
With that answer came a terrible fear: "Have you done it?"
"No."
"Will you do it?"
"Yes."
Not maybe, or If I can, or If I am released. Just the bald reply, and with it the wave of total confidence from the chair next to her.
"Do you know why you are supposed to kill me and Bryce Sonnenberg?"
"Yes."
"Why, then?"
"To make sure that you do not speak to anyone about what you know."
"What do we know?"
"I don't know."
Lola repressed a hysterical groan. He was ready to kill her and Bryce for whatever it was that they thought she knew, while she was absolutely sure that she knew nothing that could matter to them. It was another dead end, and she was forced to rely on a murderer's answers to save herself.
"Do you know why Alicia Rios employed you for this?"
"No."
"Can you suggest a reason why she might have?"
"Yes."
"What is the reason?"
"I have done work for her before."
"Similar work?"
"Yes."
"You mean"—she had to make absolutely sure—"you have killed people for Alicia Rios?"
"Yes."
Lola went cold. She had slept with a professional assassin, been driven giddy with excitement by a killer's lovemaking, fallen asleep snug in a murderer's arms. The next question didn't seem to have much to do with anything, but she had to ask it.
"Do you kill people with—with your bare hands?"
"Yes." Again the surge came through the telemetry, an ecstasy so strong it was almost pain.
Physician, heal thyself. Lola fought for self-control. There was nothing in haldane training to prepare her for this. She had to bring them back to objective issues or go crazy.
"Does Alicia Rios live on Ganymede?"
"Yes."
"Is she on Ganymede at the moment?"
"Yes."
"Do you know her address, and how to get there?"
Two questions in one—something that you were taught not to do in the first haldane instruction course. But he was answering: "Yes."
"Tell me how to get there."
As he gave directions, in the clear and matter-of-fact manner that had impressed her the first time they met, Lola wondered what she was going to do with the information.
Call Alicia Rios? Hardly. How were you supposed to begin the conversation? "Hello, I understand that you gave orders for me to be killed, and I want to ask you why." That seemed like a certain way to make sure that Rios sent a second murderer, to try again where Jinx Barker had so far failed.
A knock on the outer door of her office, coming just when that thought of a possible other killer was already in her head, brought Lola rigidly upright in her chair. She heard the outer door open, then a click as it closed. It was self-locking. As soft footsteps moved through the entrance hall toward the inner office door, she stared wildly around her, wondering how to defend herself.
Someone tapped on the inner door. Lola jumped to her feet—did killers knock to announce their arrival? Who knew what killers might do, when kill
ers could also be lovers? Her relief, when the inner door opened and Bryce Sonnenberg's face appeared, was so great that her knees buckled and dropped her back into her seat.
"Bryce!"
"I'm sorry." He did a double take at the sight of the man lying full-length in the patient's chair. "But you did say to come first thing in the morning, so I did." He noticed the tape on Barker's wrists and ankles. "I didn't mean to interrupt you, and I did knock on the door before I barged in. I'd better go now. Call me when you're ready to see me."
"No!" Lola jumped up and grabbed his arm. Since the first session she had regarded Bryce Sonnenberg as not much more than a kid—a strange and troubled one, with a changing personality that was still hardly formed, so that even though he was tall and strongly built, he seemed far younger than she was. But now she was vastly comforted by his deep chest and the heavy muscles in the arm that she was holding.
"Don't leave, Bryce. Whatever you do, don't leave. This involves you as much as me." And, when he stared at her in open disbelief, "It does, it really does. Give me one more minute; then I'll explain."
She bent over Jinx Barker, making sure that the tapes were securely in place, then commanded the computer to end synthesis and place him into sedated-care status. The computer recordings would all be filed away, so that she could perform a later analysis of the session. Meanwhile, with nutrients provided by IVs and all body functions monitored, he should be quite safe. A patient could remain in sedated care for a long time—if need be, for weeks.
But time alone would not solve the problem of Jinx Barker.
"Sit down, Bryce, and listen closely. You're not going to believe this at first, but let me tell you everything before you start asking questions."
She read him the summary of her interaction with Jinx Barker all the way from the beginning, when "Conner Preston" had taken an office along the corridor and had first showed up in her office, to last night's realization of what was about to happen, and then to this morning's questioning.
"Does it mean anything to you?" she asked at last.
He hardly needed to answer. Although at the talk of murder his expression had changed—becoming at first startled and then somehow older and more guarded—he had shaken his head when she mentioned Jinx Barker, Alicia Rios, and Jeffrey Cayuga.
His reaction to her question came as a surprise to Lola. He rubbed at his nose for a moment, then went off in another direction completely: "He was ordered to kill you and me. Who else was he told to kill?"
It was a question she had not thought to ask, and for the moment it was too late. Jinx Barker was under deep sedation.
"What makes you think there might be somebody else involved?"
"Logic." He grinned at her, unmoved by the news that he was on a murderer's victim list. "Or maybe I should say, lack of logic. If there's no reason at all for killing you or me, there's just as much no-reason for killing someone else. Anyone else."
Lola thought immediately of Spook. He had tried to help her sort out Bryce's muddled and contradictory background, and she had encouraged him. But if she had exposed him or Bat to danger ("Look after Spook, don't let him get into trouble "), then it was all her fault if . . .
"As for what we should do next," Bryce was continuing, cutting off that troubled train of thought. "I don't know. We can't leave him trussed up like that forever. On the other hand, we can't let him up to have another go at you, or me, or anyone else he chooses. So I say we visit the person who set him onto us, and find out what's really going on."
"But what about him?" She glanced down at Jinx Barker.
"You stay. When I said we make a visit, I actually meant me."
"I can't let you."
"So give me an alternative. We have to discover what all this is about, because it's obvious that somebody thinks I'm something I'm not. The obvious person to talk to is Alicia Rios, and from what you told me, she's not that far from here. Are you willing to leave him here alone?" Lola's shiver gave the answer. "I thought so. Nor am I. And we couldn't possibly take him with us."
There was a gleam of manic excitement in his eye. Lola recalled the hurtling space scooter, skimming within inches of a mottled mountain of rock and ice. That had been his idea of pleasure. But these dangers were likely to be far more subtle.
"What will you say to her?"
"I don't know. Something innocent. It will depend on what she says to me."
"Be careful."
"I will." Again he seemed changed, older and more aware of himself than she had ever seen him. He was nodding his head thoughtfully. "I know how to be careful. I know it very well. And unless you have any other suggestions I ought to be on my way—before Alicia Rios has time to suspect that her plans are not working out."
* * *
Joss Cayuga was still on Ganymede. The brawls of the big world made him nervous, and he would much rather be safe on Lysithea, but he had learned to follow his instincts. His last meeting with Alicia Rios had left him profoundly uneasy.
Allowing Jinx Barker direct and personal interaction with a haldane had been an act of pure folly. Worse than that, though, was Alicia's admission that Barker had been crazy enough to bring Lola Belman to a First Family party. That was Jinx's braggadocio, the very opposite of discreet behavior—and Alicia Rios had gone right along with it. According to Lenny Costas, Belman had seen both him and Dahlquist, while Alicia had actually walked right up to the haldane and done everything but talk to her. Inviting attention like that was asking for trouble. It forced the question, How much could Jinx Barker be trusted? And, since Alicia Rios apparently had infinite faith in the man, a second question: Had Alicia herself become an intolerable risk for the Ganymede Club?
Cayuga had been hiding out in a travelers' terminal on one of the upper levels, close to Ganymede's biggest spaceport. He had been there for two days. It was a perfect place to remain unnoticed, because, although food and accommodation were available around the clock, everyone else was in transit. Every few hours a different set of strangers rolled in, each preoccupied with worries of ship timetables and manifests.
Cayuga consulted his watch. He had told Alicia that he would call her at about this time. She would be in her own quarters, but she believed that he was far away on Lysithea.
He left the restaurant and made his way to a booth in the travelers' communications center. His call could not go to Alicia directly through Ganymede circuits, or she would notice the absence of signal travel time to and from Lysithea. Cayuga requested a call route via a relay station on Callisto, including a half-minute hold on signals forwarded in each direction. He waited patiently while the connection was established to Callisto and back to Alicia's home deep in Ganymede, and waited again for Alicia to pick up. He was becoming convinced that she was not there as planned when at last her face appeared within the display volume.
"Cayuga? Where have you been? I called you an hour ago, and all I got was a low-level fax. You need to change him, by the way—he's still a Jeffrey Cayuga facsimile."
"I will, as soon as I get some free time. I've been up near the surface, reviewing the defense systems. What's the status with Jinx Barker?"
While the message was beamed to Callisto and back, he decided to leave a higher-level fax in charge the next time he was away. The level-two fax that he had been using was not very smart, and a clever questioner might be able to trick it into revealing things about Lysithea that Cayuga did not care to have known.
"It's going very well," said Alicia Rios at last. "In fact, the first and most difficult part is complete. Barker took his haldane-friend on a very special date last night. No one but Barker knows where they went—not even me—and he assured me that there would be no physical evidence. She's definitely history at this point. Otherwise Jinx would have called me today and said there had been a hitch, and I have not heard from him. Next he plans to deal with the others—the patient and then the brother and the brother's friend. Jinx hardly knows them, and they don't know each other very well,
so no one will connect them or suspect him when something happens to them. All right?"
"Excellent. He is sure that is enough, and there is no need to spread the net wider? Maybe there should be others."
"Be reasonable, Cayuga. He says that's everyone. We have to trust Jinx."
"I trust no one."
"Well, we have to stop somewhere—otherwise there will be no one left on Ganymede."
"No one except members of the Ganymede Club? That would be acceptable. Never forget the stakes, Rios. We have too much to lose. When will Barker complete the rest of his work?"
"Today. I am expecting him to call me when it is done, and then I will call you."
"At once, if you please. This situation is not at all to my liking."
Cayuga terminated the connection but remained seated in the booth. He ought to feel relieved, and did not. "We have to trust Jinx." There you had it, the problem with Alicia Rios. She hardly seemed to realize that Jinx Barker was not a Club member. Better if she had said, "We must check constantly on everything that Jinx does."
Almost without thinking, he consulted the Ganymede directory. The listing of licensed haldanes showed the name, Lola Belman, and the full routing. He placed a call, directly this time, and waited. He was expecting an answering service, a fax, or possibly no reply at all. There was a long delay, until he was sure that no one was there and he was ready to cancel. When his finger was already on the button, the display volume came alive, a breathless voice said, "Yes?," and a woman's face appeared.
Cayuga hit the disconnect instantly. With instinctive caution he had disabled the video link from his end, even though he had not expected a human to answer. It was remotely possible that she would be able to trace him, but only if she were already in tracking mode before the call came in. She would not have had time to enable it in the split second that they were connected. He, on the other hand, had been concentrating hard on his display. Her face, whoever she was, was clear in his memory. He returned to the directory and asked for access to information files on haldane services. It took a minute or two to locate what he wanted, but the file on every licensed haldane, as he had hoped, included an image ID.
The Ganymede Club Page 21
