The Devil's Eye ab-4

by Jack McDevitt

  "I'm sorry, sir. We don't give out that kind of information."

  Alex ran the original transmission, Vicki Greene with fear in her eyes and her hands rolled into fists. "I know this will strike you as odd, but I don't know who else can help me." The white-and-gold blouse lifted and fell. HASSAN GOLDMAN, the blouse read. Who the hell was Hassan Goldman? "Since you're not here, I'm asking your AI to forward this message. I'm assuming the cost." And the arc of six stars. "I'm in over my head, Mr. Benedict. God help me, they're all dead." He ran it again.

  "I'm in over my head."

  "Chase," he said, "who or what is Hassan Goldman?" He ran a search. Hassan Goldmans were more numerous on Salud Afar than they had been on Rimway. One did medical enhancements. Another Hassan Goldman was a noted law firm in the capital. Hassan Goldman specialized in caring for pets. He was an actor, dead these twenty years, who'd performed comedy, and was still beloved by a substantial portion of the population. Another Goldman did landscaping in a place neither of us had ever heard of. He had been the captain years ago of the tour ship Leesa , who'd sacrificed himself, after his engines had blown, in a largely successful effort to save his passengers. Three Hassan Goldmans had lived in various places and apparently never done anything except reproduce. He'd been a major sports figure. He'd been one of seven people killed in an avalanche while skiing in a cordoned-off area that skiers weren't supposed to use. He prepared special lotions to help aching backs. There were more. Was there any connection between any of these Hassan Goldmans and Vicki Greene? None that we could find. Were any of the Hassan Goldmans connected with claims of paranormal events?

  "None known."

  Alex kept the image of Vicki frozen over a coffee table while we looked. The name on the blouse was inscribed in black above an arc of six black stars. Six stars. "Six people," said Alex, "died on the Leesa . Five other than himself." The heroic captain had saved seventeen. "Coincidence?" "So where," I asked, "does that leave us?"

  Alex sank into his chair. I asked the AI if any of the five passengers had been connected with claims of paranormal events.

  "None known."

  "We're asking the wrong questions," said Alex. "What's the right one?" "The obvious one. Who sells shirts with Hassan Goldman imprints?"

  "There is no sales source on record."

  "Somebody's making his own," I said. "Probably a church, a charity, some sort of special event." He asked the AI to connect him with the space station. "The general information desk," he added. A young woman in a dark green uniform appeared. "Orbital Center," she said. "How may I assist you?"

  "Can you tell me," said Alex, "if the name Hassan Goldman is used by any of the businesses on the station?" "No, sir," she said. "However, there is a tour ship here by that name." "Do they give out shirts to passengers?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Okay. What can you tell me about it?"

  "How about if I switch you over to the tour company?"

  "Okay. Please." There was a pause. Then a male voice: "Starlight Tours." "My name is Benedict. One of your ships is the Hassan Goldman ?" "Yes. That's correct." "I'm trying to locate a friend. Her name is Vicki Greene. I think she took a tour on the Goldman several months ago. I was wondering if you could verify that?"

  "I'm sorry. But we don't give out that kind of information."

  Alex looked in my direction. Worth a try. "I wonder if it would be possible to speak to the captain of the Goldman ." "He's off duty," came the response. "He'll be in tomorrow morning." Alex said thanks, switched off, and looked up the specifications for the Goldman . Among them he found the captain's name. Ivan Sloan. "Ivan?" I said. "Yes. Do you know him?" "He was one of my trainers at StarFlight." "Good," said Alex. "Marvelous." He asked the AI to find the number for Ivan Sloan. "You'll probably find him at Samuels."

  "That is correct, sir. Do you wish to be connected?"

  "Please." Alex got up, signaled for me to do the call, and left the room.

  Ivan was one of those people who strikes you as being a bit slow until you get to know him. He was always there when I needed him and, when I was having some doubts about whether I'd ever graduate, he took me aside and asked how serious I was about piloting interstellars. I told him I was serious. That there was nothing in my life I wanted more than that. "Then get your act together," he'd told me. "You'll be okay. You've got all the talent you need. Hell, it doesn't take that much talent. All you have to do is be smart enough to tell the AI what to do." He said that as if he meant it. "What you don't have," he added, "is confidence in yourself. Probably from too many people over a lifetime telling you what you've gotten wrong." There was truth to that. My dad was forever warning me not to touch stuff, so I wouldn't break it. When he saw me he knew me at once, and broke into a big smile. "Chase," he said, "what are you doing out here?" He was seated at a table, with a cup in one hand, a dinner plate and silverware in front of him. Behind him I could see a mural. A sailboat. "Came out to see you , Ivan. How are you?"

  "I'm serious. You're the last person I expected to see in this corner of the cosmos."

  "I'm on vacation," I said. "How about you? How do you come to be here?" "I'm from here." "You're kidding. You're from Salud Afar? I never knew that." He shrugged. "I might not have mentioned it." "Running tours?" He looked embarrassed. "That's pretty much what it's come down to." Tours from Salud Afar? I looked through a viewport at the black sky. "So where do people go? What's to see?" "Varesnikov," he said. "It has a magnificent set of rings and moons. And people like Sophora, too. It's a crystal world. Looks great when you get the right angle on the sunlight." "I guess." I saw something in his eyes. Pain, maybe. Or embarrassment. As if his life hadn't turned out the way he'd expected. "So how'd you turn up on Rimway?"

  "I cleared out of here when I was twenty-two, Chase. Those were bad times. I didn't much like living under the Bandahr." He turned away for a moment. Spoke to someone else, then angled the link so I could see the people with him: a man and two women. We did a quick round of introductions. One of the women was his wife Mira. She was attractive, congenial, probably twenty years younger than he was. The other couple were friends. "Let me ask a quick question, Ivan," I said, "and I'll get out of your way. A couple of months ago, you had a passenger named Vicki Greene. Do you remember her?" "The company did," he said. "I didn't." "I assumed she'd gone out on the Goldman ." "As a matter of fact, she did. But it wasn't my ship then. Haley Khan was running her at the time."

  "Would it be possible for me to talk to Haley? Can you give me his code?"

  "He's gone, Chase. Disappeared."

  "How do you mean?"

  "He vanished. Right off the station."

  "How could that happen?"

  "Don't know. It happened several months ago. Right after Vicki Greene had been here. There's no record he took the shuttle down. But he didn't show up for work one day and we've never been able to find him."

  "You called the police?" "The CSS. Yes. They couldn't find him either." He paused. Said something to the others at the table. Came back to me: "What's your connection with him, Chase?" I told him about Vicki. "Do you know where she went? On the Goldman ?" "Probably the standard tour route. I never got a chance to talk to him after the flight."

  "Did anybody else?"

  "I don't think so, Chase. That was the same question the Coalition guys were asking. Haley came off the flight and went back to the hotel. He usually did that. He wasn't much for hanging around. Anyway he had a couple days off coming to him, and we just never saw him again. Ride with Vicki Greene and walk out of the world. It's like one of her books."

  "What about the AI?" "The CSS took it. Part of their investigation." He paused, lost in thought. "There was something else odd, too."

  "What's that, Ivan?"

  "She bought out the ship. Wanted to travel alone. No other passengers."

  "Would you guys take her someplace special if she asked?"

  "Oh, sure. We'll take you sightseeing anywhere you wanted to go. If nobod
y objects."

  "Like if there's nobody else on board."

  "Yes."

  "Okay. So she wanted to go off the usual tour destinations. Where else might she have wanted to go?" "Chase, you got me. There is nowhere else. There's nothing out here for hundreds of light-years in all directions." "Do you know where she was coming from ?" "No. I can check the logs."

  "Would you do that for me? And get back to me?"

  "That kind of information's supposed to be private."

  "I'd appreciate it, Ivan."

  He called the next morning. "There's no record," he said. "What happened to it?"

  "Officially, the flight never happened. That tells me the CSS took it."

  SIXTEEN

  Barry would have been all right if he hadn't become a physicist. But all that nonsense about mass and energy got him believing he really knew how the world worked. And he didn't. He never did. And that's what got him killed.

  - Midnight and Roses

  Vicki, Ivan said, had signed on for the flight from a hotel in Moreska. Moreska was a small town in the middle of nowhere. It had no spectral claims, no demons, creatures from another age still haunting the roads. But it had once been home to Demery Manor, which, for reasons unknown, had been blown apart during the final year of the Bandahr's rule, just months before his assassination. Nobody knew why the incident had occurred, although everyone assumed Nicorps was involved. The manor's owner, Edward Demery, was not an enemy of the regime, as far as was known. I didn't think blowing up a house was enough to have interested Vicki Greene. Until I heard that seventeen other homes, throughout the region, had been destroyed the same night.

  The Demery Manor site consisted of a few burned timbers and a couple of stone walls jutting out of the earth. The common wisdom held that Edward Demery had incurred the wrath of Aramy Cleev and paid the price. According to the flyers we'd gotten at the hotel in Moreska, "most experts" believed the Bandahr had been personally offended when Demery, during an interview, had described the compassion and basic decency of Dakar Cleev, Aramy's grandfather, without mentioning Aramy's own matchless compassion. The dictator had said nothing publicly, of course, and had in fact even praised Demery's perspicacity. But anyone who knew Aramy Cleev understood the failure to note his kindness would not have gone down well. The general destruction had come six days after those unfortunate remarks and had been spread over several hundred kilometers in all directions. Houses, villas, and manors had been leveled. There'd been no survivors anywhere. Nicorps, it was assumed by many, was closing its books on people who had incurred the Bandahr's displeasure. We were looking at the ruins, on a cold afternoon, while a wet wind blew in off the sea. We had an autoguide with us. "They killed him and his wife," said the autoguide. "Eighteen houses in one night?" said Alex. "That seems a bit extreme."

  "There are always rumors when terrible things happen," the tour guide said. "If you want my personal opinion, I think Nicorps simply went rogue and decided to kill everybody they didn't like. But who really knows?"

  "What did he do for a living?" I asked. "Demery?"

  "He was born into wealth, ma'am. But he thought of himself as a mathematician though he never had any formal training."

  "Was he a native of this area?" "Oh, no. No. He wasn't even from this world. Demery was born on Rimway." "Are there any theories about why all these people were killed the same night?" asked Alex. "Other than Nicorps running wild?"

  "What other explanation could there be? I think they'd probably gotten backlogged. Decided to catch up on old work. Did it all the same night. It wouldn't be the first time they'd done something like that."

  Alex stared at the ruins. "Did Demery leave an avatar?"

  "It was purged. On the day of the explosions."

  "By whose authority?"

  "Nobody knows."

  "It would," I said, "have had to come from high up." Alex nodded. Of course it would.

  ***

  Edward Demery had not only lost his life. He had undergone an electronic subtraction as well. And not only the avatar. You went looking for data on him, and there was enough to prove he existed. You could find a birth certificate, you could find brief accounts of his impending wedding, and there was real-estate information. Demery buys office building in New Samarkand. You could find an account of his acquiring controlling interest in Blackmoor Financial, and his contributions to the Aquarius Fund, which was striving to rejuvenate oceans hampered by the absence of a moon. There was an award from the Ballinger Historical Society. But of his personal life, what he thought, what he believed in, what he cared about, that was all gone. Orrin Batavian was a banker who liked to be thought of as an historian. We sought him out because he'd organized a speaking engagement for Vicki and because he'd been a close friend of Demery's. We found him at his home, a large, landscaped property on the edge of town. "Ed and I shared a fascination for ancient history," he told us. "For the early years." Because of that friendship, he said, he'd held his breath for several days after the explosion, wondering whether they'd come after him, too. "You never knew what might irritate Nicorps," he said. "It was the way they operated." We were seated in his office in downtown Moreska. "Somebody got in trouble, everybody he knew got swept up with him. I had my fingers crossed." The walls were filled with framed certificates of outstanding accomplishments by Batavian's bank and pictures of the man himself with various people whose postures suggested they were VIPs. "Why did he get in trouble?" Alex asked. "Do you have any idea?" Batavian shook his head. "I honestly don't know. He didn't like the regime. But nobody did." His chair squeaked. "Almost nobody. Some people saw no problem with Cleev. You did what you were told and didn't make trouble, then you had nothing to worry about." "But you do think Cleev was behind the attack." "Well, Nicorps was. I doubt it was anything big enough to draw the Bandahr's attention. You have to understand that it was the guys further down the food chain who caused most of the trouble. They had thugs and psychopaths running everything. And the way they looked good to their bosses was to be able to show a body count every month. "Those were bad times. So people didn't make an electronic record of themselves. Ed was an exception. People still don't do it, for that matter. Not the older ones. Call it force of habit, but there's always a

  sense that the Bandahr might come back. So you don't put anything up. Especially not an avatar who's going to tell the government what you really think." Batavian had an aristocratic demeanor. His family had prospered under the dictatorship, and the word around town was that he'd survived when Demery went down because he had connections. "It might be true," he admitted. "I was never a collaborator, but my father was. And my sister." Alex's eyes narrowed. "Do you have any idea why they would have purged the Demery record?" "They did that routinely. They didn't have to have a reason. You got in trouble, you became invisible. Look, I don't know whether he just said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Or whether there was something they were actually afraid of. Demery didn't like the Bandahriate. But he never did anything more than talk. And he tried to be circumspect about the people he spoke to. He was like me. We both had a decent life under the sons of bitches, if you played by the rules and didn't mind keeping your mouth shut. So we played by the rules. Lived with it as best we could. I don't know. Maybe they took him out because somebody just wanted to run up the numbers. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he had some old fertilizer in the basement. I just don't know." "All right," said Alex, "let's try a different subject: Vicki Greene." "Ah, yes. I knew that was coming." "She did a program here. With you as moderator." He smiled. "She spoke to the Martian Society. By closed circuit. It was members only. And a few guests." "The Martian Society is-?" "-A group of people who pretend we've been taken over by aliens. Who keep out of sight." "The original aliens, apparently." He laughed. "We have a pretty good time. It's strictly a social operation. Nobody takes it seriously." "What did she talk about?" "Her books, of course." "That's all? Anything else come up?" "Well, it was a fairly wide-ranging conversation." "Did she m
ention the explosions?" He stuck his tongue in his cheek while he thought about it. "No," he said finally. "Not that I can recall." "How about Demery?" "No. There was no reason to. But she was interested in him. She was excited to hear we'd been friends." "Why was she interested in him?" "Because of the Lantner world ULY447." "Which is what?" "Well, it's not really a world. It's an asteroid-a long way out. Light-years, in fact." "And?" "Two ships disappeared out there. During a religious ceremony. Ed was always intrigued by it. Always coming up with explanations." Alex glanced my way. That sounded like another reason for Vicki's interest. "Tell us about it. About the disappearance." "Not much to tell, Alex. We had a corporation, Starloft, that used to sell people asteroids. The inner-system asteroids, of course." "Starloft sold asteroids?" I asked. "Yes." "Why? What can you do with an asteroid?" Batavian put on a beatific smile. "Immortality, young lady. They name it for you. Then they take you and your family and friends out to the thing, charging everybody for the transportation, of course. They hold a ceremony and install a monument with your name on it. People bought them to honor deceased relatives. Some people provided for it in their wills. It was a pretty lucrative business at one time." "But they don't do it anymore?"

  "No. The Bandahr claimed ownership of the asteroids, and Cleev took a cut of the proceeds. The current government probably wouldn't have changed things, but we went through a Save-the-Asteroids period. People didn't think markers should be put on them. Or that the government or anyone else owned them. It became a political issue." "So it got stopped?" "The politicians saw a good thing and got on board. They eventually taxed it out of existence." "So what about the Lantner mission?" "That was a big deal for Starloft. For a long time, the business was strictly local. Then the Family of God, a religious group led by Calius Sabel, decided to go deep. Go for the outer asteroids. Out to the Swarm." "The Swarm?" "It's a sea of asteroids. Some of them line up pretty closely with Callistra. They picked the biggest one they could find and decided to build a monument on it. They thought it would provide religious significance." "In what way?" "The Family of God associated Callistra with the eye of the Deity. So the placement of a monument on that asteroid was to assure the faithful that they walked always in His light. Or some such thing. "Starloft sent a team out and did the installation. It's still there if you want to take a look at it. When it was completed, the Sabels went out in two ships to conduct a ceremony. There were a couple of Starloft executives with them. The two ships were the Lantner , which the Sabels leased, and the Origon , which was provided by Starloft. They got out there okay. They set up imagers, spent two days in prayer and thanksgiving, and on the third day they went down to do the ceremony." "And this was thirty years ago?" I asked. He had to count. "Thirty-six, Chase." "How far is it?" He checked with his AI. "Thirty-three light-years." "They'd have been using the old drive," I said. "Just getting there would have taken a week." "Please continue," said Alex. "On the third day, they went down onto the asteroid?" "Yes. There were two landers. They put on pressure suits and got out and assembled in front of the monument. The ceremony was transmitted back here on HV. I didn't see it live. But I've seen it since. Everybody has. "Anyhow, they did some praying. Then they started making speeches. One of the Sabels was talking when the transmission suddenly stopped. Just blanked out. Dead at the source. It was the last anybody ever heard of any of them." "When the rescue units got out there-?" said Alex. "-They were gone. Ships, landers, people. Everything. Except the monument." I was trying to imagine any sequence of events that would account for it. "It doesn't sound possible," I said. Batavian got up, walked over to the window, and looked out. In the distance, a train moved across the countryside. "There was a search. But they never found anything. Some people blamed the Mutes. There were all kinds of stories. Mostly that other aliens were loose out there somewhere. And there was something else." "What's that?" "The patrol boat that originally went to the scene, the Valiant , never made it home. It was the first rescue vehicle." "What happened to it?" I asked. "Are you going to tell us it disappeared, too?" "No. It filed its report, and another Bandahriate vehicle, a specialized one, I think they said at the time, went out to look around. The patrol boat returned to its usual assignment. And a day or so later it exploded." "Sounds like a pattern," said Alex.