CHAPTER 26
The Otaru node said it would take almost three hours for the Emulation ship to reach the Home System and establish orbit around Europa. Gideon, still studying Airlie’s letters, looked up and said that he would very much appreciate an opportunity to examine the displacement drive.
The node smiled, bowed, but explained that there was nothing to see aboard the vessel.
Gideon looked like a man who very much would like to argue the case for why he should be allowed access. The node smiled, turning minutely to me. “Otaru is at your disposal, Inspector.”
I, meanwhile, could not stop thinking about Narwhal Island and what it might mean. Was I ultimately meant to be part of whatever was going on there? Or was I part of something else? I had nothing but questions, and the questions were doing my head in.
We were still sitting in the elegant pavilion over the pond. There was no sense of movement; there was a faint aromatic breeze, and the gentle sounds of nearby birds and trickling water.
I thought about loose ends. We had a few of those hanging around by now. “Right. Okay. First, I need to know everything you can tell me about the circumstances surrounding Otaru’s murder. What was he doing at the time, where did it happen, known associates, how was it done, who might have had motive, opportunity and means — everything. The whole file, if possible.”
The node nodded. “We are transferring that material to your headware systems now.”
And, good for his word, suddenly a warehouse-sized load of information arrived in my head and started unpacking itself into files, directories, categories, cross-references, sensor findings, histories, and much, much, more. Bewilderingly more. I watched my interface file operations display going through more activity per second than almost ever before.
I was unpleasantly reminded, by contrast, of the day Hydrogen Steel left its creepy calling card in my brain, which had been much, much worse than this. That firemind sending a load of information at you made it feel like a violation. Otaru, to give credit where due, made it feel like the most extraordinary gift in the world.
By the time the data were safely unpacked, sorted and stored where I could easily access it all, I saw that my system’s buffers were choking with the load. I’d never seen headware buffers under such strain. It was a noteworthy thing in itself. I kept wanting to call Gideon and point at it and marvel.
Gideon, meanwhile, was reading through the sheaf of handwritten letters we’d found in the hidden box. He looked bored to the point of screaming with the content of these letters, but at the same time seemed increasingly puzzled.
“I also need all the details you can give me about the sixty-three deaths you told me about. I’m thinking it’s all tied up together somehow,” I said to the node.
The node transmitted more information. There wasn’t a lot to go on: it was a list of names, addresses, occupations, circumstances of death, and miscellaneous notes, including coroners’ findings. Looking down the list, I saw my earlier suspicion was correct. It was all “accident”, “misadventure”, “natural causes”, and a few instances of “murder-suicide” in which each killer apparently killed his or her kids and spouse, and then offed themselves. No doubt the details of these cases would reveal vicious and bitter divorce proceedings involving child custody rights.
And, naturally, there were no reports anywhere in this documentation of any kind of weird, supernatural humanoid killers that manifested as if out of black smoke, and which disappeared into the night when they were done. Every case looked tragic, but unremarkable.
Also, none of the victims was wealthy. Many of the people listed were academics and/or scientists, but others were listed as “writer”, “researcher”, “student”, and “journalist”. Pamelyn Casto, for example, was a writer. Dr. Brewer-Irons was an academic and a writer. Dr. Michael J. Huyck, junior, was a scientist and a writer. Terrie Murray was listed as a biologist, at least she was before she and her husband lost their lives in a hov-crash. And so it went, on and on.
As I waded through the files on all these deaths, the Otaru node simply stood there, like a quiet work of art, barely breathing, staring off into the distance. For a few minutes I watched him, waiting for him to blink. It was a little hypnotic, watching him.
Gideon, who noticed my distraction, said, “Have you had a look at these letters?”
Blinking myself, I glanced down at him. “Up to my eyeballs in victim files and stuff about Otaru. Why, what’s up?”
Gideon was still poring over the letters, holding them up very close to his eyes, peering at them in the minutest detail. “There’s something a little fishy going on here.”
“Fishy?”
“Fishy, yes.”
“Fishy how?”
“Well,” he said, opening one of the letters. He showed it to me first: two smallish sheets of messy, angular handwriting, written perhaps with an antique fountain pen. He read snippets: “‘Had a lovely visit with you last Christmas. Ought to do it again next year. Just got back from holiday to Trinity habitat. Nasty sunburn. Wife got bitten by a crab.’ And so on and on, for two pages.”
“Sounds about normal for a letter. Who’s that one from?”
He looked at the sender details. “One Michael J. Huyck, junior. Rigel Sunset III habitat.”
My headware flashed an alert. “Oh!” I said, reading it. “He’s on the victim list!”
“Indeed?”
“Who else you got there?” I asked, scrambling over to where Gideon was sitting.
He sorted through the envelopes, reading names. “This one’s from one Debi Shinder, New Texas, Mars. This one’s from Dr. Donald Brewer-Irons, Barnard’s Star, Big Sky Station. And here we have Dr. Warren Richardson—”
I took the letters from him and flipped through them myself.
“Er, McGee? I was just—”
My headware was keeping me busy. “All these names are on the list.”
“What, all of them?”
I stared at him. “Like I said. Hydrogen Steel’s killed all these people.” I shot him a copy of the list.
After a moment, Gideon swore quietly. “But there are more names on the list than we have letters,” he said. “Like this Treena Fenniak, self-described environmentalist and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Bet she’s a bundle of fun.”
“We need to know more about these guys,” I said, looking through the handful of envelopes. “And why she kept these letters out of all the correspondence she must have received.”
“It’s all just tedious domestic stuff,” said Gideon. “‘We got a new puppy. He’s pee-peeing everywhere. Timmy’s baby teeth are starting to fall out. Sick grandparents. Taking a holiday. Having extensions built on our house. Read a fascinating book the other day.’ And so on, and so on…”
“That’s what people talk about.”
“Yes, it’s what people talk about, but these people are taking the time to handwrite their correspondence, and the recipient wanted the letters kept in what must have seemed to her the most secure place on Narwhal Island she could find. She hid these letters, plus all this money. It doesn’t add up.”
“What are you saying? You think there’s more going on?”
“I’m certain there’s more going on.”
“Pardon me for asking,” Gideon said to the node, “but would you have a facility on this ship for doing a spectroscopic analysis?”
The node bowed and smiled. “Of course, Mr. Smith. You have but to ask.”
Gideon got up and handed over the letters and their respective envelopes. “I’d like a complete spectro screen on all of this stuff, envelopes and letters. Keep them together.”
“As you wish.” He left, without either of us quite seeing him go, even though we were watching him at all times. Somehow, he simply slipped between bits of the scenery, like an actor on a s
tage.
“God,” I said, muttering, “is anything real?” I waved my arms around, trying to hit things that looked solid, and did indeed encounter reassuring solidity every time. Which was not reassuring. Nothing was as it seemed. Even me. Probably, even Gideon.
Gideon was watching me with a certain wry amusement. “Nobody wants the truth, McGee.”
“I want the truth! That’s my whole thing. I’m a cop. I hunt for the truth.” I kept thinking about what the node told me about Otaru trying to spread some kind of information, against Hydrogen Steel’s wishes. I thought about truth and lies, and misinformation, the lie that rings with the sound of truth.
I’d seen this fluidity of emerging truths all the time in my career: the stories we told ourselves to explain a crime evolved with each development, often inspiring several different stories, each seeking to explain the same details. Which story is the truth, though? The evidence could be maddeningly ambiguous at times; indeed we were often unsure if we had all the evidence available; or wondered if some of the more unlikely bits of evidence were evidence or if they were just stray bits and pieces that were also at the crime scene. Even with every dazzling forensic technological tool at our disposal, there were still too many times when we simply could not be certain.
“The truth is always embarrassing, or awkward, or compromising,” said Gideon. “The truth can get people killed. It can ruin decades of hard, maddening work. It’s often the last thing we want to know — and yet if we can ferret out the truth about the enemy, we gain an advantage, of sorts. Truth is a maze of mirrors, McGee. You should stay the hell away from it.”
“You believe that, Smith?”
“Live by it, die by it.”
“So what are you doing here with me?”
He grinned at me. “You’re a friend. I can help.”
“You think I’m going to get us killed.”
“I do.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“No. You’re a friend. That’s all that matters.”
“Even though I’m…?” I looked down at my brand new phony body.
He laughed for a moment. “In the bigger scheme of things, does it matter?”
“It mattered to you a while ago. You were all worried about your soul, as I recall.”
“I’m still worried about that.”
“But you’re still here.”
“That’s right.” He waggled the eyebrows and allowed a small grin. “You might say things improved somewhat.”
“We could still die.”
“We could.”
I thought of Hydrogen Steel out there, with its endless smoky killers.
“I’ve seen worse odds,” Gideon said, looking thoughtful.
I looked at him, frowning. “Smith, who the hell are you?”
“Gideon Smith, collector of antiquities, sometime artist, vagabond, friend, at your service, Inspector,” he said in his plummiest voice, executed a formal bow that looked at least as good as the Otaru node’s efforts, and shot me a cheeky grin. “Who the hell else would I be?”
The Otaru node somehow slipped back into our presence again without our noticing his arrival. When I did spot him, I felt like I had a vague memory of his approach along the narrow wooden bridge leading out to our pavilion, but on closer reflection I could not be sure that I had seen anything like that at all.
Gideon ditched the small-talk and went straight to business, asking the node about the spectro results on Airlie’s letter collection.
The node bowed. He shot Gideon and I a copy of the report.
I’d read enough forensic spectro reports in my time to know what I was looking at. “So you’re saying these letters were treated with urine?” I said in surprise.
“Otaru merely provides the results of a test,” the node said. “Interpretation is best left to those with greater expertise.”
I shot him a withering look. As though even the emulation of a firemind couldn’t draw conclusions from a test!
I remembered something about urine from my police training, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “This urine thing rings a very distant bell,” I said to Gideon.
He interrupted me, finger to his lips. He pulled out a folded bit of Active Paper and, using his finger, sketched a two-word phrase backwards. The paper displayed his message as intended, and he showed it to me, very quickly, in a flash:
GNITIRW ELBISIVNI
It took me a moment. Then, “Oh!” I pointed, but didn’t say aloud. Yes, that made sense. Invisible writing. This was something I’d learned. Some organic liquids, such as urine, lemon juice and others, contained carbon. You traced out the text of your message with a stylus dipped in the liquid. After it dried, there was no trace of the message. Subjecting the blank page to heat, however, caused the carbon in the liquid to char, thus revealing the hidden text. It was one of the oldest known methods of conveying secret messages known to humanity. Also one of the most primitive; it was the lowest of low-tech. But then, how ironic, and how perfect, that these guys, facing an enemy of godlike technological power, resorted to something so simple, so human, to get around it?
“So all of these letters are…?”
Gideon shook his head. “No. Watch.”
He put the letters aside and took up one of the envelopes. He carefully pulled it apart, until it was as it had been in the past, a flat, angular sheet. Looking up at the motionless Otaru node, he asked for a lit candle or something similar. The Otaru node produced the very thing, a tall red candle in an elegantly understated porcelain candleholder. I caught Gideon glancing at the candleholder with a speculative eye as the node handed it to him. He smiled quickly, then placed the candle on the pavilion floor. The sharp gold light from the candle contrasted with the soft, misty environment. I could smell melting wax and a warm, burning odor.
I could not help but notice that the candlelight looked good on Gideon’s face. His eyes gleamed.
He held the unfolded envelope above the candle flame, careful not to burn the paper, but close enough for the candle’s heat to reveal the message.
My heartbeat was loud in my ears; there were knots in my guts as I watched.
Words slowly appeared, letter by sketchy letter, on what would have been the reverse of the front of the envelope.
“All these people communicated by old-fashioned post, sending physical letters using one of the oldest, and easiest, secret message techniques known,” Gideon said, whispering. “When we send regular mail through the infosphere to System Mail Hubs and off elsewhere in human space we know, at some level, that some or all of the content of our messages is being scanned by at least one of a number of security services. We accept this level of scrutiny as the price we pay for the level of relative safety we enjoy—”
I disagreed. I had been a copper — arguably would always be a copper — but I still never believed that monitoring civilian communications, en masse, as a matter of public policy, was healthy. It treated the entire population as suspects or potential suspects. I knew of too many cases, the sort of incidents that never make it to the news media, where the vast edifice of civilian eavesdropping had led to the persecution and punishment of the wrong people. Intelligence isn’t a perfect art; mistakes inevitably get made, particularly when budgets are tight and personnel too often are propped up with instant disposables given a couple of hours of compressed security training.
Gideon was working on his third envelope now. I looked over the two he’d done so far. The writing was small, but legible, the messages hidden but not encrypted. Which was surprising, I thought. You’re running a network under the noses of this vast interstellar intelligence apparatus and relying on the assumption that nobody in the sprawling bureaucracies involved would think to look for messages scribbled inside envelopes. It was breathtakingly audacious, but I could see
how it might work.
Up to a point, that is. It was now looking like Hydrogen Steel had somehow found out about this network and had been busily rolling it up. What I knew about the firemind thanks to his colossal injection of hideous information back at the hospital suggested that it was not above manipulating the operations of the intelligence and security organizations in order that its own interests were served. It could scarcely have been more sinister, more insidious, whispering in the ear of someone at the top of the bureaucracy, influencing a key decision one way or another.
There were six large envelopes. Soon they were all “done”.
Gideon blew out his candle. The stink of candle smoke was surprisingly strong.
I said, looking over the letters, “Do we need these?”
“Might be best to keep them,” said Gideon. “There could be stuff hidden in the text we don’t know about yet.”
“How did Hydrogen Steel find out about these guys?” I couldn’t help but wonder who these people were, quietly communicating amongst themselves, prying information from chaos, piecing together something Hydrogen Steel wanted to keep people from knowing. I thought back to Otaru telling me that Hydrogen Steel’s mission had something to do with Earth. The obvious conclusion burned in my mind: had these sixty-three people learned some aspect of what really happened the day we lost the Earth? Hydrogen Steel, I’d been told, was trying to prevent the spread of information without in any way drawing attention to its actions. Which made perfect sense: inquiring after the firemind’s activities would only beg questions about what it was trying to keep quiet. I swore to myself, thinking about it.
I thought again about Narwhal Island. All the urine-coded letters we’d found were addressed not to Kell Fallow, but to Airlie. She was part of the network. But she would also have been known around town…
So everyone on the island had been killed, not in a “product recall”, but because they knew Airlie Fallow, and might tell me something.
I felt dizzy thinking about it.
I felt, too, a grim and somber obligation. I swore to myself I would find out the truth that Hydrogen Steel was trying very hard to keep secret.
Hydrogen Steel Page 26
