by F P Adriani
“Cold?” he asked, his hand helping me arrange the bed linens better.
“Tan…Tan, it’s bad there. Dirty and damp, and so many of the people are miserable. I thought it was bad here, but here looks good compared to there.”
“Yeah, it does. …Is that why this guy Jamie came here?”
My head turned to him, but I couldn’t see him just like he couldn’t see me. “Honestly, there’s nothing there, Tan. You’re worrying for nothing. He’s a bit naïve, and after what happened, I couldn’t just leave him there. Sometimes I do things spur-of-the-moment because they feel right then, though I’m not sure why yet….”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Should I have just left him there? Look what happened when I took off from here? Poor Juli….” My voice faded away, started cracking. I couldn’t hold them back any longer; the tears finally came, hot and fast….
Now he pulled me closer, said softly, “Is that what this is all about?”
I didn’t respond. My tears dampened his damp shoulder even more.
“It’s my fault,” I said in a weak beaten voice. “Had I been here…I think that wouldn’t have happened at the house….”
Now he slid from beneath me and grabbed me by the arms, giving them a little shake. “Think, Pia—think. You didn’t do this. They did! Someone started before you were even in the picture. They killed Amy. If it wasn’t for you protecting Julianne, they might have hurt her sooner.”
“Tan, I know what you’re trying to say, but it just doesn’t matter…. And I’ve got no choice but to finish all this now. If I remain at a standstill here, I don’t think the other side will. I’ve got to go wherever this all takes me, even if I’ve got to go with Hu.” I hated saying her name in his bed, but it had slipped out before I could stop myself.
There was a small silence.
Then Tan said, “Then I’m going too. I’m not letting you get away from me again. You feel guilty over Julianne and I feel guilty over you. And it’s not the first time, if you remember.”
I tried to sit up. “But your job—”
His hand on my arm pulled me back down. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve been doing so much overtime lately, I can take days off. I figured I might have to. But I need to know when. If we’re going somewhere—when?”
“That I don’t know,” I said, frowning into the dark. “And before then, I need your help on something else. Your boss, Clive—I need to see him again.”
Now, he stilled beside me. “Why? And will this jeopardize my job?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“Well, what the hell’s going on with him now?”
“I can’t say yet…. Look, I’ll know in two days, I think. Or maybe late tomorrow. We’ll see. …I’ll let you know when I’ve gotta see him….” I was getting very sleepy. His skin felt drier now and therefore warmer beside me; it was very tempting….
But, ultimately, I didn’t have the energy needed to act on Tan’s tempting skin. “I must sleep now, Tan,” I said in a softer voice as consciousness began seeming too hard to maintain.
And when he said, “Go ahead, baby,” that really pushed me over the edge, and the dark room instantly faded into nothingness.
*
When I woke up the next morning, Tan had already gotten dressed and left for work. I’d slept so soundly, I didn’t even hear him. I had been hoping we’d “connect” in the morning when I had more energy, but now that connecting would have to wait.
On the dining-room table, he’d left me a letter explaining where a few things were in the house and saying he’d call me around lunchtime. That “lunchtime” reminded me of something—something I hadn’t thought of before.
Yesterday Roberto told me he and Lori would be back visiting at the hospital until lunchtime today.
I picked up my portable phone and dialed Julianne’s room again.
When Lori answered the phone there, I said, “I’m going to need your help.”
*
Tan did call me at noon, but mostly to check on me, to see if I was doing better. I told him that I was because, well, I was—slightly. But he didn’t have much time to talk then, and neither did I; I had to go back to the Castano house.
On the phone Lori had informed me that the cops had taken a lunchtime break yesterday, during which they had disappeared from the house—all of them had disappeared. And I was hoping they were creatures of policing habit….
My hoping paid off: I did another one of my pass-bys and saw that only Lori’s car sat in the driveway now.
When I finally walked up to the front door, she opened it to me and I slipped inside, my Osier scanner working in one hand, my special case strapped to my other arm.
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she asked, nervously looking over her shoulder, seemingly at the mess the downstairs still was. Most of the furniture was out of place, and there was a spot near the kitchen entrance—a spot where a body had been but that a special police tent now covered.
I didn’t blame Lori for being nervous. None of this thrilled me either.
I swallowed uneasily before saying to her, “No, I’m not sure about this. But it’s got to be done. Remember: if the cops come back before I’m finished, you asked me to come with you to get some of Julianne’s things.” I handed her a communicator, and then I moved the scanner toward the stairs.
“But where are you going? What are you doing?”
“That’s not for you to know. Trust me,” I said. “And stay here. Press the communicator button if someone comes. But: Do. Not. Follow. Me. Understood?”
Her head shook fast. And then I walked up the steps.
*
My first night there when I inspected the place, I’d thought something about the house had seemed wrong, as if the outside shape and the inside shape didn’t match, as if I hadn’t encountered every space inside.
Now I knew there was a hidden room behind Julianne’s room, a hidden room only accessible via a panel in one of the walls. It wasn’t a full-length panel, so now I had to squeeze through an opening raised off the floor, which left me inside a dark library area.
There might have been a room light to turn on somewhere, but I didn’t want to risk it being visible outside this space, which might reveal this space. I used my small focused-beam flashlight instead. I had to find a second panel—somewhere among the narrow hardwood floorboards. This wound up taking more time because I was stuck in a mostly dark room….
Too hot in here, not enough air…I began sweating…. Then I found the panel. I pulled up the top and slid down the opening into a very narrow staircase. It was lined in stone and would go into the belly of the house, or, more correctly, beneath the belly.
I knew that this was Diamond, so there were no dangerous species lurking down the damp musty staircase. But then I didn’t need dangerous species to make me afraid of tight spaces…. I was sweating again, wondering what the hell I was doing here as the staircase seemed to go on forever in the half-dark. My flashlight didn’t light the way that far ahead. Maybe this was all a mistake; there would be nothing waiting for me….
No, there was something. I finally found it: a small cellar-room at the edge of the stairs. There were boxes and steel canisters along the floor, and the “walls” were made of earth and rock, both human-made concrete and Diamond-made stone. And I knew a special digitally-locked container was also fixed into the wall.
I soon located it, entered the proper code, slid off the container’s top, and found two notebooks waiting inside. My shaking fingers pulled them out and I opened my case, intending to put the notebooks inside…only I suddenly couldn’t resist looking at the writings.
Sliding both my case and my ass to the floor, I opened the cover of one of the books. My fingers flipped the pages: they were filled with technical information, geological information, unfolding maps of Diamond resources, atmospheric motions and tectonic forces…I barely understood a word of it.
My f
ingers kept paging through the notebook—and then I hit a summary section. It was both handwritten and computer-written, with printed-out pages attached. In this section, Amy Castano spoke to the reader, the reader who might not be her….
I didn’t want to read this, but I did read this.
And then I was sorry I’d read it.
I was sorry I’d ever found out about this whole house and these Castano people and that John and then the Thorntons—oh everything! Maybe sometimes not knowing was better. Maybe sometimes just closing your eyes and living in ignorance of the world around you—maybe that was the best way to live. You just couldn’t do anything with some knowledge; the knowledge itself was the end of its usefulness. And that rudely highlighted the limitations of both your mind and body.
My hands shook on the notebooks, sweat slid down my neck and into my bra, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the words because I now saw that the potential damage to Diamond was much, much worse than I’d ever thought.
I read the words in front of me over and over again, hoping it was all a mistake, especially because, as far as I could tell, there were no other map pieces completing the piece I’d seen and the piece Hu had apparently seen. I sensed other information was incomplete too; there might be another notebook….
My communicator bleeped. Shit—I’d been down here too long! My hands scrambled to pull everything together; then I rushed back up the narrow stairway. Inside that little library, I dusted myself off the best I could, then I slipped back into Julianne’s room, rummaging through her drawers and shoving some of the clothing there inside an overnight bag carelessly dangling off a wall hook.
As I walked back downstairs, I could hear Lori telling the cops, “…the food there just isn’t good enough. I wanted to get her fresh snacks. Pia’s getting Julianne some clothes….” Her words died when she spotted me. Her voice had sounded okay, but now I saw that her pale face gave away her nervousness. Her tongue was carelessly licking her lips as I stepped off the stairs.
“Here are the clothes,” I said, briefly holding the bag up high. I didn’t know the cop standing there, but he turned to glance at me now. “The poor kid,” I said to no one in particular. Then, to the cop: “Have you found out anything more?”
“No,” he said, staring at me with not-blank-enough eyes. “Have either of you thought of anything else you could inform us with?” He looked back and forth between us. But we both shook our heads.
“How long will all this investigating be going on?” Lori asked in a distressed little voice, swinging her hand to encompass that tent behind her especially. Another cop stood there now, taking some measurements of something.
“Not much longer,” the other cop said to Lori. “Maybe two more days. Then you can probably have your house back.”
“How? It will never be the same! I can’t even stay here now, I’m so afraid…. When will I ever—and Julianne, after what’s happened to her—” Her voice grew increasingly distressed.
“Take a deep breath, Ma’am,” the cop said, his hand pressing beneath her arm. But I wondered if she really was so distressed or if she was putting on an act to distract the cop’s suspicious nature.
Whatever the case, her actions worked to our advantage: about five-minutes later, we were both outside the house driving away in our respective cars.
*
I went back to Tan’s house to change my clothes. Then I called him.
Luckily I caught him in his office. “I need you to make that meeting for me with Clive. Today. In an hour. Tell him to meet me on Route 58, at the south corner where it splits off into a dead end.”
“But Pia—this is such fast notice. What the hell explanation am I supposed to give? What if he says he can’t make it?”
“Oh don’t worry about that. He’ll come.”
*
The hot afternoon Sun pounded on top of my head as I leaned back against my car. Sunglasses covered my eyes, but they didn’t block my view of the land around me. I watched the pale sand shimmering in the distance, the grass near my car gently bending with the rhythmic wind. I smelled something citrusy—a light fresh scent probably coming from a nearby farm. I imagined a tree silently waiting there, giving off its nectar to lure insects who didn’t exist here. On Diamond most everything needing pollination was either done by wind manipulation or by machine. In some ways, farming here was more work than on Earth; in other ways, it was less.
This part of Route 58 was an open lonely stretch of road that didn’t lead to much, and that was why I’d picked it. I wanted to be able to see all sides, to check them for anyone who shouldn’t be around here.
I finally spotted a dark red car in the distance; it slowly came toward me. And by the time it got pretty close, I’d moved to the front of my car so it sat between me and the other car. My hand lay on my Granger inside my jacket pocket. I didn’t know what his car looked like; this could have been anybody coming at me….
It wasn’t. It was him. He pulled his car behind mine. Through his windshield, I saw his head tilt sideways, as if he were feeling suspicious. I slid back out toward the road, pressing my back to my car once again.
His door opened and he unfolded himself from his seat. As he walked toward me, I saw that he’d sloppily half-rolled half-shoved up his gray shirt sleeves to his elbows, and one side of the bottom of his shirt had slipped out of his brown pants. Above all this, his face looked a little pinched, with either trepidation or suspicion again, or possibly both.
Now I said, my eyes turning to the empty field beyond us, “I often wonder about people. About how much they see, how much they know, especially about others. And how much they share. Amy Castano didn’t share much with others about her work; in fact, it looks like she shared almost nothing with just about everybody. But there’s this C person—she shared a whole lot with him in particular. And if I’d known this days ago, that would have been nice.”
I looked back at Clive; his eyes had been carefully studying me. But now he exhaled loudly and turned his head away, pressing his hands on his hips. “What do you expect me to say to you?”
“I saw your name. At TNI. One of the donation plaques. Apparently, for a few months you were on the Board there, for the Diamond branch here. Mighty chummy of you.”
“So? And lots of people make donations to lots of places.”
“So you’re telling me that’s all it was then—an innocent connection? And the ‘C’ Amy talked about—that’s not you? Is this your claim?”
He only glared back at me.
And now my anger flared. “You got something of hers to give me, you better hand it over. Now.”
His mouth twisted into a sneer. He took a step closer to me; then he must have thought better of it because he quickly stepped back again. “Well, from my perspective, who the hell are you? Why should I trust you? Tan tells me his girlfriend wants to talk to me—so I think this is just some family thing. Then you bring up Amy. I didn’t owe you anything then. And I don’t owe you anything now.”
“What about Amy—Julianne? What about them? Amy trusted you and you’re not doing right by her.”
“I’ve got to do right by me. I can’t support every out-there idea every scientist comes up with. Evidence is needed—”
“And you’re saying you don’t have that.”
“I’m not saying anything. But I’m the one who told you about TNI—don’t forget that,” he said, pointing a bouncing forefinger at me.
“So? Maybe you figured I’d find that place anyway, so then you could plead you’re on my side, on Amy’s side, like, ‘Look, I helped you’!”
“Wow, you’re suspicious.”
“In my line of work, I’ve got to be. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Diamond. How much do you know?”
He spread his big hands. “What—what do I know? She told me to hold onto some things. She gave me a bit of map, a thin notebook. It’s all a theory. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You really believe that
?”
“I have to.” His mouth shook a bit now, which seemed to be an uncomfortable feeling for him. “I’ve got two kids, a wife I love—that’s all I really care about. I’m sorry for Amy and Julianne now, but they’re not my responsibility.”
“I’ve looked you up. You were a scientist at one point too. You don’t think that makes you responsible to investigate any important science that comes your way? Don’t you want to know?”
“No. I don’t anymore. It’s true I’ve been naïve. I’ve done some stupid things. I’ve gotten involved in things I later realized I shouldn’t have. But then I moved on. Amy would never do that. She kept pushing, and she got dead. Like I said, I’m thinking of me.”
“You’ve got no fucking idea how bad all this is!” I shouted, stepping closer to him. Really, he was a lot bigger than I, and he was a Sander too. But I was blinded by my anger over his stubbornness. “Your kids aren’t safe. You aren’t safe. Wake up!”
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to kill me, and absent my gun, he probably would have been able to kill me.
But all of a sudden, in one shaking motion, his body collapsed back against my car and his right hand began rubbing his frowning forehead.
I said to him now, “You think I don’t want to ignore it all? I do! But at what price?”
Now he spoke fast, but at himself more. “I don’t know what the hell possessed me to get involved with that place. I’m always trying to better myself, trying to prove I’m better-than. Maybe I should feel satisfied more. I’ve got a good job. I’ve had it for years. Why wasn’t that enough?”
“We all get greedy sometimes. Give me the map piece and the notebook—have you got them?”
His head shook fast at me. “I didn’t bring them, I didn’t trust you. I’m still not sure I do….”
“I don’t work for them. They tried to kill me on Hera.”
“Holy shit!” he said, shifting uneasily against my car, his eyes darting at the landscape around us as his face turned a gray-brown shade now. “Look, Pia: the map I’ve got is useless. The location—under The Sapphire Sea’s bed. No one could get near it. Amy couldn’t. So her calculations there are very extrapolated. I’m telling you the truth. Check for yourself. The three are at pretty equidistant locations. The Sapphire Sea’s the general area for that one.”
