When the waiter left, DeRicci sighed. “Do you know what they offered me today?”
“Who?” Flint asked.
“The governor-general, basically, speaking for the entire United Domes of the Moon.” DeRicci’s head was still spinning. She couldn’t believe that such illustrious people wanted to talk to her, let alone offer to work with her.
“What did they offer?” Flint asked.
“They want me to be the first appointee to a new office,” she said. “I’m supposed to be the Chief of Moon Security. I’d make policy on how to defend the Domes, coordinate with the head of security for each Dome, and—”
“The Domes have heads of security now?” Flint sounded surprised.
DeRicci shook her head. “This would be new, and organized by the UDM, not by the Domes themselves. After the two attacks on Armstrong, the UDM Council figured it was only a matter of time before the other Domes had major security problems and it was time to coordinate them.”
The waiter returned, carrying their drinks on a tray. Flint had ordered real coffee, made from beans imported from Earth. Leave it to him to indulge in a stimulant instead of something that would relax him. DeRicci had thought of ordering wine, but instead she had settled for water.
As much as she wanted to escape the conflicting emotions of the day, she needed to be clearheaded. Flint was one of the few people—maybe the only person—she could confide in, and she needed to pay attention to whatever he had to say.
“So that’s what the whole press conference was about?” Flint asked. “It was an excuse to get some of the mayors, the councilors, and the governor-general together to talk with you?”
DeRicci shrugged. “I’m as taken aback as you are. Maybe more so.”
Probably more so. No one had told her about the medal ceremony. When she had left Police Central, she had removed the Silver Moon from her lapel, and replaced the medal in its little box. She strongly objected to being rewarded for doing her job, especially when that job had been predicated on the loss of countless lives.
She hadn’t succeeded during the Moon Marathon, no matter what Soseki had said. A lot of people had died that day. And she had done nothing positive in the bombing case. There was still no suspect, and no real understanding of why someone (or many someones) had tried to destroy the Dome.
“The United Domes are a loose confederation,” Flint said. “The mayors have more power than the governor-general. A moon-based post seems to me to be a political move on the Council’s part, a power-grab so that the UDM would eventually dictate policy to the Domes.”
“I said that.” DeRicci sipped her water. It was cold and fresh and tasted better than any water she had ever had before. She resisted the urge to check the paper menu, cleverly disguised to look like an ancient book, to see where the water had come from—or how much it cost.
“And?” Flint asked.
“They denied it, of course,” she said. “All the while promising me enough power to make sure each Dome followed my security recommendations. My head aches from all the doublespeak.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they’d do this at a press conference?” Flint asked.
DeRicci shook her head. “They want this to leak. People are scared right now. They want someone to do something to protect them. There’s been talk in the Armstrong City Council of confining aliens to particular parts of the city—”
“But there’s no proof that aliens bombed the Dome,” Flint said. “And the attack at the Moon Marathon came from a human.”
“I said that too.” DeRicci rubbed her fingers against the cold side of her water glass. “You know, in the past, I would’ve gotten yelled at for that kind of outspokenness. Now everyone listens as if what I have to say is important, and then they find ways to contradict me. I think I like the yelling better.”
The political realm was completely new territory for her, and she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being used.
“I don’t see how leaking this whole idea to the press will make people feel safer,” Flint said.
“Here’s the psychology,” DeRicci said, annoyed that she understood this much of the game. “People don’t believe official statements. They do, however, believe leaks, thinking that information ferreted out is somehow closer to the truth.”
“But overall security,” Flint said, “that’s like a UDM police force. We’ve avoided that since the Moon was colonized.”
Double doors in the paneled wall opened wide, revealing the steel walls inside the kitchen. The waiter entered the private room, carrying a tray on one hand as if he were some kind of entertainer.
DeRicci sighed. Maybe Flint had been right about privacy. Every time the conversation got going, it felt like the waiter had to interrupt.
He bowed before them as he took a large bowl off the tray. He set the bowl in the center of the table, then grabbed two plates and placed them before Flint and DeRicci. The bowl was filled with greens and multicolored vegetable bits, all cut so fine as to be unrecognizable. The waiter took some bottles of various oils from a nearby wait station. He dashed each oil onto the greens, then used two large wooden spoons to mix up the entire mess.
The air smelled of olive oil and basil, with a hint of vinegar. DeRicci’s stomach rumbled again.
The waiter left. After the double doors had closed, Flint asked, “Are you going to take the job?”
“What do I know about Dome security?”
“Seems to me that you’re well known as a public speaker on that topic.”
She looked at him sideways. He had gripped both spoons and was trying to dish some greens out of the bowl. He was failing miserably.
She moved the bowl closer to his. “That was more than a year ago, and those talks were about the threats to the Domes, not about how to secure the Domes.”
“Seems to me you have to understand the threats before you can prevent them.” Flint managed to drip some greens onto his plate. The greens looked soggier outside of that bowl. The smell of vinegar grew.
“Sounds like you want me to take this job,” DeRicci said.
“Better you than most of the so-called security experts I’ve met,” Flint said. “At least you understand the unfairness of most Alliance laws, how complex it is dealing with more than fifty legal alien species, and how humans are just as dangerous as the rest. If we get some xenophobic person establishing policy, then the Moon becomes an unpleasant place to live.”
DeRicci grabbed the bowl, tilted it slightly, and pushed greens onto her plate. Then she set the bowl back in the center of the table.
“I was thinking of not taking the job.”
That caught Flint’s attention. He set his forkful of greens on the side of his plate, and looked at her, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “Why?”
“That’s not me,” DeRicci said. “I’m not political. I’ll make everybody mad.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m an investigator. I’ve already been promoted past my skill level. This’ll be a nightmare.”
“Then say no.”
He made it sound so easy. But he was right. Someone else would get the job. Someone else would be the person who used the threat of bombings and biological attacks to create a strong interdome government.
The greens tasted bitter. The vinegar accented the bitterness. DeRicci pushed her plate away.
“I don’t want them to create an overall security post. I went to various Domes last year and talked to the governments so that they’d make their own policy. What the City of Armstrong needs is very different from the needs of Glenn Station. We have the largest port on the Moon. They have a small private port that’s rarely used, and bullet trains. They’re not facing external threats.”
“I thought you said we weren’t either,” Flint said.
“Of course we are,” DeRicci said. “But we can’t shut down the port. We can’t move all the Peyti to one side of the Do
me and the Rev to another. I’m envisioning checkpoints and more identification than we’ve ever had, and files and files of information just to get from one section of Armstrong to another. Who’d want to live like that?”
“Why don’t you mention it to the Council?” Flint asked. “Or are you supposed to deal directly with the governor-general?”
“I don’t know,” DeRicci said. “There’s going to be a meeting tomorrow.”
“So tell them.” Flint finished his greens and set the plate aside.
“I’m afraid to,” DeRicci said. “I’m afraid any objection I make will become an idea, and if I turn the job down, someone will remember the objection as a suggestion, and suddenly it’ll all become policy, whether I like it or not.”
“It sounds like you have no choice,” Flint said. “You have to take this position.”
“If only I could show them that this bombing was an isolated incident. Maybe they’d abandon the entire idea.”
“The bombing may have been isolated and the Marathon attack was isolated, but they came back-to-back,” Flint said. “You were involved with both. They feel related.”
She knew that. She felt trapped, leaning against the velvet couch, the beautiful table in front of her.
“I used to want the respect,” she said. “Now I have it, and I hate it. It’s forcing me into positions that I don’t want to hold, places I don’t want to go.”
Flint templed his fingers, his eyebrows raised. He studied the double doors as if willing them to remain closed.
“But I’m really torn,” DeRicci said. “They’re going to create the position, but they’ve given me the chance to create the rules. I’d be a fool to balk at that.”
Flint took a sip of his coffee, then ran his finger along the cup’s rim. “No one would ever call you a fool, Noelle.”
“People used to,” she said.
He smiled at her. “And they were wrong.”
Six
Aisha Costard was shaking. If someone had told her two weeks ago that she would visit the Moon before she returned to Earth, she would have laughed. At that time, she had thought her Mars case something simple—an adventure really, instead of a disaster that had already changed her life.
She stood on the curb, waiting for Port Rentals to bring her an aircar. To other people, she probably looked like a typical traveler, clothes wrinkled from days on a shuttle, a bag over her shoulder. The clerk inside the rental office hadn’t given her a second glance, merely took Costard’s hand, pressed it against the identification box, and then touched a separate screen, confirming that Costard was who she said she was.
No mention made of the limited warrant, no comment on the fact that her travel visa came from Mars instead of her home planet of Earth, no discussion of the alert which had tinted Costard’s file orange.
Apparently, Armstrong’s customs had cleared all that. Or maybe they had simply modified it, giving whomever looked up Costard’s identity specific instructions.
Costard had been too afraid to ask, especially after the last few days.
The Disty had given Costard clearance so that she could settle the major contamination case. But they had warned her that they would come for her if she tried to run. They would hunt her down, even if she Disappeared.
She was working for them at the moment, even though they wouldn’t come into the same room with her, even though they considered her as contaminated as the bones she’d been studying.
But the Disty did concede that she was making progress. Her work on the skeleton had brought the contamination area down from three square blocks to two, because she could prove that the skeleton had been at that site only as long as the building, which was about thirty years.
The area still reeked of death as far as the Disty were concerned, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. And if Costard could find the dead woman’s family, then maybe the contamination would disappear for good.
A man stopped beside her. He wore a long brown coat and thigh-high boots. His hair fell against his shoulders. On one arm he wore a corporate patch. He didn’t give her a second glance.
She resisted the urge to move away from him. She didn’t want him to look at her. Ever since she had gone to Sahara Dome, she had felt like the ground could shift under her at any moment.
She made herself take a deep breath of the recycled air. Dome air always had a metallic taste to it, no matter how fresh the engineers tried to make it. At least here the Dome’s ceiling was visible, and the buildings towered above her. Real streets, with no rabbit warrens, no need for her to crouch every time she went from one location to another.
Armstrong Dome was big enough, and the roof of the Dome high enough, that aircars were practical here. That, at least, was enough like Earth to reassure her.
“How long you been waiting?” the man next to her asked.
Costard started. She glanced at him sideways, then realized the movement probably looked furtive. She made herself smile at him. “A while.”
“They’re always backed up here,” he said. “I don’t know why I schedule everything so tight.”
“You’re not local?” she asked, then realized it was a dumb question. Why would a man from the city need to rent a car at the port?
“I’m from the Outlying Colonies,” he said, “but I do way too much business in this solar system. Seems like I’m in Armstrong half of my year.”
She swallowed, trying to imagine that kind of travel, and failing. “The literature says Armstrong is human controlled, right?”
He gave her a surprised look. “That’s a strange question.”
She shrugged. “I—had some trouble on Mars. I didn’t realize the Disty had so much power.”
“People rarely do.” He rocked back on his heels, checked over his shoulder as if he were looking for his car, and then looked forward again. “You here on business?”
“Yes.”
“I can show you around, if you like.”
Months ago, she would have taken him up on the offer. She might have still if this had been Tokyo or London. But she was in another damn Dome, and she wasn’t sure how to behave.
“I’m not going to be here long enough for that,” she said. “But thanks.”
He nodded, as if he had expected the answer. “You’re from Earth, right?”
She almost blurted, How do you know? but caught herself just in time. “Why?”
“People from Earth rarely research their destinations. You live outside of the home world, you learn pretty fast that you have to know exactly what you’re walking into.”
She felt her face heat. “You never answered my question.”
“About Armstrong? It’s about as human as a Domed colony can get. Maybe it’ll get more human real soon now. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“New security laws coming in,” he said. “Armstrong’s been attacked twice in the last two years. The city’s become paranoid.”
An aircar rounded the corner of a nearby building, and slowed down. It hovered above the waiting area, then eased its way to the pavement in front of Costard.
“Looks like yours,” the man said.
She nodded.
“The navigational equipment in the vehicles here are old by Earth standards, but still real functional. The only thing you have to worry about with these babies is that they’re pretty easy to break into. Don’t leave anything important in them.”
He was being friendly. He was being helpful. She wanted to trust him more, but she didn’t dare.
“Thanks,” she said, as she went around to the driver’s side.
A Port Rental employee, wearing a dark green uniform, got out. He took her hand, just like the woman inside had, and pressed her palm against a screen.
“How come you don’t use ‘bots or straight computerization?” she asked, getting irritated at the way these people just grabbed her and pulled her hand toward the screens.
“Living flesh,” h
e said without looking at her. “We have to make sure the part is attached.”
The answer made her stomach turn. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how the whole living-flesh identification system could be compromised by a cutoff limb. The blood had to be flowing through the palm, and the skin had to be warm. How did someone fake that?
The screen beeped its verification and the car chirruped a greeting at her. She hadn’t heard that particular aircar electronic voice since she was a child. The man who had helped her hadn’t been kidding when he said the equipment was old here.
He grinned at her and nodded his head as she got into the car. She put her bag on the passenger’s seat, strapped herself in, familiarized herself with the controls, and hesitated.
If this had been Earth, she would have gone straight to her hotel, checked in, and cleaned up. She would have let the hotel information screen tell her about Armstrong, its history and its sites, while she prepared for her meeting.
But she was behind schedule, and even though she’d notified everyone in Sahara Dome who needed to know about her delay, she didn’t trust them to act rationally about it. She had only gotten four days away from the project, and she had spent half of one in travel, the rest of it and all of another day in customs, and now half of this day trying to get out of the Port.
She didn’t have time to follow her usual leisurely plan. She would have to see if she could meet with the Retrieval Artist first.
Then she would settle in. Then she would spend at least one evening pretending she was still free.
Seven
Miles Flint sat at his desk, watching the report on InterDome Media for the third time. He had downloaded it nearly an hour ago, and ever since, he’d been watching like a man who couldn’t take his eyes off a particularly devastating accident.
His office was cooler than normal. He had turned the temperature down when he had come in, mostly to stay awake. He’d been napping in his office too much lately.
Buried Deep Page 4
