Buried Deep

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Running away wasn’t the answer. Going back wasn’t the answer either.

  She would just have to figure out how to push Flint to work faster, to find a solution that would satisfy the Disty.

  A solution that would somehow keep everyone alive.

  Twenty

  Flint sat at his favorite table in the Brownie Bar, eating a bowl of cream of asparagus soup, made with real asparagus and real cream. He loved the Brownie Bar. It could afford to serve food with real ingredients at low prices.

  The bar specialized in marijuana baked into brownies. The bar had been in Armstrong for generations, a holdover from the earliest settlement. Many of the early colonists had come to run away from government regulation, particularly regulation of their pleasures, and bars like this one—catering to specific drugs—had come into being.

  The Brownie Bar was one of the few left, partly because marijuana’s side effects were minimal compared with some of the heavier drugs, and partly because the place was so very profitable.

  The bar was divided into several sections. Patrons called the very back the quiet section because it catered to the people who wanted a little relaxation on their lunch hour. A small brownie, an hour or so at the booth while they ate and did some work, and then they’d leave. The other sections focused on groups—parties of two or three had one room, and a newer room had just opened for groups that wanted to add alcohol to the brownie mix.

  Flint didn’t eat the brownies when he came here, preferring to sit by himself in the back, enjoy the spectacular food, and use the public access screen built into the table. At the Brownie Bar, no log-in identity was needed, so Flint could work here on some of the more sensitive stuff.

  At the moment, he was trying to understand the M’Kri Tribesmen. Their arguments in the Multicultural Tribunal had seemed filtered to him, and as a result, almost impossible to follow. What he had learned, however, was that the richness of their land had been a closely guarded secret.

  He wasn’t even certain the Tribesmen had understood the mineral wealth of the soil they had inherited. The various M’Kri cultures had never surveyed the land, and according to at least one witness in front of the Tribunal, no outsiders (read: no aliens) were allowed within a hundred kilometers of the Tribesmen’s land.

  If that were the case, how did Jørgen’s company even learn of the minerals? How did the negotiations with the Tribesmen happen? And where did they happen?

  None of those questions appeared to have been asked at the hearings, and none of those questions were answered in any of the documentation.

  The more he dug into this case, the stranger it got.

  He also spent some time researching Jørgen. He looked up Lagrima as a name, and came up with a very short list. Hardly anyone in any database named a child Lagrima—at least in modern times. It had been a somewhat more common name on Earth two centuries earlier—a lot of space travelers and adventurers were named Lagrima.

  He would have to research them, but not here. Too much research on a single topic called attention to the place and material researched. The history of the owners of the name Lagrima would have to wait until he went back to the university. There, no one would take much notice.

  The screen blanked, and he finished his soup. He wasn’t quite full. He would order some of the Brownie Bar’s fresh bread—the bar’s baked goods (even without the herbal additive) were excellent.

  With a touch of his finger to the edge of the screen, he summoned the waitress. Because the Brownie Bar specialized in drugs, it preferred human waitresses to keep an eye on the patrons. Flint liked the personal touch, even if it meant the waitress would occasionally ask about his work.

  He kept the screen blank while he waited for her. When she did arrive, she was in a hurry, and didn’t even look at the table as she took his order. She got his coffee first, telling him that the bread would be a few minutes, since some fresh loaves were just coming out of the oven.

  Flint wrapped his hand around the coffee mug and leaned back in his chair, mentally reviewing the rest of the research that he had planned to do this day. Looking up the name Jørgen, after looking up Lagrima, might be a flag. He was better off doing more work on the M’Kri, and seeing if someone somewhere had done surveys that hadn’t made it into the official records.

  The waitress hurried back with a plate covered with bread and specialty cheeses. He hadn’t ordered the cheeses, but he knew the Bar sometimes tried new foods, just to see if patrons would enjoy them. He’d been the beneficiary of the bar’s generosity a number of times.

  He let the bread steam to one side as he pressed the screen. He was about to log in and state his question, when someone put a hand on his shoulder.

  He looked up to see Ki Bowles smiling at him.

  “I thought that was you,” she said.

  He did not smile back.

  “I decided to say hello. We’re heading to one of the private rooms, and I didn’t think you’d see me.”

  It wouldn’t have been a great loss. Flint darkened the screen with the touch of a finger. “We?”

  She swept a hand toward the door to the quiet room. An amazingly short, slim man hovered near the opening. It took Flint a moment to recognize him.

  That was DeRicci’s old partner, Leif van der Ketting. Van der Ketting had been Flint’s successor. Van der Ketting remained a detective after DeRicci’s promotion. Whenever anyone discussed the Moon Marathon and the near-disaster at the Dome, they talked about DeRicci. No one mentioned her partner and his heroics that day.

  “Still trying to see how dirty your hands can get?” Flint asked.

  Bowles shrugged a single shoulder. “Your old partner is a fascinating woman.”

  “So are you,” Flint said. “You might want to be careful. It looks like fascinating women are targets for on-the-make reporters.”

  She flushed. “That was uncalled for.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Flint said. “I saw your latest piece on Noelle. It was filled with innuendo and suggestion, no real research at all. I thought you were an investigative reporter, Ki.”

  “I am. I’m investigating.”

  “Then you lack ethics,” Flint said. “A real reporter would wait until she had the entire story before going public with any of it.”

  “A Retrieval Artist has no right to lecture me about ethics,” Bowles snapped. “Maybe I should investigate how you got so rich the day you left the force.”

  “Go ahead,” Flint said, knowing that his tracks were covered.

  The color had faded from Bowles’ face. She had, apparently, recovered. “I didn’t come over here to fight with you. I came to say hello, tell you I’m still working on the story, and ask you to talk with me.”

  “I’ve already said no. I’ll continue to say no for the rest of my life,” Flint said.

  Her lips twisted in an imitation smile. “You’re not the kind of man who changes his mind.”

  “Obviously,” Flint said, even though it was a lie. If he were consistent, he’d still be a computer programmer, inventing new software, new systems, working as deep into the networks and machinery of Armstrong as a man could get.

  “You’ll be the only one of DeRicci’s partners I will not have talked to.” Bowles said that as if it would convince him.

  “Apparently I’m the only one with a backbone.” Flint glanced past her at van der Ketting, who still hovered near the door.

  The man looked even smaller than he had after the Marathon. Flint wondered what kind of luck, what kind of career van der Ketting had had in the past two years.

  “Why do you hate Noelle so much?” Flint asked.

  “Why do you like her?” Bowles countered.

  “Let me remind you that you cannot make a recording of any of our conversations. I will own InterDome Media if you do.”

  “As a private citizen, I can record anything,” Bowles said. “You know that.”

  That was the first time she had come back with that response. It worried Fl
int.

  “This conversation is over,” he said.

  Bowles frowned at him. “I’m not going to use anything without your permission.”

  “You even use my likeness and I’ll sue InterDome. Do you understand me, Ki?”

  “No,” Bowles said, “I don’t understand you. You’re completely unfathomable to me. But I do understand what you’re telling me, and I won’t use your likeness—unless you do something on the public record that happens to be newsworthy.”

  He inhaled slowly and silently so that she couldn’t see him holding back the angry response that had just tried to escape.

  “The fact that I have come here for lunch is not newsworthy,” he said. “Although I find it interesting you come to a drug bar for a professional meeting. Does van der Ketting have a problem? Or are you simply trying to loosen his tongue a little?”

  “You’re a very suspicious man,” Bowles said. “There is kindness in the human soul, you know.”

  “In some.” Flint pointedly looked around her. Van der Ketting had stepped just inside the room, but still looked nervous. “You’re being rude to your subject.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you joined us,” Bowles said.

  Flint studied her. Her hair had silver tips today, showing the usual care in her appearance, but there were lines under her eyes that came from lack of sleep.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind,” Flint said. “But as for van der Ketting, I doubt he’d be happy about it. I doubt he’s happy about the way you’re wasting his time. Is that what you’re trying to do? Make him angry so that you’ll get some good quotes?”

  Bowles eyes twinkled. “Why do you hate me so much?” she asked, mimicking his tone from before.

  He decided not to respond to the flirtatious question in the same manner. Instead, he told her the truth.

  “I don’t hate you, Ki. However, I do think you’re one of the most insensitive people I’ve ever met, and I don’t think that makes for a good investigator, whether she is a cop, Retrieval Artist, or a reporter. Now, let me finish my lunch.”

  She took a slice of bread, the smile still pasted on her face. But the spirit had disappeared from it.

  “One day, you’ll realize I’m not so bad,” she said, and walked back to van der Ketting. Flint watched out of the corner of his eye as the two of them disappeared down the corridor.

  He didn’t like what she was doing, but he didn’t know how to stop her.

  He wasn’t sure anyone could.

  Twenty-one

  She was being followed. She had known it for hours now, and she was convinced it was not her imagination.

  Aisha Costard sat on the edge of the too-soft bed in her boxy hotel room. The room had screens on all four walls. She kept the screens off, for the most part, except for one screen on which she kept running a program that showed water running down rocks into a high mountain lake.

  The sound of running water was supposed to be soothing. But she wasn’t soothed. She liked to think it was because she knew the sound was fake.

  But that really wasn’t it.

  She was so homesick that she could hardly breathe. She loved Madison, loved the university town with its isthmus and its lakes. She loved its history and the weather.

  She loved the wind.

  There was no wind in Armstrong, no wind at all in either of the Domed communities she’d been to these last few weeks. All of the promotional materials she had found in this hotel room had told her that the Dome did its best to imitate an Earth environment.

  Only they had forgotten wind and rain and humidity and snow, and that wonderful overheated sensation that came from too much sunlight.

  Costard put her face in her hands. Being followed. Being watched. Maybe since she had arrived on Armstrong, but certainly since she had gone to the Disappearance Service.

  Were they following her to find out why she had turned them down? To see if she was some kind of authority?

  She shook her head inside her hands, her breath warm against her palms. Maybe she was longing for Madison because she was longing for the innocence of that life, the way she could lose herself in the past, the fact that the only politics she had to pay attention to were university politics, and sometimes not even that because she had been a star tenured professor, a feather in everyone’s cap.

  What did it matter that she was a bit naïve, a little impolite, a tad distracted? Who cared that she didn’t know the differences between Alliance laws and Earth guidelines? How would such esoteric things hurt her?

  She had found out, of course. She had found out that what she considered esoteric was essential, and what she considered essential was esoteric.

  She had never realized how very protected she had been until everything turned on her, until she had come to Mars. And now she was on the Moon, forbidden to go back to Earth until she was cleared by the Disty, and if Flint was right, she would never be cleared.

  And now she felt trapped in this room. She wanted to see Flint, to make sure he would do the job even if she didn’t Disappear, but she was scared to go out. Scared that she would get followed to his office, scared that he would be angry because she brought someone who shouldn’t be there.

  Scared.

  Homesick and lost and scared, all emotions she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  Not since her parents died. And even then, the emotions hadn’t been this debilitating. Her blindness to the world around her made it possible for her to continue surviving—if she just focused on the past, on the bones, on history, everything would be all right.

  Or it had been until she had traveled to Mars.

  Before she left, she should have looked clearly at the situation, and she hadn’t. Once she was there, she tried.

  And now, in Armstrong, things were even worse. She had to see everything around her, even the person (persons?) who was following her, and she couldn’t. She could only rely on a feeling, little glimpses out of the corner of her eye, little details that were slightly off.

  The SDHPD had warned her before she left that the Disty would monitor her as best they could in a non-Disty environment.

  Maybe that was what bothered her the most. Maybe it was simply her conscience, worrying that some Disty spy had seen her go into the Disappearance Service.

  She lifted her head out of her hands and flopped backwards on the bed, sinking into the mattress. Around her, the sound of rushing water seemed so real that if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine herself beside a brook.

  But she didn’t dare. Her imagination helped with her work—helped her visualize how someone died, just from their bones; helped her visualize how they might have looked in life; helped her even find corpses that were long missing—but it wouldn’t help her here.

  She had to get back to Mars. But first, she had to talk to Flint, to make sure he would continue working even if she hadn’t disappeared. Maybe the person who had been following her had been him, just seeing if she had taken his advice.

  To contact him, she would have to leave the hotel, and that frightened her for reasons she didn’t entirely understand. If she contacted him on the hotel links, then the message would be public.

  If she contacted him through her links, the hotel might be recording her part of the conversation.

  She would have to leave sometime—even if it was just to go to the Port to return to Mars.

  Costard sighed, stood, and adjusted her shirt. She ran her fingers through her hair to comb it. She grabbed her purse but not a coat—it felt odd to go out without a coat, even now. Then she opened her door and stepped into the hallway.

  The hallway was well lit with histories of Armstrong’s greatest events running on the wall screens. Most of the events seemed to involve speeches and building things. She never stopped long enough to get a sense of what the history was all about.

  On some level, she found that odd, considering how much she loved history. She used to say she loved human history, but she was begin
ning to discover that she only loved Earth history, and only then if it concerned humans. She had never thought of herself as narrow-minded until she had traveled so far from home.

  She took the stairs down to the main floor, nodded at the woman who seemed to live behind that desk, and headed out the front door as if nothing were wrong. She would only go a few blocks, and then she would contact Flint, ask him for a safe place to meet.

  He would know. He seemed like the safest person she had encountered since she left home—and he was the only one who had been rude to her, the only one who had made her mad.

  She didn’t think of the Disty as people.

  And she certainly hadn’t interacted with them. She had only heard their edicts from humans, people who seemed to know more about everything than she did.

  She shivered, even though there was no wind and the air temperature was perfect. She longed for the coat, just for the sake of comfort.

  The air still had that strange smoky electrical smell that Flint said came from last year’s bombing. Costard looked around as she headed down the street.

  A young couple walked toward a restaurant attached to the hotel. Two aliens—one with so many arms they looked like wings—appeared to be arguing across the street. A few more people hurried down the opposite sidewalk, as if they knew exactly where they were going.

  Costard retraced the walk she had taken with Flint. She didn’t know much about the neighborhood and she certainly wasn’t going to go somewhere she hadn’t been before.

  The skin on the back of her neck crawled. But she knew better than to turn around, knew that if someone was watching—or following—he would do whatever he could to avoid getting caught.

  She hurried, finally reaching the end of the block. She looked around again before crossing the street, and saw a slightly different group of people. The aliens were still the only ones on the street, still arguing.

  No one appeared to be watching her.

  She didn’t know how far to go. Restaurants had to have public links. Maybe if she just went into one and ordered a salad, she would be able to contact Flint. It would be a quick trip, and there would be people around her.