Remains

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “Very neat,” he said. “I never imagined that I’d be able to finish it all in one place.”

  Mace pulled the disc from his shirt pocket and sailed it at Koeln. It caught him across the forehead and he pulled back. Mace started lurching toward the living room. Nemily took his arm and dragged him the rest of the way.

  “Damn,” Koeln said. “You’ve complicated matters, Mr. Preston. Now I have to kill you, too. Don’t think I’ll miss a second time.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Mace “ Nemily whispered.

  He put a finger to her lips, then pointed at the dining room entrance. She nodded and crawled away.

  “Good, Glim has his own weapon,” Koeln said. Another muffled shot went off, a heavy, suppressed sound that was obvious now. “That was very cooperative of him.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Mace asked.

  “Evidence.”

  “You killed Reese.”

  “Yes. And Simity And this unfortunate at my feet is Toler.”

  “You didn’t finish with Simity.”

  “Really? She’s tougher than I thought. She should have bled to death.”

  “That’s what you were doing in the Temple when I found you there.”

  “You interrupted things then, too. I was interrogating the good Patri first. She was reluctant. I didn’t have time to clean up as well as I like. Talking is fine, Mr. Preston, but I won’t humor you for long.” Koeln’s voice sounded closer.

  “Interrogating her for what?”

  “I needed to find all the players,” Koeln said. “I even had Ms. Dollard under surveillance in her workspace when she was linked in, hoping to trace any messages she might send to confederates. But it turned out she didn’t have any, she was just a mule.”

  The pain was overwhelming. Mace’s entire left leg felt as though it had been crushed, and beneath the agony he felt dampness spreading.

  “You’ve been in the house all along?” Mace asked.

  “I overheard your interrogation of Mr. Hawthorne.”

  Then Koeln stood above him, aiming at him, but then suddenly frowned and spun around.

  “I’ll find Ms. Dollard before the end of the day,” he said, turning back to Mace. “So you’ve only postponed her death.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a witness.”

  Mace shivered. That was bad, he knew that, but he could not think what it meant. “I don’t—”

  “No, of course not. I’m closing down the program. Those are my instructions. Midline, in case you’re wondering, never should have happened.”

  “Rogue operation?” Mace asked, remembering what Philip had told him. He wondered then how Philip knew so much, but he felt cold and knew he was beginning to go into shock. His memory might just be tricking him.

  “That’s exactly right,” Koeln said. “Originally, I was supposed to oversee implementation of the program. Aea was a target. But politics change all the time, often very quickly. It’s been called off. Except a few overly dedicated zealots refused to stand down. So now I’m to eliminate all trace of what we were doing. Piers, Glim, and regrettably Ms. Dollard now, were the last components of a very complex program. Piers was the one party I couldn’t trace at first, he’d covered his trail very well. When Toler showed up—contrary to orders, by the way—he flushed Piers for me. After that it was simple to find all the connections.”

  “You said... closing down? Aea—”

  “Will not be destroyed, no. An agreement has been reached and Lunase-Aean relations are moving to a new phase. This... program... is an embarrassing leftover. Time to bury the remains. And of course, you are part of those now. I have to ask, though, if there’s anyone else. Do you know?”

  The shivering was becoming uncontrollable now. The pain had diminished slightly, but he knew he was in trouble.

  “You’re in shock, Mr. Preston. Too bad. I suppose I’ll have to bury your associates, too, just to be sure.”

  “PolyCarb—you got inside?”

  Koeln laughed. “Of course. It’s easy when you’re invited in. Now, enough. You should think about something pleasant. I’m going to kill you now.”

  “That’s... pleasant...”

  “Yes, well.”

  Mace braced himself as best he could, though the shivering persisted and grew stronger. He wondered what death would sound like, if he would hear the shot. Probably not. Too close, too immediate. He waited.

  He heard... something... clattering, a thud, grunting. Furniture was being moved. That was odd. Why would Koeln move the furniture before killing him? The man was Lunessa, who knew what rituals they practiced in extremes?

  Toler was dead, Reese was dead, he would kill Nemily. Mace felt intensely sad and angry at that. Nemily deserved better.

  It was quiet now. Death would come silently, he knew, a quick passing from apprehension to nothing. He tried to imagine nothing. The dreams of a cyberlink? So he had heard. So he had heard.

  Mace opened his eyes and saw Philip leaning over him. Philip looked very concerned.

  “Macefield? Can you hear me?”

  Mace opened his mouth, but a garbled croak was all he could manage.

  “Pathic is on its way. I’ve given you something to stabilize you, but you’re going to pathic for a time. Do you understand?”

  Mace made himself nod.

  Philip looked up. “He’s all right.”

  “You’re SA,” he heard Cambel say. “I should have known.”

  “Are you certain you didn’t?” Philip asked wryly. “You went along with a great many coincidences on my part.”

  Mace strained to see who else was around. He wanted to see Nemily, but all he saw was Cambel, standing against the opposite wall, scowling, and beside her a woman with broad shoulders: Coif.

  “Pathic is here,” Cambel said.

  Mace reached up to grab Philip’s arm. “Nemily... ?”

  “She’s fine.” He leaned close to whisper. “There should be no problems.” He straightened. “It’s time for you to go be healed, Macefield.” He patted Mace’s hand.

  Philip had answered the wrong question. Mace wanted to know if Nemily would be expelled. What would happen next? But Philip was gone and suddenly strangers in coveralls were around him, prodding him and hooking him up to their devices. And then he was asleep.

  Cambel sat by his bedside. Mace blinked; his eyes felt gummy. He coughed and she looked up.

  “Thirsty?” she asked. She moved a tube to his mouth and he sucked. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”

  “Thanks. How long?”

  “Oh, less than two days. I told them you prefer to be awake and they finally decided that you weren’t hurt badly enough to keep you under.”

  “That was considerate of you.”

  “I thought so.”

  The door to his room opened and Philip stepped in. He carried two packages under his arm.

  “Macefield.”

  “Philip.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t know yet. Cambel says I’m alive.”

  “A hole in your leg. They’re regrowing your kneecap. Painful, I’m sure, but not fatal.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then held up the packages. “I considered just sending these to your dom, but I thought you might prefer a more personal delivery” He set the larger package beside Mace.

  It was actually a metal case. Mace fingered the latch and the lid popped open. Within, set in padding, were three ranks of the miniatures Philip had promised him. The colors, even in the flat lighting of the pathic room, glowed brightly.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He looked up. “What’s that?”

  Philip set the smaller box beside the larger. “Your friend Ms. Dollard’s augments. We confiscated them to vet them of anything... classifiable. But they’re clean.”

  Mace opened the case. “I see. What am I going to do with them?”

  “I imagine you could give them back to her.”

&
nbsp; Mace looked up at Philip. “I remember someone saying that you’re SA.”

  Philip nodded.

  “Why were you there?”

  “Cambel. Glim—”

  “Slugged me from behind at Nemily’s apartment,” Cambel said. “There’s no way to put a decent spin on it.”

  Philip pursed his lips in an almost-smile. “I was about to confront Piers anyway. I finally had enough evidence.”

  “What evidence was that?”

  “One of my people witnessed him present during a private ghosting session—with Nemily Dollard. He was there with Toler.”

  “Ghost...?”

  “Something Piers had from Hellas, evidently. An augment. The one I believe was missing from the site.”

  “Piers took it.”

  “That and the recorder,” Cambel said.

  “Where is it now?”

  “We have the recorder—it was in his dom—but the augment is missing again. I suppose we could do a deep probe on Ms. Dollard to find out—my agent tells me it was an occluded overlay, Nemily would have no conscious memory of it—”

  “Your agent. Coif?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was also working with Koeln.”

  “No. Coif took over Reese’s operation when he was killed. Koeln had to deal with her then.”

  They were silent together for a time. Mace felt certain that he was not being told everything, but now it did not bother him. He knew Helen had been innocent.

  “Piers was the first trojan. Koeln was the one you needed to find.”

  “Yes,” Philip said sourly. “Piers never really did anything, so we couldn’t be sure. He just did his job and acted his part and waited. I think he actually changed his mind about the situation and wanted just to live here. Likely as not he had simply grown too comfortable. His position here would never be matched in Lunase.”

  “You didn’t know about Koeln, though.”

  “I had begun to suspect.” He looked mildly embarrassed. “Your arrest was a rather heavy-handed ploy to get him to make a move. It worked better than we had hoped thanks to Ms. Dollard’s presence. He showed up and removed Ms. Dollard. He had no legitimate reason to do that. But then he offered you PolyCarb assistance to deal with what he thought we had arrested you for.”

  “You mentioned evidence. What evidence?”

  “Evidence Helen had accrued. She’d been looking into some irregularities in the Ganymede project, which was being supplied by the first generation of Aean exotic materials to come off the new lines. Some of the same materials that had gone into the Hellas Planitia project. No one outside PolyCarb was supposed to know about that, but as soon as they shipped, Lunase began making demands in the Signatory trade talks to limit any and all potential manufacture of XMs outside the Lunase labs. The timing was suspect. PolyCarb brought her back in to find the source of the leaked data. She hadn’t gotten far, but there was a body of evidence. Someone inside PolyCarb was not only passing information but beginning to undermine the projects. Small things, things that might have been coincidences, but—Helen never believed in coincidence and neither do I.”

  “Helen was security, wasn’t she?”

  “Among other things. She really was an excellent engineer. But her talents were unique.”

  Mace swallowed thickly and cleared his throat. “Did you know her?” he asked.

  “Not personally. But I’m familiar with her work. Remarkable person.”

  “I never knew.”

  “She gave you her persona encoding,” Cambel said. “She probably thought you’d access it. Then you’d have known all of it. I think she’d be pretty pissed off if she knew you never did.”

  I’m beginning to think she married me just to have a backup in case something went wrong.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” Cambel said.

  “Mmm. Maybe.” He looked at Philip. “What happens now?”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t do that, Philip. We’ve been friends too long.”

  Philip pursed his lips. “And the question is, are we still?”

  “Partly.”

  “I would like to think so, Macefield.”

  “Then tell me what happens now. What is SA going to do to Nemily?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing much, I imagine. I’ve already vouched for her.”

  “And me?”

  “I don’t understand. Why would anything happen to you?”

  “I—” He glanced at Cambel. “I probably obstructed your investigation.”

  “Nonsense. Without you, it might never have been resolved. If anyone is going to have to answer for anything, I imagine it will be Lunase and PolyCarb. They colluded over eradicating evidence. A number of people are dead.”

  “PolyCarb could have prevented Midline,” Cambel said. “If I understand what this new agreement is all about.”

  “No,” Philip said. “Lunase had ordered the program terminated after Cassidy Even Five-Eight was an unauthorized strike. The people responsible had stopped taking orders.” He looked troubled, a deeply conflicted expression Mace had never seen on his face before. “I don’t know what will happen. If anything.”

  “If anything,” Mace echoed.

  “If anything.” He leaned over and rapped his forefinger on the augment case. “But you can return these to Ms. Dollard personally”

  “Is SA going to expel her?”

  Philip frowned. “Not on my recommendation, certainly. There will be a hearing. What they’ll decide...”

  “What about me?”

  “That was never a question.”

  “Not for you.”

  “It was never a question.”

  Mace picked up the augment case. “Thank you.”

  “Macefield. I would like to know.”

  Mace studied Philip’s dark face for a long time. Then he nodded. “We’re still friends, Philip.”

  Philip nodded. “I have details to attend.”

  He left the room and it seemed that a heaviness remained. Mace wondered if he could live up to his answer. He hoped so.

  “Will we still be doing business?” Cambel asked.

  “If you want to continue a partnership with an unobservant, insensitive idiot.”

  “No, I don’t think so. But with you—I think we can work something out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me. You may live to regret this.”

  Mace reinitiated his domestic personality

  “How long am I going to be online?” Helen asked immediately.

  “As long as you want,” Mace said.

  “Not if you’re going to put me in a closet every time something happens that makes you nervous. I could probably have kept SA out. You should trust me a little more.”

  “Sorry”

  “But that’s not the reason you closed me down, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nemily Dollard is in the building. This is highly suggestive, Mace.”

  Mace was silent for a time.

  “Mace?” the d.p. prompted.

  “I think I want her to stay with me.”

  “I think that might be a good thing. What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t you think I’ll get in the way?”

  “You know the answer to that better than I do.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So I’ll leave the choice up to you.”

  “I think you need someone watching your back door.”

  “I take that as a yes, then.”

  “Yes. Now let me go through all the backlog that’s stacked up since you took me offline. Go see Nemily. It’s your turn to make a decision.”

  Nemily sat on the floor of the greenhouse. Mace breathed in the rich odors of mulch and loam and green life and ached to touch her. She held another augment in her hands, turning it over and over. Finally, she handed it to him.

  “Mace, I—” She seemed conflicted,
but he did not push. She sighed heavily. “I talked to Cambel about this while you were in pathic,” she said. “She recommended I not run it. I agreed with her reasons.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That you should be with me if you love me. That my becoming Helen, even a small part, would only complicate things for you. That you should choose and that I should be myself only. It could be unhealthy for you to carry on a sometime relationship with your dead wife.”

  Mace winced, but he could not fault the logic. He had the faint suspicion she was withholding something, but if it involved Cambel it might be best left unexamined.

  “What about—?” He hesitated.

  “Love? How will I know?” She smiled sadly. “I don’t want to be anywhere else—with anyone else. Maybe that’s enough. But I don’t want to

  complicate what we have with “ She waved at the augment now in

  Mace’s hand.

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yes.” She shrugged again. “I’ve had more than my fill of them. Maybe there’s another way to learn it. I’d like to find that out first. If you want to try.”

  Mace looked down at the augment for a time. “I never accessed the ROM and I never knew why. Maybe I should just always wonder.” He walked over to a tree on the workbench and screwed the augment into the dirt at its base. It resembled a dull metal mushroom, but then gradually took on the coloring of the earth. “At least we’ve got the time.”

  “Maybe. That depends on what SA decides. If they—”

  “It will be fine. Philip vouched for you. So did I, as if it’ll do any good.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll see. If they decide to expel me... will you come with me?”

  “No, don’t answer now. Wait till their decision.” She smiled quickly. “Maybe some things are better left unanswered. But for us...yes, I would like to try”

  He descended to the kitchen deep into nightcycle. His body felt tight, almost vibrating from the physical exhaustion. His leg still ached from the bullet wound, but it was passing. Nemily slept.

  Will you go with me?

  Mace wished she had not asked him that. He believed he would, but he could not say it with absolute certainty He had always wanted to live on Aea. Even now, tainted as it was, he could not think of another place he wanted to spend his life.

  Would he have gone elsewhere with Helen?