by Sage Walker
“He’s not there,” Archer said. “Three of these people work in Navigation, two in Biosystems, two in SysSu.”
Helt recognized neither of the SysSu names.
“The SysSu people are both teachers.” Archer must have seen Helt’s slight dismay at not knowing who they were. “One teaches an ESL class, English as a second language, at the University. The other’s a colonist, a lottery winner. She’s an archaeologist.”
The University was essentially autonomous, but on flowcharts it was listed under the SysSu umbrella. It was autonomous, yes, but if the academics decided to teach classes only in, say, Ukranian, SysSu could and would challenge that decision. Helt hoped that never happened. He’d be the person to listen to arguments from both sides and try to keep things out of court. The arguments would be wordy ones. He wasn’t certain of much, but he was certain of that.
“There’s not enough information for Legal to make cases against any of the seven people on the list. They have done nothing on Kybele that is actionable in any way,” Archer said.
“You’re saying you and Legal can’t get the work done before that last shuttle leaves.”
“We’ll keep working on it, but it’s not likely.”
“Three of them in Navigation. Let me see.” Doughan pulled up the bios attached to the names from Navigation and gave a quick glance at each. “At least none of them work anywhere near the drive systems,” Doughan said.
“And ours, in SysSu, aren’t in position to do much damage. Although I suppose propagating bad grammar could be a sort of sabotage,” Archer said.
Doughan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m going to miss being a dictator, damn it. Once that first burn ends, the execs are up for votes of confidence and all the other checks and balances that we’ve built into our version of democracy. But for now, I can just off-load these bastards, and I intend to.”
“It might be that some of the people know—pardon me, knew Cash Ryan,” Archer said.
“It might be that NSS might want to ask them some pointed questions,” Doughan said.
Whoa, Archer. Helt frowned at his boss. Damn it. You just put me in charge of investigating Ryan’s death and you and Doughan seem to have forgotten that inconvenient little fact.
“Are you going to tell them they’re being questioned about a suicide?” Helt asked. “If you are, then it’s about the Ryan case and I’ll need to be there. If the Seed Banker problem is quiet white collar crime, and not related, then it’s a purely administrative matter, of course.”
“I don’t plan to tell them Cash Ryan’s death is a murder,” Doughan said.
“We don’t know which it is at this point, do we, Doughan?” Archer’s voice was gentle. Anyone who worked in SysSu would have known that gentleness was a warning signal that said, “You’ve done something really, really, stupid, haven’t you?”
Doughan picked up on the reprimand and found something interesting to look at on the wall behind Archer. “No,” he said. “We don’t. For this round of questions, I’ll have a uniformed NSS officer with me, or—or someone from Legal, Archer. In face-time, or in real-time as observer.”
The weight of unease Helt had been carrying since last night grew appreciably heavier. Damn. He wasn’t sure how to parse that interchange between Archer and Doughan. Doughan had signed off on the document that named Helt Special Investigator, with all its odd privileges, but the two execs were talking past him.
“I don’t know if that’s needed,” Helt said. “I’ll ask Obrecht.” Giliam Obrecht handled Kybele-Earth legal traffic. He wasn’t a criminal law specialist; no one on Kybele was, but Giliam could find out what was needed.
Helt’s discomfort came from an embarrassing sense of incompetence as well. None of the Seed Bankers were on his first tier of off-listers.
He called files from his State of Kybele construct, isolated them on his interface, and checked them against the list projected on the wall. He went down two levels of risk assessment and found one of the names. Only one, Andrea Doan, Biosystems, agronomist. He flagged the name so he could study her history. He’d need to use what he found out about her, about the others, to restructure some of his sorting mechanisms, because he’d missed a potential threat to the ship.
That job had to be done, and quickly. Also, as of right now, seven of the shuttle seats would be occupied by Archer’s seven newly discovered off-listers, and seven contract hopefuls got to stay. Yves Copani would be among them, if Helt could manage it.
News of the death would ripple through the ship. The questioning Doughan planned to do would wake nightmares of unauthorized interrogation, of arbitrary eviction, old horrors set free to alter the spoken and unspoken social contracts of daily life. The fabric of how life would be lived here.
Helt’s life, too. The death and the reactions of these two were threatening his sense of safe haven, coming to harbor, refuge. Kybele was a dream made real, and now the dream was in danger. He couldn’t step aside. He couldn’t fail, and he knew he might.
He forced himself to concentrate on the task of adding the seven names to the Ryan list on his pocket interface, under Contacts, more for Jerry and Nadia to cobble into Cash Ryan’s biography.
There was nothing specific he could say to Archer, to Wesley Doughan, no words he could think of except to say, “This feels wrong.” They had no proof of murder. They wanted suspects if murder had been done. Archer had found some people that looked suspicious to him, and Doughan was hot to turn them into killers. This chase might be worthwhile, or it might divert attention from the work Severo was trying to do.
Helt opened the NSS Station Log. NSS, as usual, made the sort of reports that would have been avidly read in a small-town weekly news site from the last century. Responded to call, observed whatever, arrested whoever, by name and alleged offense. The work on the death of Cash Ryan was on there but without fanfare. An unexpected death.
“I think Mena and I could keep these questioning sessions intradepartmental, at least in form,” Archer said.
“As opposed to formal arrests, sure. But we have to look at these Seed Bankers. Maybe they know something about Cash Ryan,” Doughan said. “No one else seems to have noticed he was alive.”
“These grilling sessions you’re planning. You’ll be prepped on specific things that Severo will need. That I will need, I take it,” Helt said.
“You’re the Special Investigator,” Archer said. “You’ll do the interviews, of course.”
“Of course,” Helt said. Doughan looked surprised, but didn’t object. Helt was not an exec, but he had the authority, in this instance, to do this his own way. So maybe Doughan had read the boilerplate, after all.
“This was Cash Ryan’s second tour,” Helt said. “We don’t know much about what he did during either of them. We’re working on his biography, and we need any info we can get for a psychiatric autopsy.”
“Yeah. That second tour surprised me. Maybe David I remembers something about him,” Doughan said.
“I sent a query to David I this morning,” Helt said. David I had been in charge of the big kabooms that had blown a hunk of solid rock into a hollow sphere and filled it with breathable air. His crew had bored the tunnels of Level One and the Navigation spaces of Level Two. David I had hired Ryan for three years and might have known him; his crew had been exponentially smaller than the one David II guided now. The list of other people who had been on ship twenty—no, thirteen—years ago needed looking through as well. Engineers, certainly, but Biosystems and SysSu people had come on early, too. Someone must have known Cash Ryan then. Helt added that search to his list.
“If you set up a link for a conversation with David I, I want to sit in. I haven’t talked to him for years,” Archer said. He stretched and stood up. “Also, I haven’t been over to Stonehenge for a long time. I’ll go give the names to Mena.”
Archer stared at his little Huerfano and flicked its controls until they pleased him before he put it in
his pocket. Mena came from Stonehenge to Athens for face-time work and never complained, but the travel took time away from her working day. Archer would spare her a trip, have his lunch there, and probably go up into Center for a walkabout, a taste of this and a bite of that, fresh from the fields in Center or the specialty crops grown on Level One.
Doughan tapped his left ear. “Severo’s back. He just cleared the airlock.”
Archer sat down again.
Helt took another sip of coffee. It was hot, and he hadn’t noticed Doughan refilling the cup. He hadn’t noticed the pastry in his hand, earlier, and now the coffee. He needed more sleep.
Helt’s tired eyes remembered the picture of a Ferrari. Yves Copani, the miner, now had a better shot at staying, at being one of the new colonists whose Earthbound seats would be filled by the Seed Bankers. Copani belonged to Navigation, but he was well down the chain of command from Wesley Doughan.
Helt tried to tamp down his irritation at Doughan. Doughan’s stage-set office was part of Helt’s resentment, even though Doughan had had nothing to do with its design. The executive decision to get rid of the Seed Bankers was efficient; committee discussions would certainly have lasted well past the last Earthbound shuttle’s departure—and any committee would probably have ostracized the Seed Bankers, in the full ancient sense of the word. Banished them; in this case, permanently. Even so, at the moment, Helt didn’t like Wesley Doughan at all.
Helt’s personal worldview had taken a sudden lurch. He suspected it was a result of recent sexual arousal mixed with a threat to his world as he knew it. What he wanted to do, right now, was to challenge the alpha male who ran Navigation. He told himself to stop it. He would think about the implications in his Copious Free Time. Right.
Doughan pushed the lock buzzer. Severo came in wearing his NSS uniform but something of the Big Black clung to him, a slight temperature difference on his skin, perhaps a few molecules of canned cold air, or maybe just the excitement that could come upon a man when the large spaces inside Kybele suddenly fell into the real perspective of time and distance and became tiny and mortal. Something.
“They didn’t mind talking to me at all,” Severo said. “You know how it is, a crew, how they stick together. They didn’t post their reactions to the death when they learned about it, but they seemed pretty standard—irritation, maybe some grief. They were cooperative, but they can’t help us with what Ryan did yesterday after he left shift.”
“Did they notice anything unusual about him? Any change in behavior in the past days, or weeks?” Helt asked.
“They thought he was more relaxed than usual yesterday. They said he had a week off coming up, and maybe that was why.”
“You’ll look at that more closely,” Helt said.
“I’ll talk to each of them, separately, sure,” Severo said.
Helt opened his palm screen and entered the info. It was data for the psychiatric autopsy, perhaps.
8
Elena’s Story
Helt sensed, rather than heard, Severo nearing the door of the murky dark bunk room in Sysu. It seemed only minutes ago that he’d left the NSS office, left Severo listening to more reports from his officers. They’d been sent out to talk to some of the people who had been in the same video screen with Cash Ryan, anywhere, anytime in the past three years. To narrow the field a little, Jerry and Nadia had put together a partial list of people who might have known Cash Ryan. They were still working on it, unless they’d gone home for a break.
“I’m awake,” Helt said.
“Coming in, then.”
Helt raised the light level in the room, sat up, and looked under the bunk for his shoes. One was there. He grabbed it so it couldn’t get away and looked around for the other one.
“Here.” Severo lifted Helt’s other shoe from the edge of the sink and handed it over.
“Why was Ryan happy last week?” Helt asked.
Severo leaned back against the edge of the sink. “You’ve had a nice little nap and it grieves me to have to tell you NSS hasn’t found your answer while you zeed away in here.”
Helt shifted on the bunk and rested his back against the wall.
“And where did he go after he left work?” Severo asked. “Straight up Athens tower so he could jump off? And how many hours is it going to take for us to find out?”
“Heh. I wish I knew,” Helt said. “It takes seventy minutes to get back to Navigation offices from where he was working. At least we know that. And he came in with his work crew. Last they saw him, he had changed into civvies. So there’s one hour and maybe twenty minutes when we know he was still alive.”
Sleep was a wonderful thing. Helt assessed how his muscles felt and how his bones fit into their sockets. This had been a particularly hard and deep sleep, dreamless, healing. He assessed the state of his teeth and tongue. They could use some help.
“We need to get this nailed as a suicide,” Severo said. “That’s a quote. You said it.”
“And if we don’t get a good enough case from Biosystems to call it that?” Surely some more lab was in by now. Helt reached for his interface, but it was in his shirt pocket and his shirt was on the back of the chair in the far corner.
“Then it would be really fine to find Ryan’s personal info stash. We don’t have to ask it questions,” Severo said.
“You said his interface wasn’t on him when they stripped his body at the clinic. And you haven’t found it in his quarters. And SysSu hasn’t located whatever he turns off to keep things private, but everyone has something like that, somewhere. So where is it, Severo?”
“I even had one of the engineer guys scan the walls in his rooms, looking for hidey-holes. All rock, all the way. We’re doing a fucking archaeology search from the tower to where we found the guy. Could be Ryan kept his interface in a Faraday pouch, one of your techs said. So we’re sifting dirt under that tree. As soon as we know where he was before he hit the ground, we’ll look there, too.”
“There’s spook tech we could be using that I don’t like to think about,” Helt said. “Surveillance bots. Mini cams. Long ears, Wi-Vi to see through walls. Eyes on everyone who’s on the streets, day and night, full-time monitoring of where people are and what they’re saying and doing. It’s one way, but the monitoring we do, have been doing, has always been with consent.”
“You’re the IA,” Severo said. “What you’re talking about will get you what people are doing now. What they did last week or before that we can look at if it’s recorded. Not if it isn’t.”
“Maybe suicide stuff is in his interface,” Helt said. “Recorded. We can hope. Join me for an early dinner, Severo? I have a meeting coming up after that.”
“You’d better clean up before you go meet anyone. I brought you a sandwich. Look at the time.” Severo flashed the time onto the wall.
“Ouch,” Helt said.
“Is it a woman?” Severo asked.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you should shave.” Severo hauled his bulk off the bunk and made for the door.
Helt got up and looked in the mirror. Severo was right. Helt felt like an underachiever adolescent, sleeping in. He hadn’t done that for years.
“Thanks, Severo,” Helt called down the hall.
“Don’t forget your shoes,” Severo yelled back.
* * *
Helt met Elena at the Athens train station and they walked toward the agora. Elena paid attention to her surroundings, to the paving, to the walls of the buildings carved into the rock on either side of the street, the doorways she passed. She walked as a woman walks on rough ground, as if wary of pebbles that might slip beneath her foot.
When he’d talked to her in Center he’d felt comfortable with himself. Boy meets girl; let’s see if we want to meet again. Helt wasn’t comfortable now. Boy meets girl again, girl is either wrongly accused of a terrible crime or innocent of it. He had sworn, long ago, to stay away from women with dark secrets, terrible pasts. Maybe Elena wasn’t like that
at all, but it was possible, because of Ryan’s death, to add layers of darkness to Elena’s words, her actions, even if none existed. It was possible he wanted to do that.
The street was dark, the dark of a cloudy night in a quiet town. The night lights on the doorways and the ones high overhead were set for that particular effect, and Helt didn’t know where to start.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said. “I’ve never seen a woman carve an old lover into precise little pieces before.”
At the edge of the open space of Athens agora, she paused, a deer at the edge of the clearing, or a predator looking for game. A street sconce backlit Elena’s dark hair with silver, as if she had suddenly aged.
She looked up at Helt and smiled. If he’d been looking to shake her confidence, he hadn’t managed it. She had wrapped a red shawl around her shoulders against the chill, like one of those Russian dolls that have other dolls inside them. Matryoshkas? Something like that.
“Let’s say I was living with Cash Ryan before he fell,” Elena said. She began to walk again, toward The Lab, a combination restaurant and bar. Scattered lighted windows marked rectangles of yellow on the pavement of the Library portico. Muted, the lush sounds of a string quartet drifted past the columns. The Anachronistic String Quartet was in rehearsal; Brahms, Helt thought. Archer Pelham was sawing away on his cello tonight. The music stopped abruptly and then resumed, repeating the same passage.
“I wasn’t,” Elena said, “but let’s say I was. Even so, I would have been dealing with a cadaver, an exercise in pathology, no longer a living thing, and I would have distanced myself from the memories of the man I had known. Who was not there anymore. It’s something I know how to do, but so do you.”
And that was true enough. Compartmentalize. Do the task. If there is a cost to pay for putting a reaction aside, pay it in the middle of the night. That night, or a night years later, for sooner or later, the bill came due. Helt nodded, but he wasn’t sure she saw the gesture.
