The Man in the Tree

by Sage Walker

  “He’s a traitor.” Helt watched a vein pulse on Doughan’s forehead and estimated his pulse at about 90.

  “That was decided before he walked in the room, but now we have some useful information from him. We have a lead to someone who knew Cash Ryan and is also a Seed Banker.”

  “And what did the other stuff tell you?” Doughan asked.

  “Kelly Halkett will not betray a friend if there’s any reasonable way to avoid it. He gave us Birdy’s name only after he chose to believe we were simply looking for contacts who might have known a murdered man—with the goal of solving a murder in which Kelly Halkett is, in my best estimation, in no way involved. He’s a true and honest child of the Enlightenment; he believes in reason and he trusts his numbers, his probabilities. He has a naive belief that reason will triumph, eventually. He may be a Seed Banker at heart, but he doesn’t plan to harm Kybele.”

  “You can’t know that.” It was almost a snarl.

  “I’m extrapolating and I know it. But I’ll lay odds he has what he wants for his future. He has time. A lifetime, to try to persuade the rest of us to use reason and keep this treasure available to an Earth that is in sad need of the resources we’ve hoarded here.”

  Doughan slowed his breathing and relaxed some key muscles. It was an effort to bring his temper back under control, if Helt read him right.

  “You have a major character flaw, Helt Borresen,” Doughan said, and his voice was flat. “You would have sympathy for the devil himself.”

  “Accepted,” Helt said. “I have another problem as well.”

  “I’ll bite. What is it?”

  “Kelly Halkett is sane. It’s difficult, with the tools I have, to find threats to this ship that come from people who are sane. And I don’t have a lifetime to spend at it.”

  Kelly Halkett had left a wife and child on Earth. His gamble had to be that he could convince Kybele not to leave the local system—and then he could go back to Scotland. If there were a way for him to cripple the ship, would he use it? Or had he only thought to spend his life here, hoping to convince the ship to stay at home, even if his efforts lasted until everyone in his family was dead? Had he planned to be that sort of martyr?

  Whatever he had imagined made no difference now. Kelly Halkett was going home.

  14

  The Sculptor and His Girl

  Yves Copani was in SysSu’s lobby, pacing from monitor display to monitor display in the otherwise deserted space. His hands were gripped behind his back, the art gallery posture of someone who really wants to touch something.

  “How long have you been here?” Helt asked.

  Copani turned and smiled, a flash of white teeth. “Ten minutes.”

  Helt motioned toward the hallway and Copani followed him. “Did you see Doughan leave?”

  “I saw him. I’m not sure he saw me. He looked like he was in a hurry.”

  The extra chairs were still in Helt’s office. Helt motioned for Copani to take the visitor’s chair beside his own, the one Doughan had just vacated.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the sculpture?” Helt asked.

  Copani’s alert enthusiasm changed to posture of limp despair, a deflation so theatrical it had to be, in part, feigned.

  “I’m busted.”

  “Busted for what?” Helt asked. Not the murder. The man in Helt’s chair had been in the diner, begging for a place on board, when Ryan died. Busted for the creation of unauthorized art? Not if Helt had anything to say about it.

  “Vandalism,” Copani said.

  “Is that what you call it? Damn it, man, that area of Petra canyon is marked as home sites, and now that has to change. Your World Tree, if that’s what it’s called, is magnificent.”

  Yves Copani’s hands relaxed their grip on the arms of the visitor’s chair. “The area was gonna be lazed into rubble after I left. I figured I’d just start the process a little early.”

  “It has to be that everyone who’s seen it has kept it secret, a treasure of their own,” Helt said. “No images are up anywhere; I looked. That response is unusual. May even be unique. I’m wondering when the first captures will go viral.”

  “Me too,” Yves said.

  Helt read a quickness about the man, a restlessness, a sense of controlled purpose. The sculpture was a challenge. Copani decided to show us what he can do. He wants to stay on board; he’s said that. What else did he want? “You’re an architect. You didn’t put that on your résumé when you signed up as a welder, and you’ve completed more projects than any of the guys working here now.”

  The dejection was gone. Sometime during Helt’s admiration speech, Copani had decided he was not in enemy territory. He had fitted into the visitor’s chair as if he’d spent hours there, shooting the shit with an old friend.

  “You had architects working up here already. The position of ‘welder’ didn’t have that many applicants, so that’s the one I asked for. I figured I’d lay low about the other stuff.”

  “The last big verbal punch-out the architects had was about twelve years ago. That’s a few years after the megaliths went up in Stonehenge. The—discussions—got a lot of media time,” Helt said.

  Copani glanced at Helt to see if the two of them were sharing the same subtext. There had been some battles royale over Biosystems’ choice of a monumental work. Any Earth-based architect could find who said what to whom in the chatter behind the journal articles and published plans, and obviously, Copani had.

  “The designs wakened some strong post-colonial sentiments.” Copani’s tone was a calculated neutral, a reversion to the formalities of academe.

  Copani was just showing he could speak diplomacy-speak if the situation needs it, Helt decided. “That’s nicely phrased. They did. I remember.” Helt grinned.

  “But in the aftermath, Kybele convinced the world that the climate wasn’t all that would change up here. Buildings, homes, walkways, megaliths, you name it—everything can be torn down and rebuilt, if enough people want to, always.” Copani talked with his hands, building and trashing castles in the air with swooping gestures. “I like that. I really like that.”

  “It’s a hope,” Helt said.

  “You were still Earthbound. That PR was your work?” Copani asked.

  “Looked me up, have you?”

  “Sure. You’re the man I need to convince, so I did some homework before I talked to you the first time.”

  “Okay. But I didn’t do the PR. I was working IA for Kybele’s lottery office in Oslo then.”

  “But you pushed the PR guys when the flap started. I’d bet on it,” Copani said.

  Helt didn’t deny it.

  “What sold me that you guys up here had your act together was that abandoned structures will get filled in with rubble. Clean slate for rethinking.”

  Even without haunted houses, the ship had already made a ghost. Stories of the missing miner came up now and again in idle discourse, and the differing certainties about where his body was, and why, were urban myth, nothing of concern. This was not a superstitious population. Yet. But the plan was, David II’s crews had decided, to fill in abandoned structures. Yes, Helt had nudged them a little bit in that direction, but it hadn’t taken more than a nudge.

  Helt nudged, sometimes, and sometimes he had hunches. He had one now. “You know where the dead miner is,” Helt said.

  Copani’s eyes narrowed, assessing Helt’s face. “Some things are secret. The tunnels are ours,” Copani said.

  Heh. The miner died in the tunnels and the body was never found. But it was here, somewhere; Copani had just told Helt so. Where? Why did they hide him? Was he frozen close to the surface where it’s really, really cold? They didn’t put him in one of the seed vaults. Those vaults were monitored 24/7. Did they carve out a private mausoleum for him?

  “Ours?” Helt asked.

  “Well, there’s hardhats, and then there’s everybody else.”

  Everyone else meant nerds, meaning SysSu and some of the Navigati
on brains, or farmers, meaning Biosystems. “I thought so,” Helt said. “David II wonders about class divisions sometimes, but no one knows whether to worry about them. So, Yves Copani, you’re telling me an ‘us and them’ spirit is alive and well in the tunnels. David II thought he had staved it off by having everybody sleep and eat on Level One.”

  “All that going upstairs for food does is piss us off,” Copani said.

  “What’s it like, living in a stratified society?”

  “It’s good. It’s easy; we’re not feeling excluded. Some women, you know, like men who work with their hands, and vice versa. I don’t know if I’d want to mess with the way things are now.”

  “But if, if, I say, it comes time to mingle Level One with the underworld, could you do it?”

  Copani frowned, probably thinking about traffic flows, destination structures, light and sound. “I think so,” he said.

  “Look, the list of people who will be departing on the last shuttle has changed. I’d rather you didn’t ask why. But I’m wondering if you would send your portfolio to David II. I’ve looked it over, quickly, and I’m impressed. I think David II will be, too.

  “And be sure to send him some of the stuff you’ve thought up since you’ve been here.” Helt wanted, very much, to see if the time-striding resonance of Copani’s world tree carried through into homes, parks, stadia, whatever he wanted to do here. Did Copani paint on canvas, on wood, did he make lightscapes? His online portfolio showed only buildings.

  “I’ll send a few things.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Did you know Cash Ryan?”

  “The dead guy? No. Never worked with him. Most of what I do at my day job is weld conduit and supports in the new tunnels as we go. This guy worked outside, is what the story is. You think he killed himself because he didn’t want to leave?”

  Killed himself was the current assumption, then, still holding through the morning. Helt wasn’t good at lying, and he didn’t want to. “I can’t answer that.”

  “Okay,” Copani said. “I wasn’t trying to push. You execs deal with whatever happened. I haven’t heard anyone else say they want the job.”

  “Do you know anyone who knew him?” Helt asked.

  “Only one person.”

  “Who?” Helt asked.

  “I don’t want to say know. I know only one person who could recognize him on the street. She says she was at a club with some friends and this guy Ryan tried to talk her into a date. She thought he was creepy, and told him, no way, never, go away.”

  “Navigation is tracing every contact the man ever had. If you could help them…”

  “Susanna knew what he looked like,” Copani said.

  “Your girlfriend?” Helt asked.

  “Susanna Jambekar, the best midwife on Kybele.”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  “The love of my life.”

  Oh, shit. Yves’s girlfriend was one of the two people in Biosystems on the Seed Banker list. Hide your damned reaction, Helt.

  “Creepy, how?” Helt asked.

  “Wouldn’t stop staring at her. I can’t blame him for that; she’s beautiful, but there’s staring and then there’s staring, you know?”

  “I think so,” Helt said. “We’ll want to talk to her soon, then.”

  Yves tensed up.

  “You didn’t rat her out. Security tells me she was in the same street camera view with Cash Ryan a couple of times, so she was on the list already.” That much was true. Helt didn’t mention the Seed Banker funds in her account. He didn’t mention that she would be booted back to Earth. Would Yves Copani follow her? “Thing is, the guy was a loner. We’re looking for anyone who had any contact with him. We’re trying to put it all together, that’s all.”

  “You better be nice.” It wasn’t a threat. It was the real thing. Be nice to her or I will hurt you; a message sent loud and clear via a sudden increase in the bulk of the muscles in Yves Copani’s neck and arms. Helt was suddenly aware that this was a man who carved and chiseled rock for pleasure—and did it after a hard day’s physical work. Copani’s reaction was controlled, but very real. His face looked friendly, so the message was only a message—but not one to be taken lightly. He’d been sitting with Helt during part of the dead hour, but only for part of it. He had to go on the suspect list.

  “We will,” Helt said. “So, you’ll send files to David II? I’ll tell him they’re coming.”

  “I’ll do it,” Copani said.

  * * *

  As soon as Helt was alone again, he grabbed the videos Navigation had culled that showed the combination Susanna Jambekar/Charles “Cash” Ryan. The captures were brief. One showed Susanna entering a hairdresser’s shop in Athens, Cash Ryan behind her, walking past without a glance. Another, Susanna exiting the Athens clinic and turning up the street that led to the plaza and the elevator. Cash Ryan was walking the other way on that street and didn’t seem to notice her.

  Wait. Helt replayed it.

  Susanna Jambekar had dark hair tied in a knot at the back of her head. A dull red lab coat slung over her shoulder. She walked—

  Wait. “She found a video of him walking, and then, yes, I knew him,” Venkie had said.

  Helt looked for a view of Elena walking away from the camera’s eye and found one.

  Helt viewed, split-screen, Susanna walking away from the camera, walking away from something she had finished at the clinic, Elena walking away from the camera in the Level One corridor near her lab. Susanna Jambekar and Elena had the same sort of stride, that careful placement of the feet. Graceful but cautious. Not the same, but. But add the lab coat and wishful thinking.

  Over a rising fear, he searched the Athens plaza cameras on Friday morning for Severo and himself, and found the woman he had briefly thought looked like Elena. It was Susanna.

  This was discovery, this was a lead, but which one of these women had hated Cash Ryan enough to kill him? Please, not Elena. Please, don’t let Yves Copani be in love with a woman who would kill a stalker.

  Helt wanted to run. He wanted to go to Mena, right now, to tell her to wait, wait, before she scheduled Susanna’s interview. There were specific things to ask, very specific things.

  He took a deep breath and looked at the rest of the Susanna Jambekar/Cash Ryan footage. They had both exited the train at the same time on a couple of occasions. The times of the encounters were scattered over three years. Views of the Stonehenge elevator platform, Cash exiting or entering as Susanna crossed the platform going from one place to another. If you went back in time and forward in time from those same views, would you find places where Cash Ryan had been nearby but had avoided camera capture?

  Helt didn’t have time to find out. He called Mena.

  “I’m having lunch,” she said. The background wasn’t in focus. Mena seemed to be standing in front of some sort of cloth. In the foreground, he saw a wineglass, a pitcher on a table.

  “Where? Where are you? I’m coming there right now.”

  “In a tent in the vineyards. You’ll see it,” Mena said.

  15

  Privacy

  Helt ran. He made good time through the deserted SysSu lobby and dodged past shoppers in the plaza. He paced back and forth until the train slowed and stopped at Athens. He paced up and down the car while it traveled, stared at the Stonehenge elevator lights as if glaring at them could speed his ascent, thumped the opening door, but not hard enough to hurt it, and ran for the tent he saw at the edge of one of Mena’s pet vineyards. His path led him between rows of stripped vines, their severe pruning apparent through yellowing leaves. They looked tortured to him, only two twisted, recently unburdened arms left on each to cling to the supporting wires on either side of their trunks. The scent of ripe grapes grew richer in the warm midday air.

  His eyes, in the shade cast by the canvas, took far too long to adapt. Skiing into black shadow now would be risky—but he wouldn’t be skiing the fjells again, and he shouldn’t expect to have a teenage
r’s near-instant adaptation to changes in ambient light. He was too old for that.

  Those bulky cylinders in the shadows were vats on trailers; the long white-clad tables set up for this morning’s harvest crew were to his left, and there was Mena, sitting at one and staring out at a field as yet unharvested. She saw him coming and turned her head to watch him pant his way toward her. Elena, seated across from her, looked up, frowning, and he wondered how the big, sweaty, anxious nerd interrupting her lunch looked to her today. Helt stopped beside Mena’s chair.

  “What is it, Helt?” Mena asked.

  “More on the murder.” Helt would have sworn he saw Elena’s eyes strobe from amber to yellow and back to amber again when he spoke. It was a quick flash, and he didn’t know how to read her eyes. He had no clue whether what she signaled was fear, or anger, or pleasure at seeing him. Her expression was pleasantly neutral, one of polite concern.

  Elena’s presence here was a complication. Either she was privy to everything Mena knew, and knew the execs were keeping the Seed Banker information to themselves, or she wasn’t in the loop and didn’t know. And then there was the question of recordings going on right now, documentation of the harvest, possible listening ears.

  “Pardon me,” Helt said. He grabbed his interface and checked; there were four cameras recording in the tent but none of them were close enough to catch conversation from this point. But he wanted this recorded, every word, every gesture, because Elena was here and he wanted there to be no secrets, nothing hidden from possible review, no private moments between them until she was no longer a suspect. He set the controls on the nearest camera to pick up their speech and send the footage to his SysSu files and nowhere else. “Okay, we’re on camera. For the archives.”

  “Helt! Slow down! Sit down.” Mena pointed to the chair beside her.

  Helt sat. Lunch for the grape pickers must be mostly over. A few people were still seated, deep in conversation. Two men carried emptied plates to a cart near the door. A few crumbs littered the white cloth in front of him. Mena and Elena were eating late; skewered lamb and dolmades. His view of the beauty of Elena’s face, her throat, her hands, was enhanced by a non-barrier in the center of the table, a bowl filled with clusters of ripe grapes in ice and water. There were several kinds of grapes; pale greens and purples and reds, but one cluster was almost black, another tawny gold. The colors seemed to have been chosen by an Old Master to set off Elena’s skin.