by Sage Walker
There had been two households in the old saltbox high on a cliff in Maine, but only the boy who had known the unity that was there before Lily’s injury knew how separate those households were. Lily was still there, and polite when Helt called. Jørn had died fifteen years ago, climbing Perito Moreno. The glacier face was unstable and he had known it.
“Damn you,” Helt said.
“This is a single trauma for Elena, psychic, not physical. Single traumas leave a lot less damage than multiple ones. You’ve studied PTSD as much as I have, I think.”
“Yeah,” Helt said. “Probably.” Sequelae of parental loss was a topic Helt had read a lot about, too, even though his loss of a parent was different from the death of one.
“You say you’ll never know who she was, and that’s true.”
“Damn Cash Ryan for that, if nothing else.”
“You need to know the Elena she’s becoming,” Jim said. “Elena Maury culls defective embryos. In some ethical systems, that’s a form of murder, and she does it every day. You need to find out if she could or did cull a rogue human, Helt. My suggestion is that you get to know her well enough to know for yourself what she is capable of doing and not doing. Not in the past, but in the now. You’re the best person for the job.”
“I’m falling in love with her,” Helt said.
That Jim knew it showed in his face, and he didn’t look at all surprised or dismayed by the news, although part of Helt was surprised and dismayed that he’d said it.
“Yes,” Jim said. “But are you going to hide evidence to protect her if she killed a man?”
Helt had been thinking about that while he stared at camera captures of Susanna, while he worried about Doughan’s response to Seed Bankers, while he made the occasional side trip to look at the painfully thin data points around Cash Ryan’s last hour.
“No,” Helt said. “I won’t do that. I’m not capable of doing that. How did I get stuck with this mess anyway?”
Jim grinned at him.
“You got stuck with it because the injury to your mother gave you a caregiver neurosis, sometimes known as a hero compulsion. You got stuck with it because whether you like it or not, people like you and trust you and talk to you. If you’re going to get information out of them, that’s a skill set you need.”
“You talking to you or to me?” Helt asked.
“I’m a psychiatrist and I can do one-on-one. You handle groups with that same concern, with the ability to listen to everyone’s narratives and try to get a benign result out of them. I learn from you, Helt.”
Well, damn. That’s what Helt had been doing with Jim. He saw him as a peer, yes, but more than that, as a mentor. “Yeah. I learn from you, too.” He said the words slowly.
“You’re good at your job, you poor bastard. You’re afflicted with a certain rigidity of ethics, too. You’re in love, and you’re in danger of going batshit crazy if you don’t get some sleep.” Jim picked up the tray and the cups and the bottle. “Help me wash the cups. You didn’t drink your wine.”
Helt knew what Elena was doing tonight, and he knew he wouldn’t see her, so he might as well sleep, except he couldn’t. He picked up the tray and led Jim toward the lounge.
“I need to talk to Obrecht,” Helt said.
“Why?” Jim put the dishes in the sink and looked hesitant and confused. Helt nudged him out of the way with an elbow and grabbed the detergent. He handed Jim a towel.
“Because we don’t have an established crime force and we’re not following the rules. There aren’t any reflexes in place to protect witnesses, or suspects, or the crew who’s looking for the criminals, for that matter. Rules, sure. Reflexes, no.”
“It’s too late tonight and I want to be rested when I sit in on that discussion,” Jim said. “Building in reflexes takes practice. Can’t be just theory, and I don’t want to think about what sort of practice is needed for learning that skill set, not right now.”
“Gaming,” Helt said. “A cops-and-robber game where we get points for not ever falling into the Stanford prisoner trap.” It had been an experiment where the theorists set up a situation with some people as prisoners and some as guards. It got ugly fast, and the experimenters had shut it down.
Jim polished the cup he held, for far longer than it needed. “Might work.”
Helt took the cup from Jim’s hand, stacked it and the wine, corked, onto Jim’s carry tray, and handed it over.
“This means you’re going to quit for the night, right?” Jim asked.
“I need to close down.”
“Which means you’re not quitting but you don’t want to lie to me about it. You’re an idiot,” Jim said. “At least get a little rest before you do the next thing, okay?”
“Good plan,” Helt said.
* * *
He was back in the data flow, staring at a blinking light that said David II had left Doughan’s office. Doughan had pulled the file David II left, the locations where Cash Ryan had been on work crews this past three years, and then Doughan had gone home. He lived in Athens, close to his work.
Helt had opted for Petra, not Athens, because he liked to separate work from home, and because a roofed canyon habitat was the plan for the first settlement on Nostos. Not that he’d be there to see it.
Elena was in the clinic lounge with Mena. They were talking about papoose boards. Papoose boards? Helt wanted her to finish the pathology slides, but she had to have time. He wouldn’t dare rush her.
The camera at the Athens station showed Doughan getting out. Helt traced him into the residential section where he lived.
Jim was gone. Helt didn’t notice that until he blinked and realized he was alone in SysSu.
He might as well sleep at home.
In the agora, on his way to the train, he seemed to sense Level Two, the shuttle port, and Navigation offices below. He thought he felt the spin of the world beneath his feet.
18
Key Words
Sunday morning’s crew of vitriol-peddlers on Earth below had exhausted the value of railing about resources lost on the construction of Kybele. Now they were trying to drum up hits from the idea that firing Kybele’s departure engines would, pick one or several, cause tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or, Helt’s favorite so far this morning, blow up the moon.
Thirty thousand people lived on Kybele, and as far as Helt could tell, maybe eight thousand of them had a secret itch to be Hollywood moguls and six thousand were closet actors. So far, three studios were up and running, and they made good money on made-for-Earth exports. Films produced on Kybele had earned a lot of film festival awards, usually for Art Direction. The mise-en-scène was spectacular, and the half-g effects added a certain something.
At least four thousand people on board made music, with varying degrees of skill. From bluegrass to sitar, you could hear it live. But the real money was in docudramas. Silkworms were a hit. Go figure.
Were the silkworms, proudly brought from Suzhou, China, thriving? An artisan co-op there had pooled donations and purchased three lottery tickets. The Province budget committee had gone a little nuts and increased the number of tickets to three hundred, and three Suzhou people scored.
Were the colonists thriving as well? We are, the Suzhou colonists assured them, and camera crews followed their settling in, and later, the growing romance between two of them. The birth of Zhōu Xifeng’s son on Kybele in the wee hours of Sunday morning had been celebrated with fireworks and dragon parades in Suzhou.
That meant midwife Susanna Jambekar was now available for questioning. Mena would call before that happened. Maybe Elena was asleep now. Maybe she would call when she woke.
Helt told the audio feeds to pick up buzz words from the crowd chatter of the past two days and got up to get his next cup of coffee. He’d slept hard and deep last night, with no dreams at all that he could remember. He felt almost rested.
Murder, the wall whispered, murder. In the Athens agora, in the restaurants and bars t
hat sent their feeds to Security, in the Petra canteen, in the barns at Stonehenge and all over social media. Coulda been murder. Cover-up. I hear Navigation is doing some serious grilling of some people. In face-time. What are the bosses hiding? Cover-up. Who was that guy Ryan? He was murdered, no question. What if it’s a serial killer? But there’s just one victim. Cover-up. Will we be safer in crowds for a while, or should we stay out of them?
Was this part of the “different energy” Elena had sensed in the Petra canteen?
The police log showed very little activity, less than usual. People were busy with tasks that could best be done while Kybele was still in Earth orbit, or they were behaving. No one wanted to end up arrested and shuffled to the off-list this late in the game. Severo would be busy getting morning reports about now, but Helt decided to interrupt him. It was time for disclosure.
And it was time to talk to Giliam Obrecht about legalities and money. Helt sent a request to him.
Helt. Legal advice, please. Anytime, please, but soon.
He asked the interface for Severo and got a view of the waiting room at the Athens office, NSS’s miniature version of a bull pen. Helt watched the backs of two people in plainclothes leave for the streets and the working day, orders presumably in hand. Officer Evans, she of the maple-colored hair, the woman who had insisted on chain of evidence precautions with Cash’s home interface, she who had apparently been quite authoritative with Venkie, was talking to Severo.
Helt let Evans leave before he buzzed Severo’s pocket.
“You on my case already? I was looking forward to a Sunday that would only be twice as much work as usual. You’re going to add to the load, right?”
“I hope not,” Helt said. “This shouldn’t be a biggie. Severo, the public wants to know why the execs are hiding a murder. It’s time to go public or we’ll have paranoia all over the place.”
“That’s going to foul up Doughan’s idea of private interviews before the facts are out.”
Severo’s eyelids were puffy. He looked like he wanted to be stubborn just to be stubborn.
“But the news that it’s a murder is already out there,” Helt said. “The street already knows about it, and the information will only get more garbled if we don’t put the facts on the record. You want me to send you the camera captures?”
“No. But I’ll have to clear it with Doughan.”
“Let me do that.” If you want to curse someone, give them responsibility without authority. Doughan was playing that game with Helt, consciously or otherwise. “I’ll talk to the trio. As soon as they clear it, then putting the info on the police log becomes an order that came from the top. I’ll draft a statement for them.”
“Okay,” Severo said.
A slight edge of the stubbornness Helt had sensed in Severo seemed to have been put aside.
“Have a good one, Severo.”
“Bueno, bye.”
It was 0750. Helt looked out through his open door to the hallway, hoping Jerry or Nadia would come by, even though it was Sunday morning.
Helt’s opening paragraph to the execs said that the public was aware that the death was probably a murder. He added quickie links to show the resultant unease and the need for putting the facts in the data stream. He sent it to the execs and to Severo. He followed that with a proposed murder announcement. Ongoing investigation has now determined that the death of Charles “Cash” Ryan was most probably a murder, investigations are proceeding, and so forth. Mena sent back an okay. Her interface, and presumably Mena, were at her home.
Helt poured two cups of coffee and carried them down the hall to Archer’s office.
It was dark in there, except for the glow of the desktop screen. Its light traced Archer’s profile, his craggy nose and clean-shaven authoritative jaw; it highlighted the icy paleness of his unblinking eyes and his smoothly combed white hair.
Archer’s shoulders were slightly hunched beneath the shelter of his blue cardigan. He looked his age, and usually he didn’t. He looked old and frail and sad.
Helt put Archer’s coffee cup on his desk. The text on the screen was the murder announcement.
“I see,” Archer said, without looking away from the screen.
Helt sat down in the chair next to Archer’s desk and waited.
Archer shut off the announcement and the room went dark.
“I went along with the delay,” Helt said. “But now the fact that Ryan was murdered is news, and it’s everywhere.”
Archer sighed. His programming lighted the room with a large window that seemed to look out at the morning agora, on mute. The display was on the north wall. The agora was south of here. Archer liked it that way. “You disturbed my searches for right-to-forget dodges that might have been used to create Charles ‘Cash’ Ryan’s faked life.”
“I’m sorry,” Helt said.
“Don’t be.” Archer’s fingers continued their dance on the keyboard. “News? The apt term seems to be ‘leak.’ Do you have any ideas about who talked?”
“No,” Helt said. “It could have been anyone in medical who knew Calloway was looking at hypothermia files. Calloway’s girlfriend, if he has one. Jerry, Nadia, Severo, they were with me when Calloway brought us the news. I doubt they said anything, but we didn’t mark the information Top Secret.”
Archer leaned back and took a sip of his coffee. “You think it’s time this went into the NSS public log.”
“I do.”
“Make your announcement. You have my approval. That’s one of three.”
“That’s two,” Helt said. “I sent Mena and Doughan a heads-up on this. Mena says to go public.”
“But not Doughan.”
“No,” Helt said.
“He hasn’t seen it yet. You sent it”—Archer glared at the info on his desktop screen—“less than ten minutes ago.”
“I hope Doughan okays it. You and Mena make up a majority,” Helt said. “But I hope I don’t have to play that card.”
Archer spun his chair so he was facing Helt. He took a sip of coffee and looked at Helt over the rim of the cup, scanning him as if he were a malfunctioning program. “What’s wrong?” Archer asked.
A lot of things, like Helt was not at all sure he could do this job, and his innocent wish that Kybele would be a peaceable kingdom where he could live happily ever after was broken, and he was mad at himself for wishing for something like that, which was obviously an unrealistic, childish dream. “Chain of command. Severo looks to Doughan on this and wants to go through Doughan on everything. We have time constraints, and waiting for his go-ahead could be problematic. But the fact is, Doughan tagged me for the oversight job. The Special Investigator.”
“With the relieved approval of Biosystems and SysSu, I seem to remember. Why are you here?”
“Either Doughan lets me do the job, or he’s an obstacle. I don’t like that, Archer. I don’t know how to handle the problem.”
“I think you do. That’s why you’re here, bothering me,” Archer said. “So what shall I say to Doughan to make your life a little easier?”
“Heh. Tell him Severo needs to hear that Doughan will be happier if information comes to me first and goes to Doughan after I’ve vetted it. It would save some time, and I get the feeling Doughan’s happier looking at updates than wading through stuff himself. That’s what junior officers are for, right? I suppose I suspect a military mind-set and I’m accusing him of being limited by it. I don’t know him well enough to say that.”
“So you’ve noticed our Navigation exec is fond of concise reports and well-defined hierarchies.”
“You know him better than I do and you’ve known him longer,” Helt said.
“That’s been my analysis of him in the past. It’s a character flaw and it’s cost him at times.”
“Because you’ve used it to manipulate him?” Helt asked.
“Of course I have.”
Archer didn’t elaborate, but some of the history he must be remembering caused a smile t
o visit the corners of his mouth. It was quickly chased away.
“Talking it through with you helps,” Helt said. “I’m going with him to interview the midwife this morning, so I think I have a framework to use to state my case.”
Archer turned his chair and nodded to the simulated agora. “IA, you’re good at what you do. This death is an interdepartmental problem, to put it mildly. I give those to you. Solving problems that won’t stay in one department is your job description. I wrote it. I knew quite well you would end up stepping on toes, and you have. But I knew you could figure out how to step off them again. And you have.”
“Remind me of that when Doughan balks, if he does. You began by doing all of SysSu’s liaison work yourself,” Helt said.
“I did. Now I confine myself to the internal conflicts in SysSu, as best I can.” Archer leaned back in his chair and stared at something in the direction-reversed agora. “And I watch the pressures coming to near-space from Earth. I’ve tried to encourage rumors about more intensive colonization of Ceres, the project that the Northern Coalition made so much talk about before the triple eruption a couple of years back.”
Iturp, Karynsky, Lascar, those three volcanoes in Earth’s Ring of Fire, had belched a lot of smoke.
“The cloud cover over the Northern Hemisphere mitigated some of the heating in South Asia,” Archer said. “End result, the Northern Coalition’s been pretty quiet about us. We may even get away without too many sabers rattling.”
Russia, Northern Europe, Canada, and the United States had found many common interests as the planet heated. They had water and arable land; much of the world didn’t. In the south, the Pampas were irrigated farmland, now, not grassland. The tongue of Africa that remained temperate was intensively vertically farmed and constantly at war.
“And here,” Archer said. “Here in the luckiest, most improbable place a human can be, I grow old. I suppose I had the fantasy, once, that keeping communications easy and open would be enough, that interdepartmental problems could be solved using the obvious tools of transparent, accessible communications and common sense,” Archer said.
