Neither knew what to make of the conjoined mind Zero had distinguished and brought vividly to life now for Cal in his brain. Cal wasn’t skilled enough to detect this as another, different thought process, although he could hear it. It was like studying stars: they all looked alike unless you knew what you were seeing. Zero could apparently separate nuances of thought as easily as he could recognise different faces; Cal could not. He heard the madness though. A man on board his ship was carrying insanity in his head like a tumour.
“I have an idea.” The Sender’s words jolted Cal out of his introspection.
“And?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“We leak out the fact that I’m not neutered, that I’m close to discovering—”
“Not gonna happen. Ever.”
“Wait, listen. He’d come for me, wouldn’t he? He’d have to. We could be—Where are you going?”
“Away from this conversation.”
Zero sighed and followed him out of the door.
“I’d be perfectly safe!”
“Can I hear something buzzing? No, it’s just you. Read my lips. Fuck, read my mind: N. O!” They were walking toward the security offices, but Cal suddenly nudged Zero out of the corridor and into a viewing alcove. “It’s not about your safety—or not wholly about that. We probably could protect you. But after—everyone would know!”
Zero frowned deeply. “No, they wouldn’t. Why?”
“What do you mean why? Because we’d have just told them.”
“But it wouldn’t be true!”
Cal mirrored Zero’s expression. How could his most confusing conversation ever be happening with a man who could read his mind? “I think it would. It is true.”
“Well, yeah, but they wouldn’t know that.”
“Yes! They would! If they’d just been told—”
“I don’t think I’m explaining this very well. Listen …” Zero closed his eyes and a warmth flowed into Cal’s mind. He saw events playing out: rumour of Z’s abilities spreading through the ship like a virus; a faceless man hearing it; an attempt on Zero’s life; a capture; rumour squashed, ruse explained; medals and glory. And then them having celebratory sex.
Cal laughed. “Add promotion for me while you’re at it.”
“Do you see though?”
“You can’t manipulate humans as easily as that. They wouldn’t just disbelieve what they believe. It’s like in those Old-Earth movies where the judge says to the jury disregard that statement. How the hell do you disregard something?”
“Well have you got a better idea?”
“If you came in contact with this man, do you think you would know him?”
“If I touched him? Definitely. But isn’t that going to be just as suspicious? Everyone on board being lined up so I can touch them? I think people would work out why, don’t you?”
Cal was about to reply when he heard a click. He knew what it was. He’d readied a taser enough times himself. He straightened.
“Don’t move. Step away from the Minder.”
Cal glanced at Hunter and then at Fuller who was backing him up. “Which is it? Stay still or move?”
Hunter waved the taser and Cal moved cautiously away from Zero.
“What’s happening?”
Zero’s panicked message made Cal wince. “Shut up. I don’t know.”
“They think it’s me!”
Cal was about to reply when Hunter gestured for him to turn around, and when he complied, Fuller slapped cuffs on him.
“Huh?”
Cal almost chuckled at Zero’s confusion. “Don’t say anything. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”
He could see Zero pouting slightly, eyeing the arresting officers.
Cal immediately sent, “No. Don’t you dare!”
Zero twitched his nose.
“I mean it, Z. Whatever this is, it needs to be worked out our way—Braindead way.”
Zero gave a tiny shrug.
Happy that Hunter and his team of one weren’t about to start being manipulated into anything the fanciful Sender’s mind could come up with, Cal said carefully, “This doesn’t concern Commander Zero, Hunter.”
Hunter nodded and stood aside so Z could leave.
“Let me listen in?”
Cal nodded before he realised what he was doing and so to cover demanded brusquely as Z walked away, “Okay, Jim. What’s this about?”
Hunter pointed down the corridor in the opposite direction of Zero’s departure, and Cal began to march, testing the restraints, not liking being on the other side of an arrest.
“I started checking the crew records.”
Something cold crawled down Cal’s spine, a sense of impending dread. He knew exactly where this conversation was going now.
“Know you didn’t ask me to, but as you were checking colonist bios I thought I’d save you some time and check crew security ratings and the like—just to see if I could find some anomalies. Guess what?”
Cal didn’t need to guess. He flicked a glance to Hunter. “I’ve altered mine.”
Hunter’s brows rose. He apparently hadn’t expected Cal to admit it so easily. Cal heard a snigger in his head from a certain eavesdropping Sender but ignored it.
They reached security.
They didn’t have cells, as such, just what they termed The Drier—a secure storeroom they’d turned into a small unit to house overenthusiastic partygoers. They’d removed the bulkhead door and replaced it with Plexiglas so the unfortunate security officer on duty could watch the vomiting and monitor signs of life.
Hunter pushed Cal into The Drier now and clicked the door shut.
He seemed happier now that his boss was contained, and noticeably relaxed.
“Can I at least make that stench of vomit disappear?”
Cal repressed a smirk as, to him, the cubicle suddenly smelt of freshly brewed coffee. He caught Hunter’s eye. “I can explain why my records were altered, but I need you to think about something before I do.”
Hunter gave no indication what he thought about this one way or another.
“He’s listening. He’s intrigued.”
“Stop it!”
“Why did you just bring Fuller with you? Two restraining officers for an arrest—that’s regulations. But you just brought Fuller. Why? I’ll tell you why, because in your heart of hearts you know I’m not guilty of these murders and you didn’t want anyone else but Fuller to see me being taken into custody.”
“Tell me why you altered your records.”
Cal took a little breath. “I needed my duty roster to show I’d been on a transport when my father died.” Hunter clearly hadn’t expected that. Cal could sense Zero listening intently too. “I’d threatened to kill him too many times to make it believable that I didn’t finally do it.” He glanced away for a moment. “He was beaten to death with a baseball bat. The one I’d threatened him with.”
“You weren’t on route to Titan when he was murdered?”
Cal shook his head. “No, I was at home, visiting with my mom. They found him by his pick-up out in the yard when some of the guys turned up to work. I took off out through the back door, and—”
“Altered the log.”
Cal nodded. “But I didn’t murder these guys on board, Jim, and I think you know that.”
“Do you want him to know for sure?”
“No. Shut up. This is too weird.”
“Trust me, this is nowhere close to the weird I could show you.”
Hunter looked over his shoulder at Fuller who was impassively making a note of the arrest as she asked him, “You wanna sign off on this, Sarge?”
Hunter clenched his jaw then asked Cal unexpectedly, “What would you do, Boss? If it was me with the altered record?”
Cal didn’t hesitate. “I’d run your DNA against the sample we took off the dead guy. Just to be sure.” He pressed his arm to the glass between them.
§§§
By the time
he was three hours into his incarceration, Cal was beginning to wonder if the mind-reading thing was all it was cracked up to be. He was exhausted. It didn’t seem to occur to Zero that humans switched off in their heads—that when the talking of the day was done, they needed quiet times. Granted, it was all new and exciting, for both of them, and for the first two hours and fifty minutes it had been like being a kid at Christmas: ripping paper off present after present, hardly looking at one before going onto another. But now his head hurt. It wasn’t like any headache he’d ever experienced either; it was like a physical tear in his brain, a graze that was sore to probe. Zero wanted to ease it for him, but Cal had winced and cried out for real, just as he had when his mother had tried to put ointment onto his welts—just too uncomfortable even for relief.
Zero had sulked. For approximately thirty seconds, and he’d let Cal feel every one of those miserable, angry thoughts, before he’d brightened. “I’ll check out how the DNA is coming along.”
“Don’t skew the results!”
“Do I need to?”
“No! Of course not. Ow!”
“So why would I then? Duh!”
And he was out. Just like that. Cal was alone. He sighed with relief like a virgin given a moment’s respite from a voracious lover, and laughed at this idea.
Then Z was back and Cal groaned.
“Charming.”
“Sorry. So?”
Cal gasped as a searing pain shot through his entire body. What had been a tiny graze in his head was now a vast scalding pain flooding through his nervous system. He gave a weak mental scream. He heard Zero echo this cry, faintly, but couldn’t make out the words, and then the connection was severed. Zero had broken it.
Cal shot to his feet and pounded on the glass partition. “Hey, Fuller.”
Fuller turned from the computer screen she was studying.
“Go check on—check on the Minders.”
“Why?”
“Please. Just—”
Her comms buzzed and she answered it, eyes fixed on Cal. “Fuller.”
There was a distorted message but Cal heard panic in the voice. Fuller rose. “Where?” She grabbed a weapon and gave a tiny glance back at him. “Screaming’s been reported. Deck 2.”
“Go!”
She nodded and ran.
§§§
Zero came back to him before anyone returned to the crew room.
Cal conjured him visibly as he metaphorically limped into his head. “There’s been another one.”
“You heard it.” He didn’t make it a question. He sensed Z wasn’t up to probing.
“I—broke you off.”
“Other people heard screaming. Fuller went.”
“It was a woman—dying.”
“I’m sorry.” Cal frowned as he said it. For the first time, it occurred to him that what Zero had was a curse as much as it was a gift.
Zero took a moment to reply. “I discovered something about the killer.”
Cal allowed a surge of hope until Zero added wryly, “It’s not you.”
“Stop pissing about. This is—”
He actually heard the sigh of annoyed fondness and then got what Zero had meant. It was confirmed when Hunter returned to the crew room half an hour later and immediately came over and unlocked the door. He circled his jaw, apparently chewing humble pie, then said, “Sorry, Boss.”
Cal just patted him on the back. “I’d have sacked you if you hadn’t done exactly what you did. What have we got?”
Hunter shook his head slowly. “Trust me, you really don’t want to see this.”
“I do!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Cal made his way slowly to the captain’s quarters.
It was icy in the corridor, and he wrapped his jacket close, hunching himself into its insulating properties. They’d wanted it frosty for the Halloween party that would now never be. Someone must have forgotten to tell the décor team that fun on the Elon Musk was cancelled.
It had been bad.
Not the worst he’d seen, but bad enough. A woman this time, which confused him. He didn’t know much about murderers, but he’d assumed they stayed within their preferred victim groupings—in this case, men. But the woman’s body had been found by two of the catering crew in one of the food lock-ups. The unlatched door had alerted them, and when they’d investigated, it had swung open upon the grizzly sight. She’d been mutilated, breasts removed and put into her hands, and Cal had, once more, found her splattered with a substance he was fairly sure was semen.
Laskar was leaning against the bulkhead by his viewing portal when Cal entered. He’d been asleep, off duty. Cal’s call had woken him, and now, dressed in a surprisingly tattered robe, he looked old and worn down by responsibility.
Cal said simply, “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Three, Cal. Three.”
“I know.”
Laskar continued to regard the tiny pinpricks of light on the other side of his window. “Are you a man of faith, Lieutenant?” Before Cal could reply, the old man closed his eyes to the stars and added, “We killed God, didn’t we? When we left Earth and came out here. He can’t exist in a vacuum, can He?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Lasker shivered and pulled his robe tighter. “This used to be my favourite time of the year. When I was a boy.” He turned his gaze to a uniform hanging by his locker. It had a mustard-yellow top and black pants. It was the costume he wore every year to the Halloween party. “I was too old for this years ago. Too old to play Captain Kirk to a shipload of children who don’t even know they’re living in a godless universe. All Hallows Eve. All Saints. That’s what we used to call it. What a fucking irony. Don’t suppose you’ve even heard that, have you? God and all his saints ain’t just sleeping now—they’ve long gone. We’ve replaced them with this…” He turned his gaze once more to the stars, but Cal wasn’t concentrating on the older man any more.
He was staring at the back of the captain’s head, and Laskar apparently detected the weight of that focus and returned his attention to him. “I can’t put it off now, Cal. I’ve gotta report this and start the turn around. End of my career. Didn’t want to go out like…What?”
Cal shook himself, his stunning revelation making it hard for him to speak. “Sir. I recommend you delay that decision. You spoke of faith? I’m asking you now to put that faith to a little test…”
§§§
Cal leant back from his computer screen.
All Saints. He’d understood it as soon as the captain had said the words. The three deaths were ritualistic. He’d known that as soon as he’d seen them, but he hadn’t been able to make the connection until he’d heard those words. It was All Saints—and someone was creating martyrs. A man shot to death with arrows: Saint Sebastian. Flayed alive and made to carry his skin: Saint Peter. And Saint Agnes, bearing her severed beasts aloft to shame her persecutors.
It didn’t help him catch the guy, but it sure put some imperative into the need to. As far as Cal had been able to ascertain, there were more saints in the Old-Earth religions than there were crew and passengers aboard the ship, and there was a very long way to go still before they reached the Saturn moon—and some very gristly martyrdoms yet to enact.
Cal summoned a council of war.
They sat around the crew room’s table, absorbing his epiphany—Zero, Hunter, Fuller, Holliday, Sloane, Manning, and the Doc. Those he could trust.
He had a plan, but he was fairly sure no one was going to like it much. Well, Zero would probably go for it; he was the one who had, in a way, given Cal the idea.
They were waiting patiently for him to explain. But to lay out his proposal, he needed to explain the presence of the Minder. His being there and his…ability.
He took a breath and began, “I have persuaded the captain to allow the Halloween party to go ahead after all. Everyone aboard ship will be present. Our killer, therefore, will also be present.” So far, so good. He had their atten
tion if nothing else. “Commander Zero,” he risked a glance at Z to see if he was mind reading him, but an internal, unspoken enquiry elicited no response at all, “will be at the party, too. His…inhibitor is currently faulty. He has assured me that if he touches the killer, he will know him. But he has to touch…” He trailed off, as no one was listening to him. A babble of furious, concerned chatter had broken out at the mention of the faulty implant. Holliday had immediately stood and moved away from the Minder and was clenching and unclenching his fists.
Zero had put his hands down into his lap as if the mere presence of such dangerous, naked skin was an offence to humans which he recognised and was ashamed of.
Cal saw a twitch of amusement flicker over Zero’s face, however, and realised he was reading his internal dialogue—that he’d heard where innocent thoughts of naked skin had briefly and tantalizingly gone, and he was smiling openly now because he must have got that thought too…Cal gritted his teeth. “Get out.”
“Sorry.”
Suddenly, the doctor slapped his hand onto the table and everyone stopped shouting. “Seems to me, we’re missing the point a tad here. It ain’t us having to trust him that’s the issue—it’s can he trust us…” He held out his hand. “I’m willing for him to test me. Are any of you?”
The doc looked around at each of them in turn. Cal didn’t mention that Zero had already touched him and in places where he assumed nothing could be hidden.
Fuller immediately shrugged and held out her hand.
Cal was immensely grateful to both of them, especially to the doc, who knew there was a great deal more to Zero’s ability than just reading a human mind through skin-to-skin contact.
It was entirely possible that Zero was manipulating this whole scenario, and the doc must have worked this out as well as Cal had. It had not escaped Cal’s notice that Sol Corp protocols mandated return to Earth in just such an occurrence as they were now having on board. What better way for a Sender to escape a trial period on Titan? Cal now had the dubious benefit of love to overcome natural mistrust. The doc did not.
So Cal knew what a leap of faith the doc had made to back him.
He put his hands out and placed them on top of the two on the table. He needed to make an equally impressive gesture back.
Seasons of Murder: In the Shadow of This Red Rock Page 10
