by Chris Bunch
‘From where?’ Wolfe asked bleakly. ‘One of you brought it with him . . . or her? I’m supposed to believe that one of you is some kind of ex-saboteur or something and capable of rigging something like that from a handful of wire and bellybutton lint?
‘Sorry. I’ve read the background files on everybody here. Nobody qualifies.
‘Even if I believed that, there’d be another problem. Assume there was some kind of blaster with a timer that somebody managed to pre-aim, knowing precisely where she was going to set up her recorders.
‘She walks into position, the timer goes off, and she gets spattered. That’s known as having God in your lap, and I’m an atheist.’
Wolfe suddenly noticed Northover was a little white. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘I forget some of us are still civilized. ’
‘Never mind,’ the scientist said. ‘Go on.’
‘Then, after Ware’s dead, our murderer comes back here, unobserved, secures her gear and scoots before anybody arrives. The body was supposedly found about 1830 or so. That whole plot sounds like some kind of romance, and I’m not romantic any more,’ Wolfe said.
‘You’re right,’ Northover said thinking for awhile. ‘We were all together, talking about the test afterward, and then somebody . . . I think it was Cherney . . . said Ware was missing, and we went looking for her. Not enough time.
‘But dammit, Wolfe, we are all accounted for at 1700!
‘Every single bleeding one of us!’
‘Son of a bitch, squared,’ Joshua muttered. ‘Cubed.’ It was a day and a half later, very late at night, and Northover was still right.
Wolfe had made up twenty little cards with each team member’s name and where they were supposed to have been at 1700 hours, when the test was made and Ware died, and had them laid out on his tiny desk. For 15 minutes before and after the blast, everyone was well accounted for.
All right. Consider all options. Was Ware in fact killed just at 1700? Of course, because she had to be at her recorders when the test was made. She wouldn’t necessarily have been there a few minutes before or afterward. The killer had to have her at a precise spot at a precise time. That suggests some kind of robot, doesn’t it, Wolfe? But then somebody would’ve had to pick the fiendish thingie up afterward, and there wasn’t time for that, so that’s out.
But why was she killed at precisely 1700?
At 1700, Wolfe realized, everybody including the killer, would be ostentatiously accounted for. The precision was for the alibi, not the murder.
Which gives me absolute zip-null!
He glowered at the cards, and there was a gentle tap at the door. He swept the cards into a drawer.
‘It’s not locked,’ he said.
The door opened, and Mikela Tregeagle came in. She wore a white blouse, with two buttons at the throat undone, and close-fitting fawn pants. She was barefoot.
‘I guess you and I are the only ones still up,’ she said, closing the door behind her. ‘I tried to sleep, but my mind keeps working, keeps remembering, and I thought maybe I’d mix myself some milk. It’s a pity that Juan keeps a dry camp, or I’d be looking for a drink.
‘Then I saw your light on under the door, and thought I’d intrude.’
‘You’re not intruding.’ Wolfe stood, and slid his chair toward her. ‘Here. Take a pew.’
‘I’ll sit over here,’ she said, and sat on the bed.
‘I’d offer you something,’ Wolfe said, ‘if I had anything.’
‘I’m all right,’ Mikela said. She looked away from him, at the wall. ‘So what happens next, Joshua? Aren’t you going to run out of questions soon?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Then what?’
‘The Federation ship we sent for’ll have specialists aboard. They’ll take over.’
‘And what’ll you do then?’
Wolfe didn’t answer.
‘Go back into the night like the mysterious being you are?’
‘I’m not mysterious.’
‘Oh, but I want you to be,’ she said, lying back on the bed. ‘Everyone thinks field work is glamorous. If they really knew. You spend a year or so sucking up to anyone with money who’s a scientist hopeful for funding, which is never enough to do it right.
‘Then you go out with the same people, the same faces you’ve been on eight, ten worlds with. Sometimes they’re friends, sometimes maybe they were even lovers, maybe now they’re enemies.
‘You’ve heard all their jokes, all their stories, and they know all yours as well.
‘About the only real pleasure is finding something new, and what the hell are we finding here? Another goddamned Al’ar base, and the only mystery is there’s nothing at the far end, so far, although I know we’ll find something sooner or later.
‘Otherwise this is no different than what, seven or eight identical bases?
‘We’ll be out here for another year, maybe two, then go back to the Univee and spend another two years making everything neat and tidy and publishable so all our enemies can have something to throw rocks at.
‘Then I start trying to raise money again for wherever Juan wants to go next, and the cycle begins all over again.’
‘In the wrong light, anybody’s job looks crappy,’ Wolfe said, feeling like a sententious ass.
‘Maybe . . . but I’m still glad you materialized, regardless of the circumstances. It gets tiresome when everybody knows everything about everyone.’
‘Everything except the most important thing,’ Wolfe said. ‘Who killed Lorn Ware and Toni Acosta.’
‘Oh, that’ll come out, sooner or later,’ she said. ‘Which means it’s maybe not the most important thing at all.’
‘What do you think is the most important thing?’
Tregeagle’s fingers moved to her blouse, unfastened another button. She looked up at Joshua, and her eyes were bright, glittering. ‘For me,’ she said huskily, ‘right now, it’s what it’s like to kiss you.’
‘There actually might be an answer to that,’ Joshua said. He crossed to her, knelt beside the bed. Her mouth opened under his, and he cradled her head in one hand.
Her tongue slid into his mouth, her lips moved under his.
Joshua unbuttoned her blouse, pulled its tails out of her pants. Her breasts were firm, erect.
Her hand moved down, unfastened the snaps of her pants, pulled them open. She wore no underclothing.
‘Yes,’ she breathed when the kiss ended. ‘I do want to know more about my stranger.’
‘So you still don’t have any idea who the murderer could be,’ she said, much later, in the near darkness. They were still joined.
‘Lots of ideas,’ Wolfe said. ‘None worth thinking about, let alone mentioning.’
‘I tried to play detective this afternoon,’ Mikela said. ‘What about the idea that Dov Cherney killed Lorn, and then somebody else killed Acosta?’
‘Two killers among 20 people? Aren’t we supposed to be shaving with Occam’s Razor?’
‘Oh well,’ Tregeagle sighed. ‘I guess I’ll stick to being a dig-and-delver. Speaking of which,’ and she wriggled against him, ‘I do like your delver.’
‘Thanks,’ Joshua said, and kissed her. ‘Delving with you isn’t a bad way to spend an evening.’
‘Morning. It’s very late,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Aren’t you sleepy?’
‘Not very. But shouldn’t you be thinking about going back to your room? I’d rather keep our business our business. ’
‘In a while,’ Mikela said. ‘As for anyone knowing, you don’t know how things work on an expedition. Everybody probably knows everything, like I said. But when it comes to sex, everybody pretends not to know.
‘But you’re right. It might complicate things. And there’s at least one somebody I’d just as soon not have know.
‘Although what he’d do about it . . .’
She stopped. Wolfe waited, but she didn’t continue. He caressed one breast, tweaked her n
ipple until it was firm, and her breathing quickened. She lifted one leg across his thighs, moaned as he moved slowly, steadily in her.
‘Dov,’ Wolfe said calmly, ‘I know you didn’t kill Scholar Acosta. But what about Lorn Ware?’
Cherney stared at him through the swollen purple ruin of his face. His forearm was shrouded in a plascast. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I said no, so yeah, I killed her. Killed both of them with my Al’ar deathtouch,’ he snarled.
‘Thank you. Go back to your goddamned meditations,’ and Wolfe slammed the storeroom door a bit harder than he’d planned.
‘I get the idea you’re groping at straws,’ Northover said. He sat in the middle of the gravlifter’s front seat, eyes fixed straight ahead.
‘I am,’ Wolfe admitted. ‘Do you have any other ideas?’
Northover shook his head. Wolfe steered the gravlifter toward the transmission tower, climbed until the craft was level with the second level.
‘This was the first one that backblasted, right?’
‘That’s correct. But I don’t know what you hope to find. I examined this tower closely from every angle, with as long a lens as I have. Whatever’s causing these problems has got to be in the main generating apparatus, not on the tower.’
Wolfe looked curiously at Northover.
‘You checked this tower out from a distance? Why didn’t you do what we’re going to do and land on it?’
‘I don’t think the arm would support something as heavy as a lifter,’ Northover said, not looking at Joshua.
‘Come on, man. This is antigrav, remember? You could have a pilot hover the damned thing while you clambered around.’
‘I . . . couldn’t. I can’t.’
‘Why not? You don’t weigh more than 45, 50 kilos.’
Northover took a deep breath, looked away from Wolfe.
‘I’m acrophobic,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ Wolfe said. ‘That’s why you had Tregeagle shinnying up that wall in the cave instead of going yourself.’
‘She . . . and Juan . . . Scholar Frazier . . . are the only ones who know. I told her when I first interviewed for the team, last expedition. She said it didn’t matter, she couldn’t see any reason an electronics analyst had to be a mountain climber.
‘Then, when this project was presented, she remembered what she said, thought it was pretty funny, and said she’d do the climbing for me as recompense. Matter of fact, she did go out on the arms of this tower after the first backblast, but didn’t find anything.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s quite a woman. I’ve sometimes wished that I’d met her ten years ago.’
‘Why ten years?’
‘That would’ve been before she met Juan, and fell in love with him.’
‘Oh?’
‘They’re lovers,’ Northover said. ‘At least they were, some years back.’
‘Why don’t they partner in the open?’
‘He’s married.’
‘But obviously not faithful,’ Wolfe pressed.
‘I don’t know the reason. Maybe he’s religious, or figures he’s got some kind of duty to his wife, who I’ve never met. I’m pretty sure . . . hell, I flat know she still loves him. So why she does like she does . . . I don’t know.
‘But I’ve got enough trouble understanding my own life, so I don’t have time for anybody else’s.’
‘Why does she do what she does?’ Wolfe asked.
‘Never mind,’ Northover said. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did.
‘Look, Wolfe. I’ve been trying to force myself, but I’m not going to be able to get out onto that arm, like you want.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Joshua said. ‘You just sit where you are, and I’ll tell you if I find anything. You tell me what it means.’
‘All right,’ Northover said. ‘But if I get a panic attack . . .’
‘We’ll drop down and ground the lifter immediately.’
‘All right. I’ll try.’
Wolfe brought the lifter close to the tower. The huge lower arm hung over him.
A light blinked on the lifter’s instrument panel.
‘Signal,’ Northover said. He picked up a mike, keyed it.
‘Northover and Wolfe. Who’s ‘casting?’
The light went suddenly dead. Northover looked at Wolfe puzzledly, then shook his head. ‘Twenty damned people on this world, and we still get wrong numbers. Man and technology, the perfect union.’ Northover forced a laugh, clipped the mike back on its rack.
Joshua took climbing line from the back seat, tied it securely to the gravlifter’s crashbar and gingerly stepped out onto the arm. He looked about for an anchoring point.
‘Will I hurt anything if I tie the lifter to one of these puppies?’ He pointed to the row of round seven-foot-tall columns Frazier had theorized were used to fine-tune the power transmission to the receptors below.
‘Nope,’ Northover said. ‘They’re as solid as everything else Al’ar. Probably you could lift the tower by them.’
Wolfe threw a double half-hitch around the column, anchoring the gravlifter, then made his way gingerly across the arm.
‘This’ll be interesting,’ he said. ‘Not knowing whether what I’m looking at is . . . what ho.’
‘What is what ho?’
‘Evidently you’re wrong about these columns, and Scholar Tregeagle missed something,’ Joshua said. ‘They’re a bit more fragile than you thought. Here’s one that’s worn through, right down at the base.’ He moved across the slippery alloy almost to the end of the arm, avoided looking at the long drop to the sands below, and knelt next to the column, examined the fault.
‘Not worn through,’ Wolfe said. ‘Cut. Or maybe the weld or whatever joined it to the deck plating didn’t hold. Correction. It had some help. There’s hammer-strikes on the far side. On both sides, rather.
‘Try this one, Northover. The column was cut, I don’t know how recently, but I’ll bet not long ago. Maybe by a blaster on narrow aperture? Then somebody hammered it out a ways, then back.’
‘I’ve seen holos of other towers on other planets,’ Northover said. ‘And gone over them a millimeter at a time. I’ve never heard of anything like this. The Al’ar didn’t practice shade-tree engineering.’
‘No,’ Wolfe said. ‘But maybe somebody human does, who wanted to create a backblast.’
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘Let’s go look at another tower,’ Wolfe said. ‘Then I’ll try an answer.’
He started toward the gravlifter, stopped as he heard, almost felt, a deep hum.
‘Somebody’s running the grid,’ Northover shouted. ‘Come on! We’ve got to get out of range!’ He fumbled at the anchoring line. ‘Goddammit,’ he swore. ‘It won’t come!’ He jerked at the rope, further tightening the knots, then, in utter panic, jumped behind the controls of the gravlighter.
The hum was growing louder, and Wolfe felt his hair stand on end. The metal was more slippery than before, and Joshua felt like he was on ice. He forced his way, almost falling, toward the tower the gravlifter was anchored to, just as Northover slammed thrust to the lifter’s drive.
It jerked forward, the half-hitches held, and the gravlifter flipped, hurling Northover out.
He fell, screaming, but Joshua had no time for his death. The grid’s power-hum was louder, and Wolfe felt pain grow, pain like his nerves were being stripped from his body.
He rolled over the side, dropped ten feet to the lower arm, found his feet. But that was no refuge. He remembered Frazier’s explanation that the power would come up the angled arm from the ‘tanks’ on the main tower.
He ran, nearly falling, to where it C-curved, slid down the curve, then leapt straight out, onto the top of the ‘tank.’ He almost fell, regained his balance, saw, hidden in the depths of the tower, notches that were some sort of service ladder.
He half-fell, half-jumped and had his hand in one notch, dangled as just above him, a series of violet fir
eballs slammed across the sky, dancing from tower to tower and the gravlifter exploded like a bomb.
The fireballs vanished.
Joshua swung, found another hand-hold, then his feet were in a notch. Quite suddenly his body spasmed. He held on until the reaction passed, then began the long, precarious climb down.
He’d walked almost two kilometers toward the base when the first gravlifter found him.
‘Four dead now,’ Scholar Frazier moaned. ‘Gods, everybody wants to be famous, but not for something like this! And who’ll be next?
‘We’re huddled in our rooms waiting for the next murder, scared witless it’ll be us.’
‘There won’t be any more murders,’ Joshua said firmly. ‘Now sit down, and put yourself together. I’ve got some questions.
‘First. That holograph of the house on the wall? Where’s it located?’
‘What? What the blazes does that have to do with anything? ’
‘Shut up and answer my goddamned question,’ Wolfe snapped. ‘Some bastard tried to kill me three hours ago, and did kill Northover. I’m the one who ought to be sitting there jelly-fishing, not you!’
Frazier gasped a handful of breaths like they were the last ones promised. He looked at the architect’s rendition of the lakeside mansion.
‘This is absurd . . . but it’s not anywhere. I’ll never be able to afford something like that. My wife and I had it made as, well, a dream-scheme. She said maybe it’d be a good luck charm, or encourage me to make some great discovery and win the Nobel or the Federation Prix d’Découverte or something that’s got a big fat wad of credits attached, and we’d find a lake and build our house.
‘I kept telling her I’m not much more than a science-drudge, hardly a Schliemann or Vauxton, and I’ll never be in the history books. But she keeps saying next time, next time I’ll find something big.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘She’s got more faith in me than I do.’
‘Evidently,’ Wolfe said. ‘Considering your affair with Mikela Tregeagle.’
Frazier jolted. ‘How did you find out . . . who told you?’
Wolfe didn’t bother answering.
