Grantville Gazette, Volume 73

by Bjorn Hasseler

  ****

  Chicago's main museum complex sat alongside a freakily huge lake. There, on Day One, I observed (admired would have been an overstatement; these things had all begun to look alike) yet more artwork and fossils. Traveling inland, I whiled away Day Two gawking at wondrous beasts at the Brookfield Zoo. I wasted far too much time both evenings streaming local news feeds and surfing Earther social media, incredulous that anyone could believe the overpopulated home world would be better off without lunar He-3 or Belt rare earths and precious metals—and somehow unable to look away.

  And louder than ever, the words echoed in my brain—

  Two dead. Two dead. Two dead. Two dead . . .

  On my third day in Chicago the tourism act ended. Either no one was surveilling me, or I lacked the skill to notice them. Regardless, the clock was ticking.

  Two dead. Two dead. Two dead . . .

  I began with the last address I had for Darin Hodges: a name conspicuously absent from the collection of lobby buzzers. "I'm a friend of Darin's father," I told the apartment manager, a glum, elderly fellow with the droopy jowls of a St. Bernard. "I promised the old man I'd take Darin out to dinner."

  Only Darin hadn't lived there in months. Skipped out owing rent, the manager said, chatty after I paid the young man's arrears. Everything Darin had left behind—no inventory had been taken, of course—had long since been disposed of through a consignment shop (which kept no records of its customers) or recycled.

  No clues to be had then, from his possessions, to the young man's whereabouts.

  The University of Chicago online directory did not list Darin Hodges, but a snapshot of that directory from the Wayback Machine confirmed that, in the previous semester, he had been a student. I roamed the echoing corridors of Watson and Crick Hall, asking about him, until a young woman with blue-and-mahogany-striped hair and gold hoop earrings pointed me to what had been Darin's office as a research assistant. Former officemates there and, once I tracked down the professor, Darin's erstwhile dissertation adviser, claimed they hadn't been surprised at Darin's dropping out. He had been distracted for months, they said, doing more coffeehouse BSing than research. BSing about what? Economics. Or politics. Maybe tree-hugging. Labeling his hobby horse didn't seem worth the effort. More discouraging, no two of them agreed when they had last seen him.

  If anyone as much as suspected Darin had been abducted, they kept it to themselves. Clearly, no missing person report had been filed. Chicago PD would have found these same acquaintances as readily as had I.

  Mentions of coffee were, if not productive, at least timely. I got a recommendation for a nearby coffee bar where, over a double espresso, battling exhaustion, for the umpteenth time I considered more technological methods of investigation. If I hadn't had the skill set, I'd never have gotten into Les Hodges's computer. I wouldn't even be on this quest. I wouldn't be achy and bruised inside the damned exoskeleton, without which I could not as much as get out of bed on this damned planet.

  If I accessed the younger Hodges's financial accounts, I'd have a better idea when he had been snatched. The latest transaction might even suggest where he had been snatched. Then, by hacking the city's archive of public-safety surveillance, with facial rec I might spot the actual kidnapping. Maybe, even, the kidnappers. But the prospect, however unlikely, of getting caught and serving years in this barbarous gravity once again deterred me.

  We'd call hacking Plan B.

  Darin's father was in biotech, the professor had offered confidentially. Was I aware of that? (Yes.) Perhaps an advanced degree in biotech had never been Darin's idea. He certainly had some kind of issue with his father. (Okay, I hadn't known that. Not for certain. To be sure, the paucity of messages from Darin on his father's computer had implied as much.)

  And maybe the young man's adviser was onto something. Somewhere along the way I heard that Darin had volunteered as a docent at the nearby Oriental Institute. Showing ancient Middle Eastern artifacts? That was not exactly a typical hobby for a budding biotech engineer. I plodded the few blocks to the museum, passing a line of posters on utility poles proclaiming a week-earlier protest over Spacer imperialism. All that the arduous trek got me was three more sorry-haven't-seen-hims.

  Outside the museum, with evening falling, a car with heavily tinted windows pulled up. The Uber to return me to my hotel, I thought, till the rear curbside window slid down a few centimeters. From within the vehicle, a decidedly non-synthesized voice said, "I hear you've been asking about me."

  ****

  I struggled to contain my shock.

  "Darin Hodges?" I said. This was, without a doubt, the "missing" son. It wasn't just that he took after his old man, with the same slot face, cleft chin, and close-set blue eyes. More times than I cared to remember, I had watched Darin in the vid from his father's hacked comp. I saw the same thin lips, the same slight leftward bend to the nose, and the same curly black hair.

  "Yes." I heard the click-thunk of a door unlocking. "Get in, please."

  I did. And as the car sat at the curb, my mind raced.

  The terrified young man in the vid, handcuffed to a metal-frame chair, pleading for his father's help, had had a black eye and a split lip. Had cringed from a ski-masked, voice-disguised someone threatening his slow death unless the elder Hodges did as directed. The passage of time might explain the fading of bruises, but not the young man's freedom—much less why, to protect his son, Les Hodges had . . . done what he had. Apart from a few people within the company, no one knew that.

  I hadn't anticipated Darin finding me. That left me winging it. I temporized, "How did you know it was me asking around?"

  "We don't see a lot of middle-aged Spacers around here."

  "Your father is a middle-aged Spacer," I reminded. (Earthborn, and so a shorter-than-two-meter pipsqueak, but a Spacer nonetheless. Belters crazy or driven enough to visit must be in short supply, though. I sure as hell looked forward to going home.)

  "Uh-huh. And how often do I ever see him?"

  "Let's start over." I introduced myself, my spiel basically what I'd used with the apartment manager. I concluded, "When your dad heard I'd be in Chicago, he made me promise to take you to dinner."

  Sarcastically: "So how is dear old Dad?"

  "Fine, the last I saw him," I lied. "So, dinner?"

  "Why not? A man's gotta eat."

  The address Darin told the car turned out to be for a just-off-campus hole-in-the-wall. It struck me as unbusy, even for not quite six on a Thursday evening. Then again, what did I know of Earth collegian dining habits? The hostess, an Earth-tall, perky brunette whom Darin seemed to know—I speculated that she, not the food here, was the main draw—escorted us to a booth in the rear. Her perfume, a floral scent I recognized but could not have named, started my nose running.

  Serapes, piñatas, and mariachi music announced that dinner would be Mexican. When the stoop-shouldered waiter brought chips and menus to the table, I ordered margaritas and nachos, exhausting my knowledge of the cuisine. The menu covers proclaimed Proudly Vegan, and my expectations for the meal ebbed further—not that my dining experience was what mattered.

  "Make them frozen," Darin appended. The waiter nodded.

  "So," I began.

  "So," Darin repeated. "Tell me. Are there many hu . . . Earthers in the Belt, or is it just my father?"

  Humans? Implying I was not? "Quite a few, as it happens. Lots of opportunity out there. The pay is good. That's why your dad went. To provide for his family."

  "To abandon his family, you mean." Darin peeled the adhesive paper strip from his paper-napkin-wrapped silverware. Rolled the strip into a tight cylinder. Unrolled it. Coiled the band again, even tighter.

  Even I could read that body language. How deep did the resentment go? Changing the subject, I tapped my menu. "So, vegan?"

  "Do you know what three animals are the top contributors to Earth's biomass? Do you?"

  "No idea."

  "Guess."

  "E
lephants? Then whales?" I'd started us down this rabbit hole by commenting on the meatless menu. "And cattle."

  "Cattle first, then humans. And a very distant third? Every other kind of animal on the planet, combined. Elephants are massive individually, but together they still comprise only a fraction of one percent of the biomass of just cattle. That's how few elephants remain. And how many cattle we keep. And what a blight humanity has made of itself."

  "Oh," I offered quietly. It did not placate him.

  "And do you know why so many cattle?"

  Because, as I'd been learning, there was nothing like a good steak. Synthed meat—synthed any food—was a poor imitation of the real thing. "No, why?"

  "Because there are so many people. And do you know why?"

  From doing what came naturally? "No, why?"

  "Spacers," he snapped. "For a while, it looked like humanity, finally, had come to its collective senses. Had realized our world has its limits. Had realized that too many of us can only mean too little of everything else in nature. There was hope, at the brink of the precipice, that the human population would stabilize. Then the goodies began arriving from off-world, and people—the fools—forgot all about restraint. It doesn't matter if we tell ourselves the sky's the limit. The planet knows better."

  In other words, more anger at his father. Shrinks had a term for that kind of misdirected emotion. Displacement, was it? I preferred his officemates' description: coffeehouse BS.

  By any label, Darin had no idea the sacrifice his father had made. For him. "Les was very proud of you. You know that, don't you?"

  "Was?"

  Oops! "Was and is. I haven't seen him in months. I'm sure he's still proud of you."

  "Not proud enough ever to show up at a Little League game. Or attend an award ceremony. Not proud enough to come to my graduation." Darin plowed, scowling, through a litany of grievances. Les footing the tuition bill at an Ivy League college, and then for three years of grad school, did not merit a mention. Nor did pleading for his father to save his life enter into the diatribe. Finally, the young man shook it off. "How is it you know Dad, anyway?"

  "I'm his accountant." I wasn't, of course, but access to Les's company HR file let me improvise. "He talked about you a lot. And about your mother, of course. He misses her." It seemed like a safe bet. Sally Hodges had passed away two years earlier. A half-billion kilometers away at the time, Les had missed the funeral. Doubtless his absence was another black mark. "Anyway, Les made me promise to look you up if I made it to Chicago."

  "So you said."

  Did he look skeptical? I couldn't decide. Then again, I hadn't gone into accounting for my people skills. I mean, does anyone?

  The waiter finally returned with our drinks.

  Darin downed a healthy swig. "Miners need accountants?"

  "Everyone needs an accountant."

  "That's what's wrong with the world. No offense."

  I sampled my own margarita, and found salt crystals along the glass rim off-putting. Where I come from, we mix in a pinch of salt, because drink bulbs don't have rims. And a Belt margarita never came slushy, because ice chips would clog the nipple. Also, maybe there was too much Triple Sec? All in all, a disappointment. "No, what's wrong with the world is that everyone needs a lawyer."

  Darin managed a laugh. "I'm sorry to hear that that pestilence has even gotten to the Belt. What's it like out there?"

  Here, at last, was a topic about which I could discourse on autopilot. I kept looking for a segue, but what is the proper transition to, "How did you get away from your captors?"

  Because, by rights, the kidnappers should not have let him go. Not yet.

  ****

  I used to say that I work for evil geniuses.

  That doesn't mean that I much like the company. I do respect the hell out of them. No one becomes the richest outfit in the Belt, or comes to dominate the Solar System market for precious metals, by accident. Bottom line: the company controls many of the most valuable commodities in the Belt. It decides if and when any of its scarce resources get offered for sale—and so, it keeps those metals pricey.

  Suppose you somehow find a way to raise enough money to go asteroid hunting on your own. Suppose that, against daunting odds, you discover the mother lode. Do you try somehow to develop it on your own, market the ores on your own, compete against the wealthiest, savviest, most hard-nosed bunch around? Or do you exchange what you've found for a stake in the company? I'll give you one guess which usually happens.

  The Belt is way too vast for any law—except the law of the jungle—to apply to rocks that again and again wander millions of kilometers from civilization. The company can sustain its wealth for only as long as no one else knows the orbital parameters of the celestial bodies it mines. That only works using the strictest of security measures.

  Over the years I've performed audits on many company rocks, mother lodes of platinum, iridium, and other precious metals—and I still haven't a clue to the location of even one of them, any more than do the miners. On every trip, the autopilot had complete control of my ship, while I hadn't as much as a porthole by which to guess at my route. And once on site? The smartglass of company-provided pressure-suit helmet visors allowed no star, moon, or even planet to be seen. Oh, and the printers aboard company ships and in company mining bases would self-destruct if I tried to make lenses for a telescope, or hi-res optical sensors, or parts for any other prohibited gear.

  Also high on the taboo list? Anything that someone might employ to build a radio transmitter of any higher wattage than what a spacesuit helmet uses, or a laser of any nontrivial output level. Once on a company rock, I couldn't signal my location, any more than could the miners. Between drop-ins by someone like me, bringing whatever messages had accumulated at company headquarters, a mining crew was out of touch for the duration of their standard-year-long duty tour. Which meant, ironically, a company auditor had, all unknowingly, hand-delivered the ransom file (encrypted, of course) to Les Hodges.

  How about narrowing down the search with math and pure logic? Deducing, or at least approximating, a rock's orbital characteristics from the known parameters of my departure point, flight duration, and acceleration? The company had me there, too. Each flight vectors away from its starting point in a random direction. Each flight somehow involves a half dozen or more midcourse corrections. Much of that travel/meandering (inside a little, windowless can, remember, locked out of all ship's sensors) has to be idle time to defeat attempts at dead reckoning. Bottom line? Corrupt or coerce a company miner—or an auditor—all you want: they still can't betray the location of a mine.

  So, did I work for geniuses? Hell, yes. But I hadn't encountered true malevolence till my last Belt outing, and it wasn't the company's evil.

  ****

  "All very nice," Darin said, back to questioning my seeking him out. He leaned across the table, studying me. "But oddly persistent, considering. I mean, how often can you get to Earth? You could've just explained that I'd left the university and you couldn't find me, then spent the day sightseeing."

  "When I make a promise, I—"

  "You've let your ice melt," he interrupted. "We can't have that." Our waiter was nowhere in sight, and Darin called out to the hostess. "Another round. Especial, por favor."

  "Special, how?" I asked.

  Darin grinned. "You'll see."

  I took a new tack. "Why did you drop out of school?"

  "Not important."

  Waiting him out led only to an awkward silence. "What are you doing now instead?"

  The hostess bustled up to our table with fresh margaritas. The especial variety added paper cocktail umbrellas. I got the glass with the tiny red parasol. Darin's was blue. She said, "Enjoy."

  "Well, Darin, what have you been up to?" I tried again.

  He raised his glass, waiting till I did the same. "Bottoms up."

  I took a healthy swallow, then waited.

  "You know," he drawled, "someone else came ar
ound, a couple months back, likewise curious about me."

  "Oh?"

  "A bill collector, or so he asserted. He also put a disproportionate amount of effort into finding me."

  "To collect the rent you had, well, forgotten to tend to before moving on?"

  "Drink up, Dad's friend." Darin downed more of his margarita, then waited till I followed suit. "For my back rent? That's a good one. No, the guy worked for the company."

  "What company?" I asked, with the sinking feeling that I knew. The company. Two months ago, I had returned to Ceres. Two months ago, my employers first saw the coercive vid on Les's hacked computer.

  If the company had hired an investigator Dirtside, why hadn't they said so? And what else hadn't they told me?

  Toppling onto the table, spilling what remained of the drugged margarita, as awareness faded, I intuited an explanation. Or maybe it was Darin's smirk that suggested the answer.

  That first investigator had never reported back.

  ****

  Two dead. Two dead. Two dead . . .

  Coming out of my drug-induced fog, I took solace from not having become number three. Yet. Or perhaps the bullet I'd dodged was becoming number four, the fate of the Earther "bill collector" remaining ambiguous. Either way, I silently chewed myself out for having so thoroughly scrubbed my comp of Maureen's spyware. Damn my obsessive-compulsive thoroughness anyway! Never mind the company's penchant for secrecy, right about then I could have used a competent someone tracking me. Not that I had any idea where my comp was, other than gone from my pocket. Ditto, the passport sleeve for my current ID. I would have felt their lumps under my ass.

  I'd awakened at least once before into this dismal, windowless storeroom. Apart from a clearer—if still throbbing—head, nothing had changed. I remained immobile, helpless. The cyclopean red eye of a camera still guarded me.

  Just maybe I remembered Darin and the pretty hostess maneuvering me from the booth. Either way, I'd lost consciousness before exiting the vegan restaurant. At least I assumed we had left. The indistinct murmurs that penetrated the walls and closed door did nothing to suggest I was in the back room of a restaurant.