Grantville Gazette, Volume 73

by Bjorn Hasseler

  "You did good," Andy repeated.

  I grunted acknowledgment. If he knew I'd heard him, maybe he would let me rest.

  What I'd done was hold myself together through a tag-team interrogation by a dozen agencies' experts at the United Worlds counterterrorism center. Because that's what we were embroiled in: terrorism. There had been no ransom note—for me, much less the quarantined asteroid—because we were dealing with extremists. They didn't care about money. They worshipped Earth.

  Their issue was with humanity and, more broadly, the billions of people (and their cattle) overloading the planet. It took Spacer-developed resources to make the current population supportable. On that single point, Darin and I would have agreed. Grant that dependency, and how do you fix the "problem?" By starving the beast. By cutting off Earth from those resources. By making humanity live within the planet's carrying capacity. I had not forgotten Darin's slip of the tongue. Spacers weren't human? Then we, doubtless, were expendable. Unlike the nonhuman, non-cattle fauna who did matter, that distant third of all other terrestrial animal biomass.

  Where were Darin's cronies? Possibly in hiding, as the Chicago PD still assumed. My personal belief/conclusion/dread? They had scattered, en route to off-world destinations, there to build and deploy devices like the one they had forced Les Hodges to beta test. The field trial had been a success: built with readily available supplies and equipment under microgee conditions, then functioning just as intended. As I knew from firsthand experience . . ..

  The spooks, if not one hundred percent convinced, had at least conceded the possibility. And so, resources beyond the company, beyond metropolitan police, beyond the minimalist government favored by off-world settlements, would be assigned to tracking down the cabal—before, I sincerely hoped, Darin's plague shut down space travel. At national labs, scientists would tackle the problem of determining what the plague was, how to counteract it, what code updates to the Solar System's myriads of printers and synthesizers might impede its production.

  All in a race against time . . ..

  Oblivious to my angst, Andy asked, "So, ready for dinner? You've earned it. I know a great sushi place."

  "Another time," I said. But while I was too tired to eat, sleep beckoned.

  And more than either, I needed to come to grips with my fears. If the contagion were ever set loose on Ceres . . ..

  "Car, how long to the hotel?" I asked.

  "Ten minutes," it answered.

  I didn't make it that long without dozing off.

  "We're here," Andy announced. Still out of it, I did not respond till he gave my shoulder (the uninjured one) a nudge. We had pulled up to the curb outside the hotel entrance. "Can I give you a hand up to your room?"

  "I've got it," Maureen said. "I'll get him tucked in."

  If only there were time to sleep. "Have a few minutes for a drink, Andy?"

  "Sure," Andy said. His comp rang as I began climbing out of the car. "You two go ahead. I'll be right up."

  I let the exo march me across the lobby to the elevator. Ineffably weary, unspeakably worried, the exo got me down the long corridor to our room. As I decanted whiskey from the minibar into three glasses, Maureen scanned all about our suite with a gadget from her purse.

  "We're clear," she said. "What's going on?"

  "Let's wait for Andy."

  When he arrived, he arched an eyebrow at Maureen.

  "You, too?" she said. "I just swept for bugs. We're fine."

  "Ready for some good news?" he said. "That call downstairs was from one of the folks we just met with. Their facial rec has already tracked down your vegan buddy. She'd been to Midway, all right. She flew to Mojave Spaceport, and from there to an O'Neill habitat at L5. They spotted her about to board a shuttle for the return flight."

  "Is she in custody?" My spirits rose—

  And were as soon dashed, as Andy shook his head. "Habitat law enforcement thought they had her cornered. She went out an airlock. No suit."

  Spaced herself! Even as my gut lurched, a part of me took grim satisfaction in that gruesome death. A part of me wanted all those fanatical bastards pitched out of an airlock. If they had their way? If their plague ever got loose, destroying suits, eating vacuum seals? Hundreds, thousands, of innocent Spacers would be the ones dying of explosive decompression. My wife, family, and friends all too possibly among them.

  "But they'll recover her comp," Maureen said. "That's all we need. Right? To get the recipe?"

  "The comp wasn't on her," Andy said. "They're reconstructing her movements through the habitat, to find where she stashed it. No joy just yet."

  Except they wouldn't find her comp, and not only because having the recipe in hand would be too easy. "You said she was ready to board her return flight. Then she'd already made and deployed her device. As a security measure, I'll bet she tossed the comp into a recycling bin."

  Like Anisha Chatterjee, reduced to organic feedstock on a distant, contaminated rock. I shuddered.

  "The locals will keep looking," Andy said. "And they'll hunt for devices like what those miners found. A bomb squad is being dispatched to L5 as we speak."

  "If anyone finds a bomb," I predicted, "it'll be set with a long delay. For maximum impact, and to give minimum warning, they'll aim to strike everywhere at once."

  "Scary," Andy said, "but logical. And a silver lining, too, if correct. It'd mean we have time. Anyone in the cabal going to the Belt will be awhile yet in transit. Before they get there, maybe we'll have another face or three to search for. The intel types are tracking down Darin's known associates, and the neighborhood tree huggers, and recent university dropouts to see who among them also dropped off the grid."

  Maureen came over to sit beside me on the sofa. "That was Andy's news. There was something you wanted to bring up."

  "I know I can trust you both." Her, for saving my life. Him, for introducing me to the highest levels of counterterrorism. To not rescue me, or to not make those introductions, would have been simple enough.

  "But you trust no one else," Andy completed. "Yes, this has been hard. Yes, we're not out of the woods. But you can let down a bit. I'll grant you the L5 action wasn't a complete success, but it's progress. The rest of the terrorists are doubtless flying a lot farther. The spooks have time to find any device at L5, to identify Darin's accomplices, to sort out this whole mess."

  I downed my shot, and raised the empty glass for a refill. Andy delivered it, and I downed that, too. "And who will sort out matters within the company?"

  "What do you mean?' Maureen asked.

  Andy's eyes just narrowed.

  I said, "Darin knew that his father's crew was in detention, incommunicado. And he wasn't surprised when I said that rock had been evacuated."

  Andy stiffened. "No. You can't believe that."

  "I can," I said. "I do. There is a leak. Someone inside the company is involved in this mess. Somebody well-placed, high up, because no one else would have known those things."

  "On Ceres?" Maureen asked.

  I shook my head. "Here on Earth, I have to believe. No need to coerce Les Hodges to do their field trial if they had had a collaborator on Ceres. Or anywhere else in space."

  "Then what . . .?" Andy trailed off, his face ashen.

  "What do we do?" I said. "We three get back to work. We have our own private investigation to run. And we dare not fail."

  Because if we did, the toll would be a lot higher than two dead.

  ****