by Kathy Tyers
“Nothing today.” Libby gave her only a glance as she reached for the next prep, but Graysha saw suspicion in the tight set of her lips.
Saddened, she pulled an azotobacter-inoculated culture plate out of the wincubator. The growth gel medium’s surface had crusted, as expected. Sparse growth, distinct colonies—probably once shiny on this medium—had gone dull and dry-looking.
Well, her work was before her. She would spend the next hour comparing and cataloging spore samples.
After tea break, though, she had trouble concentrating, preoccupied with Chairman DalLierx’s condition and the rather exciting notion that her entire floor was momentarily under suspicion.
Another mysterious murder attempt. Wonderful.
And she couldn’t feel too excited, not until she knew DalLierx would pull through.
It could’ve been a colonist, she mused, staring out the break-room window over the water purification facility’s broad, flat roof to a dull-brown geometry of plowed ground. It would be interesting to find out if this attack fit a pattern, and she had recently met a sociologist.
Instead of returning to her lab from the break room, she walked straight to the elevator and waved at its call button.
In a second-floor office that smelled faintly of burnt vanilla, she found sociologist Benjamin Emerson standing beside a monochrome screen, idly scrolling it along while he smoked a straight-stemmed pipe. She’d known eleven-year-olds taller than this man. Maybe that was why he stood at the desk instead of sitting and why he chose to smoke. The scent evoked pleasant warmth in her mind.
“Graysha,” he said, brushing long black hair from his eyes. Instead of glassware and lab equipment, his shelves were lined with potted plants, subtly framing a collection of ancient scholarly books. “Good morning,” he exclaimed. “What brings you down here into the realm of irreproducible results?”
“A question.” Graysha sank onto a low stool to look him eye to eye. “About the Lwuites.”
He clasped the pipe’s bowl and exhaled. “Ah. You and three others this morning.”
“I suppose the poisoning brought them over, too.”
“It appears that way. Would you like the standard analysis?”
“We’ll start there.”
Dr. Emerson rested his pipe on a tabletop. “Our department’s main concern is with social dynamics—childbirth records, et cetera. The Axis Settlement appears well balanced, with a highly educated and artistic element and a conservative, righteousness-oriented element. Each is trying to prove it’s more polite, more willing to sacrifice, and so forth. We have factions, yet in a frontier culture, people are fantastically interdependent for survival and progress. Already they find their Gaea employees too liberal.”
“I would think any group that would come this far out and commit themselves this deeply would be strongly unified.”
“They do display signs of a persecution complex. And,” he added, “they’re determined to grow their own society in their own way.”
That made her laugh softly. “Not cooperative with Gaea sociologists, you’re saying?”
Emerson turned sideways, pulled on his pipe, and smiled.
“Have you sent anyone over to their church services?” she asked.
“I went myself. Twice.”
“Oh! And . . . ?”
He blanked the desktop screen and glanced out a window. From down here, the CFC plant’s smokestack looked even taller, reaching up out of the window’s frame. “The core of the services I visited seemed to be Noetic, as near as I could tell. The faith of human reason. Really, nothing one needs to join a church for.”
How true. Abandoning Novia’s Church of the Universal Father had left gaping holes in Graysha’s thought habits. Still, she hadn’t joined Einstein’s other major religious group because Noetics had no one to pray to.
She tucked her feet behind a stool rung. “Don’t the Lwuites have reference works?”
“Not on any files we can access. And every time we send an official query, they clam quiet and claim the Religious Liberties Act. Graciously but firmly.”
She eyed his bookends, a pair of medieval horse heads. “Why’d Gaea let them sign on?”
He shrugged. “Gaea, you may recall, was desperate for laborers. We did everything by the tutorial—notified them of official investigation. They gave every appearance of cooperating. Really, they don’t seem the least bit interested in spreading their own variant of truth.”
“Has anyone actually tried to join them?”
Dr. Emerson cocked his head, sparrowlike, pulled on the pipe again, and made a fragrant tobacco-and-vanilla-scented cloud. “What are you considering?” he asked.
What was she thinking? Accomplish two goals at once, maybe. Find out if they’re lunatics—and stay visible. “It occurs to me that they might give a sincere inquirer more information than they’d give an investigator.”
“We’re not interested in costumed espionage.”
“I understand.” Graysha stared out the window. North of the CFC plant, a domed rise—the underground hub’s roof—bulged up out of a rock pile planted sparsely with dwarfalfa.
She had promised to tell Emerson’s wife, Antonia Fong, if she learned anything definite about the cooling. So far, she’d found only what seemed to be a defensive virus on the Gaea net. “Then what about this poisoning business?” she asked.
Emerson’s voice came from behind her. “DalLierx seemed the perfect charismatic leader figure. We thought most Lwuites were happy with him.”
“Most.” A gust of Bday—Sunday—wind flattened the dwarfalfa. “But they voted against him and hired me over his protest, and it takes only one malcontent to make trouble. Does this attack make him a martyr to the rest of them?”
“It might, or it could weaken his image. Difficult to tell. We’re glad, for stability’s sake, that it looks as if he’s going to survive.”
“Does it?” Graysha spun around. “I mean, the micro techs won’t tell us anything. He’s going to make it?”
The sociologist frowned, resting both arms on his desk. “Yes, he is. We’ve had a standing call to the HMF. They upgraded his condition this morning from serious to stable.”
“I’m glad,” she said, and she meant it. Of course she wouldn’t wish death on anyone, but there was something else. As hard as this was to believe, here she was, attracted to another dominator-type male.
At least she could admit it to herself.
Emerson held his pocket memo against his mouth. “Enter, poll, DalLierx. Pro,” he said. Then to her, he added, “Are you? That makes three for, one against.”
Amusement distracted her. “Gaea’s having its own election? Jirina Suleiman, on my floor, said she heard a rumor the Lwuites suspect us.”
“Naturally. Just as we suspect them. Humanity is like that, you know.” He waved her out.
The second floor’s hallway, like the fifth’s, made a loop around the elevator, stairs, and a pair of prep rooms. Its single long window looked north-northeast. Sunlight glistened off the vast crop shelter. She walked past Nonliving Soils, just to be able to say she’d been there, then boarded the elevator again. Riding, she ran a hand back and forth on the cold metal door.
Now, unfortunately, she was alone with her feelings. She almost regretted finding out Chairman DalLierx was widowed. He opposed her very presence on his planet. Even if he didn’t already despise her, or at least suspect her, he wouldn’t look twice at a woman who’d be dead in fifteen terrannums. For that matter, she didn’t need the distraction from her work.
As for religion, if Lwuites would explain their beliefs to sincerely interested parties, she did have someone to approach.
She could give Crystal a call.
―――
Ari MaiJidda ran stairs two at a time back up to her office. “Look what a cleaner found,” she announced to the secretaries as she burst through the arch, dangling a small leather bag from one finger. “The missing insulin ki
t.”
The nearest secretary gasped. “Where was it?”
Ari waited until the room fell silent. Once she had everyone’s attention, she answered. “In a D-group locker.”
The room sprang to life. “Someone in D-group?”
“Who?”
“That’s terrible.”
It was close enough to the truth. Over the chorus of denials, Ari heard the near secretary speak again. “Which locker?”
“We’ll see.” Ari had already researched locker assignments, but for appearance’s sake, she slid around the desk, punched in a locker number on the woman’s keyboard, then stepped back. The others could draw their own conclusion.
“Oh dear.” The secretary raised a hand to her cheek. “Dr. Brady-Phillips seemed like a pleasant woman. But they’re often the worst, aren’t they?”
Accused
Graysha crossed the southern arc of the hub on her way home from work that afternoon after spending a frustrating hour on the Gaea net. The cooling references she managed to find followed no discernible pattern. The best of them merely posted snippets of data without comments or accompanying graphs.
She had jotted several onto a sheet of paper, starting a graph of her own, but so far it was so full of blanks that she couldn’t interpolate anything significant.
Someone called her name, and she stopped to look around. Crystal DalDidier waved from a bench near the hub’s central circle. Deciding she still had plenty of time before she needed to eat, Graysha walked toward her D-group friend with a spring in her step. “How’ve you been?” she asked, buttoning her overshirt against the hub’s pervasive coolness. She sat down.
“Better now, thanks.” Crys wore an embroidered smock over her browncloth pants. Pink spots bloomed on her cheeks.
“Morning sickness?” Graysha asked, smiling.
Crystal raised a hand off her lap, then replaced it. It was a helpless-looking gesture. “Oh. That’s right, I guess you wouldn’t know. I was born Crystal DalLierx. Lindon is my brother.”
Brother? Scooting back on the concrete bench, Graysha stammered to cover what felt like a terrible faux pas. Now that she looked for it, she saw the resemblance in Crys’s straight chin and innocent-looking brown eyes. “No, I didn’t know . . . I’m sorry. You say he’s doing better?”
“Thank heaven.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She’d hoped to befriend Crystal. Was that still possible? She looked around. No one appeared to be in earshot. “Crys,” she asked cautiously, “is there anything I can do to help with the poisoning investigation? I know I’m an outsider and not particularly trusted, but . . .” She trailed off, hoping Crystal would accept the wish, if not the ability, to support the Lwuites.
Crystal drummed her fingers on her legs. “Oh dear. Graysha, you’ll . . . you’ll probably be getting a call.”
“Oh. From the . . . you have a police force, don’t you?”
“More or less. It’s been consolidated with D-group.”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Well, I’m due to practice again, not tomorrow evening but the next. I’ll—”
“Um, Graysha?” Crystal raised her hand again. “You probably aren’t expected for practice.”
That didn’t sound good. “I think I am, unless I’m remembering the schedule all wrong. Isn’t tomorrow Windsday?”
Crystal clasped her hands. “I can’t believe no one told you,” she said.
“Crys, don’t play guessing games.”
“I’m not. It’s just that . . . this puts me in an awkward position.”
“I’m sorry,” Graysha said. “I don’t mean to.”
“I believe you.” Crystal laid a hand on Graysha’s arm, then said, “All right. Don’t go for D-group practice, because you’re being conditionally discharged.”
“What do you mean?” She pictured her hopes blown away like dry leaves by a Windsday gust.
“You’re specifically under suspicion.” Crystal spread her hands on the bench. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s ridiculous, but . . .”
The gist of Crystal’s hints hit Graysha like a concrete block. It was bad enough they didn’t want her in D-group, but— “Me?” she exclaimed, incredulous. “Your brother?”
Crystal nodded.
“I . . . What am I supposed to have done? No, wait.” She raised both palms. “You probably shouldn’t tell me.”
“If I don’t, somebody else will. It’s common knowledge. They proved that his nasal passages were infected with insulin-producing bacteria.”
“Infection,” she repeated numbly. No wonder—
“Evidently, microbiologists are especially suspect, since they’d know how to create that kind of infection.”
“Sure. But . . .” Graysha shut her mouth and swallowed. She might as well hope for immortality as try to convince these people to accept her. “Crystal, I’d never dream of—”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Crystal said it with conviction. “I think Ari MaiJidda did it. She’s the one person on this planet who could poison Lin and get away with it.”
Graysha fingered browncloth wrinkles alongside her knee. The hub seemed stuffy, cool though it was. “Why?”
Crystal’s loose braid slid past her shoulder as she leaned forward. “There’s bad blood between them from a long time back.”
“But—”
“She used to be pretty hot for him, but he turned her down. And I think she has more against him than the old grudge.”
So this was Crystal’s private suspicion, not general opinion. “At first byte,” Graysha said, “the idea makes sense. But don’t you think it’s pretty wild? There have to be others who—”
“MaiJidda’s got a hard reputation. She’ll never be suspected, because she’s supposed to want to beat him in a fair fight. But she’s also the one most likely to head up the investigation. It makes me furious.”
Graysha tried to imagine Coordinator MaiJidda as a poisoner and found she didn’t know the woman well enough, though she did tend to distrust anyone who reminded her of her sister, Asta.
But there’d been that missing protein-fiber meal on the first day, and the “accident” in the firing range. “I suppose any of us is capable of murder. Not that speculating would have brought your brother back if . . .” She let the thought go unspoken.
“He’s going to be all right,” Crystal said with a firm snap of the last word. “I just saw him. They’re going to let him go home in two days if he promises to rest. Fat chance of that. Once he’s loose he’ll work harder than ever, trying to catch up.”
“You’re probably right.” Everything she heard about him pointed to an amazing work ethic.
No! Do not admire that man!
As the thought flashed through her mind, a couple in their thirties strolled by. Graysha watched them pass, considering Ari against her own favorite suspect, Will Varberg. “Whoever did this is stupid to even think about killing a person. Coordinator MaiJidda isn’t stupid.” Neither, of course, was Varberg. She caught herself fiddling with browncloth again and folded her hands in her lap. “Well, maybe not stupid. But they must have no moral underpinnings at all.”
“There you have it. Ari MaiJidda. And she resents Lin for his morality.”
What had Ari done, try to seduce him? Graysha raised an eyebrow. She’d hate to be known for a lack of morality. Still, no one could base a murder accusation on such “evidence.” She nearly said so but decided against it. Having suspicions probably gave Crys a shred of comfort. “If she’s guilty, she’ll be caught.”
“Not likely.” Crystal shook her head. “But even if she is, Lin’ll want the charges dismissed. He’ll want her forgiven, since no harm was done. That’s the problem with our ‘moral underpinnings.’ According to the recompense law, crimes are committed against individuals, not the government, and victims can refuse to prosecute. Lindon introduced the law.”
Graysha tried to wrap her mind around a fistful of questions. Should she ask about the Lw
uite religion that those “moral underpinnings” suggested? HMF visiting hours? What was a recompense law?
She decided not to ask any of them. Crystal had brought out word of her brother’s condition, and that word was encouraging. Now that Graysha was certain he’d survive, she could concentrate on her own work.
Would her family have visited her if she’d been poisoned?
Forget it.
“Do you have other family, Crystal?” she asked. Somehow, she needed to end this encounter gracefully.
“Besides Duncan and our three-and-a-half? Lin and I have a brother, and our parents live at Center, west of here. They’ve just gone back. Now, on Duncan’s side I’ve got three nieces and two nephews,” she said with unmistakable pleasure, “though I have to admit Lin’s girls are the beauties.”
“I’ll bet,” Graysha murmured. An instant later, she wished she hadn’t spoken.
Either Crystal didn’t notice or she simply considered her brother’s looks a simple fact of life, like water and gravity. “Bee and Sarai lost their mother when Bee was only two,” she said. “Freak accident—she was on an observation deck, right in a meteor puncture’s kill zone. Six months pregnant. The doctors barely saved Sarai.”
“Oh.” Recalling the chill that had fallen on their conversation while watching the overflight vidi, Graysha grimaced. “The poor man. Why hasn’t he remarried?”
Crystal’s eyes narrowed. “Too busy. Always too busy for small things. Maybe this little incident will remind him he isn’t immortal. If so, Ari MaiJidda’s done him more good than harm.”
“If she did it.”
Crystal brushed dust off her pants. “It’s all right. You have to talk that way. But I’d appreciate your not casting aspersions on me for being convinced.”
“Heavens, no. I’m a newcomer. He’s your brother, and you know them both.”
Crystal toed the concrete under the bench. “I have to go.”
