by Kathy Tyers
“Sometimes. Hard work is 95 percent of the job, but there’s always inspiration.”
“Will you feel safe going back to work?”
How about that—he’d gone from suspicious to concerned. This session, painful though it was, really had gotten her somewhere. “Um, mostly.”
DalLierx grasped his chin, covering his upper lip with one finger. Even under glaring fluorescent lights, his pale face was beautifully boyish. “If there’s Gaea money at stake, once you go public your co-workers will become competitors.”
“But I’m not actually going for the reward. I only want the truth. If they find the organism quicker, that will be good for Goddard.” On the other hand, if she could lay claim to even 1 percent of the reward money, it would help clear her debts. Don’t get greedy! she ordered herself. And stop admiring him, for heaven’s sake.
“Depending on what you find,” he said, “we might be able to send word out to Gaea’s Copernicus Office. We wouldn’t dare go over Lee’s head for anything less than solid proof.” He sat motionless, staring at a spot on the concrete floor.
His thoughts, she realized, had taken a different track from hers. When it came to Goddard’s weather balance, he was not going to forgive blindly, the way he might refuse to prosecute someone who tried to kill him.
Fascinating.
She glanced at the observation window again. “I think I should go.”
His head came up. “Oh. Yes, we’ve kept you too long. I apologize once more.”
“I’m glad to see you . . . up.” She pulled her overshirt back on. “I think I see now why the USSC outlawed human genegineering. Splicing a bacterial gene is relatively easy. Controlling its effect is impossible.”
Lindon shook his head. “Don’t apologize for what you said about your mother.”
“I need to let you rest,” she said again. Mentally she stood him next to Paul. Lindon’s attractiveness had a gentler, more persuasive quality. He wasn’t constantly pushing at her libido or her loneliness—not deliberately, anyway. She found that attitude much more appealing.
He pushed up to stand, then clasped her hands. “We do thank you.” He paused there, looking as if he wanted to say more . . . Looking, also, like a little boy who desperately needed a nap.
She stepped toward the door, tugging her hands free. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Lindon raised one slanted eyebrow. “Please be careful. I will be praying for you.”
Her stomach lurched. Novia generally used those words as a reprimand. “I’ll be careful,” she said, frowning.
Copernicus
Novia Brady-Phillips stood by the docking area’s stippled gray wall, waiting for her assistant to process their baggage. That tended to be a lengthy procedure, and her left knee throbbed.
Fortunately, Copernicus Habitat furnished entertainment for those waiting on the docks. Projected onto a nearby wall, a real-time image of the hab’s huge toroidal shape rotated slowly, filling the screen with shining metal struts, antennas, and hatches.
She’d seen similar donut-like images. Newer than Einstein or Newton, Copernicus’s design was the latest in habitat technology, with the toroid’s inner “ceiling” walled in transparent composites to let in more light energy than a cylinder’s window strips could admit. Larger than Newton or Einstein, Copernicus’s new design made it an ambitious project. Its location, orbiting Epsilon Eridani at one of Goddard’s stable Lagrange points, made it isolated.
She checked the time, guessed that Jambling might be halfway through his task, and pushed along the docking area.
Copernicus customs would probably allow all her gear, no matter how arcane its circuitry (not to mention the military hardware), because a Eugenics Board seal covered each of its locks. Usually some bureaucrat flexed muscle at her nettechs, but Jambling knew how to deal with bureaucrats. That was part of his training.
Farther along the Immigrants’ Wall, she found a semitransparent, three-dimensional habitat map. Clustered around the ring’s fifty-kilometer “floor” were offices, laboratories, the green cubes that symbolized schools, and yellow stripes for transport facilities. Between those clusters, an inner reach was partially planted in crops and parklands, dotted by subground accessways to the shielded outer skin.
It looked emptier than she’d expected. Evidently Copernicus was having trouble attracting settlers.
She spotted Jambling by his height, walking toward her between clusters of passersby, and she gestured him toward the nearest elevator. Following a boxlike baggage cart, brandishing its remote control in front of him, he steered it into the elevator box.
When they emerged at Roosevelt Settlement, she was glad Nettech III J. L. Jambling sauntered beside her, showing troublemakers his alert eyes and all-business expression. This neighborhood was crusty with light industrial sprawl, two-story warehouses, and thriving saloons. She’d never smelled so much liquor in broad daylight.
Lovely, she observed. The businesses that grow up around spaceport docks . . . even when those docks are built down a level out in the habitat’s skin.
She eyed her escort. Jambling stood 190 centimeters tall, but he was so thin, with pale skin stretched over prominent bones, he looked unhealthy. His curly black hair looked greasy, though he’d just shampooed. His “muscle” consisted of deadly toys concealed on his person.
She did wish she’d told him to rent something they could ride, not just a baggage cart. Paced by his remote, the cart slid along tracks embedded in the walkway. A door opened on her right, exuding fumes of industrial composites.
Novia stepped up her pace.
Within five minutes, they reached the governmental plex. Novia checked into a two-bedroom suite with central office room, showered, and then waited for Service to bring up the lunch she’d ordered upon check-in. The sooner she washed the artificial cherry taste of protein-fiber meal out of her mouth, the happier she would be. Not liking to waste time waiting, she pointed her keyboard’s short antenna at a wall socket. Jambling already sat in front of his. “Are you working on Goddard?” she asked.
“No.” Cracking his knuckles, he squinted at her. “Checking out Copernicus. Major social groups—Daughters of the Crossing, Alphan Knights, and two lodges of Freemasons. Sixteen trade unions, three churches, his-and-hers correctional facilities, four prep schools, and a tech-ed. What else would you like to know?”
“Nothing.” Sitting this close to Goddard and the expected fruits of her labors, she felt that exploring Copernicus was wasting time. She logged in her priority code and added the Gaea reception number for that nearby planet. “All right, Mr. Jambling. We have a Goddard listing for a Gaea net, open, and a Colonial net, closed. Which do you want to tackle?”
As she expected, that got his attention. He cracked his knuckles again, stretched his elbows, and reached for his keyboard. “Colonial for me.”
She resisted the urge to smile. The door chimed. “That will be lunch, I think.”
Jambling kept poking keys.
“Lunch,” she repeated. “Jambling.”
Frowning, he pushed away from his station and sauntered across the room’s gray carpet. Daylight from a single square window puddled at center floor. It was the only bright spot in an office that was otherwise decorated in institutional fade.
Before pressing the Lock button on their doorframe, Jambling slipped one hand into a pocket. Novia knew he was armed. She hadn’t come to like him during the shuttle trip, but she respected his attention to detail.
The door slid away. When Jambling reached forward with both hands, plainly satisfied that the caller posed no threat, she turned back to her work.
Gaea net opened immediately to her codes. Divisions: Botany, Engineering, Entomology . . . She skimmed downward. Medicine, Meteorology, Microbiology . . .
There.
Jambling set a covered plate beside her. Mumbling thanks, she pulled off the cover. She’d ordered chicken or “an acceptable local subs
titute,” and the cubed meat steaming in thin brown sauce looked sufficiently like chicken. She forked down a bite, then reached back over and keyed in a division search for Graysha.
The automated net kept a running account of on-line activity. Graysha’s personal file also opened to Novia’s executive code, and it showed that at first she’d done settling-in research, then checked microbial balances at various sites. There was a search of abstracts, then more routine activity.
Novia flexed her fingers, warmed by a sense of watching a fast-forward scan over her daughter’s shoulder, retracing the weeks since she arrived. It was good to see that the girl had been working and even better to see she’d started researching the Lwuites right away.
Novia ate several more bites of chicken, sopping up sauce with narrow noodles, then exited Microbiology and picked up Medicine. She keyed back to the day of Gray’s arrival. To her dismay, an account logged by a Dr. Yael GurEshel recorded Graysha’s immediate hospitalization. Novia read details, saddened by the realization that one day, she would read of her daughter’s death this way.
Scrolling down hastily, she observed log-in data on other patients, men and women whose names, injuries, and ailments meant little. One entry did catch her eye, a classification change from “illness” to “attempted murder.” That piqued her professional curiosity, and she recorded the patient’s name, DalLierx, to check later.
The name turned up promptly again, though—on an authorization code used to block Graysha’s attempt to send a personal letter.
DalLierx. Novia noted the name and his title: Chairman for Colonial Affairs.
Bingo.
Working away at her chicken cubes, she eyed an overview of clinic activity at the Axis Plantation site and let her instincts absorb patterns. Later, as her subconscious digested that information, she would realize where something was amiss.
Next, she started checking to see if these Lwuites maintained another major clinic. The main one, there at Axis Plantation, wouldn’t be the site of any illicit activity.
Aided by a hardcopy map from EB Einstein, she accessed the other settlements’ medical data. Center’s clinic was pitifully small and appeared to send its critical patients elsewhere. At Hannes Prime, slightly higher per capita activity offered promise. Most of the clinic admissions there were listed as “mining accidents.” That, too, she would check later.
When Port Arbor’s admissions data appeared, she stabbed her last noodle in triumph. Port Arbor admissions were double Hannes’s, but major causes usually weren’t listed. There, if anywhere, the colonists were conducting illegal activities.
Unfortunately, Graysha’s name didn’t appear on the patient roster.
Novia had arrived in-system too early.
She could wait. It would be amusing to extract as much data as possible from this distance.
“Anything interesting on the Colonial net?” she asked Jambling.
He raised one shoulder, twisting his neck sideways in a weird asymmetrical stretching motion. “I’m not in yet, but it feels like a standard access lock. I’ll have it momentarily.”
―――
Graysha slept little that night. Rolling over and over, she tried to formulate arguments that would persuade Melantha Lee to let her start looking for a CFC-metabolizing organism. She guessed the colonists monitored her computer now, though she’d spotted no sign of it. When she dreamed, her mother chased Lindon DalLierx down an endless concrete corridor, brandishing a hypo full of gamma-vertol over her head. It glowed like a torch.
Awakening in a sweat, she lay staring at swirls on the concrete ceiling. If Novia had sent her here, she must look no closer at Lwuite secrets. Instead, she had to solve the atmospheric crisis—if that was possible—and leave immediately. That would protect the colonists, but it would end her fading hope for gene healing.
But if Novia wasn’t involved, she would be needlessly throwing away the best opportunity of her lifetime by leaving Goddard.
“I will be praying for you,” he had said. Maybe he didn’t mean that she needed to mend her ways or change her mind. She’d seen concern, not antagonism, in his eyes. She envied his apparent ability to forgive his assailant. How much more like the Christ she’d read about, long ago, than anything her mother ever said or did.
Mother! Graysha rolled over again. What, she wondered, should she do now? She was risking other lives, not just her own, by staying here.
Welling up from under her thoughts came an inexplicable sense of assurance. Justice would be served despite her fears, it whispered. Ultimately, she was responsible for her own actions and the task destiny gave her. She must not endanger others deliberately, but she must not live in terror of making a mistake, lest she prove unable to act when the time was vital and right.
Was that man praying for her right now, this minute? Wouldn’t it be nice if life were that simple, she observed, clutching the feather pillow. Still, that moment’s reflection snipped the threads of tension that kept her awake. Too tired to fight sleep any longer, she pressed her eyes closed and let the threads fall away.
―――
The next morning, she fought Dday darkness and the temptation to doze with a double dose of coffee, lurching through catch-up work sent down from Varberg’s office. Trev vanished from her awareness once she set him to washing glassware.
“Good morning, Graysha.”
Rubbed r’s and the scent of lime made her suspect Paul, and swiveling in her chair, she saw him. He lounged against the doorway, indolently examining his fingernails, then raised his eyes to examine her. “You’ve been the busy one,” he said.
She hoped she looked presentable, resisted straightening her hair tie, then wondered why she felt so uncomfortable when Paul looked at her in that intensely sexual way. Maybe she should just enjoy the attention. “Being a murder suspect is time-consuming,” she said lightly.
“Yes, isn’t that ironic? I probably want him dead worse than you do, and you were the one accused.” His teeth gleamed when he smiled.
Prickly discomfort settled between her shoulder blades. She disliked such talk. Paul really might have tried to murder Lindon . . .
Or it might’ve been Varberg. Even Jirina!
This was awful. All her co-workers were suspects, and she honestly cared who tried to do this awful thing.
Carefully, she said, “His sister thinks it was Ari MaiJidda.”
Paul returned his attention to his shapely fingernails. “Have you checked Wastewater lately?”
“No, I guess I haven’t. I probably should.”
“Let me know if you’d like company. I can probably break free.”
There it was again, the ache deep in her body from too many nights alone. “Thank you, Paul. You are a gentleman and a scholar.”
But as soon as he’d gone, Trev poked his head in. “He’s the one who tried to off DalLierx,” he whispered loudly. He glanced into the hall. “I’d bet a week’s pay.”
“Nah,” she whispered back.
Trev wrinkled his nose and pulled at one edge of his straggly new mustache. “Think Paul’s too nice-looking to have done it?” He ducked back out, then reappeared. “Either him or Varberg. Remember the gribby that died?”
Graysha bit her lip. Suppose Varberg had tested his organism on an animal first, one whose immune system was genegineered to resemble a human’s.
Rattled, she plunged into the effort of composing her research proposal. Though drafting it took the rest of the morning, she simultaneously watched three automated spore counts in the outer lab. With that accomplished, she tabled it onto the Ellard file to let the wording rest awhile.
Varberg poked his head in just before quitting time. Trev scowled, seized a tube rack, and hurried out behind Varberg’s back. “What’s this I hear about your being questioned?” the big man asked. “Are the Lwuites trying to deprive me of another soils person, or is the position sheer bad luck?”
“They’re a strange gang,” she said, tr
ying to look straight at his eyes. Libby’s inability to meet her gaze had been her own confirmation they suspected her. “Really strange.”
“Well, if you need a character witness, just call me.”
“Thank you.” Not at all pleased by his offer, she forced a smile. Varberg grinned.
―――
After work, Graysha accepted Jirina’s invitation to jog in the hub. The black woman’s legs were so much longer that they couldn’t run together, so Graysha brooded her way alone around two long laps.
“Don’t slow down, Blondie,” came a dark voice behind her. Jirina shortened her stride to match Graysha’s, then accelerated again. “Come on. You’re stronger than you think.”
Graysha submitted to being run hard one more lap, then staggered off the unofficial track at the hub’s edge, near the bench where they had left a pair of towels. As Graysha picked hers up, one corner flicked a bush with broad green needles. A whiff of rosemary startled and invigorated her.
“How goes it?” Jirina reached for her own towel.
Graysha wiped sweaty rivulets off her forehead. “Oh, Jirina,” she gasped, “life has never been so complicated.”
Even sweat-streaked, Jirina’s long dark face had an uncanny beauty. “Tell!” she exclaimed.
Puffing out her cheeks, Graysha exhaled and draped her rosemary-scented towel over her shoulders. “Well. You know this man I’m supposed to have tried to murder?”
“Right. I know you, woman. You’d pull the wings off butterflies if you could find any.”
“That’s me. So tell me how stupid it would be to fall for Lindon DalLierx.”
“Oooh.” Jirina turned around and walked backward, facing Graysha. “It wouldn’t be hard, Blond Woman. It wouldn’t be hard. With a face like that, mmm. Are you?”
Graysha shook her head. “I don’t know. It must be the pressure of the situation. You know, the accusations, the worry about being framed for trying to kill him. But I’ve been intimidated by a man before. Never again. If I did, it would be back to the old downward spiral.”
Jirina dangled her towel over one shoulder and shifted her pace to a hip-swinging strut. “You don’t see this lady in any hurry to bed down permanently with any given male.”
