The staircase ended at a wide platform. Just ahead, Giday’s little house was so high up that the roof poked up above the talltree’s leaves. When she arrived at the address, a Guardian was just switching on the holographic generator. Around the house appeared the same ring of blue light Ara had seen at Iris Temm’s home. Ara walked through it and the generator beeped an alarm, just as the other one had. Ara wondered if she was going to be crossing scene barriers for the rest of her life. The Guardian recognized her and waved her on. Ara wasn’t sure she wanted to go but knew she should.
Linus Gray, his face matching his name, met her just inside the door. The stench washed over Ara and made her gag. She suddenly wished she hadn’t eaten that sundae at lunch.
"Here," Gray said, pressing a dermospray to her upper arm. The drug thumped home.
"What is it?" Ara demanded
"An neurological inhibitor," Gray explained. "It’ll put the olfactory bulb in your brain to sleep for about an hour. You won’t smell a thing."
He was right. The horrible stench had already faded. Ara nodded her thanks and glanced around the room. Giday’s house was little more than a cottage, with three tiny rooms and a bath. Ara could see into every room from the front door. The miniature living room contained one easy chair, a short sofa, and a set of wall-mounted shelves that displayed various knickknacks. On the couch was a lumpy bundle covered by shiny black cloth. Two Guardian technicians were just starting to tuck in the edges. Ara caught a glimpse of discolored flesh. Tan was watching, her eyes flat and angry. A small gravity sled hovered in front of the couch like a coffee table.
Gray handed Ara a set of gloves. She put them on. "Do you want to see the body?" he asked.
"No," Ara said flatly. "What about her finger?"
"Cut off and replaced," Gray said. "The DNA of the new finger matches Iris Temm’s. We’ve already compared a sample of Giday’s DNA to the samples we collected from the finger sewn to Vera Cheel’s body. It’s a match. Giday’s DNA also matches the blood Tan found on the shirt in Dorna’s room."
"So Dorna’s definitely the killer, then," Ara murmured.
"Sure looks that way," Tan said.
The technicians finished tucking the cloth. With a soft hissing sound, it sealed itself around the corpse and the couch cushions beneath it. The techs gently lifted the entire bundle onto the sled. The first tech adjusted the sled’s controls until it hovered at waist level and maneuvered it out the door. The second technician nodded at Tan and followed.
"How long was she in here?" Ara asked.
"Preliminary scan suggests about two weeks," Tan said.
"Two weeks?" Ara gasped. "How did she go this long without being found? Who found her?"
Tan took out her data pad and consulted notes. "The downbelow neighbors called in to complain about a weird smell. One of our boys came up to look around and found her. No one noticed Giday was missing because she was supposed to have left for an off-planet vacation fifteen days ago. Spaceport records show she had a ticket to DelaCruz, but she never boarded the ship. Between that and the fact that her house is up so high hid the smell for a while, no one even knew she had been murdered."
Ara thought about a woman named Diane Giday in the Dream taking care of last-minute business and looking forward to her vacation. Perhaps she had hummed to herself a bit or sighed with satisfaction at the completion of her last piece of work. Then a dark man appeared and turned the Dream into a nightmare, leaving her corpse to rot in her cozy little house. Ara’s mouth turned down with silent fury.
"If she’s been dead for two weeks," Ara said in a flat voice, "there’s no way I can recreate the scene. Too many minds won’t be in the same place, and most of the others will have forgotten the patterns."
Tan nodded. "I thought as much, but figured I’d ask anyway."
"Giday was probably the thirteenth victim," Gray said. "That means the killer is escalating."
Ara gave him a blank look.
"He means the attacks are coming closer together," Tan explained. "Look, Prinna Meg was murdered about three years ago, a few weeks after Dorna Saline was recruited into the Children, in fact. About a year later, Wren Hamil is killed. Eleven months after that, Iris Temm is murdered and we bring you in to have a look. Nine months later, this woman Giday dies, but we don’t find the body until now. Two and a half weeks after that-two and a half weeks-the monster goes after Vera Cheel. There’s going to be another one, Ara, and soon. We have to find this guy."
"The word is out among the Children," Ara said. "Female Children aren’t supposed to enter the Dream alone, and they need to be ready to leave it on an instant’s notice. But you know how it goes-plenty of people disregard the advice. At last count, we have over three thousand Sisters, Mothers, and Grandmothers, and most of them figure that they’re either more powerful than the stalker or the odds are against any one of them being attacked."
"Technically they’re right about the odds," Linus said. "Less than one in three thousand."
"Tell that to Mother Diane." Ara shuddered. "I certainly wouldn’t take the risk."
"Let’s do the search," Tan said. "See what clue the killer left for us this time."
Searching the cottage didn’t take long. Ara found six pairs of earrings lined up on Giday’s dresser and a thirteenth singleton broken in the wastebasket. "It was probably fourteen earrings and the killer broke one to make a ‘set’ of thirteen so he could keep one and leave twelve."
"Dorna’s a she," Tan said. "Unless there’s something the monastery medics don’t know about."
"I don’t think it’s Dorna," Ara said.
Linus Gray, who was carefully stowing the earrings in an evidence bag, gave her a hard look. "Why not?"
"Call it a feeling," Ara said. "It’s just-it’s just-I don’t know. Out of character for her."
"For Dorna, maybe," Tan pointed out. "But who knows about one of her alternates?"
"I just think we need to keep an open mind," Ara said. She started to sit on Giday’s narrow bed, then stopped herself. The crime scene technicians might want to examine it.
Tan nodded. "I agree. And you’re right-it’s possible Dorna didn’t do any of it. But the fact that she disappeared right after one of the murders says she’s got something to hide."
"Which may not be connected to this case," Ara said.
"And there are those nightmares about people dying in the Dream," Tan said. "Kendi mentioned her talking about them."
"She’s not the only one," Ara countered. "I’ve had a few bad dreams myself."
"And I found Giday’s blood on her sleeve," said Tan.
"Someone could have planted it there," Ara said. "If I had chopped someone’s finger off and there was even the tiniest chance some of my victim’s blood got on me, I’d burn my clothes. I certainly wouldn’t hang them in my closet for the Guardians to find. And if I were afraid the Guardians were close to catching me, it’d be awful tempting to plant some phony evidence in the room of someone who had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances."
"Do you think Dorna’s dead somewhere?" Gray sealed the bag.
"I don’t know," Ara said, worried. "I hope not. But it’s a definite possibility. And what if she was murdered to keep her quiet about something?"
Tan put a gloved hand on Ara’s shoulder. "Look, I don’t want it to be Dorna either. But she’s the obvious suspect right now and we have to talk to her even if her disappearance and the blood are completely innocent. Come on-let’s see if we can find anything else the killer left behind."
This time it was Gray who noticed it-a music disk titled Thirteen Lucky Love Songs. "The last song has been wiped," he reported.
"All we’re doing is proving that the same killer got each one of them." Ara tried to pace the miniature living room, then gave it up. There wasn’t enough room. "This doesn’t give us any clues to who the killer is."
"He-or she-will slip up eventually," Tan said grimly. "The nano-second that happens, we’ll nail the b
astard."
Ara’s gaze drifted about Giday’s living room. The denuded sofa seemed to mock her, a blot in the otherwise tidy house. It was the house of a woman bent on enjoying her vacation until at the last minute a lunatic had crushed her mind and destroyed her body. On the wall above the couch hung a lot of framed photographs and holograms interspersed with the occasional certificate of award.
"Has someone told her family?" Ara asked. "I’m figuring she wasn’t married."
"No, she wasn’t, and not yet," Tan responded.
Ara got up and went over to investigate the certificates more closely. One of them was a commendation for outstanding work in multiple message transmission in the Dream. It was signed by one Tara Linnet, Manager for Dreamers, Inc. Ara blinked, her heart suddenly pounding.
"We’ve been stupid!" she almost shouted. "God-completely stupid!"
Tan, who had been talking to Gray, jumped in surprise, then recovered herself. "What are you talking about?"
"There!" Ara pointed to the certificate. "Right there. We’ve been ignoring a potential lead."
Gray stepped forward. "In recognition for outstanding contribution and work in multiple message transmission," he read. "So?"
"Isn’t it obvious?" Ara said. "Giday worked for Dreamers, Inc., before she came to the Children of Irfan. They’re a corporation that offers Silent communication for a price."
"I’ve heard of them," Tan said. "What’s the big deal?"
"You said one of the problems with tracking down information about the killings on other planets is that there are so many law enforcement agencies that don’t talk to each other and compare notes," Ara said. "But what about the corporations?"
"Go on," Tan rasped.
"Dreamers, Inc., has more employees than some governments have subjects. They’re not just multi-national-they’re multi-planetary. But for all that, they’re is still a single organization. It doesn’t matter if one branch falls under one government and a different branch falls under another-it’s still a single unit. And you can bet that if someone’s been killing their employees and chopping off their fingers, they’ll know about it. Why don’t we ask them?"
Tan looked excited for the first time since Ara had met her. "You’re right! The corps can cut straight across police boundaries."
"There’s Dreamers, Inc., and the Silent Partners," Gray said, ticking off his fingers, "and Silent Acquisitions-"
"Silent Acquisitions only deals in Silent slaves," Ara said. "They don’t hire out Silent."
"Wonder if Dorna passed ever through them." Tan toyed with her braid. "The records that came with her were incomplete, and you can bet I checked."
"That’s pretty common," Ara said. "I was the one who bought and freed her in the name of the Children, and the clearinghouse I found her in typically didn’t give anything but a short medical history. Previous owners were kept in strict confidence."
"Why do they do that?" Gray wanted to know.
"Because sometimes people own slaves in places where slavery is illegal," Ara replied. "They keep the slaves ignorant this fact. It’s easier than you might think, especially if the slave doesn’t speak the local language. And a lot of slaves are abused until they acquire a slave mentality. It wouldn’t even occur to them to try escaping or to demand their release. It sometimes takes years of counseling to bring them out of it."
A breeze wandered through the windows, making the curtains flutter. Ara thought she caught a whiff of decaying flesh and wondered if the shot Gray had given her was beginning to wear off.
"At any rate," Tan said, "we need to start checking with the corporations. The killer’s MO is unique, so they’ll probably have no trouble remembering it if they’ve seen it. Then we just find out if they ever owned someone named Dorna Saline, and-"
"That might not work," Ara pointed out. "It’s common for buyers to change the names of their new slaves. It reinforces the slave mentality-you don’t even own your name-and it muddies the trail if the purchase was illegal. Half the time the slaves themselves don’t know their owner’s real name or the name of the planet they lived on. Dorna, if she’s the killer, may have had a different name with every owner. For all I know, Dorna made up her current name. She was only listed as a lot number on the auction catalog."
"You didn’t bother trying to check?" Gray asked.
Ara shrugged. "Why should we? Like I said, the previous owner is kept anonymous, and we give our new people as much privacy as we can, since slaves have had so little of it. It means a lot to most of them, being able to choose their own name. Some keep their slave names as is or they change the spelling or pronunciation. Some use a name from their childhood. Others make up brand new ones. Kendi did that, I’m pretty sure. I have no idea what name he was born with, and I’ve never asked."
Gray deflated a bit. "How will checking with these corporations help us find Dorna’s hiding place?"
"It won’t," Ara said. "But right now we don’t have definitive proof that Dorna’s involved in the murders at all. If we find another place that had these finger-chopping murders, we can cross-check names of Silent employees and slaves with the monastery records of Silent who arrived here before the murders began. We might get lucky."
"More sifting," Tan sighed.
"I believe a wise woman once told me-how did the saying go?" Ara said. " ‘Welcome to the tedious side of Guardian work’? "
"Very funny."
The rotten smell grew stronger. Tan sniffed the air, apparently noticing it herself.
"We should get out of here before our suppressants wear off," she said. "I’ll let the techs know we’re finished so they can do the fine-tooth comb thing. Ara, we need to contact some of these corps. Can you do it this evening, meet on your turf at, say, seven?"
"You want me to come with you?" Ara said.
"You know slavers. I don’t," Tan said. "And thank god for that. I’d much rather deal with killers."
At seven o’clock Ara was in her pleasure garden. The fountain made pleasant noises and the pear and orange blossoms smelled exquisite. Usually the place felt quiet and relaxing, but now there was an undercurrent of tension and she felt an urge to keep looking over her shoulder. Twice she spun around expecting to see a looming dark man with a hat that hid a leering face and both times she saw nothing. When Ara felt a presence at the edge of her turf, she had to muffle a scream before she realized it was only Tan.
"Please come," Ara called.
Tan appeared, and the Dream rippled briefly around her. "You look nervous."
"Let’s just get started," Ara said. "I have a contact at Dreamers, Inc. Take my arm and I’ll move us."
Tan obeyed. Ara closed her eyes and cast out her senses. Dreamers, Inc., kept a permanent presence in the Dream, and the pattern of thought was familiar to Ara. She located it and focused on it. They were here but she wanted them to be there and they would be there now. The familiar wrench cut through her and she opened her eyes.
The brown desk and the red Oriental carpet stood in the middle of a stark, white space. There were no walls, no ceiling, no doors or windows. Just empty whiteness with a room-sized square of colored silk in the middle of it. A human man, thin and spare, sat behind the desk with his hands primly folded on the blotter. An inkwell and quill pen sat to one side of a small sign that read Welcome to Dreamers, Inc.. Everything about the space and the man said receptionist. Ara knew that there were actually close to a hundred receptionists on duty at any given moment to field and direct the countless mundane inquiries the company received every day, but the human mind was not geared to register hundreds of receptionists and thousands of questioners occupying the same space, and Ara’s subconscious automatically filtered out what her conscious couldn’t deal with. Everything she didn’t need was relegated to background whispers.
"May I help you?" asked the man in a reedy voice.
"My name is Araceil Rymar," Ara said. "This is Inspector Lewa Tan. I need to talk to Marco Clark. Is he in the Dream?"
"Tell him that I need to speak with him immediately."
"To Dream Engineer Marco Clark," the man said. "Message begins: Araceil Rymar needs to speak with you immediately. Message ends. Is that correct?"
"Yes, thank you." Ara took Tan’s arm and with a wrench they were back in Ara’s pleasure garden. Birds twittered and bees buzzed among the blossoms.
"Couldn’t you tell yourself if this Marco guy was in the Dream?" Tan asked. Her voice once again was full of rich, low tones.
Ara shook her head. "I’ve only met him in the Dream, never in person. We’ve never touched, and I’m not good at finding people I haven’t had physical contact with. Marco can find me, though."
"So where now?"
"Let’s try Silent Acquisitions. They deal exclusively in slaves, so there’s a good chance Dorna passed through them at one time or another."
Another wrench and they were standing in another receptionist foyer. This time the rug was blue and the desk was a chrome and steel fortress and the person behind it was a red cone with four flexible arms and three eyes, but it was still clearly a receptionist foyer. A hovering sign behind the creature read Silent Acquisitions, Ltd.: Where Your Tastes Are Met.
Ara again introduced herself and Tan. The cone narrowed its eyes. "Are either or both connected with Children of Irfan?" Its voice was like a spoon plopping in cold pudding.
Uh oh, Ara thought. "Why do you ask?" she said aloud.
"Please answer the question," the creature plopped. "Are one or both you connected with the Children of Irfan? Please answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There are no lies in the Dream."
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