by Vernor Vinge
Wil looked at the remaining holo. Yelén was in her library. Sunlight streamed through its fake windows. Night and day must have little meaning to Yelén; that made Wil feel even more tired.
Korolev diddled with something on her desk, then looked back at Wil. “Thanks for the compromise. I was on the verge of doing something…rash.”
“You’re welcome.” He closed his eyes a moment, almost succumbing to stun-induced sleepiness.
“Yes. Now we know our worst fears are true, Inspector. Agrav glowballs. Polka-dot paint. These are completely trivial things compared to what we have already given away. But they are not on the gift inventory. It’s just like Phil says. Marta’s murderer is not done with us. Someone or something is out there, taking over the low-techs.”
“You don’t sound so sure the Robinsons are behind it.”
“…No, that was partly wishful thinking. They have the clearest motive. Tammy would be the easiest to handle…No. It could be almost any of the high-techs.”
Brierson was too tired to keep his mouth shut. “Do we even know who those are?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if the murderer is masquerading as a low-tech? Maybe there’s a surviving graverobber.”
“That’s absurd.” But her eyes went wide, and for nearly fifteen seconds she was silent. “Yes, that’s absurd,” she repeated, with a trace less certainty. “I’ve got good records on all the rescues; we made most of them. We never saw any unusual equipment. Now, a masquerader might have his high-tech gear in separate storage, but we’d know if he moved much of it…I don’t know if you can understand, Brierson: We’ve had total control of their stasis from the beginning. An advanced traveler couldn’t tolerate such domination.”
“Okay.” But he wondered if Lu’s reaction would be the same.
“Good. Now I want to get your impression of what you saw today. I watched it all myself, but—”
Wil held up a hand. “How about waiting till tomorrow, Yelén? I’ll have things sorted out better.”
“No.” The queen on the mountain wasn’t angry, but she was going to have things her way. “There are things I need to know right now. For instance, what do you think spooked Kim Tioulang?”
“I have no idea. Could you see who he was looking at when he panicked?”
“Into the crowd. I didn’t have enough cameras to be more definite. My guess is he had lookouts posted, and one of them signaled that Mr. Bad was in the area.”
Mr. Bad. Phil Genet. The connection was instantaneous, needed no supporting logic. “Why make a mystery of it? Give Tioulang some protection and ask him what he has in mind.”
“I did. Now he won’t talk.”
“Surely you have truth drugs. Why not just bring him in and—” Wil stopped, suddenly ashamed. He was talking like some government policeman: “The needs of the State come first.” He could rationalize, of course. This was a world without police contracts and legal systems. Till they were established, simple survival might justify such tactics. The argument was slippery, and Wil wondered how far he would slide into savagery before he found solid footing.
Yelén smiled at his embarrassment—whether from sympathy or amusement he could not tell. “I decided not to. Not yet, anyway. The low-techs hate me enough already. And it’s just possible Tioulang might suicide under questioning. Some of the twentieth-century governments put pretty good psych-blocks in their people. If the Peacers inherited that filthy habit…Besides, he may not know any more than we do: Someone is backing the NM faction.”
Wil remembered Tioulang’s sudden panic; the man feared someone in particular. “You have him protected?”
“Yes. Almost as well as you, though he doesn’t know it. For the time being I won’t risk snatching him.”
“You want to know my favorite candidate for villain? Phil Genet.”
Yelén leaned forward. “Why?”
“He showed up just a few minutes after Tioulang took off. The man reeks of evil.”
“‘Reeks of evil’? That’s a professional opinion, is it?”
Wil rubbed his eyes. “Hey, you wanted to get my ‘impressions,’ remember?” But she was right; he wouldn’t have put it that way if he’d been thinking straight.
“Phil’s a sadist. I’ve known that for years. And I think he’s worse now that we’ve got all the low-techs out of stasis—you little guys are such easy victims. I saw how he worked you over about Lindemann. I’m sorry about stunning you, Wil, but I can’t tolerate any of the old grudges.”
Wil nodded, faintly surprised. There was something near sympathy in her voice. In fact, he was grateful she had stunned him down. “Genet is capable of murder, Yelén.”
“Lots of people are. What would you have done to Lindemann if…? Look, neither of us likes Phil. That by itself is no big deal: I don’t especially like you, and yet we get along. It’s a matter of common interest. He helped Marta and me a lot. I doubt if we could have rescued the Peacers without his construction equipment. He’s more than proved he wants the settlement to succeed.”
“Maybe. But now that everyone has been brought together, perhaps your ‘common interest’ is dead. Maybe he wants to run the whole show.”
“Hmm. He knows none of us have a chance if we start shooting. You think he’s really crazy?”
“I don’t know, Yelén. Look at the recording again. I had the feeling he wasn’t taunting just me. He knew you’d be listening. I think he was laughing at you, too. Like he was on the verge of some triumph, something the sadist in him couldn’t resist hinting at.”
“So you think he set up the glowball—and was laughing at us all the time he was ‘clueing you in.’” She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t make sense…but I guess I’m paying for your intuition as much as anything else. I’ll break a few more autons out of stasis, try to keep better tabs on Phil.”
She sat back, and for a moment Wil thought she might be done with him. “Okay. I want to go over your other conversations.” She noticed his expression. “Look, Inspector. I didn’t ask you to socialize for your health. You’re my low-tech point of view. We’ve got a murder here, incipient civil war, and everybody’s general dislike for me. Just about everything we saw today has a connection with these things. I want your reactions while they’re fresh.”
So they reviewed the picnic. Literally. Yelén insisted on playing much of the video. She really did need help. Whether it was the centuries of living apart or her high-tech viewpoint Wil didn’t know, but there were many things about the picnic she didn’t understand. She had no sympathy for the women’s dilemma. The first time they viewed the women’s meeting, she made an obscure comment about “people having to pay for other people’s mistakes.” Was she referring to the Korolev failure to bring womb tanks?
Wil had her play the scene again, and he tried to explain. Finally she became a little angry. “Sure they’ve got to make sacrifices. But don’t they realize it’s the survival of the human race that’s at stake?” She waved her hand. “I can’t believe their nature is that different from earlier centuries. When the crunch comes, they’ll do what they must.” Would the queen on the mountain also do her female duty? Would she have six kids—or twelve? Brierson didn’t voice the question. He could do without a Korolev explosion.
The sunlight streaming through Yelén’s windows slowly shifted from morning to afternoon. The clock on Wil’s data set showed it was way past the Witching Hour. If they kept going, he’d be seeing real sunlight, through his own windows. Finally the analysis wound back to Wil’s conversation with Jason Mudge. Korolev stopped him. “You can take Mudge off your list of suspects, Inspector.”
Wil had been about to say the same. He simulated curiosity. “Why?”
“The jerk fell off the cliffs last night, right on his pointy head.”
Brierson lurched to wakefulness. “You mean, he’s dead?”
“Dead beyond all possible resuscitation, Inspector. For all his God-mongering, he was no teetotaler. The aut
opsy showed blood alcohol at 0.22 percent. He left the party a little before you ran into Lindemann. Apparently he couldn’t find anyone who’d even pretend to listen. The last I saw he was weaving along the westward bluffs. He got about fifteen hundred meters down the path, must have slipped where it comes near the cliff edge. One of my routine patrols found the body just after you got back here. He’d been in the water a couple of hours.”
He rested his chin in his palms and slowly shook his head. Yelén. Yelén. We’ve talked all through the night, and all that time your autons have been investigating and dissecting…and never a word that a man has died. “I asked you to keep an eye on him.”
“Well, I decided not to. He just wasn’t that important.” Korolev was silent a moment. Something of his attitude must have penetrated. “Look, Brierson, I’m not happy he died. Eventually he might have dropped that ‘Third Coming’ garbage and been of some use. But face it: The man was a parasite, and having him out of the way is one less suspect—however farfetched.”
“Okay, Yelén. It’s okay.”
He should have guessed the effect of his assurance. Yelén leaned forward. “Are you really that paranoid, Brierson? Do you think Mudge was murdered, too?”
Maybe. What might Mudge know that could make it worth silencing him? He owned little high-tech equipment, yet he did know systems. Maybe he’d been the murderer’s pet vandal, now deemed a liability. Wil tried to remember what they had talked about, but all that came was the little guy’s intent expression. Of course, Yelén would be willing to play the conversation back. Again and again. It was the last thing he wanted now. “Let our paranoias go their separate ways, Yelén. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
For whatever reason, Korolev didn’t push him. Fifteen minutes later she was off the comm.
Wil straggled up to his bedroom, relieved and disappointed to be alone at last.
16
As usual there was a morning dream, but not the dream in blue this time, not the dream of parting, of gasping sobs that emptied his lungs. This was the dream of the many houses. He woke again and again, always to a house that should have been familiar, yet wasn’t. There were yards and neighbors, never quite understood. Sometimes he was married. Mostly he was alone; Virginia had just left or was at some other house. Sometimes he saw them—Virginia, Anne, Billy—and that was worse. Their conversations were short, about packing, a trip to be made. And then they were gone, leaving Wil to try to understand the purpose of the hidden rooms, the doors that wouldn’t open.
When Wil really woke, it was with a desperate start, not the sobbing breathlessness of the blue dream. He felt a resentful relief, seeing the sun streaming past the almost-jacarandas into his bedroom. This was a house that didn’t change from day to day, a house he had almost accepted—even if it was the source for some of the dreams. He lay back for a second; sometimes he almost recognized the others, too; one was a mixture of this place and the winter home they bought in California just before…the Lindemann case. Wil smiled weakly at himself. These morning entertainments had greater intensity than any novel he’d ever played. Too bad he wasn’t a fan of the tearjerkers.
He glanced at his mail. There was a short note from Lu: Tammy had agreed to a three-month bobblement, subject to a ten-hour flicker. Good. The other items were from Yelén: megabytes of analysis on the party. Ugh. She’d expect him to know all this the next time they talked. He sat down, browsed through the top nodes. There were a couple of things he was especially curious about. Mudge, for instance.
Wil formatted the autopsy report in Michigan State Police style. He scanned the lab results; the familiar forms brought back memories, strangely pleasant for all that they involved the uglier side of his job. Jason Mudge had been as drunk as Yelén said. There was no trace of any other drug. She had not been exaggerating about his fall, either. The little guy had struck the rocks headfirst. Wil ran some simulations: A headfirst landing was consistent with the cliff’s height and Mudge’s stature—assuming he tripped and fell with no effort at recovery. Every lesion, every trauma on poor Mudge’s body was accounted for; even the scratches on his arms were matched to microgram specks of flesh left on bushes that grew close to the path.
It was all very reasonable: The man had been seen drinking, had been seen leaving the picnic in a drunken state. From his desperate eagerness of the afternoon, Wil could imagine his state of mind by evening. He had wandered down the path, self-pity and booze exaggerating every movement…If it had been anyone else, he might have been stopped. But to approach Jason Mudge was to risk sermons unending.
And so he was dead, like any number of drug-related semisuicides Wil had seen. Still, it was interesting that the actual cause of death was so perfectly, instantly fatal. Even if Yelén’s autons had discovered Mudge immediately after his fall, they could not have saved him. Except for multiple gunshot wounds and explosions, Wil had never seen such thorough destruction of a brain.
It might be worth going over the fellow’s past once more, in particular Wil’s last conversation with Mudge. He remembered now. There had been some strange comment about Juan Chanson. Wil replayed the video from Yelén’s auton. Yes, he implied Juan had once been a chiliast, too.
Now, that was easy to check. Brierson asked Yelén’s GreenInc about the archeologist…Chanson was well covered, despite his obscure specialty. As a kid, he had been involved with religion; both his parents had been Faithful of the Ndelante Ali. But by the time he reached college, whatever belief remained was mild and ecumenical. He was awarded a doctorate in Mayan archeology from the Universidad Politécnica de Ceres. Wil smiled to himself. In his time, Port Ceres had been a mining camp—to think that a few decades later it could support a university granting degrees like Chanson’s!
Nowhere was there evidence of religious fanaticism or of any connection with Jason Mudge. In fact, there was no hint of his later preoccupation with alien invasions. Chanson bobbled out in 2200, and his motive was no nuttier than most: He thought a century or two of progress might give him the tools for a definitive study of the Mayan culture.
…Instead he wound up with the greatest archeological mystery of all time.
Wil sighed. So in addition to the late Mr. Mudge’s other flaws, he had been spreading lies about his rivals.
17
The next few days fell into a pattern, mostly a pleasant one: The afternoons he spent with one or another group of low-techs.
He saw several mines. They were still heavily automated. Many were open-pit affairs; fifty million years had created whole new ore beds. (The only richer pickings were in the asteroid belt, and one of Yelén’s retrenchments was to give up most space activities.) The settlement’s factories were like nothing that had existed in history, a weird combination of high-tech custom construction and the primitive production lines which would eventually dominate. Thanks to Gail Parker he even saw an NM tractor factory; he was surprised by a generally friendly reception.
In some ways the North Shore picnic had been misleading. Wil discovered that, although most people agreed with Tioulang’s complaints against Korolev, few ungovs seriously considered giving their sovereignty to either the Peace or New Mexico. In fact, there had already been some quiet defections from the statist camps.
People were as busy as Rohan claimed. Ten-, twelve-hour days were the rule. And much of the remaining time was filled with scheming to maximize long-term gain. Most of the high-tech giveaways had already been traded several times. When he visited the Dasguptas’ farm he saw they were also making farm machinery. He told them about the NM factory. Rohan just smiled innocently. Dilip leaned back against one of his home-brew tractors and crossed his arms. “Yes, I’ve talked to Gail about that. Fraley wants to buy us out. If the price is right, maybe we’ll let him. Heh, heh. Both NMs and Peacers are heavy in tool production. I can see what’s going on in their tiny brains. Ten years down the road, they figure on a classic peasant/factory confrontation—with them on top. Poor Fraley; sometimes
I feel sorry for him. Even if the NMs and the Peace merged, they still wouldn’t have all the factories, or even half the mines. Yelén says her databases and planning software will be available for centuries. There are ungov technical types better than anyone Fraley has. Rohan and I know commodity trading. Hell, a lot of us do, and market planning, too.” He smirked happily. “In the end, he’ll lose his shirt.”
Wil grinned back. Dilip Dasgupta had never lacked for self-confidence. In this case he might be right…as long as the NMs and the Peace couldn’t use force.
Wil’s evening debriefings with Yelén were not quite so much fun, though they were more congenial than the one after the North Shore picnic. Her auton followed him everywhere, so she usually heard and saw everything he did. Sometimes it seemed that she wanted to rehash every detail; finding Marta’s murderer was a goal never far from her mind, especially now that it seemed part of a general sabotage scheme. But just as often she wanted his estimate of the low-techs’ attitudes and intentions. Their conversations were a weird mix of social science, paranoia, and murder investigation.
Tammy had been bobbled within hours of the picnic. Since then, there had been no signs of high-tech interference. Either she was responsible for it (and had been terribly clumsy), or the glowball and paint were part of something still inscrutable.
Apparently the low-techs were oblivious to this latest twist. Over the last few weeks they had seen and used an enormous amount of equipment; most had no way of knowing the source or “sanctity” of what was provided. And Yelén had erased the polka-dot graffiti from Wil’s gate. On the other hand, it was certain that some NMs knew of the bootlegging, enough that Tioulang’s spies had gotten the news. Knowing the NM organization, Wil couldn’t imagine any conspiracy independent of Steve Fraley.
Yelén dithered with the notion of seizing Fraley and his staff for interrogation, in the end decided against it. There was the same problem as with grabbing Tioulang. Besides, Marta’s plan seemed to be working. The first phases—the giveaway, the establishment of agreements among the low-techs—were delicate steps that depended on everyone’s confidence and goodwill. Even in the best of circumstances—and the last few days did seem about as good as things could get—the low-techs had all sorts of reasons for disliking the queen on the mountain.
