The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  ‘Your brother’s daughter?’

  ‘One and only. Bart died about five years ago, one of those wasting diseases no one in the interior knows anything about, and by the time he got to the ’Soilcoast, it was too late to do anything. You’d think by now they’d have improved the medical system in the Deepsoil towns, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s a materiel question, Ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. No way to ship the big diagnostic machines in. No way to take in the life support systems. Shit. They take in anything else that suits them, in itty bitty pieces, if necessary, with a whole troop of mechanics to put it together again. Oh, well, no reason to fuss about it now. Bart’s long gone, and my bitching won’t bring him back. Anyhow, if you could get hold of those people and set up dates for me, this afternoon or tomorrow morning, I’d appreciate it. I’ll call you just before noon, if that’s convenient.’

  ‘You have other plans for this morning?’

  ‘I, Blanchet, am going to have my annual medical checkup. That’s why I’m here. Orders from up top.’

  There was no shortage of diagnostic machines at the Splash One medical center. No shortage of technicians either, Don thought, as she was prodded, poked, bled, and otherwise sampled for the tenth time in as many minutes. ‘This is the last one,’ the anonymous white-coated person said with at least a semblance of sympathy. ‘You can get dressed now.’

  The physician, who appeared harried and abstracted, leafed through the chart twice before looking up at Don with a furrowed brow. ‘You didn’t have that wound on your arm last time. No record of it in your history. Well, there wouldn’t be. It’s obviously fresh.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a recent injury.’

  ‘When? How?’

  ‘Oh, about ten days ago. A fall. A ’ling blew its top when I was on a narrow trail, and I fell against a sharp edge. I reported it to the Prior when I got back to the Chapter House. It should be in the record update.’

  ‘Oh, I see it. Yes. Well, just checking. Healing clean, is it?’

  ‘Seems to be healing well, yes.’

  ‘Do you want the scar removed?’

  ‘Perhaps later. It still takes two or three weeks of regeneration treatment to take scars off, doesn’t it.’

  ‘With the small machines, which is all we have available, yes. About that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have time right now. I’ve got several explorations to do for BDL before Old Moon’s out. I’ve got some leave coming up next Dead Moon, though. Maybe I’ll do it then.’

  ‘Suit yourself. If you want it done in Northwest City, don’t go to the BDL medical center there. Word to the wise, right? Go to this woman. You’ll have to pay for it, but you’ll be better satisfied.’ The physician handed over a note with a name on it.

  Don made an appreciative noise, both for the information and because she had been afraid there would be close questioning about the injury. Not that it wasn’t very much like a dozen crystal cuts she’d had over the years. It could have been a crystal cut.

  But it wasn’t.

  Shortly after she had returned to Northwest from the Enigma, she had calmed down and begun to realize how dangerous her position might be. This realization was followed by a period of indecision during which she had found an excuse to make a quick trip to Splash One, ostensibly only to attend a government house reception. During the reception, she had managed to get lost on the way to the women’s convenience long enough to hold a lengthy whispered conversation in a dark and supposedly vacant office, guaranteed by her friend to be free of ears or eyes.

  ‘I don’t suppose it would do any good to suggest you just forget the whole thing?’ her friend had murmured.

  ‘I’ve explained why that won’t work,’ she had said. ‘This information has to get out. It has to be made public.’ They both knew it. Don’s friend had worked for an intelligence agency at one time and was well aware that this was the kind of information that had to be publicized. As public information, it was a danger to no one. As a secret, it was a death trap. And the consequences to the planet if the information was kept quiet were too terrible for either of them to contemplate.

  ‘BDL isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘That’s why I can’t do it,’ Don had whispered. They pretty well control me. I know damned well my Priory reports where I go, what I do. Not just me. All Explorers. No. It’s got to be someone else who does it. Someone BDL doesn’t control.’

  Together they had crafted a hasty plan, every step of which made the danger more and more clear. When they parted, it was as co-conspirators. Wheels were in motion, very secret wheels. Donatella returned to Northwest with a sense of mixed relief and apprehension, taking refuge in routine duties, everyday activities. Behind her in Splash One, her friend would move things along.

  There had been one loose end. She had had to fill out a ‘lost or stolen equipment’ report to cover the synthesizer that she had taken to Splash One and returned without. But after that, nothing had happened. For weeks, nothing at all.

  Until ten days ago when she had been sent out on a routine two-day trip to explore a pocket of deepsoil behind an offshoot ridge of the Redfang Range. It had seemed an odd assignment, even at the time. The offshoot, Little Redfang, was only half a day’s travel from Northwest. The Passwords to a good part of the range were Donatella’s own work, and most of them had been part of the repertory for almost a decade. All that was wanted this time was some minor variation that would get wagons through the Fanglings in a slightly different direction from that taken formerly – a route that Don could see no sensible justification for – and virtually any apprentice Explorer could have done the job.

  Still, an assignment approved by one’s Prior was an assignment not to be argued with. She remembered being preoccupied with her personal problem, worrying at it relentlessly as she rode. The plan was dependent on so many variables, so many little things she couldn’t control. She was having second thoughts, trying to decide if she should make another trip to Splash One or whether it was too late at this point to do anything but ride it out. Indecision was not an ordinary thing with Donatella, it irritated her. Explorers couldn’t be indecisive. Those that were didn’t last long. The morning’s trip made the matter no clearer, moreover, and by noon she reached the peril-point and had to force herself to set the subject aside. She told herself she would think about it again that night, over her campfire.

  It took most of the afternoon working with synthesizer and computer, trying permutations of a few phrases that seemed likely, to come up with a new score on the music box that quieted things down very nicely. It was a fairly simple variation of a score she knew well, one she felt competent to use in singing herself through the range – just as a test, and certainly not something that was required of an Explorer – and it was early evening when she started.

  The way she chose was a narrow ledge along a towering face and above a sheer drop into a gorge of living crystal. The gorge gleamed with amber and hot orange lights through its generally winey mass. All the Redfang Range was bloody, as evil looking in its way as the Enigma, though a whole lot simpler to get through. Her narrow ledge wouldn’t do as a trip-trail, but it would serve to get her into the deepsoil pocket, after which she would find some way out that wagons could travel. As she sang her way along the ledge, she told herself that hell must look much like the gorge below her. The lower the sun dropped, the more it looked as though it were on fire.

  She didn’t hurry during the transit. Afterward she realized it was entirely likely that someone had followed her from the peril-point. Certainly that someone knew something about Tripsinging, for the attack came at precisely that moment when she moved out of peril. A black clad, black masked form, barely visible in the dusk, came from slightly to one side and behind her.

  If it hadn’t been that she turned just at that moment in response to some tiny sound; if it hadn’t been that the sun glinted on the knife blade as she turned, she would not have seen her attac
ker at all.

  As it was, she dropped without thought, rolled, pulled up her legs to protect her belly and her arm to protect her throat, felt a moment’s searing pain along the arm, kicked up and out with both legs, and saw the figure soar over her into the air above the gorge. She had reacted without thought, reacted as she had been taught, as she had practiced a thousand times in the self-defense courses that, since the Jut Massacre, all Explorers had had to take over and over again.

  The weapon clattered onto the ledge, but the attacker fell endlessly, without a sound.

  For a short time after that, Don was so busy applying emergency care to her gashed arm that she had no time to wonder about the attacker. When the bleeding was stanched, she huddled over a tiny fire, terrified that the assassin might not have been alone. Then, when no further assault came, she began to wonder why she had been attacked at all.

  At first light she had attempted to climb to the place the body lay, so far below as to be virtually invisible. If she could find out who, she might find out the reason.

  After an hour or two, she gave up. Someone might get into the gorge with a parachute or a balloon. They would not get out again.

  Since then it had remained a mystery. Someone had tried to kill her. She didn’t know who, and she wasn’t sure why. Not a torture killing like Gretl’s; nothing weird about it; just a straightforward attempt at murder!

  A Crystallite assassin? That’s why Explorers studied self-defense, after all, because of the threat posed by fanatics. It could have been. In which case, the intended victim might not have been Don Furz particularly, but simply any Explorer. However, Crystallite assassins were said to scream religious slogans during attacks. Certainly they had done so during the Jut Massacre and in several other assassinations since. This person, male or female, had been silent.

  Was it someone who knew what Don had found out? One of those twenty the Explorer King had mentioned? Then how had he or she found out? What did they know?

  Was it someone from BDL?

  What would her trusted friend think about it? She had been unable to pass the word along until yesterday.

  Now she realized the doctor was looking at her oddly, obviously wondering at her long preoccupation. ‘I was just trying to figure out some way to have the scar removed now,’ she said to explain her abstraction. ‘But it can’t be done. There just isn’t time. Other than the scar, how am I?’

  ‘You’re thirty-three years old, in perfect health, in beautiful shape, with no evidence of any disease whatsoever. You’ve got the muscles of a stevedore and the reaction time of a prime jetball ace. What else can I tell you? Here’s a copy of the report. The duplicate will be placed in your record.’ He cocked his head and looked at her quizzically.

  Don grinned. No matter how often she told herself it was foolish, she always approached the annual medical exam with the suspicion it would find her in some lingering illness. Each time, the report relieved her anxiety, and she took the copy now with a sense of reprieve.

  She called Fyne Blanchet from a booth in the lobby of the medical building.

  ‘I made a lunch date for you with your elderly relative,’ he said. ‘She’s a little hard of hearing, so I hope she got it straight.’

  ‘When and where, Blanchet?’

  ‘Thirteen hundred at the Fish House on Bayside Street. She told me, among many other things, that she doesn’t eat red meat.’

  ‘Who can afford red meat? I can’t.’ Pasture land was strictly limited on Jubal, and red meat was the epitome of luxury. Fowl was more usual. Fish, more common yet.

  ‘I’m waiting for a call back from your niece, and Link Emert would love to have cocktails with you after work. He says seventeen hundred at the ’Ling Lounge, just down the block from his office.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll check back with you after lunch.’

  Lunch at the Fish House was as predictable as any meal with Cyndal. Close inspection of the menu to determine whether there was anything on it she could not eat. Each such item read aloud. Querulous inquiry into the morals of anyone who would eat said item. Further finicky attention given to ordering copiously from among items that she could eat. And, finally, greedy consumption of said items, right down to the polish on the plate, while discoursing upon the flavor of every mouthful.

  If anyone had an ear trained on Cyndal, Don hoped they enjoyed the experience.

  ‘Very nice, Donatella. Very generous of you. What do you hear from your dear mother?’

  ‘Just the usual, Cousin Cyndal. She’s still greatly involved with the local gardening group there in Deepsoil Twelve. She asked to be remembered to you.’

  ‘Such a lovely woman, your mother.’

  Donatella, who had quite another view of her parent, smiled and said nothing. When she left the restaurant, the waiter came running after her with her bag, which she, as usual, had forgotten.

  ‘Blanchet? Did you get hold of Fabian?’

  ‘Dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow, whichever you prefer.’

  ‘Oh, make it dinner tonight. Then I’ll have the morning to sleep in and luxuriate before starting back to Northwest. Tell her – tell her to pick a place and I’ll meet her there at twenty hundred. I’m going to do some shopping before I meet Link Emert. Thanks, Blanchet.’

  When she arrived at the ’Ling Lounge, she found Link already ensconced behind a table, his mobile chair hidden by it. Link usually arrived early in order to make his disability less apparent.

  ‘Donatella!’ He half rose, pushing up with his arms to give the appearance of someone with legs that worked, then seated himself again to reach out for her hand. She did not lean down to kiss him. He had been very explicit about the pain that caused him, so she didn’t do it. Also, her hair was flattened and drawn back severely and she was wearing a not very becoming suit that made her legs and torso shapeless.

  ‘I don’t want to want you anymore,’ he had said to her once, the words hissing out between clenched teeth. ‘Don’t you understand, Don! It hurts to want you. It hurts to want anything!’

  So, she looked as unwantable as possible, within the bounds of what might be acceptable in a place with the effrontery to call itself the ’Ling Lounge. Predictably, it was decorated with phoney ’lings, plastic crystals that reached from floor to ceiling. Variations on Tripsinger themes pounded from speakers. ‘Interesting place,’ she said, gesturing with disdain. ‘How long has this been here?’

  ‘Oh, less than a year. It’s an appalling tourist trap, plain and simple, but the drinks are good.’

  Tourists! Lord. That’s a word I’d read about but never thought to hear in Jubal, Link. Tourists!’

  ‘More of them all the time, Don. There’s even some guy down in Bay City who advertises interior trips for tourists, with Tripsingers and the whole score.’

  ‘He’s out of his mind!’

  ‘No. He takes them out by the Deadheads, sings them through with some mish mash, then gives them a look at the Crazies, “accidentally” blows up a Crazeling or two, and brings the tourists back all agog. They think they’ve been in peril.’

  ‘And he makes it with both hands.’

  ‘So I hear. What are you drinking, Donatella, my love? It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen you, you know that?’ He said ‘my love’ casually, as though it didn’t matter, but her heart turned over at the words, as it always had. He was thinner. His eyes were sunken. That once glowing face looked pallid. Even his lips were colorless. She shook herself and smiled, pretending not to see.

  They ordered drinks. They talked. Little things. Inconsequentialities. Recent explorations. Link’s work as Explorer liaison to the Governor’s office. The recent announcement that the CHASE Commission was coming to Jubal.

  ‘What the hell is the CHASE Commission?’ she asked.

  ‘The Planetary Exploitation Council has set up a new commission to decide once and for all whether there is sentient native life on Jubal.’

  ‘Oh, I did know about it. I just didn’t reme
mber the name. The services man talked about it last night. And somebody mentioned it at that reception I came down for, last time I was here in town.’ Donatella’s real reason for coming to Splash One had occupied her mind to such an extent that she had been barely able to focus on social rituals. ‘As I recall on that occasion I forgot who the Governor’s wife was and introduced her to someone as Gereny Vox.’

  ‘Donatella!’ He sounded genuinely shocked. By ho stretch of resemblance could the well-known mule breeder be compared in either face or figure to Honeypeach Thonks. Gereny was a completely genuine, if rough-edged, person of considerable charm. Lady Honeypeach was a self-created and ominous device.

  ‘It was just a slip of the tongue. I knew right away I’d got it wrong, and I apologized all over the place. She was very sweet about it, in a poisonous way.’ Don laughed unconvincingly. It had been a horrible gaffe, one she’d heard about later from the Explorer King and one that, in its way, had perhaps helped to obscure what else she might have been doing in Splash One. ‘Well, how are they going to go about deciding the sentience question?’

  ‘They’re going to hold hearings in a few weeks, just as they did fifty years ago, what else?’

  ‘Remind me what CHASE stands for.’

  ‘The Commission on Humans and Alien Sentience: Exploitation.’

  ‘Are they going to try to prove human sentience first?’ She choked with laughter. ‘I’ve had some question about that recently. I have a few nominees for no sentience at all, starting with the Governor.’

  ‘Hush, child. You make treasonous utterance. The Governor’s stepson is chairman of the commission. Ymries Fedder. He named the commission, I understand.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Honeypeach’s son.’ It seemed appropriate to say nothing more, and she contented herself with quirking one eyebrow at Link. He quirked back and she sighed. As always, they understood each other precisely. As always, she ached to hold him. As always, she mourned for him, longed for him. And as always, she kept a cheerful face and let none of it show. He had been in that chair for five years, ever since the trip on which an unexplored Presence blew with Link directly in the way. He should have died, would have died except for Don. Afterward he had accused her of sentencing him to life imprisonment, and she had offered to help him out of it. No Explorer could do less, no lover more. The offer still stood. He had not taken her up on it yet. Thank God.