by Joe Ollinger
“Show me the map,” I order the computer.
The monitor blinks to life, showing the neatly laid-out 2D grid of Oasis City’s streets.
“Not that map.”
The image changes to a topographical of Brink, all shades of red and brown except for bands of smooth white at the poles. A dot representing Oasis City sits square in the middle, surrounded by a flat circular area amidst a planetary continent of jags and ripples indicating the sharply changing elevation. The oblong blue gash of the High Sea sits to the Oasis Basin’s west, while far to the northwest is a wide blotch of light blue, the Great Sea. Life forms in the two are very different, having been effectively separated by thousands of miles of mostly barren mountains since the High Sea was created by a planetoid grazing Brink’s crust two hundred million years ago, destroying most of Brink’s life and creating its smaller moon, Lyto. The smaller black dot marking Drillville sits at the edge of the larger ocean, like a blemish. The whole picture is ugly, by any standard, and boring.
“Not that one, either,” I tell the computer. “The settled worlds.”
It changes again, showing a swath of colored dots curving horizontally from the bottom to the top of the screen, a section of the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way galaxy. In a pattern stretching roughly upward, or from the outer edge inward, twenty-five of the dots are highlighted, surrounded by little illuminated circles of varying thickness. Earth is near the bottom, marked with a thick blue circle and four smaller overlapping circles representing Luna, Mars, Europa, and Eris. Settlements like those on Titan, Pluto, and in Sol’s asteroid belt aren’t big enough to count. Far below Earth are a scattering of worlds including Miracle Mount, an unremarkable and dismally cold planet orbiting at the outside edge of its star’s habitable zone, and Yagami, a strange and legendary world orbiting the smaller of a binary pair, blessed with perpetual and ever-changing light. Brevin, Bon Fleur, and Bloemkirk lie below them, near the bottom edge of the map. “Above” Earth, meanwhile, is the chain of worlds leading inward, toward the galactic core: Ryland, Leereweldt, Sakura, Rus, a cluster of three moons called the Triplets, Foo Xho, Brink, and finally Farraway, Penitance, and Resolve, with Kerwin’s Drop, Serling, and Darien scattered far to the sides of the path.
So many options, but really only a few are realistic. Yagami is probably the most desirable world of them all, but it would be an eight-year journey, and I could never sacrifice that much of my life to a voyage on a cramped ship. The closest is Penitance, a heavy world with high gravity and wildly changing seasons. Farraway, meanwhile, is nearly as close, and with its booming economy and gentle climate and wide-open spaces, seems so much better than Brink. That’s where I’d go, I think. Will go. Will go.
“How long ’til I can buy a ticket to Farraway?”
The map blinks gone, changing into a line graph that shows how long it will take me to save enough, depending on how much money I put away. Using my past averages as a base, the program estimates that I’m about two Brink years—one point eight six solars—away from being able to afford that ticket. A long way to go, but I might be able to chop a lot of time off that number if this weevils thing leads anywhere.
How much would a year’s pay help Jessi Rodgers? A thought I can’t avoid.
The value of a human body on this world is astronomical. I know that firsthand, and I’ve been benefiting from it since I was a young girl, a fact that haunts me constantly at the edge of my consciousness. Jessi Rodgers and her plight have drudged it closer to the surface. I never looked anything like her, but seeing her in the hospital, I could not help but think of myself in her place. What might have happened if things went differently two decades ago . . .
But there’s no point to this. I’m only making myself miserable, driving myself down into the worst part of me. I have to move on.
Thinking that TV will distract me, I pull my keyboard out of the desk nook and put an entertainment tabloid program from Ryland up on the monitor. It’s a “new” episode, meaning that it aired on Ryland about fourteen months ago. Data capsules are tiny and can accelerate faster into a sink field than ships, but they only come through every couple of months, depending on the carrier company. I’ve seen bits and pieces of this show before—it’s a cop drama about mismatched partners, one from the poor side of Strand City, the other from an old money family. It’s Ryland, so all the clothes are impractically angular and loud, and sometimes it becomes clear that the characters follow strangely loose sexual customs, but the subject matter is still too close to home, so I flip it to a stream of musical comedy from Earth: English-language Bollywood, colorful and fast and nonsensical, focusing on the frivolous romance of some young, attractive, dark-skinned people with expensive-looking hair.
A semi-transparent message appears, reminding me again to take my scheduled dose, so I open the nightstand drawer and pull out the specialized syringe and a five-unit cash chip. I screw a clean needle into the syringe and snap the chip in, breaking the holographic stamp. Finding a vein on my left arm just below the elbow, I push the needle in and press the plunger down, flushing the calcium gluconate fluid out of the chip and into my blood. I remove the needle, take it off the syringe, and toss it and the used fiver into the trash.
“Computer, I took five units.” The reminder clears from the monitor. “Wake me at eighteen forty. I’m going to sleep.”
A tone tells me that the alarm is set. The music fades out, the lights dim to black, and from there it’s a quick fall into sleep.
5
Work in the morning is a slog. I’ve shot people dead before, and each and every time it’s been a morass of paperwork and interviews, and this time is no different. After faking my way through a psych exam reciting the answers I know I’m supposed to spit out and then spending three hours sitting in an open cubicle grinding mechanically through red tape, I’m sitting in a conference room on the third floor, across from my commanding officer.
Captain Knowles, or Anthony, as absolutely no one calls him, is a gruff, stocky, mostly bald man in his mid-fifties, a no-nonsense career Collections man. He’s a by-the-book kind of captain, and if he ever had some passion for the work deeper than a compulsion to do things the “right” way, I wasn’t around to see it.
He powers up a small A/V recording rig on the conference table. One of the little pen-shaped cameras moves to track my face. Another snaps to aim at the Captain. “You got anything to say before we get into this?” he asks.
“You’ve read my statement.” I submitted it first thing this morning.
He frowns, reaching out an open hand as he stands. His fingers are gnarled and thick and bony, even though he hasn’t been in the field for decades. Sometimes I wonder if his hands were broken at some point, but I’m sure if I asked him, I wouldn’t get an answer.
We’ve been through this process before, and I know what he’s asking for, so I take my sidearm from its holster, pull the mechanism back, remove the bullet, and lock the chamber open, then release the clip into my open left palm. After placing the ammo onto the surface of the table, I hand the unloaded weapon over, and Knowles takes a tool from his pocket and slips it into a jack on the grip. The gun issues a soft click, releasing the small camera at the end of the barrel, which the Captain removes and slips into the specialized player attached to the monitor on the wall. It turns on.
As Knowles sits back down, the screen displays a quick gray blur of upward motion before crystallizing into a clear picture of the ramp leading down into the underground storehouse at the mine. I always tense up a little when I watch the guncam footage. You’re reliving a stressful scenario in which you had to pull your gun and eventually had to fire it, but I’m not sure that’s what unsettles me about it. I think it’s the lack of control. It’s having to re-experience things you’ve already done unable to change any of them.
The footage rolls through my encounter with the old man, slowing to a higher framerate just as I fire the shot into the ceiling. A coupl
e of sparks scatter away from the impact of the bullet, contrasting the darkness of the corrugated metal ceiling before the view swings back to eye level. Captain Knowles doesn’t bother stopping the video, evidently satisfied that I was just popping off a warning shot to get the miner’s attention. I lean back, trying not to seem tense as the recording moves on, outside and into the miner’s home. After a blur in which I holster my weapon, a second of black passes before the image returns in another blur, the time code advanced by a little over a minute. It slows down again as it focuses on the chest of the old man, his face contorted in rage and maybe terror as he swings the axe wildly over his shoulder.
The Captain waves a hand pausing the playback. He picks up the tablet on the table, frowning. “Where did he get the axe?”
This is where the inquisition starts.
Around two hours later, the video plays through me unholstering my weapon this morning and handing it to the Captain and finally comes to a stop, the monitor displaying a still black frame reading “Camera Removed from Weapon at 1104 hrs.”
Knowles leans back in his chair, eyeing me. He’s already asked all the required questions, and it seems like he’s on my side on this, as usual, but something’s bothering him. “Dare,” he says, “what was going on there at the end with the doctor?”
“He made a clear move for his firearms, and I responded.”
“Before that.”
He can tell that I provoked the doctor into it. Shit. “I think it speaks for itself,” I answer, as coolly as I can.
“You baited him into attacking you,” Knowles says simply, rapping his gnarled knuckles dully on the false wood of the table. “The sound isn’t perfect, but I can hear you outright telling him to do it.”
“I didn’t break any rules. He clearly wanted to pick up his guns, I thought this the best way to get him to stand down. It was a judgment call.”
Knowles sighs, crossing his arms. “Agent Dare,” he says, going into a dry, official monotone as he refers to his report, reading his findings into the record, “your adherence to protocol is questionable in several respects. My opinion is that your refusal to report to headquarters after the first discharge of your sidearm was justified by investigatory urgency, but I would suggest a greater exercise of caution in the future. Likewise, your entry by force of the doctor’s office was justified, especially in light of the fact that your conclusions about the presence of illegal activity were correct. Again, though, you need to be more careful in these situations.” As I sit tensely, waiting for his decision on the most important stuff, he stands up, removes my guncam from the player, and places it on the table next to the gun itself and its ammo. “Lastly,” he says, “I find your use of force proportional and justified with respect to each of the nine times you discharged your sidearm, except for the first. My recommendation to internal affairs will be a nominal monetary penalty and a written reprimand.”
My relief is mixed with annoyance. I’m basically in the clear on all the bullets that matter, but Knowles is dinging me for shooting the ceiling of that shabby underground storage shack at the mine. The fine will be only a tiny portion of my calcium recovery from yesterday, but it’s obnoxious nonetheless. I can’t help but throw an annoyed glance at the little camera fixed on me. Reminding myself that I got off fairly easy and that I’ll be able to return to work, I nod slowly, trying not to show any emotion. I still have stakes in the case, and this is one of the many times I have to play politics to get what I want in this job.
“Any questions, Dare?”
“What about follow-up?”
“Follow-up?”
“I want to be involved in the ongoing investigation.”
“There is no ongoing investigation until forensics comes back.”
“That doctor got those weevils somewhere.” I don’t have to vocalize the fact that if I can track down that source it’ll likely be a gold mine. Black-market refiners generally use clumsy chemical methods for extracting calcium, and whoever got their hands on chalk weevil cultures must be in the game for serious money.
“If and when a case is opened on it, you know you’re not going to be eligible for that assignment. You already got your hands dirty in this, and there would be an appearance of bias.”
I stand up involuntarily, aggravated. “Oh, to hell with that—”
“Watch yourself, Dare. I am your commanding officer.”
I force myself to calm down, keeping my mouth shut and backing away a step. Knowles always paints by the damn numbers when it comes to running his unit, but I don’t know why he’s giving me such a hard time on this. “Thanks, Captain.”
He says nothing further as I walk out the door. The hallways up here are relatively quiet, and I can’t help but enjoy the peace before I get out into the bustling, dusty, violent world. I’m alone in the elevator ride to the bottom floor, the last few seconds of quiet passing too quickly before the doors open to Dispatch.
I step out. My boots grind slightly on the fine, thin layer of dust that Collections Agents drag in throughout the day. A squad of heavies in full armor is standing around one of the Dispatcher’s desks, some of them holding their helmets. There must be a big bust going out, which would sometimes get my interest, but right now I’ve got other things to focus on, and anyway I can’t hear what the Dispatcher—Murray Tanaka, I think is the guy’s name—is saying, as the noise of conversations and calls and alerts drones together and drowns out individual words. Taking a wide berth around them, I cross to Myra’s desk.
I lean against it, and she looks up from her monitor to face me. “How’d it go?”
“I’m good.”
She nods, impressed. “Cleared for immediate duty?”
“Yep.”
“You always beat it, don’t you?”
I do have a stellar track record with shootings. I’ve probably pulled my gun more often than any other agent in this office, but I’ve never been suspended more than a week for it. “I only shoot when I’m forced to.”
“You only shoot scumbags.”
“There happens to be a lot of overlap, in terms of scumbags forcing me to shoot them.”
“Either way,” Myra says, “I’m glad it worked out.” She turns back to her monitor, clicking through alerts and assignments. “I’ve got a couple of little things for your afternoon, if you want them.”
I lean a little closer over the desk, keeping my voice quiet. “What I want is the lab report from yesterday.”
She tenses up visibly, seemingly aware that I shouldn’t be asking about it. “It’s not all in yet.”
“Do we know how that doctor got his hands on weevil cultures?”
“I can’t help you, Taryn.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think you should be asking about this stuff.”
“Did someone order you not to give me the info?”
She hesitates. “No.”
“Then why not?”
Evidently unable to come up with a convincing reason, she says, “Fine.” Working through the evidence database, she takes a minute or so to find what she’s looking for. “Let’s see . . . It says here the medical evidence was destroyed to prevent the compromise of restricted materials . . . That’s the eggs . . . Internal Affairs is checking for leaks here in the agency . . . That’s about it.”
Only the two main Collections Agency Offices—this one, and Drillville, thousands of miles away—have access to chalk weevil cultures. So the leak must be a Collections employee or someone with the manufacturer, an interstellar mega-conglomerate called the Shipping Consortium for Astronautics and Planetary Exploration, or SCAPE for short. Evidently IA is looking for leaks within the Agency, which is to be expected, but I was hoping for specifics on whatever outside investigation they’re doing. “No notes about SCAPE?”
Myra shrugs. “I doubt they would let an employee walk out the door with their product.”
“Not like the Agency would be ok
ay with it, either.”
Myra bites her lip, as though she didn’t realize that Collections is the most likely alternative answer. “True.”
“Can you get me any dirt on the doctor? Financial records, rap sheets, anything. On the victims, too.”
She clicks through again and shakes her head. “I’ll have most of it for you tonight. The IA report will be done in a day or two.”
I hate waiting, but I guess I can live with a couple of days. Hopefully the money will lead me to the leak. Lost in thought, I turn to leave, but then I realize I’m being rude and ungrateful and stop myself. “Hey, Myra,” I say. “I’m sorry about last night. It was a rough day.”
She chuckles it off with a wave of her hand, trying to act cool. “Whatever,” she says, “I get it. But you’re buying next time.”
I flash her a grin. “Sounds fair.”
As I turn to leave again, she stops me. “Don’t you need an assignment?”
“Not today,” I answer, “I want to do some poking around.”
I walk away, brushing past a few sweaty agents coming in from the field as I step through the sliding metal doors. It’s a warm day, and the air is still. Walking out into the lot, I pull out my phone and dial. I don’t have a lot of leads on the stolen weevils, but it occurs to me that I’ve recently met someone who might.
“Commerce Board,” answers a female voice. “Auditor’s office.”
I didn’t expect to get a secretary. “Brady Kearns, please.”
“Let me see if Mr. Kearns is available—”
“My name is Taryn Dare, I’m a Collections Agent. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Please hold.”