by Robin Triggs
“You see? He’s dangerous, a killer.”
“Shut up, Greig,” Fergie said, his voice shaking only a little. “We’re gonna deal with this sensibly, right? No fights, no violence.”
Dmitri’s hands slackened on my shoulders, but he didn’t quite let me go. I took a deep breath, keeping my eyes on Greigor. He met my gaze and didn’t flinch. I was shaking with anger, cold with sudden fear.
“I reckon,” Keegan said into the resulting silence. “I reckon we want to hear what Anders has to say, right?”
No.
“Greigor’s saying that there’s something that he knows about Nordvelt that we should know too. That right? Reckon we should hear it; then we can work out what to do with them both. Right?”
God, no.
This was a nightmare. A nightmare. Everyone was looking at me. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I was trapped, beginning to panic. I could run, I could refuse to talk, I could knock Greigor cold…
“You might as well tell, Mr. Nordvelt,” Greigor said. “If you don’, I will. Sound fair?”
“Anders,” Dmitri said quietly, finally releasing me. “What is he talking about? I think you’d better tell.”
I speared one final look at Greigor, then looked away. I fell into a vacant seat and leaned heavily on the table. My hand found an abandoned glass of water and I drank.
“Well, Nordvelt?” Fergie said.
I let a little numbness seep through me – a defense, an insulation. Was I really – could I really go through with this? “I…I had a difficult…”
“What’s this, now, you’re gonna say you had a difficult childhood?” Fergie said. “Well, didn’t we all, one way or another?”
“Shut up, Fergie,” Dmitri said heavily. “Let the man speak – and you keep your mouth shut too, Greigor.”
Greigor held up his hands in surrender, somehow managing to put on an innocent face.
“Go on, Anders.”
“I told you – I was raised in Sweden. I was raised in the White War.”
Silence. Couldn’t look up from the table.
“My father was one of the leaders – of – of the rebellion.” Deep breath. “You know how pathetic that was – not a real war, just an idiotic group of malcontents refusing to adapt to the new reality of the world, of Company rule. My father was a killer. He was a terrorist. He – he got my mother killed, and he…” I broke off and tried again. “I was five when they caught him.”
“I don’t see – why should we care about that?” Dmitri said after a short pause.
“You don’t see?” Greigor put in. “His father weren’t just a rebel, he was a leader. He was rich. Here’s the boy Anders, raised in luxury, all the toys his little heart could desire—”
“You know nothing!” I shouted.
There was a momentary silence before Greigor went on. At least I’d taken a little of the gloating from his tone. “All those riches, all coming to the only child – until the Company took it all from him.”
“My father was an idiot! A stupid, reactive idiot! I’m glad he was caught, I’m glad I was brought up by the Company—”
“You’re saying you never missed that money, those houses?” Greigor asked.
“They’re better in Company hands.” And I believed it. But I couldn’t make it sound like I did. “Listen, long ago I rejected my father and everything he stood for. Don’t you think I’ve been through a hundred separate Pysch tests? Think they’d have sent me here if—”
“And this is the man the Company have chosen to give power over us.” Greigor snorted. “They must’ve been crazy. First a jumped-up generalissimo like McCarthy, and now this retarded little runt. Both hired from the same office, you know? When we get out of this bastard wasteland, I’ll be there wi’ a gun—”
“That’s enough,” Fergie said. “You’ve got nothing to crow about, you little pervert. You think you’ll have a career after this? Just shut it. We’ll get to you in a minute.” He turned to me. “Nordvelt. Anything else we should know?”
I shook my head. Couldn’t look up at him.
“What about the message you sent de Villiers?” Greigor said.
“What message?” Dmitri asked as I lifted my head to stare open-mouthed at the Argentinean.
“Ask him why he’s got de Villiers’s datapad in his room,” Greigor was saying. “Ask him about the message he sent de Villiers, drawing him out into the snow the night the commander died. Ask him all about that.”
I couldn’t tell if my heart was beating hyperfast or if it had stopped dead. “You’ve—” You’ve been in my room. You searched through my things. The words wouldn’t come. Of course he’d been in my room. He’d been prepared to plant cameras in private chambers. Just looking in my miserable quarters wouldn’t have bothered him at all.
The rest of the crew were staring at me, I realized. I swallowed.
“Well?” Keegan asked.
“After we brought de Villiers’s body back in—” I cleared my throat. “After I told all you…I went to the commander’s rooms and had a quick search…”
“Alone? No witnesses?” Fergie asked.
I shook my head. “I – I found his datapad.” I explained about the message that had lured the commander to his death.
“You see,” Greigor said, “there’s the proof – Nordvelt’s the killer and the evidence is in his room.”
“So why the fuck didn’t you tell us about this?” Fergie said.
“I didn’t send the message,” I said. “Someone’s trying to set me up. But I knew how it’d look…”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he said. “Greigor, why’d you no’ tell us about this message if you knew about it—”
“I only found it yesterday,” he said quickly, “while you were in the basement—”
“While you were supposed to be with Maggie?”
“Hey, I told you, de Villiers told me to watch Nordvelt!”
“So why not tell us as soon as you found it?” Dmitri asked.
Greigor hesitated. “I…I knew he’d just deny it. I wanted more evidence…”
“You just wanted the feeling of power you’d have over him,” the Ukrainian said.
Fergie turned to me. “Did you kill de Villiers an’ Theo?”
“No. I’ve not done anything.”
“Okay. Okay,” Fergie said shakily. “I think…we need time to take this all in. To work out what to do. Nordvelt, I ain’t judging, but this all changes nothing. You’re still the prime suspect. It’s not personal, but you should—”
“I should be locked back in my room, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll go straight back. I just…” I tried to focus on what really mattered. “I need to know one thing.”
“What’s that, Chief?” Keegan asked.
“Did…did Greigor ever say anything to any of you about me putting cameras up around the base?”
“What are you talking about, Anders?” Abidene asked.
“I never—” Greigor began, but I cut off his denial.
“Before the oil platform exploded,” I went on, as calmly as I could manage, “I planted pinhead cameras around the barracks. To try and catch the killer. With all Greigor’s snooping, I’m willing to bet that he saw me doing this. All those times I’ve randomly stumbled across you in the corridors, Greigor? All those little ‘missions’ you’ve been doing for Maggie? How many of them were just an excuse for you to spy on us?”
“Listen, I—”
“But someone moved all my cameras. So I need to know if this little weasel told anyone else about them. I need to know, Greigor.”
He shook his head. “I don’ know…I may have…”
“He didn’t say anything to me,” Keegan said.
“Nor me,” Dmitri added.
Fergie and Abi were shaking their heads, expressions g
rim, angry, confused.
“Whoever moved those cameras,” I said with a humorless little smile, “has got to be a strong candidate to be the murderer.”
“Max! I told Max, it was Max!” Greigor yelled.
“Yeah,” snapped Fergie, “because we’re gonna believe everything you tell us now, ain’t we, rat boy?”
* * *
Keegan and Dmitri escorted me back to my quarters. I handed them de Villiers’s datapad and ate a cold meal alone. Nothing had changed, not really. All I’d done was give Fergie a new suspect, a new problem, another person to keep locked up.
Max came to see me an hour or so later. She slung a bag on the floor and sat on my bed, looking glum.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“I beat the shit out of the gym punchbag, then went and welded something,” she said.
“Feel better?”
“Not really. Did a bad job, it fell straight apart. Kicking the bits around helped, though. You know the worst thing?”
“What?”
“I was thinking that at least this’ll get me a proper alibi for the sabotage. If anyone’s suspecting me, then at least I can say, ‘Look, I was asleep all along,’ and point out Greigor’s network. But I can’t do that. He only recorded – or saved, at least – the—”
“The interesting bits. Yes. I know.”
“You’ve watched it?”
“No, no – I only looked at enough to get an… I mean, he saved short sections. I didn’t have to watch them, the titles were enough—”
She glared me into silence.
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed and made a gesture for me to forget about it.
“Have you spoken to the others?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Did they ask you about the cameras I’d set up?”
“What? Oh, yeah, it’s true, Greigor told me about them. I think he was trying to impress me.”
“So—”
“But I told Maggie. And she probably told everyone else. Sometimes there’s just nothing to do but gossip.”
“Damn.”
“Sorry.”
I took a deep breath. “Is Weng okay?”
“Maggie’s spoken to her.”
“And?”
Max shrugged.
“So what happens now?”
“Well, I try and find a way to heat the base with coal – without poisoning us all with the smoke. We abandon everywhere except the kitchen, the infirmary, and the basement, and we wait for help to arrive from Tierra.”
“I meant about Greigor. And me.”
“Neither of you are to be left alone. You help us to survive, and then we hand you back to the Company.”
“I didn’t do this,” I said. “I didn’t do any of this.”
“About your father…”
I went cold. “What about him?”
“You know, I was going to ask why you didn’t tell us. About your past. But then I realized that I wouldn’t have told you if I’d had that in my family,” she said. “Yeah, I know Fergie and me, and most of us really, we grumble about the Company. No room for initiative, the endless committees and all that – but really we all know how awful life would be without it. I come from the Central African Zone, for God’s sake. You remember how devastated the area was after the Resource Wars? All those petty dictators fighting for their piece of the pie? I’d never have got beyond the city limits without the Company. I certainly wouldn’t have got to travel like I have. Hell, chances are I’d be dead.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to fight against the Company, let alone be willing to kill to end it.”
I nodded and stared at the floor. Then I got up and went to the compscreen, put my music on. I turned to face Max on the bed but couldn’t bring myself to look into her eyes. “This…”
“Yes?”
“This is my mother.”
“The singer?”
“She was – the Evening Star, they called her. Jasmine Burroughs. Angel of the North.”
“I’ve not heard of her, I’m sorry.”
“She was never big outside England. This was her only album.” I paused to listen, caught as my mother sang descending soprano, voice swooping as a harrier upon the melody. “This is all I have of her.”
Max was silent for a long minute as the guitar played: urgent, sorrowful arpeggios over a wide, angry bass. Above it all was that voice, crying for freedom, for the wild places, for the search for solitude away from the human hive.
“So what happened?” Max asked as the track faded out.
“My parents met through her music. He was a fan, rich enough to push her career. I was born into that money. And then the Company began its advance into Sweden, and… Look, you have to understand that I was a baby – I don’t remember anything, not really, just impressions.”
I could feel her eyes on me.
“I don’t even remember their faces. I was only five. My mother – my father killed her, you know? He dragged her into his war: rebel meetings in our drawing room, moving between countries, often at just a few minutes’ notice. I remember him practicing his speeches – I wasn’t allowed in his study – never even saw his desk before the security teams shot their way in. I remember – my mother didn’t smile. I don’t remember her ever smiling – she must have, mustn’t she? But in my mind she’s always pale. And thin.”
“I—”
“And when the Company mercs closed in we retreated into the wilderness. I don’t remember – don’t remember…” I swallowed. “I don’t remember anything, not really, just going from refuge to refuge. Sometimes we’d stay in great country houses, sometimes we’d sleep in tents, in snow-shelters, burying ourselves under pine branches for a little extra warmth…and all the while their trackers were closing in.
“I don’t know how she died. Some say my father shot her, some that she was gunned down by the hunters. Some say she was shot trying to flee, others that she killed a dozen men before she took a bullet. I never wanted to know. I still don’t.” I could see every one of those tales in my mind, and a hundred others. I pushed them away. I’d rather remember her voice.
“So there I was,” I said. “My mother dead, and my father… Do you know how it feels? To be told that your childhood hero has…is really a monster?”
Max was silent.
“I was moved to my grandparents. In England. My father’s parents. And they tried, they tried – they tried to love me, to care for me, to do the right thing. But how can anyone look at their grandchild without seeing their son? They were…they were afraid of me, I think. Afraid of getting anything wrong. Of getting it wrong again.”
I ran out of words.
“Anders…Anders.” Max sighed and leaned back. “You make things so hard, Anders. When you talk like this – with that look on your face…” She trailed off. When she spoke again her tone was cooler, calmer. “When you talk like this, I really feel for you. But for all I think Greigor’s a contemptible little shit, I can’t see him killing anyone. I just… Why? Why would he blow up the rig? And being able to hack into computers isn’t the same as knowing how to plant a bomb or sabotage a warmsuit. It doesn’t make sense.”
“And it makes sense for me to have done it?”
“I don’t know who you are,” she said simply. “If I’d had your upbringing, I’d probably be just plain nuts. These attacks make no sense, so why not look for a madman? Look, Anders, we’ve already had this conversation. Goddamn. Goddamn. I just know that – that I feel safe with you. I like you.” She banged the back of her head against the wall, frustration on her lips. “You want a drink?”
“What?”
“Where’s my bag?”
I passed it over to her.
She pulled it to her and reached inside. “I’d have prefer
red to have a smoke,” she muttered half to herself, “but taking you outside would probably not please Fergie too much. Get some glasses.” She pulled out a bottle like those that had contained the wine at my first meal at Australis.
“You’d drink with me?” I asked, surprised.
Max unscrewed the cap and took a sniff at the contents. Her eyes opened wide; even I could smell the spirits from across the room. “Anton’s private stock,” she said. “He liked his whisky. Hurry up with the glasses.”
I found a couple of tumblers and took them over to the bed. Max poured the liquor. It caught the light and refracted strange, shifting golden shadows onto the bedclothes.
She took one of the tumblers and held it up to me. “Here’s to the prime suspects,” she intoned. I raised my glass to her, and we each took a sip. Tears immediately leaped to my eyes and I choked.
“I said it was de Villiers’s private stash, but I didn’t say it was good,” Max croaked.
“God, that tastes like…like…God, what the hell is that?” I managed.
“Rocket fuel, that’s what it’s like.” She wiped her eyes and took another sip. “You realize Fergie’s probably got the room bugged. Cameras, listening devices, whatever. Man’s getting paranoid,” she finished in a mumble.
“You’re okay with that?” I asked, too surprised to tell her that I’d already found and destroyed a bug.
The janitor finished her drink in one big go, gasped and held her glass out for me to pour her another. “You listening to this, Ferguson?” she called. “Just a quick message to tell you to go fuck yourself, you perverted little…Scotsman!” She began to laugh, and, after a moment, I joined her.
* * *
I woke up before Max and left her sleeping while I went into the wet-room for a shower. I stood unsteady and heavy-headed in the booth, eagerly anticipating the hot water pouring over my skin, washing me clean. But nothing happened. There was no flow; the shower control panel was dead. I frowned at it blearily, slapped it a few times, but there was nothing.
I leaned against the wall and swore quietly to myself, then staggered back through to my compscreen. I hit the power and scanned my thumbprint on the reader. Then I got up again and jabbed at the combi-maker for coffee. The room was silent. I couldn’t even hear the climate control, the usual background to life here on the base.