Other than those men, and the miners who had once been convicts, the Peura world contained women – also convicts, and imported as either wives or comfort women, in close numbers to the men, so as to avoid trouble – and the Peura family.
That consisted of Mrs. Analie Peura, a second or third or perhaps fourth wife, who he admitted “Is about the age of my daughter Reelen.”
That age turned out to be twenty-seven to Peura’s sixty or so.
Both women lived in the world “But take frequent shopping and destressing trips to other worlds,” he said. “You know how women are.”
Nick made a rumbling, uncommitted sound, then said, “Did your son also travel often?”
“When he was younger,” Peura said. “Of course I sent him to study abroad, see a bit of the universe. But lately, since he’d become obsessed with becoming a space pilot – of all the crazy ideas – I told him he could not go anywhere, and I gave such orders to the spaceport as well.”
“Would there be any chance the Cinzan men smuggled him abroad the ship?” Nik asked.
“No. There was no extra passenger when they arrived to Cinzan. In fact—” He paused, as though evaluating what he was about to say, as though something about it bothered him. “In fact, when they arrived, they were minus one crew member, who got sick, and whom they had to space en route.”
“I see,” Nick said, in a tone of deep understanding.
Something about it must have stung Peura who lashed out, “I’m glad you do, because I don’t. If you think somehow being minus one crew member tells us that my son went to—”
“I didn’t say that,” Nick interrupted. “Only that any deviation from normal routine is interesting in cases like this, that’s all.”
Peura mumbled “Cases like this,” under his breath. “Have you seen many cases of someone disappearing into thin air at a bar door, in a world as thinly populated and controlled as this one?”
“More than I’d like to tell you about.”
“Well, then you should have an answer for me very shortly, and my son back home in double time, right?”
“I will do my best. If you could send your wife and daughter to me.” I could tell from the creaking that Nik had turned to me, behind the privacy shield. “Stella?”
He always turned to me for hours and scheduling, as though we had an open social calendar, and people coming and going and only I could keep track of such complex affairs. Or maybe it was that I needed to eat and sleep, and therefore my mortal needs hemmed in our availability.
“In an hour and two hours respectively would work,” I said, crisply.
“Then so be it. In one hour and two hours respectively.”
“I don’t know if I can get them to obey commands,” Peura said. “And I don’t know what they can tell you. Do you think if they knew where Narcis was they wouldn’t have told me by now?”
“It’s possible they don’t know they know,” Nick said, which is the kind of infuriating pronouncement he was likely to make. “Do what you can to make them come.”
The words had the tone of a dismissal, and were, and I can’t blame Peura for being put out. He was paying us a lot of money to come out here and find his son, and, to his mind, all we were doing is bothering him and his family.
I accompanied him to the airlock and out to the stairs down from our spaceship. As the outer door retracted, and he left, walking huffily away from us, towards the gates of the spaceship, I caught a glimpse of a red sunset over arid-looking terrain, all reddish soil and low-growing trees. The air smelled hot and spicy, like an open furnace.
I closed the door and went back to our temperature-controlled office. Nick had taken down the privacy shield and was sitting back in his chair, with his feet on the desk, his hands crossed on his chest over the creamy yellow tie.
“You know he has a point, don’t you?” I said. “He expects us to do more than question his relatives.”
Nick made a sound. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to mean. It sounded somewhat like clearing your throat, if your throat were full of gears, I guess. He made it when he didn’t wish to discuss something, which usually meant when I was right.
I went to my desk and barely had the time to sit down when he said, “Stella, did you research this world when we got the request from Peura?”
“There was no time,” I said. “Remember, we were under way and quite close to here, and we’d have had to stop and find a parking orbit with a friendly planet to do so. Also, the charges would be high because they’d be channeled through that planet. If we’d turned the job down, they wouldn’t be reimbursed, either. And as you know, the galactic databases are—”
“Yes.” He said. He didn’t say that Peura had also paid us a very good price for our coming out here, with an extra bonus for coming straight out. And I didn’t belabor the difficulty of accessing the galactic data bases while we were underway. I had never fully explored how Nick interacted with modernity, other than asking me to read him things from my “research” which usually meant a quick search of electronic information sources.
“See what you can find out,” he said.
I saw. It wasn’t much. Peura was wealthy and owned not just this planet but this solar system, which consisted of this large world and a lot of tiny worlds – asteroids really – orbiting closer to the system’s sol-type star.
His wealth was inherited, but his father had come from nothing and it was he who had initially bought the system and devoted his efforts to mining rare metals. I skimmed the names of the metals – it’s like they’re discovering new ones every week – but the important thing is that they were used in everything from building glassteel to making some of the essential parts for the coms that allowed communication across space.
The current Mrs. Peura was the fourth. The first three lived in different – and distant worlds – the last one in Dover, capital of the Human Commonwealth, as a socialite of some renown.
His daughter Reelen had attended some kind of academy in New Oxford, the world where most well-to-do sent their children to school, and managed to get through fifteen years of schooling with completely average grades without betraying either an interest or an abhorrence for any of the subjects.
His son, Narcis, had also attended school at New Oxford, but surprised me by having excellent grades in mathematics and physics. No wonder he wanted to be a pilot. He had an excellent chance of qualifying.
There was a holo with records, and I activated it.
A slim young man manifested in front of my desk. Blond, unruly hair, a charming smile, and the kind of clothes that meant he cared more for fashion than his father did.
“Narcis Peura?” Nick asked, from behind his desk.
“Yes,” I said, and reported.
Nick didn’t answer. He never did. Sometimes as he sat there, with his feet on his desk, the lights behind his eyes cycled on and off, on and off, on a rhythm. Not quite off; brighter; then low, then bright.
I’d just done relating what I’d heard when the doorbell rang.
I went out and admitted a young woman who smiled at me, eyeing me up and down. “Why, aren’t you pretty. Just like an historical sensi. Does he make you dress like that?”
I shook my head, then shrugged. Nick didn’t make me dress like that, but I’d often wondered at the contradictory reactions that would form in his mind if I’d appeared in normal getup. He seemed to handle it well enough from our guests, but the few times I’d tried to step out of character, he’d been confused and hurt. It was not a good thing to make him suffer more than necessary. Even if he was a cyborg.
“I’m Stella D’Ori,” I said. “And you are?”
“The sane one of the two you asked to see,” she said, and smiled again. I was no longer sure it was a nice smile. “Reelen Peura. Pleased to meet you, though of course, despite your pseudonym being very apropos, I probably should ask for your real name?” She raised an eyebrow expectantly. I ignored it, stepping around her to close the door
, then leading her into the office.
She, like her brother , obviously kept up with the off-world fashions. She wore a one-piece that looked – rather artfully – like a little blouse and a tutu kind of skirt in masses of tulle. Not tulle, of course, nor was the blouse silk, but both some kind of bio-fabric that looked more like the real thing than the real thing could look.
I thought I’d look rather good in that, gliding across a dance floor, but it had been too long, and now it was never going to happen again.
She made for the chair behind my desk. Heaven only knows why. Some people do. Maybe they think my desk is ornamental. I cleared my throat and gestured her towards the chair in front of Nick’s desk. She pouted harder, but obeyed, arranging her skirts before sitting down, and crossing her legs in a way that made the semi-transparent pant portion of her costume outline her legs with just the hint of veiling imperfections, to make them look like sculpted masterpieces.
I smiled a little and didn’t say anything. Nick was past noticing that kind of trick, but she couldn’t know that, and one had to admire a woman for doing her stuff, right?
In fact, she was arching that eyebrow towards Nick and saying in a slightly throaty voice, “Man of mystery, uh? Or too ugly to show your face?”
“We’ll go with too ugly,” he said, which would be the real Nick Rhodes’ response of course, since he was supposed to have been disfigured in war. But said that way, in his gravelly voice, it sounded like flirting.
She had a throaty laugh too. She pulled a cigarette from somewhere. I’d never gone for them, but they were popular again with my generation. We were assured that there were no carcinogen effects of smoking the new, improved cigarettes. Perhaps. They had gone around as a fad several times since ancient times, and then become unfashionable, or banned, or were considered too dangerous. One never knew where the medically approved or disapproved roulette was going to land. All we could do was roll with it.
But I didn’t smoke, or drink to excess, or dope, preferring to know that whatever was thinking my thoughts and making my decisions was myself. My husband, who had been the same, used to say that we were the last two sane people in the universe. A thought of Joe came and went. It hardly hurt at all anymore. I twirled the ring I still wore on the fourth finger of my left hand. Inside it, it said To Lilly From Joe. And it was stupid to wear it, I know. Both Lilly and Joe were as good as dead.
“Well, darling,” Reelen said, a smile in her voice as she shook the cigarette to light it. “I suppose you want to know about darling boy’s disappearance.”
“Yes,” Nick said. “If by that you mean your brother. We were in fact hired to investigate his disappearance.”
“I think he did a bunk,” she said. “And paid the men from Cinzan a rather large sum not to tell daddy about it. He loathes living here, not that it is a big prize, mind you, and despises the idea of becoming master to a lot of convict miners one day. He’s always dreamed of being a pilot, you know, out among the stars.”
She looked wry and amused, but shrugged and smiled. “He’d probably make a rather good one, too.” She took a puff on her cigarette.
Nick was quiet a long time. Reelen took a few puffs from her cigarette, exhaling, letting the smoke out in the kind of lazy curl one has to practice.
I could see her gathering herself to leave, when Nick said, “And you? You never entertained dreams of escaping?”
For a moment, for just a moment, I felt as though the façade of the well-composed girl was just that: a mask between her and the world, and it had come down just a little.
Then it went up again. “It is not the same is it? Daddy doesn’t care what I do. And because I was never stupid enough to vent my crazy dreams at him, he never restricted me to the planet. I’m allowed to go and shop in other worlds. My allowance permits me to buy all kinds of fripperies.” She pinched at the not-tulle skirt with her free hand. “And daddy could not be happier if I married and went away to another world. He’d probably endow me generously at that. I’m the spare. It is the heir who is to be bound to this world forever, and to supervising our precious mines here and in the asteroids. Daddy says it’s no work for a woman.” She took a deep pull on the cigarette and exhaled lazily. “At that, he is probably right.”
Nick nodded. He got little more from her after that. She laughed at the idea that she felt resentful because she wasn’t allowed to pursue a career. “What? A career darling? But I am like the lilies of the field who do not toil, and yet, Solomon, in all his glory was not as finely arrayed. Don’t be ridiculous. I am perfectly willing to believe toil is what happens to other people so I get to live as I please. At least, unlike poor Anelie I didn’t have to marry into it.”
If it hadn’t been for that brief glimpse of a real person behind the mask, I’d have felt like throttling her before the interview was done. She told us all her favorite planets to go shopping in; the stores she patronized there; the sensis she’d taken in recently. I didn’t know why Nick wanted to know such things, but I supposed there was a reason. I often couldn’t understand why he asked questions, but it always made some sort of sense in the end.
Of her brother she said only that “I hope he did make it to somewhere he wants to be, and got to try for a pilot. The way he’s been going on, going out and boozing it up with anyone who visits, or going down into Mine One City and getting drunk and fighting with the miners over one of their women… It’s not healthy. It will end in tears. So I hope he’s happy wherever he is. Daddy should stop worrying. Narcis will come home eventually, or make enough money to hire a manager. Or maybe close the damn mines and be done.” That last was said with spiteful force, and once again the mask slipped a little, and I thought she was very angry at the mines, and perhaps at her father. Whether this had anything to do with her brother’s disappearance, I didn’t dare guess.
When she had left I told Nick that. The lights in his eyes dimmed and relit. “Obviously,” he said. “What else to you think is interesting?”
“She’s not as vacuous as she appears?” I said.
“Obviously also,” he said. There was a pause. “We might have to pursue this in the Cinzan end.”
I agreed, and frankly, though I couldn’t say why, I hoped we did. I wanted out of this world. It felt like something was badly wrong on Peura Planet, and it was – for reasons I could never fully identify – making me think of Joe which was always bad, also.
But the doorbell rang and I let Analie Peura in.
While she might have been the same age as her stepdaughter, Mrs. Peura was quite a different article. She was also blond, but her hair had the kind of sleek, carefully cut look that told me she probably didn’t rely to trips outside the world to get it cut. Something like this required weekly, if not daily, attention. Also, while her step children were blond, she was the kind of silvery blond that required mods. Probably a permanent mod. Nothing so crude as dyes for Anelie Peura.
She wore a severely cut black one piece that seemed simple, but as she moved, betrayed that it had probably cost more than some small asteroids. It made her look like a perfect woman, with an extra dose of “what the boys want.”
I realized I was getting irritated with her and told myself to calm down. After all, it wasn’t as though Nick would notice, or care, except particularly, in the sense that he knew – or had memories of – what men liked, and adding it to his estimate of her character.
I made the introductions and she sat in the chair in front of the desk, folded her sculpted hands in her lap, and looked ahead, not making any comment on the privacy shield. Either her husband had told her what to expect of she understood that someone in Nick’s position – or the position he supposedly had – had to have shielding.
“It must be very difficult for you,” Nick said, sounding somehow as though he were empathizing with her. “To be out here, with two step-children almost your age.”
She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Oh, so Reelen has been little miss pleasant, as usual?”
she asked. “You mustn’t mind. She’s very young for her age, if you know what I mean, and was thoroughly put out at my husband requiring she come here and submit to interrogation. You’d think she’d be thrilled at meeting a real-life celebrity, but apparently not. And then, you know, she was disappointed in love.”
I tried to think back through the public profile of Reelen Peura, and the magazines that had featured her. I didn’t remember any man being particularly featured, much less any broken relationship.
Nick obviously didn’t remember my reporting any such thing either, because he said, “I don’t remember any relationship being mentioned, in the public—”
“Oh, no,” Analie said. “It wasn’t public, of course. Would you believe, my darling stepdaughter who spends half her waking hours making jokes about how I had to marry for money – as though I would have done something like that without some real regard for my dear Peura – fell in love with one of the miners?” She laughed, deep in her throat, a laugh that conveyed a sense of derision. “Yes. A convict miner, sent out here to serve his sentence. Mind you, he was not a pauper. Well to do, and educated, a pilot, sent here on a minor charge of smuggling. Chocolate, if I remember, to one of the worlds where it’s forbidden. He told her he’d not done it on purpose, that it was just a moment of forgetfulness. As if. Well. He told her once he went back – he was only here for two years – he would send for her to come to his world and they would be married. But he never did.
“And if she thinks I don’t know one of her long-drawn out trips all over was looking for him… Well, all I have to say is that when you have the money that Reelen does and you’re reduced to pursuing the man who jilted you, you’ve lost all your pride and possibly need your head examined, too.”
Yeah, I definitely didn’t like Analie. Which was just as well, since she didn’t tell us anything at all relevant. She talked about her life before she’d married Peura and how she very nearly, and almost became a famous international sensi star. But then she’d fallen in love – she said – with dearest Peura, and become his fourth wife, instead.
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 2