The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1

by Arlene F. Marks

  “Did they give you a reason for that?” he persisted, applying his sternest expression and deliberately leaning forward in his chair. He was pleased to see the Doc sway slightly away from him, even if it was for just a second. “Did they mention calling in an expert from outside, for example?”

  “They said they already knew what the cause of death was, and that it would violate Karim’s religious practices to cut up his body without good reason. Then they told me not to worry about it, that their report would take care of everything. Finally, they left, taking the station manager’s corpse with them,” she concluded, her expression and tone of voice both freighted with warning.

  Townsend ignored it. “And have they shared any information with you since then?”

  Ruby had been sitting quietly to this point, listening attentively as Drew conducted his interrogation. Now she shook her head and replied with undisguised annoyance, “No. Not a byte.”

  “Well, I’m going to,” Drew decided. Zagging had worked for him in the past. Perhaps revealing a lie could shake loose the truth. “In their report to Security, they said that the body was discovered, frozen solid, inside an airlock.”

  The two women gasped in unison.

  “What?”

  “That’s not right!” declared Ruby.

  “That’s what I suspected,” Drew agreed. “So, tell me, where was the body found?”

  “You already know that, Drew. His quarters were sealed off to protect—”

  Townsend got to his feet then and raised his voice, overriding the rest of Ruby’s response. “I’m having trouble understanding why, if Khaloub died in his quarters and the Rangers already knew the cause of death, they wouldn’t simply report it that way, instead of making up something about an airlock. They ignored standard Security procedure, and they lied. What I need to decide right now is, do we allow them to continue this — this farce of an investigation? Or do we take it over ourselves and do it properly?”

  Ruby looked as though she was about to swallow her tongue. “Take over the investigation? Oh, I agree with you that we could probably do a better job, Chief. But exactly how do you propose we reassign the case? We can’t simply elbow the Rangers aside. We need a trained field officer to head things up, and Bonelli would never—”

  “We don’t need Bonelli,” Drew cut in, dropping back into his chair. “I’ll head it up, and I’ll write the report.”

  “Oh, you will?” The Doc crossed her arms slowly over her chest, fairly radiating skepticism. “And who will convince the Space Installation Authority to put any credence in that report, let alone pass it along to Security?” she demanded.

  “That’s easy,” he replied. “We don’t report our findings to the SIA. We go directly to the Security Agency.”

  “Bypass the Rangers?” Ruby wondered aloud.

  “Not exactly. Is there anyone aboard who can fake Bonelli’s thumbprint?”

  Her eyes lit up. “I’ll check,” she promised.

  The Doc flung her arms skyward and breathed an exasperated syllable. “Now you want to file a false report?”

  “No, we’d be filing a completely truthful report,” he pointed out patiently, “with a Ranger captain’s thumbprint on it to make it believable.”

  “But the forgery would invalidate the report,” she persisted. “Don’t you understand? It’s against the law.”

  “We’re not using his print to defraud anyone, Doctor. We’re putting it on the document that Bonelli himself would be filing if we allowed him to finish the investigation. That’s only a crime if Bonelli complains about it, and since our report will be ten times better than anything he would produce on his own, and maybe even get him promoted off the Zoo, I don’t think he will.”

  “Then you don’t know Steve Bonelli. It isn’t credit he’s after, or a pat on the back from his superiors — it’s the rush of adrenaline he gets from tracking prey. The Rangers don’t have much opportunity to do that over on Zulu. When Ruby contacted him about finding a dead body, Bonelli was ecstatic. He’ll protect his ownership of this investigation, Mr. Townsend, with deadly force if necessary. You’d better be able to match his firepower, or, mark my words, you’ll wish you’d never started this,” she warned, dark eyes flashing.

  Beside him, Ruby was holding her breath.

  Whatever you do, don’t argue with the Doc.

  It was too late for advice. He had a job to do.

  Staring back at Ktumba with what he hoped was a match for her firepower, he leaned in and lowered his voice. “You may be right, Doctor,” he said. “At the moment, however, I have just one more question for you. If I can arrange to get Khaloub’s body back here, will you perform the autopsy, and then write up your findings in a form that can be attached to my report? Yes or no.”

  Unexpectedly, she sighed and turned away, and it was his turn to hold his breath. A forensics report was standard procedure in a case like this. Ktumba had to be aware that without her cooperation, his plan was doomed to fail. Well, at least she hadn’t asked him how he planned to procure the vic’s corpse.

  “You’re a lunatic,” Ruby murmured, and squeezed his arm. “But you’re my kind of lunatic. If you survive this, I’ll teach you to fly Devil Bug.”

  At that, the Doc swung stormy eyes on him. “All right, Mr. Townsend,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’m not convinced that the truth should ever come out about this, but since you are determined to go ahead, I can save you some trouble. It won’t be necessary to retrieve the body. My medical examination is already on file.”

  By sheer force of will, Drew kept his voice calm. “I see. So you inspected the corpse before the Rangers arrived?”

  “I saw it, naturally, but my detailed examination was performed before he died.”

  “Then you don’t know the exact cause of death.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  This was too much. “How? Are you psych—?” The rest of the question died on Drew’s tongue. In his experience, there was only one way a person could know, without an autopsy, the precise way in which another had died.

  The thought must have reached his face, for Ruby commanded urgently, “Tell him, Marion, or he’ll think you did it yourself!”

  The portrait of disgruntlement, Ktumba settled back down in her chair and began reciting in a singsong voice. “Karim went to his quarters right after lunch, complaining of indigestion. An hour later, he contacted Med Services. I made the house call. He had a dangerously high fever, and I gave him something to bring his temperature under control. Then he told me what he’d eaten for lunch, and I went to the caf to get some samples for analysis. By the time I’d done that, the man. Was. Dead.”

  “Of whatever he’d eaten that caused the fever?”

  That mirthless smile was back on her face. “No, actually, he’d frozen to death.”

  “Frozen to death?” he repeated, dumbfounded. “Without leaving his quarters?”

  “Without leaving his bed,” the Doc confirmed.

  “So he didn’t die of accidental poisoning?”

  She shrugged. “He might have died of that. On the other hand, he might have survived, if the temperature in his quarters hadn’t dropped to about 200 below zero.”

  All right. Now they were getting somewhere — he hoped. “Who actually found the body?”

  The women exchanged a glance. Ruby looked distinctly uncomfortable as she replied, “Jason Smith’s console monitors all the interior temperatures on the station. When it registered the variance in Karim’s quarters, it set off an alarm. Several people arrived at about the same time.”

  “And they discovered the body?”

  “The door to his quarters wouldn’t open right away. People ran to get tools, they told others what was happening, more came to help…” Ruby spread her arms helplessly.

  Drew sighed. If the Rangers had received the same runar
ound as he was getting now, that would explain Bonelli’s preliminary report. Meanwhile, he could feel a tension headache building. Time was running out, and these people were playing games. Somehow, he had to convince the crew of Daisy Hub that he wasn’t the enemy. Well, as Ruby had pointed out, he was no Naguchi; perhaps he could be a Khaloub.

  “Ruby, how much time do you calculate we have until Bonelli’s next duty shift?”

  She glanced at her wristcomm. “About three and a half hours. If he’s going to pay us a visit, that’s when we’ll hear from him.”

  “Then that’s how long we have to determine the truth. I want a meeting of the entire crew, in the caf, in fifteen station minutes. And tell them I have to decide what it’s safe to put into a report to the Space Installation Security Agency regarding Karim Khaloub’s death, and I can’t do that unless I have the whole story. No guesses, no evasions, and no excuses. That means everybody attends and everybody contributes. Capisce?”

  Ruby grinned. “I love it when you talk dirty, Chief.”

  Chapter 9

  Most of them looked just like their images on the crew manifest. Some looked older. None of them were smiling. Drew positioned himself beside the Muralist’s depiction on the cafeteria wall and watched them all straggle in and find seats. There was Spiro Gouryas, the classically featured structural integrity expert. Several techs walked in together, and Drew mentally matched their faces up with names and checked them off: Raymond Oolalong, Jill Wing, Park Sun, and Mischa Arkady. The ones he had already met glanced once in his direction, made eye contact, nodded briefly. Then they turned and pointedly looked at something else. He consulted his wristcomm, impatient to begin. They were still five people short. More to the point, where was Gavin Holchuk?

  Holchuk was more than the station’s resident expert on Nandrians; he was the man who had helped Karim Khaloub restore order to the Hub once before. Drew wasn’t normally superstitious, but he did trust his instincts. Right now, they were telling him that if he wanted to repeat Khaloub’s success, then he needed to follow Khaloub’s recipe, the main ingredient of which was the Chief Cargo Inspector.

  There he was. Tall, balding, with broad shoulders and deep-set eyes and craggy features, Gavin Holchuk strode into the room. He paused and scanned the assembled crewmembers, acknowledging their greetings with a nod. Finally, he strolled over to stand beside Teri Mintz and another cargo inspector, Robert O’Malley. Only then did he turn appraising eyes on the new station manager. Drew cursed under his breath and stared right back at him, holding the eye contact for a full ten seconds, until Holchuk broke into a grin and turned away. In that moment, the whole room seemed to exhale.

  Prison mentality, Drew reminded himself sadly. Staring contests, pecking orders… Khaloub had been right to be concerned about morale.

  “All right, people, let’s begin our business,” he announced. “For those of you who are seeing me for the first time, my name is Drew Townsend, and I was sent here as Karim Khaloub’s replacement.” He waited for the swell of murmuring to subside before continuing, “In less than three station hours, Ranger Captain Bonelli will be on his way over here to continue his investigation into Karim Khaloub’s death. It is my intention to present him, when he arrives, with a fait accompli, a concluded case, giving the Rangers no further reason to visit this station. To do that, I need all your help. You don’t know me yet, so you’re just going to have to trust me to do what’s in the best interests of Daisy Hub and her crew. Knowing the truth and making a report are two separate items on my agenda.”

  The silence that deadened the air following his words was as much a challenge as Gavin Holchuk’s stare had been earlier. Finally, Ruby asked, “Where do you want to start, Drew?”

  “The cause of death is a good starting point. Doctor, you told me Karim had accidentally eaten something that disagreed with him. Have you been able to identify what caused his fever?”

  All eyes turned to Ktumba, who stood beside the door, white-clad arms crossed over her ample chest. “Not from the food samples I took from the caf. But I drew some blood for analysis, and in it I found an organic substance of unknown origin with molecular similarities to Human adrenaline. I would need to conduct further testing in order to confirm my hypothesis, of course, but I believe that it was this substance that caused Karim’s fever.”

  “I knew it! It’s my fault! I’m so sorry!” Fritz Jensen shot to his feet as though launched from a pad and stood in the middle of the room, wringing his hands. “He told me it was seasoning. It looked like ground pepper and smelled like oregano. I poured some into a small shaker and put it on Karim’s lunch tray as a surprise. Some surprise! I killed him!”

  “Whoa, slow down! Who told you it was seasoning?” Drew demanded.

  Jensen looked about to cry. “The Nandrian crewman. It was early. The caf wasn’t open yet. He came into the kitchen and traded it to me for a glass of lemonade.”

  Behind the chef’s tearful words, Drew heard Gavin Holchuk cursing.

  “Holchuk? Something to add?”

  “That stuff should never have left the Nandrian ship,” declared the Chief Cargo Inspector. “The Nandrians carry live food animals aboard their vessels and breed them as necessary. Nandrian seasoning accelerates the reproductive cycle of those animals, bringing them into season.”

  “So the crewman took the ‘seasoning’ into Jensen’s kitchen—?”

  “—because that’s where our food is prepared,” Holchuk replied. “And we do use seasoning, just not for the same purpose as they do.”

  Drew considered for a moment. “Sounds like an unfortunate misunderstanding to me. What do you think, Doctor?”

  Ktumba smiled. “Assuming that I could have kept the fever under control until the effects of the seasoning had worn off, Karim probably would have recovered fully from his — indigestion.”

  “All right, Jensen, you’re off the hook,” Drew informed him. “But from now on, stay away from alien foodstuffs, at least until the Doc has had a chance to check them out.”

  Speechless with relief, Jensen nodded enthusiastically and plopped back into his seat with a huge sigh.

  “So, the cause of death was exposure to extreme cold?” Townsend concluded, glancing at the Doc. She nodded. “Okay,” he sighed, “that’s the hard part. How, in God’s name, does a man freeze to death in his own bed? Mr. Smith, you’re the life support expert. Enlighten us, please.”

  A tall, lean man in gray coveralls stepped forward and snapped to attention. Terrific. After eight standard years aboard the Hub, surrounded by rebels and misfits, Jason Smith still behaved like a regular Fleet officer.

  Drew sighed. “At ease, Mr. Smith, and report.”

  The engineer took a deep breath and began, “Out in space, we have to keep warm air circulating constantly. Otherwise, a compartment will rapidly lose heat, eventually becoming as cold as space itself.”

  “So something — or someone — cut off the air circulation to Karim Khaloub’s quarters?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I assume you have already performed a thorough examination of the air circulation system?”

  “And the ductwork leading off the mains and into the station manager’s quarters, yes, sir. We’ve ruled out any physical blockage that might have diverted the airflow. End-of-shift readouts showed all manual controls inactive around the time of the — incident. We also did a full diagnostic on the life support console. Everything is working perfectly.”

  “No possibility of an accident, then?”

  Smith shook his head. “There’s no way this should have happened, Mr. Townsend. Not by accident, not by sabotage. The entire system is watchdogged. An alarm would have gone off the second anyone hacked into the programming.”

  Drew smiled ruefully. “So you’ve ruled out the possibility that the console or its programming might have been tampered with? I’m afraid that leaves us wit
h only one alternative, Mr. Smith.”

  As the engineer drew himself indignantly erect, Drew heard a collective intake of breath. “Sir, if you’re about to suggest that I—”

  “When the impossible has been eliminated, my dear Watson, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Drew said, quoting from memory in Ameranglo. “If there’s no way the system could have been sabotaged, then we must assume it was doing exactly what it was programmed to do.”

  “By someone with the necessary skill and authorization codes,” Smith added hotly. “That still points the finger at me.”

  “Maybe it does. But I told you, knowing the truth and making the report are two separate items. At the moment, I just want to know what happened. Don’t you?”

  Smith hesitated a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. Meanwhile, a darkly scowling Gavin Holchuk began striding toward the front of the room. As he passed Jensen’s chair, the sound of a woman’s sobbing stopped him in his tracks.

  It caught everyone by surprise. Drew scanned the room and finally found her, standing with her back to the wall, beside the entrance to the caf. Lydia Garfield. Unable to barricade herself with furniture, Lydia had hidden instead behind a wall of people.

  “I shouldn’t have left him,” she wailed. Ruby hurried over to comfort her, but Lydia was inconsolable. “I would have felt the temperature going down. I could have saved him.”

  “You were in his quarters?” Drew demanded.

  “Doc Ktumba asked me to check on him,” Lydia replied tearfully. “There was no change. I was going to put his skin on him, monitor from my console. I went to the SPA room — it took only a minute or so — but when I came back — I couldn’t get in!”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Lydia,” Smith told her. “There was nothing you could have done. By the time you’d noticed the chill in the air, the door would already have been sealed shut, and we’d be talking about two deaths now, instead of just one. Be grateful that you weren’t inside with him.”