“Maybe the question is,” Iannazzi said, clenching her hands together so hard that her knuckles had turned white, “why had she waited so long inside the storage room? Had she waited for me to arrive?”
“I hate to be blunt,” the man said in one of those snide tones that actually meant he didn’t hate it at all, “but there would have been much easier ways to kill you.”
“Oh, I know that,” Iannazzi whispered. “But I work on anacapa drives. And the one in my lab would have been unshielded after I arrived.”
Rajivk’s throat went dry. “You think she was trying to destroy the base?”
“I thought that was impossible,” Sheldenhelm said. “All those safeguards—”
“Safeguards can be worked around,” said the same woman as before. “If it was completely impossible to circumvent them, there would be no need for security.”
“Why would anyone want to blow up the base?” asked Pereyra. “Especially today.”
She clearly meant after the closure meeting. There would be no point. The base’s future had become finite in a very concrete way.
“She didn’t go to the meeting, right?” Rajivk looked at that man. “I mean, you said she was here.”
“She was here,” he said softly. “While everyone else was several stories up. In the same room.”
TWENTY
HE ALWAYS FOUND the probes to be unbelievably tiny, given the amount of work they had to do. Tevin held the probe in his right hand. The probe was round and gray, with ridges along each side. The entire thing had redundancies upon redundancies upon redundancies. It contained a multitude of sensors, lights, cameras. It read every kind of information it possibly could about its environment—everything its designers knew about environments, and everything the designers could anticipate.
Designed for space and space exploration, the probe had more power than any other tool in his YSR-SR arsenal. Very few on the staff could use the probes. He was the only one on his team approved to carry one—partly because the damn things were so expensive.
Dinithi was still working her scanlight over the small circle of water where they had found the human-made chain. She also held his rake, her arm trembling just a little.
He hadn’t wanted to set the rake down. He had wanted to keep it in the exact same position, so that they wouldn’t lose the chain in the rocks or break it by trying to pull it up to the surface.
He brought the probe to her side. She glanced down at it, her mouth pursed in a bemused smile.
“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” she said.
He had had the same reaction the first time he saw one. Then he had picked it up. The probes were dense and heavy, which more than made up for their small size.
The water lapped at their feet. He had actually become used to the roar of the waterfall, although he did know if someone tried to yell at him from above, he wouldn’t be able to hear it. He had his hood off, so his cheeks were damp and chilled.
With his free hand, he put his hood on again. Before he had left the YSR-SR office, he had synched the probe to his own comm system just like he was supposed to do. He was rather amazed he had done so. Sometimes he forgot.
Perhaps the idea that he was coming to the waterfall made him think of synching before he left. Or maybe the thought that he might know whoever had died here.
Although he wasn’t entirely sure the thought was conscious. He had just done so, as part of putting his gear together.
Still, now that he was on-site, he checked the gear again. He flicked the probe to active by hitting a tiny ridge with his thumb. A red light appeared in a holographic screen in the center of his vision. The red light and the square screen overlaid the dark pool with its patches of yellow light, and the constantly moving wall of water beyond.
It made him slightly dizzy.
“I don’t see anything,” Dinithi said.
“I’m not going to loop you in,” he said. It was a last-minute decision, but the dizziness made his choice clear. If either one of them lost their balance and fell into that pool, the other needed to start a rescue, not try to undo a synch and lose the holographic screen.
She grunted with disgust. “I’d like to see this. I thought it’s always better to have two pair of eyes on everything.”
“It is and you will,” he said. “Just not right away.”
He was a little more curt than he probably should have been. Much as he liked how she worked, her constant demands and questions were beginning to irritate him. Maybe he was just getting tired.
He activated the hands-off controls of the probe, so that it would respond to the commands he gave it through the environmental suit. The probe glowed slightly in his palm.
The holographic screen showed a blackness on one side, and something shaped like a black mountain. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at part of his palm, with the lower part of his thumb appearing at the far side of his vision. He’d never quite had a literal hands-on perspective like this before.
It also made his dizziness increase just a bit.
He made the holographic screen smaller and moved it to the left of his vision, so it didn’t dominate what he saw. Then he gently tossed the probe into the water as near to the scanlight as he could get it.
The probe landed with a splash he couldn’t hear. He watched the probe sink, then slip forward, following its initial instructions to approach the end of the rake.
The probe turned its lights on full, which made him blink hard. The water was greenish-brownish-gray, with a lot of sediment.
“What do you see?” Dinithi asked. Her arm was still shaking.
When he had gotten the probe from his gear, he had also grabbed a small screen and tucked it into the side of his equipment belt. He pulled the screen out now. That screen was set to the probe’s frequencies, but allowed no real command of the probe. He had kept that for himself.
He held out the second screen, then tapped it so that it came alive.
Its imagery mirrored the imagery in his hood, but staring at both of them gave him an instant headache. That’s when he remembered his training: He was supposed to look at one screen or the other, but not both.
He couldn’t make the holographic screen in his hood visor go away, so he didn’t. He just held out the small screen, so that Dinithi could look at it while she waited.
“What a mess down there,” she said.
He agreed. The probe had gone to the edge of the rake’s tines and then, as per his initial instructions, started scanning downward.
A flood of information scrolled past on the left side of his holographic screen—temperature, water pressure, composition of the water, the rate of current and movement. He couldn’t keep up with all of it and didn’t even try.
He focused on the imagery first, and he would worry about the other stuff later.
The small links in the human-made chain loomed large in the probe’s cameras.
“When do I get to let go of the rake?” Dinithi asked.
“We can’t let go,” Tevin said. “I’ll hang onto it.”
He moved the screen to his other hand, careful not to look at the images, and grabbed the rake. Its tines, below the surface, bobbled, but the chain stayed on them.
The movement made him a bit dizzy too.
Then he passed the screen to Dinithi. She held it up, and he could just barely see it out of the corner of his eyes. He had to look away.
“The light’s weird down there. I’m thinking I should set the scanlight down,” she said.
The scanlight recorded things, though. And he wanted something other than the recording from the probe.
“Keep using it,” he said.
The probe followed the program he had given it, slowly following the chain to the rocks below. In the whitish light from the probe, the rocks looked gray and brown, but they didn’t have any sediment on them that Tevin could see. Maybe the lack of sediment was due to the churn in the water. There was sediment everywhe
re else, making the water look thick and grainy.
Still, the rocks looked jagged to him, something he normally didn’t associate with rocks that had been underwater, particularly rocks with this kind of churn constantly wearing at their surfaces.
As the probe got farther down, he realized the chain wasn’t trapped between the rocks. It had come up alongside them. The thing at the bottom of the chain was hitting against the rocks, but it looked—at least from this angle—like he could pull it up.
He wasn’t going to do that yet. He moved the probe a little closer to the swirling water, careful (or at least hoping) to keep the probe out of a strange little kaleidoscopic eddy the water had created.
The light caught something waving in the moving water. Closer to shore, he’d seen some seaweed doing that. He wondered how close these rocks were to the bottom. He supposed he could use all that information flowing from the probe to figure it out, but he didn’t really want to.
He would lose his focus on the images and on what to do next.
“What is that?” Dinithi asked. She brought the screen closer to her face. It illuminated her dark skin, and somehow removed its luminescence. She was still moving the scanlight, but slowly, clearly not paying attention to it.
Exactly the way he didn’t want his own attention to wander.
“I’m not sure what that is,” he said, but he didn’t like it. Something in the way it moved bothered him. Plants usually moved more. They bent in a variety of places, and sometimes rippled with the current. This wasn’t rippling. It really was waving.
He let the probe sink farther down. The water here had a different composition. The numbers had changed along the side. He forced himself not to watch them.
The water also seemed a little darker here, but that might have been the fact that the lights from the surface weren’t penetrating as well this deep.
The probe finally reached the side of the rocks where the chain was hung up. Only it wasn’t quite what he expected. He had thought he would find some kind of jewel or nametag or bauble slamming against the rocks.
Instead, he realized, the chain hadn’t fallen free. The thing that held it wasn’t whatever hung from the end of the chain. It was the thing the chain hung from.
Someone’s neck.
TWENTY-ONE
BASSIMA WISHED SHE hadn’t eaten the plum cake. She kept burping the meringue. Someone had decided to add a hint of strawberry to the egg whites, and it hadn’t mixed well with the plum.
But she had eaten it, of course. When she got nervous, she tended to eat everything in her way.
She had left the diner and walked to Taji’s office, partly to see what kind of walk Taji often took during the week. Most of the businesses on Sandoveil’s main street were tourist businesses, some catering to the Fleet arrivals and others to tourists from the rest of Nindowne. It was easy to tell the difference between the two.
The Fleet shops had a lot of basics—clothing, underwear, boots—made to last, because no one would be able to return to replace those items.
Or, rather, if the Fleet did return, it would do so years from now, and those items (made by the same company with the same materials) might not be available any longer.
The Fleet items were blindingly expensive unless the buyer could prove that they were involved with the Fleet somehow. Bassima wasn’t, so she had no idea what kind of discount the Fleet members got, if indeed it was a discount and not some kind of donation.
The tourist shops for the Nindowne locals had cheaper items, souvenirs that had no real worth, posters and mugs and all kinds of things that simply weren’t practical on a spaceship. The clothing was cheaper as well, and more cheaply made—bought for an emergency on a trip across the planet, rather than bought for life because the owner would never return.
Bassima never shopped in either kind of store. When she went into the places on Main Street, it was because she was being official. She didn’t pay attention to her clothing, getting most of it used. And her office provided her uniform, which was feeling a little tight after that meal.
Everything felt tight. She hated having her hands tied by regulations. If only the office had let her investigate properly. She would probably have found the Kimuras by now. Or at least Taji.
Bassima tugged on her shirt and headed past the tourist shops. The entrance to Taji’s office was on a side street, but she had one small window that overlooked Main Street. In that window, a sign blinked: Consultations, Advice—Legal and Informational, followed by a small symbol that anyone with the Fleet recognized as Fleet-approved.
Most people on Nindowne had no idea the Fleet used Sandoveil as its base. To most regional tourists who came through, the day-to-day operations of the city seemed a mystery. No one mentioned the city’s largest employer, and according to official documents, the slot for biggest job creator was the tourism industry.
Bassima stopped at the window first, noting that the lights were off, just like they had been when she had come by earlier.
But there was no notice that the office would be closed. The hours, which were a small, steady yellow beneath the sign, hadn’t changed—and showed that the office should still be open.
She cupped her hands around her face and peered inside, but the light from the sign made it hard to see anything. She squinted, thought she saw a blanket trailing off a couch, and wondered if she was just making that up.
She stepped back. The street was empty. No one had come by. Most of the shops were closed now, and people were going about their business. Besides, the local tourist trade went down in mid-fall, so the only strangers on the street should have been from the Fleet. Who knew what they did in the early evening.
Bassima’s heart was pounding, and she wasn’t sure why. She trusted the feeling, though, because she had learned that she observed things and processed them without actually being conscious of them. She had seen something this time; she just wasn’t sure what it was.
She glanced up and down the street again. Most of the lights were out in the other businesses, and nothing went by. She slipped onto the side street. It curved, like many of the side streets in Sandoveil. They followed the path of the river on the south end of town, all moving toward a bigger road that went just under the mountain.
The businesses back here got less traffic. Some were artisanal shops, bakeries, and small restaurants. And a few were lawyers or accountants.
Taji’s was the only business that advertised consulting as well as information and legal advice.
The window overlooking the side street was large and rectangular. It had a gray shutter that Taji clearly kept closed after business hours. It was closed now.
When Bassima went by the first time, she had noted the hours, the lack of a sign explaining the closure, and the fact that the shutters were closed. She had peered through the square window over the door, but only saw the hallway, and it had told her nothing.
This time, she rapped on the door again, then pushed the door to see if it would open.
It did.
She stood in front of it, feeling a surprise she hadn’t expected. Doors to businesses like this should have locked automatically at a certain time, especially if the shutters were down.
But she didn’t see any obvious computer controls, or any overrides, at least not outside the door. The system looked different from the one at the Kimuras’ house. Maybe it had come with the building rental.
Bassima activated the evidence-capture feature on her regulation shoes. Then she stepped inside. No lights came up, and they should have as she entered.
She swallowed, stepped back out, and flicked on her shoulder comm, contacting the office. This time, she got dispatch.
“I’m outside Taji Kimura’s office,” she half-whispered. “There’s no one about and the door is unlocked. The automated lights aren’t working. It looks like the system is down. I’m going in, but I would appreciate it if another officer checks on me.”
The dispatch muttered somet
hing about anything to do with the Kimuras required approval from Amy Loraas. But Bassima ignored it, signing off.
Every time she had spoken to Amy Loraas, she had been discouraged from doing anything.
Bassima wasn’t going to be discouraged this time.
She stepped inside the door again. Even though she expected the darkness to remain this time, it still unnerved her. Lights came on when people walked through doors. That was simply how everything worked.
When it didn’t work, it made her nervous.
She didn’t draw her laser pistol, although she kept her hand on it. The office felt empty. She wasn’t sure why she had that opinion, but it felt exactly the same way the house had felt near the edge of the mountain—as if it had been abandoned.
She did activate her scanlight on her belt. The sudden yellow made her blink. It revealed a layer of dust that surprised her. She would have thought a busy office like this one would stay clean just from the traffic.
But she had no idea. She always operated on foot.
She kept the scanlight on her belt. The light would record what was in front of her and little else. She didn’t want to hold the light, not as she was going into the darkness.
The office smelled musty. The computer system had to be down. Every building in Sandoveil had an automated environmental system that not only maintained temperature, but kept the air at a certain level of cleanliness—one of the many things the Fleet engineers had given the community when they had built it centuries ago.
A lot of the buildings used Fleet technology, just as if the owners were still on board a ship.
Which meant the air shouldn’t have smelled musty and a little decayed. That disturbed her as well.
Her heart was pounding as she rounded the corner.
The office, in the strangely focused light, looked odd. She made herself focus. A desk near the door, with two chairs on one side for clients, and a chair on the other, presumably for Taji. But the desk was crammed across from the window, between a table covered with food containers and a door that clearly led to the office’s only bathroom.
The Falls [05 Diving Universe] 2016 Page 11