From inside the vast numbness of his surprise Trent said, "Hi there."
"Did I wake you up?"
"No. No, you didn't."
"You are Officer Benny Gutierrez, yes?"
"Yes."
"I am told your French is poor. Would you like to use English instead?"
"Sure. That'd be great."
She took the only chair in the infirmary, pulled it up next to Trent's bed, sat down and turned on her handheld, attached the gray traceset trode at her right temple and ran the thin cable down to plug it into the handheld. "I am going to need to ask you some questions; I will try not to take too long."
"I wasn't sleeping anyhow."
She pulled her chair a bit closer to Trent. "I thought that might be the case, after what happened today. I was going to wait until the morning, but I thought it would be worth checking to see if you were able to answer questions tonight."
"I can handle it," Trent assured her. "I wasn't--very close, you know--with any of the PKF I shipped up with."
Her nod seemed tired. "I suppose that is good. I am a personal assistant to Commissionaire Vance; we are doing a routine check to see whether it is possible that the criminal Trent had anything to do with what happened today. I--do you mind if I call you Benny?" she asked suddenly.
"No. What do I--" Trent let the question hang.
"My rank is a bit odd," she said. "I am a detached PKF Elite candidate with a temporary working rank outside the Elite of lieutenant. I outrank you no matter how it gets figured, but you do not need to worry about that; if I am to call you Benny, you may call me Melissa. That is my name," she said. "Melissa du Bois."
Her long hair, the gorgeous long brown hair, was gone. In its place was the spike brush cut that was common among women who had to wear pressure suits. She wore no makeup, and she had been wearing the same clothing since early that day; Trent could smell her if he tried, a musky odor that was genuinely pleasant. Her tan had faded in the months since she had left Earth behind, and some of the vitality had gone out of her; there was a subtle deadness in her voice, a lack of the animation and expressiveness that had been so striking in Trent's earlier brief encounters with her.
There were tiny, almost invisible lines around her eyes.
She was stunning.
They ran through Trent's story quickly; though she commented in a neutral tone of voice on Trent's lack of helpfulness, Melissa showed no particular disappointment at the paucity of details Trent was able to provide her. About the point where things were winding down, Trent said, "Melissa?"
The beautiful brown eyes had lost none of their ability to project interest, the casual skill of making it seem that the person they were fastened upon was the most fascinating person Melissa had ever met. "Yes?"
"They're--not telling me much. About what happened, how close they are to finding the people who killed the other PKF who were with me." Melissa did not answer Trent immediately, and Trent said softly, "Do you really think Trent had something to do with it?"
She looked at him curiously, questioningly. "How does it matter?"
Trent blinked. "Men I served with died out there, Melissa. I think I have a right to know."
Melissa continued studying him a moment longer, and then shook her head no, a single quick motion. "I doubt it very much. It is not the style of thing he would be involved in. Not with deaths, like this."
Trent leaned forward in bed, supressing with a genuine effort the sudden, completely insane desire to thank her. "What else do you know about the attack?"
Melissa did not answer him; she was busy with her handheld, paging through reports. She glanced up at Trent after a moment. "Your data profile says you have a radio packet inskin?"
Trent sat watching the curve of her cheek as she bent over the handheld. "Yes."
She nodded. "I do not know if I should be the one to tell you this, but it is hardly a secret; you would have learned it in your orientation lecture. Channel 3050.5; the password is Eclairs, with a capital E.' You will be able to monitor general Farside DataWatch business, as well as results on the current investigation as they are uploaded to the Board."
There was no trace of Watchdog on the Board; Trent scanned the Board quickly, said, "There's nothing on that channel about the attack, not yet."
He realized the mistake the instant the words were spoken.
Melissa nodded. "Probably they have not released the preliminary report yet. But--" Her mouth closed very precisely. "You checked the entire Board already?"
Trent forced himself to look surprised by her reaction. "Well, I skimmed it, yes."
Melissa gave him an odd, quick sideways look. It was 12:35. "I see." She struggled with indecision, and then said abruptly, "Come with me."
In the room where Trent had undergone a lengthy interrogation by the officers of the DataWatch, Melissa du Bois showed Trent the status of the search for the terrorists who had destroyed Benny Gutierrez's rolligon.
It was dark except for the briefing room's holo projectors; silent except for the sounds Trent and Melissa made. The lasers were buried in the wall just above the point where the walls met the floor. With the glowpaint turned completely down the holos glowed bright, the only light in the world. Watching barefooted, wearing the pants from his uniform and a white undershirt, Trent felt like God. He looked down on the surface of Luna from a great height.
They sat in a pair of chairs so close together in the cool briefing room that Trent felt the heat of her body. "This is a semi-realtime image," Melissa said. "It is updated every forty-five seconds." The triangle created by Jackson Town, Verne and Tsiolkovsky was laid out across the surface of the long conference table. The huge optical and radio telescopes at Zvezdagrad in Tsiolkovsky Crater were tiny specks; the dome at Jackson Town was the size of Trent's thumbnail. The catapult at Jackson Town was an almost invisibly thin line about the same length as the diameter of the Jackson Town dome; the catapult at Verne Crater was the size of a toothpick. The hills and craters, maria and rilles of the Lunar Farside easily dwarfed the works of man.
Melissa pointed, moved one slender hand within the holograph. "Here is where the attack on your rolligon took place, in this long ravine. From the evidence found at the scene--" The holograph flickered, and suddenly Trent was falling, plunging down toward the surface of Luna. The apparent point of view stabilized, stopped. The holograph showed a badly damaged rolligon. "There were no Orbital Eyes watching this area when the attack took place. The terrorists would have known that; trying to maintain surveillance on all of Farside at all times would be impossible, and the Eyes are not designed to. As soon as the DataWatch here at Verne realized you had not arrived when you were due, every available Eye was turned to tracking your rolligon, and they found it quickly. Unfortunately, by then the terrorists were already gone." In the holograph hovering above the oval tabletop, with his naked eye Trent could see the very faintly lighter soil a quarter of a kilometer to the west, where Lan and Callia had sprayed dust to cover their tracks. "There was a crawler--what is called a chameleon, Benny, coated with polypaint so that the crawler can shade itself into the environment around it--right here." Her hand moved again, pointing. "There are officers tracking the vehicle, but it is a slow process. Do you know anything about the sorts of vehicles in use on Luna?"
Trent shook his head. "I rode the Bullet--the monorail--to Tsiolkovsky. I rode a rolligon from there. That's all."
Melissa smiled for the first time. "In the last two months I have become familiar with every form of transportation on this horrible little planet. You are missing very little," she told Trent.
"I'll take your word for it."
"Command, lights up." The bright glow of the white glowpaint came up around them. "There is not much left to tell you. The terrorists probably came from Jackson Town. It would be the logical place from which to stage such an operation, especially if the Erisian Claw was responsible for it; I am told the Temple of Eris is very popular in Jackson Town."
&nb
sp; Trent gambled, decided to let himself sound ignorant. "Are they going to search Jackson Town?"
Overplayed; he got the quick sideways look again. "Jackson Town," she said severely, "is Free Luna territory. You should know that."
Trent shook his head, made himself sound disgusted. "I do. I mean, I did. It said that in the infochip I audited when I got assigned here." He sighed, brushed Benny Gutierrez's curly hair back from his brow. "I'm just not thinking very straight right now."
Her voice gentled immediately. "It is all right. Just be careful not to make such mistakes in front of other members of the Lunar DataWatch. You will be assigned here for two years, yes? You could get a reputation it would be"--she hesitated a moment--"hard to live down."
"You'd know about that, wouldn't you?"
Surprisingly, it did not get the response Trent had expected. Perhaps it was only that she was clearly tired; Melissa answered him without hesitation, without anger at the way the question was phrased. "Yes. It is strange, in some ways; half a year ago I would have been so pleased to be doing what I am now doing, aiding Commissionaire Vance in a highly visible hunt for the highest-profile criminal in the System. Today..." Her voice trailed away; Trent nodded encouragingly, as though entranced, and after a moment's pause Melissa's voice came back even more firmly. "Today the Commissionaire is laughed at for the first time in his career. He is a gentleman," she told Trent, "and the frustration he feels--I see it, but he does not act upon it, he does not direct it at me. Before that news conference newsdancers kept questioning me about how it felt to be known as the officer who had failed to apprehend Trent at Spacebase One; after it they directed similar questions at the Commissionaire. He never ridiculed me before the news conference, when he was not so angry; he does not do so now, when he is."
"Are you close to catching him?"
"Between the two of us, Benny, no, or I would not be wasting my time checking out random ideolog attacks like this one." Melissa yawned suddenly, stretching, the gray combat fatigues stretching tight across the muscles of her shoulders and upper arms. "I think he must have left Luna. We're fairly sure he did not do so through any Unification port, but that's hardly relevant. It would be a small matter for him to charter a craft out of any Free Luna city. Commissionaire Vance disagrees with me, but--" She shrugged wearily and met Trent's gaze with a certain degree of humor. "Who can say? I would give a great deal to know what Trent is thinking."
"How much?"
"Excuse me?"
"Never mind," Trent said. "You're very nice, you know."
Melissa du Bois looked at Trent coolly, with just a hint of speculation. "Really."
Trent looked directly at her. "Yes," he said gently, "really." He did not look away, did not break contact with the serene, careful brown eyes. "How long are you going to be here?"
"This base? A day, perhaps two. Why?" The amusement in her voice was evident.
"Just curious. No real reason." Trent did not let himself blink, kept his eyes fixed upon hers. Melissa looked at him curiously, and Trent whispered, "Thank you. For everything." The puzzled look left her features slowly, and her eyes widened slightly. Trent did not move; held her eyes with the intensity in his own, held the connection. Her breath caught, stopped, started again at a quicker pace. Trent said nothing for a long moment, and then relaxed all at once, leaned back in his chair. Melissa shook herself with what appeared to Trent like a real effort.
Trent said, "Remember I said that. I mean it."
Melissa du Bois looked away from Trent and said softly, "I should take you back to the infirmary."
It was 1:52 a.m.
Melissa jacked her handheld into the terminal in the small office Commander Brissois had given her, three doors down from the infirmary where Benny Gutierrez rested.
She seated herself before the terminal's holocams.
"Command, access Mohammed Vance."
It took most of two seconds, while the command was routed through LINK, bounced up to one of the ring of low orbit comsats that serviced Luna and back down to the PKF base outside Luna City where Mohammed Vance was directing the search for Trent the Uncatchable. The loonie secretary whom the Lunar PKF had assigned Vance answered the phone, recognized Melissa and without saying a word put her on hold.
Melissa stared for twenty seconds at a stylized image of the Earth, on a background of twinkling stars. She had largely gotten used to it by now; where others used pictures of flowers, of forests, of art, for a person to look at while on hold, Mohammed Vance's personal hold screen was a reproduction of the Unification's flag.
That was Vance, the man whom even many PKF considered too much of an ideolog.
When the field's image solidified again Mohammed Vance seemed to have appeared, quarter-size from the shoulders up, across the desk from Melissa. He spoke in French. "Hello, Officer. News?"
"Very little, sir. I interviewed Officer Gutierrez at some length regarding the attack on his rolligon. He was able to tell me very little about the attack itself, and had few opinions as to the motives of the ideologs responsible for it."
Vance grunted. "Indeed." He shrugged huge shoulders, sighed. "I must say I am not surprised."
Melissa said, "Sir, you don't think he had anything to do with this."
Mohammed Vance did not ask which "he" she referred to. "No. He is neither a fool nor a murderer. Even if he were capable of such violence I can't envision him wasting his time with a tactically meaningless attack on a group of junior PKF webdancers. When will you be returning?"
"Perhaps tomorrow evening, sir. Once the chameleon they're tracking has been found, or lost altogether." Melissa smiled, chuckled suddenly. "Officer Gutierrez would like to see me stay longer, I think."
The cyborg eyes were almost incapable of expression. "Oh?"
Melissa shrugged, half regretting the comment already, and made a quick dismissing gesture. "I'm familiar with the response, sir, when death has brushed so closely. My first patrol partner on Earth fell in love with me for a week or so every time there was a close call."
Vance nodded gravely. "I see."
"I think I'm the first person who's been kind to him--who's spent any time with him--since the attack on his rolligon, that's all."
"I see."
There was a moment's silence, and Melissa du Bois wondered if she had made a mistake in mentioning Gutierrez's apparent attraction to her. In the time she had been with Vance she had never once, not by word or gesture or glance, seen him indicate that he noticed her as a woman. She knew that he was married; his wife lived in Paris. As nearly as she could tell, after over two months of near constant contact with him, Vance was completely faithful to his wife. The lack of notice by Vance did not bother her; she was pleased by it. The PKF was to be her life, and if her father had done nothing else he had impressed upon her the importance of strictly conservative behavior in an officer of the PKF.
Vance nodded slowly. There was no hostility in his voice, no anger. "You like him?"
Melissa answered cautiously. "Yes. He's very nice. Why do you ask?"
For perhaps only the fourth or fifth time since requesting Melissa du Bois be assigned as his assistant, Mohammed Vance smiled at her. It was an unnatural thing, the creasing of stiff folds of skin that was tougher than leather. "Simple curiosity, Officer. Tell me about Officer Gutierrez."
Melissa sighed. Vance had no personal life, and therefore none of his assistants were supposed to either? She replied with carefully concealed impatience. "He's a bright young man who's confused about what's going on. He's upset about the death of his fellow officers, he's tired and he's been injured."
She had the impression that Vance had grown very attentive. "Been injured, Officer du Bois? Badly?"
"No, sir. Not badly. A slight concussion; it didn't seem to be bothering him when I questioned him."
"I see." Vance was silent for a long moment, looking down at something out of holocam range, thinking. He looked back up into the holocams on his end and said, "M
elissa."
He never called her by her first name. Melissa said quickly, "Sir?"
"Do not tell Officer Gutierrez that I am coming; do not see him again; do not alarm him. I will be there in the morning."
His image vanished, and the holofield went silver, flattened, and vanished.
Melissa du Bois sat alone with her confusion in the small office three doors down the corridor from Benny Gutierrez.
It was 2:23 a.m.
Trent lay alone in the infirmary with the sheet pulled over his head, taking his boots and handheld apart. He was not certain that there were no bugs in the room, and thought it unlikely that there were holocams, but there was no way to be sure without searching, and the simple fact that he was searching would tell them too much.
He worked quietly beneath the covers, disassembling his boots by touch. From the heel of his right boot came a sonic bomb that would knock out a normal human and slow a PKF Elite considerably. From the heel of the left boot came a needler small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. It held eight anesthetic slivers and would fire in either vacuum or atmosphere; in death pressure the slivers would probably puncture a soft pressure suit. They would not penetrate a scalesuit or the skin of a PKF Elite.
He reassembled the boots and put them at the side of the bed.
From inside the shell of the handheld came more goodies; the longest, thinnest emblade Trent had been able to find, a tiny spool of fineline, and a pair of tiny spraytubes. One spraytube held glue; the other held fadeaway.
It was conceivable, though unlikely, that the fadeaway spraytube would put an Elite down quickly enough to prevent the Elite from killing Trent.
Trent assembled his toys under the bedsheet, and tried to sleep.
It was five minutes to four.
Captain Fouché put the semiballistic down a good two hundred meters east of the attack site. If the exhaust from his landing damaged the site itself he would not hear the end of it anytime soon.
The Long Run Page 36