A Pocketful of Stars (Applied Topology Book 1)

by Margaret Ball

  “We need to tell the police,” Ben insisted.

  “Not yet.”

  “But…”

  “Not. Yet.” Words of one syllable. “We need to finish this investigation first. I don’t want Crowson alarmed over an ancillary matter.”

  “But whoever took those photos could be torturing more children right now.”

  Oh. That was the translation of “particularly revolting.” I lost all interest in seeing the evidence for myself.

  “I am aware of that,” Lensky said tightly, “but even more people may die if the primary plot is not stopped. I assure you that as soon as we have the information we need on the terrorists, we will turn over these files to the FBI, who actually have authority to pursue this matter.”

  That clearly wasn’t good enough for Ben. “Okay, we don’t need you to take care of this. I wonder what would happen if somebody told the APD that Crowson has kiddie porn on his computer?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” said Lensky sarcastically. “You think maybe they’d barge in, alert the whole porn ring, and abort my investigation? Leave. It. You don’t want to make a permanent enemy of me over a delay of two or three days, you really don’t.”

  “Ben has a kid sister,” Ingrid mentioned.

  “I,” said Lensky, “have a niece. Here in Austin, as a matter of fact. You think I don’t want this bastard stopped? It will be a pleasure to see him go down. I’m just not willing to compromise the investigation at this point. And my agency can’t take him down over this.”

  When Ben and I headed for the sandwich bar, there were actual clouds covering the sky. That probably meant a torrential downpour later, most likely at the most inconvenient possible time; right now it meant that the outdoors was almost pleasant.

  “Turtle pond?” Ben asked.

  I nodded. “You save us a bench; I’ll get the sandwiches.” That way I could make sure mine wasn’t tuna fish.

  Being smaller than a football player could be a disadvantage when trying to get to the cooler of wrapped sandwiches. On the other hand, being vicious and really small was an advantage. I could wriggle into any opening, and because I was little and sort of cute nobody associated me with stamped-on toes and elbows into their sides.

  “Tuna salad for you, mystery meat for me, and I got us each a package of Fritos,” I announced upon emerging, somewhat breathless, from the swarm.

  Ben looked at the labels. “Yours claims to be ham.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you read. All that matters is, I know that slice of pink mystery meat is not tuna salad.”

  A grackle overhead interjected a loud “Gack.” See, even grackles feel that way about tuna salad.

  “Lensky.” Ben said as though the name in itself were a meaningful statement.

  “It’s not a slice of Lensky either,” I pointed out. “He’s still walking around.”

  “Being a problem,” Ben griped.

  “I hate to be fair to the man, but if he hadn’t pointed us at Crowson we wouldn’t know anything about an illegal porn collection.”

  “I still think I should tell the police.”

  I put down my sandwich and looked over Ben carefully. He looked the same as always: uncombed light brown hair, unfocused brown eyes, too-big brown shirt flopping around his shoulders. He looked like the dictionary definition of a math geek.

  What he did not look like was somebody who ought to get into a physical altercation with a brawny spook.

  “That wouldn’t be fair,” I said, deciding to skip the more serious problem that Lensky could probably tear him to shreds. “By ending the meeting when we did, we implicitly agreed not to call in the police until Lensky said.”

  Ben hunched unhappily over his sandwich. “We have to do something…. Well,” he amended, “I have to do something. You can stay out of this, Lia. It’s not your fight and you don’t want to alienate Boris.”

  “Oh, to hell with that, Ben. I have a feeling it would be my fight if I’d seen those pictures. In fact, never mind the pictures. Su batalla es mi batalla,” I said in possibly inaccurate Spanish. “As for Lensky, remember what Ingrid said: I have a talent for alienating people. Trust me, that is never going to be a beautiful friendship.” I’d had time to think about it while I was fetching sandwiches, and had regretfully decided I was right the first time. Me and Lensky? Three-star bad idea.

  The Tower chimes sounded and a number of the people around us shouldered backpacks and headed off, presumably to attend classes.

  Ben tore a bit of crust off his sandwich and lobbed it at a turtle that was wandering around, looking hopefully at pebbles.

  “Right. It’s you and me, then. Um… what exactly are we going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I think sneaking around Lensky might work better than going through him. He’s bound to want more detail on that list of contacts you got, even if only to eliminate the obviously innocent ones.”

  Ben snorted. “Yep. There are going to be a lot of those. Fifty years ago, Crowson would have been one of those guys with three Rolodexes on his desk. He’s got everybody from the mayor to the public relations office of Dell in his email. Even the head of the Moore Foundation!”

  “Okay, so first we cross off the obvious business contacts, then look at the ones that are left. Anybody who looks the slightest bit interesting, we’ll sneak over and you can take a look at their hidden files, see if they have any of Crowson’s pictures. I understand perverts like this are into sharing.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I know, but you’ve become our Touch-Free Hacking expert. Anyway, you only need to take a brief look around, you don’t have to stare at the stuff. We’ll keep a list of the guilty parties and hand it over to Lensky when we’ve solved the terrorist problem. Then he – or the FBI or the city cops or whoever has jurisdiction – can arrest a whole set of creeps instead of just one.”

  “Huh. That does sound pretty okay. You’re making me feel a tiny little bit better about waiting.”

  “That’s me, a ministering angel and all that. Why don’t you eat your sandwich and think about something else for a while?” Um, preferably not Annelise; Ingrid and I had both reached Peak Annelise. Our location gave me an idea. “Why don’t you watch for capsicum?”

  “For what?”

  “You know, that turtle you were all excited about the other day.”

  “Caspica caspica,” Ben corrected me. “Capsicum is a hot pepper. I think. And for your information, I can do two things at once. Why do you think I’ve been donating bits of my sandwich to that guy?” He jerked his head at the box turtle that was crawling sort-of towards us.

  “Gee, Ben, I don’t know. Because you’ve finally realized that the tuna salad is disgusting?”

  “Shh! Don’t spook him.”

  It looked like just another box turtle to me, but then I didn’t do a second major in Reptiles and Amphibians. Shell: high, rounded, and covered with some kind of tan-on-brown pattern. Clawed flippers, wedge-shaped head. Yep, a box turtle. As I watched, it extended its neck to get a fragment of tuna fish that had landed off to its left, and I grabbed Ben’s arm. “Did you see that?” I whispered.

  “Yes. It’s awful. I could kill whoever did that to it.”

  A shiny metal ring was half buried in the flesh of the poor turtle’s neck.

  “Think we could catch it and get that off?”

  “Wait. Let it get farther from the water.”

  The turtle halted on a patch of bare earth halfway between the pond and our bench, turned around, and started clawing at the ground with its front flippers.

  “I never saw one do that before. What does ripping claws through the dirt mean in Turtle, Ben?”

  “Nothing. That I know, anyway.”

  I could have sworn the turtle looked over its shoulder and gave us a dirty look before resuming its clawing action, somewhat more slowly. It didn’t seem to be random; deep gouges appeared in the dirt, looking almost like some kind of pattern. The first set co
nsisted of a vertical line with two lines at an angle meeting at the center; if you were imaginative enough, it could have been a capital letter K. The next was a single deep angle, vertex downward. Like a V. Which showed the craziness of this interpretation; I’ve played enough Scrabble to be pretty sure there’s no English word starting with KV. Oh, sure, kvetch, kvell and so forth, but those are Yiddish really.

  Another vertical line, this time topped with a perpendicular across the top.

  Like a T.

  “KVT?”

  “It could,” Ben said in a low voice, “be KUT.”

  “What, he’s invoking the university radio station?” If the next two random scribbles looked like FM I would eat – the rest of Ben’s tuna salad sandwich.

  They didn’t. The next one did look like an M, though.

  The turtle moved sideways, which by the way looks really odd when one of them does it slowly enough for you to watch, and started a new group of scribbles.

  A vertical line.

  Two vertical lines joined by a perpendicular bar.

  One vertical with three perpendiculars hanging off it.

  A triangle with the long side vertical.

  “K-U-T-M,” Ben read. “I-H-E-D.”

  This was definitely getting too weird to put down to chance. And it was happening to two of the very few people on this campus who might be able to accept it. I mean, normal people would have flipped out last year, when a poker chip and Darth Vader moved out of my little brother’s toy collections.

  So I was not going to freak out over a turtle writing English letters.

  Anyway, it was all capital letters. Printed. Way easier than cursive, right?

  The third grouping was only two symbols long; a diamond followed by a verticals sprouting two perpendicular lines from the top half.

  O-F?

  Hey, at least it spelled an actual word.

  The turtle stopped scratching. Twisted its poor tortured neck around and looked at us. Raised and lowered its top shell like a person shrugging, and added a new symbol to the last group: a dot under half a vertical.

  “OF!” I said. Quietly.

  It came to me then. As well as Scrabble, I used to play a particularly vicious form of Anagrams with Andros. He’d think of several words, scramble them, and write them down in groups of five letters. It was surprising how much harder they were to decipher that way.

  These weren’t even scrambled.

  “The groupings are wrong,” I said. “It’s KUT MI HED OFF.”

  “Oh. He can’t spell. He’s trying to say C-U-T M-Y H-E-A-D O-F-F.” Ben did have his obsessive-compulsive moments. I had figured that out without fixing the spelling.

  It did seem more real after Ben’s fixes. “We can’t do that to him… can we?”

  “It’s probably illegal. And anyway, we can do better.” Ben leaned forward and addressed the turtle. “That seems like kind of a drastic solution. Would you really rather die than endure the pain until we figure out some way to get that ring off you? Because I think I know where I can find some bolt cutters.”

  “IHUR TNOW”

  “Fine, stick around and chat with Lia while I get the cutters.”

  As Ben left, a grackle dive-bombed us and shat on the remains of his sandwich. Then all the grackles overhead took off with their usual chorus of “Gack, Gack, Gackle.” Only a few blue-black feathers drifted down to mark their passing. The turtle pulled in its extremities and slammed its shells together.

  “It’s lucky you picked us for your cry for help, Mr. Mesopotamia,” I told the turtle. “Most people around here wouldn’t take you seriously.”

  The shells opened and a long neck swiveled around, fixing me with a distinctly sardonic look.

  “Look, I don’t know how it works in Iraq, but around here we don’t see a lot of talking – well, writing – animals.”

  “UDUN TLUK,” the turtle scratched out. After a quick blink I deciphered the message. “Ok, maybe you’re right. We don’t look – not for that, anyway. But with everybody except Ben using a smartphone, you’d think there’d be some Youtube videos of writing turtles and composing crocodiles by now.”

  “KROK SSTO OPID,” the turtle laboriously scratched while Ben was off getting bolt cutters.

  After resting up from that communication, the turtle added, “OOT? OOB?”

  “Ah. One of the twenty-first century’s less attractive aspects.”

  It took the little guy a long time to scratch out his messages; I was spared explaining Youtube by Ben’s return. He positioned himself behind the half-wall that discouraged drunk students from walking into the pond. “Can you bring him here? People might get upset if they saw me apparently attacking him with bolt cutters.”

  They might get upset if I picked him up, too. Wasn’t handling the animals strictly verboten? Oh, hell, it wasn’t nearly as verboten as the rest of our plan. But I didn’t want to startle Mr. Mesopotamia into splashing back under water.

  “Can I pick you up, Mr. M?” I murmured in a low voice, not to attract attention from the people remaining around the pond. True, most of them had their faces in their smartphones, but it would be nice if they stayed that way.

  Scratch, scratch.

  KUTM IHED OFF

  “No, I’m not going to cut your head off. We can remove the ring without killing you.”

  IDON TDI

  “Right, that’s the idea. But we have to do it over there.” I pointed, and after a moment Mr. Mesopotamia pulled in his extremities and closed his shells. I took that as permission to pick him up.

  Ben’s bolt cutters were huge. And ugly. Serious cutters on one end were attached to three-foot handles that gave me an idea how much force the things were expected to exert. I set Mr. Mesopotamia down facing away from the things. He might get cold flippers if he saw the size of the tool we wanted to use on him.

  “Mr. M? Could you stick your neck out, please?”

  After a moment, the top shell raised and the head, neck and flippers came out. Ben frowned as he studied the target.

  “I don’t know if I can cut the ring off without hurting him. Look how deeply embedded it is.”

  The flesh of Mr. Mesopotamia’s neck rose up in a kind of puffy billow on either side of the metal ring. He must have been much smaller when it was put on. I mentally absolved the hypothetical veteran; Mr. M. must have been wearing this long before we sent Americans into that hellhole.

  “You’ll have to hold his neck while I position the cutters,” Ben said, sounding less than confident.

  Scratch scrabble scratch scratch…

  DONT HOLD MIIM REDY

  “I know you’re brave, Mr. M. But Ben doesn’t want to risk hurting you if you flinch or if his hand slips.”

  WATS SOHA RDWO NKUT

  “Yeah, well, we’re all hoping it works out that way.” I rested one hand behind his head, then took a grip on his neck with fingers and thumb. Keeping the rest of my hand well out of range of the business end of the bolt cutters.

  Ben opened the shears and tried to rest the tip of one pointed blade between the ring and the puffy flesh on Mr. M.’s neck. It didn’t go down very far. The same thing happened, or didn’t happen, on the other side. He slid his hands up the handles, got a good grip, and squeezed.

  The cutters slid right over the ring and met in the middle.

  GETO NWIT HIT

  “I may have to hurt you just a little bit.”

  This time Ben waggled the pointy end of one blade until it was out of sight between the puffy flesh and the ring. A drop of blood oozed up. Resting the other end where it had been before, he squeezed again.

  This time the bolt cutters left a very, very shallow nick in the ring.

  “Successive approximations!”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was cursing or declaring a plan of action.

  Whichever it was, Mr. M. wasn’t having any. He twisted his neck to make it clear that my grip was unacceptable, then scrabbled furiously.

  WATS
RONG YUST UPID

  KANT EEVN KUTM IHED OF

  “Look, Mr. M.,” I said, exasperated, “That’s just what we’re trying to avoid. We don’t want to cut your head off; there has to be a better way to get the damn ring off.”

  Nobody ever said that a paranormal phenomenon couldn’t also be intensely irritating.

  STOO PIDI DONT DI

  “Yes, that’s our plan.”

  By way of punctuation, Mr. M. retracted his appendages and drew his shells together with a distinct click.

  “I guess we need help,” Ben said. “I’m not exactly the most mechanically gifted person. I know somebody who works in an engineering lab…”

  “Just be sure and wash your hands after you talk to him.”

  “Her.”

  Why was I not surprised? Of course it would be a girl.

  “Just tell me she’s not still mad at you.”

  “Why would she be mad at me?” He blinked his myopic brown eyes. “We agreed months ago to be just good friends.”

  I scooped up Mr. M. and paused. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “If I put him back with all the other turtles, how are we going to find him again?”

  “Easy,” Ben said. “He’s the only Caspian box turtle.”

  Which was not going to help me identify him. I’m just not that sensitive to the variations of squarish tan-on-brown patterns as opposed to brown-on-brown, very-dark-orange-on-brown, black-on-brown… well, you get the idea. If Ben’s confidence was misplaced, I could see some long hours of checking turtle necks for jewelry in my future.

  Chapter 9

  Vern Trexler stared in impotent disbelief as the turtle Thalia had called “Mr. M.” slithered back under the water. Who knew those things could move so fast? All he knew about turtles was Zeno’s Paradox – wait, that was about a tortoise. Oh well, same difference. For the first time it occurred to him that maybe Zeno hadn’t been strictly theoretical when he “proved” that the tortoise could outrun Achilles.