by Robin Banks
I volunteer to put the kids to bed, and when I come back she’s still clearly not talked and is not about to start. Kolya staggers back towards his house and his bed, and that doesn’t prompt her. When Osh’s yawns get so enormous that Aiden threatens him with being put to bed like one of the kids unless he goes on his own accord, she shudders and takes a big breath. Once Osh is definitely out of earshot, she takes the floor.
“Guys, I’ve got news. There was something to Luke’s hunch. I’ve checked the tox screens of the four dead patrolmen, and they weren’t clean. The substance reported didn’t make the final report because it isn’t in itself deadly, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t at least partly the cause of death. All the bodies all showed concentrations of a designer-built, extremely illegal recreational substance. I’ll spare you the chemical name because I don’t fancy dislocating my jaw, but the street name is ‘dust.’”
Luke guffaws. It’s a sound that so ill befits him that for a moment it makes me freeze in shock.
“Dust? Patrolmen on dust? No way in hell. I don’t buy it.”
Alya murmurs, “Kid, not every Fed official is a paragon of strict morals and good living.”
He gives her a look so old that you could bury it and sell it as a fossil.
“No shit.”
They stare at each other for a few seconds, then she throws her hands up in the air. “Ok, I’m an ass. Carry on. What was your point?”
“Dust isn't recreational. I mean, it is, kinda, it’s fun if that’s your kind of thing, but you can’t function on it. No way they could have kept their jobs if they were on it.”
“Could they have taken it in their own time and it still showed up on the tox screen? How long does it take to leave the blood stream?”
“Fucked if I know. I’m not a chemist. But I tell you, there’s no way someone could play that game more than once or twice. Shit’s addictive as hell, and you can’t be on and off it. The come down hurts like hell. You take it tonight, you’re gonna spend tomorrow twitching and screaming. You ain’t gonna be turning up for work pretending like you’re normal. You’d be better off going to work still on it, pretending you can’t see music or smell colors.”
He sounds so confident and so surprised that this is all news to us, as if he were talking about the laws of gravity. I find it intensely annoying.
“How the hell do you know all that?”
His face doesn’t just go shuttered this time: it shuts down so completely and suddenly that I feel as if he’d slammed a door in my face.
“Maybe I read it in a book.”
“Kid, she’s got a right to ask,” mutters Alya.
“And I’ve got a right not to answer.” His eyes flash blue at me through the fringing of his eyelashes before looking away again. “I’m clean, if that’s your worry.”
“I never…”
He cuts me off. “Whatever. I’m telling you what I know: no way in hell anyone could hold a job like that on dust. They’d have got found out in no time. You don’t believe me, go look it up.”
Gwen clears her throat. “Ok. What are the chances that they tried it once or twice, had a bad reaction to it, and died?”
Luke’s jaw twitches. “Not impossible. People croak on it all the time. That stuff isn’t always cut neat, and the dosage can be random. The people who make it and sell it aren’t chemists, either. But for four Patrolmen to try it and die in a few weeks… Too much of a coincidence. I don’t buy it.”
“Neither do I. And it gets worse. The four of them were in the same squad in ’68. They fought on Pollux, and their squad landed.” She takes a deep breath. “One of them has a relative here. Aiden, this is the squad that… It’s them. Someone’s found them, and is knocking them off.”
Aiden has never been one for emotional displays. When I first met him he barely spoke unless it was about work, and even then hardly ever in complete sentences. It wasn’t that he didn’t have opinions, or didn’t care enough about people to express them. Quite the opposite, in fact: he cared so much that he was paralyzed by the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. Sasha has done him a lot of good in that respect; she’s one of those rare people who can be calming and energizing at the same time, and she has a lot of experience with people recovering from their own pasts. To my psi-bility she feels so good that just being near her is like getting a massage to the soul.
Sasha makes Aiden feel safe, cared for, and accepted; in a very real sense, she helped him find his voice. She also brought troubles to his door. Her past became their past as soon as he let himself love her, and it’s harrowing. They have processed it and accepted it both individually and as a couple, but that doesn’t change the nature of her story. It was not a one-way process because Aiden’s story isn't any happier. But while his past is over, Sasha’s is growing into a fine, strong boy hurtling headlong into manhood, a boy currently sleeping in one of our back rooms.
And now somebody is killing off the men responsible. Sasha wouldn’t find this easy to deal with, but she’d deal with it, same as she deals with everything else life throws at her. Now she is off on a mission and Aiden is having to hear this on his own. Even without my gift I can see him trying to shoulder the weight of it, failing, and retreating back into his old shell. When he finally speaks, the words fall out of his mouth as if they were wholly disconnected from him.
“You told Sasha?”
“No. I thought you should hear first, and you should decide whether to tell her now or wait until she’s back. And I don’t intend on telling Osh unless you and Sasha agree to it. You can, if you want, but I’m not telling him anything without her explicit consent. Sorry, but she’s his mother.”
“I’m his dad.”
“I know. And I know that you will do the right thing. But I also know that this is too big for me.” Her voice softens. “If you want, I can tell her.”
“No. I’ll do it. Thank you.”
Alya clears her throat, and I’m suddenly reminded that we have strangers in the room witnessing the confluence of major historical events and our private family history.
“Guys, I’m sorry, but we have no idea what you’re talking about, and it sounds relevant.”
Gwen glances at Aiden but he’s still frozen and barely responsive. She takes a big breath, steels herself, and speaks at the floor.
“Some of the Patrolmen who landed here in ‘68 got a bit out of hand. They did a lot of stuff they shouldn’t have. Some of it resulted in babies.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes. The kids in question turned eleven last year – those who got to be born, anyway. We’re poor and disorganized, but we try to keep up with the important stuff for the kids, so they all got their year-eleven tests and full DNA profiles. I never thought about it and I could kick myself for that, but those profiles could be used to identify the Patrolmen involved. We could have done this all along. If we matched at least an individual, we could work out the squad involved. It seems that someone did that for us, and is tracking them down and doing them in.”
“But your records are protected, right?”
“Sure. But so are the Patrol records, and we still got them. Anyone and anything can be hacked. And if it’s someone from Pollux, it wouldn’t be all that hard. They wouldn’t even have to hack us remotely: they’d just have to break into our shed and take it from there.”
“You think it’s someone local?”
“I don’t know who else would know or care about this. The Patrol never went public with it, for obvious reasons, and neither did anyone from here. They had other priorities. If anyone outside of Pollux heard about it, it was through word of mouth from a local or a Patrolman. I doubt that’d be enough to motivate a stranger to go on a killing spree. I’ll tell you what I know, though: if the deaths keep piling up, the Fed are going to work this out same as we did, and they’ll blame it on us for sure.”
Alya’s eyes widen. “Crap. You realize that we can’t take this
to the assembly, right? We can’t tell anyone. The only people who’re definitely innocent are those who were on-planet while those four Patrolmen got bumped off, and they could be accomplices. Anyone who was off-planet at the time should be automatically treated as a suspect.”
Aiden looks up, his eyes on fire. “Do you include Sasha?”
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know her. If the dates coincide…”
“Shut up. Not one word. Gwen, Osh’s father?”
Gwen’s bottom lip trembles. “Not one of the four. I checked. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I needed to know. We could find out who he is. I haven’t tried. I didn’t want to cross that line.”
“That’s up to Sasha. And Osh.” His anger evaporates and he goes blank and rigid again. “Wish she was here. Unfair of me.”
“Me too. Alya is right, though. Not about Sasha,” she hastens to add as his face darkens, “but we really cannot come out with this. It could totally blow our chances of finding those responsible.”
“We want to?”
She swallows hard. She feels so frustrated and so miserable that I wish I could hug her. “Were it up to me, I’d be tempted to let the lot of them get slaughtered. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But when the Fed work it all out, they’re bound to treat it as a hostile act on our part and respond accordingly. They won’t care if it’s a lone wolf. Hell, I’m willing to bet that they won’t bother investigating that hard: they’ll just jump at the chance to come at us again. And this time they know who they are dealing with. They’ll come prepared. If they don’t wipe us out, they will definitely fuck us up. I think this is it: this is the problem we’ve got to solve. We need to stop those deaths.”
“Or make them more creative.” Raj’s voice is deeper and colder than usual. “The principle is sound; it’s the execution that could do with some improvements. Pun intended.”
I don’t think for a moment that this is just empty macho posturing on his part: he looks too saddened by his own thoughts.
Alya slides her hand under his. “That’s a consideration for another day, and not for us. For now, we need to fix this shit before it blows up.”
He grabs her hand tight. “There is no part of this I can tolerate, you know that?”
“Yes. And I also know you’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Right.” He gets up. “Unless you need me, I’m going to get some air.”
Alya catches his hand and squeezes it before letting him go. He walks out oddly rigid, as if he was struggling to contain himself.
I think I know how he feels; I’ve had years to get used to Osh’s story, years watching him grow up and remembering in random flashes about how he got to be born in the first place, and I’m still not at peace with it. I’m not sure Osh is, either, though he knows he’s loved. Sasha and her family made sure of that all the way along, as we do now. All and still, I think this kind of origin story is bound to leave a mark on people; all anyone can do is strive to make it the kind of mark that adds character without impairing function, and that’s more easily said than done. Osh is incredibly mature and capable for his age, but he’s still a kid of eleven. When I was his age, even though I was earning my own air, I was still reliant on the adults around me in a lot of other ways. I needed my family to support me. Maybe I didn’t need them as desperately as I thought back then, because they weren’t there for me and I still managed, but I could have really used their help and my problems were nothing compared to Osh’s. I hope that if the time comes for me to be there for him, I’ll be able to. Given the way I feel right now, I’m not overly optimistic I could be of any use to him, but I’ll do my best.
Alya shrugs at Gwen. “Raj takes this kind of thing hard.”
“I’d think less of him if he didn’t.”
“He is also absolutely serious. If at any stage you decide that it’d be appropriate or convenient to dispatch those Patrolmen, the offer stands.”
“I… That’s not up to me to decide, and I’m really grateful that’s the case. I don’t know who it’d be up to, but I know that it’s not me.”
“I know. I’m just clarifying the issue because I know Raj and you don’t. If he says something it’s because he means it, particularly if it’s something important. And this would be a way of resolving our issue.”
Gwen cringes. “I know, but let’s save it as a back-up plan, hey? I must be getting soft, but I find it profoundly uncomfortable to discuss knocking off a whole bunch of people in cold blood for strategic purposes, even when they’re people I’d like to see dead.”
“We need to keep it as an option if everything else fails, though. If we don’t find our killer, I don’t know how many of these deaths it would take before the Fed catch on. They don’t have our Luke to analyze their data, and it looks as if they’re actively trying to prevent each incident being properly investigated and reported, but they are not completely useless. The Anteians can’t protect you from a Fed incursion. They have superior technology and training, but the Fed outnumber them. More than that, they simply wouldn’t try.”
“I didn’t expect them to. This isn’t their problem.”
“Raj would do his best to ensure that as many people as possible are evacuated in the event of an attack, but he won’t risk his home world. Too many lives are at stake. He doesn’t have the power to involve Anteia officially, and he won’t risk involving them by accident.”
“But he’d send hired killers out on our behalf?”
“Yes. Done right, that wouldn’t put his people at risk. He’d file that under ‘making the world a better place’. Anteian ethics are rather robust.”
“I’m learning to appreciate that, but I’d still prefer to focus on our current plan, if you can call it that. We know we’re looking for a killer and who the potential victims are, but that’s not much to go by. Were we the Fed, we could put a sniper on each of the targets and catch the killer at their work.”
“Were we the Fed, we’d probably mess that up.”
“True dat. But with a single ship roaming the cosmos searching for a potential killer, we are likely to struggle. How long can you spend looking for needles in haystacks?”
Luke croaks. “The prophecy says we’re going to do it.”
“And you trust it?” asks Gwen.
He shrugs. “I don’t understand it. But yeah, I guess I do. It’s been right up to now. You didn’t know you had a problem. We turned up. Turns out you got a problem.”
“But we don’t have a solution. Luke, if we gave you the location of the Patrolmen in question and of the four deaths, would you be able to tell us where we should go first?”
He frowns. “Unlikely. Well, I could, maybe, depending on what the data looks like, but it would be no more than a wild guess.”
“Given what you’ve come up with up to this point, I’d take one of your wild guesses over a computer-generated model any day of the week.”
He blushes faintly at that. “I can give it a go. As long as you don’t follow it like it’s gospel. Do you have the data ready?”
“Yup. I was hoping you’d agree. When do you want to do it?”
“Now.” He gets up.
“Are you up to that? You haven’t had much of a break.”
“Sooner I start, sooner I know if there’s anything to it.”
“Wouldn’t you be better off starting in the morning?”
“Nah. It actually works better if I’m not totally with it. I’m not running the process: once it gets started, it runs me. I’m barely there at all.”
Alya frowns at him. “You never told me any of that.”
“You never asked. I’ll need data on the planets, too, both the ones where the deaths happened and the ones where the Patrolmen are on.”
Gwen nods. “Why do you need that?”
His face shuts down. “My astronomy’s crap. That a problem?”
Gods, but the guy is touchy. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything anyone could say to him that he won’t take a
s a personal insult.
Alya murmurs at him, “Kid, Gwen isn’t questioning your schooling. What information could planetary data give you?”
His voice sounds distant and coarse. “The only independently wealthy person I know who wants to knock these people off is Raj, and he ain’t done it. The killer’s bound to have a reason to travel, like they’re musicians or something. Or the means to travel, anyway. Info on the planets may tell me something. Or not. I never know until I look. Hell, the arrival logs may be enough to give you your answer, or at least narrow down your search. Whoever the fuck this killer is, they ain’t that bright.”
Alya shakes her head. “I’m not so sure. Maybe they’re just bright enough to work out that the Patrol would cover this kind of incident up, even from themselves. Maybe they just don’t care provided that the job gets done. Maybe they’re being obvious on purpose, to frame us.”
“Maybe. Dunno. If you get me the info, I can look at it. If you don’t, I won’t. Whatever. Not my call.”
Gwen smiles up at him. “Luke, we’ll get you whatever information you deem necessary. After what you’ve done for us already, your opinion holds a lot of sway with us.”
“I’d rather it didn’t. I ain’t that bright either.”
He nods in our general direction but mostly at the floor and walks out.
Gwen sighs and pats Aiden’s hand. “Are you up to retrieving that information for him?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t look it, though; if anything, he looks like his anguish and his drive to fix the unfixable have somehow reached a compromise that crushes him emotionally but allows him to do his job.
As soon as Aiden is out of sight, Gwen sags and Asher scoops her up and puts her in his lap.
“Milady, I don’t know about you but I’m about done with today. I’m heading to my bed and I’d like you to be in it.”