“Sixteen.”
“That’s a lot of bodies to store in three cramped ships.”
“The morgue coolers—”
“Three per sick bay. That’s nine bodies—what did they do with the other seven?”
Sam rubbed his stomach. The conversation made it ache. “Body bags in the hold?”
“Want to know what I think?” Kilian smiled, a frosty twist of lip that reminded Sam uneasily of Pierce. “I think they ran out of body bags. And someone thought, oh aren’t these convenient, and emptied out the meat and shoved the bodies in the agers. They probably thought they were reefer units.” She chuckled. “I’d have hated to be the poor bastard who cracked those seals after two months.” Her happy expression vanished when she looked at Sam. “Sorry. My sense of humor.” She sat forward and spread her hands out on the tabletop, spacing them so that they both were bathed in red-tinged light.
Sam imagined the shadowing as the thinnest film of blood. “Captain, are you an augment?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Pimentel told me things, too. About agitation and feeling sick.”
She smiled brilliantly. “You remembered that!”
“Yes.” Sam tried again. “Should you be sitting in the red like this?”
The smile turned strange. “I find it energizing.” She grew serious. “Has a mainline colonel with a nasty facial scar been turning up at the SIB over the past few weeks?”
“You mean Niall Pierce?”
“You know him, too?”
Sam shook his head. “I know of him, from the Rauta Shèràa Base files.”
“He was part of the evac.”
“Yes. And I saw him at the hospital once. He was there to pick up scan results. I haven’t seen him at the SIB.”
“I have.” Kilian stood up and walked out into the blazing sun. In the distance, the booms of the Y-40s shook the air, but she didn’t seem to hear them anymore. Her timorousness had disappeared—energy seemed to ripple from her now, like heat from a roadbed. “Do you think you’re being watched?”
“Yes.” Sam’s hands shook—he braced them against the table.
“Do you own a weapon?”
“No. You think I’ll need one?”
“If you don’t know how to use it, it may do you more harm than good.”
“I’m very good at running and hiding.”
“Not bad skills to have.” The grim smile again. Then Kilian glanced at her timepiece. “I have to get going.” She walked back to the table and hoisted her bag, then gestured to Sam with that childlike backward wave. “Let’s go.”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “I want to sit here a while.” He looked out over the water, at the lakeskimmers and sailboards. “Maybe I’ll even walk in the sand.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
The dark in Kilian’s eyes softened. The goddess touched. “You’re a very brave man.”
“As long as I know you’re here.” Sam smiled up at her. “I couldn’t do it alone. I could never do it alone.”
Kilian started to speak, blinked, turned away. She strode across the sand, her step hurried. As though there were someplace she needed to go. Or someplace she needed to leave behind.
Chapter 22
Evan slept fitfully and awoke feeling restless. As pink-orange wisps of cloud drifted through the sunrise sky, he tended his roses, following the checklist Joaquin had given him to the letter. Hours passed as he applied nutrients and fungicides, cut back straggly branches, slaughtered the weeds that had dared poke through the raked and treated soil.
For the first time, he found himself enjoying the work. Sweat and repetition helped him think.
“So, Quino would rather think me brain-impaired than believe Mako killed the charges against Jani to save Pierce.” Evan yanked at a stubborn pig’s ear, breaking the plant at ground level. “He controls my access to secured information, which means I can’t investigate further without his buy-in.” He knelt and dug into the ground with his hands. After a few strong tugs, he wrenched the root free, spraying clods of dirt in all directions. “Shroud was right. Quino wants to cut me loose—he’s tossing up that Haárin option as a smoke screen.” Well, he had learned a lot about the esteemed Mr. Loiaza in the thirty years of their acquaintance. “You snake me, I may just make some notes about you, too.” He wiped smeared earth from his face and hands and continued weeding.
“So who got to him, Anais or Roshi?” Evan paused in front of a creeping Charlie that had taken over a shady corner near the Wolfshead Westminster. “I’d bet Anais. Quino doesn’t give a damn about the Service, but he sure as hell cares about Cabinet Court retainer fees.”
He tore out the creeping Charlie with a hand rake, then collected the round-leafed tendrils and stuffed them into a decomp bag. In a few days, he’d remove the rotted plant matter and fold it back into the soil to nourish the roses, the vanquished enemy reworked for his purpose. Government in a nutshell, part two.
He collected his implements and concoctions, trudged to the small shed adjoining the house, and returned them to the appropriate hooks, racks, and shelves. Pulled the flask from his trouser pocket and took a draw.
The breep of the front-entry buzzer greeted Evan as he entered the house. Halvor had already departed to run errands, and Markhart worked upstairs before lunch, which left him with the unusual task of answering his own door.
He didn’t check the security display to see who waited outside. If the door system announced a visitor, then his jailers must have already cleared them. So he released the panel, swept it aside, and found himself nose to nose with an agitated Hugh Tellinn.
“Mr. van Reuter.” Tellinn looked over his shoulder, then back at him, his movements as stiff and awkward as they had been in Shroud’s parlor.
Who does he want to pound into the carpet now? “Dr. Tellinn.” Evan looked past the man to see if either of his neighbors had wandered to their front yards to check out the action in person. Both areas looked clear, which meant they had stayed inside and used scanners instead. “Come in.”
The physician stepped inside. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said softly. “I understand this isn’t the best time for you.”
“Not your problem, Doctor. Don’t give it a second thought.” Evan regarded Tellinn with a critical eye. So, Val, you forsake young and dumb for old and smart and look what happens. He gets jittery and seeks out the enemy. “Is this a medical visit?” he asked for form’s sake.
“Only officially. So I could get permission to come here.” Tellinn took a tentative step toward the sitting room. “I—I need—I need your help.”
“I’m not in the position to help myself, much less you.”
“Just hear me out. I think after you do, you’ll change your mind.” Tellinn walked around Evan into the sitting room, then glanced back at him in nervous expectation. “I’m here about Jani Kilian.”
Oh no. Evan fell in behind him and sat in his usual lounge chair. “Val didn’t send you here in an effort to bypass John, did he?”
Tellinn perched on the edge of the sofa. “No. If Val knew I’d come here, he’d kill me.” He started to rock, a slight forward-and-back motion, like a continuous nod of the head. “I need you to contact Jani the next time you go to Sheridan. I need you to give her something.”
Evan studied Tellinn’s face for some sign he joked, but saw only dour sincerity laced with panic. “I won’t be returning to Sheridan for some time.” If ever. “The most serious charges against Jani are to be dropped, and she’s to be given a medical discharge. Since that’s the case, the SIB no longer needs what information I have to offer.”
“But surely you can think up some excuse. Perhaps tell your attorney that you’ve remembered something important.” Tellinn stilled his rocking long enough to reach into his inner shirt pocket and pull out what looked like a cigar case. When he snapped it open, however, steam puffed—he removed a frosted cylinder the size of Evan’s index finger. “She needs to h
ave the contents of this syringe injected as soon as possible.” He slowly inverted the cylinder, displaying the straw yellow liquid contained within.
Evan eyed the cylinder with dismay. For years, his own physicians had threatened him with similar devices. “That’s a gene-therapy cocktail.”
“Yes.” Mild surprise dulled Tellinn’s edginess. “If you know what it is, you must realize the condition she’s in.”
“I remember what you said in John’s parlor. John didn’t think you knew what you were talking about.”
“Dr. Shroud had allowed his ego to come before the needs of his patient.” Tellinn rendered his own diagnosis of the situation quickly and coolly. “I had to bribe one of his hybridization specialists to help me manufacture this. It’s primarily designed to repair the defect in Jani’s heme pathway, but it also contains components to fix the worst of her metabolic abnormalities as well.” He resumed his rocking. “They’re packing her with engineered carbohydrates because that’s the diet prescribed for patients with AIP, but she’s synthesizing idomeni digestive enzymes that are cleaving the molecules in different places, which is leading to the buildup of toxic metabolites in her tissues—”
Evan jumped in before the torrent of words turned to flood. “Dr. Tellinn! I can’t help you!”
“But . . .” Tellinn stilled, and blinked in bewilderment. “Val said you agreed to help us. You felt guilty because of the way you treated Jani years ago and you wanted to make it up to her.”
Vladislav’s got nothing on you for dramatic nonsense. Evan squeezed the arm of his chair. His hand closed over a Crème Caramel petal left over from yesterday’s encounter with Joaquin, and he rolled it between his fingers. “Dr.—”
“Call me Hugh,” Tellinn interrupted hopefully.
Evan glanced at the wisp of flower in his hand. “It sounds as though you don’t know the entire story where Jani and I are concerned.”
“I confess, I don’t keep up with events as well as I should.” Tellinn’s face lightened with an apologetic smile. “But Val said you almost married—”
“John Shroud has circumstantial evidence linking me to Jani’s transport explosion. I had nothing to do with it, of course”—Evan’s fingers worked harder, grinding the petal to fragments—“but it looks very bad, and I’m in no position to fight it. In other words, he held a shooter to my head. That’s the only reason I agreed to perjure myself. I don’t care what happens to Jani.” He brushed the bits of rose to the floor. “But now that she’s to be discharged, it’s all academic.”
Tellinn’s eagerness evaporated. “No, Mr. van Reuter, not all of it.” He glared at the cocktail cylinder, then shoved it back into its case. “You won’t help?”
“I can’t.”
“Her organs will fail, one by one. Her brain will be irreversibly damaged. She will die.”
“Even if I could talk myself onto the base and somehow arrange to meet Jani, I could never convince her to take anything from me.” Evan felt his pocket for the flask, then pulled his hand away. Not in front of the children. “I assume you’ve tried to contact her Service doctors yourself.”
“Just last night. Begged my way as far as a Roger Pimentel. Received a very cold, ‘thank you, Doctor, but we have things under control’ in response.” Tellinn’s face had paled to a Shroud-like pallor. He sat forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped across his forehead.
Evan looked over the top of Tellinn’s head to the window and the outdoors beyond. He wished he’d remained outside, never heard the buzzer. “John loves her. If he has to resort to brute force or invoke compassionate intervention to get into Sheridan, he will.”
“I don’t think you understand the extreme animosity that exists between Service Medical and Neoclona.”
“I know all about that. If John hadn’t accused the Service Surgeon-General of promoting butchery last year when she refused to allow Neoclona to assist in the training of Service physicians, he wouldn’t find him on the outside looking in now.”
“There’s more involved than that.” Tellinn’s face had the nauseated cast of a man who had bitten into an apple and found half a worm. “I think the Service higher-ups who remember the idomeni civil war hold John responsible for the destruction of Rauta Shèràa Base. They feel that if he hadn’t angered the idomeni by getting involved in illegal research, there would have been much less outrage directed at the remaining humans as the war wound down.”
“Knevçet Shèràa led to what happened at Rauta Shèràa Base, and John Shroud had nothing to do with that.” Evan massaged the rough upholstery until his fingers stung. “How many times do I have to tell you, Doctor? I can’t help you.”
“She’s been through so much.”
“I hate to sound cold, but she brought a lot of it upon herself.”
Tellinn stared at him, tired eyes searching in vain for something. Then he stood slowly and walked, back bowed, step heavy. He paused in the room entry and turned back to Evan. “Val tells me stories about Rauta Shèràa Base. He leaves a lot out—I can tell from the way he jokes to fill the holes.” He hesitated, dark eyes reflecting the horror described. “He talks about the last night. The Night of the Blade. The dead quiet when the bombing finally stopped, and the Laum streamed out of their homes and lined up to be slaughtered.” He looked at Evan. “Humans don’t line up to be killed.”
“Not unless they’re forced, no.”
“So the humans who died there probably weren’t killed by Haárin, because the Haárin weren’t carrying the sorts of weapons that could compel them to stop. Val thinks they were executed by criminals for failing to come through on contracts, or just to keep them from talking.”
“That’s certainly possible.”
“Jani wasn’t a criminal. She got into trouble for fighting the criminals.” Tellinn’s hands twitched. He kicked at the carpet—the tread of his shoe caught so that he almost lost his balance. Gone clumsy again. “So how can you say Rauta Shèràa Base was her fault? Seems to me quite a few humans went over the edge there. Panicked. Rode the madness of the moment. They’re the ones to blame, not her.”
Evan reached for his flask again. Stopped himself again. “Jani won’t die. Remember that she has Nema on her side, and Prime Minister Cao knows she dare not anger him.” He stood, hoping that Tellinn would take the hint. “Something will shake loose.”
“I hope you’re right.” Tellinn accepted the invitation to get lost. “Thank you for nothing, Mr. van Reuter.” He headed for the door—it swept aside, and he almost collided with a grocery-carton-laden Halvor.
“I’ll be outside,” Evan informed the confused aide. He had the flask out of his pocket before he stepped out of the house.
It would have been nice to officially blame the Haárin or some criminal syndicate for the deaths of Ebben, Unser, and Fitzhugh. That would have provided answers enough to cut off the questions and the rumors that sprang from the events of that night. And the magic Joaquin could have worked with a few holos of the blade-cut dead or signs of ritual execution would have dispelled once and for all the cloud of suspicion hanging over Evan. Nothing works like firm, hard paper. From there, it would have been an easy leap to suppose Jani’s transport crash the product of Haárin vengeance or criminal bungling. And I’d have been out of this house by autumn. He ducked into the shed, leaned against the sheet-metal wall, and emptied the flask down his throat. If not for Roshi’s screwup.
He kicked at the decomp bag, distended by weed bulk and digestion gasses, and gagged as a warm belch of half-rotted vegetation stench puffed through gaps in the opening. He grasped the handle of the bag and dragged it across the floor to rest near the solvent storage ventilator. The digestion mechanisms built into the sack worked quickly—in a few days, there would be no sign of what the muck had been or where it had come from—
Something flitted in Evan’s head, like a whisper. He picked through his myriad thoughts trying to recover it, but it wriggled away like a fish.
The madness of th
e moment . . . .
He stood in the doorway of the shed, Tellinn’s words echoing in his head, and stared at the decomp bag until Markhart called him in to lunch.
Chapter 23
Jani set aside the issue of Blue and Grey that she’d been paging through, and stifled a yawn as post-augie languor settled over her. Sitting in a stream of red light wasn’t the medically approved way to deal with Neumann’s hallucination, but she’d grown desperate since she’d awakened that morning to hear his off-key bass emerge from her bathroom. I always dreamed of this, Kilian, he said when he stuck his shower-damp head out the door. All you’d have to do is strip and join me to make this moment complete.
A few minutes later had found her trudging barefoot across the South Yard, wearing the same base casuals she’d slept in, duffel on her shoulder. It had still been dark, thankfully. No A&S-holes out and about to find her in sweat-stained dishabille.
Working on sleep-deprived autopilot, she had showered in the women’s locker room of the South Central Gymnasium. Dressed. Applied makeup with a trembling hand. And walked out into the blaze of day to find Neumann leaning in the gymnasium doorway, waiting for her. He’d stood close enough for her to smell his breath drops, the cinnamon candies he had sucked incessantly.
I watched you through the gap in the shower curtain, and you didn’t see me.
“Nervous, Jani?” Friesian shuffled through a file and made a notation into his handheld. He had gone the “B” shirt route, as well. And had his hair trimmed.
“No more than usual, considering the circumstances.”
“They will probably holocam this, even though it’s a nonjudicial. Just forget it’s there and act natural.”
Act natural, he says. She’d have a hard enough time staying awake. She had tried to give Neumann the boot by breakfasting decently, then making sure her morning in Foreign Transactions remained uneventful by locking herself in her office and letting her comport screen her calls. He hadn’t shown up—she thought she’d beaten him.
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