Andra learned a lot just watching what Mairwen made note of and what she ignored. She was more talkative than she’d been at dinner, but mostly because she was asking questions. Andra tried to answer with as much objectivity as possible, so as not to prejudice the assessment with her own suspicions. She couldn’t say the same of Chief Laboratory Manager Lavong, who’d attached himself to their group like a limpet.
She mostly knew him from two-plus years of biweekly faculty meetings. He was probably middle-aged, nearing a hundred, and big and portly, sweaty, and given to bombast. He was an ally and backer of Vestering’s unofficial campaign to become a regent. He knew the labs intimately and had a comprehensive knowledge of the facility, equipment, and procedures. He took any criticism of them personally, so when Andra brought up the accidents in a recent faculty meeting, he’d blustered defensively and essentially told her to mind her own business, or she’d be sorry.
During the tour, he’d slid between obsequious, defensive, and truculent, and was transparent in his agenda to convince Mairwen that everything was in perfect order. Jerzi’s solid, watchful presence had apparently suppressed Lavong’s habit of bullying anyone he perceived as weaker, though Andra would have paid good money and bought a jumbo bag of candied salt nuts for anyone who wanted to watch him try it with Mairwen.
She hadn’t realized the new interior lab on the fifth floor made the thirteenth lab in the Chem building, or that the second-floor lab had been repaired so quickly because of outside funds. The university often collaborated with commercial companies for research programs and joint ventures, and the companies sometimes rented the labs for short-term projects. A contract research company had been using the damaged lab for critical experiments and needed the lab restored quickly, so they’d offered the O-Poly a grant to make it happen. Lavong was unhelpfully vague about the nature of the projects, citing nondisclosure agreements, and suggested Mairwen ask the public relations office if it was important. To Andra’s admittedly inexpert eyes, the newly replaced lab equipment looked more state-of-the-art than usual. It would be interesting to learn how often the accidents had impacted the commercial companies. Maybe it was a sneaky way to get them to ante up for keeping the labs modernized.
At the end of the assessment, after they left the Chemistry building and walked through the Materials Science building to its airpad, Mairwen invited Andra to the hotel that evening at eight for a preview of her findings. Jerzi had insisted on arranging a pickup time so Andra wouldn’t have to depend on public transport, making her regret mentioning that she didn’t have transportation of her own. He, of all people, should know better than to treat her like a helpless princess, even if his heart was in the right place.
“Dad said you kicked his ass at the shooting range yesterday,” said Pico. She shifted the cross-slung bag off her hip and pulled down the plaid kilt where it had ridden up. Today, she looked like an ancient Scottish guard, complete with white socks, billowy-sleeved blouse, and beret. Pico had the most original taste in clothes of anyone Andra had ever met.
“It was a tie.” Andra smiled. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
Pico grinned. “Good. He needs a challenge.”
Andra wasn’t touching that one, just as she hadn’t touched the other hints Pico had been throwing about Jerzi for the last ten minutes, under the guise of idle chatter as she’d helped Andra straighten the classroom before leaving. It was nice that Pico was giving her tacit encouragement to get close to Jerzi, but it was a bad idea. However much she might want to spark with now-single, nova-hot Jerzi, an interstellar-distance relationship was on the top-ten list of things she didn’t want to have, right under the Cruzdon plague.
“I thought Valenia didn’t work at the childcare center every day,” said Andra.
Pico made a sour face. “She’s not supposed to, but the manager takes advantage of Valenia’s love for children. I should have slipped out of class early to meet her.”
The very full Practical Applications class often ran late, this time by thirty minutes because they’d been reviewing the POGS Day projects. Andra had brought in a professor from engineering specifically to do the post-mortem on Ms. Dortief’s malfunctioning combat robot and Mr. Ravlenko’s ambitious attempt at a catalytic resonator for a super-radiant emitter. As Ms. Grien had guessed, the phase gate had failed because Ravlenko was a lopar who couldn’t be bothered to check his math. The professor had been surprisingly good with the students, and seemed to enjoy the cross-discipline energy of the class. Andra wondered if he’d be interested in co-teaching and expanding the curriculum if the university added a second section. As an added bonus, the collaboration would twist Vestering’s knickers extra high and tight.
The pathway lighting made it easy to follow the artfully meandering walkway across the floater. Andra was glad she’d had the foresight to wear comfortable shoes and a vest with extra pockets that morning, so she didn’t need to carry a bag.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Andra said, “did I hear Valenia say you met Sojaire at space camp?” She felt only a twinge of guilt using Sojaire to forestall Pico from further attempts to extol her father’s considerable virtues. Andra would bet good money that Pico had more than a passing interest in the young man.
“Yes, he was one of the staff. He was going for his B-level medical certificate at the time, and he was hired as a temporary replacement for the camp’s regular medic.” She was silent for a long moment. “Then they tried to kill him.”
Andra raised her eyebrows. “Sad what some employers will do to get out of paying a contract fee.”
Pico smiled lopsidedly. “He found out something he shouldn’t have, so the directors tried to space him like it was an accident. I saw him trapped in the sabotaged airlock. I got him out, and they chased us into the station’s hydroponics section.”
“What did he find?”
Pico re-slung her bag to ride against her other hip. “Dad says you’re okay with… that you like minders.” Her voice was suddenly quiet as she peered up at Andra warily.
Andra blinked at the sudden shift in topic. “Yes. They’re just people.” She made a face. “Except the CPS Minder Corps, who are mostly pendejos arrogantes.” No one in her Forward Intelligence unit could stand them. She’d even had a couple of their Academy-trained students in a class once, and neither she nor they had enjoyed the experience.
Pico snorted. “Probably cousins of the arrogant assholes who work in the CPS testing centers. The space camp directors got a bounty from the CPS Testing Center on Etonver for every minder kid they discovered, so they put us in dangerous situations so we’d be forced to use our talents. A kid nearly died. Sojaire figured out what was going on and was going to report it. When we ran into the hydro section, they came after us with beamers. I was scared and mad, and I didn’t want them to hurt Sojaire again. Somehow, I flatlined all the tech within about a hundred meters.”
“Impressive.” Andra knew that heavy tekes, who could handle big things like chairs or desks, got all the attention, but she’d always thought the microteke ability to work with small and microscopic things would be much more useful.
Pico shrugged one shoulder. “Anyway, the police assumed it was caused by an unlucky shot from a plasma beamer, and I let them. Dad always said it was better not to have the CPS know who you are.”
“I agree with him.” For all that the CPS offered a safe haven for minders whose very existence scared the ignorant, the agency also had a habit of enhancing minder talents with chems that had harsh side effects. Everyone she knew had a family member or friend who was disabled or died early because of them, though the CPS always found something else to blame it on.
“Anyway, ever since, Valenia thinks Sojaire and I together are catalysts for extraordinary events.” Pico frowned and fell silent.
Ordinarily, Andra would have scoffed, but she’d been thinking the same thing about Jerzi and herself, what with lab explosions, rogue robots, and restaurant stabbings. It w
as statistical nonsense, of course, but it had made her feel better that morning to slip a collapsible, powerful shockstick in a hidden pocket of her vest. Still, if “interesting” things had to happen, she’d rather have Jerzi by her side over anyone on the planet.
The Math building’s large round doorway irised open in front of them, and they entered the bright atrium. The acoustics in the atrium made it possible to hear anyone speaking in it, so it was often used for impromptu speeches. It was the newest building on the floater, and she’d heard that the Physics Department was still bitter about losing it to the Math Department, who’d turned out to have deeper-pocket sponsors that year. It had a smaller footprint than either the Chem or Mat Sci buildings, had only three stories, and had short, angled wings instead of curving donut walkways. Whoever had designed the campus had a serious love affair with all things circular. Andra only noticed it again when she saw it through the eyes of others, such as Mairwen and Jerzi on that morning’s tour.
Andra had never been to the childcare center, so she assumed the three children sitting in the south hall indicated its presence.
“What the hell?” muttered Pico. She picked up her pace. As they got closer, Andra saw the door under the center’s sign was closed and dark.
Pico stopped next to two dark-haired children, a boy and a girl. They were both sitting against the wall, and the boy was hugging his knees, looking down. “Miguel, what are you doing out here?”
The boy, who was maybe eleven, didn’t look up. “Esperando a para nuestros padres. Ya se tardaron.” Andra could barely hear him. She didn’t think Pico understood much Spanish beyond swear words, so she translated. “Waiting for their parents. They’re late.”
A little redheaded girl sitting on a separate bench piped up. “When the man came, Ms. Val told us to wait out here.” Her Old British accent made her sound impossibly cute.
Pico waved her hand over the wallcomp, then knocked on the irised door. “What man, Lyssi? One of the parents?”
Lyssi shook her head back and forth vigorously, her springy curls bouncing. “I don’t know.”
Andra heard heels tapping behind them and turned to see an overdressed woman in brilliant green and yellow approaching. She looked like an annoyed parrot. “Lyssi, come here, immediately.” The little girl’s face fell as she stood and brushed her hands off on her loose pants and picked up a small backpack. The woman rounded on Pico. “I know the center closes at six, but you can’t just leave children in the hall. Forty minutes isn’t that late. I pay good money for a secure facility. I’m reporting you.”
“I don’t…” began Pico, but the woman interrupted.
“It’s too late for excuses.” The woman grabbed Lyssi’s hand and leaned into Pico to hiss, “I’ll have your contract for this. See if I don’t!” She held tightly onto the miserable little girl’s hand as she hauled her back down the hall.
Pico muttered what Andra assumed was a vile insult in Polish as she activated her wristcomp. “I pinged Valenia at six when I saw class was going to run over, but she didn’t answer. I figured she was just busy. The center takes advantage of her.”
On a hunch, Andra squatted down next to the boy, Miguel. “¿Se fue Valenia con el hombre?”
He nodded, confirming her guess that Valenia had gone with the man.
“¿Hace cuanto?” If it was only a few minutes ago, maybe they could catch them.
Miguel looked up at the clock display on the wall. “Hace treinta minutos.” Thirty minutes ago was the center’s closing time. Maybe the man had been one of the administrators?
Pico was pale and tense as she furiously worked her percomp. “She never leaves without telling me who she’s with. And she wouldn’t go with a stranger in the dark, not even a security guard, if we had any.”
Andra gently elicited more details from Miguel. He, his sister, and a number of other kids had been playing as usual when a pale-skinned man came in and talked to Valenia in a language Miguel didn’t know. A few minutes before closing time, she’d shooed all the remaining kids out the door and locked it, then went with the man toward the atrium. Miguel thought she didn’t want to go with him and that she was scared. The boy was clearly worried, and his sister clung to his hand like he was a life raft.
Maybe Luka Foxe’s serial killer case had given her an overactive imagination, but dread was spreading like ice in Andra’s stomach. She pulled Pico away from the children and spoke quietly. “I don’t like this. If you stay here with the kids and to wait for Valenia, I’ll take a quick look around the building.”
She reached into her vest pocket for her shockstick and started to take off down the hall, then turned back. “Ping your dad and tell him we’re going to be late.”
Chapter 10
* Planet: Nila Marbela * GDAT 3241.146 *
Jerzi watched Andra with his peripheral vision as they rode the Math building’s lift down to the first floor. She was strong and resilient, but no one would come away from what she’d seen without cost.
“Damn it,” she said softly. “I really, really wanted to be wrong. As wrong as I was when Da’vin died.”
It was the first non-professional words he’d heard from her since he got there. He crossed his arms and crammed his hands under his armpits to keep from pulling her in and holding her tight. Nothing in her body language said she wanted comfort right then.
He’d just arrived at Pico’s apartment when he’d gotten Pico’s ping about the delay. She’d asked him to stay in case Valenia came home, and he had, until the ping from Andra that Valenia had been hurt, and his daughter needed him. He’d cursed the Tremplin traffic system for the ten minutes it took to get queued and in the air, and the twenty minutes’ flying time to the university.
Working his way through a plethora of university security, Tremplin police, and emergency responders, he’d found Pico on the third floor of the Math building, seated in a single chair in the hallway outside an office. He knew her shuttered expression, the one that said she was blaming herself for whatever had happened to Valenia. He’d seen it often enough when she thought she was the reason their family was falling apart.
Pico the child would have thrown herself into his arms, but adult Pico simply took hold of his proffered hand when he dragged another chair out of the open office and sat next to her.
“Professor De Luna tried to talk me out of coming up here, but Val was asking for me.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Val said a man came to the childcare suite, asking questions like he wanted to bring his kid there. He spoke French, but with a Slavic accent, like when I speak French. He made Val nervous. She tried to hit the security panic button, but he stopped her. He said he’d hurt the children unless she went with him. He took her to the north wing lifts and stunned her with something. She passed out. When she awoke, she was in the construction area.” Pico pointed down the hall toward the unfinished area. “She recognized it because she’d had to chase down a kid here last week. The area was already bloody when she woke, but it wasn’t hers. At least then. He cut her up all over, and told her not to leave until midnight, or he’d come back and kill the kids. Professor De Luna found her.”
“Have they already transported Valenia to the medical center?”
Pico nodded. “I need to be there. She’ll need someone who knows to leave the lights on.”
“Do you want me to take you?” He didn’t want her out of his sight, but it wasn’t up to him.
She was pale, but her voice was steady. “The inspector said she’d take me. She wants more details from Valenia.”
He nodded. “I’ll be wherever you need me to be.” He squeezed her hand. “I know you won’t believe me right now, but this isn’t your fault.”
“My head believes it,” she said quietly. “My heart doesn’t. I should have been there. We couldn’t have missed him by more than fifteen minutes.” Her lips thinned in anger. “It’s not fair that it should have happened to Valenia. Not after what she’s a
lready been through.”
“No, it isn’t fair, but she’s alive, and she has you looking out for her.”
A tall, powerfully built woman in a flexin-armored police vest and arm braces approached them. “Ms. Adams? The inspector is ready to leave, if you are.”
Pico stood and slipped her bag over her shoulder. She turned to him. “Could you check if Professor De Luna has a way home?”
“Yes, of course. Ping me with updates.”
After Pico had left, he used a technique he’d learned from Luka and politely but persistently kept asking for Andra until he’d found the right person who could take him to the office they’d left her in. Her relaxed body language and neutral expression would have fooled most people, but he knew she was on edge and thoroughly annoyed.
“Are the police being burros malditos?” he asked, knowing he was mangling the pronunciation for ‘damned asses.’ She made Spanish sound expressive and fluid; he sounded like a tourist.
“The police are fine. I’ve had multiple pings from the regent, the university’s PR whip, and Vestering, all variations on ‘keep your mouth shut.’”
Jerzi was surprised Andra wasn’t telling the callers to launch themselves ass first into the nearest black hole. No gunnin liked political games, Andra least of all, when he’d known her. Academic life must have made her more patient.
He’d offered her a ride home, and she’d accepted without argument, which told him how upset she was underneath her professional façade.
The lift doors opened and let them into the harsh light of the atrium. By tacit agreement, they didn’t speak again until after they’d walked to the Materials Science building, retrieved his flitter from the rooftop stacker, and cocooned by the cozy darkness of the flitter, headed toward her apartment building. Only the map display and the flitter’s console provided light.
Pico's Crush Page 9