by Patty Jansen
“Dr Scott, you said?” Redness creeping into her cheeks, she reached for the phone, dialled and listened. “Dr Scott is on a call.”
“Good. Then he’s here. Where can we find him?”
She met my eyes, a touch of defiance coming over her face. “You need an invitation from one of the scientists to get in.”
“Let’s just say the invitation comes from Dr Elsi Schumacher.”
She sat up straight, her face closed. “I don’t know who or what you are and what you’re doing here, but I don’t appreciate jokes like that.”
“It isn’t a joke. My name is Cory Wilson, delegate to gamra. What I want to ask Dr Scott is of vital importance for Nations of Earth and for peace in this part of the galaxy. Now let me talk to him, please.”
I could play the pompous-arse role if I wanted.
The secretary swallowed, then glanced at the others, who formed a black-clad wall between her and the exit. “I’ll let you in, not all of them.”
“They come with me. If it pleases you, I’ll leave two guards here.” To make sure you don’t let in anyone else.
Another short silence; she licked her lips. “Very well.”
She stumbled up from her chair, grabbing a keycard from the desk.
The glass door slid open for her.
I gestured to Telaris and Ezhya’s male guard. Wearing translators, they would have heard that two of them were meant to stay behind. They placed themselves on either side of the glass doors while the receptionist led the rest of us into the corridor.
We passed closed doors with high voltage warning signs, and open doors into rooms full of equipment in dust-free encasements. The odd worker sat behind a screen.
At the end of the corridor, we entered a light-filled room in which the centrepiece was an oval conference table. Each of the chairs around it faced its own little screen. A holo-projector stood idle in the middle.
More equipment lined the perimeter of the room. There were also two partitioned offices.
In one of these offices a man worked behind a large screen displaying a map of lines and circles. He was about fifty and wore a washed-out jumper over thin shoulders. He had more hair on his chin than his head.
The receptionist said, “Dr Scott, there are visitors for you.”
One look at me and my party and the man reached for the comm unit on the desk. Thayu leapt into the office faster than I had ever seen her move, and slammed her hand on the unit before he could pick it up.
The man tried to push her away. “I’ll call the police!”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said in a low voice. I walked into the office. “We only need to talk to you, nothing more. Mind if I sit?”
I sat down when Dr Scott said nothing, and added to the guards in Coldi. “Jam this room; shut the door.”
Evi moved to the door, shutting it in the receptionist’s face; Ezhya’s female guard took a reader from her pack and put it next to one of the computers in the main room. A touch of the screen, and it came to life. Thayu crouched next to her, thumbing her reader while studying the display of one of the machines in the cabinet.
Ezhya Palayi leaned casually against the doorframe.
Dr Scott’s face had gone pale. “If you are looking for any of Dr Schumacher’s data, you’re too late. It’s all gone.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
In the conference room, Thayu went to work. Tables and lists scrolled over the screen of her reader. Every now and then, she keyed something into her translator, or spoke a few words with the guard.
Telaris remained by the door, a patient obsidian statue.
I waited.
Dr Scott sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. Every now and then, he threw a dark glance at me, or at Ezhya.
Silence lingered.
Deleted material could be restored easily enough. If Special Services or the police had been here, which in all likelihood they had, they knew this, too. The material hadn’t been in Danziger’s office, Special Services didn’t have it; I had a feeling we wouldn’t find it here, either. With each minute that passed, the chance that someone would come into the building’s foyer and discover the receptionist more or less under siege increased. We had gotten unnoticed out of Danziger’s office yesterday, but we were pushing our luck to do so again.
I rose from the chair and went into the meeting room.
“Thayu? Find anything?”
She turned, and a brief expression of sympathy flickered across her face before it became professional again. She shook her head.
I paced to the door, turned on my heel and paced back again. “How much longer do you need?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know that we’ll find anything. How much longer do you want me to keep looking?”
Glancing at Dr Scott, still with his arms folded in his office, I decided in a split second. “Don’t bother. Keep whatever you have there running. Do you have that damaged report here, the one you’ve been trying to fix?”
She nodded.
“Then come into the office with me.”
Without a word, she took her reader and followed me, her face still so unemotional. At my gesture, she placed the reader on the table in front of Dr Scott.
While she turned on the projector and opened the report, I said, “I have a question regarding some material we have been able to restore.”
Dr Scott tightened his arms closer about his chest. “I don’t comment on a colleague’s unpublished work.”
“I understand you and Dr Schumacher got on well?”
“That’s none of your business. Flash Newspoint and their rubbishy gossip. Elsi is dead. She can’t defend herself.” His voice wavered.
“I appreciate that and your privacy, but I thought that if you were friendly with your colleague, you might be interested in something that could clear her name. It’s in everyone’s interest to understand what happened.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Gamra. I’m Cory Wilson.”
“The one who was in the office with President Sirkonen?”
“The very one.”
“And now you come to ask about Elsi’s work?” He pushed himself off the desk, looking wearier. “I thought they’d finished with that. Taken it all and gone. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s bad enough Elsi was killed for this, and I’m sick of suggestions that I had anything to do with it. I didn’t.” He backed further away.
“Dr Scott, I’m not coming to investigate or accuse anyone, least of all you. Those matters are up to the police. My concern is with the information that went missing at the same time your colleague did. My employer on this mission is the government that has paid for this information, and would like it back.”
“Then you’ve come for nothing, because they’ve already been here and have already looked.”
“Who?”
He shrugged, his face a mask of defensiveness. “Some of those . . .” He glanced at Thayu.
“Chans?” Oh, how did I hate the feel of the word in my mouth.
“Yes.”
My skin crawled at the hatred in his voice.
“They found nothing, just like the police found nothing and you will find nothing.”
“Yes, I understand, but we actually have some of the information that went missing.”
His eyebrows rose.
I touched the screen and activated the holo-projector. “We don’t have all the data, but we need your help in interpreting what we do have.”
Displayed on the crystalline screen was one of the maps with its pretty fields of blue, green and purple. Just like Thayu’s hair.
“This is one of the maps we’ve been able to retrieve.”
Dr Scott reached out for the reader and scrolled over the map. I thought some of the defensiveness left his face. “I remember this. Elsi came to show it to me. She said she had never seen a more dramatic trend in her life. Very significant and sust
ained. This map represents rainfall? Oh yes, I see it does.”
“Increased rainfall?” I asked, aware that Ezhya at the door listened intently to every word.
“Oh yes. In this case, if I remember correctly . . .” He scrolled through the next map, which resembled the first, and the next one, then frowned. “That’s strange. It doesn’t appear to be here.”
“The data was damaged,” I said, keeping my voice neutral, and hoping Dr Scott would go on.
Which he did. “There was another map which was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen, showing the distribution of a greenhouse gas, sulphur hexafluoride. At the edge of this continent here. . . ,” he pointed, “. . . was a large red spot, indicating a huge concentration of it, and then in the next measurement, it had lost about a third of its size. Where is this?”
Ezhya didn’t miss a beat. “Crystal Wastelands. The crater.” He spoke Coldi, and I translated. “It’s a meteorite crater on Asto.”
Dr Scott studied the screen a bit more, his frown deepening. “Is there any industry in this place?”
“There is industry on the planet, but not here. No one lives in this area.”
“No surprises in that. Anything alive couldn’t possibly breathe this air. There wouldn’t be enough oxygen in it.”
Ezhya confirmed. “No one comes near the Crystal Wastelands. Many have tried. Some of the desert kids go there. Apparently, they ride boards on the air in the crater. It is dense and grey and makes their voice go funny. If they fall off they die.”
I translated for Dr Scott, who nodded. “That sounds like sulphur hexafluoride all right. It’s the heaviest gas known. When you put it in a tank, it looks like water. You can float things on it. We only know it as an artificial product. Production requires free fluorine gas, which is one of the most reactive substances known.”
Asto, I knew, was extremely rich in fluorides.
Dr Scott stared at the screen again. “It’s also the strongest greenhouse gas we know. It doesn’t break down, because it doesn’t react with anything much. Its effects last for at least twenty thousand years.”
I thought I understood. In some way, the gas had formed in the crater when the meteorite hit, and wasn’t being formed anymore. “So this work shows that it’s running out, or running down, or whatever—disappearing in any case?”
“So the data seems to suggest.”
“And that causes an increase in rain?”
“Probably. Most importantly, though, it would cause a significant drop in temperature.”
“How much?” Ezhya’s voice sounded harsh, stressed, I realised.
I translated.
“Hard to say without having all the data,” Dr Scott said.
“If we provided him with new data, could he tell us?” Ezhya asked again, his eyes meeting mine.
I translated.
Dr Scott turned and looked directly at Ezhya. I cringed. “Do you think I want to sign my death warrant?”
Thayu stirred, staring at the screen of her reader, then glanced at me, “With permission, mashara advise that we move.” There was an undertone of urgency in her voice. I’d have to come back to Dr Scott later.
I rose from the table. “Thank you for your time, Dr Scott.”
Ezhya’s female guard opened the door and strode into the hall.
I followed, trying to keep up with Thayu. “What’s the matter?”
“We have two identities incoming.”
“Close by?”
“Not yet.”
“Who are they?”
Renkati.
The receptionist met us in the corridor to lead our group back to the foyer. Evi and the other guard still waited there. Thayu spoke to them in a low voice. They pulled out readers and compared screens. There seemed to be a disagreement about what to do.
I joined them. “Mashara, is there a problem?”
Ezhya’s female guard inclined her head. “Delegate, while you were speaking, mashara received a message from one of the people the Delegate wanted us to contact.”
“Who?”
She held up the reader.
On the screen was the text: I have a bottle of my father’s vodka to give you. Michael.
Michael Sirkonen. Our last chance, and I would hazard a guess that he was trying to tell us he had a copy of the data.
“Did he give a place to meet?”
She fiddled with the screen and showed me again.
The Station Juice Bar, Barendrecht.
“Do we know where that is?”
“A part of Rotterdam. Mashara is working on the details right now. If we leave now, we buy ourselves some time before Renkati shows up.”
When, not if, they showed up.
I glanced at the relative safety of the waiting minibus outside the entrance. Rain still fell in sheets, leaving trails of mist over surrounding paddocks. The minibus was a regular taxi and had no equipment with which the guards could communicate, so one of them had to wave until the driver spotted them and brought the vehicle to the entrance.
Two guards first, then Ezhya and me, and then Thayu and the last two guards behind her. Into the rain. Cold wind whipped straight through my shirt. Shivering, I clutched my reader to my chest. I wasn’t used to this kind of weather anymore. At the door of the van, I waited for Thayu to catch up. She half-ran, shielding her eyes from the rain. Her face was drawn taut.
Horrible memories of near-death on the marshland outside Barresh? Her feeder output was blocked.
I ached to say a few personal words, but she avoided my eyes, flung herself into the first available seat.
I clambered up the step and sank in the seat next to Ezhya Palayi.
The driver closed the door, and sought for my eyes in the bewildering party of weird people. “Back to the station, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The bus turned onto the road.
I stared unseeing out the window. I hoped desperately that Michael Sirkonen would have the information we were after. I also hoped that whatever the meeting entailed, the Station Juice Bar served meals, and coffee, because, not having eaten either breakfast or lunch, I was swaying on my feet. Maybe Coldi and Indrahui could survive on thin air, but I definitely could not.
Next to me, Ezhya said, in a thoughtful voice, “This particular visit was very useful.”
“Was it?” That was news to me.
Ezhya let a small silence lapse.
“What he said—that the surface of our planet is cooling significantly—is what I suspected—and feared. It also explains actions by some groups.”
“Does it?” I tore my gaze from the sodden paddocks and met the gold-specked black eyes.
Ezhya’s face looked drawn, the grey in his hair more noticeable. He clasped his hands on his knees. “Not directly in relation to the murder of your president or this organisation that calls themselves Amoro Renkati, but to the larger motives behind it all.”
I frowned.
“Gamra has a law that none of the member entities should have repressed populations. An original population of a piece of land can stake a claim on their home territory to have it returned to them. In the past those claims have largely been granted by zhamata, and secondary populations, invaders if you like, have scrambled to defend themselves, and remain eligible to the network. That’s partly why Indrahui is such a mess.”
I nodded. Then a feeling of cold ran over my spine. I whispered, “The Aghyrians.” They were the original inhabitants of Asto.
Ezhya sighed. “Yes. Indeed. There has never been a point for them to make the claims, but a lower temperature is likely to make the planet once more inhabitable by the Aghyrians.”
And leave a whole planet open to be claimed by a few? That was too ridiculous to contemplate. “But they’ve been gone for—how many years?”
“That doesn’t matter. They’ll want what they think is legally theirs.”
I didn’t think that was bluff. The hatred of Coldi had been obvious in everything I had seen from
the Aghyrians: in Marin Federza’s words, in the way the medico spoke, in the way they offered Amoro Renkati the technology to break away from an Asto-dominated gamra. “There are only—what—about two hundred thousand of them?”
“There are, but they are the fastest-growing ethnicity within gamra. Already, they hold many positions of power.”
Delegate Joyelin Akhtari, Trader Marin Federza.
“Most are extremely intelligent. They have technology that baffles our best teams.”
“Which Amoro Renkati wants to use to set up a rival Exchange network, and which has been used to kill President Sirkonen.”
“The Aghyrians have simply pushed Amoro Renkati into action. They are using Amoro Renkati as their lackeys. The Aghyrians have time. Before they make their claim, they would like to see our standing within gamra weakened.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I knew: it also made far too much sense. “Something must be done against this law. They can’t just go ahead and disown an entire population for the sake of a few.”
“If the law isn’t changed, they can. The law was written to protect small populations who have been driven from their homelands. There are conditions that must be met, but we’ve tested them, and if the Aghyrians decided to claim, they could probably meet all of them. Asto would have to make huge concessions to the Aghyrians in order to maintain its Exchange. If this Amoro Renkati gets their way, there will be a lot of entities voting against us. I wouldn’t like to predict the outcome.”
I stared. There were billions of people on Asto; they wouldn’t be happy with this. “So the material Danziger found was indeed a contingency plan?”
Ezhya blew out a breath. “There are many such plans for many different places. We must be prepared for the worst.”
In other words: yes?
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Would you evacuate the entire population?”
“Only if absolutely necessary. If the climate changes are worse than we feared. If we can’t come to an agreement. If . . .” He shrugged. “Right now, it doesn’t look good.”
“Wouldn’t you . . . fight?”
“Only if we have to. But it would split gamra. We would lose the Exchange network, because it can’t exist without us. Without others, who would walk out, we have no trade.” He let the obvious hang in the air: Asto imported much of its food. He shook his head. “No. We must keep talking. It will take a long time, but we must solve this peacefully, with gamra, with independent negotiators. It’s the only way.”