“Macefield,” Philip said quietly. “Thank you.”
“What happened?”
Philip’s lips puckered distastefully. “Obviously she’s been beaten. From the damage it’s clear someone tried to kill her.” He gestured at Simity with his right hand. “Broken bones, ruptured capillaries... she needs a new kidney They’re growing one for her, but it will be a few days.” He shook his head. “The worst part is the skull fracture. She lost a lot of blood, too. There may be brain damage.”
“I don’t understand. What purpose could this serve?”
“I wouldn’t have thought any. But—”
“I have always believed...”
Mace started at the sound of Simity’s thin voice. Her head shifted on the massive pillow, mouth working as if chewing something, and her eyes blinked open. She squinted up at Philip, her left eye puffy and purple.
“Philip.”
“Patri.”
“Where am I?” Her eyes drifted left to right, moist and fearful.
“Pathic. You’ve been hurt.”
“I know. It—I don’t understand... thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure anyone...” She noticed Mace then and frowned.
“Not at all,” Philip said. “You’re a friend. How can I help?”
She looked back at him briefly. “You just did. I haven’t heard such simple sentences in months. If you’re being insincere, don’t tell me.”
“Never. But you know I mean it. So. What happened?”
“Do you expect me to be indiscreet in front of strangers?”
“Ah. Patri Simity, this is my friend, Macefield Preston.”
“How do you do, Macefield Preston,” Simity said. “A friend of a friend and so forth... why are you here?”
“I’m looking for another friend,” Mace said.
“Mmm. I didn’t realize there were so many friends left in the world. That’s encouraging.”
atri—” Philip said.
“Did you check on the Temple?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And it was all right?”
“It’s been ransacked, I’m afraid. Nothing broken, just... disrespected. Now can you tell me what happened?”
She drifted back to sleep then. Philip glanced anxiously at the monitors above her, but they seemed normal enough. He looked up at Mace.
“Pathic was called anonymously two hours ago,” he said. “They aren’t sure exactly how long she’s been like this—much easier to tell such things from a corpse than from a survivor—but they believe it was sometime in the last twenty to twenty-two hours.”
“That’s a long time to be left alone like this. She’s tough. Toler?”
“That would, of course, be the easy assumption, but it doesn’t make sense. She would be one of his best resources if he got into trouble. The Temple acts as a transition hospice for Lunessa, both immigrants and emigrants. Killing the patri would draw a lot of unnecessary attention and close one of his avenues off Aea. It would accomplish nothing.”
“How did you get here?”
“Ah. Now that is interesting. Cambel received a data transfer from Simity to her dom system a little over two hours ago.”
“I didn’t know Cambel knew Simity.”
“She didn’t. Not well enough to be receiving comms from her. And this was an enormous file. When she opened it, she found Simity’s entire correspondence with a patri in Lunase named Vin. Vin, it seems, is quite displeased with current Lunessa policy. There is detailed information concerning the use of the Temple and its acolytes by SetNetComb in various covert operations, mostly trade sabotage. It suggests an organized attempt to undermine trade among the Signatory stations.”
“The war you were talking about.”
Philip nodded. “Toler is a soldier in that war.”
“You say this was sent two hours ago. But if Simity was beaten yesterday—”
“Then who sent us the file? Exactly. It was sent shortly before the anonymous call to pathic. I called Simity when we opened the documents to find out what she wanted us to do with them and found pathic already there. So here I am.”
“These documents—”
Simity opened her eyes again.
“I’d like you to continue checking on it while I’m here, Philip,” she said. “A place can be like a person; it needs to feel cared for or it can die.”
“It’s in the Heavy, Patri.”
She scowled. “I don’t want you to conduct services. No one comes anyway. I just want you to go there and see that nothing is out of order. Check on it. Remind it that people still know it’s there. The Temple hasn’t been left empty since it opened. Just because I’m stuck in pathic is no excuse.”
Mace found himself liking this old rector even while she tested his patience. Philip gave him a sympathetic look.
“All right,” Philip said. “I can do that. Now. What happened?”
“Are you being kind or are you genuinely interested?”
“Both. Now stop testing me and tell me.”
“Did you hear,” Simity said weakly, “that Lunase is at war?”
“I’d heard something like that,” Philip said. “With whom? Why?”
“Oh, everyone, for everything. No one is happy there.”
“It would help to know who did this to you, Patri.”
“Mmm. You probably already know You’re just confirming.”
“Perhaps,” Philip said. “What we do not know is why or how he did this or what your Temple has to do with it.”
She drifted to sleep again. Philip sighed wearily. “This could take a long time.”
“These correspondences,” Mace said. “Any names in them?”
“Oh, yes. Toler figures prominently. SetNetComb comes up a great deal. The impression I have, though, is not an overall effort. It sounds more like one department in the larger government that has gotten out of hand. Vin mentions attempts to shut the program down, but suspects it has continued covertly.”
“As if that’s never happened before.”
“Exactly. Toler, according to Vin, was sent here to initiate this phase of the operation. He was supposed to meet his contact and begin.”
“And that contact would be—?”
“That name isn’t mentioned. Toler was supposed to meet, start the program, spend a week or so here, then return to Lunase. Evidently, Toler is a well-travelled Lunessa. Some of his other destinations are interesting—Cassidy Five-Eight, and Midline.”
Mace took a few moments to think about that. “So what happened? How did they meet?”
“We don’t know. Vin sent Toler to Simity instead of to his contact.”
“Reese should know.”
“Probably, but we can’t ask him anymore. I am hoping Simity—”
“Yes? Philip, are you still here?”
“Yes, I am. Can I help you with anything?”
“I doubt it. I’m beyond help.”
“Don’t be cynical on me.”
“You must wonder,” she said quietly, “what I believe anymore, Philip. We’ve had many talks about the nature of faith and the objects of reverence, but all that was mostly theoretical. Enjoyable. I look forward to many more. But I always knew you never accepted the tenets I’m supposed to represent.” She drew a deep breath, swallowed loudly. “Fair enough. Tenets change. But there’s something at the base of it all that drives us and keeps us bound to the forms even when they seem to have lost their meaning.”
“Possibly—”
“No. Definitely” She looked around as if gathering her thoughts. “You see, many of my peers in the Temple have lost their faith, but they continue in it. They go through the motions because people depend on structure. They know they fulfill a purpose even if the original meaning is gone for them. But they misunderstand faith. You see, they placed their faith in something outside, something they expected to direct them or give them anchor or let them measure themselves against. Faith isn’t static. Faith is....” She closed her eyes and fell silent for several seco
nds. Mace glanced at the monitors reflexively. “You don’t have faith in something,” Simity continued suddenly. “You simply have faith. Like truth, it’s a process. It is always the same and it is never the same. If you expect it to remain unchanged it will pass you by. It follows you where it leads you. People who do the inexplicable in the name of their faith have misplaced it. Of course, they’re looking in the wrong place, in the wrong way. I have never lost my faith, Philip, because I have never mistaken faith for property.”
“What does all that have to do with what Lunase is doing?” Mace asked.
“Nothing. Everything. They’re trying to turn the future into the past by pretending that nothing changes, that faith is eternal and therefore always the same.”
Mace tried to match her words to circumstances, but it seemed that she was only rambling. She was old and frail and badly injured. She might live, but the fear, the brush with mortality, had certainly distorted her sense of priority, her perception of relevance.
“Do you know where is Glim Toler?” he asked.
“I don’t know”
“Who would know?”
“Gaia. It revolves, you see, around the central nature of causality I wrote a paper once. It helps to remember.” She winced. “Thank you for coming, Philip. I seem to remember you told me stories...”
A pathologist came in then and leaned close to one of the monitors. He made a quick adjustment and Patri Simity slipped instantly into sleep.
“That’s all for now,” he said. “Thanks for talking to her for so long. It gave us a real good baseline to map the damage.”
Philip glowered at the man as he stood. For a moment, Mace thought he might see Philip erupt in rage. But Philip drew a deep breath and walked out of the room.
“I’m sorry for your friend,” Mace said.
“They seem to have some expectation that she’ll recover,” Philip said, glancing back at the pathic facility.
“It doesn’t make sense that Toler would do that.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it doesn’t make sense for anyone to do it. She’s not—she’s been rector here for forty years. This branch has been losing importance for all that time, till now...”
“Till now the rector can lie bleeding in her own Temple for hours before anyone finds her.”
“Yes. Which is sad, but it is also a contradiction. What motive?”
“Did you say twenty hours ago?”
“That is their best guess.”
“I was in the Temple nearly that long ago, with Koeln.”
Philip frowned. “What was he doing there?”
“The same thing I was. Looking for Toler. We both had the idea of asking the patri.”
“And?”
“And she wasn’t there. Or if she was, she was hidden.”
“They said they found her on the floor in the kitchen.”
“Wouldn’t make sense that Koeln could miss her, then.”
Philip shook his head. “But he’s an even less likely suspect. Why would a member of PolyCarb security try to kill Simity?”
“He’s Lunessa. Maybe he hates the Temple. Who else does that leave? Reese Nagel?”
“Again, why?”
“So no one we can think of would have a motive to kill Patri Simity?”
“I can’t think who.”
“Then it’s someone we don’t know.”
“Toler’s contact, our trojan. Koeln?”
Philip shook his head slowly. “Why would he be looking for Toler if he was the contact?”
“Koeln has lied to me already. He found Nemily and questioned her about Toler. Did I tell you that Helen’s name is on both their InFlux jackets as sponsor?”
“I looked into that, Macefield. The dates go back before Hellas Planitia. Those sponsorships were made prior to Helen’s death.”
Mace stared at his friend, absorbing the information. “How is that—?
Toler was on Mars, at the site. We know that. If she sponsored him...”
“It’s doubtful she did. Someone in PolyCarb used her name to do this. The trojan, we can assume, since Helen was out at Ganymede when these were filed.”
“The trojan set this up that long ago?”
“We can assume this operation has been going on for several years.”
“What operation? Lunase?”
“Yes. Trade talks have broken down repeatedly over the last few years on PolyCarb’s—and by extension Aea’s—entry into the manufacture and distribution of exotics, materials Lunase insists are theirs to make and sell by right. The current talks are supposed to reach an accommodation between the orbitals—specifically Aea—and Lunase regarding who gets to make and sell what. It’s that simple. When the issue first came up, Lunase made several unfortunate statements suggesting they would make us suffer for encroaching on their rightful purview. We suspect they developed a very efficient process for breaking down exotics at the molecular level. The first trial was Hellas Planitia.”
“A threat to boost their side at the talks.”
“Exactly. When that failed to get them what they wanted, they destroyed Cassidy and Five-Eight.”
“And now Midline. But—”
“The word I have is that the operation has gone rogue. The talks are currently proving successful. Agreements are being reached. But someone within SetNetComb has decided to continue the war.”
“Lunase can claim that it was a rogue operation all along.”
“Of course.”
Mace thought it through silently. Then: “If Lunase wants to shut it down, then Toler arrived here with no contact. He’s still here because whatever he’s supposed to do, he can’t do it. He may be stuck here, with no way off.”
Philip nodded. “So he went to Patri Simity to get back home and she told him no. He flew into a rage and beat her. That would make sense, in a way. But he would have to go somewhere else then to get off Aea.”
“Nagel?”
“Possibly We may never know now. Nagel is dead.”
Mace stared at him, his ears warming. “What? When?”
“Several hours ago.”
“I didn’t—he—” Mace grunted. “Maybe he told him no, too. That sounds desperate. I—”
Something in the timbre of conversation around them changed. Mace caught Philip’s frown and then looked away as the sound grew louder. People were huddling close to one another, the thickest gatherings around the public terminals.
Philip crossed the circuit toward the nearest terminal. He stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd. He came back a moment later.
“SA has made Midline public,” he said.
“Hell.”
“Perhaps. I’m going back to my shop. This is getting tiring, being here. What are you going to do?”
“I’m still trying to find Nemily I might have another talk with Koeln. Assuming he’s still alive.”
Philip smiled grimly “Be careful, Macefield.”
Blue-uniformed SA security hovered around the entrance to 5555. A crowd stood at a wide yellow marker strip, watching. Other people came in and out of the nightclutch as Mace looked on. A pathic gurney came out then, surrounded by half a dozen medics. All Mace saw was a patch of skin and gauze where a face should have been.
Koeln stepped out of the entrance. Behind him came Coif, Reese’s muscle. They stopped briefly and Koeln spoke to her. Coif nodded and walked away Mace squeezed between the people in front of him to stand at the edge of the marker and stare at Koeln. Koeln glanced back toward the door, then did a quick survey of the crowds gathered. It seemed to Mace that he lingered briefly on him, then let his gaze sweep past. He spoke to a pair of SA security people, then pushed his way through the crowd.
Mace backed away from the line and worked his way out into the open circuit.
He spotted Koeln heading toward the spoke elevator. Mace hung back, watching to see if anyone else trailed along after Koeln. He hurried to close the distance as Koeln reached the spoke and slipped onto the elevat
or as the doors slid shut.
More than a dozen people rode up with them. At each ring, a few left, one or two got on, until at the final stop, the interior, everyone got out.
Koeln stood against the opposite wall of the car, watching Mace. The doors closed again and they were alone. Koeln punched in a code and the car locked in place.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Preston?”
“Reese is dead, I take it?”
“Yes. Someone crushed his skull.”
“Toler?”
“That’s my first guess.”
“Where’s Nemily Dollard?”
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to suspect that she’s made contact with Toler and if so she’s either in the same condition as Reese and Patri Simity or they’re working together.”
Mace felt his scalp tingle. “That’s a stretch, don’t you think? Why one or the other?”
“Ms. Dollard has been central to this, as are you,” Koeln said. “She came here sponsored by your wife. So did Toler. Now that both of them are here, people are dying. I can only assume that these murders are being committed to keep people silent.”
“Silent about what?”
Koeln shrugged. “We’ll learn that when we have Toler. Perhaps there are others here who are part of it, but none of them were sponsored here by a dead PolyCarb employee. One who, herself, might have been culpable. One who, I’m sure, was at least acquainted with whoever is now running the operation.”
“What operation?”
Koeln smiled. “Some things are still confidential.” He reached for the button. “We’ve held the lift up long enough, I think. Other citizens need to get places.”
“I don’t think Toler killed Reese.”
Koeln’s finger paused. “Why not?”
“Because it keeps him on Aea and he has to know that if he stays, he’ll die.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps he doesn’t care anymore.” Koeln dropped his hand. “Last night, Ms. Dollard went to see Reese. She was escorted to ring one by Coif, to perform an illegal ghost for someone. This wasn’t the first time she’d done work like this for Reese.”
“Who was the client?”
“I don’t know. Coif didn’t see. My guess would be Toler. He had approached her to carry vacuum here from Lunase when she emigrated. She claims she refused. Perhaps she did. But then why would Toler bother to try to contact her now? And why, afterward, would Toler kill Reese unless Ms. Dollard had confirmed something about Reese?”
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