by Sage Walker
“We don’t have those yet,” Severo said. “We can’t start questioning witnesses until we have some.”
“I’d like to know about the lab work,” Helt said. “Maybe Martin doesn’t know to post the results to NSS.”
“Martin?” Nadia asked.
“Martin Kumar. He’s on duty tonight at the clinic.”
Helt called him. Martin Kumar was awake and sitting in the lounge at the back of the clinic, a screen in front of him. Its blue light made his hair look blue and turned his white skin an ominous shade of gray. He rubbed his eyes and smiled. His eyelids were red, but it looked more like fatigue than tears.
“Hi. It’s good to see someone else awake.” Martin stretched in his chair.
“We are that,” Helt said. “All four of us.” He sent views from the monitors. “Nadia, Jerry, Severo, Helt.”
“Hi, Nadia! Jerry, everyone, hi,” Martin said.
“You’ve all met?” Helt asked.
“Don’t know if he knows Severo,” Jerry said. He got up and came back to his screen with a sandwich from the bag and a glass of something tan from the fridge.
“I haven’t met—Chief Mares.” Martin said. He brought up the lights in the clinic lounge and suddenly looked a lot healthier.
“Are any lab reports ready?” Helt asked.
“Just the automated stuff,” Martin said.
Severo leaned forward and stared at Martin. He didn’t look threatening. He just looked sort of puzzled, but it was a calculated puzzled. “Dr. Calloway and Dr. Maury did what is called a forensic autopsy,” Severo said.
“They did.” Martin’s expression looked a little puzzled, too. “Everything was recorded, and every sample of tissue and blood is under locked protocols.”
“And the body is locked up, too?” Severo asked.
“The morgue has limited access, always. Nothing had to be changed for that.”
Severo nodded. “I’m figuring you just did a crash course on chain of evidence.”
“I did. Sir.”
“Yeah, I’m learning a lot tonight I didn’t plan to worry about, too,” Severo said. “Martin, I’m Severo Mares, Chief of Navigation Security Services.”
“Oh.” Martin blinked at Severo’s broad, tired face. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“Likewise,” Severo said. “And you’ve just been deputized by NSS. Helt will send a release over to you so you can get us the medical information as it comes in. May take Helt five minutes to get it to you, but tell us what you have so far, okay?”
“I guess this patient’s privacy issues are different than most,” Martin said. “Sir, the last time I looked, everything we’ve run is in normal range.”
“NSS will need it anyway,” Helt said. “Any scrap of information Biosystems comes up with. Could you set up the lab work to go over there when it comes in?”
“Sure,” Martin said. “Here comes the first batch, then.”
Severo looked at the lists of acronyms, abbreviations, and numbers that appeared on the screens. “Can you interpret this for me, doctor?” Severo knew all the MDs on board, all four of them, and knew Martin wasn’t one. Severo was teasing the kid.
Martin was still young enough to blush, and his fair skin made his blush impressive. “I’m a medical student, sir.”
“Even better. You’ve studied this sort of thing more recently than that lazy Calloway and won’t brush anything aside.”
“He isn’t lazy, really,” Martin Kumar said with great earnestness. “He just likes to look relaxed to help people stay calm.”
Helt found a release of medical information form and sent it to Severo, who signed it and forwarded it to the Athens clinic.
“He looks like he’s half asleep when he plays poker, too. You’d better watch him,” Severo said.
“I have,” Martin said, deadpan. “Cash Ryan’s blood chemistries are all within normal range except, of course, for the two starred results over on the far right. Abnormals are pulled out of the list to make them easier to see.” Martin pointed them out. “His blood pH is very low, acidotic, which happens when there isn’t oxygen, and then there’s low oxygen saturation. But he wasn’t breathing, sir. He was dead when the samples were taken. That, and a little alcohol, is all we have as yet. The drug screens take a little time to cook, and the pathology slides—Dr. Maury will be doing those.”
Uh-oh. Helt looked at Severo for guidance. Severo was looking at something infinitely far away, but Severo knew about the elevator capture, knew that Elena Maury was the next one on it after Cash Ryan’s death.
“Where do those get done?” Helt asked. “There in the clinic?”
Martin shook his head. “No. Only frozen slides are done here, quick reads while a patient is in surgery. The rest are done in Dr. Maury’s lab in Stonehenge.”
“You’ll take the samples to her?” Helt asked. The question of how many samples of human tissue were in that lab, accessible to Elena, was a biggie.
“I will,” Martin said. “But not until the next tech comes on shift. You don’t think she wants them tonight, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Helt said.
She didn’t work alone there. It might be okay.
“Sounds like a plan,” Severo said. “Martin, have you been looking at lab results on suicides? I have.”
“Yes. The indicators aren’t specific; any sort of stress looks much the same as depression if you check blood chemistries. Suicide assessment is based on behaviors. We would need reports from people who knew him, or evidence of some sort that he was making end-of-life plans.”
Severo sent a list to the screens.
Threats of harm to self.
Seeking pills or weapons.
Talking or writing about death, dying, or suicide.
“That’s the list I found,” Severo said. “We’ll be looking for the first two things. But we haven’t found his interface, and SysSu hasn’t told me where he hid his personal data stash.”
“I’m working on it,” Nadia said.
Helt continued down the list.
Recent losses.
Feelings of hopelessness.
Cash Ryan was a contract worker scheduled to leave the ship forever.
Difficulties with relationships.
Elena Maury and Cash Ryan had lived together for a time, in their college years. Who walked away? Elena or Cash? Why? Were they still in contact? Helt didn’t want to know, but knew he had to find out.
“We don’t have much personal information about Cash Ryan,” Severo said. “We don’t have it yet. Martin, do you want to sit in while we see if we can find some of it?”
“I’d like that very much,” Martin said.
Jerry’s alertness increased, a subtle thing, a glance at Nadia’s studiedly neutral face. Helt wasn’t sure he saw it, for in a blink Jerry was back to his normal slouch. It could be that Jerry was on guard against any age-appropriate male who might make a claim on Nadia. Jealousy was old style, immature. Denying it was the norm, verbally.
“So here’s the plan,” Severo said. “We interview every contact we can find. That starts in the morning.” He centered the current time on screen.
0134
“Make that, starts later this morning.” Severo scrubbed the time away and brought up a list of names. “Here’s the first tier of interviews. I’ll be starting with Ryan’s work crew. It’s what we’ve got.”
Helt didn’t recognize any of the names.
“When Archer was here, we used the NSS protocols you’ve put up and added what we’ve found,” Nadia said. “We’ve been searching for biographical data and ship contacts as well.”
“Lemme see it,” Severo said. He peered at the schemata. “So. You’ve managed the info to highlight information that might be critical, and you’re running suicide versus probabilities of murder, side by side. You’ve come up with a system that lets us look and weigh the probabilities of either and switch focus to the better bet without breaking stride.”
&nbs
p; “I hope you don’t mind,” Nadia said. “It’s just a candlestick chart but I modified it.”
“I don’t mind,” Severo said. “We’ll take the revisions. Send them over. That’s what the morning shift can see when they come in.”
Jerry leaned back in his chair and gave the chief an exaggerated lookover. “Wow,” Jerry said. “You don’t do turf battles?”
Severo thought about that and frowned. “Not when my turf is improved by the invaders,” he said. He looked at Jerry as if he’d just become aware of him and then turned his full attention to Nadia. His visual inspection could have come across as offensive, but it didn’t; Severo seemed to be evaluating new and valued coworkers and looked satisfied with what he found. “You two did most of this work, didn’t you?”
“The set design is mostly Nadia’s,” Jerry said.
“If Archer fires you, come and see me,” Severo said. He got out of his chair in that deliberate way he had. It looked slow, but it wasn’t. It was just efficient. “I’m going to get some sleep. This time I mean it. Thanks, guys.”
The office was quiet for a few moments after Severo left. Helt went looking in the vault records. Pathology slides were virtual and comparison algorithms to find matches for tissue of any sort were really good. In the process, Helt discovered that pig liver cells don’t quite look like human, but the differences are subtle.
He glanced up at the live world around him. Nadia and Jerry had turned their focus totally back to their screens and Helt felt a twinge of the peculiar loneliness that can happen in a crowd of strangers. He scanned captured footage of Elena, beginning ten years back. The train station cameras at Stonehenge caught her face now and then; he added her profile and the width of her forehead to the protocols as he watched. He didn’t know why he’d never talked to her, never run across her at Biosystems conferences about this or that.
Elena worked closely with Mena Kanakaredes. Mena was easy for the scanners to pick out of the travelers coming and going between Stonehenge and Petra. She was tiny and her height made her easy to spot, so he scrolled again to see if he could find Elena traveling beside Mena. While that set of stuff sorted itself out, he set parameters for brunette women plus dark-haired males, narrowed them for Elena’s shoulder width and height and Cash Ryan’s body build, and scrolled for a while, but the false positives were thick on the ground.
Helt’s eyes were tired. He sampled the music Jerry was playing to himself while he worked, a synthetic marimba for the melody line, shifting harmonies by a chorus of shimmering woodwind equivalents, a bass throbbing at about 22 hertz, just above the lower limit of human hearing. The tags on it said it was Kybele-grown music, a pickup band named, at least this week, Infinite Regression.
“So that’s our chief of police,” Martin said.
“Did he charm you?” Jerry asked.
“He’s a little clumsy at it,” Martin said. “Calling me ‘doctor’ set off a bullshit alert.”
“He saw it and compensated,” Nadia said.
“I’d like to play poker with him.” Martin yawned a wide yawn in his corner of Helt’s screen.
“Good luck with that,” Jerry said.
“You speak from personal experience, I take it,” Martin asked.
“I lost my shirt.” Jerry didn’t look up when he said it.
“Ah. Group, I’m going to try for some sleep,” Martin said. “I’ll check in if anything shows up here.”
“Thanks for that,” Helt said. Murmured good nights came from Jerry and Nadia. Martin vanished from the screens.
Nadia lifted her head and looked over her screen at Jerry. “Which shirt?” she asked.
“Blue silk,” Jerry said. “That raw silk they’re making that looks rough, not silky.”
“You didn’t lose it. You loaned it to me. I’m wearing it,” Nadia said.
Jerry blinked and looked abashed. “Oops,” he said.
“Oops?” Nadia asked.
“Helt?” Jerry asked.
“What?”
“I can’t think of a clever, fond rejoinder that would imply I noticed how lovely Nadia looks in blue silk.”
“Neither can I. I’m going to avoid confrontation and leave.” Nadia and Jerry had planned to camp out in Center tonight. He didn’t want to keep them from what they had planned to do before they slept. He imagined their kisses, the beauty of their intertwined bodies, the healing brought by the primitive comforts of sex and shared warmth. He was jealous. Helt pushed back from his desk. “What’s that stuff you were drinking?”
“It’s apples and pears, mostly,” Nadia said.
“It’s good,” Jerry said. “Nadia mixes it for me.”
“I’ll try it, then. Jerry, my only advice would be to hug her and say you’re sorry.” He poured himself a mug of the pale tan stuff and went down the hall toward the bunk room. The smoothie was good. It tasted like apple pie with honey and cream.
Helt took his work to bed with him, images and searches projected on the bottom of the bunk above him.
Eventually, he slept.
6
An Unexpected Death
Helt opened the door to the conference room.
“… shows the number of hits on the death announcement is at background level, no more than that,” Archer Pelham’s overly quiet voice said. “Good morning, Helt.”
“Yes, it is. Morning, all.”
The chiefs of the three working sections on Kybele were together in SysSu’s largest meeting space. Archer Pelham, Support Services; Mena Kanakaredes, Biosystems; Wesley Doughan, Navigation. The videos would show Helt Borresen, SysSu Incident Analyst, yawning but freshly shaven. And he wasn’t late. He was just last.
Helt zombied his way to the coffeepot and worked on increasing his caffeine titer while he stared out through the windows that looked down on the Athens agora. Chrysanthemums blazed gold in urns near shop doors. Students and shoppers moved, bright and alive, in and out of shadows, in and out of the buildings that fronted the agora. The University Library, across from SysSu, was designed to look impressive, and it did. This building, although more extensive, was deliberately less grand.
“He’s a Navigation employee,” Archer said. “Did you know him, Doughan?”
“Not to speak of,” Wesley Doughan said. “I don’t think he ever showed up at my desk in person. He was here on a three-year contract with engineering and scheduled to leave when it was over. We’ve been looking for his contacts, and we haven’t found many. Severo talked to David II last night. David didn’t see Ryan often, he says. Didn’t see him yesterday.”
“I thought Chief Mares would be here this morning,” Archer said.
“Severo’s out with Ryan’s surface crew this morning. They said Cash worked morning shift and left it alive, but Severo’s out there talking to them anyway,” Doughan said.
Suited up, breathing canned air out on Kybele’s cold hide, with the starscape spinning by every seven minutes, with fat blue Earth so close, Severo would like that. But he wouldn’t be back for hours; travel to one of the poles and out to a surface worksite took time.
That Cash Ryan had worked his shift yesterday meant it had taken him time to get back, too. It set a time frame that meant there were fewer hours to reconstruct.
Helt refilled his coffee cup and turned away from the bright morning sky outside, which was a view not of infinity but of artifice. Someday, after generations had passed—how many would it take—Two? Seven? Someday, the illusion might seem foolish, and students would paint slogans on the ceiling. Generations after that, there could be real skies again for people to walk under, and real seas with real tides. Helt wondered if sky would seem strange and unnatural to them then.
The trio in charge of Kybele looked too few, too human, too fallible, for the job of guiding the first, perhaps the only, fragile egg full of Earth-based life to a new world outside the human basket.
Mena, at least, had gravitas to fit her role. Her profile, that straight line of forehead and nose, came st
raight from a Greek statue. Her stern expression came from a slight case of myopia that she chose not to treat, but it was effective. Doughan flanked her on one side, Archer on the other, looking much less impressive.
Helt had worked with all of them for a decade. At this moment they were strangers, unknowable. A million secrets lay hidden in red blobs of pulsing wetware cased in bone, thousands of purposes, memories, agendas.
So that’s what a live look at an autopsy could do. Add a night’s work, with only three hours of sleep in the bunkroom here in SysSu. Helt needed his coffee this morning.
Helt sat down beside Archer and pulled a work screen closer. It showed the roped-off space in Center.
“This death is a headache,” Wesley said. “It was a suicide or it was murder. A suicide would be no surprise and maybe even expected. Not everyone gets to stay at our party and some of the rejects aren’t happy about that.”
“In either case, it’s a matter we can’t treat lightly,” Archer said.
“We won’t,” Doughan said. “If evidence doesn’t appear to define this death as suicide, we have to treat Cash Ryan’s death as a murder under investigation. Personally, I think he offed himself. But if—if, I say—it’s a murder, the tower elevator SM outage came at an inconvenient time.”
Archer’s eyebrows lowered in a visual hrrumph you could almost hear.
“The … hiatus leaves us with questions to answer that are going to take a lot of time and man-hours. As of this morning, we have no views of Ryan getting himself up Athens tower, and we have only one person in proximity to the Athens elevator near the time Ryan died,” Doughan said. “It’s Elena Maury, Biosystems. She has a history with Cash Ryan, and she was on Athens tower last night.”
Helt knew Elena’s face now; he’d seen it in shadow near the Athens elevator in Center, in the flesh. He’d seen it on his screens in crowds near the stations, in captures taken in the clean neutral light of her lab. He knew her voice. He knew her the way fans know celebrities; he had sought glimpses of her on every public camera on Kybele. He looked up at Mena’s face, live and real and near him, and saw signs of thunder. Mena could look calm to everyone else, but Helt knew better.