by Sage Walker
“You saw her there?” Mena asked. She had cut a flower from one of the urns below and tucked it in her hair. Her dull green work shirt looked ready for a red carpet. But Mena always looked ready for a red carpet, except for her hands, her thick strong fingers and unvarnished nails, the dirt-stained calluses on her palms. Mena was a hands-on farmer.
“Cameras show her in the Athens tower elevator just after the SM,” Helt said.
The video came to the screens. Elena Maury carried a stainless steel rack, which Helt now recognized as a container full of Petri dishes, those little covered plates that he remembered from biology class. She looked at the elevator walls with the expression of a sphinx contemplating riddles, those amazing eyes so calm, so quiet.
Mena curled one hand around her coffee mug and rubbed the rim with her thumb.
“So, you show Elena on the Athens elevator. Huh. Find another suspect, Doughan.”
“You work with her,” Helt said.
Mena stared into her cup. “Her lab tests out the embryos of the initial breeding pairs for any species we want to introduce in Center. She’s a genome wizard and has done some clinical medicine. I do botany, she does zoo, more or less. I run Bio for her so she can say I’m her boss. I run Bio for her so she won’t have to. I don’t waste that head of hers on committee meetings.”
Helt felt a sudden rush of relief. Elena had someone in her corner.
Archer wasn’t as protective of Helt’s time in committee meetings, and both of them knew it. Archer tried to stay a stranger to long discussions, a sort of Anubis who gave final judgment on disputes, and only after Helt had held up the scales that balanced the soul of a matter and found that it weighed more than a feather.
“I didn’t say she’s charged and convicted, Mena,” Doughan said. “I don’t think riding an elevator is grounds for arresting her. And even if she’s this morning’s prime suspect, she’s the on-board pathologist. Should we let her do the tissue work? Should we trust her results?”
“It’s possible she could fudge the results on the micro stuff, right, Mena?” Helt asked.
“With great skill,” Mena said.
“But the body fell or was pushed from Athens tower, the murder weapon was a branch of a pine tree, and we have the branch. The autopsy she did is well documented. Any odd results are going to look—well, odd,” Helt said.
“Photos of the path slides will be reviewed by Mass General. We can’t get their opinion on the actual fluid samples no matter who does the work. Reviews of the slides won’t be back for weeks, but they will be reviewed,” Mena said.
Mena was protecting one of her own. She was like that.
“There’s timing,” Archer said. “I would really like this matter settled before the last shuttle leaves.”
“Because you don’t want a murderer on board?” Doughan asked. “I know I don’t.”
“I don’t,” Archer said. “But I would imagine we have several murderers on board as it is. Our population is varied, and it contains family units. Most murders are kinship based, or so I’ve read, and I doubt that axiom will change.”
Kin and lovers, and Cash and Elena had lived together once. The thought made Helt queasy. He told himself to put the image aside. He told himself the facts weren’t in.
Ten thousand berths on Kybele were filled with lottery winners. The price had been steep, and that was a selection method of its own. Lottery winners had started coming up twenty years ago, and love and marriage came with them. The other twenty thousand, two-thirds of the Kybele’s population, were technocrats. Kybele was top-heavy on the IQ scale, skewed by highly skilled people who could do the work required to get a mini Earth habitat on its way and keep it running, but high IQs were not always associated with emotional stability.
Kybele’s population also had a variable whose ramifications could not be determined or dismissed. Every adult on board had decided to leave Earth forever, to live and die in a generation ship so that, assuming their genome survived, in whole or in part, their descendants might someday colonize another world. All of them nuts, if you looked at it that way, and Helt sometimes did. He figured he was nuts, too.
The safety factors, all sorts and kinds of genetic material, were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored deep and out, close to the big cold beyond Kybele’s skin. If you bought a lottery ticket, you bought storage for a tiny vial with a few of your cells in it and your name on it. Part of you got to make the trip and might live and breathe here someday. Part of you might walk on a new world. It was a lottery, but it was real.
“Our handling of an unexpected death sets precedents, as most matters do these days,” Archer said. And then there’s the matter of jurisdiction, as well.”
“You’ll hear no objections from me if we manage to hand the problem off to Earth,” Doughan said.
Helt waited for Archer but Archer’s stare at his screen said it was Helt’s turn to talk.
“I’ll state the obvious, for the record,” Helt said. “Every human on Kybele, including lottery winner colonists, is, as a legal fiction, an employee of Biosystems, Systems Support, or Navigation. Once the ship is under way, everyone on board becomes a citizen, with the traditional rights and obligations inherent in that status. The debate that brought this system about was long and heated, but the employer-employee relationship seemed to be the most efficient way to get the ship built, stocked, and ready to travel.”
Coworker reviews counted, peer evaluations counted; those safeguards were in place and guidelines were followed, but anyone on Kybele could be fired. Including Helt Borresen, for that matter. “Elena Maury has colonist status. Until the last transport goes back to Earth, she can be dismissed by her exec—that’s you, Mena—for any stated or unstated reason.”
Doughan didn’t seem to like that statement. “It’s been our tradition not to state our reasons. If somebody messes up here, we try to stay neutral so they get a fair chance at a life and a job when they go back down. We send facts, but no felony record if we can avoid it. But we’ve never sent a murder suspect down. Seems like we would want to give fair warning if we do.”
“We knew we would be cops,” Wesley Doughan had told Helt once. He’d been stretched out in a bamboo chair in Helt’s quarters in Petra, his feet on the upholstered cushions of the stone banco that could double as a bed, staring at a moonlit view of the Pyrenees on the screen behind the interior window. “Shore Patrol. Whatever.
“Navigation will have jack all to do for decades at a stretch, other than wobble correction, simulated lander runs, and equipment maintenance. Industry is under our umbrella; that’s a different thing. But the pilots and the outside crew can’t sit around polishing boots forever, and somebody will have to keep this overeducated group of absentminded professors from throwing garbage in the streets.”
“Yeah, well, garbage is our job,” Helt said. “Systems Support. Maybe it should be Bio’s job, but I can’t get Mena to take it. The miners get physical now and then. That should be enough to keep you in shape. That’s if Bio manages to breed any that can operate machinery. Want another beer?”
That had been years ago. In the bright morning, here in the conference room, Helt got up for the coffeepot.
“Send the problem away,” Doughan said. “I take it that’s the plan. I don’t like it, but the fact is that a murder trial is not on my departure schedule,” Doughan said. “Look, all Severo has had to deal with is the occasional fistfight, the occasional student prank. We have some jail cells at the Athens station, but we’ve never used them. A couple of people have had to be locked in their own quarters for the night to rethink their situations, and we check with their Division heads first if we need to do that. That’s our working protocol.”
“As far as experience in matters concerning criminal law,” Archer said, “Ju Zheng from our legal staff has the job of judge in magistrate court, if one needs to be convened. She’s only had a couple of cases to deal with so far.”
Helt brought the coffeepot to t
he table and topped up the cups.
“Legal says the algorithms say that with this limited population, at this point in time, if there’s a murder trial, the Division Execs are the judges. That’s us.” Doughan frowned as if the idea disgusted him.
Legal had a staff of five. One attorney did finance and estate planning and civil arbitration, two worked on Kybele-Earth matters. There were two paralegals. “That’s assuming you’re crossed off the suspect list,” Helt said.
“Yeah,” Doughan said. “Everyone here’s on it, except Helt. He’s cleared.”
“I have some time and date stamps from work last night here in SysSu. There’s no cross-check yet. I’m not completely off the hook,” Helt said.
“So everyone here’s a suspect,” Doughan continued. “Until we aren’t, it’s probably a good idea for us to leave the cameras on in the offices.”
“Spy on ourselves, yes,” Archer said.
“Interfaces, too,” Helt said.
“Sure,” Doughan said. “Severo will be asking you for time and place verification during the SM hour, if he hasn’t already.”
“He hasn’t, yet,” Mena said. “But what connects Elena and this Ryan person? This engineer who was scheduled to be gone in three weeks?” Mena asked.
“It’s possible Cash and Elena might have been an item in their college years,” Doughan said. “SysSu found a video of them in a club; not much, but it could mean they knew each other in face time, at least.”
They might have been roomies, just roomies and nothing more. For some reason, that had not occurred to Helt until now. He liked the concept a lot. Maybe a bit too much.
SysSu had worked on Ryan’s history most of the night, but SysSu’s exec, Archer, didn’t take his cue and say how his division was researching this mess, and Helt wondered why. Archer was playing Old Man, and not just in Navy style. He seemed lost in his screen and looked half asleep, although Helt knew he wasn’t.
“Nadia Tay and Gerard Beauchene are the SysSu ITs who found the body,” Helt said. “They wanted to work on this, and they’re good. They’re searching archives. As of 0300 they had not found any contact between Maury and Ryan, anywhere, anywhen, since they were enrolled at MIT at the same time. One semester.”
“Not even in a crowd shot? I mean here, on Kybele. In commuters coming and going?” Mena asked.
“Not even that,” Helt said. “Or, not yet. In a population of thirty thousand—”
“Captured on video only when they show up on some public security camera somewhere,” Doughan said. “Captured by position sensors only if their interfaces are live. I know, I know. I’m one of the ones who pushed to keep us as much privacy as we could handle.”
The streets and the trains had security cameras. There were panic buttons in shops, but only as much video surveillance as a shopkeeper wanted to review on her own. There were smoke alarms in every dwelling, but cameras in bedrooms were a private affair. A scream in the night would get attention, though, if it sounded like a cry for help. Fine-tuning the system for people with nightmares or small children was still ongoing.
In the wilderness sector of Center, many of the introduced animals and birds had locators implanted under their skins and some wore cameras. Helt had met a couple of monitored deer with Elena, only two nights ago. There were cameras and smoke detectors out there, monitored in Stonehenge, but surveillance of the forested areas was minimal by design.
Doughan looked around the table, a commander evaluating his resources. “Archer, sorting this out is a problem for Navigation, but SysSu will have a lot of cross-departmental traffic to supervise for us.”
“Which I plan to delegate to our Incident Analyst,” Archer said.
The statement was no surprise. Helt had known this would happen even while Severo was making his report last night. That he had called it right was small comfort. An ugly death had happened in his home, damn it, and he had to fix the damage, and he knew he might fail.
“I see,” Doughan said. “So it’s all yours, Helt. Severo is in charge of the human investigations and he’ll report to you. You take what Severo finds and bring it to the execs,” Doughan said. “I wish you luck.”
“Thank you,” Helt said. He would need more than luck. He needed legalese in place that would let him cross-check everyone on the SM list, including the three people in this room. Damn. Unlike Doughan, he had never known he was going to be a cop.
The trio had a sort of shorthand, after working together for ten years. Archer stared briefly at each of them with his Anything else? Let’s get on with it, shall we? Look.
Mena glanced up from her screen. “The statement’s ready to go out, if you want to review it. That the trio is taking all necessary steps, et cetera. As you wrote it, Archer. Nice job.”
Biosystems was the official voice for announcements of Kybele’s policies, and so it was Mena’s pronouncements that would enter the news feeds. When the ship began its burn toward the rings of Saturn, that job would go to Doughan. After that, the plan was three-year rotations between the departments, adjusted for times when the ship would be in maneuvers. The ship’s governance would always be headed by Navigation during those times.
“Nadia Tay wrote it, Mena. I’ll tell her you like her style.”
“Copied mine, did she?”
Archer gave Mena a wink.
The meeting was over. No need for discussing the timing of the next meeting; it would happen when needed. No need for social joshing; all of them were in one another’s data streams several times a day as it was.
“Do you want some video with it?” Helt asked Mena, as the others got out of their chairs and headed elsewhere.
“Sure,” Mena said.
The stone wall behind Mena was covered with a mildly green fabric, a choice subject to several discussions between the ship’s architects and its workmen, a felt made from pulped grass and bacteria-grown glue. It was handy for green-screen work.
Mena stood, straightened her shoulders, and drew a deep breath. “I think just a sentence or two in voiceover will be enough. Text for the rest.”
Helt captured her saying, “… unexpected death … last night after a fall from Athens tower…” and so forth. She had learned to look at a camera lens, but she didn’t like it.
“An unexpected death,” Helt repeated.
“A suicide, Helt. Tell me when I can say that and I’ll stop being camera shy. That’s a promise.”
Because her face said she needed it, Helt hugged her.
7
Make a List
The scent of Mena lingered from the hug, her skin fresh from a morning scrub with that moss-and-cedar-scented soap she favored. Her scent had not changed. She was rough with her washing, in a way that had caused Helt, once, to take the cloth from her strong hands and bathe her gently, as if she were a child. The memory hurt. Helt had not touched her for—eight? Eight years?
Kybele’s soil was her pride, pulverized, smooth-polished sand sifted and mulched and treated with micro-life painstakingly collected and hauled up on specifications designed by Mena’s husband, Alex Aaronsohn. Aaronsohn had died on an Earthside trip, examining soils in the arid Sierra Tarahumara, a victim of a drug war, or anti-Semitism, or a target for someone who thought Earth had no business in space, but none of the usual suspects claimed credit for the killing.
Yes, Mena grieved for Alex. Helt had been part of that grieving, a shared time of relief from despair, of desperate love-making where joy and sorrow were united and the pain of death was held at bay, a time of passion in the face of unbearable loss. But when that time was over, Mena had pushed him away.
“Do you have another lover?” Helt had asked her.
“Not yet. But I will. So will you. Go.”
She’d left him. It hurt and he had tried not to show how much it hurt. What hurt most was that she didn’t break stride, didn’t seem distressed, had gone on about her work with the same intensity and pleasure she had shown before her husband died.
&n
bsp; If the occasional man came and went in her life now, that man was none of Helt’s business. It hurt not to know if there was someone for her, but he hadn’t asked.
As far as Helt knew, her loves were the grain fields in Center, the coffee and cacao that grew in lighted plots on Level One of Stonehenge, and the vineyards. She was particularly fond of the vineyards. Don’t forget the stands of tea bushes, grown in a misty habitat on Level One, Helt reminded himself. First grain, and then stimulants. That’s how we are.
He had an instant’s memory of a mareritt night, a dream where the small boy Helt padded the length of a long corridor to a closed door he could not open, worried by sounds from within that he could not understand. He pushed the nightmare away.
* * *
In his office, he searched Legal’s cache of boilerplate for the authorization he needed to let him solve a murder case. Special Investigator seemed to fit the job description. He spent a few minutes staring at the list. Examine records and locate links, identify case issues and figure out what evidence is needed, obtain and verify evidence. Interview suspect and witnesses. Fine, that’s what an IA did. Perform undercover assignments and maintain surveillance, including monitoring communications. As Kybele’s IA, Helt had done that, but only by the request of the parties involved. Spy on ourselves, the execs had just said. The newly designated Special Investigator would be looking at Mena and Archer and Doughan in ways he hadn’t before. He didn’t think he was going to like that at all. It felt icky.
Helt sent the file to the execs for signatures. He wondered how closely they would read it. The document gave him a decidedly odd place in the power structure, but Helt could hope it was temporary, a set of powers that would vanish the moment Cash Ryan was declared a suicide. He profoundly hoped that moment would be soon, like today. Like now. The shortest route to that was Elena. He wanted her to fix this mess for him and for herself.
The wall of greenery behind him misted itself, on schedule. Helt kept the other three walls blank for projections. He turned them all morning blue, clean, and neutral.