by Sage Walker
He looked at Elena, and Mena beside him was a flood of memory, of her body, her sensuality, her ability to demand and to satisfy. He felt her assessment of what might develop between him and Elena. It was generous. It was right as Mena saw it. It made him hate time, that he and Mena were separated by it.
“There’s some information Doughan wants kept quiet for a while. It will be public soon. Elena—”
Elena pushed back her chair. “I’ll let you talk in private,” she said.
“No! Don’t leave! This may concern you, and I want you here.”
Beside him, Mena had shifted away from him and lifted her shoulder as if to guard against a blow. She stared at him over that defensive shield, her dark, unblinking eyes as observant as a hawk’s. The tiny lines at the corners of her eyes were deeper than he remembered, and Elena was on her feet and walking away.
“Stay with us, Elena,” Mena said. It was a command, but her eyes never left Helt’s face. “Forgive me,” was what he thought he saw. And because Mena asked it, he could not do otherwise.
“Please,” Helt said, speaking to the woman leaving them, “I want you to know everything I know.”
Elena stopped and turned back toward the table. He knew she had heard, and Mena had heard, everything he implied with that statement, every truth that was in it. Mena looked down at her plate with a tiny, knowing smile. Elena came back and sat down again.
“It’s this information, for now, that I want you to hear. The implications bother me,” Helt said. “Elena, there are seven Seed Bankers on board. There may be more; we don’t know yet. The seven are all colonists and in the past year their backers have sent them money. A lot of money. One of them is Susanna Jambekar, and—”
Elena frowned. “That’s nuts,” she said. “It fits nothing I know of her.”
“I’m sorry,” Helt said. “All seven of these people will be questioned by NSS or by me, or both. All of them will be sent back to Earth. Mena, I came here because I must interview Susanna Jambekar myself. Preferably with you there.”
“Of course.” Mena stared hard at him for a minute. “Oh. You assumed I would grill her, get answers, and guard her from Doughan and NSS? You are wrong. I want this cleared up as much as you do, I can promise you that.” Mena looked exasperated. “Oh, Helt. Is that why you ran all the way up here? And have you had lunch?”
“I want you there. You might see things I might miss. I ran because I was afraid that you might be already talking to Susanna.”
Mena waved to one of the men near the cart. He nodded and went away somewhere. “No. I won’t talk to her without you. I wouldn’t do that,” Mena said. “But what worries you about this particular woman?”
“I’ve been looking at records on Susanna Jambekar. She knew Cash Ryan, at least a little, and her boyfriend says she didn’t like him. It’s possible he was stalking her; I don’t know that yet for sure. Elena, in some ways, to some degree, she looks like you.”
“Stalking? Oh, that’s ugly,” Elena said. “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t look like me at all.” Her fingers explored the texture of a slice of bread on the plate beside her unfinished lunch, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. “Except for dark hair, and our skin tone is fairly close. She’s thinner than I am.”
You are lush and there’s not an ounce of fat on you, Helt wanted to say. “You walk the same way. Sort of,” Helt said.
“Really?” Elena asked.
“Really,” Helt said.
“So, do you think she killed Ryan because she didn’t like him?” Mena asked.
“I don’t know,” Helt said. “I don’t know if he could have been that much of a threat to her, or if she could have hated him that much. I don’t know the connections between the Seed Bankers.” He didn’t know a fraction of what he needed to know about this, and he could fail, and he wanted help and didn’t know where to find it. “I don’t know if Cash Ryan was one of them. He didn’t get funds from them here; we know that. At least one other Seed Banker knew who Ryan was, and Doughan is finding out more about that, probably right now.
“If there was a connection between Ryan and the Seed Bankers, what did he do, or not do, to mark him for murder?” Elena asked. “If they didn’t want him around, all they had to do was wait and he’d be out of their hair. Out of Susanna’s hair, too, for that matter.”
And out of Elena’s hair as well.
Mena curved forward, stretching her back, and then straightened. “I suppose this Ryan man could have threatened to expose whatever plans the Seed Bankers had to sabotage Kybele, if they had any. Or threatened simply to expose them to get them off-ship and leave him here. And then they selected Susanna to do the deed of killing Ryan because she didn’t like him? Helt, this is wild speculation.”
The smell of sizzling chunks of lamb grilled over oregano stalks drifted up to Helt’s nose from the plate that had magically appeared in front of him. The dolmades, wrapped in fresh grape leaves, added a hint of citrus.
“Next you’ll be speculating that Susanna killed him in self-defense because Cash Ryan was so delusional he thought she was me, and he tried to hurt her,” Elena said.
“And attacked you, except it wasn’t you, it was Susanna,” Helt said. “Do you think he hated you that much?”
“I don’t know!” Elena’s amber eyes changed color, to black-centered gold. “I told you, I knew him when he was a student. I know nothing about his life since then, except that he showed up here and got himself killed. How many times must I tell you and your damned archives that that’s all I know?”
“I’m sorry,” Helt said. “I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t—I won’t—Please forgive me.” He still blushed, when he felt this chagrined. His face was hot and bright red.
“Okay,” Elena said, and her eyes were amber again.
A glass of ice water had appeared when the lamb did. Helt raised it to Elena in a grateful toast.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Hmmm,” Mena said. “We need to get this settled. I think the person to ask about whether Susanna hated Ryan is Susanna.” Mena retrieved her interface from a pocket, hesitated, and laid it on the table. “What are the rules for this? I should be present when you talk to her?”
Helt nodded. His mouth was full of lamb.
“Wait!” Elena said. “Could this possibly be delayed a day or two? Susanna has a primip in early labor. Can’t this wait until the baby is here?”
“Primip?” Helt didn’t know the word.
“Primipara. This will be her first child,” Elena said. “It’s a matter of trust, Helt. Susanna’s done all the prenatal care, and the mother knows her and will be more comfortable with her than with anyone else.”
“Is it Zhōu? Any problems?” Mena asked.
“No problems,” Elena said.
“I didn’t know she was this near term. That’s wonderful!”
Helt watched the two women smile at each other, smiles that held the worry and hope that burdens every childbirth, smiles that spoke of concerns that began when a particular primate species developed a bipedal gait. He was an intruder in archetype country. He sat very still.
“Well,” Mena said. “This requires us to be adaptive. ‘Where’s my midwife?’ ‘Oh, she couldn’t make it today. She’s under investigation for treason.’ Put that speech in Calloway’s mouth. No. That conversation could upset any patient,” Mena said. “What’s the risk of delay, really, Helt?”
“We have watchers on all the Seed Bankers. I don’t know what she could do that wouldn’t be noticed,” Helt said.
“It’s settled, then. Zhōu will have her baby without disturbance. The grilling of Susanna about Cash Ryan can wait for a few hours.” Mena pushed back her chair and got to her feet. She put her interface in her shirt pocket.
“Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to the fields. There’s a small planting of Moschofilero that may be ready for harvesting tomorrow, but I want to be sure of it.”
She took a few steps toward th
e pulled-back canvas that served as a doorway and then turned to look back at them. “You don’t need me as duenna, you two. Let the cameras do the work. Finish your lunch, Helt.”
Helt watched Mena walk away, her posture so erect you could forget how tiny she was because she walked tall, always focused on the work going on around her, always focused on the next thing to do and how it would be done. He watched her leave the blue-gray of canvas shadow and step into the soft golden light of an early autumn afternoon.
“You still love her,” Elena said.
“Of course I do.” He would never know what women talked about or why, but now he knew Mena had told Elena about Helt, about shared intimacies. Whatever she’d said, it hadn’t sent Elena running, at least. “But the time of being lovers is in the past now.”
“If she needed you, you would go to her.”
“Never doubt it,” Helt said.
“I never will.” Elena smiled. “Particularly now that it’s on the record.”
“Ouch,” Helt said. A great weight lifted from his shoulders and he felt very, very good. Elena didn’t hate him. He smiled to let her know she had scored a point, but hadn’t hurt his feelings.
“It would work. The camera thing. I’m not saying it won’t feel weird. I’ve never thought of myself as an exhibitionist,” Elena said.
“It’s only for documentation if it’s needed,” Helt said. “I hope it won’t be,” and then some of the things that might end up on that record became very clear to him, and he blushed again.
But everyone was on the record, sometimes when they knew it, sometimes when they didn’t, and a certain sort of anonymity came from the sheer bulk of what was available.
Someday he would tell Elena that she was more beautiful now than she had been at eighteen, caught in public videos when she accepted awards in high school, when she went on that school thing to Europe, when, in her early twenties, she defended her dissertation for a committee that tried to look dispassionate. But they had been pleased. The videos showed that.
The contours of her face were more defined now; her eyes seemed larger and wiser.
“I’ll be fidgeting around my lab all day,” Elena said. “I’ll drop by Zhōu’s house as the obstetrician on call, but I’ll be in the background. My job is to stay out of the way and let Susanna do the work. So I’m going to be distracted. I’m sorry.”
“I have to get back to SysSu. A conference. If you’re finished before midnight. No, before two a.m. Let me know. We’ll have a drink.” Which didn’t sound suave or debonair at all. Helt felt like an idiot, but he didn’t much care, because he thought she knew what he meant.
Elena looked carefully at the bowl of grapes and plucked a particular one from the cluster that was almost black.
“For you,” Elena said. She leaned forward with it and Helt, obedient as a baby bird, opened his mouth. The flood of its juices was sweet, musky, rich with complicated darkness and spice. Her fingers brushed his lower lip. She drew away and stood up to leave.
“If it’s past two in the morning, I won’t take the risk of waking you,” she said.
16
Manipulated Objects
Helt set a true color image of Rodin’s The Thinker on the display stage in the center of the SysSu conference table. Testing, testing, one, two, three. He aged it with verdigris, rotated it, slowly, and then grew it to the size of a man and a half.
Severo, in a T-shirt that was fiercely pink, and David II, whose team’s black jersey still looked impeccable, were already seated, their backs guarded by the curve of wall behind the round table. Both of them were intent on whatever they were looking at on their table screens. They had good views of the door and of the plaza below. Severo never put his back to a door if he could help it.
Helt rubbed his lower lip. It was slightly chapped, a little rough. He licked it, but he couldn’t taste grape, or Elena’s fingers.
Down on the plaza, maybe twenty people formed a shifting amoeboid pattern, pseudopods of two or one or five of them stopping and talking or coming in and out of the Library or the shops. Another twenty or so sat at café tables, drinking, munching, and talking. The umbrellas that shaded the tables from summer sun were furled so they wouldn’t block the afternoon warmth. It would be so nice to be down there rather than up here. It would be so nice to laze away the afternoon.
Jim Tulloch ambled in, his hands in the pockets of a pair of disreputable chinos. His mud-colored T-shirt looked equally battered. He wore his signature sandals. On a Saturday afternoon, he had opted for socks that didn’t match, or he hadn’t noticed they didn’t. One was green and the other a sort of blurry yellow-and-blue tartan.
He looked as if he’d be more comfortable in a kilt. Something about Dr. Jim Tulloch reminded Helt of a slightly warped ad for single-malt Scotch.
Helt vanished the statue. Severo looked up and nodded at Jim Tulloch.
“It’s your show, Jim.” Helt motioned to the chair he’d left empty between him and Severo. “We’re all here, except that David I has a slot with us. Archer’s still fine-tuning him; he’ll be here when he’s happy with the signal.”
“Doughan? Mena?” Jim asked. He took the empty chair, peered at the table screen in front of him, and tapped its keyboard.
“Doughan can’t be here,” Helt said. Doughan was looking for Oriol Bruguera. The official fiction was that only the execs were supposed to know there were Seed Bankers on board. That little deception wouldn’t last, and Helt felt uneasy about it, but there wasn’t really time to explain it right now, or a way to get the three execs together and agreeing to let the information go public. Not right now. “Mena’s not coming. A woman’s in labor, and Mena’s guarding the mom and Elena Maury and the midwife from, I don’t know, the harpies or invisible bears or something. You’re here for Biosystems.”
“Okay.” Jim Tulloch pushed back from the table and brought his tartan-socked right ankle up to rest on his left knee. It was a relaxed pose, but Helt knew him well enough to know he was paying sharp attention to everyone in the room.
“The idea is to re-create a personality with a particular set of traits that caused another personality to murder him.”
“Make that plural,” Severo said. “Personali-ties. Could have been more than one person.”
“Granted,” Jim said. “I take it we all agree to dismiss the theory that Charles ‘Cash’ Ryan was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, saw something he shouldn’t have seen, and was killed for it.”
“How often does that happen, Severo?” David II asked. “Historically, I mean.”
“Depends on when and where you look. Different times, it happened more. Somebody misses a target; bystanders die. That was Earth. Here? An innocent victim would really piss me off,” Severo said. “I don’t even want to think about that can of worms.”
Because, Helt thought, however improbable it might be, if Cash Ryan turns out to have been killed by mistake, we’ll have to get really creative about why it happened and who wanted to kill whom.
“So we won’t go there,” Jim said. “What we need to do varies from the standard model. Psychiatric autopsies were often, historically, a method for psychiatrists to mourn a colleague who had committed suicide. Because, in the bad old days, a lot of psychiatrists were depressives. Or they had other neuroses. They were people who went into psychiatry to try to heal their own wounds.”
“My understanding is that they still do,” Helt said. He’d heard Jim relive some of those wounds, war stories from his time as a medic in the Northwest Passage. Then med school, then a residency in neurosurgery, then back to academe for a psych residency, because that was where the pains were that he couldn’t fix, not for himself, and not for his patients.
“Yup.” Jim Tulloch grinned. “I am the well-adjusted, sociable exception that proves the rule.”
Severo sighed.
Jim looked away from Severo and kept talking. “To review the tool we’re using, the procedure developed as a way to look
for clear warnings of suicidal intent, so we could try to prevent the next one, but also it was used as a way to expiate some of the guilt of realizing, after the fact—I should have known. I should have seen.”
Tulloch’s baritone voice was mellow and relaxed. He spoke in the conversational cadence of a prof at a graduate symposium, colleague to colleague. It was a practiced strategy that implied that the listener, whether she was a Psych 101 student or one of Severo’s beat cops learning crowd control, knew all about the subject at hand. Helt admired the technique. He tried to use his own version of it from time to time.
“But we’re dealing with a murder victim, not a suicide. The job, this time, is to rebuild his personality out of fragments of fact, and then sort out what about that reconstructed personality made someone take the risk of killing him.”
“Kill him and then try to make it look like suicide,” David II said.
“Yeah, when it would have been easier to tuck him into a side tunnel and shove some rocks over the entrance,” Severo said. His eyes did a quick scan of the activity in the plaza, the faces of the others in the room, the stillness of the open door into the hallway. Apparently satisfied, he looked down at his desk screen. “Later for analyzing the perp. Sorry.”
“I’ve wondered about the tower toss myself,” Jim said. “It seems fairly impromptu to me. If we had access to where he kept his personal confessional, his diary, whatever, we could do a lot more. We don’t have it.”
“Not yet,” Helt said. “We have his e-mails. They are scant in number and mostly about business. We haven’t located a data storage device of any sort. We know there’s a stash in the cloud somewhere, under some name or other. There has to be one. We haven’t found it yet.”