by Sage Walker
No, they weren’t. Helt said nothing.
Doughan looked around the empty lobby and followed them in. The exec’s relaxed, athletic stance seemed to be painted over a base of combat readiness. Helt looked for signs of fatigue and decided he found them, a slight pouching of the skin under Doughan’s eyes, some rapid blinking, but maybe he only saw them because he was looking for them.
“Where are Ueda and Bruguera?” Doughan asked. He closed the office door. This time the projection that dwarfed his desk was a view of Kybele herself, an expanse of black stone peaks and valleys with a sharply curved horizon. Helt imagined the snowball Kybele would become once she picked up her load of ice, imagined the landscape as a clean white expanse on a black background, infinity spiked and salted with unwavering points of stars.
One of the struts of the plasma shield passed overhead, part of the immense spindle built around Kybele. It was only a massive girder in the sky now, tinted blue by reflected earthlight. Once activated, the structure would look inert until it encountered interstellar rubble. When it did, the tent it formed would incandesce with lethal energies. Helt tried to imagine the fireworks display when that happened, and couldn’t.
“I asked them to wait for a few minutes,” Giliam said. He walked to the group of chairs near Doughan’s Huerfano. “They are in SysSu, where the most excellent Nadia Tay and Gerard Beauchene are doing their best to distract them. The engineers seemed somewhat anxious, and I must say I find their anxiety quite appropriate.”
“What the…” Doughan began.
“Legal circumlocutions manufactured by me so that I can buy time for your suspects are not on my agenda,” Giliam said. “They are not my clients, nor can they be. Helt asked me to review, closely, the Seed Banker affiliations of these people.”
“And you have,” Doughan said. On Earth below, beyond the sharp curve of Kybele’s horizon, clouds covered northern Europe. It was raining in London and dry in Spain. Helt looked for a tiny dot that could be the incoming shuttle, but he didn’t see it.
“I accepted the Special Investigator’s request, naturally, although that means I can’t defend any of them if charges are made.”
Doughan gave a slight, curt nod. “What did you find?”
“One of these people was a card-carrying Seed Banker for two years, twenty years ago, membership paid for by a parent. Four have attended lectures by Seed Banker speakers, think-tank presentations…”
“Who’s the former member?” Doughan asked.
“Ueda, who’s waiting upstairs.”
“A card-carrying member,” Doughan said.
“Who never attended a meeting and never corresponded with the organization or its members. California produce was the foundation of the family’s wealth. Considerable wealth. Ueda’s father bought him a two-year membership in a related organization based in Japan. Support for Seed Bankers is a family tradition. Ueda didn’t follow it.”
“I see. What about the other engineer who’s scheduled to be here now?”
“Oriol Bruguera went to a Seed Banker lecture or two,” Obrecht said. “His attendance may have been job related. He was working at Svalbard at the time.”
“I’ll ask him about that,” Doughan said.
“The others? Their connections are as peripheral. The files are in NSS if you’d care to look at them,” Giliam said.
So Helt’s intuitive skepticism had been right, but his twinge of satisfaction about it vanished, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of dismay. Something had gone very, very wrong.
“So you don’t think these seven people are a Seed Banker cell?” Doughan asked.
“Their histories demonstrate no more involvement than anyone who has an interest in Kybele’s unique political stance would have,” Giliam said. “Exposure to the occasional lecture, glances at articles after headlines caught public interest.”
“What about the money?”
“It isn’t there,” Giliam said.
His matter-of-fact delivery of that bombshell made Helt blink.
“It what?” Doughan asked.
Giliam had to be joking. Helt could find no indication of a joke, or psychosis, in Giliam’s face. The legalist’s expression was one of amused alertness. He stood on the balls of his feet, his hands together behind him, rocking back and forth, waiting for their reaction.
“It isn’t there as far as the Seed Bankers know,” Giliam repeated. “Oh, the money is quite real, and it’s in their accounts. But it’s hidden from the account records they can access.”
They were all still standing. Doughan turned on his heel and walked toward his desk. “Helt, sit.” Halfway there, he said, “You, too, Giliam.”
Giliam didn’t sit down. He followed Doughan.
Helt’s worldview had just tilted, and he didn’t like the feeling at all. Archer had given the Seed Banker list to Doughan after the first meeting of the execs, when suicide was still on the books. Helt had accepted the list at face value, had looked at biographies on Midwife Susanna and on Engineer Kelly Halkett, on Andrea this morning, but he hadn’t studied the rest of the list.
Archer wouldn’t have faked bank accounts. Someone else must have. Which meant SysSu had missed a hacker. But SysSu didn’t miss hackers.
“I brought the information I have.” Giliam handed over a Huerfano. Doughan looked at its little screen. “Helt linked me the copy he had of the bank statements of these individuals. In that list, each of the accounts received a single deposit of a half million Northern Coalition dollars in the past year. On different dates; the most recent six months ago. The deposits came from two different companies, one in Timor, one in Celebes.”
“Archer said something about that. He says they’re shell companies for the Seed Bankers,” Doughan said.
“When I accessed these seven accounts yesterday, here on Kybele, as if I were the account holder, those deposits don’t exist. Were never made.”
“How’d you do that?” Helt asked.
“You asked me to look at Seed Banker accounts,” Giliam said. “I’m a bank auditor for SysSu from time to time, Helt. I have access.”
Helt wanted to grab something solid and hang on to it. He gripped the arm of the chair he was sitting in, but it didn’t help much. “Archer said they had done nothing with the money. He found that strange.” A cascade of possibilities ran through his mind, but he couldn’t process this, couldn’t fit it together. Archer Pelham was a careful man. Archer had looked for strange sources of money on an ongoing basis, he’d said, and found them, and brought these seven people to Doughan’s attention. And Archer had been wrong.
Someone who didn’t know Wesley Doughan might not have seen the hesitation, the augenblick required for Doughan to process the information and run through possible responses. Helt saw it. He was pretty sure Giliam saw it, too. He wondered what was showing on his own face.
“Helt, did you know this?” Doughan asked.
“I should have. I didn’t.” He had trusted Archer. Giliam knew the list came from Archer; Helt had told him so.
The next move belonged to Doughan. Helt hoped Doughan would do the right thing, get this into the open. It would be so easy to close ranks, to fall into the trap of hiding his fellow exec’s slip-up from the public. But Giliam wasn’t the public.
“Whatever Archer thought or knew—” Doughan said. “Oh, hell. Let’s ask him.”
Helt’s sense of relief was physical and profound. A lot of back and shoulder muscles returned to more or less normal but his neck was still tight and it was going to hurt later.
Severo’s voice spoke from Doughan’s desk. “We have a situation.”
Helt looked down at the red light blinking on his interface. Jerry’s face came up. Giliam tapped his own interface. “We need you up here,” Jerry said. His words came through while Severo kept talking.
“Eight people are in SysSu and they want to talk to Helt real bad,” Severo said.
“Eight? Which eight?” Doughan asked.
“The Seed Bankers. And Susanna’s boyfriend.”
It could be that Cash Ryan had framed them all. He had some skills at manipulating data; he’d managed to doctor his work résumé.
“Bring them here,” Doughan said.
“No!” Helt said. There was, there had to be, a connection between them and Cash Ryan, even if wasn’t Seed Banker money. If he could get them focused on what the connection might be, if they could believe that all that was wanted from them was a solution to this murder, if. But the balance between trust and suspicion was going to be hellishly difficult to maintain. “Jerry, take them to the conference room upstairs.”
“Here. This area is easier to secure,” Doughan said.
Helt stood up. “If they get violent, you and Severo can shove them through the windows,” Helt said. “I need the resources I have up there.” Meaning, in this case, Jerry and Nadia. Meaning Archer down the hall. He went to the office door, opened it, and held it open.
Doughan looked up at him and didn’t move. So the battle’s lost, Helt figured.
“You gave me the job,” Helt said. “Let me use the tools I have. Let’s get this settled in the next two hours so we can get back to work. Sir.”
Stonefaced, Doughan pushed himself out of his chair and walked past Helt without a word. Giliam caught up with him two steps past the office door.
Helt closed the door carefully. The muscles in his forearms were trembling.
* * *
The train enclosed them in the strange privacy common to the role of passenger. The three of them took one of the four-booths with a worktable, Doughan and Helt side by side, close enough to touch and completely isolated from each other, Giliam opposite, all of them elsewhere with minds and fingers busy. Helt called Archer, audio.
“What is it?” Archer was in his office, good.
“Bad. Look at this and tell me what happened.” Helt sent the differences in account balances last Thursday side by side.
As the impact hit, Archer pushed back in his chair and gave the data a profoundly disapproving look. “Where did this come from?”
“Giliam,” Helt said.
Giliam looked up from his own work at the sound of his name. Someone else’s conversation. He pulled his screen closer to his nose and returned to his own pursuits.
“Where is he?” Archer asked.
“With me. We’ll be in the conference room upstairs.”
“Where’s Doughan?”
“He’s coming, too,” Helt said. He switched to Jerry, audio. “The Seed Bankers all have alibis now?”
Jerry. All except Halkett and Benson Luseno. Text. Jerry had someone in the office with him.
“Okay,” Helt said. If all of them had documented alibis the announcement of that might clear the air. But they didn’t. Helt would have to side-step that inconvenience.
He peered into usage and found Archer and Giliam in a rapid text exchange. Doughan and Severo, ditto.
Jerry. They got together in The Frontier before they came up here.
Helt. Thanks.
It was a five-minute ride and it was over.
The train told them to watch their step.
* * *
The stone paving of the agora was rain-washed, wet. The afternoon light was set for dark autumn gray. In a surely unintended consequence of its diffusion, thin silver frames outlined the edges of walls and windows and turned the buildings into an architect’s blueprint with no depth, no solidity. Earthlight could never do this. Helt stepped carefully on the apparently liquid surface of the agora. It felt solid, not at all like a mirage. That was reassuring.
The air in SysSu hit his face like a warm slap. Doughan and Giliam on his heels, Helt led them upstairs.
Two NSS officers flanked the conference room door, probably stationed there by Severo. The feel of this discussion was not going to be casual.
Nadia had left three chairs vacant at the center of the horseshoe of people. Helt took the center one, facing the empty display stage, comforted, a little, by controls familiar to his fingers and the feeling of security that comes from home territory. He glanced at the empty gray windows at the far end of the room. It was awfully damned quiet in here.
Doughan on his right and Giliam on his left, and faces. On the right side, Doughan’s side, Nadia got up from her chair next to Doughan’s and went to the coffeepots. Next to Nadia’s chair, Susanna Jambekar, in blue scrubs, huddled beneath a miner’s jacket that probably belonged to Yves. He sat beside her, his body-builder arms bulging beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a work coverall. Yves didn’t look cold. His hands were flat on the table in front of him, as immobile as the stone he loved to work, but he was watching every motion in the room.
Nadia and Jerry began the coffee ritual, each one carrying a coffeepot, one on each side of the room.
“Cream? Sugar?” Nadia asked Yves, and the silence broke into murmurs and mutterings.
Down the line to the left, Giliam, Jerry’s empty chair, Andrea Doan, who sported a bright red slash of lipstick, Kelly Halkett in his work coveralls, Severo next to him.
Beyond Severo, the two soccer player engineers, Ueda and Bruguera, an unlikely contrast of genetic heritages from lines that went back to medieval Japan and Roman Gaul. Helt did a thumbnail assessment of them as athletes. Ueda looked like he’d be fast on his feet. He had a compact body, the sort that wants to get pudgy unless a person works hard to stay fit. Oriol Bruguera was called “Birdy” because of his name. He looked more like a hawk than an oriole, a thin, hungry hawk. Beside them, Benson Luseno, a Kenyan brought up in Liverpool, an ESL teacher with offices in the Library. His dolichocephalic head was shaved to a gloss and his hands were delicate, small and plump, like a child’s. Akila Shenouda sat at his left, an archaeologist out of Egypt. She was young and had been here five years, a member of the most recent batch of colonists.
Helt took a deep breath. “This is a mess. It needs fixing. You want to talk to me; I want to talk to you. We have work to do and some misconceptions to explain.” The expressions he saw ranged from expectant to openly angry. He saw outrage, wounded dignity, and varying degrees of fear. Akila seemed terrified. Helt glanced at her history; at age four she’d been injured in a water riot in Cairo. So many histories.
It was time for stagecraft. Helt had to look like he knew what he was doing, had to let every move, every modulation in his voice, reinforce the conviction that this meeting was going to stay calm and reasonable, that there would be time to say everything that needed to be said.
He knew at least the first move of the game he wanted to play.
“I assume you’re here because I showed Andrea Doan a list of your names.”
“She contacted us, yes,” Kelly Halkett said.
“Yves?” Helt asked. “Your name was not on that list.”
“I’m here with Susanna,” Yves said.
Someone, any one of them, could have objected, or asked that Yves be excluded. Yves looked up and offered eye contact to anyone in the room who wanted it. Some met his gaze, others made little acknowledgment of his presence. No one objected. Maybe it was the muscle-to-fat ratio of Yves’s arms that kept them quiet.
“From the morning after Cash Ryan’s murder until about twenty minutes ago, we worked under the assumption that the people in this room belonged to a Seed Banker cell and had been funded to carry out a plan to keep Kybele from leaving orbit.”
Helt couldn’t watch all the reactions, but the cameras wouldn’t have that problem. A lot of screen cap review would be going on later. What he did see were people whose initial shock was quickly replaced by a determination to look impassive. Doughan and Severo had worn those masks from the beginning. Giliam was busy with his screen and seemed oblivious to the room.
Helt felt like he was facing a jury.
“Here’s what we saw Thursday morning. October the nineteenth.” Helt distributed a summary of each person’s bank account to the individual screens facing them; a slight nod to a privacy that did not ex
ist. “Please note the deposits, and the dates of the deposits.”
Yves leaned over to look at Susanna’s screen. He looked at Susanna’s face. He looked back at the balance. Oriol Bruguera whistled. Kelly Halkett frowned. The other reactions were mostly disbelief.
Doughan, silent at Helt’s right hand, seemed content to let his presence say that this gathering was happening with the full consent of the execs on Kybele. Helt sensed no impatience in him; he was attentive, alert, neutral, and impressive.
Helt still didn’t know if any of the people in the room had seen the inflated numbers go by; if the fake balances had been sent, however briefly, to personal screens.
“As a precaution, I asked Giliam to look at the deposits again,” Helt said. “This is what he found. What we think you might have seen on Thursday, if you happened to check your account that day.” Helt split-screened the individual balance sheets, without the Seed Banker deposits, side by side with the inflated numbers.
Jerry. Who’s looked when? You want that?
Helt. Yes. Damn straight he wanted that. Helt. Did it show on personal screens? Or just to SysSu that day? If someone had slipped him a half million, would he have squawked about it to the bankers? It would be tempting just to wait it out for a while, see how long it took for the system to catch the error.
“So that’s the money you were talking about,” Andrea Doan said.
“Yes. Deposits from companies known to be fronts for the Seed Bankers, designed to draw attention to the nine of you.”
“Is it real?” Kelly Halkett asked.
“It’s real,” Giliam said.
“Is it still there?” Halkett asked.
“It is,” Helt said.
“Cash Ryan did this?” Susanna asked.
“Cash Ryan or his murderers. You’ve been under surveillance because of this information, all of you.”
“Then I trust you’ll stop doing that as of now,” Kelly Halkett said.
Severo leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table as if protecting the space between them. He looked at Kelly Halkett. “I’m not sure turning off the surveillance would be a good idea. I tell you, I’d like to get some people off overtime. They say watching you guys is boring.”