by Sage Walker
That startled him. He didn’t know what to say. “You’re welcome, but what did I do?” Helt asked.
“The details about the stalking—I’ve seen the videos. It could have been embarrassing for her and you kept it private for her.”
“Nothing would have been gained by showing it to everyone,” Helt said.
“Even so, it was thoughtful. Dr. Maury?”
“Yes?” Elena said.
“I’m so sorry any of this happened.”
“Thank you, Officer.” Elena’s voice was low and soft.
“I’ll be here, but please go back to what you were doing. We all have work to do tonight,” Evans said.
“Will do,” Helt said. He was still surprised by Evans’s reaction. “Elena, you here?”
“Sure. What am I looking at?” Elena asked.
“Most likely, you’re watching me chasing wild geese. It’s a hazard when you have too much speculation and not enough fact. Let’s say Cash Ryan wanted to convince someone he was vital to the ship’s well-being. Let’s say he decided that because he wanted to stay near you.”
“That’s what you think, or what you know?” Elena asked.
“What I think.”
“But he was stalking Susanna,” Elena said.
“And Akila Shenouda, but not for long. Susanna was a distraction to help him stay away from you until the ship was under way. He wanted to be careful and cautious. He wanted time…”
Helt continued down the lists of checklists.
“Lots of time. The way he saw things, you would change your mind and love him again, because of course he was lovable. In his own eyes. He loved himself, so…”
“So I would come to my senses sooner or later.”
“Exactly. So, to convince someone…”
“Someone who has access to this room,” Elena said. Helt inhaled, sharply. She didn’t say Doughan’s name.
“That he was needed here, it’s possible he would pick…” Helt stopped at an array of columns of figures. Pure hunch. Burn durations to give the delta vee needed to move Kybele out of Saturn orbit and push her outsystem, North at the top of one column and South at the top of the other.
Helt gave himself a thumbnail view of Elena. She was staring at the same list from her screen in her Stonehenge lab. “You’re thinking way far ahead, Helt.”
“Yeah. Far enough ahead that nobody looks at these files too often. There’s a set for the propulsion array on each pole,” Helt said.
“The numbers are slightly different, right and left, very slightly.” Elena took a deep breath. “That’s because Kybele spins clockwise. Gyroscope effect. Sometimes I forget the basics.”
Helt changed to a different set of figures. “This set here”—Helt ran his index finger down the screen—“defines the power output needed to get that delta vee, this one describes where on the Saturn orbit we should be when we begin the push, and this one underneath it is the elapsed time for the burn to get that power.” Flawless. There was nothing here. He thought about the time it would take to review every file in here. It couldn’t be done in one night and he was no physicist.
Think simple. Think …
Cash Ryan had faked his résumé and he’d been skilled enough to get by with it. He could have messed with something in here, but there was no sane reason for it. It would accomplish nothing except to get his ass kicked off the ship. There was no reason to mess with anything in here unless he wanted to prove to Doughan that he could hack the arrays of data in this room.
Helt moved to the files histories, time and date data, entries; everything looked fine, and then, and then. October. October 11. He pulled up a deleted file and split-screened it with the Saturn burn. Same file, but. But the numbers were slightly different, very slightly.
“Heh.” He used his interface to look for copies in SysSu.
The charts in SysSu archives right now matched the original values. The numbers were old; before Kybele even had an atmosphere the calculations for this burn had been done and reviewed by damned near everyone who had ever calculated an orbit. He checked the numbers against an Earthside file from the Northern Coalition archives. They matched.
Think simple. Look at the edit log. There. October 4, October 11, October 18. Last Wednesday, the Wednesday before, and the Wednesday before that. The bad numbers went up on October 11 and came down on October 11. They were checked again on October 18 but they hadn’t been changed since then. The files in here would have showed the original values to anyone who looked and they matched the original values now, all the way back for twenty years. They would be reviewed again, many times, as new data came in when Kybele got closer to Saturn.
“Helt?” Elena asked.
“Sorry. I got lost there. Let me look…”
Come in to the time and date log as phpmyadmin. Go to the Table screen, and click the operations tab. There’s an autoincrement field that shows time and date. Just delete what you don’t want and put in what you do, if you’re the phpmyadmin. It’s primitive, it’s simple, and no one will notice unless they look.
Look at the backup files again. Yup. There it was.
“Why Saturn?” Elena asked.
“Because the rings are flashy? Something we’re all going to notice and talk about.”
There was a chain of command for this room, these files. Doughan, David II, and Severo were the first three names on it, then a list of people in Navigation who had the skills to take over in case of unspeakable disasters. None of them had looked in here in October, yet, as far as the records showed. The SysSu duplicates didn’t show that there had been any activity down here, either.
The phpmyadmin had deleted the flawed numbers and replaced them with the original file, and deleted the time and date marker that would show when it happened. The phpmyadmin for this room was Doughan.
Helt leaned back in his chair, locked his hands behind his head, and looked up at the ceiling. Heh. There was a trapdoor up there, fitted into the rectangular patterns of the ceiling but easy to find if you knew what you were looking for. A way to change the lights, repair conduit, add power cables. He went over and tugged the ring that would pull it down.
The trapdoor moved. It wasn’t fastened from above, but why would it be? This room could only be entered through the locked doors he’d opened, entered by people the exec let in. The hatch up there wouldn’t be locked. It was an emergency escape route of sorts.
“It’s all fine,” Helt said for Evans to hear. “The files I was worried about aren’t contaminated. Time to lock up.” He idled the system in the room, left it, and closed the doors behind Doughan’s desk. Time to go.
Doughan’s interface was still beside the door, still easily seen from anywhere in the lobby. It was ringing. Helt nudged it with his foot. He called Evans while he walked across the lobby. “No, Doughan’s not down here. I don’t know where he is. I left his interface here for him, if he checks in with you and asks about it.”
“Thanks,” Evans said.
“I’m coming to SysSu,” Elena said.
The train arrived that would take him back to Athens. Helt stepped in. The car was empty. “Exactly what I was about to suggest.”
* * *
The Murder Mess revolved slowly in the Huerfano in Nadia’s office. More names were exiled to the periphery of it now, Seed Bankers out in the Oort cloud, even Kelly Halkett and Benson Luseno. NSS had put them on the alibied list this evening, after the beer fest at The Lab ended.
It would be okay to enter what he’d learned down there in the Navigation archives. It would be okay to enter it here. This copy of the Murder Mess was safe; it existed only on the Huerfano, nowhere else. But still, Helt hesitated. Coward.
The debris on the tables had shifted. The rubber chicken was nowhere to be seen. Helt picked up the deflated soccer ball. There was something familiar about it. He held it up in both hands and looked at it from underneath.
Heh. The shapes of stitched leather were the same shape as the petals th
at enclosed Kybele’s sun. Hexagons that enclosed a sphere. He just hadn’t looked at the petals, or their shadows, that way. The discovery made him feel better. He was slow sometimes, but maybe he’d see what was in front of him if he just kept working at it.
Helt mauled the flattened thing back into a ball and put it down where he’d found it.
He put the cold vault into play on the public and private versions of the Murder Mess as the location where Ryan died, watched a few Navigation names cluster near it, Navigation techs who kept the elevators running, watched the names hauled away and archived because they’d been verifiably elsewhere on October 18. Elena’s name still orbited Ryan’s death. Yves? He had a motive, and a way to get Ryan from Navigation to the vault. He had the physical strength to get a dead Ryan on and off the elevator. But he’d come to see Helt at the Frontier Wednesday night. The timing would have been very, very tight. And he wasn’t on the SM announcement list, unless he’d asked someone about that particular hour. Being able to hide that part of the murder could have been just luck. Right.
Helt got up and walked out into the empty hall. He came back in and filled Nadia’s office with the State of Kybele. Interaction bubbles floated through their ether, gently bobbing to absorb the signatures of industrial hardhats on their night-shift routines, a few farmers walking out to pinch the moisture in the soil with their fingers, in the fields beneath Stonehenge, some night owls in Petra awake and glued to media of one sort or another. He wondered when the Seed Bankers’ experiences would show up in the interaction bubbles. For now, the world was quiet.
He wondered what Doughan’s warped files and Archer’s gaffe would do to the configuration that spun around Cash Ryan. And he didn’t touch a thing. Not even in the Huerfano.
Archer was at home; his interface and the new local bugs agreed about that. Mena was in her house in Petra, and Doughan could be any damned where but he sure wasn’t home. Evans sat at her desk in NSS. He sent her the location of the vault.
“So that’s where you and Yves Copani were,” she said. “I couldn’t see you.”
“There aren’t any cameras in the dead-end part of that stairwell. It’s the vault I’m interested in. No cameras in there, either. Could you get the forensic techs down there in the morning?”
“Sure. You think that’s the place?”
“I think it’s a good bet,” Helt said. “Thank you, Officer Evans.”
“Melody.”
“Melody?”
“You can call me Melody. It’s my first name.”
“I will. Good night.” She wouldn’t be able to look at what was going on in this office unless she called again. She had the public version of the Murder Mess at hand, and plenty of blank spaces to fill from the day’s NSS reports to keep her busy. Helt walked out on the agora and waited for Elena in the middle of it, in a dead zone. The agora was dry now underfoot. A few lights were on in the Library, but Giliam’s office fronted an inside corridor and had no exterior window to show, even if he was working tonight.
Four people came out of the train, a trio that walked toward a residential side street, maybe after a dinner in Petra, and Elena behind them, her shoulders hunched and her hands deep in the pockets of her windbreaker. She stopped a few paces away from him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I need you.”
“I’m flattered, but can we go inside first? It’s a little chilly out here.”
“Oh.” Helt didn’t feel cold at all. “Sure. I mean, I need to talk.”
Elena nodded and fell into step beside him.
“There’s a lot to sort out. So much…”
The displays in the atrium tonight were rectangles of translucent primary colors. After Helt passed them he realized they were arranged, left to right, in spectrum order, as if white light had been divided into its component colors by a nonexistent prism on the agora. Red through violet.
Helt led the way into Nadia’s office and reached for his interface. It was in an unfamiliar pocket. He was still wearing a Navigation coverall. That’s why he hadn’t noticed the chill outside. He laid his interface on a table and pointed at it. Elena laid hers beside it and they went into Helt’s office.
“Really private?” Elena asked.
“Really private.” Helt woke his screens. “If NSS checks in, Officer Melody Evans will hear us…” He located Jesuits and sent the train conversation he’d had with Elena to his interface, “having a conversation about governance.”
“SysSu is bugged by NSS?” Elena, in the visitor’s chair, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up beside her.
“Not on my watch,” Helt said. “But there could be. Bugs. Jerry sweeps for them every day in there and he hasn’t found any yet.”
“I talked to Jim,” Elena said.
“About Ryan’s mother?”
Elena nodded. “How he managed to get to speak to her is a story for him to tell. Summary is that Ryan never called home after high school graduation except to ask for money and make blackmail threats if she didn’t pay up.”
Helt looked for the report in the Murder Mess. It had been filed five hours ago. His eyes went to it. It was lengthy.
“Don’t read it now,” Elena said. “It’s not a feel-good story. Again, summary. His mom’s not psychotic, but she was blackmail-able. Not anything criminal, but she did some stuff in her adolescence that she didn’t want her husband, Cash’s father, to know.”
Helt vanished the file. “Okay. Sounds like more confirmation on Jim’s theory. Thank you for dealing with this, Elena.”
“I’m glad to help. You’re hot on the trail of something and it’s bothering you.”
“It shows?”
“It does.”
“Heh. I have information overload and I’m getting punchy. So here I am in this coverall because I didn’t think to take it off, and I’m wondering why Cash Ryan went down a staircase toward someplace he knew had to be minus ten if he was in civvies.”
“Because he was wearing a coverall and somebody took it off him later. The one you have on flatters you, by the way. It brings out the color of your eyes.”
It was dark blue, Helt noticed. He had blue eyes. The color was recessive, more or less, and might someday be really rare. He looked down at his chest and saw a corner of his windbreaker, rolled and stuffed in front for quick storage before that trip down the stairs. “Does it? Time to get out of this. It’s hot.” He pulled the zipper down, retrieved his windbreaker, and climbed out of the coverall. “But a coverall keeps you warm.”
Elena held out her arm. “Let me see it.”
Helt handed it over and Elena turned it this way and that. “Here.” She held out a section for show and tell. There was a little zipper in the lining and a wallet shaped lump beneath it. “The power pack’s under the left armpit. That’s a good place, not in the way much. And it wouldn’t be easy to tell if it needs a battery change or whatever. Unless you check it.”
Helt started to toss his windbreaker to the corner stand, but there was a bulge in the pocket. Peanuts. His hunger woke, sudden and strong. He grabbed the peanuts and began to munch.
“You haven’t had dinner,” Elena said.
Helt shook his head. “Have you?”
“I guess I forgot.”
“There’s stuff in the lounge. I’ll go get us something.”
Elena got up and slipped her shoes on. “I’ll come with you. Can we talk in there? In the hall?”
“We can,” Helt said.
But they didn’t. Helt picked up a jar of food bars in the lounge. Elena looked around, found chilled water in a fridge, and retrieved a couple of bottles. Helt fished out a peanut butter and jelly bar and offered the jar to Elena. She picked lemon, and they walked back to the office, munching on the way.
Elena tucked herself into the visitor chair again and settled the coverall over her knees. “Here’s my theory,” she said. “Cash wanted to convince Doughan he was valuable to the ship. So he got into the Mission Co
ntrol room somehow.”
“Are you cold?” Helt asked.
“No. I like the smell of you on this.” She stroked the sleeve of the coverall, and Helt wished his arm was in it. Or out of it. As soon as he had this nailed, oh, yes.
“He got in through the ceiling,” Helt said. “And he sat down and changed a file, and then climbed back out. I learned how to do that tonight. You’ve been thinking about this.”
“And little else. He knew the password…”
“He didn’t have to know the password. You get in there from the Nav office. Once those doors are open, somebody lets you in because you’re supposed to be there.”
“He counted on a routine schedule for data checks,” Elena said.
“It’s a Huerfano down there, of sorts, but there’s SysSu backup.” Helt pulled up the Mission Control room files, and tugged Elena’s chair over beside his so she could see what he was seeing.
“Thanks,” she said.
Also, she was closer. He liked that.
“This will just look like strings of numbers … Heh.”
“Tell me.”
“Every Wednesday. The files are scanned for edits and revisions every Wednesday.” Helt leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The food effect was hitting. He felt better, less cranky, stronger. “The files were changed and corrected on the eleventh. Wednesday. And nothing happened, no alerts, no flap, nothing until the eighteenth. What was…”
Nothing had happened for a week after that. It was baffling.
“Doughan,” Elena said.
Helt reached for a water bottle and opened it. He took a deep, cold swallow. “What was Doughan thinking? I’m really fighting this, aren’t I?” Helt asked. Doughan, and now Archer. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He did not know.
“You were. You aren’t now. Doughan did a fix on an altered file and didn’t tell anybody about it.” Elena sighed. “That means nothing, in the greater scheme of things.”
“Doughan could have thought it was a joke, or a test. He could have thought someone was checking to see if he really did check the alerts every Wednesday.”