by Paul Preuss
“Not impossible.”
“If she was after the plaque, why make a fuss first?”
“Well, if she wasn’t the killer, she could have been an accomplice,” Polanyi said stiffly.
“Lieutenant, she doesn’t have a record.”
“Beaned a guy with a pipe in a bar once. He didn’t press charges.”
“Guns?”
“Well . . . none registered.”
“Other relationships?”
“None known.”
Sparta grunted. “Next.”
“This man.”
Zeromski was replaced on the screen by a smooth-faced man in his late thirties. His blond hair was fine and pale, almost colorless, and clipped so close to his head that his pink scalp shone through. She recognized him without trouble.
“Wolfy Prott–Wolfgang Prott, that is–the manager of the Mars Interplanetary Hotel. It’s an open secret that the hotel has been the scene of illegal trading in Martian ‘souvenirs’–mineral samples, fossils, even artifacts. Prott was assigned to Mars a year ago by the Interplanetary chain.”
“Zurich based . . .”
“Right. Prott’s been working for them about ten years–Athens, Kuwait, Cayley on the moon–first in their PR department, then in sales, then as assistant manager. This is his first stint as manager. He’s got a rep as an off-hours pickup artist.”
“His pattern?”
“Tourist ladies in the wine shops, rarely on his own premises–and he’s mostly stayed away from local women. Maybe he’s afraid of the local men.”
“And he can’t account for his whereabouts that night.”
“Claims he was asleep in his suite in the hotel. But he was seen leaving the lobby a few minutes before the murders, wearing a pressure suit. An hour after the murders, he was having a nightcap with his own barkeeper.”
“That alibi’s so weak it’s ridiculous.”
“He was up to something . . . whatever it was.”
“Not murder.”
“Oh, but one more thing,” Polanyi couldn’t disguise a touch of self-satisfaction. “Wolfy’s known to be an expert shot with a target pistol. There’s a range in the lower level of the hotel, and he’s his own best customer.”
“Any of his pistols missing?”
“Well, we’re not sure how many he . . .”
“Fine,” she said coolly. “Who else have you got?”
This was the face she had hoped not to see, a dark and handsome face, elongated and delicate, a young man’s face with deep brown eyes, crowned with black and curling hair. His lips were parted in a smile that revealed straight white teeth. He was wearing a standard pressure suit.
Alas, Polanyi had not eliminated him from the list. “Dr. Khalid Sayeed, Council of Worlds planetologist. Less than an hour before the murders, Sayeed and Morland were shouting at each other in the bar of the Interplanetary. . . .”
“Khal . . . Dr. Sayeed was shouting?”
“A vigorous disagreement, anyway. Something about the terraforming project. Morland went straight from the hotel to Town Hall. Sayeed claims he went to his apartment–it’s near the shuttleport–but we can’t corroborate that.”
Sparta studied Khalid’s picture intently. He was a year younger than she was, Blake’s age, and she hadn’t seen him since she was sixteen years old; he’d aged well, grown into a poised and confident adult.
Like Sparta and Blake, Khalid was a member of the original SPARTA, the SPecified Aptitude Resources and Training Assessment project, founded by Sparta’s parents in an attempt to demonstrate that the multiple intelligences inherent in every child could be enhanced to levels the world regarded as genius. Khalid was one of SPARTA’s great successes, intelligent and sophisticated, multiply talented, dedicating his career to the improvement of human welfare.
But according to Blake, Khalid was also quite possibly one of the prophetae. A member of the Free Spirit. A member of the deadly cult.
“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’ll take these with me,” Sparta said, withdrawing the data slivers from his video-plate.
“All yours, Inspector.” He leaned back and opened his pudgy palms. “You’ve got what we’ve got. What else can I do for you? Show you the nightlife?”
“Thanks, I’ll take a rain check.”
Polanyi smirked. “Rain? What’s that?”
VI
The glass ceiling of the Ophir Room was clouded with condensation; the air was humid. The maître d’ led Sparta up and down steps and across terraces among tables that overlooked the largest open expanse of water–very green water–on Mars. In the palm-ringed pool half a dozen young men and women splashed and swam, all lithe and tanned and naked. Sparta thought they looked more like models than tourists; probably the hotel paid them to disport themselves prettily during the lunch hour, a kind of fashion show manqué.
Khalid Sayeed’s table was on a balcony near the pool, screened from it by skinny palms. He rose to greet her. He was one of those erect and graceful men whose smile was so dazzling, whose eyes were so arresting, that he seemed taller than his medium height.
“Inspector Troy, thank you so much for agreeing to see me.”
She took his hand and shook it once, briefly. “Dr. Sayeed.” Her nostrils tasted his faint, pleasant scent. Unaided memory confirmed that it was him, the boy she had known a long time ago.
If he recognized her as the girl who had been his schoolmate in SPARTA, he gave nothing away. With the schooling they had shared, both were so adept in social matters–she only when she had to be, though to him, or so it had seemed to her, it had always come naturally–that neither would give anything away involuntarily.
As she sat down opposite him the rush of long-suppressed memories surfaced. . . .
Khalid, age nine, arguing theology with Nora Shannon in the playground on the roof of the New School, maintaining sweet calm in the face of the girl’s increasingly desperate refusal to accept his contention that Islam had rendered Christianity irrelevant. And he finally forced Nora to retreat, if only because he had committed far more of the Koran–not to mention of Thomas Aquinas–to memory than she had of the New Testament. Whereupon he proceeded to explain why the Shi’a sect into which he’d been born was the only trustworthy repository of Islamic teaching. . . .
Khalid, age twelve, on a field trip to the Caribbean, terrifying her mother and father with a narrow escape from sharks: after ditching his pedal-powered airplane in the warm sea he had kept the sharks at bay for twenty minutes by kicking their snouts with his deck shoes. . . .
Khalid, age fifteen, conducting the Manhattan Youth Philharmonic in a crisp, energetic rendition of Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, to be hailed with wild applause which was soon followed by worldwide videolink reviews announcing the debut of a new Bernstein. . . .
“I’m scheduled for a survey flight tomorrow morning and I wanted you to have a chance to get at me before I left,” he said.
The maître d’ handed them elaborately printed menus, made of real paper by the feel of them, printed with real ink.
“Get at you?”
“The flight should only take about two days. Flying on Mars is inherently unpredictable, however, and should I be delayed I didn’t want you to think I was evading you.”
“If you will excuse me,” the maître d’ simpered, “would either of you care for anything before your meal?”
“Will you have something to drink?” Khalid asked Sparta.
She saw that he was drinking tea from a glass, Sri Lankan by its aroma. “I’ll have tea,” she said, “the same.”
“Very good, madame; sir, your waiter will be along in a moment.” He glided away.
Khalid poured fragrant tea from the pot on the table into her glass. For a moment she concentrated on sipping the tea, which was flavorful but a bit too old–shipping technologies had improved in the last few centuries, but Sri Lanka was farther from Mars than from England–before returning her attention to Khalid.
“A
ll I need from you, Dr. Sayeed, is proof that you could not possibly have killed those men or stolen the artifact. Then I’ll be free to concentrate my attention elsewhere.”
“Proof?” He didn’t smile this time, except with his eyes. “Whole schools of philosophy and mathematics have sprung up around the proposition that there is no such thing.”
“There is, however, such a thing as truth.”
“So I believe, Pontius Pilate to the contrary. And law–in the law I believe without question. I assume you’ve already read my statements, Inspector. And read the story of my life.”
She nodded. “You argued with Dr. Morland here in the hotel not long before he was killed. You left shortly after he did and were not seen again until the next morning.”
“That’s right. I cannot prove that I went to my apartment and watched an infovideo on the Sahara rehabilitation project, then observed evening prayers and went to sleep. But that is the truth.”
“You live alone, Dr. Sayeed?”
“Yes.”
“But you are married.”
“My wife lives in Paris with her parents, not to mention with numerous aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins. As you perhaps already know.” An odd expression, half teasing, half wistful, bent his curving brows, but was quickly gone. “But do you know that I have never met my wife? She is fourteen years old.”
Sparta did know it. When she’d known him before, Khalid’s family had been poor; he had been enabled to attend SPARTA on a grant from a society of wealthy dogooders who called themselves the Tappers. Khalid’s brilliant performance in SPARTA had drawn the attention of his powerful relatives. His subsequent marriage, by arrangement–without a word of prior consultation with him– was a great honor, a sign that Khalid might one day be named imam of the Sayeedis by his great-uncle, the khan.
Sparta said, “Your apartment is near the spaceport.”
“Yes, on Kirov Place in the MTP complex.”
“The building is not directly connected to any civic pressure tube. When you are outside your home you habitually have your pressure suit with you.” She tilted her head to indicate the brown canvas bag in the chair beside him.
“All Martians do so as a matter of course. Where’s yours?”
“In my room.”
“I would advise you to adopt our custom quickly,” he said. “All this”–he waved at the trees, the pool, the glass roof dripping with condensation–“is an illusion; it can vanish in an instant. The reality is freezing thin carbon dioxide. Say a rock were to fall from the cave arch over our heads . . .”
“I’ll take your advice.” And she meant it; just thinking about the possibilities, she regretted her carelessness. But that was not a fact to be shared with him. “Your building . . . it has three units, each with a separate entrance. Yours is on the second floor, reached by an outside stair.”
“Well, you have done your homework this morning. Do you know why I chose that apartment?”
“For its view, I assume.”
“In fact that’s a good part of the reason.” He leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea. “When followers of Islam first embarked into space, Inspector, there arose the problem of determining the qibla, the direction of prayer, which as you know is toward the Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca. The times for prayer can be decided locally, but the position of Mecca–which at a sufficient distance is coincident with the position of Earth, of course–is in constant relative motion. So we orthodox carry these.” He set down his tea glass and brought a flat round object from his pocket, the size of a large pocket watch but much thinner. He laid it on the table. “Mine is a copy, about one-quarter size, of a rather unusual 14th-century astrolabe made by the astronomer Ibn al-Sarrajof Aleppo.”
The astrolabe consisted of a thin stack of incised bronze disks, inscribed in Arabic. The topmost was a net of spherical coordinates, a rete. Tiny scratches and irregularities revealed that the piece had been made by hand.
She looked at it with interest, studying it more closely than human eyes permitted, although no one would have suspected that her glance was anything more than casual . . . for the brain is a flexible organ: it can be trained to suppress or ignore double exposures, as users of old-fashioned monocular microscopes well knew. Like those ancients, Sparta could focus closely on any small or distant object with her macrozoom right eye with both eyes open, and without betraying herself by squinting.
“An expensive copy.”
“It is functional,” Khalid said. “It can actually be used as an astrolabe in the northern latitudes of Earth–or with suitable conversions, even on Mars, I suppose–but its principal operations are carried out by a microminiature inertial guidance system.” He rotated the tiny astrolabe with his fingers until a bronze pointer fastened to its center pivot had risen above the curving equator of the rete. “My spiritual compass. No matter where I go, or where the Earth wanders, the alidade points to Mecca.”
“A beautiful device,” she remarked, without expression. “What does it have to do with your choice of an apartment near the shuttleport?”
“Simply that my little room faces sky through some two hundred degrees of arc. Thus the qibla is rarely in the direction of a blank wall.” He looked up. “Ah, here we are . . .”
The waiter arrived, with timing so precise it might have been rehearsed. Khalid smiled; his uninsistent charm was as glassy as the table between them. The presentation of the astrolabe, which he now repocketed, had been a fascinating diversion from which Sparta had learned nothing germane to her case.
Khalid led the waiter though a recitation of the specials–roast goat stuffed with garlic and prunes, all grown on Mars Station, and poached salmon, fresh by freight shuttle from the hold of the freighter Doradus, recently arrived in orbit–and details of the preparation of several of the more elaborate items on the menu.
When Sparta asked for a green salad, Khalid reacted as if this were not only normal but in fact an exceedingly rational choice; but as for himself, the salmon was too tempting.
The waiter left. Sparta said, “Tell me about your argument with Morland, Dr. Sayeed.”
His smile thinned. “I’ll give you the bare bones. I trust you’ll flesh them out from your own sources.”
“I have plenty of time.”
“Some background, then.” He sipped his tea and made a show of considering his words. “Xenoarchaeologists and xenopaleontologists have a difficult task,” he began. “The Martian atmosphere was once rich in water vapor; the Martian desert once flowed with liquid water . . . as in fact it still does, several times a year, in a few low places where exposed ice hasn’t sublimed and the atmospheric pressure is just sufficient to keep water from evaporating instantly. But these are scattered, evanescent episodes. A billion years ago, or more, things were different. The atmosphere was thicker, the climate of Mars was mild, conditions were stable long enough–just–for the appearance and rapid evolution of life. Thus today we find fossils of living creatures. And thus the much rarer evidence that Mars was visited, perhaps only briefly, by an ancient intelligent race. No scrap of these most precious of treasures must escape our attention.”
He paused for further contemplation. “The task of the xenologists is not only difficult but noble,” he resumed, “the task of preserving the past. On the other hand”–the fingers of his right hand opened like a flower–“in the future Mars will again be a living paradise. Even without human intervention–given the passage of another billion years.”
When she did not react to his dramatic assertion, he went on. “The period of precession of Mars’s orbit around the sun and of its poles suggests that every couple of billion years or so Mars becomes warm enough for icecaps and the permafrost to melt and for liquid water to collect on the surface. The Mars Terraforming Project has been charged with accelerating this natural cycle. To do so we must increase the density of the atmosphere and enrich it with water vapor. At some point the greenhouse effect will take over and begin to raise at
mospheric temperatures, one consequence of which will be to increase atmospheric pressure even more. Once the positive feedback is established, the plentiful water resources now locked up will melt and flow freely across the open desert, without instantly evaporating. True plants will survive in the open. The plants will excrete oxygen; meanwhile a much greater supply of oxygen will be released from the rocks by seeded bacteria. Eventually we Martians will not have to worry about keeping our pressure suits handy.”
She was sure he’d given this speech often, and his oratory was rousing. But she said only, “You were telling me about your argument with Morland.”
He nodded. “Mars is dead and has been for a billion years. But because there was life here once, the xenoarchaeologists and xenopaleontologists and xenobiologists–xeno-is a prefix that seems to apply only to previously Earthbound disciplines; there are no xenophysicists or xenochemists–these xeno-optimists would like to believe that indigenous life survives to this day. Somewhere. Somehow. I understand their passion. I would like to believe so too,” he said, his expressive fingers drumming the green glass, “but I don’t. That was the gist of my disagreement with Dr. Morland.”
“You don’t seem the sort of man to get into a shouting match over theories,” she said.
“There was nothing abstract about our argument. Liquid water is the key to everything I have described. In the past there have been many schemes: to melt the north polar ice-cap by spreading it with dark earth to absorb solar radiation, or by engineering especially dark lichens or algae to achieve the same thing. Or by using nuclear reactors, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds or thousands of them. Other ideas. Any of these methods might work, but it would be centuries before the partial pressure of atmospheric water vapor would rise to significant levels. Schemes to melt the permafrost have been even more outlandish, including the subterranean detonation of nuclear devices by the thousands–an idea motivated less by concern for Mars, I think, than by the desperation of Euro-Americans to rid themselves of the antique weapons with which they once threatened each other. All of these plans have serious drawbacks.”