by Alex Hughes
Cardinal Laboratories was a low, industrial-boxy building in South DeKalb not far from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation offices. It had been constructed with a double-paned roof with a filtered drainage system; according to the sign out front, the rainfall and dust particles landing on the roof were monitored for fallout levels from the dirty bomb that had wiped out neighborhoods to the east years ago. According to the sign, government intervention and monitoring had led to a fifty percent decrease in the level of radioactive pollution in the last ten years. I didn’t know which idea was more disturbing, the fact that there had been so much radioactive pollution they felt the need to monitor it, or that they were trumpeting its decrease. Could the government really impact pollution? And if so, did they have huge weather turbines or something? Should I be more nervous than I already was?
The parking lot was huge and cracking; employee aircars and flyers lined the rows along with the infrequent classic car and some too old or too broken to fly. The occasional tree planted in medians among the parking lot looked withered, a few steps from death. It wasn’t a cheery place, despite the attempt at bioengineered flowers planted in pots by the front door. The flowers were mostly dead, shriveled with the winter cold, and frost covered the pots.
The main foyer was tiled in an echoing flat material that hit the bottom of your shoe with a texture I’d never felt before. Considering this was a science and materials research company, it could be some grand experiment or a new product in the early stages of testing, but I hated it. Not grippy enough on your feet and too grippy all at once.
Cherabino had a warrant, and split the list of interviews with me, her and Michael taking one room, me taking the other to make us get through the list faster.
I was set up in a room with two glass walls, soda machines, coffee carafes, a refrigerator, and a table and chairs. Break room. I seemed to spend my life in break rooms. Still, there was food if I got hungry.
CHAPTER 6
Wright’s supervisor was Susan Cornell, a mousy woman with very messy hair, mismatched clothes, and a distressing tendency not to meet your eyes. Despite this, she had one of the most focused and interesting minds I’d come across in a long time. If science was a betting sport, with scientists lined up for a race to a breakthrough and money placed on all sides, I’d put my money on her, and that before she’d done no more than say hello. Her mind kept going off in odd directions not immediately called for.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.” Even after nearly a minute in the same room, she hadn’t met my eyes.
“How old are you?” I asked point-blank, a question that normally offended any woman over twenty-five, which she’d passed a while ago.
“Forty-four years and seven months,” she said, absolutely without emotional reaction. She was still looking at the table. After a moment: “How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-nine,” I said.
“I am older than you.”
“That’s true,” I said, still watching her mind. Huh. I was starting to think the avoidance of eye contact didn’t necessarily mean she was hiding something. Her brain just seemed to process the “social” information differently than the norm. She did a good job of compensating, enough that she’d been promoted to management, but body language just wasn’t there. She’d responded to my question with a repeating question out of socialization and habit, not interest.
That, plus the sideways thought patterns occasionally, made her a very interesting mind. Combined with the order I’d felt immediately, I was betting she was genius level or better in her field, and far more creative than the average in odd directions. I wished I had more time to watch that mind work in her element.
“I have a schedule today,” she said, looking at the clock. “What do you need to know?”
Well, normally I’d ask if she liked Wright, but I had the feeling that wasn’t the best question right now. “Why did Wright get fired?” I asked instead.
Now she glanced at me, then away. A few thoughts like fishes darted across her mind, some in odd directions. “Noah Wright, pay level four, was let go from his job for sharing sensitive information with noncleared sources.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you the information.”
“I didn’t ask you to. What did he do with it?”
“He posted it on the WorldNet without password protection or quarantine allowances. He then posted several messages in forums to advertise the information. By the time he was discovered, the sensitive information was effectively worldwide. The government found the information. They are not happy.”
“Is it still there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Several of our key employees worked to remove it. But once the information is out there, it is hard to erase completely.”
“Several of your key employees?” I asked. “Let’s talk to them first.”
• • •
Over the course of the next hours, I talked to perhaps twenty people, most of whom had worked with Wright on a regular basis. A picture slowly emerged of a quiet man who treated his coworkers well, who made steady progress on his goals and steady contributions to his teammates, but was otherwise unexceptional.
The next person I talked to had a different story.
“Wright was a bastard,” she said, a Nicole Sagara. She was a small, fragile-looking woman in a lab coat with a huge surge of anger going off in Mindspace.
“Why was Wright a bastard?” I asked calmly.
Sagara looked at Cornell, who was studying the file. Then she looked back at me. “It’s no secret that I reported him for suggestive comments in the workplace. They weren’t even at me. But I got tired of hearing dismissive terms for women. I got tired of him taking credit for my work—and Johanna’s work—and Laila’s work—without so much as an acknowledgment that we were on the team. I got tired of him being an asshole, and telling me to get him coffee. I requested a transfer. Three times. But I didn’t get it.”
Cornell’s mind changed shape then, and she looked up. “Nicole. I told you that I knew about his exaggerations. He was not getting any extra credit for his falsehoods. Your work was good work. His work complemented your work. The final projects were stronger than any individual on the team could do alone. Teamwork is stressful. But good results happen.”
“He threatened to take a laser pistol and stick it up my ass,” Sagara said. “HR backed me up on the transfer. And the punch. They said it was justified, even if I did break his nose.”
“He got a permanent mark on his record. He is fired now. Your work on both the Galen Project and the laser pistol technology is exemplary. I don’t understand why we continue to have this conversation.”
Traitor, Sagara thought so hard I could hear it despite her low numbers in Ability. Her anger was truly a thing to behold. “Just because he was a Free Data Campaigner doesn’t mean he should get away with all of this!”
“The paperwork was submitted for prosecution. What causes Mr. Wright campaigned for on his free time are none of our business. When he released sensitive information without authorization, he was fired.”
The third time, she thought. And for all we know he was doing it all along. “Can I go now?” Sagara asked resentfully.
“Don’t forget your status report is due this afternoon,” Cornell said. “You may go.”
When Sagara left, I asked Cornell, “What’s a Free Data Campaigner?”
She rearranged papers, then answered, “In the twentieth century in the early days of Internet networking, many scientists and engineers believed that sharing information freely would benefit humanity. The majority of information was scientific in nature. Some people still think research should be available to all. This lab appreciates the idea, but we have government contracts for various military applications. There are national security concerns we have that simpl
e science operations do not.” She recited this as if reading from a book.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Now she looked at me. “Wright did good work. But Wright should have followed the rules.”
Then the next employee knocked on the door and I was off to the races again.
• • •
After it was all over, Cornell took me back down the carpeted hallway toward the lobby. I hadn’t said I was a telepath, to her or to any of the interviewees. Perhaps this was a technical breach of privacy, but legally, I was okay. None of them had asked.
The dribs and drabs I’d gotten of the secret information they kept talking about had been sobering. This particular facility handled a lot of weapons, and a lot of Tech-level projects the government was moving forward with for one reason or another despite the bans. It sounded to me like the gun-control arguments they’d had before the Tech Wars: the government wanted the citizens to be gun free, even starting legislation to take away their rifles, while the government held stockpiles of automatic weapons all over the country.
It didn’t strike me like the Tech laws were doing much better. Maybe the Guild was right to do their own research. Maybe not. Both sides were breaking treaties to do it, and it made me very, very sad. Cooper, my personal hero of all the Guild founders, was very much a fan of honesty and integrity in dealing with people and organizations. Hard choices meant hard answers, he’d said. That, and stand for what you stand for.
I think Swartz and Cooper would have gotten along okay.
When we arrived at the front lobby, the receptionist was gone somewhere and Cherabino was seated quietly in one of the comfortable chairs, Michael standing next to her.
“Thank you for showing me around,” I told Cornell.
“I can’t leave you unattended,” she said.
“We’re about to leave,” I promised. There was a forthrightness about Cornell that I appreciated, though I still missed the occasional eye contact or social body-language mirroring; the lack was like a discordant note in a symphony. I’d been around normals too long, clearly, if physical cues were overriding my sense of Mindspace. Either that or the injury I’d had until recently had changed me.
She seemed hesitant but spoke anyway. “Noah Wright broke the rules, but he did not deserve to die. If there is something we can do to help you without breaking our promises to the government, it is the right thing to do so.”
Cherabino moved us to the parking lot. “We’re running late,” she told me and Michael. “And when I called in, Paulsen was on the warpath.”
“You asked me to remind you to stop for food,” Michael said, once we were in the car.
“Yeah,” she said. “You willing to be the one to go in and get it?”
“No problem.”
• • •
“He’s been in there ten minutes,” I said.
“There’s a line. You can see it through the door. And besides, you were the one who didn’t want fried tofu again,” Cherabino said. “It takes longer.”
She sighed, and time passed.
“You’re brooding again,” Cherabino said.
“Am I?” I looked up, and noticed the shields between us had thinned. “I’ll try to do it quieter.”
“You can’t let all of this stuff eat at you. It’s not healthy. Plus I have to listen to it through that Link of yours. I’m not a telepath. Normal people shouldn’t have to listen to people brooding. They shouldn’t, damn it.”
“It’ll fade,” I said, a quick, habitual protest.
“It’s fading already, maybe,” she said. “But it’s not gone yet. Anyway, try to cheer up, okay?”
She sighed, moved some papers around, and pointed to the glove box. “Here, open that.” A picture flashed between us, a picture of a nice pair of black men’s gloves set in a box. She was nervous, somehow.
I had to force myself not to comment on the image or the emotion; she hated it when I jumped ahead. So I pulled open the compartment she’d requested.
A wrapped package in garish paper sat self-consciously, just the size of the box of gloves I’d seen in her mind. I picked it up. What did she want me to do with it?
The thought must have leaked across the Link, because she said, “Open it.” She swallowed the added “idiot.” I felt it go by but said nothing. Apparently I was the only one here who wasn’t allowed to jump ahead.
It was a truly hideous wrapping paper. Her niece’s school sales project, her mind supplied. Twelve ROCs a roll. I opened the paper, pulling the bow off and ripping into the paper, which did not deserve reuse.
Inside was a linen-paper box, the expensive kind, with a pressed seal on its top outlined in ink. Some logo I didn’t understand. I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what the lines were trying to represent.
She pulled the box out of my hands and lifted the lid, offering it to me. “They’re gloves.”
“I see that.”
She pushed the box back into my hands. I took it, cautiously, in case she wanted it back.
“For you. They’re for your birthday, Adam. I looked it up. Your birthday is tomorrow, right?”
I stared at the gloves, uncertain. I mean, they were just gloves, right? “Yeah, my birthday is tomorrow.” She’d never given me anything before. Crap, I’d never given her anything either. I’d thought we weren’t birthday people. To be honest, the only person in the world right now who cared about my birthday was Swartz, or that’s what I’d thought.
She pulled one out of the box. “See, they’re hydropolimat. They maintain body temperature better than wool, but they don’t get too hot, and if you get blood on them at a crime scene, they’ll wash clean. They also have a built-in protective layer, so as long as you don’t leave the gloves in a puddle or anything they’ll keep the blood and mud and ickies away from your hands. They’re nice gloves.” She paused then, glove in hand. “I’m hogging your present, aren’t I?”
“Um, yes?”
She plopped the glove back in the box, and it settled half in, half out, on top of its brother. Then she settled back in the seat. “Sorry.” Thoughts buzzed around her head like bees, none settling into permanency, and she’d remembered enough shielding that I didn’t get them by accident.
The sun was falling into the car through her window, puddling on her face and behind her head like a halo. She looked away for a moment, and her profile was illuminated, as was the skin beneath the button on her shirt still unbuttoned near her neck. She had a beautiful neck, and those breasts—
I clamped down on my thoughts and looked away before I embarrassed myself. Back at the gloves. They were just gloves. But that almost made it worse. She cared, maybe. She cared. And what I felt, the deep things I felt and what I wanted, well, they were all about birthdays and Christmases, Thanksgivings, and New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, year after year, gifts and promises and—and things I couldn’t have, I told myself sternly.
Swartz said I couldn’t have a relationship until I could keep a plant alive, and I had twelve dead plants lined up in a row in my apartment.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you?” she demanded.
“What?”
“Say thank you, damn it. It’s customary when receiving a gift. You know what, never mind. Idiot.”
I looked back over, and if anything she was more beautiful than ever. Her mind, open, if I would dare to touch it.
Michael tapped on the back window, and it was suddenly a flurry of dealing with food and napkins and paper.
I tucked the gloves away in my coat, carefully. Happy birthday, Adam. Happy birthday.
CHAPTER 7
We checked in with Andrew, one of the police forensic accountants, when we got back to the department. Or rather, Cherabino did and Michael and I tagged along. It was only the next cubicle over from hers and he had fantastic coffee.
>
“Have a minute?” Cherabino asked.
Andrew turned around in his chair. “Only about ten before the next meeting. What do you need?”
I gestured to the display of real gourmet coffee beans, grinder, and brewing machine.
“Go ahead,” Andrew said. “I made a fresh pot a little while ago.”
So of course I fixed myself a cup, humming happily under my breath. Blue Mountain coffee, real sugar, milk even. Andrew’s cubicle was the Cadillac of cubicles.
“Have you had a chance to do discovery on Noah Wright’s accounts yet?” Cherabino asked him.
Michael handed me a cup, and I made him coffee as well. Three sugars, no cream. Too much when he wasn’t drinking department swill, that wasn’t my problem. He took the cup with a polite nod.
Andrew poked around in some files, pulling one out. “Actually, yes.” More shuffling papers. “Wright banked through our local New World branch. And his company was remarkably cooperative about sharing financial records on him and his ‘retirement.’ His pension was laughable. But he paid his mortgage and his bills on time, thousands of ROCs a month. He does not have the savings to support this.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” Cherabino asked.
“The money doesn’t work,” Andrew told her. “I’ve looked under every rock and every tree, but no progress. He has cash deposits well under the amount that usually gets attention, and he’s paying most of his bills with cash as well.”
“Is there a rich relative that’s supporting him?” I asked, knowing full well the evidence was pointing rather to a drug trade or something similarly illegal. Unemployed researchers didn’t make large amounts of untraceable cash, not legally anyway.
“Not that I can tell, and I’ve looked.” Andrew looked apologetic. “Perhaps it’s a relationship with someone with extra cash, as in romantic relationship.”
“Most likely, though, it’s criminal,” Cherabino said.
“Well, yes, it looks that way.”
“Thanks, Andrew.”
“No problem. Um . . . I do have the thing . . .”