The Quiet Pools

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “Thank you! I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t said that at least once.” He leaned in closer to her. “But you’re wrong. I’m not crazy. I just hate your guts.”

  His arm went up, the stick came down, and the razors sliced deep into her good shoulder. She did not have the breath to scream. Blood ran, spurted, streaking dusty skin. She could not lift either arm.

  “No—”

  “You still don’t know who I am, do you?” he hissed. “I’m the leveler. I’m the collector of debts. I’m a soldier of the Earth. I’m the hands of Jeremiah, and you’re the Chosen. I chose you. I chose you to die.”

  He whipped the stick in a blinding-fast sideways stroke, and she screamed as the side of her head exploded with thunder and fire. She spun away, collapsing into a quivering huddle, the web of light in her eyes fast fading.

  An immeasurable moment later, the murderous dragon’s tail came down once more, across the back of her neck, shattering the bones of her spine and the delicate tissues within. She jerked soundlessly. But it was only reflex, for whatever was life and consciousness, whatever was Malena Graham, was gone. All that remained was the slow death, the quiet transformation from delicate machine to dust.

  CHAPTER 21

  —GAA—

  “…the greater good…”

  The murder of Malena Graham was news that would not wait for morning, and so it was a short night for many in the Project family.

  Hiroko Sasaki, on Takara to receive a deficiency report from the supervisory circle and tour the nearly completed Memphis, went directly from her suite to the transportation office to arrange a shuttle home.

  Still wearing his striped pajamas, Edgar Donovan settled in his office node and began calling contacts in the media, even as he monitored the first fragmentary reports on Newstime and the black traffic on the private corporate net.

  A shattered Thomas Tidwell, receiving special handling from Houston corpsec, shed his Thomas Grimes persona and fled to the quiet security of Halfwhistle by means of a corporate screamer.

  Sleepy-eyed morale counselors and group dynamicists, huddled in a Building H conference room, debated whether to hold the pioneers over until the shock had been absorbed or to empty Noonerville early.

  An unlucky senior facilitator headed for Virginia with an insurance check and the vain hope of shaping the Graham family’s public posture.

  And Mikhail Dryke, heart-weary and discouraged, came back to Houston from Prainha, feeling as though it were a pilgrimage of futility. Too late, again too late. In the two hours and forty minutes between the flash alert and Dryke’s Celestron touching down on the complex’s runway, both the primary and secondary reasons for that journey had evaporated.

  The first, of locating Graham’s killer, disappeared when Rangers from the Beaumont post forced down a Ford Firefly a few kilometers short of the Louisiana border, arresting one Evan Eric Silverman. The second, of determining whether Silverman had known Graham’s status, vanished when he confessed—no, boasted—in his first interview that he had killed a colonist, calling Malena a “traitor” and himself a “martyr.”

  On hearing the latter, Dryke’s fury was matched only by his feeling of impotence. It had been obvious for months that the pioneers were at risk from the more radical Homeworlders—if not, then why were their identities and movements so conscientiously concealed? Dryke had urged repeatedly that the training centers be made closed campuses. But he had been overruled by assorted management types, Sasaki included, for reasons which had nothing to do with security.

  Better to make it unnecessary for them to leave than to forbid them, he was told. Better that they see the center as a refuge, not a prison—their fellows as friends, not inmates. Better that they choose to turn their back on a world that they’ve decided for themselves is unfriendly. Better for morale. Better for solidarity. Better for everyone.

  Except Malena Graham.

  By midmorning, when Dryke reached the Beaumont post, it was already clear that so far as Allied Transcon was concerned, the murder of Malena Graham was a public relations disaster.

  Here was the grieving family standing in front of their home, a sobbing Mother Caroline declaring, “Our girl was stolen from us. We never wanted her to go,” and Father Jack bitterly denouncing Allied Transcon for negligence—as if Graham had been some sort of teenage overnight camper.

  Here were the world media, suddenly interested in the “tensions” between Allied and the Houston community, broadcasting inflammatory interviews with Diaspora opponents, complete with footage of the compound fences, patrol boats, and watch towers. And here was clean-faced clear-spoken Evan Silverman, being interviewed from his cell by a grimly earnest Julian Minor. Dryke sat in his vehicle in the post parking lot and watched on the skylink for as long as he could stand.

  “What do you mean, don’t cry for Malena Graham?” Minor asked. “This is a young woman, her life in front of her, a courageous physically challenged twenty-year-old. And you dragged her off to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and beat her to death.”

  “I don’t think I want you as my defense attorney, Julian,” said a relaxed Silverman. “The truth is that Malena Graham was a thief and a traitor. She was a Memphis colonist, a partner in a quadrillion-dollar hijacking of the Earth’s treasuries. She shares in the blame for every sin and excess committed by Allied Transcon over the last three decades.”

  “So you murdered her as a revolutionary statement.”

  “I executed a criminal for her crimes.”

  “Will that be your defense?”

  “The courts are controlled by Allied’s bedmates. They won’t allow the truth to clutter up their rush to judgment. Which is why I’m talking to you.”

  “But I’ve talked to you before, haven’t I?” asked Minor.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Aren’t you Jeremiah?”

  Dryke sat forward, riveted.

  “No,” said Silverman.

  “You talk like the man who calls himself Jeremiah,” pressed Minor.

  “Jeremiah is the prophet,” Silverman said, frowning slightly. “It shouldn’t be a surprise if you hear the same words from his disciple.”

  “Is that what you call yourself? A disciple? Is this political or religious?”

  “I’ll let you apply the labels as you choose,” Silverman said with a shrug.

  “But you’re trying to say that what you did is part of something bigger.”

  “It is.”

  “Were you under orders to murder Malena Graham?”

  “Execute,” corrected Silverman. “My hands are Jeremiah’s hands. I do his work.”

  “Not any longer.”

  “There are ten thousand for Tau Ceti—ten thousand minus one. There are ten billion Homeworlders standing for the Earth. How can they think that they’re safe from us? In that ten billion there are ten times ten times ten thousand who will gladly do what I’ve done.”

  “The cost—”

  “We are many, and they are few. In a war of attrition, one of us for one of them is a victory. We’ll cheerfully pay that price until the last of the ten thousand is gone.”

  Julian Minor was scoffing with his eyes. “Do you seriously think that you can announce a plan for this kind of mass murder and still expect to carry it out?”

  “Jeremiah’s soldiers are everywhere,” said Evan Silverman with easy confidence, looking directly into the camera. “There’s no place our enemies can go that we can’t reach them.”

  Dryke had seen enough. “Log it for me. Kill the screen,” he said, and the skylink went dark. But he did not move to leave the flyer.

  For, listening to the interview, Dryke had finally understood the weight of discouragement that had settled on him that morning, that had taken him under as he sat on the edge of his bed, the fading images of a disturbing dream cross-channeled with the jarring sounds and images of the flash alert.

  Now the dream came back. The siege had gone on forever.
Each morning he walked the ramparts, reviewing the defenses and looking out at the broad grassy meadows where the enemy’s campaign tents stood and campfires burned. Each morning Dryke found a post or two abandoned, a familiar face or two among the enemy, dead allies reborn as adversaries.

  Then came a morning when he woke to find himself the last bowman on the ramparts. That was the morning the assault began in earnest—uncounted enemies attacking the fortress at a thousand points. And the last archer knew full well as he nocked his first arrow that neither will nor heart nor skill would count enough to carry the day.

  Writ the chronicler on the day he died, Too few on the ramparts, too many outside—

  Inside the post, Dryke was stopped at a security gatelock, then escorted to a Captain Norwood’s office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open.

  The office was no more than half a dozen paces in any dimension. At one end, a man in a brown uniform sat behind a small boomerang desk, beneath a Scale 3 wallscreen. “Captain Norwood,” Dryke said. “I’m Mikhail Dryke, Allied Transcon.”

  “You’re late,” Norwood said curtly, pushing back his posture chair and rising. He gestured past where Dryke was standing. “I understand you know Lieutenant Alvarez.”

  Stunned, Dryke turned to follow Norwood’s gesture. A woman with a vaguely familiar face was seated there on a cushion couch.

  “Mr. Dryke,” said Eilise Alvarez. “I was just telling Captain Norwood about your personal contribution to the Martinez case.”

  A dozen replies passed in review of Dryke’s wary censor before he finally spoke. “Then I’ll have to make a point of telling him my side of it sometime,” he said, looking back to Norwood. “I’m a bit confused. How are the Houston Transit Police involved in this?”

  Norwood settled in his chair. “Lieutenant Alvarez is representing a special operations unit working on controlling civil unrest aimed at Allied Transcon and its personnel.”

  “We’re also seeking transfer of the prisoner to our jurisdiction on commencement-of-crime.”

  “Which probably won’t be granted,” Norwood said, nodding. “Anyway, you both asked for briefings on the Graham case, so I thought I’d spare myself the repetition. I assume you don’t object?”

  “No,” said Alvarez.

  “No objection,” said Dryke. He gave Alvarez a sideways glance as he took the free chair along the far wall.

  “Fine.” Norwood glanced down at the desktop, which had the muted gleam of a flat tank display. “Recorders on if you’ve got them. Victim, Malena Christine Graham of Great Bridge, Virginia, age twenty. Oh, and she was a crip, restricted to an airchair. According to witnesses, she was picked up by Evan Eric Silverman, twenty-eight, of Houston, at a bar called Magpie’s on Old Spanish Trail about ten forty-five last night.”

  “Twenty December,” Alvarez said quietly for the benefit of her recorder.

  “Silverman took the girl to a field about three kilometers west of Magnolia, off State Route 1488, where he stripped her and beat her with a dragon’s tail. That’s a club with a pattern of razor edges embedded in the top third. Illegal as a weapon. Silverman had a license for his—apparently he’s a juggler. Cause of death: You’ve got your pick until the coroner wraps up. Most likely the head injuries killed her before she bled to death. Time of death is twelve twenty-one a.m. That’s the twenty-first,” he added. “You want to see the evidence tape?”

  “Yes,” said Dryke.

  “Is there any point?” asked Alvarez.

  Norwood opened his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Not for me to say. I don’t know what you’re after.”

  “All right,” said Alvarez. “Show it.”

  The assault had been savagely cruel, and the body was grossly disfigured. It was the same kind of mindless violence he had seen in the incident at the observation platform, but turned up one notch from brutality to butchery. Looking at the evidence video, Dryke could not even tell if the young victim had been attractive.

  “Jesus. Did he do all that?”

  “Not quite. When they found her, the fire ants were having their fill. It’s a mercy she was dead.” Norwood shook his head. “At least I hope she was dead.”

  When the recording ended, the lights came up. Alvarez was pale, but when Dryke raised an eyebrow in her direction, she shot a withering look back.

  “That’s about it at this point,” said Norwood, who had never turned to watch the wallscreen. “Nothing I didn’t have to release to the media, really. Frankly, I’m still not clear on what you’re after. There’s not much here to finesse.”

  “What about this ‘Jeremiah’s hands’ business?” asked Dryke.

  “He has been talking a lot, that’s a fact,” said Norwood. “You obviously caught his spotlight performances. I can’t let any of his private showings leave the building, but I could set you up with a screen somewhere. Are you interested?”

  “Yes. If you could arrange that when we’re done, I’d appreciate it,” Dryke said.

  “What else is there to do?”

  All that was left was all that there had ever really been—the quest for Jeremiah. “Silverman’s home,” Dryke said.

  “Being searched and inventoried now.”

  “What about his comlogs, his library, his personals? There could be important information in them—information that could finally give us a chance to take apart the Homeworld network. I have access to technical experts who can disarm any security traps Silverman might have left.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Shrugging, Dryke said, “Mutual cooperation—our expertise in exchange for access to whatever’s dug out.”

  Norwood frowned and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t see what standing you have to ask for access to criminal evidence. And we have our own hackers and crackers.”

  “If Silverman really is working with Jeremiah, I promise you, you’ll need more than a password engine and a wipe mask to get into his file library,” warned Dryke.

  “We’re not amateurs, Mr. Dryke. We do this all the time,” Norwood said with evident annoyance. “And again, I don’t see how I can justify making you a partner in our investigation.”

  “Can I inject something here?” asked Alvarez.

  “Go ahead,” said Norwood.

  “I’m looking at a work load of seventy-one open property crimes against Allied facilities—which may or may not involve Jeremiah or members of the Homeworld movement. Total damage and losses runs about fourteen million dollars,” said Alvarez. “Will that earn me a look at Silverman’s personals?”

  “Yah,” said Norwood. “We’ll work with you on that.”

  “Then you may as well let Mr. Dryke have it as well. We’ve got a co-op agreement with corporate security, and they’ll see anything we see.”

  Norwood cocked his head and pursed his lips. “All right, Mr. Dryke,” he said finally. “Bring on your experts.”

  “I’ll go make the call.”

  “Wait,” said Norwood, turning to face his wallscreen. “V-mail, forward till acknowledged: Norwood to Unit Six. We’re going to get an outside assist on Silverman’s personals. Let’s keep our hands off all data storage media and devices until then. Catalog in place. End.”

  “Sending, sir,” said the comsole’s voice.

  Reaching out to his left, Norwood touched several desktop sensors, and a list of files came up on the screen. “Unlock fourteen through twenty-two, one viewing, sequenced, then re-lock.”

  “Done, sir.”

  Finally, Norwood turned back toward the others and rose from his chair. “Okay. You can call from here,” he said, making his way toward the door. “When you’re done, ask for file fourteen.”

  “We didn’t mean to chase you out—” Alvarez began.

  “You didn’t. I’m due in the tank to testify in another case.” He squinted toward Dryke. “Let me know when you can have your people here.”

  “I will. Thank you, Captain.”

  As the door closed, Dryke thum
bed off his recorder and turned to Alvarez wearing an openly puzzled expression. “What’s going on?”

  “I want Silverman’s personals,” she said. “I don’t want blank logs and a brainwashed AIP. Your texperts are insurance.”

  “That’s not what I mean. There’s no co-op agreement between us. Or am I missing something?”

  “There is now,” she said. “Unless you don’t want it.”

  “I’ll take it. But I still don’t understand. You can’t have forgotten about Brian White since you told Norwood about it half an hour ago.”

  “I only told him how I knew you,” she said. “I didn’t tell him what I thought of your ethics. And I won’t, unless you try to see Silverman.”

  Dryke looked at her wonderingly. “Stand still. I can’t track a moving target.”

  “This one’s different than the last one,” Alvarez said quietly. “White was petty stuff, a classic bad boy. We know how to handle his kind. But Silverman’s a hard-wired freakoid. And he scares the pee out of me.”

  “He’s in lockup. Norwood’s not going to let him walk.”

  “Not that kind of scared. But how many more are out there?” she asked. “You’ve got fifteen hundred employees in the compound and three thousand more outside for the next Silverman to pick from. There’s no way that you can lock them all up safely out of reach.”

  “I know,” said Dryke.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how to get inside Silverman’s mind. I don’t even know if I want to.”

  “You don’t want to,” said Dryke grimly.

  “Is he crazy? Cerebral function deficiency?”

  “Was Hitler crazy?” Dryke asked rhetorically. “I don’t know. I’ll bet he doesn’t come up CFD. He’s worse. A bad combination of hate and intelligence.”

  “And calculated viciousness.”

  “That’s what you get when you put those two together,” said Dryke. He gestured at the screen. “Are you ready?”

  “I suppose.”

  Dryke nodded. “File fourteen, display,” he said, thumbing his recorder to on.

  Larger than life, Evan Eric Silverman sat calmly in the back of the Ranger cruiser, talking to the officers in the front seats.