The Quiet Pools

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Everyone did it. Everyone. But he hesitated, because he knew how the truth would sound to ears tuned to suspicion. And then he told the truth, because he knew that a lie would sound still worse.

  Whether coincidence or not, from that point onward Lange started fishing for a confession. What do you think of Jeremiah? Are you a member of Homeworld? Do you know anyone who is a member? Do you know anyone who you think might be sympathetic to their cause? What about Bill Wonders? Loi Lindholm? Deryn Falconer? Daniel Keith? William McCutcheon?

  Those questions Christopher fielded more easily. His opinions of Jeremiah were less than passionate, and a series of increasingly amused repetitions of “No” did for the rest. He did not try to tell Lange he was fishing in sterile waters.

  Then, just as Christopher was beginning to feel comfortable, things took a nasty and surprising turn.

  “How often did you discuss your work with your father?”

  “Almost never,” Christopher said.

  “What did your father want to know about your work?”

  “As I just said—”

  “You said you talked about your work sometimes. What did you talk about?”

  “All he wanted to know is if I was happy with what I was doing, and if the work was going well.”

  “On May 7, you traveled to Oregon and stayed two days at your father’s house. What was the purpose of your trip?”

  Christopher allowed his incredulity to show. “A family visit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he invited me. Don’t you ever go home?”

  “What did he want to talk about that weekend?”

  Christopher frowned. “The Twenty-ninth Amendment. Serai stages. The mean annual rainfall of northwest Oregon. We went hiking,” he added by way of explanation.

  “Did you talk about Homeworld activities?”

  “No.”

  “In August, your housemate Loi Lindholm went to Europe for five days, visiting Brussels, Paris, and Geneva. Why did she make that trip?”

  “August? Ah—she had a commission debut and went to some business-card kiss-and-snack parties,” said Christopher.

  “What did she take there for you and whom did she deliver it to?”

  “What?” His face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Nothing. Her trip didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  Lange rolled on, undeterred. “Five times in November, your father left messages for you on your personal account. What instructions did he give you?”

  “Wait a minute,” Christopher said warningly. “Wait just a minute. All that means is I didn’t want to talk to him.”

  “But then you took a call from him at your workstation in Building 9. Was that because you needed to warn him about the Munich gateway?”

  The picture suddenly snapped into focus, and Christopher stared at it with a collision of horror and helplessness, astonishment and rage. “What are you saying? Those are all just things that happened.” He clawed at the safety restraint, but it would not release him. “This is crazy! What are you saying?”

  Lange sat back in his seat and watched Christopher’s futile struggle, listened, but was unmoved.

  “I’m not saying anything,” he said lightly, pulling off the headset and closing the slate with one finger. “I’m just asking questions.”

  Christopher should not have been surprised when he saw where their journey had taken them, but he was, all the same. He knew with the first glimpse of the little Forest Grove hub-port, knew with the first breath of air as they crossed from hot-winged screamer to waiting flyer.

  But until the thin ribbon of U.S. 26 and the scattered houses of Manning flashed by below, until Tillamook State Forest spread out beneath them and a mist-wrapped Hoffman Hill loomed out the right-side windows, Christopher refused to accept the knowledge.

  At that point, though, he had no choice but to embrace it. They were taking him home.

  There were four vehicles already crowded into the clearings flanking the house, and easily a dozen people in sight—ferrying cases from inside to the square-backed silver van, standing talking in knots of two or three, or just watching as the flyer bearing Christopher floated in to settle on the much-trampled grass between the muddy track of the old road and the garage.

  Christopher had long since given up demanding—or even pleading for—explanations. He docilely followed Lange inside, sat in the living room chair Lange pointed him to, watched mutely as white-gloved men and women meticulously erased any signs of the intrusion with vacuum and buffer and an endless supply of square yellow cloths. How long had they been there? Where was his father?

  Presently, Lange returned, trailing behind a black-haired dart-eyed man with a wrestler’s build and a soldier’s walk. Christopher stood up to meet him.

  “Are you Dryke?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Getting ready to leave,” said Dryke. “I’ll take the rest of your questions when you’ve answered mine. Come with me, please.”

  He led Christopher to the office and, asking Lange to wait outside, closed the door behind them.

  “Sit at the desk.”

  Moving tentatively, Christopher complied.

  “Ask the AIP if it knows you.”

  Christopher swallowed. “Hello, Lila.”

  “Hello, Christopher,” Lila said. “I wasn’t told you would be visiting. How long will you be staying?”

  “I don’t know,” said Christopher, looking to Dryke.

  “Ask for your messages.”

  “Lila, are there any messages for me?”

  “No messages, Christopher. Should I update your address to this location?”

  “No.”

  “Ask it to replay the last message sent to you by Jeremiah.”

  “I never—”

  “Ask it.”

  He did, and the center panel of the comsole darkened into an image of William McCutcheon. “Hello, Christopher. This is your father. You’re not being paid enough if you’re still working at this hour—”

  “Lila, you made a mistake,” said Christopher. “That’s my father.”

  The display went white. “I’m sorry, Christopher,” said Lila. “Which Jeremiah did you mean?”

  Suddenly fragile, Christopher looked up into Dryke’s intent gaze. “It made a mistake.”

  “No,” said Dryke.

  “You think my father is Jeremiah?”

  “There isn’t any question about it. Do you expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Dryke nodded. “Lila, show Christopher Jeremiah’s last transmission.”

  It was his father again, sitting in a room Christopher did not know. “This is William McCutcheon, speaking for Jeremiah and the Homeworld. As you can see, I have visitors this morning. As you might guess from the weapons they carry, I did not invite them. Mikhail Dryke, chief of the security forces for Allied Transcon, has invaded my home to arrest me—”

  “Lila, where is my father?” Christopher asked suddenly.

  “He was shot by Mikhail Dryke on Sunday morning,” Lila said. “I infer that he is dead.”

  With a cry of anguish, Christopher vaulted out of the chair and lunged at Dryke. The older man turned the charge aside easily, spinning away and giving Christopher a shove that carried him hard into the wall. By the time Christopher picked himself up and turned, he was facing five men and three weapons.

  “Fagging bastard. Where is he? What did you do with him?”

  “Buried him in the earth,” said Dryke. “I would tell you where, but that could prove awkward. I’m sorry.” He turned to one of the newcomers. “Tell Ramond I want the rest of the house files wormed out and this AIP reset. Now.”

  The man nodded and left, and Dryke turned back to Christopher. “I don’t know that I believe what you told Donald. Even if I did, I don’t know how much sympathy I’d have left for you. You’ll understand that if you have any idea of the grie
f that Jeremiah caused.

  “I do know I don’t trust you. I can’t. If it was my choice, you’d be going with us, and disappearing, at least until Memphis sails. But it isn’t my choice this time, and my orders are to move you out and cut you loose,” he said. “Lucky you.”

  He stepped closer. “But I’ll warn you right now, don’t come near Allied property, or anyone in the Project. I don’t think I even want to hear that you’re back in Houston. That would put thoughts in my head that you don’t want me to think.

  “Your resignation will be final in ten days—thank you for that, it’s tidier. You’ll even get one more check, I suspect. But your passes, codes, and credits are dead as of now. You can send someone to pick up your car.”

  They kept him waiting in the bedroom while they finished their work. When the only noises Christopher could hear were outside the house—voices, the banging of equipment being loaded, the whistle of lifters—he opened the door and found himself alone.

  He walked through the silent house slowly and reached the front window in time to watch the last vehicle, the silver van, clear the scorch pad and disappear over the treetops. He stood at the window for a long time, though there was nothing more to see. His body jangled with an impotent fury. They were gone, and he could not touch them.

  And his father was dead, and he did not know how to feel.

  CHAPTER 26

  —AAU—

  “I must walk carefully.”

  Christopher could not stay in the house. It was too uncomfortable, too jarringly wrong, to be in his father’s space and not feel his father’s presence.

  Even the characteristic smell of the house—part aromatic cedar from the closets, a hint of sesame oil from the kitchen, his father’s soaps from the bath, the char of burnt wood from the fireplace—had been upset by the cleaning. It smelled now of alcohol and cleanser, and another faint chemical scent—the strongest in the kitchen—which he could not define.

  Heedless of the temperature outside, Christopher went through the rooms opening all the movable windows and both doors, changing the blowers at the top of each dome to exhaust. Then he left the house behind and walked into the forest, his fists buried deep in the pockets of a jacket borrowed from his father’s closet.

  For a time, he ordered himself not to think, allowing the mountain to wrap itself around him. The air was damp and cool, the ground soggy underfoot. There was a steady patter as drops of water fell from the tree crowns high overhead to the carpet of trillium and humus. A few birds called lonely sounds from the branches far above him. Now and again, his approach flushed a nimble-quick chipmunk from a tangle of ferns and brush.

  The farther he went into the forest, the more his steps slowed. His purposeful passage, tramping a line through the wildness, became a quieter communion. He threaded his way between the gray-white trunks almost as a ghost.

  Where did they take you, Father?

  He had no thought of searching for the grave, no hope that even a forensic expert would find it. Dryke had undoubtedly been too thorough for that. Christopher’s sense of futility was such that he had not even called the police. What could they do with no body, no witness, no evidence?

  Even Lila had been silenced, as Christopher had learned when he finally tore himself away from the window.

  “Lila? Do you know where they put my father’s body?”

  “Would the speaker please identify himself?”

  “This is Christopher. Christopher McCutcheon.”

  “Thank you, Christopher. To use verbal command mode, I will need a sample of your normal speech. Would you please talk to me about your day?”

  Vainly hoping that some part of Lila’s customization had been missed by Dryke’s wormers, Christopher had invented for Lila a more pleasant morning than he had lived.

  “Thank you. I have a sufficient sample now. Will you be the primary user of this AIP?”

  “No,” he said. “The primary user is my father.”

  “Thank you,” Lila said, and then stole even that faint hope away. “What is your father’s name?”

  No, involving the police was pointless or worse. What did he need them to do? He already knew enough of what had happened, exactly who had done it, perhaps even a piece of why. But his testimony was valueless. He knew nothing firsthand. It was only a story.

  A wild story. What would a thoughtful prosecutor make of such a tale from a distraught young man whose life had been disintegrating around him? If that prosecutor talked to Meyfarth—and, of course, he would—he might quite reasonably decide that the most likely suspect was Christopher himself.

  The best he could hope for was that they would believe him enough to declare his father missing. But what was the value in that? Only his father’s attorneys and accountants would care, and nothing seemed less important at the moment than matters of business and family finance.

  Justice? Punishment? Revenge? Words of primal myth and melodrama, the classic passions of the wronged, and yet they, too, seemed not to matter much to Christopher. Perhaps it was too soon, the shock too fresh, the loss too new. He had not even cried.

  Or perhaps the passions and tears both were knotted in the confusion of unsettled issues. He had been cheated of his own confrontation with William McCutcheon, robbed of a reckoning over the lies which lay between them. Lies which now appeared to be only the lesser part of the deception his father had worked.

  A fat drop of water falling from above hit the back of Christopher’s neck and made a cold trail under his collar to the vicinity of his shoulder blades. Christopher shivered, suddenly realized that he was hunchbacked against the chill, the jacket nearly soaked through. He turned back, guessing at the direction. When he crossed paths with old Johnson Road a few minutes later, he allowed it to lead him back the long, easy way.

  The truth was that he did not understand well enough who his father had been—whether William McCutcheon had, in fact, been murdered, or had fallen in what amounted to a duel. Christopher did not know if it was right to love and mourn him, or to hate and curse him. He still did not know how to feel.

  “Hello, Christopher,” Lila said as Christopher entered.

  The house was barely warmer than the woods, and Christopher hastened to close the windows. “Hello, Lila.”

  “I am glad to see you again, Christopher. Can you tell me if something has happened to Mr. McCutcheon?”

  That froze Christopher in midstep. “Mr. McCutcheon?”

  “William McCutcheon, your father. The owner of this house.”

  Christopher took several uncertain steps toward the office. “What’s going on here, Lila? When I left, you were as dumb as a toaster.”

  “While you were gone, I appear to have received a message from Mr. McCutcheon,” said Lila.

  His breath caught. “What? Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know, Christopher.”

  “What other possibility is there?”

  “The message may have been composed earlier and stored until after a trigger event or a specified time. It’s even possible that I sent the message to myself.”

  Sliding into the chair at the comsole, Christopher said, “Let me see it.”

  “I’m sorry. I do not have a copy of it. I would not be able to show it to you if I did.”

  “Damn it, who’s in charge here? Do I have primary user status or not?”

  “You have visitor status, Christopher. Mr. McCutcheon is the primary user.”

  Which meant that the initialization Christopher had completed before leaving the house had been erased and replaced. “Then tell me what you do know. What the message was and where it came from.”

  “I only know that several of my directories are restored, and the time stamp on my command files is only a few minutes old. That’s what I would expect to find if I had received a self-executing command file.”

  “Do you remember Mikhail Dryke being here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

 
; “Yes, Christopher. If he was here, that is a reason for concern.”

  “What are you doing now besides talking to me?”

  “My first instruction is to try to locate Mr. McCutcheon.”

  Christopher frowned. “What if you can’t find him?”

  “I have contingent instructions. Do you know where Mr. McCutcheon is?”

  “My father is dead.” It was easier than it should have been to say.

  “His death has not been recorded, and his skylink address is still active and pointed here. How do you know that he’s dead?”

  “Because you told me, two hours ago. And Dryke confirmed it. What else did my father tell you to do?”

  “I’m sorry, Christopher. I am not allowed to tell you.”

  Christopher felt a quick flash of impatience. “Look, Lila, Dryke already knows, unless the message came in by parachute—I can’t imagine that they’re not still monitoring this house. What good does it do for him to know and me to be in the dark? And if you’re going to be carrying on with Homeworld business, I want to know.”

  “I’m aware of the monitoring, Christopher. I’ve been instructed not to place you at risk.”

  “Maybe I want to be put at risk,” Christopher said, the thought springing new into his mind as he spoke it. “Maybe I’m going to want to draw Dryke back here. Lila, was my father Jeremiah?”

  “Yes, Christopher. Your father used that name.”

  “Why that name?”

  “I don’t know the significance. But your father’s grandfather was named William Jeremiah McCutcheon.”

  “I never knew that,” Christopher said. “I never knew him. The face and voice—that was you?”

  “I coordinated the simulations.”

  Christopher was silent for a long moment. “What if I said I wanted to take over my father’s work? All of it.”