“Okay. No surprise there. You have her in custody, right?”
“Not exactly. She’s gone missing.”
“She’s missing, too?”
“Yep. Without a trace.”
“How’d you find who she was?”
“We had her description from Diane Gold. There aren’t that many Ventures in the Andiquar area, so on a hunch that Flambeau would turn out to be the person who attacked you, we pulled out pictures of all the young women owners and lessees who fit the general description and showed them to Gold.”
“What do we know about her?”
“Her real name’s Teri Barber. She’s a schoolteacher. Twenty-four years old. Born off-world. On Korval.”
“We were taken out by a schoolteacher?” I said.
He shrugged. “She came to Rimway four years ago. According to her documents she’s from a place called Womble. Graduated from the University of Warburlee. With honors. Majored in humane letters.”
I couldn’t restrain a laugh.
They ignored me. Alex said, “You think she might have gone home?”
“We’re looking into it.” Korval was a long way off, literally at the other end of the Confederacy. “There’s no record that a Teri Barber went outbound over the last few days, but she could be traveling under a different name.” An image took shape off to one side of Fenn’s desk. Young woman, black hair cut short, good features, blue eyes, red pullover, gray slacks. Alex came to attention.
“She has an exemplary record as a teacher, by the way. Everybody at the school says she’s a princess. The kids, administration, they all love her. They think she walks on water.” He braced his chin on the palm of his hand. “The Venture’s leased. Long-term. The leasing company has the same address we do.”
It was hard not to stare at the raven-haired woman. I could see why everybody—at least all the males—had such good things to say about her. She reminded me of Maddy. She had the same charge-the-hill, no-nonsense look. Not quite so pronounced, maybe, but then she was considerably younger than Maddy had been.
“Our best guess is that Barber waited near Ida Patrick’s house to make sure Kiernan wasn’t followed. They knew you folks were on their track. The fact that Kiernan used Chase’s name to rent the skimmer tells us that much.” He frowned. “I’d guess that was intended to send you a message to back off.”
Alex was silent for a moment. “Barber gave that an exclamation mark,” he said at last. “Fenn, when you catch her, I’d like very much to talk to her.”
“We can’t allow that, Alex. Sorry. But I’ll do this much: When she explains what’s going on, I’ll pass it to you. Now, there’s one more thing.”
“Name it.”
“We’ve locked down her quarters. It occurs to me there might be a connection somewhere we’re not aware of. I’d like to have you, and maybe Chase, too, take a virtual tour of her place. You might see something that’ll help.”
It’s always struck me as odd that despite the vast range of building materials available, people still prefer to live in houses that look as if they’re made of stone, brick, or wood. They rarely are, of course. Haven’t been for millennia in most places, but it’s hard to tell the difference. I suppose it’s something in the genes.
Teri Barber had lived in a log-style home atop a wooded hill on Trinity Island, about four hundred kilometers southeast of Andiquar. Big enclosed deck, looking out over the sea. A place where the wind blew all the time. There was a landing halfway down the hill, connected by a creaky wooden staircase on one side with the house and on the other with a pier. The yellow Venture waited on it. A few meters away, a canoe rested in a rack at the edge of the pier.
“Rental property,” said Fenn.
Alex was visibly impressed. “Where did she teach?” he asked.
“Trinity University. She taught the basic syntax course for first-year students. And classical literature.”
We went down to the pad and inspected the Venture. It was sleek, with swept-back lines. Ideal vehicle for kids, except that it was pricey. “Any sign of the laser?” Alex asked.
Fenn shook his head. “No weapons of any kind on the premises or in the vehicle.” The dock rose and fell. “We aren’t finished with it yet, but it doesn’t look as if it’s going to tell us much.”
We looked inside the Venture but saw no personal belongings. “This is the way we found it,” Fenn said. “She didn’t leave anything.”
We went back to the house. Two rockers and a small table stood on the deck. A stack of cordwood was piled against the wall. On one side of the house you could see a stump she apparently used as a chopping block.
The place was well maintained. It was one of those two-story big-window models from the last century. Something about it suggested fourteenth-century sensibilities. Maybe it was the big porch and the rockers.
“She live here alone?” asked Alex.
“According to the rental agent, yes. She’s been here four years. He didn’t get up here that often, but he said there was no sign of a live-in boyfriend, or anything along those lines. He also said he didn’t realize she was gone.”
The scene changed, and we were inside. My impression of an antique atmosphere was confirmed by the interior: The furniture was immense: a padded sofa big enough for six; two matching chairs; and a coffee table the size of a tennis court. Thick forest green curtains were drawn over the windows. You sank into the carpets. Quilts were thrown across the sofa and one of the chairs.
“How long has she been missing?” Alex asked.
“We’re not sure. The school was on a semester break. Nobody can recall having seen her for about a week.” He glanced out the window. “Nice place. I understand they have a waiting line if it becomes available.”
“You think she might be coming back?”
“I doubt it.” He tugged at his sleeves. “All right, this is obviously the living room. Kitchen’s over there, on the other side of the hallway. Washroom through that door. Two bedrooms and another washroom upstairs. Everything pretty well kept.”
“But only one person living here.”
“She has money,” I said.
“That’s what’s strange. We checked her finances. She’s comfortable but not well-off. This apartment is an extravagance. Unless—”
“She has accounts under other names,” said Alex.
There were several prints on the walls. An old man deep in thought, a couple of kids standing on a country bridge, a ship gliding past a ringed planet. “It’s a furnished unit. Everything belongs to the owner. She left clothes and some assorted junk. But no jewelry. No ID cards.”
“She knew when she left,” Alex said, “that she wasn’t coming back.”
“Or that that there was a chance she wouldn’t, and she wanted to be ready to run.”
Her bedroom was in the back of the house, overlooking the ocean. It was cozy, dark-paneled walls, matching drapes and carpet. The bed was oversized, with lots of pillows. It was flanked by side tables and reading lamps. A couple of framed pictures stood atop a bureau: Barber laughing and having a good time with a half dozen students; Barber posing with a male friend on the front steps of what was probably a school building.
“Who’s the guy?” I asked.
“Hans Waxman. Teaches math.”
Alex took a close look. “What’s he have to say?”
“He’s worried about her. Says she’s never done anything like this before. Just taken off, I mean. They’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship over the last year.”
“And her students like her, you say?”
“Yeah. They say she was a good teacher. Nobody seems to know anything about her personal life. But they really like her. They couldn’t understand why we were interested in her.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Only that we wanted to talk to her because we thought she might have been a witness to an accident.”
The guest bedroom was a bit smaller, with a view of the chopping block
. A chair, a table lamp, a picture of Lavrito Correndo leaping across a stage.
“Anything ring any bells?” Fenn asked.
“Yes,” said Alex. “What’s missing?”
“How do you mean?”
“Your office has pictures of your entire career, from when you first started. At the house, I can walk around and see pictures of your folks, of your wife and kids, of you on the squabble team. Even, if I recall, of me.”
“Oh.”
“She has pictures,” I said, pointing to them.
“Those are from last week. Where’s her past?” Alex held up his hands as though the apartment were empty. “Where was she before she came to Trinity?”
An ornate mirror hung over the sofa. The drapes were pulled back, and sunlight poured in through a series of windows.
“How about you, Chase? See anything?”
“Actually,” I said, “yes. Let’s go back downstairs.” There was a dark blue quilt thrown over one of the chairs. Embroidered in its center was a white star inside a ring. It had to be handwoven, and it looked as if it had been around a while.
“What is it?” asked Fenn.
“Who do you think owns the quilt? The landlord?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It has a connection with somebody who pilots superluminals.”
Fenn squinted at the quilt. “How do you know?”
“Look at the seal. Here, let me show you.” I killed the picture, and we were back at the country house. I touched my bracelet to the reader. The screen darkened, and my license appeared on it: . . . That Agnes Chase Kolpath is hereby certified to operate and command superluminal vessels and vehicles, class 3. With all responsibilities and privileges appertaining thereto. Witness therefore this date— Signatures were attached.
“Agnes?” Alex said. “I didn’t know that was your given name.”
“Can we proceed?” I asked.
They both laughed.
The background symbol on the document was, of course, Diapholo’s ring and star. “It’s named for the fourth-millennium hero,” I said. “He sacrificed himself to save his passengers.”
“I know the story,” said Alex. “But I don’t think the design is quite the same.”
“The style has changed over the years.” I returned us to Barber’s living room and adjusted to a better angle on the quilt. “This is pretty close to what it used to look like.”
“When?”
“Sixty years ago. Give or take.”
“So who could the pilot have been? Her grandfather?”
I shrugged. “Anybody’s guess. But the quilt looks like an original. Does it belong to her or the landlord? And you might have noticed Barber looks a lot like Maddy. Maybe they’re related.”
Fenn called again that afternoon. He’d talked with the landlord. The quilt belonged to Barber. He also reported that the Teri Barber who graduated from the University of Warburlee was not the same Teri Barber who’d been teaching the last few years at Trinity.
Superluminal certification records showed no listing for anybody named Barber. So Alex and I fed her image to Jacob. “See if you can find anyone,” I told him, “who has or had a license who looks enough like her to be a relative.”
“That’s fairly vague,” he complained. “What are the search parameters?”
“Male and female.” I looked at Alex. “You think she might actually have been born in Womble?”
“Probably not. But it’s a place to start.”
“How far back?”
“All the way. The certification design’s been around a while.”
“Anywhere over the last sixty years,” I told Jacob. “Born in, or lived in, Womble. On Korval.”
“Looking,” he said.
“Take your time.”
“Of course this is very nonscientific. It calls for an opinion.”
“I understand.”
And, after a few moments: “Negative search.”
“You don’t need to find a duplicate,” I told him. “Anybody who looks remotely like her would do.”
“There are no persons, male or female, licensed to operate interstellars, who at any time lived in Womble on Korval.”
“Try the same search,” said Alex. “But go planetwide.”
He produced three pilots, two male, one female. I didn’t think any of them looked much like Barber. “It’s the best I can do.”
“Proximity to Womble?” asked Alex.
“Closest one is eight hundred kilometers.”
Detailed information on the families was blocked under the privacy laws. “Doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “I don’t think Teri Barber exists. Let’s try something else. Same search, substitute Rimway. The Associated States.”
I wondered whether Fenn would institute a search of college yearbooks from, say, 1423 to 1425. “She had to graduate from somewhere.”
“The database would be pretty big,” said Alex. “Anyhow, who says she had to graduate from somewhere?”
“I have a hit,” said Jacob. “A female pilot.”
“Let’s see her, Jacob.”
She looked like Teri Barber. She was wearing a gray uniform and her hair was brown instead of black. But the certificate was dated 1397. Thirty-one years ago. “She’s a pretty good match,” Alex said. The woman would now be in her midfifties. Barber was no more than twenty-five.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Agnes Shanley.”
“Another Agnes.” Alex smiled. Not a real smile. More like a reflexive one. “Did Agnes have any daughters?”
“It doesn’t say. She married in 1401. To one Edgar Crisp.”
“Do we have an avatar for her?”
“Negative.”
“How about a locator? Can we talk to her?”
“Yes,” said Jacob. “Her file’s been inactive for twenty-five years. But I have a locator code.”
“Good. On-screen, please.”
“We should pass it to Fenn,” I said.
Alex ignored me. He does that when he doesn’t want to deal with me. But I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get directly involved again. This was precisely the sort of behavior that had gotten us into trouble already.
“If we tell Fenn,” Alex said, apparently judging that the silence between us had become strained, “he’ll shrug and say the fact that she looks like Barber is irrelevant. I can hear him now: You look through every pilot certified worldwide over the last sixty years, of course you’ll find someone who looks like her.”
“Actually,” I said, “that’s a pretty strong argument.”
He laughed. “You have a point.”
“I still think—”
“Let’s just stay with it for a bit. I want to know what’s so important that somebody tried to kill us.” I heard anger in there somewhere. Good for him. Alex had always seemed to me to be a bit too passive. But I wondered if we weren’t picking a fight with the wrong people. I get a little nervous around bomb throwers. He turned back to the AI. “Jacob, see if you can get me on the circuit to Agnes Shanley Crisp.”
Jacob acknowledged. I got up and wandered around the room. Alex sat listening to the birds outside. They were especially noisy that afternoon. Then Jacob was back: “Alex,” he said, “it appears the code is not currently in service.”
TWeLVe
There’s a lot to be said for doing a disappearance. You bamboozle the bill collectors, upset the relatives, rattle the local social group, and give them all something to talk about. It’s an easy way to become a legend. And it feels good. I know because I’ve done it several times myself.
—Schaparelli Cleve, Autobiography
Alex had some questions to ask Hans Waxman, the math teacher. But Waxman didn’t know us and would probably be reluctant to talk to strangers about his girlfriend. So we looked for a better way.
Waxman ate breakfast most mornings at a quiet little place called Sally’s, just off the northern perimeter of the Trinity University campus. Several days afte
r we’d toured Teri Barber’s apartment, I arranged to be waiting for him.
I’d selected a table near the front window. Alex waited in a park across the street, relaxing on a bench, trying to look inconspicuous. I wanted Waxman to be able to see the passing traffic, so I put my hat on the chair that had its back to the window. I set my reader on the table and brought up The Mathematical Dodge. It’s a collection of puzzles and logic problems, and I made sure I angled it so he could see the title as he came in the door.
He arrived at his usual time, looking thoughtful and distracted, his mind presumably on that morning’s classes. He was, as they say in the girls’ locker, a juicy piece—tall, blond, nice jaw. Looked even more congenial in person than he had in the picture. We made eye contact and I smiled and that was all it took.
He came over, shuffled his feet a bit, and said hello. “I see you enjoy doing puzzles,” he added.
“Just a hobby.” My. He was attractive. In an innocent sort of way. The kind of guy you don’t see around much anymore.
I’d ordered a fruit plate with hot chocolate. The chocolate arrived while he was considering how to pursue the gambit. I decided to save him the trouble and held out a hand. “Jenny,” I said.
The smile widened. It was a shy grin, made all the more appealing in a guy who should have been able to get anybody he wanted. “Nice to meet you, Jenny. My name’s Hans. May I join you?”
The truth is I started regretting the lie before I delivered it. Alex had instructed me to avoid using my name, but I was thinking, yes, he was a bit young for me, but what the hell. Now, with the deception, he was forever off-limits. “Sure,” I said.
He picked one of the remaining chairs, with the window view that I wanted him to have, and sat down. “Are you a teacher, Hans?” I asked.
“Yes. Math. How did you know?”
I nodded toward the book. “Most people would take no notice.”
“Oh.” The smile widened. “Am I that obvious?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. But we’re close to the school, and you look as if you belong—” I stopped, canted my head, and let him see I was impressed. “I don’t think I’m getting this right.”
“It’s okay, Jenny. Thank you. In fact, I have a class in forty-five minutes.” He ordered eggs and toast, and I asked where he was from. He started talking about far-off places. My fruit dish showed up, and things went swimmingly. He wondered what I did for a living.
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