by Sarah Zettel
“I see.” Without another word, Helen’s representation vanished.
Su stared at the empty box, along with everyone else. She looked mutely up at the Secretaries and the committee and then back at the box.
“A recess, please, Secretaries, committee members.” Su got to her feet. “Surely there’s been an outside interruption in communications from Venus.”
The Secretaries gave their assent. It was still being seconded as Su turned and hurried out of the chamber, the sounds of her footsteps echoing off the marble walls.
What does she think she’s doing? Su ground her teeth as she marched across the lobby. This is not productive. She could be cited for contempt. She could be arrested….
What if she doesn’t care?
Su staggered and caught her balance against a marble bench. She sat down heavily, as if pushed bodily by her thoughts.
This might have done it. They had attacked Helen’s integrity, her management of her people and her world. It might have been enough. After all the work and the caution and the planning, this confrontation might have pushed Helen over the edge into rebellion.
Su took a deep, slow breath. “Oh, Helen,” she whispered. “Oh, Helen, my friend, be careful.”
Michael watched as Helen slowly, deliberately, removed the assembler rig goggles and set them on her desk. She blinked at them a moment before she could make herself look up again and focus on Michael and Ben.
“That,” said Michael mildly, “was probably not extremely productive. They’re going to haul you down there for contempt.”
“Then they are going to have to come and get me.” She pulled the gloves off, one finger at a time.
“Helen…” began Michael. A cold sensation crept through him as he watched her eyes. This was not Helen angry. This was not even Helen furious. She had gone past those emotions into some new world, and he wasn’t sure how to pull her back.
“No.” She swiveled the chair and stabbed a finger at him. “No. We’re finished with them.” She stood up a little bit at a time, as if all her joints protested the move. “They are not taking our world away from us.”
“Amen,” whispered Ben. Michael whipped around to stare at him.
“That’s not the word I’d use.” Helen smoothed her scarf down. “Michael, someone here sent the committee that photograph. I want you to find out who.”
“Does it really matter?” Michael spread his hands.
“It matters!” Helen began to shake. “The U.N. is about to take Venera away from us and one of our own people is trying to help them!” Her fists clenched involuntarily.
Michael licked his lips. “Okay, Helen. I agree, we need to know who sent that picture, but just so we can head off a complete takeover. We can tell the C.A.C. somebody’s been spreading lies and then they’ll—”
“And then they’ll still conclude we are even more out of control than they thought we were and come up with a few extra security people,” said Helen bitterly. “It’s done, Michael. Whatever spin can be put on that photo, it’s not going to change anything. They are coming and they are taking over.” She smoothed down her scarf. “I just want to know who it was so we can keep them out of the info loop. Start with Grace Meyer. She might just have done it to see me out of here.”
“Helen, we don’t know—”
“Then find out!” Helen’s fist slammed against the wall. “That’s your job!”
“All right, Helen, all right,” said Ben. “We’ll find out for you. Don’t worry about it.”
“Good. Good.” The tide of her more-than-anger subsided in her a little. “While you’re doing that, I’m going down to the surface to talk to our neighbors. We’re going to need them. Ben, have a couple of pilots meet me in the hangar, and warn Josh and Vee I’m coming down.”
She left the office without looking back. Michael stared after her as she walked down the stairs and began crossing the farm, with her shoulders hunched and her hands knotted.
He turned to Ben. “What are we going to do?”
Ben shrugged. “I’m going to send a message to Dr. Hatch and Dr. Kenyon. I assumed you were going to start checking out whether Grace Meyer gave the C.A.C. that photo.”
Disbelief flooded Michael. “Ben, she’s over the edge. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Yes, she does.” Michael could practically hear the finally Ben added in his thoughts. “She’s saving her home, and she’s asking us to do the same.”
Michael’s hands fell to his sides. You’re on your own now, Michael, whispered a voice in the back of his mind. He’s gone with Helen or taken her with him.
“All right,” he heard his own voice say. “But you’d better hope I don’t find out you sent that picture.”
Ben’s jaw tightened, just a little, but he said nothing. He just turned and left, following Helen’s path across the farms.
Michael rested one hand on the windowpane and tried to think, but before he could sort out what had just happened, his phone spot chimed. Michael touched it to take the message, a little relieved.
“Code 360-A,” said a recorded voice.
Michael swore under his breath and rounded Helen’s desk. It woke up when he touched the command board and he shuffled her icons until he got the security overview and entered his own passwords. The desk took a reading of his fingerprints and let him in.
360-A was unauthorized access to com archives. Yes, there it was, the serial number. It didn’t use Venera’s ID system. Probably a briefcase jacked into the system for somebody’s fishing expedition. Probably Stykos and Wray trying to get their story out. Maybe Peachman, but he didn’t seem like he had the expertise, although he certainly had the love of publicity. They’d tripped one of Michael’s bugs, and it had pinged their case and dumped the report for him.
He couldn’t really blame them. Somebody had to try. In their place he’d have done the same. Maybe he could have Helen talk to them again. He glanced toward the door. Or maybe not. Helen was not at top form right now.
So, where are you? He typed in the appropriate commands. The answer appeared a split second later.
The infirmary? Michael frowned. Who’d…
Michael swore again, loudly this time. He tossed down the command to shut the intruding case terminal out of the com files and ran out the door.
By the time he reached the infirmary cubicle, Angela and Philip had their briefcase packed away, and they both had the nerve to look affronted.
“What the hell were you trying to do?” Michael demanded in a hoarse whisper as he touched the control for the cubicle’s sound dampener.
“You’ve been holding out on us, Michael,” said Phil. “You’ve got this base bugged into the middle of next week, and you didn’t think you should tell us about it.”
“I showed you all security measures pertaining to the Discovery,” said Michael slowly, enunciating each word. “I gave you every authorization—”
“You’ve got a private copy of every single conversation that goes on on this base,” croaked Angela. “E-time or face-time. Wouldn’t the good citizens of Venera like to know about that? Does Grandma Helen even know?”
Of course she does; she approved the design. Michael didn’t say that. There was nothing he could say. The files existed. Gregory Schoma had created the programs and done the wiring. Michael had never needed to resort to them for any case he’d supervised, but they were there all the same. Everyone more or less expected message logs to be kept, but message texts? Usually written permission had to be obtained before private e-mail could be stored. Venera was very proud of its privacy regulations.
But what was he going to say to these two? That he didn’t approve of those copies? That he’d never used them? He’d never erased them either.
“If you’d told me what you were looking for,” said Michael, “I’d have given it to you without the hackwork.”
“Would you?” Philip lifted his eyebrows. “I want to believe you, Michael, but—”
Michael waved his hand to cut the other man off. “I’m not going to play Prove-It-To-Me with you. What do you want? If I’ve got it, I’ll give it to you.”
“Who faked the Discovery?” asked Angela.
Michael blinked. “Derek and Kevin Cusmanos. They confessed.”
Angela shook her head gently. For the first time since entering the cubicle, Michael found a moment to wonder if she was still in pain. She still had plenty of tubes and monitors taped to her bare arms.
“They didn’t do it alone. You know that, Michael,” she said. “You’re not stupid and you know the people around here much better than we do.” Her voice took on a rasp. Philip drew a glass of water from the dispenser and handed it to her. She sipped. “So who else faked the Discovery?”
Michael weighed his options. He could stall, he could lie, or he could be straight with them. He didn’t really like any of the choices. At last, he said, “I don’t know.”
“Was it Dr. Failia?”
“What?” The word jerked Michael out of his slump. Angela didn’t bat an eye; neither did Philip.
“She has complete control of Venera’s financial records,” said Phil. “The base is her whole life, and it was about to die. People around here worship her. They’d start a war if she asked them to. It would not be hard for her to funnel the necessary money down to the Cusmanos brothers so they could do the deed.”
“No,” said Michael.
“No, you know she didn’t do it, or no, you don’t want to believe she would?” Philip looked down his nose at Michael. “You’re a v-baby, aren’t you?”
Anger rushed through Michael’s veins. He clamped his jaw shut around the words that wanted to tumble out.
When he was certain he had control of his voice, he said, “There are some things Helen wouldn’t do, even for Venera.”
“Are there?” whispered Angela. “There are two dead men next door to us, Mr. Lum. Who else on this base would people kill or die for?”
They were trying to anger him, trying to get him to doubt what he knew. It was a good tactic, and they played it out like the pros they were. But a tactic was all it was, a game, a way to try to turn him against Helen and Venera. That was all.
“The Cusmanoses died of food poisoning,” lied Michael, slowly, reasonably. “We found a whole batch with the same contamination and have closed the brewery. It was bad luck.”
“It was dead convenient,” said Philip. “And you’re being deliberately obtuse.”
Michael just smiled a little. “And you two are completely objective and did not get sent up here with any agenda at all. The C.A.C. just wants what’s best for the planets. Am I right?”
“Come on, Michael.” Angela rolled her eyes. “You’re too smart for this.”
Michael nodded again. “You’re right. I am.”
He left them there and made his way back to the main corridor and joined the flow of life that swirled through Venera, all day, every day. This was his home, his place, his life. He knew its upside, and its underside. He knew what the people sheltered here would and would not do.
The yewners were used to chaos. They were used to looking for rebellion and conspiracy and greed. They weren’t used to people being happy. They didn’t understand. This was another world. His world. He would not let them turn him against it.
He would not.
After Michael stormed out, Philip got up out of his chair and closed the cubicle door. “Well,” Angela said mildly. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to kid himself for more than three days, maybe four, tops.”
Philip shook his head and returned to his seat. “Less than that. He’s good people, at bottom. He knows where his own lines are, and they’ve been crossed.”
“They’ve been erased.” Angie fell back on her pillows. “If we’re right.”
“You’ve got to be kidding? How could we be wrong?”
“We could always be wrong.” She let her head flop toward him. God, it felt good to have those earphones off. “We’ve got more simulations than direct evidence. One good lawyer, and we’re suspended for negligent harassment and God knows what else.”
“Won’t stay that way.” Phil picked a spot at the tip of her fingers that didn’t have any tubes sticking out and patted it. “I just wish we could have got to him before the Cusmanoses had to die.”
“Yeah,” Angela coughed. Phil practically jumped to hand her the water. She smiled as she took it. “Thanks.”
She drank. It tasted good. It felt good going down. The pain was almost gone. She couldn’t believe how good it felt, just to move an arm under the sheets and not have it feel like hot sandpaper. To be able to turn her neck freely, to not have every sound screaming straight through to her brain. “I wish we could have told him we know about the C.A.C. accusations. That might have pushed him over.”
“Now, now, we don’t want him to know how many of his landmines we did get around.” Phil looked at the door thoughtfully and fingered his beard. “We might be wrong about how long it takes him to come around. I want a back-up plan, just in case.”
“Let’s get to it.” Angela pushed herself up a little higher on her pillows. Work felt good. Working was easier than thinking about what was waiting outside the walls. Aliens. Living creatures, intelligent creatures right here, right next door to Mother Earth, and they’d saved her life. Saved all their lives.
And Helen Failia might have known about them for years. She might have defrauded to keep her secret. She might have killed. She was definitely in contempt of committee.
And right now this woman, this maybe-murderer, was controlling all human contact with these new people. That could not be allowed to continue.
Chapter Sixteen
“THIS IS RIDICULOUS.” VEE shoved her briefcase back on the scarab’s kitchen nook table. “Why don’t we just fly over there? We know where they are.”
“Maybe because we’ve been told to stay here?” suggested Josh.
“We haven’t been told anything lately.” Vee glanced toward the main window. The perches and the holobubble sat there in the gray twilight, unattended. Naturally, they’d been out to take a look at it all, and they had good measurements and great pictures, but they had completely failed to elicit any response out of the nobby “cortex box” at its base that functioned as translator.
“Not to mention that if we left,” Josh went on, “we wouldn’t be able to talk to any of the People we met.” He waved his hand at the plans for the modified survey drone they had been hashing out on the briefcase screen. “This is a long way from finished.”
Vee and Josh were working up simulations for a mobile communications drone which used parts scavenged from survey drones and his lab. The problem was, of course, that while the drones had all kinds of recording equipment attached to them, they had zilch in the way of projection equipment.
Vee found herself wishing she could talk to Derek Cusmanos. He’d done such a job on the laser in the Discovery, they could use him now. She shook her head, a little sad, a little angry, a little confused. First he’d blown his talents on a fraud, then he got caught, then he went and died from a bad batch of yeast.
How did you even start to deal with something like that? Especially when you were the one who helped catch him in the first place? Guilt, cold and unfamiliar, took hold, and she set it aside with difficulty.
“We don’t need to talk to them; we just need to let them know we’re still here.” Vee chewed her lip thoughtfully. “T’sha said they have politics. Maybe the local bureaucracy is having a hard time deciding on a replacement for her. If we showed ourselves, it might be a motivator.”
“It might be seen as a sign of aggression. We really don’t know that much about them, Vee.” Josh was trying to be reasonable. He was even succeeding, but Vee wasn’t in the mood for reason right now.
“We know a little. We know they’re ready to talk.” She pressed her fingertips against the tabletop. “We know they have a hierarchical social infrastructur
e, and we know they really want to settle this planet because their own is in trouble.” She met his gaze. “Personally, I think it’d be a bad idea for all concerned to let them talk too much about that in private.”
Josh watched her thoughtfully for a long moment. “Plus, you’re bored, right?”
She smiled her patented number-fourteen vapid smile. “You know me so well.”
“Mmmph,” snorted Josh, exaggeratedly unimpressed. “Unfortunately, I’m not the one you have to convince. Adrian!” he called up the corridor to the pilot’s compartment. “You hearing any of this?”
“I’m trying not to,” Adrian called back.
“All I’m suggesting”—Vee stepped into the aisle where she could see Josh at the table and Adrian crouched in front of the pilot’s chair, checking the inventory in one of the storage cupboards—“is that we fly in, showing that we are in fact still here, and come back. It’s just to start things up again.” God knew they weren’t having any luck appealing to Venera. Supposedly Helen was talking to the C.A.C. today, but no one upstairs seemed to be willing to tell them how that was going, if it had happened yet. That, even more than the empty perches outside, was making Vee nervous.
“Look,” Adrian straightened up. “I’m not sure I want things to start up again, all right? I’m even less sure I want to have to explain to the governing board that I helped start them.”
“Dr. Failia’s last orders to us were keep them talking,” Vee pointed out. “We’re currently failing in that assignment.”
From his face, Vee could tell she’d scored a hit. “I don’t think going into their camp was part of what she had in mind,” said Adrian.
“Keep them talking,” repeated Vee. “Which we currently are not doing.” She folded her arms. “If the U.N. wants to know what our current status is, what are we going to tell them?”
Adrian’s shoulders sagged. He looked past Vee to Josh. Josh shrugged. “I almost hate to say this, but she’s right. If we have to give an update, it’s going to be lean.”
Adrian turned away and carefully slotted his inventory roll into its rack. When he faced them again, his expression was grim. He was remembering the crash, Vee was sure. He was remembering the aliens carrying away the body of copilot Bailey Heathe. They still didn’t know why. Vee had been reluctant to ask the question. Okay, Vee had been afraid to ask the question. She wanted the aliens to be…good people, understandable people. She’d been unwilling to compromise the image she was building in her mind.