by M. D. Cooper
Just before she reached the ocean, she saw that the others were floating sideways out of the stream of water to a rock ledge. Isa moved in the same direction and joined Martin and the rest of the group, perched on the flat rocks.
Martin was removing his pack and stripping off his clothes. “Coming for a swim, Isa?” He clearly couldn’t wait any longer.
“Okay,” she replied. “Give me a minute.”
“We’ll join you,” Rahmin said.
Martin put his stuff in a pile and positioned himself at the rock edge. He lifted onto his tiptoes, jumped, and executed a perfect swan dive. Isa watched as he entered the waves, making barely a ripple. She waited for him to break the surface before jumping in and making somewhat more of a splash. The water was cold but not unbearably so. As soon as she surfaced, she swam over to Martin, who was treading water.
“You know,” he said. “I love my seeding site, but this place is beautiful. Just beautiful.”
As she looked at the green and grey of the tall rock cliffs, the delicate waterfalls, and the aquamarine ocean, Isa couldn’t help but agree.
* * * * *
The day at the fjords with Martin and the Tyrians was a fantastic diversion—so much so, that Isa forgot to mention to the Tyrians that she was going to see Tony that evening.
He was scheduled to arrive on the daily flight from Carthage after agreeing to talk further with her about about Tyre’s attractions. It was coming in late, so Martin had returned to the hotel to relax while Isa waited at the spaceport.
She could have created a holo that would make it look like she and the planetary engineer were at an exciting location for the interview, and it would have looked entirely authentic, but that felt like she’d be cheating the viewers. Besides, she knew that actually being on Tyre would spark a natural enthusiasm in Tony’s expression and tone that she’d want to capture. He hadn’t minded at all when she’d made the request, only saying that he was glad of the excuse to visit his favorite planet.
While she awaited his arrival at Ushu’s air and spaceport, she considered possible locations where they could record the interview. Perhaps they could go to the peak of one of the lower mountains, or somewhere even more spectacular. Her only problem was that there were so many places to choose from.
Should I take him to the fjords?
Despite her reservations about Samuel, Rahmin, and Ada, the day had been magical. Compared to the solid, artificial structure of the air and spaceport, her memory of the fjords seemed almost unreal. But then again, so had the chute at Mount Athos, the golden cavern, the crystal caves, and everywhere else she’d been. It was like living in a fairy tale.
She spotted the curly-haired engineer coming out of arrivals, and caught his attention with a wave.
“I appreciate you coming all this way,” she said when Tony had walked over to her.
“No problem,” he replied. “I was due to pay a visit in a couple of weeks. I just brought my plans forward. How have you been getting along? You look as though you’re enjoying your stay.”
“Do I?” Isa asked. “I guess it must show. I think Tyre is amazing, and I’m dying to tell everyone about it.”
“I’m glad to hear that. While it might be nice for Tyrians to have this place all to themselves, it isn’t really fair to keep the secret from the other New Canaanites.”
“That’s right,” Isa replied. “There’s plenty here for everyone. By the way, I met your friend Samuel. He’s been showing me around, along with some of his friends.”
“Excuse me?”
“Samuel. And he introduced me to two more Tyrians, Ada and Rahmin.” When Tony continued to look blank, Isa said, “You probably heard about my cave rescue?”
“I did, but I also heard that you were okay. I was glad nothing serious happened.”
“Thanks. The only damage was to my pride,” said Isa ruefully. “Anyway, a man named Samuel came up to me as I was leaving the hospital, and told me that he knew you. He said he’d heard what I was doing on Tyre and he wanted to help. He said you’d suggested that he could be my informal guide.”
“There must have been a miscommunication somewhere,” said Tony as his brow lowered. “I don’t know anyone named Samuel.”
DISCERNMENT
STELLAR DATE: 03.20.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Government Center, Ushu
REGION: Tyre, New Canaan System
Tony had invited Isa to his office in the modest government building in Ushu. The place was dark and quiet. All the staff had gone home for the evening except for a single security guard manning the front desk.
Tony showed Isa into his room, which was sparsely furnished with only a couple of chairs and a desk that held a built-in holo display. He motioned to Isa to sit down.
On the way over, they hadn’t spoken at all about the Tyrians who had befriended her. Isa’s suspicions about them had been on the wane. None of them had done anything that she considered strange since the argument she’d walked in on at the restaurant. She’d told herself the spat could have been about anything, and that the three friends undoubtedly had private business between themselves that they didn’t want to share with new acquaintances, so it wasn’t hard to explain their sudden change in attitude when they saw her returning from the restroom.
But that was before Tony had said he didn’t know anyone named Samuel. Now she had another reason to suspect their motives. Why would Samuel lie about something so trivial?
“I’m not sure what to make of all this,” the planetary engineer said, “but I am concerned. It sounds like someone’s used my name as a way to manipulate you, which is odd. I mean, it isn’t like you’re working on anything politically sensitive or even significant.”
Isa raised her eyebrows.
“Important though your project is,” Tony hastily added.
“I’m just kidding,” said Isa.
“On the other hand,” said Tony, “what this person, Samuel, has done isn’t exactly a crime. I think we need to find out who he and his friends are. Then maybe we can figure out why they’ve done what they did and what they might want.”
“Okay,” Isa replied, “if you say so. Though I don’t plan on having any more to do with them now. It’s giving me the creeps just thinking about them.” Her years spent mining asteroids, when everyone relied on others for their safety, had given her a healthy disrespect for people who demonstrated they couldn’t be trusted.
“Do you know their surnames?” Tony asked.
“No, they only used the most basic Link presence, and it only revealed given names—or they just don’t have last names.”
“Do you have any images of them? I guess it’s possible that I do know this man Samuel after all, and I’ve just forgotten. Not that it would excuse the lie about me asking them to show you around Tyre.”
Isa wished she had augmented vision like Erin and could record everything she saw. However, she did have the recordings for the infomentary and searched through them for her friends. She realized that her offhand comment to Martin earlier that the three Tyrians’ seemed reluctant to appear in her shots hadn’t been hyperbole. They’d somehow successfully managed to avoid appearing in any recording she’d made. She almost felt like contacting Martin to check that Samuel, Ada, and Rahmin did actually exist.
“I don’t have a single image of any of them,” she told Tony, “but I can describe them to you.”
“You said they met you outside the hospital, didn’t you?” he asked.
“That’s right. That was where Samuel approached me.”
“Let me see if any security scanners cover the area.” Tony spent a moment searching, then shook his head. “No luck there. Okay, we’ll go ahead with your descriptions. Wait a moment.” He paused for a moment, his eyes ticking up to the left in his Link-tell.
Isa had spent several days with the three Tyrians, so it wasn’t hard for her to recall what they looked like. Isa described Samuel, Rahmin, and Ada to the AI. Then she and Tony waited while Onyx searched her data on the settlers.
Onyx replied a few seconds later.
He activated his holo display.
“Rahmin Butler,” he said as a holo of a man appeared above his desk.
Isa didn’t need to take more than a cursory look at the spinning figure of a very tall, well-muscled man with shaggy, light brown hair down to his shoulders.
“That’s him.”
“Ada Grey.” Tony switched the holo for one of a red-haired woman dressed in a boiler suit.
Isa gave a short nod. “That’s Ada.”
“And Samuel Jefferson.”
Samuel’s familiar figure replaced Ada’s.
The dark-skinned holo figure didn’t take more than a turn before Isa said, “Right again.”
He altered the holo display to show all three holos in a line before studying them carefully.
Finally, he said, “I don’t recognize any of these people. As far as I know, I’ve never seen any of them before.”
Isa recalled all the time she’d spent with the Tyrians, feeling slightly nauseated. She also felt duped.
“And yet,” Tony went on, “I don’t think they intend anything sinister.”
“How can you know?” asked Isa.
“For one thing, they used their real names. If they had something illegal or subversive in mind, I would have thought they would give false names, wouldn’t you? Onyx found them in a flash.”
Isa didn’t answer. He had a point, but something else had sprung to mind that puzzled her. “Samuel told me he makes wine, Ada’s a sanitation engineer, and Rahmin designs servitors. Are those facts true too?”
Tony looked up the information. “Yes. They weren’t lying. That is what they do.”
“That’s a strange collection of professions for a set of friends.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t understand what the connection is,” said Isa. “I mean, I have friends in Placement Services in Landfall because that’s where I worked when I came out of stasis. When I was a miner I knew other miners. What might have brought a vintner, an engineer, and a robotics expert together? They don’t seem to be in a romantic relationship.”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Tony said, “but don’t forget that with a low population, society is small and close-knit. There’s a lot more mixing of groups here compared to Carthage.”
“Okay,” said Isa, momentarily stumped. Then she said, “How do you think they knew what I was doing here?”
“Ah, now that’s easily answered,” Tony replied. “There was a news report that plans were under way to entice more settlers to Tyre, including the arrival of the settler placement specialist, Isa Chen, who would be filming of an infomentary on the planet’s most spectacular attractions.”
“Ugh, of course,” Isa said. “And then they would have seen the report on a person rescued from a cave and made an educated guess as to who it might be.” She recalled Samuel asking her name when she left the hospital, and Martin had told her that he found out about her accident from Eamon, who had seen a vid of her rescue on the Tyre daily news reports. “So now we know how these three oddballs could spot me.”
“It’s all slotting into place,” Tony said.
“But I still don’t understand…. Why did Samuel lie and tell me he knew you? Why didn’t he and the others just introduce themselves and offer to show me around?”
“If he hadn’t told you he was my friend, would you have accepted his invitation?”
“Now that you mention it, probably not. I was having a good time exploring Tyre by myself, despite my accident. It was only because of Samuel’s supposed connection with you that I took him up on his offer. Actually, there’s something else you don’t know.”
Isa told him about the heated conversation she’d interrupted at the restaurant, and Tony steepled his fingers as he mulled over the facts. While she waited for his response, she looked out the office window over sleepy Ushu. Its streetlights stretched to Mount Athos, which was now a gigantic black shadow hanging over the city’s outskirts.
“Well,” Tony said finally, “I wonder if that argument they were having was about Samuel’s lie? Maybe he’d told them what he’d said and was asking them to back him up, and the other two were telling him he shouldn’t have done it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Isa said. “It happened soon after they met me, so it fits. The others weren’t there when Samuel told me you and he were friends. They came over afterward.”
Tony eased back in his chair and chuckled. “My first instinct is to call this Samuel out. It would be funny to see his face when I walk up to him with you and make it plain that I have no idea who he is. But that seems a bit cruel. I think it’s because his lie was so easily revealed. It was only a fib he told because he really wanted you to agree to his suggestion. He’s just a Tyrian who’s a bit too enthusiastic about selling Tyre to new settlers.”
“I guess so,” said Isa. She was still annoyed at Samuel, but Tony’s explanation did seem the only one possible. “But I won’t be comfortable hanging out with him and his friends any longer. I’ll make excuses so I don’t have to see them anymore. It’s a shame, because they took me to some beautiful places that aren’t even mentioned in the official guide. Tomorrow won’t be a problem. I’ll tell Samuel that I’m meeting you to do an interview, and he’ll stay well away. Then after that… I don’t know yet, but I’ll think of something. I was planning on leaving Ushu soon anyway.”
“Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” Tony asked. “Samuel sounds like a bit of a fool, but I’m sure he and the others are harmless.”
“They probably are, but I don’t like being around people who aren’t straight with me.”
In other circumstances, Isa might have overlooked the deceit, but it wore on nerves already frayed from the nightly dreams of being left behind on Sirius while the other Noctus made their escape.
She rubbed her eyes, hoping that with Martin present she’d finally manage a good night’s sleep.
A TRIP
STELLAR DATE: 03.21.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Erin’s Apartment, Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, New Canaan System
After the attack, Tanis had insisted that Erin accept full-time protection.
She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being accompanied wherever she went, but Erin had to admit that Tanis had a point. Until Max Rasner had been found and the investigation was concluded, her life was at risk. Perhaps even afterward, too, if her suspicion that it hadn’t been Max who’d attacked her was correc
t. Although murdering someone on New Canaan would be hard, it wasn’t impossible, as she’d discovered.
Erin was also well aware that there was no way the governor would take no for an answer, so she hadn’t bothered to protest.
While she waited in her apartment for the guards to arrive, she reread the message from Martin.
Erin said the words as much for herself as for Walter. She was worried about Isa, but she knew that no one would care for her better than Martin.