She stood in near darkness, cut by a single dusty beam of sunlight stabbing through a storm shutter. As she looked around Li understood the odd curvature of the alley outside. The house was built onto the outside skin of one of the old life-support pods; this room’s three newer walls were native mud brick, but the back wall, the only original one, was a curved gleaming expanse of ceramic compound. An airlock yawned in the center of the old wall, but its control panel had been ripped open and hot-wired long ago. The irising virusteel door panels were permanently stuck at a two-thirds-open position, and someone had hung a blanket over the gap, blocking off Li’s view of the geodesic dome that must lie behind.
In front of the dead airlock stood a swaybacked table piled with pads and datacubes. A wiry, weathered man sat behind the table: Daahl, the shift foreman Li had met on her first mine visit.
“Well,” Daahl said, looking straight at Li. “You get curiouser and curiouser.”
“You too.” Li sat down on the stool across from Daahl’s and leafed through the papers and fiches that littered the table. She saw pit regulations, UNMSC section headings, General Assembly minutes, court papers. “You some kind of pit lawyer, Daahl?”
“You could say that. Care for a beer?”
“Thanks.” She took out her cigarettes. “May I?”
Daahl called into the front room for the beer, then took the cigarette she offered. As she leaned across the table to light it, he grabbed her wrist and turned her hand palm up to look at the faint lines of the wires. “They say you’re a hero, Katie. Pretty good for a pit girl. Tell me, was it worth it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
They smoked in silence. Someone opened the door, set three beers on the table, and came around the table to sit beside Daahl. As he sat down, the lamp on the table shone full in his face, and Li recognized the young labor rep from the news spin that Haas had gotten so hot under the collar about. “What is this?” she asked. “Interrogation by committee?”
“This is Leo Ramirez, the IWW rep in town. He’s just going to sit in on our talk. If you don’t object, that is.”
“Sure, what do I care? Invite the Trotskyites. Hang up a picture of Antonio fucking Gramsci.”
Ramirez grinned, dark eyes sparkling in his handsome face. “I didn’t think you people were allowed to know who Gramsci was.”
“‘You people’?” Li muttered under her breath and rolled her eyes.
Daahl just smiled and kept smoking.
When he had finished precisely half of the cigarette Li had given him, he pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, put out the half-smoked butt, wrapped it carefully in the handkerchief, and tucked it back into his pocket.
This operation took Daahl’s full attention for a good quarter of a minute, and when he finally spoke his voice was as steady as if they were discussing the weather. “Why did you make Haas drain the glory hole?”
Li shrugged. “I thought he was hiding something about the fire. I wanted to get to the bottom of it before he sent anyone else down.”
“That’s altruistic of you,” Ramirez said.
“Oh, sure. I’m a real hero.”
“Why did the Secretariat really send you?” Daahl asked.
Li took a sip of her beer, stalling, and winced as the liquid hit the raw nerve where her tooth had been. “To fill in for Voyt and handle the accident follow-up. If there was another reason, they didn’t let me in on it. And anyway, I thought the idea here was that you were going to tell me something.”
“We’ll get there. But first I want some answers.”
“I may not have the answers you want, Daahl.”
“Of course you do. You just haven’t thought about it enough to realize you have them. So. Why did the UN send you?”
Li shrugged. “Sharifi was famous. When someone like her dies, people want to see heads roll. I’m the axe man.”
Ramirez stifled a laugh. Daahl just kept watching her with his pale sharp eyes. “If someone—let’s say a friend of ours—were to possess information that helped you do that job, what would you be willing to give for it?”
“If you mean am I prepared to buy information from you, the answer is no.”
“Not buy.” Daahl stood and walked across the room to the single small window. The shutter cast bars of rain-green light across his face and lit up his thinning hair like a halo. “Money would be simple compared to what we want. And we’d have to know you were the right person to do business with. We’d have to have… assurances.”
Ramirez seemed to have dropped out of the conversation, and when Li glanced over at him he was leaning forward on his stool staring at the two of them like a rat blinded by a miner’s lamp. He might know the geography down here, she realized, but in this room he was the odd man out. This was miners’ territory, soldiers’ territory. Blood-bargaining territory.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re charging,” she told Daahl. “Then I’ll know if I can pay it.”
“Two things. First, if what you find out about the fire explains anyone else’s death besides Sharifi’s, we want to know about it.”
“You want me to pass information on an ongoing investigation to you? I could lose my job for that.”
“We don’t necessarily need the information ourselves,” Daahl said. “We just need it made public.”
“You mean included in the investigation report?”
“Included in anything that’s public record. We can figure out how to use it from there. Right, Leo?”
Ramirez nodded. “We really just need you to bring the accident reports up to date.”
“AMC’s accident reports? I can’t believe you have to go to me under the table to get that,” Li said.
Daahl raised his eyebrows. “Then you’ve obviously forgotten even more than that chop shop doc said you would.”
Li pushed her beer around the table, turning it in precise right angles, leaving a square of condensation on the cracked tabletop. “So basically,” she said, “you’re just asking me to do my job. An open investigation on Sharifi’s death. And these accident reports. Which are public information anyway, right?”
“Yes. As far as the deaths go.”
“Ah. What else do you want?”
Daahl bit his lower lip, glanced toward the window again. “We want Sharifi’s dataset.”
Li choked on her beer and slammed it back onto the table, spilling it. “She was doing defense R D, Daahl. That’s covered by the Espionage and Sedition Act. People get shot for breaking that law. And getting shot isn’t on my to-do list this year.”
“Some things are worth breaking the law for, Katie.”
“To you, maybe.”
“It’s not only miners AMC’s killing. There’s something happening in the mine. In all the mines. Look at the production records. Look at the ratio of man-hours to live condensate pulled out. We’re striking less and less live crystal down there. The bootleggers have been saying it for years. Now even some of the company miners are saying it. And Sharifi said it, before she died. She looked me in the face and said it straight out. The Anaconda’s dying. All the condensate on Compson’s World is dying.”
“Oh, come on, Daahl. The Security Council—”
“They know,” Daahl said, and gave her a moment to digest that fact. “Why do you think they’re spending so much in synthetic crystal R D? And look at the multiplanetaries, stripping out crystal just as fast as they can before the end hits. We’ve been saying it for years, pushing them to do something. But we can’t prove it. Sharifi proved it—proved it to herself anyway—and her dataset could give us the traction we need to turn this around.”
“That’s crazy,” Li said. “Condensates don’t die. They break. How can a whole planetful of them be breaking at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” Daahl said. “But Sharifi did.”
None of them said anything for a minute.
“I’ll bring the accident reports up to date,” Li said. “That’
s only fair. It’s my job. But the other thing…”
“The accident reports will be enough for now,” Daahl said. “Just think about the rest.”
“All right,” Li said. “Where do we go from here, then?”
Daahl reached into the depths of one of the piles on the table and pulled out a battered fiche. “Read this.”
The fiche held two dozen separate documents, and it took Li a good ten minutes to be sure she understood them. As she read, she realized she was looking at AMC corporate records: weigh-station logs, pay chits, production records from the on-station processing plant. Slowly a pattern emerged.
“Someone’s cooking the books,” she said. “Someone’s giving one set of numbers to the miners and another set to AMC headquarters. And they’re skimming communications-grade crystal somewhere in between.” She looked up at Daahl. “Who?”
“You tell me.”
Li frowned and tabbed through the records again. “It could be almost anyone,” she said at last. “The pit boss. Someone in the breakerhouse. Or at the mass drivers. Someone in the on-station processor or loading bays. All they’d need is a few people willing to look the other way at the right moment. That and a few friends at key points along the line.”
“Those kinds of friends have to be paid,” Daahl pointed out.
“You saying you know who the bagman is?”
“Look at the pithead logs.”
She looked. And saw one name popping up again and again. Daahl’s name. All the fiddled shipments had gone out when he was the on-shift pit boss. And he had signed off on every one of them.
“Why are you showing me this?” she asked.
“Because Sharifi died over it. Two days before the fire I heard her and Voyt talking. Fighting. She told Voyt she was onto him, threatened to go to Haas. And over Haas’s head to the Service brass if necessary. She was throwing big names around. Five-star names.”
“General Nguyen?”
Daahl nodded.
“And what did Voyt say?”
“Not much. I think she took him by surprise. And Voyt wasn’t the type to argue to your face about something when he could get what he wanted by sticking a knife in your back.”
Li picked up her forgotten beer and took a gulp of it. It was grass-bitter and warm as blood, and it reminded her of things she couldn’t afford to think about now. “So you think Sharifi threatened to go to Haas, and Voyt killed her? And that the fire was… what, a cover-up? Do you have any proof of this at all?”
Daahl shrugged. “That’s your job.”
Li looked back over the figures. “Voyt couldn’t have done this himself. Who was running him?”
“Someone. Everyone who ever got within smelling distance knows that much. But as to who… that’s your problem.”
“And what was this someone having Voyt pay you?”
“Nothing. He just told me to sign off on the pithead logs and keep my mouth shut.” Daahl smiled. “He offered what you might call negative incentives. Besides, I would have done it anyway. There are good reasons for me to have dirt on Security personnel.”
“I can imagine,” Li said. She probed the hole where her tooth had been and thought about the dirt Daahl already had on her.
“I put these numbers together because I knew perfectly well where they’d put the blame if they ever got caught.” He shrugged his bony shoulders. “Crooked pit boss. Oldest story in the business. Anyway, I wanted to have enough information so I could roll over on Voyt if I had to. And make it stick.”
“Very sensible,” Li said. “But why tell me? And don’t say it’s all just about the miners. Union officials don’t lose any more sleep over dead miners than politicians lose over dead soldiers.”
Daahl glanced out the window. His eyes looked ice-pale in the faint beam of daylight. Sheepdog’s eyes. Wolf eyes.
“Sharifi’s death came at an awkward time,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if he were trying to relay a very complicated message over an unreliable channel. “We want to make sure there’s no ongoing UN presence in the mine. If that means helping you wrap up this investigation and leave, we’ll help. Also for you personally… it would be good not to be here too much longer. No more than”—he glanced over at Ramirez—“two weeks?”
“At most,” Ramirez said.
Li caught her breath, looked back and forth between the two men. “You crazy bastards,” she said. “You’re planning a lockdown. You think the Secretariat’s going to stand back and let you shut down their best Bose-Einstein source? They’ll crucify you!”
“What’s the UN going to throw at us that’s any worse than what the miners face when they go to work every day?” Ramirez asked. “Besides, it’s not your problem. Unless you’re telling us you want to make it your problem.”
“Oh no. That’s your fight. I’m not that crazy.”
“Then I suggest you wrap this investigation up and get off Compson’s at your earliest possible convenience.”
Li looked back and forth between the two men, took a last sip of beer, and pushed the glass away from her. “So where does that leave us?” she asked Daahl.
“With a deal,” he answered. “And make sure you keep it. I wouldn’t like to see something unpleasant happen to you.”
Ramirez flexed his long legs and his stool slid backwards, squeaking across the bare floor panels. “Do you know what a coffin notice is, Major?”
“Don’t threaten me, Leo. I know a hell of a lot more about them than you do. And I don’t plan on getting shot down in the street like a dog. Not by the Molly Maguires, and certainly not by some snot-nosed rich kid playing at coalfield politics.”
Daahl laughed suddenly. “You haven’t changed a bit, Katie. You must scare the hell out of humans.”
He pulled a fiche off the desk and bent over it. Ramirez got up and slipped back through the airlock, pulling the blanket behind him. Li started toward the front door, but before she made it Daahl came around the table and laid a hand on her arm.
“Katie,” he said, speaking quietly enough so Ramirez couldn’t hear him. “If you need anything, ask me. I’m not making any promises but… Brian will know where to find me. Understood?”
Li nodded and stepped into the front room.
McCuen was still at the table. He had the boy on his lap, and he was twisting a piece of colored string between his fingers, showing him how to make a Jacob’s ladder. The woman bent over the fire stirring something. She didn’t look up when Li and McCuen left.
A few steps down the alley Li stopped.
“Wait here,” she said.
Daahl answered the door. When he saw Li, he stood aside silently to let her enter. The woman and child were gone. Someone had banked the coal fire so that the room was dark and already cooling. Daahl closed the door behind him and leaned against it with his hand still on the latch. “Yes?” he said.
“Mirce Perkins,” Li said. “Where is she?”
“Is that wise?” Daahl asked quietly.
“Just tell me.”
“Why?”
“I want to see her.”
“No you don’t,” Daahl said. There was an edge in his voice. Distrust? Anger? “You don’t belong here anymore. Just do your job and leave. Whatever you think you remember, forget it. It’s what she wanted. It’s what your father wanted. You owe it to them.”
Li didn’t answer. After a moment Daahl opened the door and she walked past him into the watery sunlight.
* * *
Half an hour later, she and McCuen were back on the station shuttle. She gave him a carefully sanitized version of her talk with Daahl—a version that didn’t include the threatened lockdown or Daahl’s final words to her.
“So,” he said when she’d told him as much as she was going to. “Voyt’s fiddling the books. Sharifi finds out, threatens to tell Haas, Voyt kills her. Pretty tidy.”
“Too tidy. First, nothing says Voyt actually killed her. There’s about fifteen people strung out along the pipeline
that Voyt could simply have been playing bagman for, and they all had as much motive as he did. Second, what or who killed Voyt? Third, what was Bella doing down there and who moved the bodies after she saw them? Fourth, what the hell caused that fire in the first place?”
“Still…” McCuen said, pushing at the Voyt angle as single-mindedly as a bloodhound baying on a hot track.
“Yeah,” Li said. “Still.”
AMC Station: 20.10.48.
“What a pit!” Cohen said, peering around Li’s quarters with a shocked expression.
Today’s face was a thirtysomething Italian actress who was just starting to get talking roles in the kind of clever independent studio interactives Cohen was always trying to drag Li to. She was so astonishingly, exotically beautiful that Li couldn’t be around her without stuttering and tripping all over herself—even when she wasn’t standing in Li’s narrow quarters sparkling like a diamond in a mud puddle.
Of course, only part of the sparkle had anything to do with either the ’face or Cohen. The rest was the packet compression needed to accommodate the encryption protocols Cohen had insisted on using for this streamspace-realspace visit. It left him looking bright, hard-edged, slightly more in focus than everything else in the small room. And Li didn’t even want to think about the credit he must be blowing at the private-sector entanglement banks.
He opened the closet, flicked at the spare uniforms hanging there, and sniffed dramatically. “You mean to tell me you actually live here?”
“No,” Li said, rummaging in the piles of fiche on her desk, looking for Daahl’s production figures. “It’s the next hot vacation spot. Just making it safe for the free world.”
He circled the room, tilting Chiara’s exquisite head as if he harbored some vain hope that the room would look better from a different angle. He turned to her, forehead wrinkled with earnest dismay. “Really, Catherine. I don’t think the Corps appreciates you properly.”
“They appreciate me enough to keep the paychecks coming. In the real world—a place I’m aware you don’t visit often—that’s pretty much as good as it gets.”
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