Coming of Age

by Timothy Zahn

  A moment later Lisa was high overhead, streaking toward Barona’s northern power station and trying to make some sense out of the jumble of emotions chasing each other through her mind. It was a relief, of course, to have her worst fears proved wrong … and yet, at the same time, the real reason for Daryl’s behavior had her so mad she could hardly see straight. How dare he treat her like some pestering kid and then sneak off to be with some stupid teen woman? He was acting just like one of those preteens who belonged to secret clubs and wouldn’t say anything about them to outsiders. He could simply have told her he had a date—she would have understood. It was the way he’d dumped her that was so infuriating.

  Wasn’t it?

  Even with the cool wind whipping past, she felt the rush of heat that rose to her face. She had absolutely no interest in Daryl as anything except a teacher—none at all. Was it her pride that had been bruised so badly, the fact that Daryl’s interest could switch so easily to someone else? Because she wasn’t jealous. Really. Wasn’t.

  Abruptly, she reached up her sweater and angrily ripped the tissues out of her bra, flinging them as far as she could away from her. No more pretending to be something she wasn’t for anyone.

  She’d planned on spending at least half an hour going over parts of the new book with Daryl and was consequently some forty-five minutes early for her shift at the power-station. For a moment she considered waiting outside, but there really weren’t any places nearby that had both the privacy and light she needed to read. Leaving her book on the power station roof near one of the skylights, she went inside.

  The adult supervisor didn’t seem surprised to see her so soon. “Lisa Duncan,” he nodded, marking something on his clipboard. “You’re sure racking up the extra points these days. This is, what, the fourth time in as many weeks you’ve signed for nighttime power duty? You must be planning to go into science or medicine or something.”

  “Extra points are nice to have,” she said noncommittally. “Should I go ahead and start now or wait until I’m supposed to?”

  “Whichever.” The man peered through the square of glass set into one of the office’s doors. “Charl’s doing okay, I think, but he’d probably appreciate a little help. If you start now you get to quit early, too.”

  “Okay.” Nodding to him, Lisa teeked open the door and walked into the big room.

  The north power station, the newest of Barona’s three, had been built with each of its four flywheels in a separate room, which was the reason Lisa had signed specifically to work here. Charl, a preteen from a different hive, was slouched in a chair near the flywheel’s side, gazing at the spinning wheel with an unblinking expression that was both tired and somewhat resentful. Lisa knew his type instantly: he’d probably fooled around most of his life, losing points for disobedience and never volunteering for the extra work that could make them up. Now, with Transition bearing down on him, he was trying desperately to make up for lost time. Teeking over a chair for herself, she sat down a few meters away from him and got to work.

  He left an hour later, never having acknowledged Lisa’s presence by so much as a glance. That was fine with her; still smarting from the whole thing with Daryl, she wasn’t much in the mood for conversation.

  One of the technicians on duty came in a few minutes later to check some readings, followed almost immediately by the supervisor, who was checking something else. Lisa waited until they were gone, and then, still watching the flywheel, flew up to the ceiling skylight and opened it. Reaching out, she picked up her book and dropped back to her chair, glancing once at the office door to make sure she hadn’t been seen. The Story of Our Trip to Tigris, the book’s cover said. Settling back into her seat, Lisa opened it and held it out at nearly arm’s length, an awkward position for reading but the only one she’d found that also let her see the flywheel well enough to continue teeking it. The need to keep some of her attention on her work cut her reading speed considerably and made it necessary to put off all writing exercises until later, but she didn’t mind. There were very few jobs where she had the necessary privacy to do any reading at all, and fewer still where she could earn extra points at the same time. And those points were becoming increasingly important to her as even the very simple books Daryl had given her hinted at facts and ideas which she had never before heard of. There were a lot of unknowns out there, she was beginning to realize, and the more schooling she could get the better would be her chances of learning about them.

  And so she sat and read, learning for the first time how the huge flying ships had first brought people to the world. So completely did the book and flywheel hold her attention that she never even noticed the technician who got three steps into the room before seeing her and beating a silent retreat … nor the supervisor who stood at the window for several minutes afterward with a grim expression on his face.

  Through the gauze curtain surrounding the two chairs, the tabernacle’s candles were blurry globes of light, flickering like uneasy spirits with every passing breeze. The effect always reminded Omega of a particularly gruesome horror story he’d been frightened by back when he was a kid, one reason he generally didn’t take confessions at night. But any rule had its exceptions.

  “Speak, young Heir of Truth,” he nodded at the shadowy figure across from him.

  Weylin Ellery was still a little breathless from his sixty-kilometer flight south—though teeking didn’t require any real muscular effort, it wasn’t easy to breathe with the air hitting your face at eighty kilometers an hour. “O Prophet, I bring news of Detective First Tirrell and his investigation.” He paused for a deep breath. “He’s been trying to find people who knew Colin Brimmer’s mother, and today he told us he thinks Matthew Jarvis might have kidnapped him.”

  Omega frowned in the darkness. “Doctor Matthew Jarvis? The endocrinologist?”

  “I guess so. He’s a scientist, anyway, at the university.

  “Did Tirrell give any reason for this suspicion?”

  “Nothing that Hob—Hob Paxton—thought was any good. Jarvis’s lab books show he wasn’t working the days Tirrell says the kidnapper was in Ridge Harbor, and he’s also out in the woods somewhere on vacation. Tirrell wanted to try and find him—some trick with his radiophone—but Hob told him the department wouldn’t let him.”

  Omega was silent a moment. “Has Detective Paxton questioned you at all about why you asked him if you could be Tirrell’s liaison?”

  “No, sir. He swallowed the story about me wanting the chance to work with someone from the seaside. He’s not too smart, sometimes.”

  Omega nodded, thinking hard. Could it be that Paxton had swallowed that line but that Tirrell hadn’t? In that case this whole thing with Jarvis might be nothing but a decoy designed to lull him. Omega, into a false sense of security. But, no, that was too subtle even for Tirrell. And anyway, why drag a name as big as Jarvis’s into it?—besides which, Omega’s information indicated that the few police departments who’d even heard of the Heirs of Truth thought it was just another of the secret clubs that grew like weeds among preteens. No, Tirrell couldn’t be gunning for him … and that made Weylin’s story even more intriguing, because whatever else was said about Tirrell, no one had ever accused him of having bad instincts. If Tirrell thought Jarvis was involved, he probably was. Which led immediately to the question, Why? “Did Tirrell mention a motive Jarvis might have had?” he asked the righthand.

  “Not to us, sir. I think he was mad at Hob for not letting him do the radiophone trick.”

  “You have done well to tell me this,” Omega said. It was time to bring the confession to an end; he’d gotten about all he could out of Weylin for the moment and the preteen had to get back to his hive before lights-out. “Strive to bring peace between Hob and Tirrell, so that you can learn more about what Tirrell is doing. Remember that the man who has Colin, whether scientist or not, is evil; and those of us who serve the Truth must free the boy from his grasp.”

  A few minutes later he
watched from the entrance to the tabernacle as Weylin rose swiftly into the night sky and disappeared among the stars. For a moment he lingered, his eyes picking out the constellations as he thought about this new twist. Was there, then, no fagin involved at all?—or was Jarvis simply acting as agent for someone else? That was a particularly intriguing thought, one that might make it worth reopening communications with some of his old friends. If someone had found a way to bribe, threaten, or blackmail leading citizens that effectively, the technique might be worth learning.

  No. Better to wait a while, at least until Weylin could pump Tirrell for a little more information. After all, he had a good thing going here already, and it would be foolish to risk someone else’s muscling in on him.

  Smiling in the direction of the temple site, Omega glanced once more at the stars and went back inside.

  Chapter 11

  “… THE FOURTH … THE FIFTH … and the seventh,” Cam Mbar said, closing the last of the eight lab books and settling back with a quiet sigh that somehow expressed just how wasteful of time she considered this. “Dr. Jarvis left on the seventh, so there are no more entries,” she added.

  Tirrell nodded as he finished making little triangles around the dates she’d read off. “That’s all the lab books you have?”

  “Weren’t they enough?” she asked dryly. “I could go get last year’s, if you’d like.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Tirrell said, looking over his calendar with growing interest. It had been a long-shot hunch all the way, but it had paid off. “And you confirm he’s been here every weekday since the beginning of the year?”

  “Every one of them—and most of the days last year, too,” she confirmed tiredly. “If you’re about to suggest he doesn’t deserve such a long vacation—”

  “Nothing of the sort,” Tirrell assured her. “You might be interested in taking a look at this, though.” Turning the calendar around, he slid it across the desk toward her. “The circles are entries he made in his hibernation studies book, the squares are his pituitary studies, the x’s his work on that hormone I can’t pronounce, the plus signs his Romo’s syndrome cure, and the triangles the work with pre-teekay children.”

  Cam glanced at the paper, an annoyed frown spreading across her face. “You must not have been paying very good attention to me, Detective,” she said. “There are at least half a dozen days in May alone that I remember that you don’t have marked.”

  Tirrell shook his head. “I marked every date you read off. But go ahead—check it yourself.”

  Cam gave him a strange look. Then, clamping her jaw, she picked up the first lab book and leafed through it. Tirrell sat back, letting her take her time. It took several minutes, and when she finally looked back up her irritation had been replaced by puzzlement. “But I remember him working here these days,” she insisted.

  “I’m sure you do,” Tirrell nodded, “and I’m not doubting your word. It would seem, though, that you’re missing at least one of the doctor’s lab books.”

  “But these are always kept in a locked drawer—” She stopped suddenly. “You think it was stolen?”

  “Not really. I think Dr. Jarvis has it with him.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. “But he never takes his books out of the lab,” she objected weakly.

  Tirrell didn’t bother trying to argue the point; she was certainly intelligent enough to see that he was making sense. “Do you have any idea what else he was working on, besides these?” he asked instead, waving at the stack of books.

  “No … not really.” She still looked troubled, as if she were betraying a confidence. “A lot of time he worked alone, or gave me routine sorts of tests to run. We’d all sit down together on Nultday morning and discuss the work he wanted to get done for the week, and I never heard him mention any project but these. Maybe he told one of the other assistants about it, though.”

  “I doubt it.” Tirrell pondered a moment. Until Tonio got back from Ridge Harbor, he still wouldn’t have anything Paxton would be willing to move on. But with a little ingenuity, perhaps he could circumvent the need to see Jarvis’s project proposals or any other official records. “I’d like you to dig out all the supply and equipment requisition forms you can find for the past nine or ten months. Who’s the best endocrinologist here after Dr. Jarvis?”

  “Dr. Somerset,” the woman said without hesitation.

  “I’d like you to ask him to join us, too, if you would. We’re going to try and figure out what exactly this special project is.”

  Somerset, though not especially enthusiastic about their chances, was nevertheless willing to help. Jarvis, fortunately, was the methodical sort who had kept copies of all his requisitions neatly filed in chronological order; but even so, it took Cam and Somerset the rest of the day to sort through them all. Tirrell, sitting off to one side, listened quietly and cultivated his patience.

  Finally, at four-fifteen, Somerset put down his pencil and returned the last piece of paper to the pile. “I don’t know, Detective,” he said, pushing back his chair and stretching. “It’s pretty obvious now that Matt did have something going on the side—there are drugs here that I know we haven’t used on any of the other projects. But as to what that other thing is, I really can’t tell you.”

  “Make an educated guess,” Tirrell said. “Surely you can do that.”

  “I’m sure I can. But I’m not sure I should.” Somerset eyed the detective thoughtfully. “After all, this is Matt’s private work, and without an official police request, my telling you anything at all puts me on rather thin legal ice. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Perfectly,” Tirrell nodded, forcing his voice to remain calm and reasonable. “At the same time, I’m sure you understand that in a police investigation time can be critically important. Of all of us here I’m probably the one most familiar with the laws concerning privacy—that’s the main reason I asked Ms. Mbar to read me the dates in the lab books, instead of looking through them myself. If you’d prefer to wait the couple of days it’ll take to get proper authorization, that is of course your right. But it would make things a lot easier if you could give me at least some idea of what Dr. Jarvis was doing.”

  He held his breath as Somerset and Cam exchanged glances, but they didn’t call his bluff, at least not directly. “Why don’t we call Dr. Jarvis and ask him about it?” Cam suggested. “I don’t think even Dr. Ramsden could object to interrupting him for this.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Tirrell shook his head, mind racing. The last thing he could afford was someone tipping off Jarvis that they knew he’d been running a secret project. At best, it would give him time to hide or destroy anything he didn’t want seen; at worst, it could spook him into dropping into a hole so deep they might never find him. But it was clear he couldn’t voice such thoughts here. “Radiophone conversations are by their nature more vulnerable to eavesdropping than regular phone calls,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “If the wrong person heard what you said there could be real trouble.”

  Vague intimations had worked once before, but this time Somerset wasn’t giving in quite so easily. “What sort of trouble?” he asked stubbornly. “You said yesterday you were trying to find this Oriana woman, but today you seem a lot more interested in Matt and his work. If we’re going to help you, I think we’re entitled to know what’s going on.”

  Tirrell took a deep breath. Somerset unfortunately had a point. “All right. There’s a possibility that Miribel Oriana is blackmailing Dr. Jarvis. Knowing what he’s been working on may help us identify who’s involved.” Which was, the detective decided, as misleading a set of true statements as he’d ever heard.

  And it had the desired effect. Somerset’s expression ran the complete gamut from surprise to anger to determination; Cam’s got stuck somewhere in the vicinity of outraged shock. “You’ll understand now,” Tirrell continued, “why I can’t risk broadcasting any hint of my progress over the
airwaves. In this game, the less your opponent knows of what you’re doing, the better your chances of nailing him.”

  “Of course,” Somerset nodded firmly. “All right. Basically, it looks like Matt was doing something involving the maturation process. Some of these drugs”—he indicated his list—“are known to slow down various aspects of puberty in earthstock lab animals. Others are synthetic androgens—male sex hormones—and some rather hard to isolate pituitary hormones, all of which seem to play a part in growth and puberty. Um … there are a couple of carriers here, too—those are relatively inert chemicals that can bond loosely to two or more complex molecules at a time. They’re used when you want to get a drug to a specific but inaccessible area—the islets of the pancreas, for example—without flooding the whole system. If you choose the carrier’s grabber properly, you can get the whole thing to link up with, say, the glucagon molecules in the islets’ alpha cells. The drug then drops off and begins its work, while the carrier-grabber combination either disintegrates or also drops off, leaving the glucagon molecule undamaged.”

  Tirrell had caught about one word in five of all that, but the essence made it through the jargon. “Would this method also be useful if you wanted to get a drug within range of something spread through the whole body?” he asked carefully. “Those growth hormones, say?”