“I’m bored with the wallzac,” Lee said, as Nathan tried to move away from her foot. “Do you have anything different you could play?”
“I will check, madam.”
When he was sure the waiter had gone, Nathan grabbed Lee’s foot and tugged so that she almost slipped off her seat. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You know I don’t like it.”
“It felt as though you liked it,” she said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. I’m sorry,” she said and tried to pull her foot away.
Nathan gripped her ankle. “You don’t sound sorry,” he said.
“I am. Honestly.”
He smiled, put a finger lightly on the sole of her foot, and brushed it up and down.
“No, don’t,” said Lee, going rigid. “Don’t. I shall scream.” She giggled.
Nathan tickled a little harder, and she was instantly reduced to helpless laughter. Just before she reached the screaming stage, he let go of her foot and said, “I remember my old man talking about the early chess computers. You know what he said?”
“Bastard,” Lee gasped.
“No, that’s not what he said.”
“You know I don’t like that.”
“It sounded as though you liked it.”
“Bastard.”
Nathan said, “What he said was that anyone could beat them if they only grasped the simple notion that the machines could never resist a deliberate sacrifice.”
“Very gnomic,” Lee said. “Has this got something to do with your murder theory?”
“It’s why I don’t trust machines.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s a reason for not trusting machines.”
“Well, possibly, but it’s one of many, surely? Most of them are more or less neurotic,” said Lee. She watched Nathan switch her off without taking his eyes from her face, and with almost no alteration in his expression or the tone of his voice.
“The machines have become evidence,” he said.
Lee had never quite got used to Nathan’s habit of keeping the conversation going while in fact he was thinking aloud. “You lost me,” she said.
“They calculate the probabilities before we actually do anything,” he said. “That makes them part of the evidence.” For a moment he was lost in thought, then his attention focused on her again.
“If you ever do that when we’re fucking,” she said, “I’ll never forgive you.”
“No problem,” said Nathan. “I promise never to eat Chinese food when we’re fucking.”
On the screens, the wallzac changed to white cranes and paddy fields. The waiter returned and bowed from the waist. “Is to madam’s preference?”
“Thank you,” Lee said. After he had gone, she watched the video loop not quite holding true and making the stereo effects quiver slightly. “Are you going to tell me?” she asked brightly.
Nathan was cautious. “Tell you what?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Nathan.”
“I’m not.”
“All right.” She sighed and said, “So what’s the plan then?”
“Haven’t got one, really. The next step is to see the widow.”
Lee said, “I meant our plan.”
“Oh shit. Yeah. Sorry. Well… we’re not in that much of a rush, are we?”
“Is that what this is about? Have you changed your mind?”
“No, of course not.”
“You still can, love,” she said calmly. “If you’ve decided the homemaking bit is not for you. You only have to say.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Nathan blustered. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Lee nodded solemnly. “Because if we are going to have a family, then there isn’t that much time to waste,” she said.
Nathan tossed down his chopsticks. “Have you finished eating?” he asked, and made as if to slide under the table.
“Not funny,” Lee said.
“You don’t like this place, so we probably won’t be coming back here anyway.” Nathan smiled, knowing that didn’t make the joke any better and seeing puzzled hurt in Lee’s face.
“What is wrong with you tonight?” she asked.
But he still couldn’t bring himself to tell her. He knew that if he didn’t talk to her about the Star Cops job, then he didn’t have to think about it. Not yet. He didn’t need to face the bind he might find himself in. Not yet. And there was something else, too. Something shameful. Something he definitely wasn’t ready to think about yet. But it was there in his head. Something that job might offer, which nothing much else could. A way out…
Crime Scene
The red plain stretched to the horizon, bleak and inhospitable despite its rosy hue. The sky was a matching pale pink, and the colour co-ordination intensified the alien hostility of the place. Though the ground looked smooth and featureless at a distance, close up it was a desert of stones and small boulders scattered across the coarse sands and oxides of iron that made up the soil. Here and there, the surface was broken by gullies and cut by sudden deep fissures. Theory suggested that these were carved out by the water that had long since vanished into the fierce climatic imbalance which overwhelmed the planet.
In these surroundings the members of the Base One Ground Team: Mars Geological Survey looked sadly insignificant, and a lot more vulnerable than the work logos on their spacesuits suggested. The six shambling figures, each one trying to maintain visual contact with the person on their right, were strung out in a long uneven line as they struggled through the difficult terrain.
They were using satellite navigation to pinpoint positions so they could plant small seismic charges in a carefully predetermined grid pattern. It was gruelling work, and their suits – though lighter than those needed for the high vacuum – hampered every movement.
At the extreme left-hand end of the line, Tolly Jardine had stopped to place his fifteenth and last charge of the day. It was standard operating procedure to describe what he was doing to the next person on the short-range loop. “Placing it now,” he said as he leaned his hip against the stock of the charge gun and pushed the barrel into a patch of sand. “Ready to fire.” Although it was primed, there was absolutely no danger of the charge exploding when he shot it down into the subsoil. The seismic cartridges were guaranteed safe. They could only be set off by a microwave trigger which would be placed and keyed by the team leader when the grid was complete and the rest of the team had withdrawn. During the course of the Mars survey not one seismic charge had ever gone off prematurely. But still when the time came to release the CO2 and punch the cartridge home there was always a moment’s tension. “Firing,” said Tolly, and he felt the gun’s solid recoil against his hip pad.
“Okay, lets move on, Tolly.” Even over the crude headset in the suit helmet, Stella Dearman’s voice sounded tired. “I’ve still got my last to place. Assuming I can reach the damn position.”
“Hold it a minute,” said Tolly. Below a small boulder, near where he had placed the charge, surface sand was collapsing into what appeared to be a small hole. “We seem to have some surface instability here.” As he watched, the sand at the edges continued to fold down, making the hole larger and larger.
Stella’s voice was suddenly loud. “Don’t just stand there, you stupid bastard. Get the hell out! The whole area could be loose.”
The hole was now the size of a space helmet and seemed to have stabilized. The interior was in deep shadow, black and impenetrable. “There’s a hole opened up,” said Tolly. He bent to peer into it.
Stella reacted to the movement. “What are you doing?” her voice demanded.
“I think there’s something in it,” Tolly said.
“If it turns out to be you, you’re on your own. I’m not digging you out. I’m a su
rveyor, not a Saint Bernard. Jesus, Tolly!”
Tolly put his hand into the hole. “I’m reaching into the hole,” he said, automatically reverting to talking through his actions.
From her distant viewpoint, Stella watched him remain crouched, unmoving and silent, for what seemed like several minutes. She was about to hit the man-down panic alarm when his voice said, “My God, Stella. You’re not going to believe what I’ve found.”
Chapter 4
“You haven’t got the first fucking idea what you’re looking for, have you?” Butler’s voice drawled over the communicator stuck behind Theroux’s left ear. “Well, have you?”
Theroux pulled the last of the backpacks from the freight lock and pushed it gently towards the others. Then he signalled to the Russian technician that he was ready to seal his end of the transfer tube. The Russian smiled and nodded goodbye as he tugged himself back into the cargo shuttle.
Holding the brace bar with one hand, Theroux pushed the circular hatch closed with the other and checked the telltales for leaks. Then he floated back through the inner lock and repeated the procedure – except that this time, he dogged the hatch shut using two solid-looking sliding levers. For all practical purposes, these levers were clearly unnecessary; air pressure would have held the hatch closed against the vacuum under all survivable conditions. But it had been realized early on in the development of the orbit stations that people seemed more comfortable and better able to cope with stress if obvious examples of physical security were designed into the systems wherever possible. Experienced personnel tended to scoff at such devices, known as wacsobs – white knuckle security blankets – but everyone seemed to use them nonetheless, and Theroux was no exception.
“Control to cargo bay one, control to cargo bay one,” murmured Butler’s voice in his ear. “Flight engineer Theroux, do you copy?” The procedural formality was ironic and mildly irritable.
As he tugged himself round from the hatch, Theroux touched his throat mic and said, “I’m busy here, okay? This is hard work.” Weightlessness did not make basic physical tasks easier, it just made them different. You used unusual muscle groups and your hand-eye co-ordination was never exactly normal. And it all got tougher if you strayed from the routines designed into particular sections and modules. Suit Transfer and Storage was cramped, and ‘cramped’ threatened chaos and gridlock in whole new ways. The last thing Theroux needed right now was more of Butler’s crap.
“Lift that barge, tote that bale,” Butler murmured. “It’s what you black folks was put off the Earth to do.”
“Go fuck yourself, Simon.”
“Temper.”
“I’m trying to do my job.” Theroux struggled to get the newly serviced backpacks into a manageable group.
Butler persisted. “It’s not your job. You volunteered, remember?” He sounded peevish. “And I repeat, you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“No,” Theroux said, “I don’t.” He pushed the drifting cluster of jostling backpacks towards the storage racks preformed into three sides at one end of the module. “Satisfied now?”
Butler’s voice took on a more businesslike tone. “I’m not, actually. You should leave playing boy detective until there’s less in the way of traffic knocking about. And I use the phrase advisedly.”
“Boy detective?”
“Knocking about.”
Theroux prepared to check each backpack prior to clipping it into place in the racks. “You’ve never complained before,” he said, as he took the first one, and began by making sure the transparent dustcover was unbreached.
“My dear old thing, I will stretch myself to cover for any reasonable pastime. Sex, gambling, imbibing unhealthy quantities of brain-liquidizer.”
Without removing the cover, Theroux checked that all the service inspection tags were in place. So far, so routine.
“But I draw the line,” Butler’s voice continued, “at playing second banana in your comedy cop routine.”
Theroux finished the visual examination and considered what else he could do to satisfy himself that the unit was sound. The truth was, of course, that short of suiting-up and using it outside there wasn’t anything much. He began to wonder what the hell he really thought he was doing. Was this honestly a search for evidence, however vague and unfocused? Or was it just that he was feeling guilty… about what, for Chrissakes? What was he trying to prove? He wasn’t responsible for the deaths. It wasn’t his fault. And nobody else gave a shit.
“You’re wasting your time,” Butler’s voice said.
Theroux clipped the backpack into place and began the same routine on the next. Through his earphone, he listened to Butler deal with the departing cargo shuttle while continuing to bitch at him. “Thank you Red Star, disengagement is confirmed.”
Since communication with the shuttle was on a different channel Theroux could not hear the pilot’s responses. Strictly speaking he should not have been able to hear the controller’s end of the transaction either, but speaking strictly according to RT procedures was not something to which Butler paid much attention. “And what’s more important you’re wasting my time,” his voice complained, then, “Roger that, comrade, you have clearance for minimum thrust,” before continuing seamlessly, “I’ve got your number, Peace Officer Theroux.”
That was something he could do, Theroux thought. Numbers. If he made a note of the numbers, the unit numbers and the rack numbers as he clipped them up, should any of this batch fail, he could at least trace them back here to storage. Maybe there would be something about the way they were racked, or the order they were used in, or something…
“It’s all just an excuse to play with yourself while I do the real work.”
He began to dictate the numbers into his wristfile. While he was at it he noted the serial numbers of the separate parts which made up the units, and even the inspection tag numbers. That was the trouble with data; it expanded to fill the time available to collect it. And there was no way to be sure what you might find useful.
“How much longer are you going to be, David?”
Theroux switched on his throat mic and said, “An hour maybe.”
“An hour? Christ I’m off shift in less than that. Minimum thrust is confirmed. Thank you comrades. Keep the faith.”
Theroux pushed another backpack into place. “Comrades?” he said. “You know how much they hate to be called comrade.”
“I thought ‘keep the faith’ was a nice touch too.”
“Pissed with me, so you take it out on the Russians, huh?”
Theroux heard the smile in Butler’s voice when he answered, “Not especially. I was merely reminding them what old-fashioned capitalism is really about.”
“I’ll buy it,” said Theroux.
“I was thinking more of the customer’s right to be gratuitously abusive.”
“Mustn’t be nice to the backpack service man.”
“I should say not.” Butler’s voice took on a studied, wry drawl. “We don’t want the Russian workers getting above themselves, now, do we? Look what happened last time. And I mean, it’s not as if their stuff is exactly ultra-reliable these days is it?”
“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Simon,” Theroux said flicking off his throat mic and returning to his laborious recording of backpack numbers.
The woman who released the locks and admitted Nathan to the lobby was plain and dumpy, and dressed with what looked like an almost self-conscious lack of style. She was clearly a little shaken to find him at her door.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Carmodie,” Nathan said, proffering his ID as a matter of politeness though the house security system had already verified his identity. “I realize this must be a difficult time.”
To his surprise, the woman took the wallet and examined the
plate and the badge. Nathan noticed that her hands were slim and long-fingered and her grey eyes were bright and intelligent. The plump figure and the plainness should not have made these details unexpected but they did.
“I didn’t realize you people still made house calls,” she said and looked into his face as though comparing it to the picture. She closed the wallet and handed it back. “You must forgive me. I never expected to see one of those close up. The picture doesn’t do you justice.” She was over her initial discomfiture. “How can I help you, Chief Superintendent?”
“I’m investigating your husband’s drowning.”
“Obviously.” She said it without edge; calmly. There was confidence now. “Shall we go and find somewhere to sit?”
She led the way, waddling slightly as though her hip joints were stiff. As he followed her through the immaculate and tasteful hallway, it occurred to Nathan that her appearance made it easy to underestimate this woman, and that she might well be encouraging that. He stopped at an unexceptional watercolour, probably hung only because it matched the rest of the decor, and said, “This is nice.”
The woman stopped and turned back. Her hip joints were not stiff.
“My husband chose it,” she said. “He had very good taste.” She moved back into what Nathan now felt sure was an act – though whether or not it was a conscious act, he couldn’t yet decide.
“Perhaps you’d like to see his office,” she continued. “He was particularly proud of his office.”
The room into which she showed Nathan was a reconstruction of a Victorian study, or what Nathan imagined a Victorian study would probably have looked like. The woman sat down behind the heavy, highly polished desk and gestured him to take the chair opposite her.
Nathan looked round appreciatively. “It’s remarkable,” he said.
“Yes.” For no obvious reason, she moved the writing set from one side of the desk to the other. “I can’t say I like it much – but then, it isn’t really a woman’s room.” She shifted the lamp into the middle of the desk.
Star Cops Page 5