On the screen, Theroux smiled. “How did I know you were going to say that?”
The short time-lag in communication between Earth and Moon made it necessary for speakers to finish positively and indicate by their expression that they were waiting for the reply. Without these almost subliminal signals, the tendency would be to speak across one another. Nathan realized that for Theroux, unable to see him fully, it would be hard to be absolutely sure when to speak so he decided to keep things succinct, which wasn’t difficult since he didn’t feel particularly chatty anyway. “What’s unusual about the Dædalus?”
“Standard General Dynamics freighter. Nothing remarkable about it.”
“It kicked in the engine at an unprogrammed time and killed the crew. I’d say that was moderately remarkable, wouldn’t you?”
Theroux shrugged. “I’d say that was Sod’s Law of Technology. The more there is to go wrong, the more there is to go wrong.”
As if to make the point, the image on the screen broke up as he spoke. Nathan leaned forward and fiddled with the tuning. When nothing changed he banged the console sharply and got a sudden rock-steady picture of Theroux waiting for him to speak. Nathan said, “Something fairly specific would have to go wrong to produce that particular effect, surely?”
“Blocked up washing facilities wouldn’t do it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“A limited number of things could have caused it, all of which the crew have checked, is that right?”
On screen, Theroux looked momentarily unsure. “Yeah, I guess so. They say they have.”
“You don’t trust their expertise?”
“I don’t trust their motivation. I mean, hell, how reliable would your work be, under those circumstances?”
Nathan thought, if I was the victim, already dead but with a chance to find out why… “I’d want to know,” he said.
Theroux nodded. “You’re a cop.”
Stupid comment. “So are you.” Why is everybody being stupid? “Sooner or later.” Or am I just… “Anyway there’s no point in second-guessing them. If they say there’s no fault to be found then as far as I’m concerned there’s no fault to be found. What we’ve got to do – what you’ve got to do – is find out all there is to know about that ship. Who worked on it, when, what it’s carrying, everything. And the same goes for the crew. There’s an answer there somewhere. I expect you to find it.”
Theroux’s pause was slightly longer than before, then he said, “Okay Nathan, you’re the man. It would help some if I knew what the question was, though.”
“You have only two real alternatives, David. If you rule out the accidental, then what you’re left with is deliberate.”
This did not seem to have occurred to Theroux. He looked genuinely surprised by the thought. “Someone set out to kill them?”
“Eliminate the impossible and whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“Jeez, I wish I’d had a classical education,” Theroux said wryly.
“And Sherlock Holmes always did have the advantage of knowing the answers right from the off. How’s the office?”
Theroux glanced around at what was out of scanner range. “Coming together. We’ll have most of what we need before long.” A brief pause, then, “How’s the apartment?”
Nathan appreciated the comparative delicacy of the question. “Strange. Something not right about it. I feel as though I’m being…picked on.”
“Shuttle-lag,” Theroux said. “And shit, you’re bound to be paranoid under the circumstances.”
Paranoid? Perhaps that was it. “They’ve assigned Devis as investigating officer.”
“Should I have heard of him?”
“He’s one of the department’s all time great cretins. British Native and All-Comers record holder. A cretin’s cretin, in fact.”
“Sounds like natural Star Cop material. You going to recruit him?”
Nathan smiled a little. “I’m going to dump you, if you don’t find the anomaly that explains what happened to the Dædalus. Keep in touch, yes?”
He killed the screen before Theroux could answer. It was only when he leaned back, that he realized he was sitting at the workstation.
“Box?” he said.
From the kitchen his own voice answered him. “Yes Nathan?”
“Book my usual table at the Lotus Garden.”
“Should I confirm a time with Miss Jones?”
“Miss Jones is dead.”
“Do you want me to adjust the reference framework and remove her?”
“No.”
“Then that datum is meaningless.”
Talking to himself. Talking to the air, it was too close to madness when the world, when the bloody reference framework, wasn’t whole anymore, wasn’t real anymore. Who else do you trust love.
Nathan got up from the workstation and went to retrieve Box from where he left it by the coffee percolator. It might be just a box but he had to have it in front of him if he was going to talk to it; he had to know which one of them was talking. If you don’t count that creepy Box, there’s no-one to talk to apart from me.
When he had Box in his hand, he asked, “Does the regional crime computer have a manageable list of suspects yet?”
Box said, “There are one hundred names still on the list.”
“Front runner?”
“Remains the same.”
He put Box down again, and poured himself another cup of coffee. The voice didn’t sound like him. Was that really how he sounded, even to her? “Odds?” he asked.
“The possibility of error remains significant.”
“Let me know when there’s someone worth lifting.”
“Have you decided whether to eat alone?”
Without thinking, he had ordered for two, and with their customary discretion, the waiters at the Lotus Garden had not commented, assuming simply that he was greedy, and caring only that he paid his bill. Carefully, he had helped himself from dishes set out in the centre of the table, leaving enough of each for Lee.
He was sure that if he didn’t think about it, her face and voice would come more clearly to him. At the moment he couldn’t picture her at all. What he had to do was stop thinking about her. It was like trying to recall a forgotten name, you had to stop thinking about it. You had to stop thinking. If you could. You had to stop thinking about her dying. You had to stop thinking about her terror, her dying alone and in terror. You had to stop thinking. You had to stop wanting to make it better. You had to stop wanting to say you were sorry. You had to stop thinking.
“Am I disturbing you, Commander?” He looked up from his untouched food. Sergeant Corman was standing by the table, looking slightly embarrassed. “It’ll keep,” she went on. “I can come back when you’ve finished.”
“That’s all right, Sergeant, have a seat,” Nathan said, indicating the chair opposite, where Lee would have been sitting. When Corman had sat down, he asked, “How did you know where to find me?”
“This was listed as an eating place for you and Lee Jones.”
“Detective work?” He couldn’t quite keep the sarcastic edge out of his voice.
Corman did not seem to notice. “It’s what they pay me for,” she said.
“It’s what they pay your boss for,” Nathan said. “You they pay as a gofer.” Why, he wondered, was he being gratuitously unpleasant to this woman?
“My mistake, sir,” she said stiffly.
That had obviously hurt. He said, “Their mistake, I’d say,” and smiled his best smile. She relaxed again, as he knew she would. “How many places did you try?”
“This is the first,” she said, managing not to sound smug about it. “It’s a routine sort of place. You’d want to remember routine things, if you
wanted to remember at all.”
“She hated this place. I never noticed,” Nathan said, the picture of Lee clear in his mind, scowling at the panda on the wallzac. “Are you hungry? I can get another plate.”
“No, thanks.”
No explanation? No polite ‘I’ve already eaten, thank you, sir’? Clearly a very self-possessed young woman. “So, if you’re not looking for excellent Chinese food, what are you looking for?” He picked up his chopsticks, lifted his rice bowl to just below his chin, and began to eat.
“Advice. As you know, we’ve been processing a fairly comprehensive list of psychopaths –”
He interrupted her, gesturing with his chopsticks, “How would I know that?”
“You’ve been monitoring our computer.”
“Who says?”
“I do. I may be a gofer, sir but I’m not a fool.”
“Does anyone else think I’ve been breaking the law?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Just me.”
“Then my advice –” Nathan said.
Corman cut in quickly, “Is to keep my mouth shut, yes. I fully intend to.”
“I was going to say, report me to your superiors.”
Her smile was politely sceptical. “Without proof, sir?”
What was she up to? Was she ambitious, what? “What is it you want, Sergeant?”
“I got the impression you thought the crime had an extra dimension. Something that was almost obvious but…not quite.”
Nathan returned to his eating. “Yes, well, it’s hard to think clearly under those circumstances.”
“You mean, you’ve changed your mind?”
“I don’t entirely trust my mind at the moment.”
Corman looked disappointed. “That’s a pity, because I think you were right.”
“You sure you won’t have something to eat?” Nathan asked.
She leaned forward and said earnestly, “There’s no recognizable motive, sir.”
Nathan couldn’t help noticing the front of her tunic was unbuttoned enough to show off her small, pale-skinned breasts. “So you look for someone whose motive wouldn’t be recognizable,” he said.
She saw him looking, and held her position for just long enough to make it obvious, though to make what obvious he wasn’t entirely sure. Then she sat back and said, “A psycho.”
“That’s the logic of it.”
“But no psycho is that elaborate in his preparations.”
“Are you serious? I’ve had some who were positively theatrical.”
“If all they were going to do was kill?” she said. “That’s all he did. He killed, fast and efficiently. And then he left.”
Fast and efficiently? Oh Christ, I hope so, Lee. No fear. No pain. Lee, I’m sorry. “A professional wouldn’t leave all those loose ends. Not unless he was interrupted.”
“He wasn’t, but maybe he thought he was.”
“A professional wouldn’t spook,” Nathan said. “Which brings you back to the psycho.”
“Yes, I know,” Corman said dejectedly. “I was hoping you’d have some new suggestions. You used to be a brilliant detective.”
“How long have you been with Devis?” Nathan asked.
“Not long.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
Corman shook her head. “I don’t think it would strike the Chief Inspector as a very good idea.”
“He’d be right.”
Corman said deadpan, “There has to be a first time for everything.”
Nathan put down the bowl and chopsticks, wiped his mouth carefully with his napkin, poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it. Finally, as he began to help himself to more food, he said, “It’s getting late, Sergeant.”
She frowned. “And I’ve overstepped the mark, I know. But I’m good, and sick of being told what to do by people who are stupider and less talented than I am.”
“You’d be surprised how many people feel like that, Sergeant,” Nathan said, without looking up from what he was doing.
Coldly angry she said, “I wouldn’t be remotely surprised. Don’t patronize me, Commander. Get me fired by all means but don’t patronize me, I don’t deserve that and I won’t sit still for it.” She made no move to get up from the table, however.
Nathan drank some more wine, sipping it slowly. “I’m outside my jurisdiction, as your Chief Inspector pointed out,” he said. The wine was a Dowchem Medoc, the most expensive the restaurant mixed and a guaranteed perfect copy of his favourite 1970 vintage. Everything about it was right, and still it tasted like shit. “I couldn’t get you fired, even if I wanted to. And if you’re as shit-hot as you think you are, you’ll have worked out beforehand that I’d be unlikely to want to. Yet.”
“I’m not that calculating,” Corman said.
“Then you’re not that good. Why ‘used to be’?”
“Used to be?”
“You said I ‘used to be’ a good detective.”
“I said brilliant.”
“You flattered me.
“I don’t think so.”
“So what’s changed?”
She lifted her face towards the ceiling. “You’re up there,” she said.
“Out there,” said Nathan. “We space types say ‘out there’.”
“No offence, sir,” Corman said, “but we detective types say, ‘what the hell is there out there to detect?’”
The office was much bigger than the quarter of a basic module the ISPF was allocated on the Charles De Gaulle. The room, like several others now used for storage, had been intended as a research facility until it became clear that many of the scientific teams assembled to work on the Moon, whether funded by governments or multinational corporations, were paranoid and competitive enough to prefer the less accessible Outposts to the laboratories of the Science Annex in Moonbase itself.
“Nothing but the best for you lads, eh?” remarked Fox, looking round the sparsely furnished chaos of the half-finished office.
Theroux tossed the remains of the cold pizza he had been eating into the organics disposal and said, “We got a good union.”
“Makes you wonder why anyone would volunteer to be a cop,” Fox said and tested the negative-pressure double door, which was part of the original lab specification.
“As I remember it, no-one on Moonbase did,” said Theroux.
“A high IQ was one of the entry requirements,” Fox said and then smirked and added, “to Moonbase, that is.”
“The test was always unreliable,” said Theroux.
Fox stopped playing with the door. “Negative pressure cycle,” he said. “That’d be standard on all Star Cop offices, I suppose? Wouldn’t want anything nasty to get out and contaminate people.” When Theroux offered no reaction he asked, “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“Quote, ‘the only design fault in that ship won’t be investigated at all’, unquote.”
“Liars and policemen need good memories, isn’t that what they say?”
“That’s what they say. What did you mean by it?”
Fox moved to look at the screen where Theroux had been working when he came in. “The cargo manifest,” he said, adding conversationally, “You know the Mars colony will never be economic. What in God’s name do they do with all this stuff?” Without asking, he scrolled down the list for a while then said, “Why are you interested in what the Dædalus was carrying, can you tell me that?”
“I’m looking for anomalies,” said Theroux.
“Anomalies?”
“That’s where you find your bum with one hand but not the other, and you know something’s wrong.”
“Sounds half-arsed to me,” Fox said, unsmiling.
Finally begin
ning to lose patience, Theroux said, “All right, enough of this shit.”
“You really don’t intend to let them rest, do you?” Fox asked.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Theroux said.
“What question was that?”
“Quit jerking me around and answer the fucking question.”
“Or you’ll what?”
“Or I’ll arrest you, charge you with a whole series of technical offences and have you shipped back to Earth for trial.”
For the first time, Fox looked rattled. “Are you threatening me?”
“You’d better believe it.”
“Get stuffed.” He took one light, hopping stride towards the door.
“Fox, if you’re charged with anything,” Theroux said matter-of-factly, “anything at all, your career is over out here. You realize that, huh?”
Fox turned back. “Like hell I do!” His voice got harsher suddenly, and his face flushed. “The police state bully boys haven’t taken over yet. Not out here, they haven’t.”
Theroux gestured round the room, and smiled. “No, but the branch office is open for business,” he said mockingly.
“You think it’s funny?” Fox raged.
Theroux stopped smiling. “I’m conducting a murder investigation.”
Fox seemed genuinely taken aback. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“Just tell me what you meant?”
“A murder investigation?” Fox shuffled back into the room, the looping stride technique forgotten. “Since when?”
“Parkinson’s Law of Criminology, that’s what Nathan Spring calls it.”
“I’m sorry?” Fox asked uncertainly, still shocked, it seemed, by the idea of murder.
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