Children of a Dead Earth Book One (11 page)

“OK, I see your point. Thanks, and please keep that bit between us, will you? It's not public knowledge yet, and I don't want it getting out.”

She crossed her arms. “You think a crewmember killed Edmond and attacked you? That's why you wanted to talk in person and avoid the network. You think someone's watching you.”

Benson put up his hands. “I'm just trying to be careful.”

“And yet you trust me?”

“Gotta trust somebody. And you're the only person who really seemed to care after Laraby went missing. I'm betting you want me to find out what happened more than anyone on this ship.”

Avelina bit her lip. “God knows Edmond deserved so much better than what happened. Don't worry, detective, I'll keep your killer ghost theory between us.”

Benson smirked at that. “Thanks, and I'll look forward to reading those files.”

“I'll put them on a pad and drop it off at the stationhouse after the shift change. It'll take a little longer, but that will keep it off the network.”

“With Edmond gone, do you have enough time? I mean, to finish your assignments before Landing?”

“That's the million dollar question, isn't it?” da Silva shook her head. “God willing, but it's going to be close.”

Benson thanked her, then returned to the lock and met up with Korolev in the central corridor.

“One down, two more to go.” Benson glided past the younger man and back towards the habitats.

Korolev spun around and pushed off the wall to follow him. “Where to now, chief?”

“Back to Avalon, constable. We're off to see a magistrate.”

M
agistrate Jindal
, and a few others within the cattle's government with the perverse desire to do their jobs properly, was suspicious and resentful of the way crewmembers always seemed to, well, float above the fray, delicately tugging a string here, applying pressure there, a nice little reward for agreeable behavior where no one could see it.

After hearing of the previous night's attack and the odd pattern of interference, Jindal approved the warrant for Laraby's personal files. Several hours later, Korolev was finally let off the hook as they crossed the door into the stationhouse.

“Thank you for babysitting me, constable, but I think you should go home and get some sleep.”

“Delighted to, chief.” He snapped a salute and span right back around and out the door again.

“Package for you, chief,” the duty officer, Hernandez, said. “I put it in your office.”

Benson nodded, walked into his office and shut the door. He wasn't trying to be rude, but in truth, he really didn't have much to say. Hernandez and he had never quite hit it off. The man was a hothead, a little too quick to pull his stun-stick, and a little too slow to think about repercussions. Despite his seniority, Benson had passed him over for promotion twice, the last time giving Theresa the spot. Hernandez had made several not-so-private accusations about favoritism in the ranks, which hadn't really helped his career prospects either.

A tablet sat on his desk with a little red ribbon tied around it. That made him chuckle. So Avelina had come through with Edmond's work files. Benson had another pad tucked under his arm, filled with everything the man was doing and thinking during the other half of his waking hours.

He set the two pads next to each other and opened their files. Sixteen terabytes of data, arranged in dozens of cascading folders and directories exploded from the work tablet, while two more terabytes filled the other.

“Holy shit…” Benson mumbled. “You were a busy little bee, Edmond.”

The pile of data was… daunting. Going through it blind would take months, maybe a year. Needless to say, it was time he didn't have.

What am I even doing?
he thought bitterly. The truth of his existence was starting to come into stark relief. He was no police detective. He was a figurehead, a public relations move by the crew to appease the cattle.

Feng had tried to remind him, and so had the captain in her gentle way. The next reminder had arrived with a little more bite. Benson flexed the muscles in his forearm, feeling the sting of his stitches.
They want me to roll over. They
expect
me to roll over
.

Benson nearly spat at the thought. He'd certainly not been shy about enjoying the rewards bestowed on him through playing Zero, but he'd earned them by working his ass off and becoming great at his job.

His first day training with the Mustangs seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb, too. But coach always told him to ignore the mountain. Take everything one small step at a time. Enough small steps would climb any mountain, cross any desert.

Solve any crime?

OK, small steps. Little bites. Or bytes, in this case. What's the first step? Show it wasn't suicide.

Benson opened his plant and linked it to both files, then opened the search menu. “Search all files and documents for terms suicide, kill, ah… and depressed.”

New bubbles appeared on the tablets. Several seconds passed as even the immensely powerful computers took their time to search such large data caches. The hits rolled in, but not where Benson expected. Laraby's work files returned forty-nine uses of the word
suicide
, over a hundred for
kill
, and three for
depressed
. Meanwhile, his personal files held none, nadda.

“Display results for ‘suicide' in reverse chronological order.”

-Sample #8472
suicided
three days after gestation. Severe deformation of the vascular system observed.

-Sample #8435
suicided
five days after gestation cycle started. Root growth failed after 14 millimeters.

-Sample #8426
suicided
seventeen days after the start of the gestational cycle. Leaves failed to unfurl properly.

“OK, I can see where this is headed. Display results for ‘kill' in reverse chronological order.”

-Sample #8469
killed
thirty days after gestation. Failed to meet revised absorption goals.

-Sample #8461
killed
sixty-three days after gestation. Failed to branch properly.

-Sample #8448
killed
fifteen days after gestation cycle began. Chlorophyll reverted to Earth norm.

The list went on, with each incidence of the searched words relating directly to a failed experiment or new plant strain. Even where
depressed
was used, it was talking about “depressed levels of photon transference.” Benson was no psychologist, but he was pretty sure it had more to do with photosynthesis than suicide.

It was the complete dearth of hits in Laraby's personal files that really struck Benson as strange, however. The table contained not only Laraby's private journal entries, of which he had been a prodigious writer, but transcripts of all of his plant conversations, and web correspondence since he'd turned eighteen. It was as close to a complete record of all his thoughts and actions as anyone but a psychic medium was going to get.

Benson hadn't expected anything as grandiose as a video recording of Edmond reading his suicide note, but the odds that someone wouldn't say
kill
over the course of years had to be staggering. Who didn't say “Let's go kill a couple beers,” or “Ben's really killing it on the drums,” or “Work almost killed me today” at some point in their life?

Laraby was either some sort of superstitious, word-avoiding eccentric, or someone had gone through and cleaned up the files using the same mental checklist Benson was going through now. His suspicion growing, Benson opened Edmond's last journal entry from less than a day before he went missing and checked the revision history.

-Last Edited on 15/04/233PE 17:49. Edited by Laraby, Edmond, ID #C47-74205

Less than four hours before he'd disappeared. Benson tried to call up the prior version, but, to no great surprise, it wasn't available. He checked the next three older entries with similar results. How hard would it be to alter a time/date stamp and User ID? Probably not very, if you had the right permissions and knew your way around the Ark's coding architecture. Covering up all of your digital tracks would be harder, but not impossible. Benson ran a few more searches that came to mind, but with identical disappointment.

The only alternative was to read through each entry and transcript individually looking for whatever crumbs hadn't been vacuumed up. It was an unappealing prospect, and he didn't have enough time left anyway. It was exactly what Benson had feared. The delay gave whoever wanted the investigation stopped the time they needed to clean up their tracks. He wasn't meant to find anything here.

Benson threw the tablet at his desk in a fit of frustration. It caught a corner, sending spider-web cracks racing through the glass in an instant. He picked it up gingerly, gently tapping the screen, but the fractured, flickering image told him the tablet was beyond salvage.

Benson sighed. In his anger, he'd just committed a crime. To be specific, a violation of Conservation Code Forty-Seven: The Negligent Destruction of an Asset Prior to the End of its Projected Design Lifetime. For an asset like a tablet, the fine was nearly a week's pay at his compensation, and an equal length of time spent wasting his nights doing community service.

“
I
want him strip-searched
.” Devorah's arms crossed her chest tighter than steel barrel hoops. She was not a happy little woman. Her dour expression was matched only by the look of childlike delight playing across Salvador Kite's face. He clearly enjoyed watching his old nemesis contort with disgust.

“Devorah,” Benson chided, “he's our guest. You want to know what he knows just as badly as I do. We'll both be able to keep an eye on him, there are cameras everywhere, and we're locking the doors behind us. Now, be a good host and let's get started.”

“Give me your stun-stick, then.”

Benson shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

Devorah tilted her head up and shook a bony finger at the smiling ex-con. “You try anything and I'll chew your kneecaps off.”

“I believe you,” Sal said in a crooning voice.

Madame Curator scowled, but waved a hand to unlock the museum's grand entrance. It had been three in the afternoon when Benson crossed over from Avalon, immediately flipping him twelve hours to three in the morning Shangri-La Time.

The three of them were the only people on the museum grounds, on account of Devorah demanding complete control over the situation without any distractions or risk of accomplices hidden in the crowds. A very private tour indeed.

The silent darkness of night in Shangri-La made the three-story building loom that much higher. Its edifice had been designed with the great museums of the old world firmly in mind. Great marble columns in the Roman tradition, more than two meters across, “held” the massive stone roof and trio of domes aloft. Of course, the marble steps, columns, and giant quarried blocks that made up the museum's walls were imitations, cleverly textured and painted stucco over lightweight composites and alloys, much like the rest of the Ark's structure. Real marble carried far too great a weight penalty. Still, it was a masterful illusion, executed by the best, and last, set builders of Hollywood. Like the majority of workers who had built the Ark but hadn't made the passenger list, it had been their final job before returning to Earth to await their fate.

The show must go on.

There was nothing illusionary about the museum's contents, however. Every piece of art, every document, every artifact had a trail of documentation proving its provenance beyond all doubt. Every museum, gallery, and private collection on Earth had been scoured for the priceless treasures that filled the building.

Benson marveled at the sights in the central atrium as the doors closed and locked behind the trio. In a place of honor at the center, Michelangelo's
David
stood in his resolute magnificence, separated from viewers by the sort of barriers that once kept rampaging polar bears safely away from delicious children. The sculpture was, by weight, the largest object in the museum to have made the journey, and looking up at him, it wasn't difficult to see why.

The inventory held no collections. Only the very best examples of each artist, sculptor, and inventor had been preserved. It would be impossible to fit anything resembling a complete accounting of the accomplishments of the entire species into a single building otherwise.

Benson forgot about Sal and Devorah as a familiar display caught his eye. Not far from
David
, on a small slope of artificial red sand, sat one of only a handful of contributions from the Mars Colony. The early twenty-first century NASA rover,
Spirit
, stared back at him through its binocular cameras. It had undergone a complete restoration more than a century ago by that year's class of engineering students. Even now, it looked as new as the day it had left Earth.

“Hey,” Devorah came alongside him. “Aren't you supposed to be watching Kite so he doesn't stuff my Rembrandt down his pants?”

Benson rolled his eyes. “That was more than thirty years ago. How long are you going to hold that grudge?”

“I'm Jewish, detective. We have long memories.”

“Touché.” Benson looked back at the rover. “It's beautiful, in its own way, don't you think?”

She nodded. “Ruggedness has its own beauty. Do you know how it got here?”

He shrugged. “I know the Mars colony sent a ship to rendezvous with the Ark on its way out and transferred some artifacts.”

Devorah put a thin hand on the railing surrounding the exhibit. “This little critter had a hard life. Back when it was launched, it was designed to last for three months. It lasted more than six years on Mars before the poor thing got stuck and froze to death. It sat for another fifty before the Mars colonists launched their first archeological expedition to go dig it out. They were too busy trying to get the colony running to do much more than dust it off and put it on display.

“But when Nibiru turned up, Mars was cut off. All Earth's resources were put to building the Ark. The Xanadu colony was barely self-sustaining, but they managed to strap enough ion drives onto one of their Earth return taxis and make it fast enough to match up with us and transfer cargo. Seventeen artifacts. The legacy of an entire world.”

“And three people,” Benson added. “The ‘Children of Ares'.”

Devorah snorted. “And where are they now? Their culture lost and their bloodlines diluted until all that's left is a single surname. People die, society forgets. But these…” Her hands swept through the entire hall. “These artifacts, pieces of art, letters, remain frozen in time. They don't forget, and they don't lie.”

A shrill alarm went out through the hall, followed by a flat, recorded voice announcing: “We regret to inform you that this is not an interactive exhibit. Please wait until a museum attendant arrives to answer any questions.”

Benson and Devorah span around to see Sal standing next to the Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle Lawrence of Arabia was riding when he died.

“And they don't try to get their sticky fingers on everything!” Devorah stalked over to where Kite stood with his hands held up.

“I just leaned over to look at it! What do you think I was going to do, tuck it under my shirt?”

“He has a point, Devorah.” Benson sidled up next to her. “And I doubt he's got any petrol to ride it out of here.”

“He could be trying to take a souvenir.”

“I don't see a wrench in his hand.” Benson pointed a finger at the ex-con. “But you're not making this any easier on me either, Sal. Behave, or the deal's off and we walk out of here right now.”

Kite shrugged his understanding, then looked back down at the incensed curator. “I thought this was going to be a private tour. Aren't you going to teach me things?”

“Like how to beat the security systems?” she quipped.

“Indulge me.”

Devorah did nothing to hide her annoyance as her wedges clomped against the granite floor, beckoning the two men to follow her. Once everyone was in position, she began the most exasperated and sarcastic guided tour ever given in the museum's long history.

The odd trio started in the central atrium where the largest displays sat, passing by
David
; the Spirit Rover; Armstrong's boots from Apollo 11; a meter long section of the Eiffel Tower; a terracotta warrior from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang; Ramesses II in the flesh, or what remained of it; a Devatas relief taken from Angkor Wat; and what the Japanese-Korean Alignment assured the museum project to be the true Honjo Masamune katana.

Political considerations heavily influenced the selection process for what constituted important historical artifacts. The United States, China, the Japanese-Korean Alignment, India, Brazil, and the European Union, the largest financial and technical contributors to the Ark project, had the greatest pull in the selection process, and each did their best to stack the deck of future history.

What those centuries-dead politicos hadn't realized was the very process of stuffing fifty thousand people onto a single ship and shooting it out among the stars meant that in a very short time, all their petty squabbles were forgotten. Within a generation, the people born on the Ark had much more in common with each other than with any race, religion, or government left behind on the dead Earth. Old grudges were set aside as basic survival took priority. By the time everyone found the right balance, it was two generations later and no one cared about their grandparents' squabbles.

Benson sympathized with Devorah's love of history, but maybe some things were better left in the past.

They moved on from the central atrium to the museum's documents wing. Here, protected behind bullet-proof glass designed for guns that no longer existed, nestled inside gentle atmospheres of inert gasses, sat shelf after shelf of letters, journals, first edition books, poetry, and the founding documents of a dozen nations. The original US Constitution was here, although the Declaration of Independence had finally succumbed to the ravages of time. The Chinese Constitution of 2047 sat immediately next to it, printed on a traditional rolling scroll of silk nearly three meters long, and handwritten in stunning calligraphy.

Sal pushed a button in the frame and watched the scroll wind slowly by as Devorah spoke of the populist uprisings that finally ended Communist rule. Not far from them was the Mars Compact, granting self-rule to the Xanadu colony and mineral resource rights to the asteroid miners based there, much to the chagrin of the Earth-based corporations that had sent them there.

However the largest and most impressive display was reserved for the most important document aboard: the Ark Treaty itself. Written just five months after mapping the course of the black hole they'd named Nibiru, it defined the entire Ark program. It was the only pact in the history of the old world signed by each and every nation state. The leaders of every country on Earth were present at the signing ceremony, along with representatives from the Lunar Polar bases and Mars. It was the one time everyone agreed on anything, and certainly the fastest treaty ever ratified.

They passed by floor to ceiling shelves of first editions from all of the greatest authors and the collected works of brilliant poets dating back centuries. Devorah stopped at a display and thumbed through a series of menus until she found what she wanted. From behind the protective glass, a robotic arm set on clever tracks built into the shelves ran down their length before shooting up three stories. It slowed, then very gingerly reached out and grabbed a book. Its target secured, the arm ran back down to where the trio stood and opened the book, holding it to the glass for everyone to see.

Devorah leaned in and read from the page with a calm, even voice:

“
S
ome say
the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.”

“
R
obert Frost
,” Sal said. “‘Fire and Ice.'”

“Very good, Mr Kite. Got it in one.”

“Why that one?” Benson asked.

“I always read that poem on the tour. Chalk it up to my dark sense of humor.”

That was an understatement. As precise as the astrophysicists of old Earth had become, the gravitational interactions of a sun, a stellar-mass black hole, and eight planets proved too chaotic to model accurately. By the time the end came, the Ark was already many lightweeks away. All of its telescopes were pointed for Tau Ceti. After a contentious debate, the survivors voted to look forward, not back. To this day, no one knew if Earth had been devoured in the fires of Nibiru's event horizon, or thrown clear of its orbit to forever roam the frozen spaces between the stars.

After all this time, Robert Frost's question remained unanswered. Benson struggled to see the humor in it, but it took all kinds. Devorah hit the return button on the display. The book shut, then sped back towards its home.

The tour continued into the east wing, which held paintings and sculptures. There probably weren't two people alive more intimately familiar with this part of the museum than Devorah and Salvador, albeit for very different reasons. Sal's jovial demeanor melted away as soon as he stepped into the wing, replaced by something indistinguishable from reverence.

The change didn't go unnoticed. Devorah eyed him suspiciously for a long moment, but if he had any devious intent, she couldn't spot it. Neither could Benson. If anything, his face had the conflicted look of a man who had stepped into a church he hadn't seen in years, where he wasn't even sure he was welcome.

They walked through centuries of art, from the muted, two-dimensional iconography of the early religious painters, flowing into the expanded palette of the early Renaissance. Da Vinci was here, one of the few artists with multiple pieces in the collection. The
Mona Lisa
smirked back at them from behind glass.

Baroque art with its sweeping sense of movement came next, while the Neoclassicists harkened back to the glories of the past. Romanticism reached out to the far corners of the Earth searching for the exotic, and then the Realists pulled right back to inspect what had been in front of them the whole time.

Impressionism followed, trying to capture the essence of action, light, and life by rejecting a devotion to minute details. The Monet would soon find a home among them.

They entered the age of cubists and surrealism, leaving the real world behind entirely. It was here that Sal really lit up, showing a command of the subjects that matched Devorah herself. She was less than enthused.

“You should remember this piece, Mr Kite.
Starry Night
by Vincent van Gogh. I believe you were caught with it rolled into a backpack, if memory serves.”

Sal nodded. “That and the Picasso.”