Conscience of the Beagle (2 page)

NO ONE
is
waiting for us at the Hebron Crossroads Hotel. Just inside, I slow my pace. The lobby is a forest. Vines hang Rapunzel-like off interior balconies and huge birds roam free down leaf-dappled walks.

Peacocks. I remember them from the zoo. I see them filtered through Lila’s smile. The birds are peacocks.

Have they somehow gotten loose? I’m leery of them. Szabo trails a plain brown female through a stand of miniature orange trees, clucking to her, until Beagle asks if that’s the way he gets dates.

Szabo laughs. So do three colonials sitting at a nearby table having lunch. So does the hotel clerk standing behind a marble desk. Privacy stolen, I fall silent. The colonials at the table grin as if waiting for us to break into song.

“You’re all taken care of.” The desk clerk holds up his hand, door cards fanned in it. He looks as if he’s going to ask me to pick a card. Any card. “I’ve got your keys.”

I walk over to the clerk. Ask in a low voice, “Where are the officials who are supposed to meet us?”

Only the innocent can look that blank, that confused. “Nobody’s come around. At least . . . you mean someone from the govern
—”

“Yes. The government. They should have been here fifteen minutes ago.”

“I had a message
—”

“What does it say?”

“That four Earthers were coming. It was on my net when I came on duty. Management left it. I always get instructions when I come on
—”

“No official message for us? Nothing? You sure?”

“No.” I’ve frightened him monosyllabic. That fear. It happens when I look at people. It happens in the interrogation room where the intimidation is planned. In everyday situations where it is not.

“Fine. That’s fine. If anyone calls, tell them we’re here.” I snatch the keys.

The clerk calls after me, “Sir? Would you like meal service to send something up to your rooms? Shrimp cocktail? A steak? You might as well. Tennyson’s picking up the tab.”

I’m walking toward the team when I see Szabo’s sky-blue eyes widen. “I’d love a steak!”

“How do you want it?”

A bewildered hesitation. I’m confused, too. Such a luxury, a steak. How do you want it? Szabo might reply: Desperately.

“Well-done?” the clerk prompts. “Rare? Medium?”

“Oh. Yes. Medium.”

Suddenly, Beagle walks to the banks of lifts. As if he’s been made team leader by silent acclimation, Arne and Szabo follow.

On the eighth floor, I stand before my room’s anachronistic Hilton Revival doorknob pretending to read the back of my key.

INSERT CARD IN READER. TURN KNOB TO THE RIGHT AND PUSH.

I wait until each member of the team enters his room. Until I’m sure that Beagle won’t make another attempt on my authority. Then I go inside.

The room is huge, nearly as large as my apartment. I ignore the Wall and pull aside the sheers. Dazzling sunshine bursts through.

Beagle. So the spy is Beagle. Arne’s too volatile to manipulate and Beagle will ally himself with Szabo. I have to remember that whoever controls Szabo, controls the team.

I look down on the lush multicolored quilt that is Hebron and force myself to relax. The hidy-hole of a window sill is my favorite place. When I was a kid, I would stare across at the smudged windows of the neighboring mega complex. In
all the years I sat there, no one ever looked back. That’s the secret of windows. Looking out of them is like being invisible.

A warm clasp on my shoulder boosts my heart into my throat. Lila. Never could break her of the habit.

Don’t come up behind me and touch me like that. Tell me you’re here. Just tell me. Don’t you know better than to do that to a cop?

I jerk my head around. But the room is empty.

Lila. The feeling of being followed leaps to its feet with me. I pace and it walks by my side. It watches as I stretch out on the bed.

The air’s too thick to breathe. Have to get out of here. The lobby? No. Not with the laughing colonials, the birds. Only one escape makes sense. I walk down the wide carpeted hall toward Szabo’s.

Five yards from his room I halt. A shudder in my chest so strong that my heart stops. Szabo’s door is standing ajar.

Something’s happened. I know it. I feel it in the thickness of the silence beyond; in the syrupy dark of the room. Don’t have anything to fight with. Orders were to leave our softguns behind. Szabo needs me. And my feet won’t leave the light.

From inside, a low cry. Another. Inarticulate mewlings of pain.

“Szabo!”

He’s suddenly there. In
the doorway. Safe. “Major?”

“Why the fuck did you leave your door open!”

Eyes round and startled. “I just
—”

“God! Anyone could have walked in!” My head pounds so hard that my vision swims. “You’re responsible for your own safety! You can’t rely on me for everything. I can’t be with you twenty-four hours a day. Jesus! A kid
—
I can understand a kid. They don’t have any sense. But you? It’s like you’re asking to be murdered. Victims. I see shit like this all the time. Your own damned fault. You walk around in a fog. You wander out of crowded areas. If you stayed in a well-lighted place you’d be . . .”

God. Shut up. Shut up. But I’ve said too much already.

“Major? Are you all right?”

A hand on my arm halts my retreat. I shake him off, swipe angrily at my eyes. Don’t know him well enough for him to see me this way.

“Come in. Sit down a minute.” He grabs my sleeve and pulls me into the room.

The air’s heavy with the smell of food. An empty plate sits atop an autocart. The Wall is playing a holo of a rocky beach. The sky’s a melancholy gray, the humpbacked waves green. Strange how a sunny man can be this drawn to shadow.

“Turn on the lights.”

He hits a wall switch. The room takes color. Arne is sitting near the Wall. His legs are crossed. Face rigid. Oh. Arne won’t be the odd man out after all. It will be me.

“Major.” Arne sounds less than delighted.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you . . .”

“It’s okay.” The psychic’s smile looks painted on with a mortician’s brush.

Turgid silence falls. In that silence I hear the slap of waves and the murder-victim mewling of gulls. Szabo bends down and hits the RETURN button on the autocart.

“Were you finished?” I ask. Arne seems angry, as though I’ve shattered some earlier, delicate mood.

“Sure,” Szabo says, glancing to Arne. “All finished.”

The cart makes a musical jingle as it negotiates the turn into the hall. Then a thump. A dramatic clatter.

A curly-headed colonial in an expensive Slickstone suit limps around the jamb. “Hi there!” He beams and rubs his leg. “You must be the Earthers.”

Do I look that out of place? Don’t we all? Three brown birds in an aviary.

“I’m John Vanderslice, the Minister of Science.” He shoves a presumptuous hand at me. He gives me no choice but to shake it.

“Have to watch that,” he says with a laugh. “Leave your door open and anyone could walk inside.”

He heard. He was hiding around the corner, just out of sight, all that time. Listening.

Vanderslice’s face is swept clean as a vacant apartment. His green eyes are large, guileless, and in constant motion. “I’m supposed to bring one of you to meet His Excellency. Just one, though. Since you’re team leader, it’ll probably have to be you, Major. Marvin can’t stand to be around more than one Earther at a time. ‘John,’ he says, ‘you ever notice how they never talk? And they never look you in the eyes
—
ever notice that?
—
like they’re shifty.’”

Drowned in a flood of speech, I look at Szabo. His eyebrows are knit. His fingers pause, arrested on his beard, mid-stroke.

“Marvin
—
The Chosen of God, that is
—
we grew up together. Used to make spitballs in elementary school before he got called to the ministry. Old Marvin, the spitball king. He hates when I tell that story, just hates it. But still, he made me Minister of Science, didn’t he? It’s because I know where all the spitballs are buried.” He winks conspiratorially at Arne
—
why Arne?
—
and smoothes the front of his jacket.

“So anyway, I tell him, ‘Marv, that’s just the way they are. Don’t let it get to you.’ Poor Marvin. He doesn’t understand sociopathology. I would have gone into sociology if mother hadn’t insisted on geophysics. She
—”

Beagle enters the room so quietly that Vanderslice only notices him when the construct is standing at his shoulder. He looks up, startled, into Beagle’s frown.

I think he’ll be prudent and step back. I would. But Vanderslice shoves forward a hand. Beagle automatically takes it.

“Dr. Taylor! It
is
Dr. Taylor, isn’t it? This is such an honor, sir! I’ve only read one of your studies in statistical criminology. It’s tough going, if you don’t mind my saying so. Hope you’ll take the time to explain some of the more esoteric concepts while you’re here. I have the annotated
Paths Through the Jungle.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

Brilliant. The word casts me into shadow.

Vanderslice refuses to let Beagle go. He studies the construct’s fingernails. His palm. “It’s just amazing. Isn’t it?” His Pied Piper enthusiasm lures Szabo into amazement with him. “Absolutely lifelike. Have you ever touched him? Warm and
—”

A tug and Beagle reclaims his hand.

“Oops. I’m being rude, aren’t I? Oh, well. We’ll just have to get used to each other. I’m your liaison while you’re here.”

Liaison. Liaison. I twist the word this way and that but, like a kaleidoscope, only splintered images form.

“Just tell me when I’m being rude. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

In
the background, Arne lifts a finger, takes a breath. If he’s about to say something, he’s too late.

“I’m used to working with off-worlders. You Earthers evade eye contact. That makes us think you’re devious. We tend to talk too much, and that gets on your nerves. Well.”

He falls disconcertingly silent. I find myself balanced on the balls of my feet, waiting. He rubs his palms together. Nods and grins. “It was great meeting all of you. The Home Force sent me your files, and I feel like I know you already. So. Major. You ready to gird your loins and meet the spitball king?”

No way to avoid it. When he leaves, I follow.

EVERY OTHER
colonial
babbles. So why aren’t these people talking? Around the table the Chosen’s cabinet sits in varying degrees of unease.

At my right shoulder a minister busies himself by alternately doodling flowers on his Sheet and tapping the erase button with his stylus. To my left Vanderslice folds and then unfolds a napkin.

The spitball king’s puffy face, his rounded body, seem inflated by the pressures of self-importance. His small hazel eyes pick me apart. “So,” he says at last. “The man who arrested Reece Wallace. Impressive.” His voice is a surprisingly effeminate tenor.

All eyes, even those of the Minister of Doodling, shift.

“Yes.”

Vanderslice is the only one of the group who smiles. The others’ apprehensive gazes dart to the man at the head of the table.

What have I said that annoys him? The Chosen of God scowls. His scowl continues long past where it should have stopped. It pulls the heavy lips down and down.

“I see you are impolite, Major. Earthers. So vulgar. So full of yourselves.” Marvin taps a manicured fingernail on the table. “Well. In spite of that, we require a quick end to this thing. And I would hope you’re bright enough to see through the gossip.” Gossip? I glance around. No one is looking my way, and they are doing so pointedly, as if afraid my very eyes might damn them. All the cabinet but Vanderslice. The Minister of Science is atypically silent. His handsome face is daydreamy calm. It looks as if he has imagined someplace nicer to be, and then has escaped there.

“I want to know how you plan to proceed.” The Chosen steeples his pudgy hands.

“Milos Arne will review the data on the explosions themselves. When he determines the certain-kill radii, then we hope our statistics man can find some patterns.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll follow the patterns with our psychic. When it’s time for the interrogations, I’ll conduct them. I will conduct them alone, you understand. Without any help from the locals.”

I expect anger, but Marvin’s rage explodes in an unforeseen direction. “Is that it?”

“What?”

“Is that all you plan to do? Find your radii or whatever and then follow your nonsensical patterns? What if the explosions were random?”

“There is no randomness, sir. Terrorist acts and serial murders contain an internal motif. Finding that motif, no matter how absurd it appears on the surface, is what our statistical criminologist was a genius at. That’s why he was constructed.”

“Abomination.” The Chosen of God slumps. His belly forms a moat of fat below his chest. “Constructing a man. It’s an abomination. I ask you, where is the soul in all of that?”

Beagle’s soul. Is that why Yi named me team leader? No. HF isn’t that diplomatic.

“I suppose you’d have to ask the construct, sir, and see if he has discovered his.”

The Chosen of God shoots to his feet. The ministers cower. The man to my right stops doodling. He hits the erase button, then industriously writes at the top of his Sheet INVESTIGATION. He underlines this twice and stabs a colon on the end.

“A psychic and a construct.” The Chosen’s lips purse in disgust. “And you, like Lucifer, are rotten with the sin of pride. I wonder if you haven’t made up your mind already.” I tense as Marvin stalks his way to my side of the table.

The doodler begins writing furiously. Under INVESTIGATION: he prints LUCIFER? SOULS? The Chosen pauses to look at his minister’s Sheet, sees that it is good, and walks on.

“Haven’t you?” he asks me. “Haven’t you made up your mind as to who is guilty?”

“May I ask a question here?”

Sullen silence from the Chosen. Alarm from the others.

“Was I misinformed? Or didn’t you request our help?”

Everyone is looking at me, their faces, their bodies still. Marvin is standing so close I can feel the warmth from his body. I refuse to look up. Instead, I tilt my coffee cup toward me. There’s a single swallow of coffee at the bottom, long gone cold. Some people on Earth would have killed for that swallow.

Then I notice, almost peripherally, that the Chosen’s hand is trembling. “What religion are you, Major?”

What’s scaring him? “Is that germane?”

“Are you afraid of my question?”

“Not afraid. I’m taken aback. I’m insulted. I normally don’t think in terms of religion. I can’t afford to.”

“Afford to, Major? You mean you can’t fit murder in the divine plan, isn’t that it? You look at Earth’s violence and wonder where faith comes in. Well, this isn’t Earth. We’re a God-fearing community. If you wish to solve these crimes, it would be best if you understood that.”

The Chosen walks to the door. The ministers rise. I watch Marvin leave with all his retinue but Vanderslice.

“Excellency?” I call.

He pops back in the doorway.

“If your people are so God-fearing, why are they killing each other?”

I don’t know if he lacks an answer or if he’s too furious for speech. The doors shut on that extraordinary scowl.

Next to me, Vanderslice lowers his head to his crossed arms. His shoulders shake with silent laughter.