Eternity's End (53 page)

Harriet lowered her eyeglasses, trying to find words. "Let me understand this. McGinnis booby-trapped his own home? Why would he—
unless
—"

"—unless he felt deeply threatened," Peter said. "A longtime threat, so grave that he was prepared to destroy himself, his home, and all of his records, rather than...
what?
" Peter gazed steadily at Harriet. "Of course, he didn't destroy his records. He gave them to you instead."

Harriet drew a deep breath, trying not to succumb to dizziness at the implications. "But what
was
the threat? Why was it so great that he was willing to take his own life?" She pinched her brow, thinking of the records now in their possession. She was more grateful than ever that they had secured copies in various safe locations. She looked at Peter again. "There's something you're waiting to tell me."

Peter gave a lopsided grin. "Not tell you. Show you. Remember the dog?"

"What dog?" asked Morgan.

"McGinnis's. Harriet remembers, don't you?"

"How could I forget?" Harriet shuddered at the memory of the dog convulsing outside McGinnis's house, and then bursting through the security forcefield to flee the fire. She still felt guilty for leaving it. But then, she'd left McGinnis, too.

"Well, one of my people has found it. Brought it back, alive and well."

Harriet felt her heart race, without quite knowing why. Morgan clapped her hands and cried, "And we get to adopt it?" Harriet eyed her, and Morgan shrugged. "Well, why not?"

Peter eyed Morgan balefully. "I'm pleased that I could amuse you. Perhaps, if all works out, you
will
get to adopt it. But as a matter of fact, the dog turns out to be carrying some extremely useful information. I brought a vid to show you." He pulled a cube from his pocket.

Harriet pointed to the player the Narseil had provided them. Popping in the cube, Peter said, "This first one was shot at a safe house outside the city, where we first brought the dog."

The recording was of moderately amateurish quality. It showed the brown dog, Rufus, in a sparsely furnished room, with two of Peter's assistants—one apparently controlling the camera, none too steadily. Harriet watched in silent fascination. The dog looked gaunter than she remembered, but seemed unharmed.

"That's my assistant Norman," Peter said, pointing to the man on screen who was crouched in front of the dog, trying to calm it. "Irv's doing camera. He's the one who caught it. Irv's afraid of dogs. I was proud of him."

Harriet nodded, fascinated by what was developing on the screen. The dog was clearly terrified, and growing more so every time it opened its mouth to bark. The reason quickly became obvious. Instead of a bark, what came out were garbled, but almost
human
, sounds. "What is that?" Harriet asked, leaning closer to hear. It was a husky, hissing voice. "It sounds like words!"

"Mhhusssst rrrr t-hhelll..."
rasped the dog.

"Is the dog
talking?
"

"Hrrrrr... musssst trrrrelll..."

"Must tell?" Harriet looked at Peter and demanded, "Is that what it's saying?"

Morgan was shaking her head. "You can't be serious." But the look of skepticism on her face was evaporating as the dog strained to be heard—and then cringed, as though from the sound of its own voice.

"Very good, Harriet!" Peter said. "It took us much longer to figure it out. But look at this—" He pointed to the screen, where the dog was now pawing at something on the side of its head. The camera zoomed in, and something twinkled behind the dog's ear.

"An implant! I remember now, Legroeder noticed it."

"Exactly." Peter fast-forwarded the playback. "There's more of this stuff, which you can watch later if you want. But once we realized that it was
trying to get us to notice the implant
, then we started getting somewhere." The playback resumed, with Norman whispering soothingly to the dog and gently touching the implant. He murmured, almost inaudibly, "—get you hooked up. We'll get some equipment on you, boy." With those words, the dog's ears perked up and he began licking Norman's hand frantically.

"The dog understood," Morgan said in astonishment.

Peter stopped the playback and changed cubes. "Exactly. We didn't have the right equipment on hand, so we had to do some hunting around. Once we had him hooked up to the right implant com-gear, this is what we heard."

The second vid started with the dog being connected, with some difficulty, to a modified headset. Rufus remained calm during the hookup procedure, but as soon as the equipment was turned on, he became excited. He barked sharply, twice. And then—not from the dog but from the speaker on the nearby console—came a human voice. Strained and distorted, it was nonetheless recognizable as the voice of Robert McGinnis.

"If you can hear these words, know that the information I am about to give you is extremely urgent—and extremely dangerous. If possible, forward it to Rigger Renwald Legroeder, or attorney Harriet Mahoney—or failing that, anyone looking for the historical truth of the lost starship
Impris.
Be aware—this information concerns not just
Impris,
but also present-day interference in local spacing affairs by agents of the so-called Free Kyber Republic
.

"Time is short..."

Harriet felt her breath tighten, as Peter paused the playback. "McGinnis must have been recording this at the same time he was getting you out of the house," Peter said. He unpaused the vid. As the dog sat utterly still, with a strange look of intense concentration, McGinnis's voice continued:

"I do not know if I will survive the next minutes or hour. I am... under heavy attack from the Kyber pirates who installed these damnable implants in my skull. Thirty years ago they tried to make me their agent on Faber Eridani, and nearly succeeded. I have endeavored to make them believe that they succeeded, while safeguarding the
Impris
records that they wanted destroyed or altered. With great difficulty, I have managed to deceive my own implants. But no longer
.

"I repeat: I am under attack from within—possibly driven by external transmission. The implants have discovered my deception. I am... resisting... under great duress... an almost irresistible command... to kill... Rigger Legroeder and Mrs. Mahoney, to whom I have just released the
Impris
records. I made a hurried judgment as to their trustworthiness, and I pray I made the right decision. I must resist long enough to let them get clear. I wanted to tell them so much more. But I may have only minutes now before I must end this battle... for good... if I am to keep from destroying them
.

"I'll upload what I can into Rufus's implants, and hope that it may do some good, if it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. But if it does... to hell with... what can you do to me that you haven't done already?"
The voice became terribly strained.
"You... bastards!"

For a moment, there was silence, and then he seemed to regain strength.

"Do not allow this recording to fall into the hands of the Spacing Authority or the RiggerGuild. Both are under the influence of the Free Kyber, the Golen Space pirates. Insidious bastards! For years, they've distorted the events of history, betraying their own people to the Kyber. I do not know who to trust in positions of authority—or if you can trust anyone. I only know, the infestation goes very high..."

There was another break in the recording. The dog's ears twitched, and he seemed about to whine. Peter raised a finger to wait, and then came a last, gasping sentence.

"I will now upload the data log. Take care of Rufus for me..."

His voice trailed off, and there was a rasp of static. Rufus emitted a long howl. Then he lay down and rested his chin on his forepaws, seemingly oblivious to the com set strapped to his head.

Peter turned off the recording. "That was recorded yesterday. My people are working now to see if they can retrieve the data upload. It's some kind of neural-net recording—very difficult to decipher."

Morgan's eyes were wide. "There are some pretty damning statements in there."

Peter's eyes glimmered. "Yes, indeed. But no names, no dates, no events. Not yet. That's what I'm hoping we can get from the recording."

Harriet nodded, listening with only half her mind, as she remembered:
... pray I made the right decision
. She heard a voice, and only slowly became aware that it was her own. "He killed himself... so he wouldn't kill us..."

Peter was preparing to leave when a call came on his collar-com. It was Pew, his Swert associate. "What have you got?" Peter asked. And to Harriet and Morgan: "I sent him up to Forest Hills, near the Fabri preserve. Remember the car that took Maris O'Hare was spotted there... some sort of traffic thing?"

Harriet nodded, as Pew reported in a foghorn voice, distorted by the com. "Nothing from the traffic incident, Peter. But it transpires they made a fueling stop here. An attendant remembers them—that two people got out and walked around the car—the attendant does not recall looking inside the vehicle." But the attendant
did
remember their being joined by a local, someone new in town, who lived up in the hills nearby. The attendant was suspicious of newcomers and outsiders, including Pew. "But I persuaded him to tell me which way they headed."

"Do you have the location?" Peter asked.

"General area. Going to check further, now. I wanted to apprise you."

"Don't get too close," said Peter. "I'm going to send some backup. Where are you now?"

"At the hydrostop." Pew gave him the address and number.

"Stay put until I contact Georgio. I'll call you back."

Peter smacked a fist into his hand and gazed at Harriet and Morgan. "The rental car was returned two hundred kilometers west of here. But only after it went
north
to a rendezvous in this little town. Does that suggest anything to you?"

"It certainly does," said Harriet. "That's near the Fabri native lands. I wonder if Vegas has any connections there."

"I don't know about that. But it suggests to me that I'd better go with Georgio," Morgan said.

"Why, in Heaven's name?" asked Harriet, a knot tightening in her stomach. "You're not a detective."

"We've been over this before, Mother. If we find the people holding Maris, we're going to have to line up the legal case fast. You can't be there, but I can. I'll start by producing the hospital documentation showing that they
claimed
they were taking her to this other hospital in—wherever it was. Arlmont?" Morgan paused only momentarily as Harriet frowned at her. "Then we can call in the local or provincial police. If
they're
honest, we can at least get Maris into protective custody in another hospital." Morgan hesitated. "Assuming she's still alive, of course."

Harriet's heart sank as she thought of the attempt on her life and Legroeder's. And yet, Morgan was right. They just might have a chance to save Maris, after all.

"All right," she muttered at last. "You win. Go with Georgio—but you
by God be careful!
"

Adaria kept her wings close about her as she scurried from the Elmira Public Library, satchel held tightly in her arms. She blinked a trace of a tear from her eyes. She was going to miss the library, and her work. She would miss the friends she had made here. She would miss living in the company of interesting humans.

She would not miss the intimidation and fear, however.

She would not miss the insidious presence of Centrist Strength, and government officials who meddled in the business of truth preservation, which was a proper business of libraries.

It is not good, that people should be driven from such a calling—that the preservation of truth should be interfered with. But what can I do? One Fabri?

It seemed hopeless, and that was troublesome in itself. Adaria had never been one to give up hope. Her mentor would be sorry to hear that it had come to this. Perhaps there was
some
way to maintain hope. Some way.

As she stepped off the transit platform near her apartment, the chill of memory set in. The memory of the night, ten days ago, when the agents of Centrist Strength had come calling. Terrorist agents, as far as she was concerned. Come to
her
home. Why hers?

The knock was not loud, but sharp. It was foolish of her to open the door, but somehow the knock seemed commanding. The two men who stood there spoke softly at first, and then with veiled threat in their voices: "...know that there are people you care for, back in the forest... it would be sad if evil came to them. But what you are doing, information you are giving to people who have no right to it, trying to make political gold out of a foolish legend—it has cost one man his life, already. How unfortunate if it cost more lives..."

Even that might not have been enough to cause her to leave her job. No, it was the change at work, her own boss acting as though Adaria had somehow done wrong to provide information to a patron, to Mrs. Mahoney. The chill had set in, not long after Mrs. Mahoney had come to the library asking about
Impris
; and it had grown steadily deeper, until Adaria simply could stand it no longer.

She let herself into the apartment with a whuffing sigh. Letting down her satchel, she turned and relocked the door with great deliberation. For a moment, she could not move, but just stood back from the door, arms and wings wrapped around herself, shivering. Then she went to the kitchen and put tea water on to heat. While she waited for the water to boil, she went to the com.

"Vegas..."

"Ffff—Adaria. Hello." Mrs. Mahoney's housekeeper sounded subdued, but pleased to hear from her. They were more
kefling
—acquaintances—than truefriends; and yet, in a city with so few Fabri natives, the distinction seemed less important.

Adaria fluttered her wings, trying to think what to say. She'd simply had the impulse to call, without knowing what she would say. "I've left my job at the library. It's just become too... uncomfortable."
Dangerous
.