Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (27 page)

‘You’ve solved the how
and
the why?’

‘Why,’ she replied, meditatively. ‘Yes. Indeed, yes. Let us both bathe in the deep blue sea of
why
.’

‘We’re here,’ said Jong-il. The car pulled up at the main compound, and Iago helped her inside.

She went through first; Berthezene and Jong-il followed behind, making the front door squeal with outrage at the metal guns they both carried. Jong-il stayed there, running their security
clearance once again through the purview of the suspicious House AI, so as to permit them to carry their weapons indoors. Berthezene took up a post in the corridor outside Diana’s room, and
Iago helped her through and onto the gel-bed.

Klang, klang, klang. Noisy old door.

‘An afternoon nap,’ she murmured. ‘Just a little sleep.’

She closed her eyes, and then she opened them again. ‘When I wake up, I want to start planning my
party
,’ she said. ‘You understand? It will need a lot of
planning.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Iago.

‘And
what
do you mean by
that
?’

‘Only what you know very well, that we cannot invite anybody, either in person or in virtual form, without compromising the secrecy of your being here.’

This annoyed Diana just enough to lift her up over the tug of sleep, if only for a moment. ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Not-sense, no-sense, un-sense.
Any
information agent
could squirrel out the information.’

‘I doubt that, Miss. We go to great lengths to keep you and your MOHsister safe.’

Diana wrinkled her nose. ‘It ever occur to you I don’t need your help? Did you ever think I’m the one keeping
you
safe?’

‘In the sense that my safety depends upon the strength of the Argent family, and its proximity to the centres of power in the system – that is, of course, true. Nonetheless, we
cannot compromise your safety. Nobody must know exactly where you are.’

‘That foul Ms
Joad
knew where I was,’ grumbled Dia, closing her eyes again.

‘A personal agent of the Ulanovs is a different matter, of course.’

‘I’m asleep,’ said Diana.

‘Very good, Miss.’

‘I really am. Go away, you horrible, crack-skinned, ancient old relic.’

‘Since you
are
asleep—’ said Iago, moving towards the door.

‘I am!’

‘—then you won’t hear me saying that we intercepted a message from Anna Tonks Yu.’

Diana opened one eye. ‘That minx,’ she said. ‘What has she to say for herself?’

‘We did not access the content of the message, naturally; in case it contained a seeker virus that would track back through the relays and reveal your location.’

Diana’s heart was lolloping a little faster. ‘You scanned it?
Is
there one?’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Iago, gently, from his position by the door. ‘And you know it. Miss Diana, you are clever – cleverer than anybody on this island with
the possible exception of your sister. You don’t need to
prove
that fact to anybody.’

Diana closed her eyes very tightly. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘Smuggling a message out to a member of a rival family – a
real
danger, potentially an immense danger. This is not Romeo and Juliet.’

‘I’m asleep,’ repeated Diana, with her eyes very tightly closed. ‘I’m not even
going
to check the bId for the meaning of that reference.’

‘You understand me very well, Miss. All I’m saying is – please, take this circumstance seriously. Danger surrounds us all the time. If any of the other MOHfamilies could
get
to you
– or any organisation from a lower tier of power, any Gongsi or mafia or militia – it would be . . .’

‘I’m asleep!’ she snapped. ‘Can’t you see it? Don’t you know what sleep looks like?’

‘You’re asleep,’ said Iago. He left the room.

9

Eva Acts

Iago made his way – a little stiffly, for the gravity was oppressive – across to Eva’s room. He lodged a request at the door of her IP, and, a little
grumpily, she came out and into the real world. Iago went into her room. Sitting in her gel-couch, she opened her eyes, and wrath flashed in them.

‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘Shouldn’t you be lurking about my sister?’

‘I’m Tutor to the both of you,’ he pointed out, mildly.

‘Tutor,’ Eva scoffed. ‘What nonsense, Iago.’

At this Iago smiled. ‘Would you prefer – flunkey?’

‘Jeeves,’ said Eva, scornfully. ‘Of course I’m not privy to everything my MOHmies do. But neither am I a kid to be patronised, like . . .’ She stopped, abruptly.
‘What do you want, anyway? I’m in the middle of something. I have a PhD to finish.’

‘Diana will be sixteen in a few weeks,’ said Iago.

‘She’ll
still
be a kid. She’ll be a kid at sixty-one. She has kid all the way through her, like a seam of silver running through an asteroid.’

‘Let’s hope,’ said Iago, leaning himself back against the wall to take some of the crushing gravitational pressure off his legs, ‘that we all survive long enough to enjoy
her birthday party.’

‘Sure we could all die at any time,’ snapped Eva. ‘Which only makes it more imperative that I get back to my research. I’d hate to leave it loose-endy.’ But she
stopped. ‘You mean something more specific, don’t you? You mean an actual threat?’

‘Your MOHparents have good evidence to that effect.’

‘Is it,’ Eva said, trying for a flush of humour, ‘what Joad said? Is the legendary Jack Glass coming down to kill us?’

‘Personally I do not believe that the legendary Jack Glass is coming down to kill us,’ said Iago in a level voice.

Eva sighed. ‘Sit down, Iago,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’d better sit down. Is the attack imminent? Do we have to move again right now?’

Iago lowered himself, creakily, into a chair. ‘Not right now. Probably next week; maybe in a fortnight. Certainly before your MOHsister’s birthday. Both the Mrs Argents are agreed,
though, that an attack is likely. They suspect the Clan Yu, but, speaking personally, I wonder if it will come from another direction.’

‘Is that why Joad came down?’

Iago put his head a little to one side. As a general policy, he considered it was better not to answer questions the sisters put to him. Answering questions was
their
purpose in life
after all. It was what they were made for.

‘Politics,’ said Eva, eventually. Then, surprisingly, she launched into an unexpected tangent: ‘are my MOHmies
disappointed
in me, do you think?’

Iago considered. ‘You could ask them.’

But Eva lifted her left arm, and let it fall under the influence of gravity. ‘Even if they
were
disappointed, they wouldn’t tell me. Not because they’d want to spare my
feelings, of course; but because, like Dia, I am what they made me. To be disappointed in me would be for them to be disappointed in themselves. And though they
are
brilliant in many ways,
my dear MOHmies are not good at honest self-criticism. The deep dark truthful mirror.’

For a moment they were both silent. Through the window, endless light fell upon the prone land; the ancient Earth yellow and brown and exhausted green beneath its holy blue sky. A figure went
hurrying past in the middle distance, from left to right, plunging through the longer grass beneath the olive trees. Such strenuous exercise in the heat of the day! The motion of boots in the grass
threw up a cloud of butterflies, winking taupe and brilliant green-blue in variegated motion as they scattered into the air between the trees.

Eventually Iago drew breath and spoke. ‘Diana says she has solved the mystery of Leron’s death.’

Eva’s eyes flickered as her bId prompted her memory. ‘The dead servant. I solved that yesterday, I believe. One of the
other
servants did it.’

Iago didn’t reply, so Eva went on: ‘has she? Solved it, I mean?’

‘She hasn’t told me the solution,’ said Iago. ‘And she claimed there were a few details she needed to slot into place, she said. But, I think – yes, she
has.’

‘One of the other handservants,’ said Eva. ‘Unless you believe Ms Joad, and it was the magically teleporting Jack Glass. One of the two.’ She looked straight into
Iago’s eyes. ‘Why did Joad tell us that Hen-and-Cow story?’

Iago waited.

Eva’s eyelids sank a little. ‘Why do I get the feeling this is a test? This whole thing? Choosing between one or other solution, it hardly matters. It’s only one dead
servant.’

‘A fully grown human being,’ said Iago, in a sad voice. ‘With all the emotional and intellectual and practical capacity that entails.’

‘There are trillions of human beings just like him in the Sump,’ said Eva. ‘But
that’s
not it, is it? We both know that’s not it. The test – is it her
or me?’

‘My understanding is that your parents earnestly desire the two of you to work
together
,’ said Iago. ‘That sounds like a platitude, I daresay. But they mean it. They
really do.’

‘That’s just a long-winded way of saying that she passes the test and I don’t,’ said Eva, sulkily.

‘You—’ Iago began. But Eva cut across him. ‘Don’t condescend to me, Iago. I really won’t bear that.’

He dipped his head.

Eva looked again through the viewing wall. The cypresses looked unnaturally upright and stiff against the sky, like dog’s ears, perked and ready for bad news. But Eva knew the moment had
already passed, the tide had rushed in between herself and Diana, and she had been stranded on the
wrong
side. The odd thing was that she experienced that realisation, in the moment, as a
mode of relief. Presumably this was relief that the more acute pain associated with the moment of crisis was already behind her. But oceanic disappointment and gloom were poised, too, to wash over
her. That, of course, would come.

‘What was it?’ she asked eventually. ‘Was it the politics?’

‘It’s always politics,’ said Iago. ‘Politics is everything. The status of the Argent Clan depends upon riding the turbulence of politics, every hour of every
day.’

‘I
can
understand politics,’ said Eva, unable to keep a tone of pleading from her voice. ‘As a system I
do
. I don’t meant to sound plaintive, but I
can
do it! Oh, maybe I don’t have the empathetic instincts she does. I wasn’t made that way. But my capacity for probabilistic solutioneering is . . .’ She stopped. There
was no point in berating Iago. He was only the messenger, after all. ‘I’ll finish this PhD,’ she added, sulkily. ‘I don’t care what you say.’

‘I know you will.’

‘What is it with you and my MOHmies, anyway? You’re old-school loyal to them, aren’t you?’

‘I owe them a great deal,’ said Iago. ‘They took me in. Plus, of course, we are working for the same thing. The stakes are enormously high.’

‘Really? Isn’t that just your usual political boilerplate claptrap?’

‘No,’ said Iago, looking very serious. ‘It’s the cold truth. It’s the truth of the grave. The stakes are higher than they have ever been. The risk is greater than
humanity has ever faced before.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ said Eva. To her credit, she really didn’t.

‘You
feel
nothing for Leron, dead on the floor,’ said Iago. ‘And why should you? You never knew him. You see him as one atom in a quasi-gaseous accumulation of –
as you say – trillions of human beings. And for Diana, the problem has precisely been coming round to your point of view. It’s seeing those trillions as a resource, and not as a
congregation of humanity.’

‘You’ve delivered your message,’ said Eva. ‘I’d like you to leave me now, so I can get back to my research.’

Iago got awkwardly to his feet, his kneecaps popping. ‘Diana will probably want to explain the solution to the mystery to you after she wakes up. She’s proud of herself for figuring
it out.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Eva. ‘We can all gather in the library and learn precisely
how
the butler did it – or the doctor. Was it the doctor? I seem to remember that
it’s always the
doctor
who is the murderer in these stories.’

He got to the door of her room before she called after him. ‘Having failed the test,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’m entitled to know. Was the FTL thing a red
herring?’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Iago. ‘I’m sorry to say.’

Eva sniffed, dismissively. ‘The FTL murders!’ she declared. ‘And the murderer.
Was
it one of the handservants, like I said? Or was it Jack Glass, as Ms Joad insisted? I
don’t doubt that my little MOHsis picked the right one. But I can’t shake the feeling that if I’d chosen
either
of them, I would have been wrong.’

Iago nodded.

‘I knew it!’ said Eva. ‘It’s
neither
of them!’

‘Or both,’ said Iago. ‘Good afternoon, Miss.’

Eva retreated to her IP. She was disappointed; there was no point in pretending otherwise. It is always galling to fail a test, and it was made much
more
galling by
realising only belatedly that it
had
been a test. Of course, she wouldn’t be expelled from the inner sanctum of the Clan. Her wiser angel tried to suggest she see it as a blessing
– for it would leave her more time to pursue her properly astroscientific research. And she could not begrudge her MOHsister her triumph (did Dia even realise that she
had
triumphed?).
The disaffection she felt was, she decided,
something else
.

She tried to settle to her Champagne Supernova work, but the idiot word ‘politics’ kept yapping through her mind. ‘Politics’! In the absolution of cold and distance
politics meant nothing at all. The object of her study was further removed from politics than anything had ever been.

She went into her IP, and, steeling herself, went (as it were) through a door. It was no ordinary virtuality door; it was, on the contrary, a carefully
concealed
portal at the rear of the
IP. A person couldn’t wait, passively, forever. Sometimes action is required.

Eva acted.