Overload Flux (7 page)

He laughed, delighted to discover she had a sense of humor. “I get the feeling you don’t do this very often.”

“Drive?”

“No, have a casual conversation.”

“No.” An opening in traffic had them going faster for a moment, but it didn’t last. Horns sounded constantly, but were muted in the quiet vehicle interior.

“Probably because you’ve been working the night shift and didn’t have anyone to talk to. Feel free to practice your conversational skills on me. It’ll distract me from obsessing about loose threads.” Of course, it wouldn’t keep him from being distracted by her instead. At least she wasn’t an obsession. Yet.

He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was trying to formulate a reply or was simply focused on traffic. After a long silence, she said, “I’m bad with words.”

“That’s what practice is for. Pretty soon, we’ll have you up to fifteen or twenty words at a time, maybe even two or three sentences in a row.”

In between lane changes, she glanced at him as if she was unsure if he was serious or not. Finally she said, “Loose threads?”

It was the first time she’d initiated conversation, so he didn’t mind that it was about work. It was a start.

“The fact that Green never called for the reward. Why the losses are mostly the NVP 70 vaccine made by Loyduk Pharma. Why Balkovsky and Schmidt were in the warehouse at all. Why a theft crew had two merc-grade forceblades for a simple after-hours slice-and-haul.”

“Why didn’t they kill Schmidt first?”

The phantasms from his memory stirred uneasily, so he focused on Morganthur more closely. The spiky, asymmetric cut and darker tips of her pale blonde hair suited her strong but striking cheekbones and jawline, he decided. “They tried to, but Balkovsky got in the way. He was protecting her.”

Her incredulous look said she thought it unlikely that an ex-Jumper needed protecting.

“He was in love with her, which made him feel protective of her. Her waster’s disease was well into stage three, so she was slowing down. He was trying to distract their attackers and give her room to fight. He didn’t know two of them had forceblades.”

He sighed in frustration at facts that didn’t make sense. “I’m not surprised a theft crew had misters, because those are good for derezzing comps and disabling unexpected guards, but forceblades need skill and make for messy kills. Not the usual thief’s choice.”

“Reconstruction told you all that?” She wasn’t exactly accusing him of extrapolating well beyond the actual evidence, but her tone was skeptical.

He realized that it was too
fökking
easy to talk to her, and now he was on dangerous ground. The reconstruction at the warehouse, what little he’d had time for, had only confirmed what his talent had already told him. “Mostly. Leo was a good friend, so I already knew how he felt about Adina, and that he’d have risked anything to keep her safe. She made it out of the service pretty much whole, but the waster’s was going to force her into retirement soon enough.”

“It’s not in your report.”

“No, it wasn’t relevant to... wait, you read my report?” She nodded, her face serious. None of his current or previous assistants had ever read his reports. Leo used to tease him mercilessly. Even Zheer had probably only skimmed it. “Most people don’t bother. They’re kind of dry reading for non-specialists.”

“I’ve read worse.”

He snorted. “Really? Name one.”

“The most recent Etonver traffic study.”

He laughed out loud. “Good lord, why did you read that?” He thought a moment. “Oh, I get it. Driving for me. Has it helped?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Too soon to tell.”

“What other hobbies do you have besides reading odd things?”

The look she gave him said she wasn’t sure why he wanted to know, or that she wanted to answer. Finally she said, “I run.”

Yet another reason he was glad to have met her. “Would you go running with me? Velasco and Alhamsi won’t.” He smiled at her hopefully.

Traffic forced their vehicle to a standstill. The dashboard display gave them an estimated delay countdown from Etonver’s traffic control system in Arabic numerals and Chinese characters.

She gave him a long, assessing look, then looked forward again. “Yes.”

He was inordinately pleased. Even Leo, his only real friend in Etonver, had refused to do that.

The independent testing lab was in a medical building, one of several on the block. After Luka gave the lab custody of the packaged squibs from the warehouse, he and Morganthur went to meet with a pharmaceutical researcher named Dr. Eglatine Tewisham. Luka had arranged the meeting to get an expert’s view of the pharmaceutical industry, because Luka’s intuition said it was a key to understanding the case.

Tewisham turned out to be a big-boned, furry man with red hair who looked more like a frontier farmer than a scientist, but his stylish clothes were expensively hand-tailored and his standard English accent was distinctively posh, maybe even Albion Prime posh.

Luka introduced Morganthur as his assistant, then wondered why he’d never introduced Velasco in similar situations. Maybe because Tewisham’s eyes kept returning appreciatively to Morganthur. Which was an idiotic reason, because Luka was pretty sure he wouldn’t care if Tewisham was interested in Velasco.

Tewisham invited them to sit, then launched into a rapid-fire lecture on the background of how pharmaceuticals were developed, produced, and distributed, a process that turned out to be much more convoluted than Luka had imagined.

“It’s a matter of liabilities and loopholes,” said Tewisham. “The pharma industry as a whole is obscenely profitable, so as you might imagine, competition is fierce. Pharmas prefer not to pay damages if their latest wonder cure turns out to be worse than the disease, so they’ve learnt to take advantage of every corporate ownership loophole in Concordance and planetary law they can find. Plus they’ve invented some new dodges that are still being tested in the courts.”

Tewisham stood and began striding back and forth, as if he were on the dais in front of a university lecture hall full of D-level students, instead of in a corporate researcher’s office full of displays, holos, and stacks of real paper.

“No one company owns more than a part of the process, so if the problem turns out to be, for example, harmful side effects, only the development company can be sued, not the production, distribution, or marketing companies.” Tewisham’s path took him closer to Morganthur’s chair. “Unless you can prove someone’s in bed with someone else.” He winked saucily at her. Her bland expression didn’t change.

“Couldn’t you sue the owners of all the companies?” asked Luka.

“Certainly, if you could find them and prove the relationship. Legally, the companies are independently owned and directed. Only shortsighted or greedy companies try to save money by keeping more than one function in-house. Profits to the real owners are funneled through silent partnerships, subcontracts, royalty payments and licenses, shell corporations, and so forth. Do you recall a popular drug called Pelderammodox? It was an antiemetic, used to treat nausea, that rendered long-term users sterile. It devastated sperm counts and destroyed female ova altogether.”

Luka nodded. “Top galactic news trend for months.”

“Just so. The pharma development company was unwound in the first year, and the production company was next, but twenty years later, Concordance prosecutors are still uncovering individual owners to this day. That was for a high-profile case. If the problem is less damaging, perhaps turning your hair the same delightful shade of blonde that Mairwen—may I call you that?—wears to such advantage, even the hungriest of lawyers will look for easier commissions.”

Tewisham seemed surprised when his flirting got no visible response from Morganthur. He was probably used to seducing women with his accent alone. Luka was mildly pleased he could tell she found Tewisham’s overtures tedious.

An idea sparked in Luka’s mind. “What about counterfeits?”

“Ah, now you’re sailing in blackmarket seas. Most drugs can be back-engineered or cloned eventually. Rival companies do it regularly. It’s generally only a matter of time, and not much time, before they begin eroding profits. The costs to trace the clone back to the blackmarketer’s temporary laboratory are prohibitive. Consequently, pharmas flood the market with new product as quickly as possible to skim the profits, then drop the price to make it less profitable for rivals and blackmarketers to undercut them. It’s an arms race, really—the faster to market, the higher the profits. I’d wager every pharma company in existence has a blackmarket mole or two.”

“What if the clone is bad, and causes the bad side effect?”

Tewisham plopped himself in his chair and steepled his fingers. It looked like a practiced gesture.

“Nobody wins. It’s hardly worth the original producer’s expense of recalling the drug, because the damage is done.” He gave them both a wicked, piratical grin. “Sadly, greedy and sloppy blackmarketers crop up every year.”

“You approve of blackmarketers?” Luka asked in surprise.

“They’re the only real check we have on pharma companies. The expansion of galactic civilization has given us millions more chances to encounter new diseases, and the pharma industry has blossomed. Pharmas are monstrously profitable as is, and they expend a great deal to avoid regulation and accountability. If pharmas had no competition, imagine where we’d be.”

On their way out of the building, Luka detoured to the lab and asked them to add amino origin tracing to the array of tests he’d ordered. The clone idea was worth pursuing, if only to rule it out.

The only thing worse than Etonver ground traffic was Etonver parking, which explained why they had to walk six blocks to where they’d left the vehicle. Fortunately, pleasant fall days were one of the compensations for living in Etonver.

Despite the relief of being able to stretch his legs, Luka’s thoughts were chaotic. He’d been off balance ever since coming back to Rekoria, and he still hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the patterns and possibilities that fit the too few facts they had. He had no objectivity left to work on a murder case in which one of the victims had been a good friend.

It had been Leo who’d convinced Seshulla Zheer that La Plata needed a reconstruction specialist in the first place. Luka had a large number of casual acquaintances across the galaxy, but few friends. Sooner or later, his obsessiveness, intuition, and hidden talents made most people uneasy or angry. Leo was one of the few who took them in stride, and more than that, respected and valued them.

Luka knew he wouldn’t be good for anything unless he regained some equilibrium. Maybe a long run after work would help him find it.

They turned a corner, and he wished he hadn’t been distracted by his upcoming meeting on the way in, because then the presence of a Citizen Protection Service minder treatment clinic would have been less of a shock. There was a sameness about the look of the clinic, like all the other CPS clinics he’d ever seen or been in on other planets. But it was the distinctive smell that got him, a kind of smoldering-medicinal-plastic miasma that drifted out over the walkway. Almost as bad as the cheap potato-mash alcohol his father favored. The rest of his thoughts fell apart as dark and bitter memories came tumbling like sharp rocks swept in by floodwaters.

* * * * *

Mairwen was puzzled when Foxe slowed to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the local CPS minder clinic. She was almost getting used to his sudden changes in focus. She waited for him to turn and explain, but he was staring at the door with unseeing eyes. His expression reminded her of the haunted look from the warehouse and in the spaceport, though not as vivid.

Not knowing what else to do, she simply stood with him, keeping watch to make sure he wouldn’t be a casualty of some inattentive pedestrian. After a long passage of seconds, an obnoxiously loud vehicle horn caused him to startle and wake from his trance. She waited, keeping an eye on him as he found his bearings and noticed where he was.

“Sorry, I...” he said, and then hesitated. He slanted a long look at her, then focused on the pavement. “Old, bad memories.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly. She had more than her share of her own, just buried deeper at the moment.

He took a slow, deep breath, then started walking again, faster than before. Once they were past the clinic, some of the tension left his face, but not his shoulders or his gait. She didn’t expect an explanation, so she was surprised when he spoke, his voice low and flat.

“My mother was a high-level telepath in the Citizen Protection Service, recruited right after second testing, but she didn’t do well on the enhancement drugs. After she left the service on disability, my
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father refused to take her to the treatment clinic because he thought it was her own fault for getting addicted. As if the CPS had given her a choice. He believed she should be able to kick the addiction if she really wanted to.” He took a ragged breath. “When I was nine or ten, I started going with her to the clinic when he wouldn’t. Toward the end, I had to jump school to take her while he was at work or he’d stop us.” The fingers of his left hand curled. “He got violent when he couldn’t control things.”

Mairwen had the feeling he didn’t talk about this often, and she had no words for him. When the CPS had gotten their hooks into her, she’d lost everything at once, not by centimeters and days and bruises at a time.

At the next crosswalk, she gave into impulse and stepped closer to him than usual and briefly brushed his hand with her fingers. She hoped he would understand it as a gesture of comfort. To her astonishment, though he didn’t look at her, he threaded his fingers through hers and gave her hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. She was equally astonished with herself. She didn’t like physical contact with anyone, but with him, not only had she initiated it, she realized she liked the feel of his skin on hers.
Danger,
hissed her cautious brain.

As she walked beside him in silence, she experienced a curious sense of emptiness in her chest, almost painful. It wasn’t external, because she’d already opened her senses to take in Foxe and their surroundings, and she’d have felt it sooner. She resolutely set it aside as something to think about later. He was too vulnerable to see to his own safety at the moment. Even if she didn’t know how to ease his pain, or didn’t know if it was even possible, she could at least keep her senses open and extended for him.