Severance (11 page)

“Hang on. Fuck that,” she said aloud. “I’m just doing my
job.” Stein looked at the time displayed on her desk. Quitting time. Actual
quitting time even, not even a half hour late. And she wasn’t going to let this
stupid mystery eat into her time. “Unacceptable,” she said, standing up
quickly, knocking over the chair behind her, but not caring. Tired of
mysteries, she left the office, wanting only to go home and do something simple
and obvious.

§

“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you sound so enthusiastic,”
Sergei said. “I’d almost say you were glad to see me.”

“Oh?” Stein said, smiling. She watched the young security
man rotate his beer on the surface of the bar. They were sitting on stools
pulled up to the bar in the Peregrine, a watering hole on the 3
^rd
level. “The Ship’s Oldest Pub,” a sign above the bar proudly claimed, although
Stein had heard that it held that record by only a couple of hours. She had
called Sergei as soon as she left the office. “Long day at work, I guess.”

“I’ll bet. I heard your name mentioned today.”

Stein’s eyes widened. “About what?”

“You might be an emotionless monster,” Sergei said, “but
when a person is murdered around here, it’s kind of a big deal.”

Stein’s shoulders sank. “Oh. That.” She hoped her body
language would communicate how little she wanted to talk about it.

Sergei didn’t pick up what she was putting down. “I shared a
trolley with Hogg this afternoon.” He took a drink. “Do you think he was using?
The kid I mean. Ron.”

Stein chose her words carefully. “Nope. And if he did, he
wasn’t using a lot. I never noticed a thing. Not that he was a terribly social
person.”

Sergei took a long pull from his beer. “Hogg says the same
thing. Wonders if the drugs were planted on him. I think he’s a little
detective–happy to be honest. Don’t know why they haven’t sent someone
competent to take the case off his hands.” Sergei flagged down the bartender
and ordered another beer, Stein matching his pace. “He was on quite the rant.
Apparently had to crawl across half the ship because someone’s address was
wrong in the database.”

Stein considered relating the similar odd behavior she had
seen in the service call database, but decided against it. Not the right topic
for small talk. Not with a cop anyways.

It had been a dirty trick, approaching her out of uniform. A
smile, and a pair of big friendly eyes. A damned dirty trick. If she had known
he was a security officer, she wouldn’t have looked twice at him. But with his
charming earnestness, and her fluctuating loneliness waxing on that particular
night, she did look twice, and then several times more. She hadn’t bothered asking
what he did. Didn’t care. Too often the answer to that question was “Nothing,”
which always made her feel awkward. One encounter became four, and by the time
she ran into him on the street, smiling his big goofy smile in his big ugly
security uniform, it was too late. The hook had been set.

Her childhood antics had caused her to run afoul of
security, but not enough to create any lasting ill–will. She thought they were
jerks, but truthfully, she had thought everyone was a jerk at that stage of her
life. It was later, during the Breeder thing, that it became harder. Peaceful
protesters, wanting child allowances, beaten down by uniforms with clubs. Stein
hadn’t been hurt, but friends had. Things got bad after that, though Stein had
mostly excused herself from that part of the fight, a decision which probably
saved her life. Ever since then, she’d found it damned hard to look at a
security officer without imagining a set of crosshairs superimposed on them.

Until she met one with dopey, puppy dog eyes.

Problems on the horizon though, just like always. He wanted
more. More of her time, more of her thoughts, more of everything. She didn’t.
It would come to something bad and painful, eventually. Always did. But for now
he was fun to share a beer with, and, occasionally, a bed.

But not someone to trust with crazy hypotheses about AI
systems tampering with the maintenance database to inconvenience government
workers. Instead she asked, “So, even the Security database is incorrect
sometimes? Sergei, Sergei. Letting slip these chinks in your armor. People will
stop fearing you soon.”

Sergei snorted. “It happens. Not that I’ve ever seen it
happen, but it must. People move. Addresses change. I don’t even know how it
updates, but it does. Any system built by man will break sometime.”

Stein silently assented, her day job a result of it. A
sudden punch in the back of her shoulder announced the arrival of Bruce, and
shortly thereafter, many more drinks.

§

“And that’s why everything you believe in is wrong,” Bruce
concluded, three hours later.

Sergei nodded, his face composed. It wasn’t the first time
he had met Bruce, but he had been on his best behavior on that occasion. Less
so tonight — Stein had been stifling laughter all evening watching Sergei’s
reactions to Bruce’s antics.

“Fair enough. I guess I’ll have to make some immediate
changes in my life,” Sergei said. He held up his glass, allowing Bruce to
lustily collide his own with it. Stein smiled.
Maybe I’ll keep him around a
bit longer.

Sergei’s eyes drifted over the bar, to the mirrored wall
with the stacks of bottles and glassware on it. He focused on something. Stein
followed his gaze, but couldn’t see what he was looking at.

“That prick can’t even drink properly,” he said.

“Who?”

He blinked in surprised, seeming to have forgotten where he
was. “No one. Koller. Some asshole I work with.” He jerked his head backwards.
Stein looked behind them, seeing a burly looking man sitting against the back
wall, staring at the table, a nearly full glass in front of him. “Real son of a
bitch,” Sergei continued. “Wouldn’t know a good time if it sat on his face.”

That sounded like most cops to her, but she kept that thought
to herself. On her other side, Bruce, who rarely kept things to himself, was
busy noisily licking the inside of his glass, trying to get the attention of
the bartender.

Sergei tugged at the sleeve of Stein’s shirt. “We have to go
now,” he said.

“What, why?” Stein asked, alarmed. She searched his face for
clues, finding only a pair of twinkling eyes. She smiled. “Oh. That. Yeah, all
right.” She turned to Bruce. “We have to go now,” she repeated loudly.

“What’s all this I hear about you having to go?” Bruce
asked, squinting at the pair.

“We have to go,” they replied in unison. Stein giggled, her
eyes widening, surprised at herself.

Bruce nodded, looking down at the new drink which had just
arrived. “Well, it’s a school night for me, too.” He finished the drink in one
swallow, then flagged down the bartender again. “So, I’ll be here for awhile.
You two have fun.”

They stood up and began walking from the bar, Sergei casting
another glance at his mopey friend in the back while Stein eyeballed her own.
She felt a flicker of guilt leaving Bruce there. He had certainly left her
alone many times, pursuing one of the many lady friends he’d had. He could very
well have another one tonight. Still, that flicker of guilt lingered as she
walked out, catching a final glance of him. Every now and then the massive
walls that he carried around seemed to get a lot heavier.

§

“VAV 341–E15 is…at sixty–four percent. Hooray,” Bruce called
out over the terminal.

“Sixty–four percent,” Stein confirmed, noting that down on
her screen. “Delta of seventeen percent,” she relayed to Curts, who was sitting
at the other desk in the room.

“What eq–qu–qu–quipment number again?” Curts asked.

“Uhhhhhhhh. VAV 341–E15.”

“Got it.”

Stein looked up and stretched her arms out. She had arrived
to work that morning to find Curts and a controls diagnostic waiting. Apparently
Curts wanted to identify every busted sensor on board the ship, by yesterday.
It was completely unnecessary, considering that of the thousands of problems
they would identify, exactly zero would be fixed. Make–work of the very worst
kind — work that someone made
her
do.

A controls diagnostic involved a technician physically
inspecting every control sensor and actuator on every piece of heating and
ventilation equipment on board the ship. They then communicated its current
status back to Stein and Curts, who compared it to what the ship’s central
system was reading. A simple matter done once, a hair–tearing experience when
multiplied by fourteen thousand sensors and five thousand actuators. A full
month’s worth of work, if they worked around the clock. Which she most
assuredly would not.

The strangest thing about it was that Curts had stayed in
the office assisting her for every minute of it, despite how fantastically dull
the work was. Stein resented the implication of this — that she would potentially
shirk the chore if he wasn’t there. Curts had suggested that this diagnostic
was particularly important, potentially relating to the ship’s upcoming
deceleration. Stein mentally called bullshit, knowing the laws of momentum didn’t
care one whit about how comfortably ventilated its projectiles were.

Curts had an awkward position, nominally reporting to a
mayor who had no interest in what he did, spending most of his time around the
navy guys who looked down on what he did. Responsible for every system on the
ship that wasn’t related to the naval operation of the vessel, which
encompassed quite a bit, this had kept most of Curts’ predecessors pretty busy.
But Curts had lately spent most of his time liaising with the naval engineers,
serving as the bridge between the two worlds, conducting joint work in
anticipation of the Push. Stein had seen little evidence of what exactly Curts’
work entailed, though if it meant he was generally around less, that was good
enough for her.

Three in the afternoon finally rolled around, and the
technicians began filtering back into the office. Those that did return were in
a uniformly foul mood — many didn’t even bother coming back, opting to head
straight home or places less reputable. Curts loitered in Stein’s office — really
his office, she glumly conceded — double–checking something on his terminal.
Stein left him there and went to change back into her non–orange clothes. In
that sense, she was one of the fortunate ones, having not gotten dirty that
day.

Bruce entered the locker room, facial muscles twitching. She
knew he was putting it on but let him be. Truthfully, she was in no mood to
talk either, about work or anything else. She had lost all interest in whatever
M. Melson was hiding, and the strange booby traps he had planted there. The
issue with the service requests still bothered her, but she wasn’t in the mood
for puzzle solving anymore. The only thing she was in the mood for, being away
from here, was all she was hoping the evening provided. She exchanged a perfunctory
greeting with Bruce, swapped some half–hearted insults directed at their
stuttering ass of a boss, then left the maintenance office and went home.

Outside, she began walking in the direction of her
apartment, wishing she could be there faster than her feet were capable of
moving. As she rounded the corner onto 38
^th
, she heard a voice
calling, “Hey! Hey, uh, ma’am!”

She turned to see a girl walking over to her, all teeth and
knees. Stein recognized her as the receptionist from the licensing office she
had visited the previous day. “Oh, it’s you, uh…” Stein began. “Miss…?”

“I’m Carrie,” she said, coming to a stop in front of her.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Laura.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Stein replied. Silence. Stein braced herself as the conversation
swerved violently towards the ditch.

“So,” Carrie began after a few more awkward seconds. “The
reason I came to find you is I heard about Ron. That’s awful.”

Stein blinked. She’d only paid a passing glance at the news feeds
that morning, and was mildly surprised to see that the news of Gabelman’s death
had only just broken that day. She’d assumed everyone else had found out about
it when she did. “Yeah. Awful,” she agreed. The conversation lurched and
shuddered along.

Carrie bravely continued on. “So, when I read about what
happened this morning, it got me to thinking. You know how yesterday you were
asking about that request? The one Ron was working on?”

“What about it?”

“Well, it’s weird. Greg didn’t make that request. My boss.
At least I don’t think so. Because when Ron came to check it out, he asked for
a different name.”

Stein’s eyes widened fractionally.
Oh, lord. No more
puzzles, dammit.
Not today.
“What name?”

“I think it was Arlo Samson?” Carrie said. “I don’t know how
it’s spelled.”

Stein recognized the name. Arlo Samson was the original
caller for the service request. She remembered it from the Big Board when she’d
dispatched Ron to deal with it. That was why she had done a double take when
she saw Greg Watson’s name appear on the service request yesterday; it had been
changed.

“I had no idea who that was,” Carrie continued. “I’m pretty
new. But I asked one of the other girls there, and they said he had been
promoted six months ago and is working in the Bridge now.”

“And you told that to Ron?”

“Yeah. When he left, he said he’d go ask around the Bridge.”
She blushed. “He looked like a nice guy, you know?”

The corner of Stein’s mouth twitched up. The girl thought
Ron was cute.
Wow. Way to go Ron
.

“So, I thought if you were his friend maybe you should know
what I saw him doing that day. Maybe it’d help you somehow.”

“Did you tell security about this?”

“I didn’t think to. Do you think I should?”

“Maybe,” Stein drummed her fingers on her pant leg. She was
feeling considerably more awake now. “Wait. Did anyone from security talk to
you at all yesterday? Like come by and interview you or anyone at your office?”