The Alien Trace [Cord 01] (29 page)

    Cord's tail whipped. "Whatever you were going to offer me-triple it and all of it's yours. Put the money in my account in notes, stock, and checks, as you suggested."

    "Flame beryls too?" K grinned. "I have the safe here; I can hand some over right now."

    Cord shrugged. "I've never seen them. Why not?"

    Hamilton K walked over to a blank wall in his office and opened up a hidden panel. "While you're counting these, I can test the various devices as you describe their operation."

    Cord nodded. "After that, will you contact O'as Garatua about the exits?"

    K reached into the safe and brought out a small box. "That and other things. That woman is going to hear some pretty foul language when I give her a piece of my mind."

    "Your mind is the only piece I'd be willing to accept!" O'as snapped, entering K's office through a partially opened door. She slammed the door panel closed with a savage push of her elbow.

    K sealed his safe and went back behind his desk. "Won't you come in?" he asked snidely. He ignored her and began counting out the small stones. They were a coral opalescence that glittered with reflected light. K counted out ten and handed them to Cord, who placed them in his side pouch.

    Only after putting the remaining flame beryls back in the safe did Hamilton K speak. "What's the matter now?"

    The Kamean shot him an equally nasty look and dropped into a chair. Cord remained standing. When they both looked at him, Cord asked, "Should I leave? Perhaps this is private."

    O'as raised a hand. "Stay. This concerns you-and all of us. I've been in communications." She bit out her words. "A subspace message came in from the Ten Suns ship
Maida
."
In an aside to Hamilton K, she said, "The news of a ship's impending arrival has already made the rounds, but that message was from the freighter
Lady of Eire. This
message was top-secret."

    Cord realized that Garatua's anger was anxiety. He wondered what could worry O'as, phlegmatic in spite of a peppery tongue, to such a degree.

    "Do you mind if I explain a few things to Cord?" O'as addressed Hamilton, evidently collecting herself.

    "Go ahead-as long as you explain the problem."

    "The
Maida
brought in about half the personnel here. The essential staff always goes in first, and nonessential comes next. The
Maida
brought the second group."

    Cord nodded. He could tell this was going to be a lengthy conversation. So he sat down on the edge of a Terran chair.

    "You recall we talked about the disposal system after you nearly went down it? Ordinarily, the recyclers work for years with routine cleaning and adjustment by the system robots. It's supposed to be self-maintaining, and it is. If it weren't, it wouldn't be reliable enough for isolated ports and starships. But the
Maida
's unit failed. Nothing too serious, but it required human intervention. They got a crew in to empty the holding tanks so they could get at the malfunction. In the organic tank, they found bits of bone."

    "Human bone?" asked K.

    "Yeah. There aren't enough fragments to fill a cup, but the
Maida
's captain thinks she knows whom they belonged to. On their last trip to Mehira, when they brought us, they lost a crewman on one of the planets where they took on freight. They thought he'd jumped ship. Impossible to find him-the place had no government to speak of."

    "I heard something about it," K said.

    "The official explanation," O'as continued, "was that he must have slipped off the ship and gone native. His crewmates didn't believe it; they thought he'd had an accident. They searched for him, but there was no trace, and the aliens couldn't or wouldn't talk."

    "It has been known to happen," Hamilton K said.

    "The mystery was that no one saw him go. It wasn't a dangerous world, and the
Maida
's method of accounting for her crew was pretty lax. It's not surprising. Checking in and out is standard practice on unstable worlds and in big ports. On backwater worlds, the rules get loose."

    "Which leads to episodes like this," K added.

    O'as grunted, "its major importance is that we know when the man disappeared. Now we know what happened to him, assuming the bones are his, and it's reasonable to suppose they are."

    "So someone on the ship must have killed him?" Cord spoke for the first time since Garatua began the report.

    "Yes. The captain has questioned the crew under hypnosis and drugs, and the first officer has done the same to her. Every crew member who was on the ship then is clear."

    "Did anyone leave the ship after that voyage?"

    "Yes, two. One took a post as third officer with a smaller company, and one retired to raise chickaroos on St. George. Ten Suns Enterprises is checking on them now. When the ship arrives, the captain wants to question everyone here who came on the
Maida
. Whoever killed that crewman is probably in the spaceport."

    "Quite a project," K commented.

    "It will be," O'as agreed without enthusiasm. "I'll compile a list of those who arrived on the
Maida
."

    There was a moment of silence. Cord's tail kept switching, To restrain it, he wrapped it about the chair leg. Something was bothering him.

    "But what does this have to do with me?" he finally asked.

    "It is highly likely that the possible killer of this crewman is the same person who killed your parents," O'as explained.

    "You left out the person who attacked me," Cord pointed out logically. "Isn't one psychopath responsible for all the attacks?"

    "I don't know," admitted O'as. She turned to Hamilton K. "The subspace message also transmitted an electronic 'picture' of the dead crewman." She reached into her tunic and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "That's why I ran here. Fortunately-or unfortunately-Cord was here too."

    She stood up and smoothed out the sheet on K's desk. Cord stood up to examine it-and recoiled. The face that stared back at him, created by millions of pinpoints, was the same man who had tried to kill him in the spaceport weeks ago!

    Hamilton was on his feet too. "Are you trying to tell me that he was attacked by a dead man? Impossible!"

    O'as spread her hands. "I have no explanation." She looked at Cord.

    "That
is
the man," Cord said in a flat voice. "And I have no explanation."

    "Resurrection? Teleportation?" asked Hamilton K.

    "Or a shape changer," muttered Cord.

    "It's clear," said O'as, "that we are not dealing with an ordinary crime nor an ordinary criminal."

    "Then perhaps my mother's telepathy receiver will find the answer."

    "And that's probably precisely why," said O'as, "your parents were destroyed."

    "But why kill the first time? Did the crewman know something about the killer or the killer's past?"

    K shook his head. "I know nothing of criminal investigation, Cord, but I do know the company. Every Ten Suns employee is screened before assignment. The psychological testing would have uncovered any crime in the suspect's background. The only person here who hasn't got a psych profile on record is you."

    "And you can't be guilty," O'as pointed out. "Still, the original murder may have been intended to cover up a crime initiated after the profile was taken-smuggling, for instance."

    "What would be worth anyone's risk to smuggle onto Mehira?" K inquired. "And if illegal narcotics were being distributed in the port, could you be unaware of it, O'as?"

    "What if he was selling them outside the port?" O'as countered. "That would explain why there were no signs of drug traffic. I know Cord has been curious about the possibility that someone was getting out."

    O'as and Hamilton K continued to argue. Cord did not hear them. From the humans' point of view, the suggestion was a good one. They didn't know about the empathic link of Mehirans-or about his dreams.

    Most crimes committed by humans might also be perpetrated by Mehirans, though not as frequently or as casually. Drug selling would probably be the exception, Cord thought. If the drug was not harmful, the Council would have no objections to its being sold. If it did affect the mind, its use would be impossible to conceal from other Mehirans.

    His dream supplied the answer. The death agonies of Mehirans so far away should not have troubled his sleep-not enough to trigger a terrifying and detailed nightmare. The source of the signal was either much closer or else was someone he knew.

    What he had experienced in the dream-the thrill, the pleasure in the victims' fear-was what the killer had felt. Oh, the murder of Fyrrell and Neteel had been for their slayer's safety, Cord was sure of it. The deaths outside the spaceport had been committed for enjoyment. And Pars? A combination of the two: first, for a scapegoat, and second, because his unhappiness and desperation pleased the one who drove him to death.

    What a fool he had been. Here, among humans, he had missed the motive because it was such a
Mehiran
crime. On Mehira everyone knew that some commit violent crimes to savor the pain of others. It had not occurred to him to look for the same motivation among humans, who seemed to lack the empathic sense.

    And with O'as's latest revelation, Cord was sure his quarry was a very unusual human.

    "Well?" Hamilton K demanded. "You're the security chief. What shall we do next?"

    "After the list is compiled," she answered, "you and I and Cord, with his clever little device, will cooperate with the
Maida
's captain to find the killer. In the meantime, the freighter
Lady of Eire
has already landed and most of the port people are celebrating. The
Maida
is not due to land until tomorrow."

    "If everyone is drunk, or otherwise engaged," K said, "it might make our investigation easier. Cord?"

    "The telepathy device works whether one is sober or not. Or," he said, grinning, "otherwise engaged." Suddenly he remembered his promise to Julia to celebrate with her tonight.

    O'as looked at her watch. "If we meet again at the third hour, here at K's office, that should give us enough time to form a plan-and for everyone else to be caught unawares."

    The three of them agreed, and Cord left K's office, the comforting feel of a knife slapping against his leg. If he made love to Julia or anyone else tonight, it would be with his boots on…

    

    

    The day had passed swiftly. After leaving K and O'as, Cord found he had only enough time to stop at his unit and change clothing before meeting Julia for dinner-among other things. When he dressed in a silky-smooth tunic and trousers (altered to accommodate his tail comfortably), he left the mind-reading device in his equipment case. The chest's alarm system would keep it safe. He did not wish to be encumbered with the detector this evening-it would make undressing complicated and generate questions.

    They met in the port's "restaurant." Unlike the main dining room, it was dimly lit, subdivided into smaller areas, and rather luxuriously furnished. There were also music and holographed entertainment.

    Julia was quiet. She was never one to chatter, Cord knew, but tonight she seemed subdued. From their table, they could watch the recorded floor show while they sipped their wine. Its pale-green color pleased Cord almost as much as its light dryness.

    The entertainment was an acrobatics/comedy/dance routine, two men and a woman demonstrating sex acts in a variety of unlikely postures.

    "That one looks hazardous to health," Cord murmured. "One false move and you'd be explaining to the doctor how your spine came to be a two-hundred-eighty-degree arc. We could try it tonight."

    Julia laughed softly. "You are corrupting me, Cord. While sex is permissible in my religion to relieve frustration, an… arrangement like that one could not be considered necessary. But I wonder what it would be like in free fall."

    "Oh, Julia, I'll never understand the ins and outs of your beliefs. Or how you came to adopt them."

    "I… was born a Centrist."

    "But…" Cord intended to say that did not seem an adequate reason to continue to believe in a philosophy which was so opposed to her passionate nature. Then he thought of his own beliefs and decided they were in similar situations.

    "Maybe I'm not suited to practice Centrism," Julia agreed. "It used to be easy, but since I met you, Cord, my control and beliefs are eroding. And I'm certainly not accomplishing anything here as a missionary. I wasn't even of any assistance to Lion."

    It was all too true to be denied. He took Julia's hand and pressed it in sympathy.

    "It doesn't matter," she assured him. "This doubting may only be a test of my faith. If it continues, then I'll decide, what to do." She refilled their glasses. "Have you changed your mind about not leaving on the freighter that came in today?"

    "No, I'm not ready to go yet. If I change my mind, I can always leave on the
Maida
."

    Julia was surprised. "That's a Ten Suns ship. I didn't know it was coming back here."

    Cord shrugged. "I need to sell Ten Suns a few more plans and prototypes. I have enough credits to leave now, but if I wait, I would have a small fortune. From what Hamilton K and others tell me, it appears that money is everything."

    "Not everything!" Julia exclaimed with surprising intensity. "Not safety or freedom."

    "No-but I would not want to be on my own in your civilization with no money."

    "That's true," Julia conceded.

    Their attention returned to the holos. The three sexual athletes had given way to a juggling act, a combination of fast talk and flying objects. Cord noticed that those watching were breathless with anticipation. The four jugglers were tossing cutter guns back and forth in an intricate pattern-and the guns were set on continuous fire. If any of the sixteen weapons was fumbled, someone was going to die.