The Octagonal Raven (18 page)

Some, like Seldyn, I was pretty sure I could eliminate, since she was basically a rich woman who’d inherited the credits and used them widely and philanthropically, and didn’t have personal expertise in the field. That didn’t mean she didn’t have intent, but it did mean she would have needed accomplices, perhaps a large number, and that would have left some sort of track—I thought.

The next search was a different sort, one to see if I could find a common factor that any shared. Several were on advisory boards, and the like, of charitable organizations, but no more than two on any one organizational board—except for the PST Trust. Escher, Dymke, St. Cyril, Costilla, Deng, and TanUy all were affiliated with the PST Trust. Eldyn, on the other hand, was associated with none of them, but I still remembered his lack of reaction at Kharl’s, and knew he had to be involved. But like the others, I didn’t know how, or how to obtain anything resembling proof.

After that, things got slow, because nothing else at all turned up, and I finally went to bed. I didn’t sleep well, knowing that in all likelihood, the CAs would be at least inquiring about an odd occurrence, and wondering how I could handle that.

Fledgling: Orbit Station, New Austin, 437 N.E.

The
Newton
was hanging in space, a good klick from the only orbit station around New Austin. The planet was about point nine Tee, with a marginal atmosphere that looked pinkish from above, and the Federal Union had been working to increase atmospheric density for close to two centuries. The single operable cargo shuttle was sliding through the nightside space, back to the station, and probably would be occupied for several hours, as it offloaded the last shipment of the four sets of biotemplates we’d carried out from Earth and through three other systems and Gates first. Once the templates were transferred, the shuttle would have to offload some other specialized and nanite-based planoforming technology. Then, after we offloaded, we’d load back up the cases that held data and biosamples, and the FS personnel being rotated back to earth or elsewhere, any passengers, and head back to Earth. With the cross-system travel, we’d have been gone from Earth almost seven months, and I was getting a little ship-crazy, despite the planetside reconditioning along the way.

I cornered Commander Matteus outside the mess. We were both hanging above the deck, because photonjet interstellar ships aren’t built to spin.

“Would you mind if I took the cargo shuttle to the station, ser?”

“You know someone there, Major?”

“No.” I shrugged. “I might, but not that I know. I just felt restless, ser. If it’s a problem…?”

The exec looked back at me, then smiled. “Actually, you could do me a favor of sorts, Major. If you’d follow me…”

What sort of favor she had in mind I wasn’t certain, because she’d never been forward personally or in any other way. I followed, hand over hand, wondering, until she reached her quarters.

The small cabin was as neat as she was, without a hint of anything out of place. As I watched, she touched one of the plates on the safe, then keyed in something. The safe opened, and she took out a small case that she extended to me. “Routine future authorization codes for the station for the next year. I was going to have Lieutenant Tang carry this, but he’s behind on his training reports anyway. It goes to the station commander. If you take it, someone will turn white—or green.”

“Meaning that when majors carry the dispatches, there’s trouble?” I frowned, wondering why we carried the codes when other ships could have reached New Austin sooner.

“The ones we carry aren’t that time sensitive,” she answered. “You may recall Captain Flahrty,” she half-asked.

“
The
Captain Flahrty?”

“I see you do. Just tell him that you’re delivering the case with my compliments.” Matteus grinned, almost evilly. “He’ll probably find something for me next trip, if he’s still here in two years, because it will probably be that long before we’re rotated out here.” A wider smile crossed her lips. “And if you could look stern or worried…I would appreciate it.”

We both smiled.

I was smiling as I left her cabin, heading for the main personnel lock, where I donned an outside suit. Then I made my way aft to the cargo lock where I waited until I got the signal from the supercargo and pulled myself along the tether to the shuttle’s hatch. It took a minute to get hooked into the air system, and it was stale, like that of most orbit transfer shuttles.

“Major,” asked the shuttle jockey after I was strapped in and linked into the simple commsystem, “ready for pushaway?”

“Ready,” I confirmed.

His touch on the ionjets was deft and easy, and in moments he had the shuttle headed back toward the cargo lock of the orbit station.

“Major…” he asked after a time of silence, “were you with the
Newton
when…?”

“When we found the forerunner artifact?” I paused. “Yes.”

“What was…what’s it like?”

“It looked like an off-center Gate, sort of whitish, hard-to-see, and old. Very old.”

“Did you ever go into it?”

“None of us did. We just scanned it with probes.”

“Good thing you didn’t.”

“Oh?” His comment seemed a little strange.

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” I asked.

“About the alien curse? Or virus? Or whatever?”

“We’ve been out six months. Tell me,” I suggested dryly.

“They say that half the scientists who were on the
Darwin
were laid up with something. Two of ’em died.”

“That seems far-fetched to me,” I pointed out. “First, that artifact was so old that it didn’t have any atmosphere left. For even a virus to survive that long near absolute zero would be almost impossible. Then, for it to be compatible with our physiology?” I found myself shaking my head. “Besides, they decontaminated the
Darwin
with a photon-plasma wash, and with nanetic medicine, there’d be no way a leftover virus from some other life form could survive. And that was over two years ago. If something like that had survived, there would have been talk sooner than this.”

He shrugged. “I only know what they’ve been saying.”

“Are there any hard reports? Anything like that?”

“Not that I’ve seen, ser. But the last two ships, they were saying the same thing, they were.”

“Could be. I just don’t know.”

“I just know what I heard.” The jockey sounded put out that either I didn’t believe him or that I had nothing new to add. So that was that for the rest of the short hop to the orbit station.

Once there, I stripped myself of the suit and racked it in one of the transient lockers, and pocketed the microkey. Then, carrying my case, I put on a stern expression and made my way to upper level and the commander’s section. Since all orbit stations were designed the same, that wasn’t a problem.

A fresh-faced lieutenant wearing a logistics insignia on his singlesuit immediately addressed me. “Might I help you, Major?”

“I have a case for Captain Flahrty.”

The senior lieutenant looked at me. “Ah…I could take it, ser.”

“I was ordered to deliver it to Captain Flahrty personally, Lieutenant. I brought it over from the
Newton
.”

“Ah…yes, ser.” He went rigid for a moment, apparently linking with Captain Flahrty. Then he gestured toward the hatch behind him and to his left. “The captain will see you, ser.”

I inclined my head. “Thank you.”

The hatch opened to my touch, and I eased/floated inside. Captain Flahrty was loosely strapped before a manual console in an office that was barely three meters square and not quite that from deck to overhead. He looked more like an ancient gladiator than a Federal Service senior captain.

“Yes, Major?” Captain Flahrty growled, as everyone had said he did.

“This is from Commander Matteus, Captain, with her compliments.” I extended the case, then managed a slight formal bow, despite the weightlessness.

Captain Flahrty raised his eyebrows, but he took the case. “Thank you, Major. Is there anything else?”

“No, ser. Unless you have anything that needs to go back to Earth.”

“If I do, Major, I’ll send it over on the shuttle.”

“Yes, ser. Thank you, ser.”

With another bow, I propelled myself out of the smallish office. After nodding to the young lieutenant, I made my way back down to the main deck, where I stopped by the mess and tried some of their pastries. They weren’t any better than those on the
Newton
, and no one on the station seemed especially friendly. So I went to suit up again and to find the cargo shuttle.

The shuttle had a new pilot, and she didn’t mention the alien Gate, and neither did I, although I did wonder about what the other pilot had told me. But all I could wonder was how anything could have survived the time and temperatures for so long. And I still felt restless.

Raven: Vallura—Helyna, 459 N.E.

I woke up groggy from not sleeping well. My home was probably safe—for a time—and the latest modifications to the glider were designed so that it would have been easier to blow it up with an antique tactical nuclear device—were there any left on Earth—than to tamper with it in a way that wouldn’t register on my personal link system.

But something was happening, more than a simple attempt to murder me. I could take matters two ways—that someone was out to kill me or that I’d been given a serious warning. Stay home and out of whatever it was, or get killed. I’d never liked that kind of game. I suppose it was why I still occasionally played tennis against Gerrat, even if he won most of the time.

If I had to, I supposed that I could dip into my inheritance and go trotting all over the world to try to dig out more on the PST connection. Or I could go visit Eldyn—I certainly didn’t want to talk substance to him on the net—and he’d probably talk to me, even if he told me nothing. But there was no certainty that I’d find anything. And there was no one else I could hire that could probably do much better. I knew nets, and systems, and I knew the people and the kind of people who ran them. If the kind of information I needed didn’t happen to be accessible on someone’s net, then it was either firewalled where breaking in would end someone on the Mars penal project, or it wasn’t on any system. In a very careful way, I’d already been set up, set up so that almost any effective way to discover exactly who was after me or why would be illegal and dangerous, or both.

I did have some information to track down Elysa—but I didn’t want to use any system I had…and if I went to UniComm…well, then, I could get further involved in the sysnet wars…if indeed they were part of the problem. Besides, something about going into Unicomm
felt
wrong.

As I sipped yet another cup of Grey tea and looked at the early-morning shadowed shapes of the East Mountains, I had one thought. Probably a bad one, but I needed a friendly face as well as more information.

So I headed to get cleaned up and dressed.

I had gotten as far as getting dressed. In fact, I was standing in my office wondering what I’d need to implement my questionable idea when the gatekeeper chimed. The identification was about what I’d worried about—or feared—the Civil Authorities.

The image that appeared was that of a tired-eyed but young CA in a slightly wrinkled off-white and gray singlesuit. “Ser, I’m officer Whitsenn, with the Helnya regional office of the Civil Authorities.” He paused, I suspect, to see what I would volunteer.

“Yes?” I was wary, but I decided that I needed to get through the call. “What can I do for you, officer?”

“There’s been an incident of sorts here, and we’ve been going through the skytors and tube records, and it appears that you might have been in Helnya yesterday when it occurred.”

“I was in Helnya yesterday,” I admitted. “I was visiting a jeweler, but I don’t see what…” I frowned, then shook my head, and offered a puzzled smile. I hoped it was a puzzled smile. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like your permission to record this, if I might, ser?”

“That’s fine,” I agreed. There was no reason not to agree. He was being polite, or putting me on notice, or both, since he certainly didn’t need my permission.

“Thank you, ser.” After a moment, he continued, “You took the two fifteen induction tube from Helnya to Vallura, and a man of your approximate description was seen hurrying to the tube train station at about five past two.” He waited again.

I smiled and shrugged. “I’m sure that was me. I didn’t want to wait for another tube.” I decided to be very cooperative. “What else do you need to know?”

“You seemed to be coming from the northwest.”

“I’d guess so. I was just following the walkway. There were oaks there. I was just walking, and then I realized if I didn’t hurry I might miss the tube.”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

I frowned. “Where? There was a pair of youngsters on the train, you know the type, with the wide-legged red leather single suits with the white vests that strobe…”

“Actually, ser, we were interested in anything you might have seen just before you got to the station.”

I squinted, trying to remember just how the monoclone had looked. “I only saw one person before I reached the station…I mean just before. I didn’t think it was that unusual. Maybe a little…There was a man in a sort of brown singlesuit—a cheap one, and it struck me as a little odd for Helnya at first, but he was standing in the nasturtiums, and then I realized he was a gardener or something.”

“Why did you think he was a gardener, ser?”

“Well…because he had knife in his hand and was doing something to the tree. It looked like he was pruning something…so I thought he was a gardener.” I looked at the CA’s image. “Wasn’t he a gardener?”

The CA politely ignored my question. “Could you describe this man?”

I shrugged again. “I didn’t look too closely. I remember the brown, because it was cheap-looking, and he had brown hair…I think. I would have noticed if he’d been a redhead or a blond. I don’t think it was black. Maybe medium-sized, not as tall as I am.” I tried to look helpful. “That’s the only person I can remember seeing. Does that help?”

“Yes, ser, it does.” He gave me a professional smile. “Is there anything else you can remember?”

I tilted my head, trying to remember any other detail, but I couldn’t, except for the clone’s vacant face and the filament knife, and I wasn’t about to mention those. Finally, I shook my head. “I really can’t. I suppose I dismissed him once I realized he was a gardener.” I paused. “Except he wasn’t, was he?”

“No, ser.”

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” I tried to be insistently polite.

“I really can’t, ser. You’ve been most helpful. All I can say is that we’re investigating.” He paused, then asked, “Did you see anyone else who might have passed this man? Say, someone going the other way? From the station toward him?”

“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t that far from the trees where he was to the station. I suppose someone coming off the tube might have walked that way, but I didn’t see anyone.” In fact, I hadn’t seen anyone except the monoclone until I’d gotten into the station.

“No one at all, ser?”

“No one. Not until I was in the station.” And that was definitely true.

He kept at it for a time, asking about details, and rephrasing questions, but I struck to what I’d seen, and everything I told him was true—except for the little detail about the clone using his knife to prune the tree. I just didn’t tell him everything.

Finally, he—or his image—looked at me. “You’ve been very patient, ser, and I thank you. If we run across anything else, might we contact you?”

“Of course.”

After his image vanished, I went upstairs and had another cup of Grey tea. I’d need to wait a bit before I put my bad idea into practice, since the last thing I wanted to do was to go screaming out of the house right after a call from the CAs.