Читать книгу A Strangled Cry of Fear - B.A. Chepaitis - Страница 6

Chapter 3

It was evening by the time Alex finished with Paul, made what progress he could toward setting up what would happen next, and got himself home. On and off he’d tried to contact Jaguar in as many ways as possible—telecom, belt sensor, empathically—to no avail. She was following his advice and laying very low.

He decided to go home for dinner before he went to her apartment, but when he opened his apartment door he felt her presence. He adjusted to it, tried to catch a scent of her mood, but all he could smell was incense burning.

There.

She was sitting in his rocking chair, staring out the bank of windows that overlooked the shores of the replica of Lake Ontario, one of the nicest parts of this replica city of Toronto, built specifically for Planetoid Three. He closed the door softly behind him and walked across the room, stopping just behind her.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

She ran a hand through the curls of smoke rising from the incense on the table next to her, playing it like a cat played thread. “Here,” she said. “Waiting for you. They want a report, I suppose.”

“Jaguar—”

“It’s a pretty simple one. He didn’t do it.”

“Listen to me—”

“You want it in triplicate? He didn’t do it, he didn’t do it, he didn’t—”

“—I know that.”

She turned and regarded him cautiously. “Say more,” she suggested.

He ran a hand through his hair and let it rest at the back of his neck. Though they were lovers, in their work relationship she remained difficult and disturbing. If their work was a dance, he thought, it would definitely be a tango. Argentinian tango. Fortunately, he was as good a dancer as she was.

“It’s a long story,” he said, “but it starts with Regina.”

He filled her in on his conversation with that woman, and Jaguar listened, nodded.

“That sounds like her, though it’s a helluva thing to throw in my lap,” she said.

“I said the same thing. But she’s just where it starts. After her, there’s Paul Dinardo.”

“Paul? What’s he got to do with it?”

“He stopped me after the meeting. Wanted to have a talk.”

She waved a hand at him. “Take it at your own pace, Alex. I’m in no rush.”

“You’re not, believe me. And I will, since it takes some telling. First, just so you know, Paul stood up for you in the meeting.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s he want?” she asked.

“He has concerns about Planetoid One, and he was talking to Diane Lasher about them. That’s why he put you on the committee. He figured if there was trouble, you’d sniff it out.”

Jaguar rose from the chair and went to the window. For a moment she stood looking out, perfectly still. Then she whirled on Alex.

“Great Hecate’s cloak,” she said. “Dinardo decides there’s trouble and I’ve got to take the heat, without a clue what’s happening? How’d that work for him last time he tried it?”

“It’s not like that, Jaguar,” Alex said, though he remembered how angry he was when Paul had Jaguar working blind in a Pentagon Blackout operation that could have been the end of her.

“Then what is it like? Bubonic Plague? Hemmorhoids? Why don’t they just kill me and get it the hell over with?”

“They won’t. They’ll just dangle swords over your head to get you to cooperate.”

“In what? State sanctioned murder of a disabled and defenseless mutoid, who happens to be innocent?”

“No. Going to Planetoid One.”

Her expression shifted from anger to tension. “Xipe totec flay them,” she whispered.

“I wish,” Alex agreed.

“They want to transfer me back? Permanently?”

“No. Just go and investigate in the matter of Francis Durero. That’s how they put it.”

Some of the tension left her, but the anger remained. “I don’t do investigation,” she said. “They want me there so they can pressure me to rescind.”

“If that’s all it is we’re lucky. There’s a lot of anger on One about your objections to the work programs.”

She made a sound like growling. “Warehousing prisoners for slave labor. Their economy’s dependent on the population they’re supposed to serve. Francis—that bear he clutches so assiduously—they make them for export sale, right? Pay their mutoids ten cents an hour, take the profits and call themselves saviors. And how much of their population is mutoid now?”

“A little more than half.”

“Most of them there for life. They’re taking in lesser crimes, too. Assaults, petty theft, public pissing. Great scam. I still can’t believe Regina’s supporting it. I’ve been talking about it for years and nobody listened.”

Alex understood her anger. He’d studied management psychology, and knew the tendency of organizations to promote those who served the profitability of the organization rather than its mission statement. Over time, without careful watchdogging, any organization could fall into the trap of forgetting what its original purpose was. Right now, Planetoid One was tilting distinctly in that direction, and needed a tap on the shoulder to turn it around. Jaguar, he knew, was an expert tapper.

“They all listened,” he said. “They just didn’t like it. But Paul listened for a more personal reason. His little sister was exposed to chembombs in the Killing Times. About two years ago she had a baby. Born with a blue patch.”

Jaguar’s face expressed the same interest a cat might on seeing a wounded mouse. “How interesting,” she murmured.

“Retract the claws,” Alex commented. “You won’t be using them. Paul started watching the mutoid programs on One. Diane got word of his interest and put a call into him. She said something was wrong, but she wouldn’t talk on the lines. She wanted a meeting.”

Jaguar’s forehead creased in thought. “About what?” she asked.

“He never found out. She was murdered first. She did say if anything happened to her, he should audit their exports.”

“Shit. It wasn’t Francis. I was right.”

“Like I told them, you almost always are.”

“Almost?”

He shrugged. “I made it always, for their benefit. Paul suspected a smuggling operation. They’ve got some high risk pharmaceutical manufacturing, stuff that gets sold illegally on the home planet. Citrozine’s worth the most.” That particular euphoric was very popular right now, recreational users willing to pay a great deal for it. He rubbed an invisible powder between finger and thumb. “Diamond Dust,” he said.

“Pretty,” Jaguar said, “and expensive. Who’s running it?“

Alex shook his head. “Paul couldn’t find any evidence. He did the audit and they were clean. Inventory stable, and their shipments pass inspection by every means.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Paul is hoping you’ll find out.”

“He’s asking me to do that?”

“Yes. But asking, not telling. He said he’d consider it a favor.”

She ran a finger down the tip of her nose to her lips and tapped them thoughtfully. “What do you say about it?”

“I say it’s a high risk venture. One woman’s already dead, and if there’s something illegal going on you’ll be next on the hit list. Even without that, Susan Eideler’s out for at least a little of your blood. Any idea why?”

Jaguar shook her head. “I didn’t have much to do with her when I was there. She was a team member, and I never requested her.”

“She’s moved up the ladder. She’s a Supervisor now.”

“She looked like she wanted to be a suit. What’s Regina say?”

“She says go and keep a low profile, let everyone get over their snit, and she’ll watch your back. But they won’t let me send back-up and nobody’s naming the limits of your time there, so I’m not very impressed.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t go?” she asked.

“I’m saying I’d rather you didn’t,” he replied carefully.

“What’s my alternative? Retract my vote?”

He shrugged. “That would work.”

She turned her lucid eyes to his, reading for the feeling behind his words. She spoke to him subvocally.

Is that the kind of woman you want in your bed?

Better than a dead woman.

Not much.

He held a hand out to her. What could he say? They’d been through all this before. He had a heart filled with passion for her, and for the job at hand. She felt the same about him, and the job. It was a tension they’d learned to negotiate.

Call it, Jaguar. I’ll back you either way.

She broke contact and looked away. “Paul knows about us, doesn’t he?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“Anyone else say anything about it?”

He nodded. “They don’t want to push it. They just want to use it to push us.”

“That sounds right. You’re sure Dinardo’s not trying to get rid of me?”

“Not this time,” he said. “Apparently you have some senators in your pocket.”

“I don’t have pockets,” she noted. She mused some more. “If I do this, he’ll owe me in a big way, won’t he?”

“He already does,” Alex pointed out.

“But this time he’d have to acknowledge it.”

“Jaguar, what’re you thinking?”

“That it might be good to get a pocket and put him in it.”

Alex shook his head. “We can manage without that.”

“Maybe you can,” she said, “They won’t transfer you. They’ll transfer me, and who’ll they put me with? Galentas, the petty fascist pig dog who substitutes a gun for the deficit of a tiny prick? My ass is on the line either way. And yours isn’t.” She turned her back to him and gazed out the window.

She’d named a truth he couldn’t deny. Her profile, her gender, the color of her skin, the bent of her mind, all testified to it. She was at risk. He was not. He walked to where she stood.

“We could call it quits,” he offered. “Temporarily at least.”

“And I could retract my vote on Durero. Which do you think is more likely?”

He put a hand on her shoulder, but when he touched her, a shiver ran through him. Crows walking on his grave, he thought. That’s what Sophia, the old lady who taught him his arts, had called those unexplained shivers. And since he was an Adept, skilled in precognition, she also taught him to pay attention when they came.

“Something happening, Spider Magus?” Jaguar asked quietly. Though the art of the Adept wasn’t hers, she always sensed its particular tingle in him.

He was silent as he attended the feeling. No vision accompanied it. Just a sudden sensation of being dropped into emptiness. A loss of earth. An unboundedness, encompassing more than him and Jaguar. It held a presence larger than time, a part of everything that would happen on Planetoid One. He breathed in. Breathed out. Let go of Jaguar’s shoulder.

“Something,” he said. “I don’t like this, Jaguar. I think you’d feel the same if it was me.”

She turned to face him. “I’m sure I would,” she agreed. “And I’m sure that wouldn’t stop you.”

She had him there. “You’re going, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Why? All expediency aside, tell me why, Jaguar.”

She took a step away, turned toward the window. “Diane was my friend. I want to know what happened to her.”

No surprise there. Though others saw her as a maverick, inconsistent and unpredictable, she had the most persistent loyalty of anyone Alex had ever met.

“She wasn’t your friend when she knew the truth about you,” he pointed out.

“When I find out the truth about her maybe I won’t be hers anymore. Then we’ll be even. In the meantime, she’s dead and Durero didn’t kill her, and I want to know who did.”

There it was, he thought. “Then we’ve got a job ahead of us,” he said.

She shifted, turned and faced him again. “I notice you haven’t yet asked why I think he didn’t kill her. And that you agreed with me.”

“You’re very observant,” he said coolly. “What do you make of that?”

“I’m thinking you saw the forensic report, which says Diane was hit from behind before she was strangled. Francis always approached face first, going for the throat without any blows.”

“That did seem important to me. Anything else?”

“You’re pretty thorough, so I’d guess you had a talk with Francis yourself.”

“An accurate guess. And?”

“And you saw the same thing I did. He’s not a paranoid schizophrenic, like they say. He’s carrying an ephemeral. One that only kills empaths, which Diane was definitely not.”

Alex sighed. That confirmed what he’d found. An ephemeral. The term empaths used when someone was possessed by a ghost, either as shadow memory or an actual spirit. Not a term recognized by the penitentiary system, but one he and Jaguar both considered when they worked with prisoners. And something he’d seen in Francis, just as she had.

Long before Francis was arrested, his brother Damon was killed by a woman who was, by all reports, an empath. She’d beaten the charge, claiming self-defense, which may well have been true. Damon had two previous assault charges, and was known to have a temper. Now his restless spirit was still with Francis in some essential way, perhaps seeking revenge, or perhaps protecting the little brother he’d left behind. But Alex hadn’t determined if he was there as memory or spirit.

“Any idea if it’s shadow, or a true ephemeral?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I didn’t go deep enough to determine that, on advice of my Supervisor. But maybe my Supervisor went against his own advice and dug a little deeper”

“He didn’t,” Alex said. “Not the right place, and there wasn’t time. But he agrees with you. Diane wasn’t an empath, Francis isn’t paranoid schizophrenic, and he didn’t kill her.”

He saw the small muscles around her neck and shoulders relax. Brief time had passed since they’d become lovers, since he’d stood with her on the mesa and shown his willingness to give his life for her. They were both adjusting to a new emotional order, and she was still relieved when he believed her.

“There’s more, Alex,” she noted. “I think Francis’s meds suppress the ephemeral, no matter what kind it is. He showed no antagonism toward me when I was obviously there as an empath. And I think he could be cleared pretty easily, if he was in the right program.”

He heard frustration in her tone and wondered once more at her contradictory nature. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Francis if she had to, but she would still rather see him healed than dead, would rather see his brother’s spirit at rest than punished. She held firmly to a core belief that healing was a better solution than revenge, and she hated to see a job botched.

On both counts, he agreed with her.

“I know, Jaguar,” he said. “And maybe we’ll get him here when this is over. For now, that’s absolutely not your job. No trying to find the ephemeral, no attempts at empathic contact with Francis.”

“I’ll get nowhere without it,” she said.

“You’ll get dead if you try it on your own,” he replied crisply. “In fact, I want you to do as little as possible until I send back-up.”

“You said they won’t give me any.”

“They won’t, but I will.”

“Who could you get?”

“Rachel’s already looking into that,” he said. Rachel Shofet, former prisoner and now good friend to Jaguar, was the best researcher and hacker on all three Planetoids. “She’ll get the right person. You know she will. I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

“You? Alex, everyone knows you there. You can’t possibly—”

“They can’t possibly stop me. Don’t you get that by now?”

She showed him a scowl. “I’ve dealt with worse than Francis. And I don’t want special treatment just because we’re lovers.”

That. Of course. It was bound to come up sooner or later, and he knew how to meet it. “Special? You call it special, being thrown into that lion’s den? Listen, Dr. Addams, if Paul asked for any other teacher I’d forbid it out of hand. I’m only allowing it because I know you can manage it.”

Her scowl subsided into furrows on her forehead, but she wasn’t quite ready to relent. “I’m just saying I know the people and the place. I don’t think I need a team for this one.”

“I say you do. You’ll be investigating potentially explosive problems, under constant surveillance from people who may want you dead. Or at least a little less troublesome than usual. And we can’t be in touch since the bubble domes block outside empathic contact, in case you forgot. So you’ll keep it low to the ground until you have back-up, and absolutely no empathic contact with Francis until I get there. That’s a direct order from your Supervisor, who happens to be a very skilled Adept.”

She didn’t trust flattery, but when he played the Adept card she knew he meant it. “Okay,” she said, only a little grudgingly. “When do I leave?”

“First morning shuttle,” he said.

He saw her tense, then deliberately relax. She turned to him, and in her expression he read her sure knowledge of risk as well as her confidence in her own capacity to get the job done. She studied him, and put a hand to his face.

“You’re really nervous about this,” she said, quiet now, his lover rather than his co-worker. “What exactly did you see?”

He smoothed her hand under his. “Nothing specific. Just—I have to be there. That’s all I know. And the lack of contact bothers me. I don’t like being separated that way.”

“We won’t be,” she said. “Not really. My people have a chant for lovers like us.” She spoke inside him, her words moving soft as grass in the wind.

If we were robbed of time and hope and flesh, still I would find you with thoughts that move too swift for any harm to chase. In all the universe of light, I will turn to yours and follow. In all the universe of light, you will be drawn to mine, familiar and strange as your own.

He leaned over and kissed her hair, breathed a thought into it.

Wait for me. Wait for me. Wait for me.

He put his mouth on hers and kissed her, breathing the thought into her as he pulled her down onto the thick carpet at their feet. He impressed it into her body as they moved together in their pleasure, in their love for each other, which was stronger than time or distance, and which they’d found would not suffer separation for long until one of them called the other home.

In all the universe of light, she would turn to his. In all the universe of light, he would find hers.

Wait for me, he breathed. I will be there.

* * * *

After she dressed to go back to her apartment and pack, he walked her to the door and watched her lean and muscular frame recede down the hall from him. Her long dark hair, the streaks where it seemed to be dipped in honey, the particular pride of her carriage, so familiar and still so surprisingly miraculous, pulled at him, lunar and inescapable.

“Jaguar,” he called.

She stopped, her back to him, head lowered. Then she turned to face him. He could see she’d already begun focusing her concentration on the task ahead.

She tilted her head at him inquisitively. “Did you want me?”

Did he want her? Yes. Always.

“Be careful,” he said. “Wait for me to get there. I’ll find a way.”

He could feel the questions she didn’t ask as she turned away and disappeared from his view.