The taller of the two said, “Jewel Delis. Come with us if you please.”
“Why?” I asked, baffled.
He took me by the arm, but I shook him off. “Let me at least put the groceries down.”
The door opened, and I set my burdens on the table. “Now what is this?”
They stared at the scattered coins, shared puzzled glances with one another before one of them demanded, “Don’t make any fuss, ma’am. We’ve shown you our credentials…”
“Intelligence Division of what?” I demanded in return.
“Exploration and Survey, ma’am. We need to question you about the disappearance of your husband…”
“Witt?” I cried “Disappeared? When? Where? He was supposed to be on that new planet with PPI, the jungle world. What’s happened?”
“You need to come with us.”
I thought they were going to show me his body. I almost screamed. It had to be that. Why else would they insist I go with them? If his body was there…then he had never left Earth. What had his mother done? What terrible thing had she done to him?
Holding myself in check, I went with them to Government Center, where they ushered me into a room with a table and a chair and left me alone. Hours passed. I counted the patterns in the flooring. I stood at the barred window and counted the leaves on the small tree outside on the terrace. I counted my heartbeats. Anything to keep me from thinking. I put my head down on my arms, trying to be hopeful. Obviously there had been a foul-up of some kind. They had someone else’s body. It had all been a mistake.
Eventually, I had to go. The door to the corridor was locked, the other door opened on a toilet and basin, where I splashed cold water on my face and drank from my cupped hands. More hours passed. I fell asleep, head on arms. The taller of the two men came back and wakened me by pulling out the chair opposite me.
“Tell us what you know about your husband’s disappearance?”
“He hasn’t disappeared,” I said through the fog in my mind. “He went away, to that jungle world. You mean from there? When did he disappear? How?”
“A week ago. On the jungle world. How did you plan his disappearance?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snarled at him. “I’ve never even been off planet!”
“We know you’re responsible. We have a reliable informant. If you’ve never been off planet, then you’re saying you paid someone else to do it?”
“With what?” I screamed. “My podfare money?”
From that point on, the nightmare only got worse. They let me sleep in a cell, questioned me again, let me go, picked me up the next afternoon and started again. When I returned to the apartment I found a strange device in the bathroom. I looked elsewhere and found others. I heard a buzz on my link whenever I used it, so I stopped linking anyone. My apartment was very obviously searched, so I’d know it. Twice my tiny cubby office at the sanctuary was searched, more surreptitiously. They wanted me to know, but they didn’t want Shiela Alred to know her privacy was being invaded as well. They wouldn’t have dared if Shiela Alred had been home, but Shiela wouldn’t return until late the following Tuesday. I resolved to see her first thing Wednesday morning.
By that time the newscasts were full of the story. Twenty-seven men from a PPI installation set out on a trail recently cleared by ESC forces, intending to walk a short distance to an observation point. The sixteen who arrived at the observation point found that the last eleven men in line had disappeared. A search was made. Nothing was found. The people at the base saw a brilliant flash of light, but such flashes were not uncommon on the jungle world and were generally ascribed to some electromagnetic discharge.
The two men from ESC wakened me late Tuesday night to question me again, in my own living room. Had I caused Witt Hessing to vanish in order to inherit his money? Had I conspired to kidnap him for ransom? Had I done this, or that? What did I know about the jungle world, the rock world?
“Eleven men disappeared!” I told them. “Eleven. What possible reason could I have for wanting eleven men to disappear? I didn’t even know the other ten of them.”
“A cover-up,” said the shorter man. “To mislead us.”
That was too much. As soon as the men left, I put on a heavy jacket and slipped out of the apartment, wedging the door so it wouldn’t record my departure. Down the hallway I detoured into the loading cubby for a disposal tube. Joram’s stories of travel had made much of the fact there are no past-this-point recorders in areas designed for waste disposal. When Tad and I were just kids, we’d marveled at his stories and copied him, of course, traveling the tubes enough to learn it was both thrilling and dangerous. This time it was merely necessary. Certain times of day, the tubes were almost unused. You can put your ear against the tube and hear if anything is coming. If not, you slide in, put your padded knees against one wall, your padded back against the other, and ease down to the next sorting floor. I did that, taking refuge in side chutes when I heard the chute rattle. On the mercantile floor I got out in a trash-sorting room moments before another load zipped out onto the sorting wheel. Half the cubic space in the towers is taken up by chutes and tubes and ducts and shafts that move people, their supplies, and their waste.
Joram said nobody monitors trash-sorting rooms. They don’t monitor the freelink used by staff to advise residents of visitors or deliveries, either. So, I linked the sanctuary on one of the freelinks, then took a freight lift to the top floor, and crawled up the nearest air duct to the roof. It was harder climbing up than going down had been. I had to stop several times to wipe my hands, they were so slick with sweat. At the outlet, I almost panicked before I found the concealed latch to the heavy screen and climbed out only moments before Shiela’s flit landed illegally in the maintenance area. No one who hadn’t known Joram Bonner could have possibly suspected I might leave from the roof.
I should have been too exhausted to think, but I found myself mentally yelling at Witt: “See! You see! Some things are perfectly possible if you just decide to do them!”
Shiela Alred was waiting for me at the sanctuary.
“Now what is it, dear? I know about Witt. We all do. It’s a terrible, terrible thing, but he still may be found, you know dear…” She reached out and I took her hands, so grateful that she was there.
“It isn’t that. It’s that they think I had something to do with his disappearance.”
Shiela was astonished. “But, dear child, she can’t think that! Witt disappeared from that planet. It’s a very long way from here. Weeks of wormhole travel.”
“They do think that, Shiela. It’s ridiculous, but they do!”
“Who thinks you do?”
“These people from ESC.”
“Exploration and Survey Corps?” She urged me to come inside and seated me at a table where a pot of tea was steaming. Shiela used tea on all occasions. Since she got it from off world and it was always delicious, I understood why.
“Jewel, drink this. I fixed it as soon as I heard your voice. Come now, stop shaking, just sit here quietly and have a nice cup of tea, and tell me all about it.”
I was barely intelligible, telling it all backward, repeating myself over and over while Shiela nodded and murmured and questioned, remaining quite calm until I said, “…and they searched my office here at least twice…”
Shiela stood up, her face frozen. “On my property?”
“Up in my office, yes. They didn’t toss stuff all over, the way they do when they search my apartment, but yes. I could tell, things had been moved and put into different order, and one of their gadgets is under my desk.”
“Stay here,” she said, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’ll be back presently.”
When she returned, she brought a fresh pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches. She poured another cup for both of us and insisted that I eat something. “You look famished. Your cheeks are hollowed. Have you been eating?”
I told her no, I hadn’t really. Not since Witt went. Not since Dam
e Cecelia’s first visit.
“No, nor sleeping well, I imagine. The person I called needs a little time to sort things out. Why don’t you lie down on the sofa there and have a bit of nap. It will do you a world of good, sharpen your wits, and I want you to make sense when you talk with my friend.”
Always after, I suspected that dear Shiela had dosed the tea, for I slept more soundly than at any time since Witt had left. When Shiela wakened me, hours had passed, and I only had time to wash my face before being introduced to a stocky man with a glossy dome of forehead above a thicket of eyebrows, melancholy eyes whose lids drooped slightly at the outside edges, and a firm, jutting jaw with incipient jowls. He had the look of a mournful but amiable hound. This, it turned out, was General Manager Gainor Brandt, now head of Earth Enterprises with direct control of ESC.
“Gainor’s only had the job for three days,” said Shiela. “His predecessor was just about to retire when he caught some kind of off-world fever that he’ll be lucky to survive. Gainor has just been promoted.”
Gainor Brandt patted my hand as though I were a small child. His hands were firm and thick, his fingers stubby and strong, very much in keeping with the rest of him.
“Shiela told me what has been happening. It took me a little time to find out who is involved and who is responsible for their involvement. It seems Witt’s mother implicated you.”
“What is it she has implicated me in?” I cried in outrage.
He chuckled ruefully, “In every crime since the fall of man, according to Botrin Prime, a colleague of mine who heads up the Bureau of Order and happens to be Dame Cecelia’s cousin or some such relationship. What is this Dame Cecelia thing he calls her?”
“Hereditary title,” I muttered. “Obsolete, according to her son. Her husband has one, too. He’s a Sir something.”
Brandt gave me a sympathetic look. “According to Prime, the Dame had only one son to continue the dynasty—that would be Witt—and she was totally centered on his life. Her dynastic plans did not include his being liaised to anyone just yet, certainly not you, and seemingly she decided she could ease her grief by persecuting you. She accused you of doing away with Witt for his fortune. That is a ridiculous charge, and anyone with any sense at all would have rejected it, but to some extent Prime holds his job at BuOr through the support of the Hargess-Hessing family.
“Prime has a nephew who was heading up one of our ESC intelligence units. Botrin asked his nephew to make your life miserable, and the nephew seems to have assumed he could do a favor for his uncle without anyone noticing or, perhaps, without anyone caring.
“He was very nearly correct. My predecessor didn’t notice, nor did I until Shiela brought it to my attention. As a manager, one must depend upon the good sense of one’s subordinates, at least until they prove to have none. The equipment in your apartment, in your office here—my people have removed it—has embedded source tags, and there are registries of such devices and who has custody of them. They could have been used for listening to your conversations, though according to the nephew no one bothered. The equipment was put there solely for harassment. No one seriously considered that you were involved in anything more nefarious than liking dogs. Which, these days, may be nefarious enough.
“At any rate, Boaty’s nephew is no longer with ESC, and you won’t be bothered again by my people.”
“Does this Botrin Prime person have any idea what his people have been doing to me?” I snarled, furious with frustration.
Brandt’s voice was grim. “My dear, Botrin Prime never thought about you at all. Botrin Prime does not usually think about people unless they have something he wants, and the Hessings have many things he wants. His only feelings now are annoyance at the whole thing coming to light and anger because his nephew has been found guilty of abuse of authority, false statements to superiors, and unethical instructions to subordinates, all items that will permanently stain his record. The young man has been dismissed with an unfavorable rating, but Prime will no doubt find him a place in PPI, nonetheless.”
“And you don’t run PPI,” I acknowledged.
“No. PPI is under the Bureau of Order. Originally, Interstellar Planetary Protection was a policing group, under BuOr. Even though PPI’s purpose has changed to ecological protection for newly discovered planets, it’s still considered an enforcement arm, its members have an enforcement mind-set, by which I mean, tyrannical, and I have no control over them.”
“Which means Dame Cecelia can go on doing it even though she knows I had nothing to do with it?”
“I’ve known Cecelia Hessing for years,” Shiela said. “I told you she’s tenacious. She’s charming and generous to her friends, but she can be wicked to anyone who crosses her. You’ve told me that she was responsible for sending Witt out there. Now he’s gone.”
“She has to blame someone.” Brandt peered into my face, looking for something. Resolution, perhaps. Fury. I couldn’t feel anything at that moment, so he found nothing to help him.
Shiela shook her head. “As I thought before, maybe…but maybe that’s not it. Jewel, are you by any chance pregnant?”
Then the blood left my face, my head swam, just for a moment, and I was suddenly so angry that everything went red. I put out a hand to balance myself.
Shiela fluttered with consternation. “Forgive me, dear. That’s entirely too personal a question for me to have asked. If you were pregnant, however, or if she thought you might be, all this nonsense might be laying the groundwork for a claim to Witt’s child on the grounds you’re unfit. It’s the kind of thing she would do.”
I was so tangled in fury I couldn’t respond at all.
“Do you have anywhere else to go?” Brandt asked. “Somewhere remote? The Hessings have a lot of friends and influence here in NW, particularly in Urb 15.”
“Jewel has been sleeping here every now and then. She could just move in,” said Shiela.
Brandt frowned. “You told me they’d searched here. Even with increased security, it would be a strategic mistake to draw Hessing antagonism toward the sanctuary.”
“I need to think,” I said. My reflection in the window opposite was of a tall, slender, very light-colored person with lots of tightly groomed yellow hair who looked icily controlled, which was a lie. Inside I was a boiling pot of lava, popping with magma and threatening havoc. I made myself say, “Just give me a little time.”
“While you’re doing that,” said Brandt, “consider getting a vial of STOP to carry with you.”
This broke through, and I cried, “No, why? I mean, that’s dreadful…”
Gainor took my hand again. “Dreadful, and expensive, but better than being the victim of harassment turned violent, as it might if she decides to hire some down-dweller to be her agent instead of flunkies at ESC.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Shiela offered. “If you decide to carry it, Jewel. Some of our preservationist friends do so. None of us would use it except as a last resort.”
I returned to Witt’s place by the same route I had taken to leave it, pausing on the mercantile floor to call Taddeus, asking him to visit me that evening and bring a tota-float.
When he arrived, he heard me out, then asked, “You’re really going to do this, Joosie?”
“I don’t have a choice, Tad.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Link Aunt Hatty in Baja to tell her I’m coming. Use a public link, not your own. Go see Shiela Alred tomorrow. See her in person. Tell her you know where I am and you’re the only one who knows. Also, please tota-float this stuff home with you and store it. It isn’t much. I didn’t bring much, and can carry very little with me. I thought I’d sort things out later, only there isn’t to be any…”
He put his arms around me. “Any ‘later.’ I know. Jewel, I wish I could do something…” Tad was a very Joram sort, kind and interesting and always eager to help.
“If you just do what I’ve asked, that’s all the help I should need.”
/> The following morning, well before dawn, I was in the disposal tube again, on my way to Hatsebah Lipkin, Matty’s sister. Everything of mine from the apartment, except what Tad had removed the night before, was in my pack. Nothing was left in the apartment to show I’d ever been there except an identichip listing made by the door as I had gone out.
Just as there are no past-this-point monitors in disposal or freight tubes, so there are none inside cross-country freight carriers and only a few in high-security sections of tunnels. Joram had crossed continents and oceans in freight carriers, as Tad and I knew from playing transport pirate throughout long, childhood afternoons. Every carrier has display panels that list the contents, the routing, and the times of departure from and arrival in freight terminals. Only these display panels are picked up by monitors. I slipped inside the first empty carrier with a routing code southward, so eager to get away from the urb that I forgot Joram’s warning about avoiding empty carriers. I remembered it with shock when the acceleration slammed me against the locked doors. When the carrier stopped abruptly, I slid the other way, the full length of the carrier, crashing into the other end. The floor was smooth and featureless except for key-shaped holes for the anchor straps. I wrapped my clothes around me for as much protection as possible, but by the time the carrier arrived at the urban hub, I was turning black and green and several other colors over most of my body.
When the carrier was shunted from the track into a loading zone, I waited for the voices outside to go away before struggling painfully to my feet and cracking the airtight door. Across the shunt track I found an empty cubby space behind a tool rack, where I crouched in silent misery, trying to observe the pattern of movement in the cargo bay. All the work was being done by robots; the few supervisory staff members seemed more interested in their gambling game in the small office than in what was going on with the cargo. The supervisors’ toilet was nearby, and I used it between shifts, getting a look at the livid splotches blooming on my face and arms. No point grieving over the injuries. They’d heal. Meantime, I had to find the shunt where Mid Coast Urb carriers were being loaded.