Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 40

"This is interesting," Damini said. "Coffin hadn't been to the office in a week."

"Since about when Morganti started investigating him. Or when he might have become aware that she was on his trail."

Ferron said something sharp and self-critical and radically unprofessional. And then she said, "I'm an idiot. Leakage."

"Leakage?" Damini asked. "You mean like when people can't stop talking about the crime they actually committed, or the person you're not supposed to know they're having an affair with?"

An urgent icon from Ferron's mausi Sandhya-the responsible auntie, not the fussy auntie-blinked insistently at the edge of her awareness. Oh G.o.ds, what now?

"Exactly like that," Ferron said. "Look, check on any hits for Coffin outside his flat in the past ten days. And I need confidential warrants for DNA a.n.a.lysis of the composters at the BioSh.e.l.l laboratory facility and also at Dr. Rao's apartment."

"You think Rao killed him?" Damini didn't even try to hide her shock.

Blink, blink went the icon. Emergency. Code red. Your mother has gone beyond the pale, my dear. "Just pull the warrants. I want to see what we get before I commit to my theory."

"Why?" Indrapramit asked.

Ferron sighed. "Because it's crazy. That's why. And see if you can get confidential access to Rao's calendar files and email. I don't want him to know you're looking."

"Wait right there," Damini said. "Don't touch a thing. I'll be back before you know it."

"Mother," Ferron said to her mother's lion-maned G.o.ddess of an avatar, "I'm sorry. Sandhya's sorry. We're all sorry. But we can't let you go on like this."

It was the hardest thing she'd ever said.

Her mother, wearing Sekhmet's golden eyes, looked at Ferron's avatar and curled a lip. Ferron had come in, not in a uniform avatar, but wearing the battle-scarred armor she used to play in when she was younger, when she and her mother would spend hours Atavistic. That was during her schooling, before she got interested in stopping-or at least avenging-real misery.

Was that fair? Her mother's misery was real. So was that of Jessica Fang's abandoned daughter. And this was a palliative-against being widowed, against being bedridden.

Madhuvanthi's lip-curl slowly blossomed into a snarl. "Of course. You can let them destroy this. Take away everything I am. It's not like it's murder."

"Mother," Ferron said, "it's not real."

"If it isn't," her mother said, gesturing around the room, "what is, then? I made you. I gave you life. You owe me this. Sandhya said you came home with one of those new parrot cats. Where'd the money for that come from?"

"Chairman Miaow," Ferron said, "is evidence. And reproduction is an ultimately sociopathic act, no matter what I owe you."

Madhuvanthi sighed. "Daughter, come on one last run."

"You'll have your own memories of all this," Ferron said. "What do you need the archive for?"

"Memory," her mother scoffed. "What's memory, Tamanna? What do you actually remember? Sc.r.a.ps, conflations. How does it compare to being able to relive?"

To relive it, Ferron thought, you'd have to have lived it in the first place. But even teetering on the edge of fatigue and crash, she had the sense to keep that to herself.

"Have you heard about the star?" she asked. Anything to change the subject. "The one the aliens are using to talk to us?"

"The light's four million years old," Madhuvanthi said. "They're all dead. Look, there's a new manifest synesthesia show. Roman and Egyptian. Something for both of us. If you won't come on an adventure with me, will you at least come to an art show? I promise I'll never ask you for archive money again. Just come to this one thing with me? And I promise I'll prune my archive starting tomorrow."

The lioness's brow was wrinkled. Madhuvanthi's voice was thin with defeat. There was no more money, and she knew it. But she couldn't stop bargaining. And the art show was a concession, something that evoked the time they used to spend together, in these imaginary worlds.

"Ferron," she said. Pleading. "Just let me do it myself."

Ferron. They weren't really communicating. Nothing was won. Her mother was doing what addicts always did when confronted-delaying, bargaining, buying time. But she'd call her daughter Ferron if it might buy her another twenty-four hours in her virtual paradise.

"I'll come," Ferron said. "But not until tonight. I have some work to do."

"Boss. How did you know to look for that DNA?" Damini asked, when Ferron activated her icon.

"Tell me what you found," Ferron countered.

"DNA in the BioSh.e.l.l composter that matches that of Chairman Miaow," she said, "and therefore that of Dexter Coffin's cat. And the composter of Rao's building is just full of his DNA. Rao's. Much, much more than you'd expect. Also, some of his email and calendar data has been purged. I'm attempting to reconstruct-"

"Have it for the chargesheet," Ferron said. "I bet it'll show he had a meeting with Coffin the night Coffin vanished."

Dr. Rao lived not in an aptblock, even an upscale one, but in the Vertical City. Once Damini returned with the results of the warrants, Ferron got her paperwork in order for the visit. It was well after nightfall by the time she and Indrapramit, accompanied by Detective Morganti and four patrol officers, went to confront him.

They entered past shops and the vertical farm in the enormous tower's atrium. The air smelled green and healthy, and even at this hour of the night, people moved in steady streams towards the dining areas, across lush green carpets.

A lift bore the police officers effortlessly upward, revealing the lights of Bengaluru spread out below through a transparent exterior wall. Ferron looked at Indrapramit and pursed her lips. He raised his eyebrows in reply. Conspicuous consumption. But they couldn't very well hold it against Rao now.

They left the Morganti and the patrol officers covering the exit and presented themselves at Dr. Rao's door.

"Open," Ferron said formally, presenting her warrant. "In the name of the law."

The door slid open, and Ferron and Indrapramit entered cautiously.

The flat's resident must have triggered the door remotely, because he sat at his ease on furniture set as a chaise. A gray cat with red ear-tips crouched by his knee, rubbing the side of its face against his trousers.

"New!" said the cat. "New people! Namaskar! It's almost time for tiffin."

"Dexter Coffin," Ferron said to the tall, thin man. "You are under arrest for the murder of Dr. Rao."

As they entered the lift and allowed it to carry them down the external wall of the Vertical City, Coffin standing in restraints between two of the patrol officers, Morganti said, "So. If I understand this properly, you- Coffin-actually killed Rao to a.s.sume his ident.i.ty? Because you knew you were well and truly burned this time?"

Not even a flicker of his eyes indicated that he'd heard her.

Morganti sighed and turned her attention to Ferron. "What gave you the clue?"

"The scotophobin," Ferron said. Coffin's cat, in her new livery of gray and red, miaowed plaintively in a carrier. "He didn't have memory issues. He was using it to cram Rao's life story and eccentricities so he wouldn't trip himself up."

Morganti asked, "But why liquidate his a.s.sets? Why not take them with him?" She glanced over her shoulder. "Pardon me for speaking about you as if you were a statue, Dr. Fang. But you're doing such a good impression of one."

It was Indrapramit who gestured at the Vertical City rising at their backs. "Rao wasn't wanting for a.s.sets."

Ferron nodded. "Would you have believed he was dead if you couldn't find the money? Besides, if his debt-or some of it-was recovered, Honolulu would have less reason to keep looking for him."

"So it was a misdirect. Like the frame job around Dr. Nnebuogar and the table set for two ... ?"

Her voice trailed off as a stark blue-white light cast knife-edged shadows across her face. Something blazed in the night sky, something as stark and brilliant as a dawning sun-but cold, as cold as light can be. As cold as a reflection in a mirror.

Morganti squinted and shaded her eyes from the s.h.i.+ne. "Is that a hydrogen bomb?"

"If it was," Indrapramit said, "Your eyes would be melting."

Coffin laughed, the first sound he'd made since he'd a.s.sented to understanding his rights. "It's a supernova."

He raised both wrists, bound together by the restraints, and pointed. "In the Andromeda Galaxy. See how low it is to the horizon? We'll lose sight of it as soon as we're in the shadow of that tower."

"Al-Rahman," Ferron whispered. The lift wall was darkening to a smoky shade and she could now look directly at the light. Low to the horizon, as Coffin had said. So bright it seemed to be visible as a sphere.

"Not that star. It was stable. Maybe a nearby one," Coffin said. "Maybe they knew, and that's why they were so desperate to tell us they were out there."

"Could they have survived that?"

"Depends how close to Al-Rahman it was. The radiation-" Coffin shrugged in his restraints. "That's probably what killed them."

"G.o.d in heaven," said Morganti.

Coffin cleared his throat. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Ferron craned her head back as the point source of the incredible radiance slipped behind a neighboring building. There was no scatter glow: the rays of light from the nova were parallel, and the shadow they entered uncompromising, black as a pool of ink.

Until this moment, she would have had to slip a skin over her perceptions to point to the Andromeda Galaxy in the sky. But now it seemed like the most important thing in the world that, two and a half million years away, somebody had shouted across the void before they died.

A strange elation filled her. Everybody talking, and n.o.body hears a d.a.m.ned thing anyone-even themselves-has to say.

"We're here," Ferron said to the ancient light that spilled across the sky and did not pierce the shadow into which she descended. As her colleagues turned and stared, she repeated the words like a mantra. "We're here too! And we heard you."

-for Asha Cat Srinivasan s.h.i.+pman, and her family High Iron There had always been jobs that paid hardworking men well: men of scant social grace, men with histories, men of mahogany or copper or freckled skin unacceptable to their era. Paid well, that is, if you didn't mind losing a few fingers, catching a red-hot rivet in a tin funnel-the way Clardy's great-grandfather did-and didn't mind the risk of dying, a stain like a burst mosquito, on the pavement eighty-six stories down.

Pete Clardy's family were ironworkers from way back. Buildings didn't go up that way anymore, boots on steel. Which is why Clardy found himself hanging in microgravity in a bar called Mike's on an unhappy excuse for a planetesimal.

Clardy drank a beer, which was skunked, but he didn't complain. It was all skunked; it was still beer. He had his spotless boot propped on a spotless bench and his back wedged into the corner where the yellow plastic wall met the grey one. He missed dirt sometimes, dammit.

"d.a.m.n Finnegan anyway," he muttered.

Yurcic looked up from her own beer, polis.h.i.+ng the sweat off the side onto her cheek before the droplets got big enough to drift. She c.o.c.ked her head at him, shaved strip of artificially copper hair drifting across her forehead. "What?"

"I said, 'd.a.m.n Finnegan.' For not putting up the cash for a wake." Clardy drained his beer, punched another one-also skunked-and sipped more slowly.

Yurcic shook her head. "Had a wife."

"I gotta kid. I still left you guys a little something, if...." Clardy knocked his own narrow, grease-black crest of hair out of his eyes. It was the same way his more-times-great-grandfather might have worn it. Clardy didn't know the source of the tradition, but it was practical enough.

"Yeah. If." Yurcic took her beer a little more slowly. Wise, he thought, given that the compact, stocky, little body under her coverall couldn't have pushed fifty-five kilos, Downside. Like Clardy, she kept one foot on the floor, white-clean magnetic boot holding her down. "You've got a kid?"

"Girl." He smiled, paternal pride wrinkling the corners of sharp, black eyes. "Sixteen. Smart. Mother won't talk to me since I got out of the joint, but takes my money just fine. Katy-she's gonna go to college."

"I've got a kid too," she said. "Wish my old man had thought so highly of me." Yurcic finished her beer. "You're right. This ain't much of a wake. Hel-lo...." He followed her gaze. "Fresh meat." Spine stiffening just a little as he noticed the attenuated body in the white coveralls.

She nodded. "That was quick."

"s.p.a.cer," he said. "Look at the scrawny muscles. He's from Outside, not even Upside."

"Must be off the Eagle" The Bombay Eagle, a non-Company s.h.i.+p, had made station the day before. "What's he doing in miner whites?"

Clardy sucked his lip. "Floater got kicked off," he said at last, with satisfaction, nipple of the beer clinking against his teeth. "Had to take an honest job. Screwed up aboard s.h.i.+p somehow, and they terminated his contract."

"Huh. How can you tell?"

Clardy motioned with an index finger. A thick wad of synthetic covered the back of the floater's hand. "They ripped his service chip. He can't go home." The s.p.a.cer caught the line of his gaze and gave him a hesitant smile. Clardy glanced away.

Yurcic laughed and killed her beer. "So either of us can go home, Clardy?" Clardy grunted. "Hope he's not on my crew, that's all."

He was.

He offered to rope Clardy in, even, though the senior miner mocked him for his caution. "Booster pack," Clardy said. "I drift, I come back."

The s.p.a.cer-O'Shaughnessy, still wearing a thick head of red hair to go with the freckles-nodded. "Anybody come after me if I Fall?"

"Got your pack on?"

O'Shaughnessy nodded again. Clardy coughed in his hand before he pulled his own helmet on, sealing the zipstrip with a touch. He reached out, slammed and sealed the s.p.a.cer's faceplate, leaned their heads together. "Keep it on. It's a long way Down. Outsider."

The s.p.a.cer flinched away from the disdain in his voice. Clardy had reason to think of that later.

"Pocahae," Clardy muttered as he seated the last of ten charges, setting the detcord, and sealing the net around the little rock they'd picked out of the swarm of others. He fired his pack and backed away. It wasn't his tribe, but what the h.e.l.l: the sentiment applied. Today is a good day to die.

The rock read rich in ferrous compounds, a good strike. A lot of them were water and hydrogen ice, useful, but the real money was in the high iron. More in the bank. If he lived long enough to put his kid through school, Clardy was going home with money to retire on not too long after it.

High iron. A whole different meaning now than when his great-great-grandfather had worked the Empire State, his great-grandfather the World Trade Center. His People had been prized in the trades even then.

Clardy's forefathers weren't afraid of heights. Clardy laughed at the thought and turned his head to regard the sprawl and wonder of the great seething sulfurous arch of the planet, ringed in a dirty white wedding band, covering half his horizon. The other way the view was cold and limitless, stars like floating phosph.o.r.escence in a bottomless sea.

He looked over at O'Shaughnessy, clumsily tying off his side of the net that would hold the ore fragments together after the blast. The tow line was set. Clardy backed away. He didn't bother to tell the new kid to find cover before they blasted.

He'd learn or he wouldn't last. Not like anybody would notice one less floater, Upside. G.o.dd.a.m.ned floaters. The old joke: Would you want your sister to marry one?

h.e.l.l no. His sister had, and he'd never see her again. She'd signed aboard the Montreal, and the Montreal almost never came home. She wouldn't be back in-system from her first three legs, to Byhand and out to Yonder, until Clardy was ready to retire for real. Not that he expected to live that long.

When he was being honest.

The net wasn't tight on O'Shaughnessy's side, but Clardy didn't mention that either. O'Shaughnessy'd learn. Or he wouldn't last.

Some old sense of honor might have twinged in Clardy, but he shook it off. Some people just didn't belong up in the iron.

He powered up his pack, and, streaming blue light like a toy model of a s.p.a.ceman, took cover before the blast.