Buried Deep Part 13

"We're also bright enough to realize that this new case is even worse," Squyres snapped. "Move on, Doctor."

Scott-Olson met his gaze. His eyes were faded, their edges lined with liquid like those of a two-day-dead corpse.

"Dozens, maybe hundreds, of bodies on this site make the contamination extreme. I can work on that site-I'm already doomed. So are Detective Batson and a few of his men, and so is most of my staff."

" 'Doomed' is a harsh word," Yupanqui said. "I'm sure we can settle that issue."

Scott-Olson decided to ignore the tangent-even though it was very important to her.

"I can put all of these already tainted people to work-my team in the lab, and the detective's grouping at the site. But the work would get done incorrectly. No one on the police force has the proper training and it would take months, maybe even a year, just to excavate the site properly and find out how extreme this entire thing is."

"Which is why you're afraid the Disty will find out," Squyres said. "We understand that too."

"No," Scott-Olson snapped. She was beginning to hate the way he spoke to her as if this were a debate instead of a fact-finding discussion.

"No?" Middaugh asked. He seemed to be the secondary antagonistic voice, useful when Squyres needed to take a breath.

"I told you up front that we need dozens of experts- experts experts-to excavate this site. We need people there all the time, working, digging, examining, taking soil samples. We need a large team, much larger than my small group and Batson's. We'd be putting experts from all over Mars at risk of contamination."

"Or people from other regions, like Earth," Wheat said.

"What of the Earth expert?" Squyres asked. "Can't she help?'

"She's on the Moon, trying to find a Retrieval Artist who will take the Jrgen case."

"That seems like an odd choice, to send her," Middaugh said.

"We needed our team. Once she finished examining the bones, her work was done, but she couldn't go home. The Disty wouldn't allow that." Scott-Olson heard some stridency in her own tones. She was more panicked about this than she allowed herself to believe.

"But they allowed her off-world," Kazickas said.

"With a long leash," Wheat said. "Dagmar and I were consulted on this."

"Without the entire group?" Squyres turned his sharp face toward Wheat. Wheat didn't even flinch.

"The decision had to be made quickly. You and Ulric were out of the Dome, and Tilly was at some conference."

"What kind of leash?" Kazickas asked.

"The charges are appended to her identification. She's on a strict time limit, and she's to report in daily with her findings. She has the backing of the entire Sahara Dome Human Government."

"And credits she can spend on a Retrieval Artist, should one be courageous enough to take the case," Yupanqui said. "I rather doubt one will."

"What's to stop her from disappearing?" Middaugh asked.

Scott-Olson's back stiffened. It felt as if she had left the room. The meeting was suddenly not about her or the potential ma.s.s grave. Suddenly, it was about Aisha Costard.

"Common sense," Wheat said.

"She doesn't have a lot of that where nonhumans are concerned," Scott-Olson said. "Did anyone tell her not to disappear?"

"She was told to get back quickly, that she could be subjected to Disty punishment if she didn't abide by the rules," Yupanqui said. "She will be all right."

"She should be back shortly," Wheat said. "You can use her."

"Good." This time, Scott-Olson deliberately let the sarcasm into her voice. "I get one expert when I need dozens. That doesn't quite work for me."

Kazickas pressed her fingertips together and tapped them against her lower lip. Yupanqui smoothed the back of one hand with the other. Squyres wasn't even looking at Scott-Olson anymore.

Only Middaugh and Wheat watched her. Middaugh as if he were waiting for her to slip up, and Wheat with a touch of compa.s.sion.

"You realize," Middaugh said, "if we go up the line and eventually our people talk with the Disty's representatives, that this could be the end of Sahara Dome."

Once again, the group was focusing on each other instead of Scott-Olson. She was amazed at the quickness with which they could make her feel invisible.

"I agree that they might abandon the Dome," Kazickas said.

"The Human Governments of Mars all signed doc.u.ments swearing that there were no known Earth-style graves," Middaugh said. "If Disty believe those doc.u.ments were signed falsely. . ."

"Then this becomes an issue for the Multicultural Tribunals," Kazickas said slowly.

"The costs would be astronomical," Wheat said.

"They'd have to broker something," Wheat said. "No one would let that happen."

His words hung in the air. The councilors stared at each other for a long moment. Scott-Olson hardly dared breathe. She wasn't sure if she should call attention to herself or not. They seemed to have forgotten all about her and the problem that brought her here. They had moved so far beyond it as to be in an imaginary world.

"Could it be some kind of grave site?" Kazickas asked.

"No," Scott-Olson said.

They all looked at her as if they had forgotten her.

"Graves don't function that way. It's one of the things we have to study before becoming M.E.s."

Squyres nodded. The edge that had made him seem so angry was suddenly gone. "But someone could have taken all the dead bodies from a certain period of time and placed them there, maybe to thwart the Disty, right?"

"The Disty would have to know about it," Yupanqui said.

"And somehow these hypothetical people would have had to do this without being seen," Scott-Olson said. "Do you know how much work that would be?"

"You don't think it possible?" Kazickas asked.

"Anything's possible," Scott-Olson said. "But I don't think it likely. I suspect these people were killed around the same time, and then buried there to cover up the ma.s.s murder."

"Ma.s.s murder," Wheat whispered, as if he couldn't believe the term.

"Do you know how they died?" Middaugh asked.

"Not yet," Scott-Olson said. "Nothing obvious. But remember, I've only seen nine of the corpses."

"Only nine," Squyres said, and shook his head.

Yupanqui sighed and placed her hands heavily on the table. The others looked at her, startled. Scott-Olson was still breathing shallowly, not quite sure what had happened at this meeting.

"Doctor," Yupanqui said. "We thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. We'll try to figure out how to get you your team without compromising anyone else's health and safety. If we can figure out how to go about this without causing a panic, we'll get the Disty involved."

Scott-Olson swallowed heavily. The thought of the Disty knowing about this still terrified her.

"In the meantime, do what you can with the people you can. We would appreciate it if you can figure out, within a margin of error of a decade or so, when this ma.s.s grave was created. Then we'll a.s.sign someone to research the Sahara Dome histories-and not just the official ones-to see if we know when this occurred. Maybe that will give us some answers, as well."

"Thank you," Scott-Olson said.

They all stared at her. It took her a moment to realize she was dismissed.

She stood, her legs shaking. She had been even more uncomfortable here than she had realized.

The councilors looked away from her. Scott-Olson stood for a moment longer, but they acted as if she wasn't there. Finally, she turned around and headed for the door.

She couldn't shake the fear that had come to her while sitting in this room. The councilors weren't going to help.

They were going to make things worse.

Only she wasn't sure exactly how.

19.

Aisha Costard felt exposed. She sat inside a windowless office not far from her hotel. She had had to cross the bombed-out section of Armstrong to get here, and a strange metallic smell now clung to her clothing.

The office was as spa.r.s.ely furnished as Flint's. Nothing hung on the walls, and the main room had only three chairs. She sat in the center one. Its seat was uncomfortably hard, and the back felt like it wasn't made for human beings.

She had been told to come here. She had contacted one of the Disappearance Services listed in the public directories. She had no way of checking up on the service's qualifications. However, she had been smart enough to use a public system to make her inquiries, a system far away from the hotel. She hadn't even used her own personal identification to do so, instead paying for usage time on three separate screens, and accessing different information under different names on all three.

She felt like a criminal. Apparently, she was, under Disty law.

Her stomach ached at the thought of what she was doing-how she was abandoning the others and thinking only of herself. And then there was this place. It was so mean and small, in what was obviously a cheap section of Armstrong.

She had always heard that Disappearance Services made a fortune. If they did, how come they didn't have nicer buildings and some kind of receptionist? Whether that receptionist was a living, breathing being or a robot or a talking face on a screen, it wouldn't matter, just as long as someone, anyone, put her at ease.

Although she wasn't sure anyone could. She gripped the sides of her chair. At her feet was the bag of boxed synthetic food the contact had told her to bring here. If someone asked her where she was going, the contact told her, she was supposed to tell them she was going to a charity to drop off some goods.

A charity. Goods. Couldn't people see through that? Wouldn't they wonder why a woman like Costard, who didn't belong here, had never been here before, would involve herself in the problems of the local poor?

She was beginning to think she had contacted the wrong place, that this was some sort of scam. From what she could tell, there was only this little room in this strange building, near the destroyed section of Armstrong. What better way to make her an easy target than to have her come to an isolated place like this?

d.a.m.n Flint for not helping her find a good service. d.a.m.n him for telling her to do this, for making it a condition of his work. d.a.m.n him for having logical arguments, arguments that had taken her this far.

And d.a.m.n her for considering them.

She stood.

At that moment, a panel opened behind her. A heavyset woman with long black hair smiled at her.

"Ms. Cunningham?" she said, using Aisha's fake name. "Please come with me."

Costard's heart was pounding harder than it ever had. The woman had startled her, yes, but the idea of going down that dark corridor frightened her even more.

If she went down it, she would have to commit to this silly path, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. She wasn't sure it was right.

What would her life be away from bones, away from the university, away from Earth? Would her life be worth living? Would she be happy just to have survived?

"Ms. Cunningham?" the woman said again. "Would you like to join me?"

Costard glanced down the corridor, seeing nothing but darkness. Then she looked at the main door.

She didn't run from things. It wasn't her way. She had gotten into this mess on her own. She wasn't willing to trust her life to people who operated out of such a horrible office.

But mostly she was afraid to take that step, afraid to give up her very self just so that she could keep breathing.

"I'm sorry I bothered you," she said, picking up the bag of foodstuffs. She felt superst.i.tious about leaving it, as if the bag itself were a commitment she didn't want to make.

The woman watched her, not speaking at all.

Costard hugged the bag to her chest and went to the main door, standing before it until it shushed open. Then she stepped into the pallid light of the Dome's day, her breath coming in small gasps. Running away wasn't the answer. Going back wasn't the answer either.

She would just have to figure out how to push Flint to work faster, to find a solution that would satisfy the Disty.

A solution that would somehow keep everyone alive.

20.

Flint sat at his favorite table in the Brownie Bar, eating a bowl of cream of asparagus soup, made with real asparagus and real cream. He loved the Brownie Bar. It could afford to serve food with real ingredients at low prices.

The bar specialized in marijuana baked into brownies. The bar had been in Armstrong for generations, a holdover from the earliest settlement. Many of the early colonists had come to run away from government regulation, particularly regulation of their pleasures, and bars like this one-catering to specific drugs-had come into being.

The Brownie Bar was one of the few left, partly because marijuana's side effects were minimal compared with some of the heavier drugs, and partly because the place was so very profitable.