Departures (45 page)

“Twenty-five laps suit ye?” Cavendish asked when they were outside. When they were by themselves, they spoke English, but his burr was still strong.

“Whatever you say,” Bennett answered.

“Shall we be off, then?” The Scotsman bounded away. Bennett followed. Cavendish held back to let him stay close. “Don’t forget to kick up your oxygen flow,” he warned. “Remember, you’re working hard.”

“I know,” Bennett said. His breath was loud in his helmet; he would be panting soon. Cavendish’s breathing sounded perfectly even in his earphones. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep up, but he kept bounding too high off Mimas and metaphorically spinning his wheels while he waited to descend.

The view on the far side of the Olympic village showed the moon as it had been for billions of years before men had come to it: a giant lump of ice, much bombarded by cosmic debris in its early days. The far side of the village looked much like the
near, although it had nothing to match the big view window in the bar and although most of the air locks led out toward the competition site. Bennett hardly glanced at the enormous, boxy structure as he puffed along behind Cavendish.

The Scotsman had gone around a good many times himself before he grunted. “What a queer thing that is,” and did his best to come to a quick stop—not easy with the velocity he had to shed. Still, he did better than his companion, who stumbled to a halt a quarter of a kilometer beyond him.

“What’s the matter, pull a muscle?” Bennett asked. That would be funny, to have Cavendish’s athletic body let him down.

But the Scotsman answered, “Nay, lad, nay,” and pointed at the side of the building. Following his finger, Bennett saw a ring of frost high on the wall.

He wondered if it indicated a problem, but laughed at himself for the thought. “It’s probably been there since the village was built,” he said.

“No,” Cavendish said at once, “because I didn’t see it when I was here as a jumper. I made the laps then, same as we’re doing now.”

“That’s crazy. Nothing ever changes in vacuum. Are you sure you haven’t just forgotten?”

“I am.” Cavendish sounded so positive, Bennett had to believe him. “Bloody odd, I call it.” With a shrug, he resumed his interrupted exercise. He shook his head the next several times the two of them bounded by the curious patch.

By the time they went back into clean up, though, he seemed to have stopped worrying about it. Bennett, on the other had, was still chewing on it as he stepped out of the shower cubicle in his quarters. That was a piece of plumbing that had required less adaptation to Mimas’ conditions than he would have expected, though a stream of warm air, not gravity, kept the water moving.

Naturally, the phone chimed while he was drying himself. In his annoyance, he forgot to cancel the video feed. Rannveig nodded appreciatively. “As good as I remembered.”

More pleased than embarrassed, he draped himself in his towel. “What’s going on?” he asked, adding, “I thought you’d be with Jablonski.”

“He’s being questioned,” she said bleakly.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I still think he’s innocent, but there’s evidence that points at him and none leading anywhere else, so what choice
does Katayama have? I don’t blame you for finding the charge cubes, or anything childish like that. And that reminds me—you really are turning into a first-class troublemaker, aren’t you?”

“Am I? How?”

“Itzhak Zalman’s asked for political asylum.”

“He has? My God, with whom? Why?”

“With the Chinese, of all people; I think the Chinese coach must have been the first person he saw after he decided his cover was no good any more.”

“His cover?” Bennett floundered.

Rannveig gave him an incredulous look. “You mean you don’t even know? He panicked when you told him there was a rumor about him being a member of the Second Irgun—because it happens he
is
a member of the Second Irgun.”

“I will be damned,” Bennett said. That had never occurred to him. “I suppose Katayama’s grilling him, too.”

“He’d like to, but the Chinese coach hasn’t let Zalman out of her suite; she’s up on her hind legs over diplomatic immunity.”

“That won’t last, not in the face of murder,” Bennett predicted. He could understand the Chinese coach’s worry, though; no quarter was given on either side in the clandestine war between the Arab World and the exiled Israeli nationalists.

Bennett dressed, then called Katayama. The security chief came on the line after a delay of a few minutes. His face was impassive, but there was something like warmth in his voice, and the fact that he was talking to Bennett in person showed how the broadcaster’s stock had risen. “Well, Mr. Bennett, you’ve helped me twice now. What can I do for you?”

“What’s the story with Itzhak Zalman?”

Katayama’s smile touched only his lips. “News travels quickly, I see. We have a recording in which he states he planned no violence, only a loss of face for the Arab World upon the disclosure of its slipshod security procedures. The value of this statement, of course, remains problematical. We would like to interrogate him in greater detail, but, ah—”

“I’ve heard.” Bennett nodded. “What about Jablonski?”

“About what you would expect. He denies any knowledge of the killings, says he was alone, asleep, and that if he were guilty he would have a better alibi.” A slight lift of one eyebrow showed how often Katayama had run into that sort of infinitely regressing logic.

Bennett thanked him and let him go; no point in using up his store of goodwill by keeping the Security chief away from his
job for half an hour. There had been something else the broadcaster had been thinking of doing when Rannveig’s call drove it out of his head. He snapped his fingers in annoyance, trying to remember.

He was on the point of giving up when it came back to him. He punched the chief maintenance engineer’s number.

He did not get the head of the engineering department; that worthy had no reason to drop what she was doing on account of his call. The assistant he talked to was a blond young man whose Anzac-flavored English was amusingly different from Cavendish’s. He described the frost he and the Scotsman had seen.

“We’ll check it out, mate, never fear. Don’t get browned off,” the engineer said cheerily.

“What was that?” Bennett snapped, sensitive to anything that sounded like a racial slur. Then he recognized the idiom. “Never mind,” he said lamely. “Would you call me back when you find out what it was?”

“Will do, mate. G’day to you.” The screen went dead.

Having done everything he could think of, Bennett settled down to wait for the return call. He checked the computer for a listing of entertainment programs and found on one of the stereovision channels a docudrama he hadn’t seen.

The show was based on the works of a great twentieth-century author, and harrowingly realistic. Characters got killed off one after another; even the hero ended up in a cancer ward. The blizzards made Bennett feel colder than anything on Mimas had.

He jumped at the chime of the phone. Switching off the stereovision was something of a relief. The Anzac engineer looked out of the screen at him. “Thanks for the call, mate. Bloody funny thing, that,” he said, unconsciously echoing Cavendish.

“Is it dangerous?” Bennett asked. “That’s what I was worried about.”

“Shouldn’t be. Can’t cipher out how the hell it got there, though—it would’ve taken enough outgassing to suck all the air from a set of rooms, but we’ve had no exploding guests, for which I’m bloody grateful, I can tell you.”

“Whose rooms would it have been?”

“I’ll have to check, mate. Let me feed the outside wall coordinates into the computer …” He turned away and fiddled with a keyboard for a minute or two. “Here we go,” he said, and gave Bennett the name.

“Thanks,” said the broadcaster; he had to stop himself from adding the Anzac’s infectious “mate.” He broke the connection
and went back to the stereovision docudrama with the nagging feeling he was missing something, maybe something important.

“There!” He could have kissed the ugly, unshaven
zek
on the stereovision screen. He broke a fingernail punching Katayama’s phone code. The woman he talked to had been one of the Security people closest to him when he found the expended charge cube; she smiled and went to fetch her chief without any argument.

This time Katayama took longer to come to the phone. When he finally did, he growled, “No matter what you think, Mr. Bennett, I am not at your beck and call. I am trying to do an important job, and your interference does not help. Now, and quickly, what is it?”

“I beg your pardon,” Bennett said sincerely, “but I wonder if you might answer me one question.”

The Security chief heard him out. “Yes, of course that’s still true,” he said, as if surprised anyone needed to ask. “I suspect it will be true two hundred fifty years from now, too; some things don’t change. Now, I wonder if you’d tell me what possible importance there is to that.” He framed the last sentence as a request, but it came out a command.

Bennett explained. As he did, he half expected his jerry-built structure of logic and wild guesses to come crashing down on his head and leave him looking like an idiot. Katayama listened in silence, not showing what he was thinking.

When Bennett had finished, the security chief ran a hand through his hair. “I take it you write thriller plots?” he said at last.

“No.” Below the camera’s angle of vision, Bennett clenched his fists. This was what he had set himself up for, trying to help …

But Katayama was saying, “I can find out quickly whether or not you are right—no small virtue, in my line of work.”

“Will you call me back?” the broadcaster asked tensely. He knew he had had to do as he did, but he hated the idea of being excluded as soon as things came to a head. He still had too much of the old American reporter’s itch to be in on the action instead of just talking about it.

Katayama, on the other hand, had no use for reporters unless they served his own purposes. “I make no promises, Mr. Bennett,” he said, and hung up.

In .008g it was impossible to pace, but bouncing off the walls, floor, and ceiling, as Rannveig had in the studio, was not the
worst way to get rid of tension. Bennett had worked up a good sweat by the time the phone chimed again. “Hello?” he panted.

His disheveled appearance managed to wring a blink out of Katayama. “What have you been doing?” the Security chief asked, then said at once, “Never mind; I am not interested in knowing. I have called to tell you what you are going to do. Listen carefully.”

Bennett and Rannveig took their places in the IBC studio. When the red light on the camera flashed on, Bennett began, “A very pleasant good day to you out there, wherever you may be. There have been a number of important developments since we spoke with you last.”

“That’s right, Bill,” Rannveig said. “We expect this to be the last day of shortened coverage of the games. The jumping should resume tomorrow.”

“The arrest of Jozef Jablonski has lifted a great burden of fear from everyone’s shoulders,” Bennett agreed. Rannveig nodded, a little glumly; Bennett went on, “The evidence against Jablonski is overwhelming. The site from which the killer fired from ambush has been discovered, and the discarded charge cubes found there were manufactured in Eastern Europe. It is most unlikely that anyone from another country would have had such an obscure brand in his or her possession.”

“Moreover, Jablonski cannot account for his whereabouts at the time of the murders,” Rannveig said. “He is currently being subjected to intensive interrogation, and his confession is expected shortly by Major Katayama.”

Bennett said, “As you can imagine, ladies and gentlemen, the people most relieved are the athletes themselves. For some of their reaction, let’s go to Angus Cavendish.”

“Thank you, Bill,” the Scotsman said. As before, he was sitting at the bar—
getting to be quite a fixture there
, Bennett thought. Almost everybody there was watching the stereovision set in a corner of the room, and thus at the moment watching themselves watching themselves. For any news more reliable than rumor, they depended on the IBC broadcasts as much as Earth did.

Cavendish alluded to that point: “I’d think almost all the athletes on Mimas are tuned to us now. Along with the set here, there’s another in the weight room, and of course in all the suites.”

“Who’s that with you, Angus?” Rannveig said.

“Marge Olbert, the first-round women’s leader. Tell me, Mademoiselle Olbert, what are your feelings now that an arrest has been made?”

“I am, how does one say it, full of relief,” she replied in halting French.

“Eager to jump again, are you?”

“But yes, naturally, and I hope to do well, it could be to win a medal.” Her sudden and unexpected smile transformed a rather plain face into a pretty one. “And if I do, at the least they will know what flag to fly for me when I am on the platform of the winners. For Monsieur Zalman this is not true, is it not so?”

“An interesting point you bring up, lass.” Cavendish had the minutiae at his fingertips. “As a matter of fact, there is a precedent. In the Summer Games of 2104 a woman from the United States defected to Indonesia after the first two events of the modern pentathlon. She won a silver, and took it under Indonesian colors.”

“Ah.” Marge Olbert hesitated, then went on. “I only hope they have arrested the right man. This Second Irgun, it is supposed to be very bad, no? If somehow there is a mistake, that would not be good.”

“There’s confidence Itzhak Zalman had naught to do with the killings,” Cavendish said. “Even if there weren’t, he’s been too closely guarded for his own protection to let him go off doing mischief.”

“I hope you are right,” the Anzac jumper replied. She left, and Cavendish interviewed several other athletes. They were all of them polite, but none said a great deal.

“That’s one of the abiding problems of sports journalism,” Rannveig said when the show came back to the IBC studio. “The clichés were invented in the twentieth century, and they’ve been repeated ever since.”