Hide and seek (11 page)

“Seems there was a wind blowing.”

 

“A light breeze by local standards.”

Sparta peered at the holographically frozen ridges in the fine sand. Her visual capacities far exceeded the resolution of the holo recorder, so her eyes were almost useless here–as were her nose and tongue, with their capabilities for chemical analysis. The crime was two weeks past. Perhaps if she had been on the real scene, in real time . . . “You’re right, Lieutenant. Not much to see.”

“This is pretty much the extent of our reconstruction. We figured the killer went outside because the way back through the corridors was blocked by the patrollers responding to the first alarm. Or maybe there was an accomplice outside.”

“Maybe,” said Sparta. Without evidence, she did not make hypotheses.

“The local patrollers did a good job,” said Polanyi, loyal to the locals he had to live with. “They responded in minutes. What you’ve seen is what they found. No murder weapon. No witnesses. No unusual prints or other physical evidence.”

“Thanks, you can turn it off.”

 

He did so. Instantly they were standing in the bright and busy center of Town Hall. * * *

 

Ten minutes later, they were back in Polanyi’s cramped and overlit office. “Now shall I run down for you the likely ones? The three with opportunity?”

 

“Please.” Let him do his job; she would draw her conclusions later.

She already knew the Martian plaque had been taken that particular night, and not, for example, the night before or the night after, because the robbery had been timed to coincide with the destruction of the Culture X records on Venus and elsewhere throughout the inhabited solar system. Simultaneously the
prophetae
had unleashed their secret death squads in a mass attack–attempting to murder everyone who might remember the texts well enough to reconstruct them. A dozen scholars had died on Earth. Here on Mars, Dewdney Morland was the intended victim, Dare Chin only an innocent bystander.

One man, the most important of all, had been missed in this assault against the crown jewels of xenoarchaeology. Aboard Port Hesperus, Professor J. Q. R. Forster had barely survived the bombing attack on his life and was now protected by heavy Space Board security.

Polanyi was talking. Sparta reminded herself to listen.

“. . . permanent population of almost ten thousand,” he was saying. “At any given time there could be at most a couple of thousand tourists on the planet. We were able to account for all 438 of the registered guests at the Mars Interplanetary Hotel and the six other licensed accommodations in Labyrinth City that night. If there were other strangers in town nobody saw them, and in a town this small that’s a good trick. So we concentrated on the locals.”

On the desktop videoplate a young woman’s face appeared. Bold eyes, wide mouth, with blond hair tied at the nape. Despite the apparent delicacy of bone that characterized a long-term resident of the Martian surface, the woman looked competent and tough.

“This is Lydia Zeromski,” the lieutenant said. “A truck driver who works the pipeline run. She was Darius Chin’s girlfriend–one of them, anyway–the one seen in his office a few minutes before the murders. Nobody saw her leave.”

“Her?” Sparta was skeptical. “She would have had to go downstairs, shoot Morland, swipe the plaque, and then turn and shoot Chin when he came to investigate.”

 

“Not impossible.”

 

“If she was after the plaque, why make a fuss first?” “Well, if she wasn’t the killer, she could have been an accomplice,” Polanyi said stiffly.

 

“Lieutenant, she doesn’t have a record.”

 

“Beaned a guy with a pipe in a bar once. He didn’t press charges.”

 

“Guns?”

 

“Well . . . none registered.”

 

“Other relationships?”

 

“None known.”

 

Sparta grunted. “Next.”

 

“This man.”

Zeromski was replaced on the screen by a smooth-faced man in his late thirties. His blond hair was fine and pale, almost colorless, and clipped so close to his head that his pink scalp shone through. She recognized him without trouble.

“Wolfy Prott–Wolfgang Prott, that is–the manager of the Mars Interplanetary Hotel. It’s an open secret that the hotel has been the scene of illegal trading in Martian ‘souvenirs’–mineral samples, fossils, even artifacts. Prott was assigned to Mars a year ago by the Interplanetary chain.”

“Zurich based . . .”

“Right. Prott’s been working for them about ten years–Athens, Kuwait, Cayley on the moon–first in their PR department, then in sales, then as assistant manager. This is his first stint as manager. He’s got a rep as an off-hours pickup artist.”

“His pattern?”

 

“Tourist ladies in the wine shops, rarely on his own premises–and he’s mostly stayed away from local women. Maybe he’s afraid of the local men.”

 

“And he can’t account for his whereabouts that night.”

“Claims he was asleep in his suite in the hotel. But he was seen leaving the lobby a few minutes before the murders, wearing a pressure suit. An hour
after
the murders, he was having a nightcap with his own barkeeper.”

“That alibi’s so weak it’s ridiculous.”

 

“He was up to something . . . whatever it was.”

 

“Not murder.”

“Oh, but one more thing,” Polanyi couldn’t disguise a touch of self-satisfaction. “Wolfy’s known to be an expert shot with a target pistol. There’s a range in the lower level of the hotel, and he’s his own best customer.”

“Any of his pistols missing?”

 

“Well, we’re not sure how many he . . .”

 

“Fine,” she said coolly. “Who else have you got?”

This was the face she had hoped not to see, a dark and handsome face, elongated and delicate, a young man’s face with deep brown eyes, crowned with black and curling hair. His lips were parted in a smile that revealed straight white teeth. He was wearing a standard pressure suit.

Alas, Polanyi had not eliminated him from the list. “Dr. Khalid Sayeed, Council of Worlds planetologist. Less than an hour before the murders, Sayeed and Morland were shouting at each other in the bar of the Interplanetary. . . .”

“Khal . . . Dr. Sayeed was
shouting?”

“A vigorous disagreement, anyway. Something about the terraforming project. Morland went straight from the hotel to Town Hall. Sayeed claims he went to his apartment–it’s near the shuttleport–but we can’t corroborate that.”

Sparta studied Khalid’s picture intently. He was a year younger than she was, Blake’s age, and she hadn’t seen him since she was sixteen years old; he’d aged well, grown into a poised and confident adult.

Like Sparta and Blake, Khalid was a member of the original SPARTA, the SPecified Aptitude Resources and Training Assessment project, founded by Sparta’s parents in an attempt to demonstrate that the multiple intelligences inherent in every child could be enhanced to levels the world regarded as genius. Khalid was one of SPARTA’s great successes, intelligent and sophisticated, multiply talented, dedicating his career to the improvement of human welfare.

But according to Blake, Khalid was also quite possibly one of the
prophetae
. A member of the Free Spirit. A member of the deadly cult.

 

“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’ll take these with me,” Sparta said, withdrawing the data slivers from his video-plate.

 

“All yours, Inspector.” He leaned back and opened his pudgy palms. “You’ve got what we’ve got. What else can I do for you? Show you the nightlife?”

 

“Thanks, I’ll take a rain check.” Polanyi smirked. “Rain? What’s that?”
VI

The glass ceiling of the Ophir Room was clouded with condensation; the air was humid. The maître d’ led Sparta up and down steps and across terraces among tables that overlooked the largest open expanse of water–very green water–on Mars. In the palm-ringed pool half a dozen young men and women splashed and swam, all lithe and tanned and naked. Sparta thought they looked more like models than tourists; probably the hotel paid them to disport themselves prettily during the lunch hour, a kind of fashion show
manqué
.

Khalid Sayeed’s table was on a balcony near the pool, screened from it by skinny palms. He rose to greet her. He was one of those erect and graceful men whose smile was so dazzling, whose eyes were so arresting, that he seemed taller than his medium height.

“Inspector Troy, thank you so much for agreeing to see me.”

 

She took his hand and shook it once, briefly. “Dr. Sayeed.” Her nostrils tasted his faint, pleasant scent. Unaided memory confirmed that it was him, the boy she had known a long time ago.

If he recognized her as the girl who had been his schoolmate in SPARTA, he gave nothing away. With the schooling they had shared, both were so adept in social matters–she only when she had to be, though to him, or so it had seemed to her, it had always come naturally–that neither would give anything away involuntarily.

As she sat down opposite him the rush of long-suppressed memories surfaced. . . .
Khalid, age nine
, arguing theology with Nora Shannon in the playground on the roof of the New School, maintaining sweet calm in the face of the girl’s increasingly desperate refusal to accept his contention that Islam had rendered Christianity irrelevant. And he finally forced Nora to retreat, if only because he had committed far more of the Koran–not to mention of Thomas Aquinas–to memory than she had of the New Testament. Whereupon he proceeded to explain why the Shi’a sect into which he’d been born was the only trustworthy repository of Islamic teaching. . . .

Khalid, age twelve
, on a field trip to the Caribbean, terrifying her mother and father with a narrow escape from sharks: after ditching his pedal-powered airplane in the warm sea he had kept the sharks at bay for twenty minutes by kicking their snouts with his deck shoes. . . .

Khalid, age fifteen
, conducting the Manhattan Youth Philharmonic in a crisp, energetic rendition of Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, to be hailed with wild applause which was soon followed by worldwide videolink reviews announcing the debut of a new Bernstein. . . .

“I’m scheduled for a survey flight tomorrow morning and I wanted you to have a chance to get at me before I left,” he said.

 

The maître d’ handed them elaborately printed menus, made of real paper by the feel of them, printed with real ink.

 

“Get at you?”

 

“The flight should only take about two days. Flying on Mars is inherently unpredictable, however, and should I be delayed I didn’t want you to think I was evading you.”

 

“If you will excuse me,” the maître d’ simpered, “would either of you care for anything before your meal?”

 

“Will you have something to drink?” Khalid asked Sparta.

 

She saw that he was drinking tea from a glass, Sri Lankan by its aroma. “I’ll have tea,” she said, “the same.”

 

“Very good, madame; sir, your waiter will be along in a moment.” He glided away.

Khalid poured fragrant tea from the pot on the table into her glass. For a moment she concentrated on sipping the tea, which was flavorful but a bit too old–shipping technologies had improved in the last few centuries, but Sri Lanka was farther from Mars than from England–before returning her attention to Khalid.
“All I need from you, Dr. Sayeed, is proof that you could not possibly have killed those men or stolen the artifact. Then I’ll be free to concentrate my attention elsewhere.”

“Proof?” He didn’t smile this time, except with his eyes. “Whole schools of philosophy and mathematics have sprung up around the proposition that there is no such thing.”

 

“There is, however, such a thing as truth.”

 

“So I believe, Pontius Pilate to the contrary. And law–in the law I believe without question. I assume you’ve already read my statements, Inspector. And read the story of my life.”

 

She nodded. “You argued with Dr. Morland here in the hotel not long before he was killed. You left shortly after he did and were not seen again until the next morning.”

 

“That’s right. I cannot prove that I went to my apartment and watched an infovideo on the Sahara rehabilitation project, then observed evening prayers and went to sleep. But that is the truth.”

 

“You live alone, Dr. Sayeed?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But you are married.”

“My wife lives in Paris with her parents, not to mention with numerous aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins. As you perhaps already know.” An odd expression, half teasing, half wistful, bent his curving brows, but was quickly gone. “But do you know that I have never met my wife? She is fourteen years old.”

Sparta did know it. When she’d known him before, Khalid’s family had been poor; he had been enabled to attend SPARTA on a grant from a society of wealthy dogooders who called themselves the Tappers. Khalid’s brilliant performance in SPARTA had drawn the attention of his powerful relatives. His subsequent marriage, by arrangement–without a word of prior consultation with him– was a great honor, a sign that Khalid might one day be named imam of the Sayeedis by his great-uncle, the khan.

Sparta said, “Your apartment is near the spaceport.”

 

“Yes, on Kirov Place in the MTP complex.”

“The building is not directly connected to any civic pressure tube. When you are outside your home you habitually have your pressure suit with you.” She tilted her head to indicate the brown canvas bag in the chair beside him.
“All Martians do so as a matter of course. Where’s yours?”

“In my room.”

“I would advise you to adopt our custom quickly,” he said. “All this”–he waved at the trees, the pool, the glass roof dripping with condensation–“is an illusion; it can vanish in an instant. The reality is freezing thin carbon dioxide. Say a rock were to fall from the cave arch over our heads . . .”

“I’ll take your advice.” And she meant it; just thinking about the possibilities, she regretted her carelessness. But that was not a fact to be shared with him. “Your building . . . it has three units, each with a separate entrance. Yours is on the second floor, reached by an outside stair.”

“Well, you