Hide and seek (20 page)

“How can you keep going like this?” Blake asked huskily. Bleary and cramped, he shook himself awake from where he had dozed off in his harness, sitting on the other side of the cab. He peered through the plastic bubble at Khalid, out there bowing to the sand.

“If either of you guys could drive I wouldn’t
have
to keep going. Meanwhile the change of routine keeps me awake.” She nodded toward Khalid. “He seems serious about his religion.”

 

“Has been ever since I first knew him.”

 

“When was that?”

 

“We were nine.”

 

“He seems to like you,” she said.

 

“I like him,” he said.

 

“So how come this mutual woman friend of yours thinks he’s a murderer?”

 

“She hopes it isn’t true. So do I.”

 

“Maybe I don’t know Khalid as well as you two, but I’ve seen him around for a few years now, and I can’t imagine the very serious Doctor Sayeed killing anybody. Not in cold blood, anyway.”

 

“I can’t either. But like you say, he’s religious. Religion can take weird forms. And make people do weird things.”

 

“If he did it, why is he trying to save her life?”

 

He brooded on that before he said, “Let’s see if she’s alive.”

 

“Want some coffee?”

 

“Thanks.” He took the steaming cup she handed him. “Who do
you
think killed them, Lydia?”

 

“The way you ask sounds like you don’t think I’d give a lot to know. Well, I would.” “You’ve been a cool customer.”

“Yeah?” She looked at him over the rim of her coffee mug. “With you, maybe.” Khalid had vouched for Blake, and Lydia had had time to think about what that meant. She sipped at her coffee for a few moments before she began to talk.

“Dare and I were here with the first bunch of regulars, the first people to really settle here. None of the explorers and scientists before us had ever stayed more than a few months. We were roughnecks, like most of the others–we worked on wildcat wells all over the permafrost regions, helped map the hydrology of Mars. And we helped build Lab City.

“We cursed and fought and got drunk a lot, the first years. Everybody did. So it took Dare and me a while to realize we were in love. There aren’t that many couples among the old-timers, you know. There used to be a lot more men than women, and a lot of the women hooked up with guys they didn’t like much just to get away from a bunch of others they didn’t like at all. When more people came in later, most of the early matches broke up. Some of the women discovered they liked freedom best.”

“Doesn’t Mars have some natives?”

“Twenty-three kids born on Mars, at last count,” Lydia said. “Not exactly a population explosion, and what’s it been, ten years now? I’m not saying there aren’t good marriages, good companionships, just that they’re pretty rare. But so is jealousy.”

“Jealousy is rare? That’s not the impression I got–the guys in the ’Pine looked ready to take my head off if I looked cross-eyed at a woman.”

 

“You’re not one of us,” Lydia said simply. “A stranger has to watch his step. Or her step–same goes for a strange woman. Besides, we all thought you were a fink.”

 

“
All
of you?”

 

“Just about everybody in the Porkypine had you pegged for trouble, even if they weren’t sure what kind. We weren’t wrong, either.”

 

“I’m not admitting anything.” He nodded toward Khalid, who had gotten to his feet and was making his way back to the cab. “Not in front of a witness, anyway.”

 

Lydia smiled. “Neither would I. They don’t pay you enough to cover the damage you did.”

Khalid’s voice sounded over the suitcomms. “You two seem to be having a lively conversation for this late hour.” He waited outside the truck while Lydia pumped the air down.
“We were talking about an explosion in the motor pool fueling depot a couple of days ago,” said Lydia. “Destroyed some vehicles.”

“Oh?”

 

Blake could see Khalid outside the cab, eyeing him knowingly through his faceplate. Blake cleared his throat. “There seems to be an odd notion that I had something to do with it.”

 

The cab door popped on Blake’s side and Khalid climbed in, maneuvering past Blake’s legs.

As he settled himself into his harness Khalid smiled, his perfect teeth gleaming in his dark face. “Remember what fun we had, Blake, that summer in Arizona? Smearing our faces with black shoe polish and blowing things up?”

“Let’s not bore Lydia with tales of our school days, buddy,” said Blake.

 

“I’m far from bored,” she said.

 

“We’ll give you the gruesome details later.” Inside his helmet, Blake had turned pink with embarrassment.

 

All three ran out of words. Lydia revved the big turbines and threw the tread motors into gear. The truck rolled.

 

Khalid coughed and said, “I didn’t intend to interrupt . . .”

 

“Yes, please finish what you were saying, Lydia,” Blake said. “About what happened . . .” When he ran out of words again, Khalid gave him an inquiring glance. “. . . the night the plaque was stolen.”

 

Lydia looked at Khalid. “I was saying that Dare and I were in love. That was pretty obvious to everybody, wasn’t it, Khalid?”

 

He nodded judiciously.

But she caught his reticence, his hesitation. “Okay. Maybe not so obvious. The truth was that I always loved him more than he loved me,” she said. “He was an independent guy, a lonely guy, and I knew him well enough to know that I couldn’t do more than put a patch on what ailed him.” She fell silent, choosing her words. “But as long as he needed me at all, I put up with it. But in the last week or so before . . . he was murdered . . . it was different. He started avoiding everybody. He was edgy all the time. I took it personally. Because I was insecure, I guess. Anyway, I knew he was working late–he’d been working late every night since that creep Morland showed up–so I went to see him at work. I suppose I had some stupid idea that I was going to give him an ultimatum. As if either of us had a choice . . .”

She was quiet even longer this time. Meanwhile the air pressure in the cab was back to Earth normal. She opened her faceplate, and the men did the same. When she didn’t resume her story, Blake finally broke the silence. “What happened?”

“Dare didn’t want to talk. He apologized for the way he’d been acting, said he’d talk to me later but he couldn’t right then. There was something about the other guy, Morland. He talked as if something about the guy wasn’t right. Anyway, he practically threw me out.”

“And you went?”

“Sure, what else? I sealed up and went outside. I hung around Town Hall awhile, but I couldn’t see Dare inside.” She looked at Khalid and almost said something, but changed her mind. Did he know she’d seen him that night, at that moment?

Lydia sighed. “Anyway, I went out to the port and drank a lot of beer at the ’Pine. I’d been there half an hour or so when somebody told me the news.”

 

“Do you remember what Dare Chin had against Morland?”

 

“No. He wouldn’t say.” She stared out at the packed dunes, crosslit by the setting sun. “I’d better concentrate on my driving.”

 

Blake nodded. The turbines rose another octave in pitch and the tractor leaped ahead, charging the dunes.

 

Khalid turned thoughtfully to Blake. “Do you know anything about this man Morland?”

 

“Not a thing, except the official resume. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

 

“He was an unpleasant person. An arrogant and insincere character. He had a taste for the high life. A heavy drinker.”

 

“Is that prejudice talking, Khalid?”

 

“You know me better. I have no objection to the moderate use of alcohol, although I do not use it myself. Morland, however, was an addict. And something else, my friend . . .”

“Yes?” “I am not convinced that Morland was really the expert on Culture X that he pretended to be. He played his role with great panache–indeed made a spectacle of it. . . .”

“His role?”

“The role of a typical xenoarchaeologist concerned for the preservation of the natural treasures of Mars. Yet when I made reference to certain specific finds–anything that did not directly concern the Martian plaque–his replies were vague.”

“You think he wasn’t an archaeologist?”

 

“He was an archaeologist, but his interest in Culture X was superficial. Or so it seemed to me.”

 

“A new interest for him, perhaps.”

 

“Perhaps,” said Khalid. “Do you know what killed him?”

 

“Sure, it’s common knowledge, isn’t it? He was shot.”

 

“With . . . ?”

 

“A target pistol, a twenty-two.”

 

“Did you know that Morland bragged of being an excellent pistol shot?”

 

“Interesting. Does Ellen know that?”

 

“Our conversation was interrupted. . . .” Khalid paused and abruptly changed the subject. “How far away are we from the target area?” he asked Lydia.

 

“From the estimated position you gave us, we’re still fifty kilometers away,” she said. “You can read it on the screens.”

 

“She’s already been out there two days,” Blake said.

 

“She’ll be all right, Blake,” Khalid said.

 

“I wish I was as much of an optimist as you.”

 

“If she regained consciousness, she’ll be all right.” * * *

 

Maybe she
was
all right. They wouldn’t know right away.

Under moonlight, Blake and Khalid stood on the saddle between the lava cones. The wind had been light all day. Sparta’s footprints, and the depressions where the wings and fuselage had rested, were still visible in the sand-dusted ash.

“She is an ingenious person,” said Khalid.

 

“Lucky, too,” said Blake.

 

“I’m sure she will be safe.” They avoided each other’s gaze as they trudged back to the tractor. Lydia had kept the turbines turning.
PART FOUR
PROTT’S LAST CHIP
XIV
Noon in Labyrinth City. The sun was high and the wind was strong out of the west.

The lost marsplane sailed in gracefully and kissed the sandy runway. It rolled a few meters to a stop in front of the Terraforming Project’s hangar. Within moments, ground crew in pressure suits were swarming over it. Sparta pointed at her helmet and shook her head to indicate she had no radio communication. The hangar’s outer doors slowly opened and the crew dragged the plane out of the wind.

Inside, Sparta climbed from the cockpit and ran in loping strides across the expanse of hangar floor. Inside the lock of the ready room, she yanked her faceplate open.
“Khalid is somewhere in the desert,” she said to the startled operations officer behind the counter. “We’ve got to go after him–he’s been out for more than three days. I’ll show you where he left the plane.”

“Dr. Sayeed is safe, Inspector,” the ops officer replied, relaxing a bit. She said, “He was picked up yesterday by a marstruck going to the pipeline head. He told us what happened.”

 

“So he did find help,” Sparta murmured.

 

“The people in the truck went looking for you and found that you’d already left.”

 

Sparta took a moment to pull her helmet all the way off. “Frankly, I didn’t think he could make it.”

 

“You did the right thing. But if we were in the habit of giving out medals, Khalid would get one. We’ll just throw him a party when he gets back.” The woman smiled at Sparta. “You’re invited.”

 

“Thanks. Accepted with pleasure.”

The officer had been studying Sparta intently. “We’ve heard stories about your luck, Inspector Troy. What you did, most of us would have said was impossible–over two thousand kilometers without holo, without radio link, without even a compass–and three days ago you’d never flown one of these things at all.”

Sparta shrugged. “I’ve got a knack for machines,” she said huskily.

 

“Some knack. A knack for navigation, too.”

 

“No, just a good memory. I’ve been studying maps of Mars for the last two weeks.”

 

“I’ve been studying maps of Mars most of my adult life. I couldn’t have done what you did.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Sparta said irritably. “It’s amazing what you can do when you have to– look at Khalid.” She fiddled with her suit straps. “Well–I’ve got rather pressing business. Do you need me here?”

A clerk who had been staring at her in admiring awe now suddenly guffawed. The ops officer grinned and pointed at a flatscreen. “See all the blanks on that incident report? If I let you go before they’re all filled in, the locals are liable to arrest
me
.”

Sparta sighed. “All right.” The pressure lock had been constantly popping and sighing; the hangar office was crowded with mechanics and other men and women from the ground crew who were eager to get a look at the luckiest woman on three planets.

“What’s the damage assessment?” the ops officer asked one of the men who’d just entered.

 

“Every unshielded electronic system in the thing is fried, like Dr. Sayeed reported,” the man replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 

“Dr. Sayeed said he found something in the autopilot,” the ops officer told Sparta. “A steel sphere about thirty millimeters in diameter. He took it with him.”

 

“It’s a pulse bomb,” Sparta said.

 

“What’s a pulse bomb?”

“A very expensive device designed to do just exactly what it did–destroy microcircuitry. Somebody wanted the plane to disappear off the screens, to lose itself in the desert and never be seen again.” And that somebody knows how I’m made and wanted to give me a severe tummy ache, she thought, but she kept it to herself.

“So, this blank that says ’cause of incident’–what do I put in there? Sabotage?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Mr. Prott has been trying to reach you for two days,” said the breathless young man at the hotel desk.

 

“Really?” Sparta thought that a bit odd. “I’ve been away.”

 

“He hopes you will join him for dinner. Perhaps tonight?”

 

Sparta needed to see Prott, too, but dinner? Her stomach leaped. The fire in her belly was banked but not dead. “Tonight will be fine.”

 

“At six-thirty? Mr. Prott will meet you in the Phoenix Lounge for an aperitif.”