Infinity Beach (37 page)

“How are you going to explain it?”

“We won’t have to. We hand him the ship, and we give the public whatever advanced technology goes with it.” Their drinks came and they toasted each other. “I don’t think there’ll be much anybody can do. He’ll be annoyed that he wasn’t brought in. But he’ll know why, and it won’t matter by then anyhow.”

That night, in her hotel room, she connected with Shep and had him bring up Solly.

“You’re playing with fire, Kim.”

“I know.”

“I have no faith whatsoever in any of your experts to keep this quiet.”

“Solly, I don’t know what else to do. I’ve thought about talking to Woodbridge—”

“No. Your first instincts about Woodbridge are correct. You give it to him, you’ll never see it again.”

“So where do I go from here?”

“There’s no way to plan until you know what really happened out there.”

“You’re talking about the logs again.”

“Right.”

“I still don’t know where they are, Solly.”

“Who would? Somebody must know.”

“Yeah.” She looked into his eyes. “I can only think of one person who might.”

To Matt’s dismay, Kim reclaimed the
Valiant
when they returned to Seabright. She allowed him to hold it while they were on the train, and to ride shotgun with it when, on arrival, she took it to Capital University. There, she imposed on friends to get some private lab time, and took a complete set of virtuals, inside and out. Then she used a public phone
to rent a United Distribution delivery box in Marathon under Kay Braddock’s name. “Not sure who’ll be collecting my mail,” she told the clerk, and asked for an ID number. She then inserted the microship into a plastic container with plenty of padding and shipped it off to her delivery box.

In the morning she reported for work and received an assignment to write a series of articles for Paragon Media on Institute activities. Matt was in and out of her office all day. Was the
Valiant
okay? He kept looking over his shoulder and referring portentously to the vessel as the
bric-a-brac
. Where was it? Was someone watching it? What was she planning to do next?

It was fine, she assured him, neatly stashed where nobody would find it.
Ever.
That might have been a whopper, but it seemed to have the desired effect, both soothing and disturbing him. Suppose something happens to you, he argued. What then?

She shrugged. I’ll be careful.

Matt had names, people they should consider bringing in. She took the list and promised to get back to him.

As to what she was planning, Kim was going to break the law once again. She sighed at the prospect, thinking how she’d come a long way from the very proper and respectable young woman who’d spoken to the gathered guests on the occasion of the first nova. Would he like to help?

“No. I will not. And I think you should forget it. Whatever it is.” He looked disapprovingly at her. “Don’t tell me anything,” he said. “I don’t want to know.”

That afternoon she went into an electronics shop at the Seabright Place Mall. “I need a universal tap,” she told the autoclerk. The universal tap was standard equipment for Veronica King.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,”
it responded.
“But we don’t carry anything like that.”

“Do you have any idea where I can get one?”

“Not really. They’re illegal. Available only to law enforcement agencies.”

She tried a law enforcement supply shop, which carried
uniforms of various designs, a wide variety of nonlethal weapons, and all kinds of communications equipment. Here she found a microtransmitter, known in the field as a
tag
. She talked casually with the clerk about universal taps. He confirmed that they could not be routinely purchased. “There’s a form,” he explained, showing her one. It was required for equipment normally unavailable to ordinary citizens, like surveillance gear.

The Institute funded an electronics laboratory at Hastings College, about forty kilometers up-country from Seabright. The Hastings affiliate was run by Chad Beamer, whom Kim knew quite well, and who liked her.

“It could cost me my job,” Beamer said, after she’d told him what she wanted.

“I’ll never tell,” she replied.

He squinted at her. Beamer had a reputation as a heart-throb, apparently well-earned. But he was also a good technician. “What’s it for?”

“I don’t want to lie to you, Chad,” she said. Chad was smaller than the general run of males of his generation. His parents had opted for longevity rather than altitude. He would get an extra few decades.

“Okay. Are you chasing a guy?”

“That’s as good an explanation as any.”

He nodded. “Give me a couple of days.”

Matt wasn’t happy with the way she was proceeding. He asked her to stay, closed off his office, and directed that they not be disturbed. “This is taking
forever
,” he said. “When are you going to give me access to it?”

“When I can, Matt,” she said smoothly. “When we’ve got the lab up and running.”

“That’ll take another few weeks, Kim.”

She held her ground. He gave up and let her go after she’d assured him that she’d provided for the possibility that something might happen to her. And she had: She’d written down a complete set of directions on how to recover the
Valiant
, folded it into an envelope, and given it to one of the
Sea Knights, with instructions to see that it was turned over to Matt if necessary.

Her own determination to ensure that important information not be lost convinced her she was right about Markis Kane: He’d have wanted to preserve the logs against history. Somewhere there had to be a trail. Even if he were the monster the news services now accused him of being, he might well have wanted to save the record of his exploits for publication after he was safely clear of the law.

And the trail almost certainly led through his sole child, Tora.

Kim went home early, mixed herself a drink, and directed Shepard to bring up a simulacrum of Sheyel.

“I don’t have much data on him,”
the AI protested.

“Do the best you can. And update him.”

She listened to the electronic murmur which was Shepard’s method of informing her he didn’t feel equipped to perform a given assignment, and then Sheyel’s image appeared before her. He was seated in his dragon chair, eyes half open, presented in an appropriately melancholy mood.

“Good afternoon, Kim,”
he said.
“It’s good to see you again.”

“And you, Sheyel. I was sorry to lose you. I wish things had turned out differently.”

“As do I. It seems I was foolishly determined.”

They gazed at one another.

“It shouldn’t have been vindictive,”
he said.
“It was there too many years without harming anyone.”

“You expected the appearance of the
Valiant
to get a reaction. I guess that’s what happened.”

“I wish I could change things. At least, Kim, I’m glad you’re safe.”
He rearranged one of the cushions.
“Where is it now?”

“It’s gone. At considerable cost.” She pulled her legs up onto the sofa and wrapped her arms around them. “Sheyel, I wanted you to know that I haven’t walked away from this. I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened. I think Yoshi was killed by the same thing that killed you.”

“Yes. That makes sense. Do you know how it might have happened?”

“Not yet. But I hope to find out within another couple of days.”

“Good. When you have the rest of it, I’d be pleased if you came back. And talked to me.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

Tora Kane lived in an isolated cottage situated in an oak grove about ten kilometers northwest of Seabright. Kim rode out on several consecutive days and strolled through the area early in the morning, recording when Tora left for the site, nine-fifteen, and when she returned, usually at around six-thirty. She noted that Tora owned a flyer, but not a dog. As far as she could determine, the archeologist lived alone.

She found a toolshed behind the house, which would provide a ladder when she needed it. That was a piece of good fortune: she’d expected to have to climb a tree.

The walks had been hard enough on her: despite modern medicine, she was not yet fully healed, and she knew her doctors would have complained angrily had they known what she was doing.

At home, she worked with Shepard to create a virtual lawyer who would be credible and persuasive. She settled on Aquilla Selby, the famed criminal attorney of the previous century. Selby had not believed in capital punishment, and had specialized in defending the indefensible, rescuing a long line of murderers and sadists from the extreme penalty, and in some cases even springing them loose on an unsuspecting public.

Selby had allowed his years to show, had very carefully orchestrated the aging process to acquire silver hair and a wrinkled brow, gaining the visible appearance of maturity that counts for so much in the courtroom, while simultaneously maintaining the medical state of a healthy thirty-year-old.

Kim touched him up a little bit, changed the color of his
eyes from blue to brown, cut his hair to agree with current fashion, got rid of his beard, took a few pounds out of his midsection. She tightened his face somewhat, opting for trim cheeks and a narrow nose.

“What do you think?” she asked Shep, when the finished product stood before her.

“He looks good,”
the AI said.
“He’d get
my
attention.”

The image completed, she went to work on the voice, eliminating its distinctive Terminal City accent, the mellifluous tonality that, to a seventh-century ear, sounded cloying. She added some gravel and adjusted the pacing. When she was finished, he sounded like a modern native of Greenway’s Ruby Archipelago.

Next she looked at her equipment.

Included in the package with the microtransmitter was a receiver and a flex antenna for long-distance reception. She rented a flyer and mounted the antenna on it, then went to bed and slept peacefully.

In the morning she heard from Chad. “It’s ready,” he told her.

She flew out that afternoon and picked up the tap.

“Remember,” he cautioned, after showing her how it worked, “if you get into trouble, I don’t know anything about it.”

She promised they wouldn’t be able to beat it out of her.

That evening she flew to within a kilometer of Tora’s home, landed, and walked the rest of the distance. The lights were on when she arrived, and she saw movement inside the cottage. Tora had a guest. Several guests, in fact. Three flyers were parked on or just off the pad.

But she knew that the sleek orange-and-black Kondor belonged to the archeologist. She watched for a few minutes to be sure no one was outside, then circled around to the pad and taped the microtransmitter to the top of a tread, where it disappeared into the well. When she was satisfied, she retreated into the woods and turned on her receiver. The signal came through loud and clear.

Kim was up early next day. She had a light breakfast, and then changed her appearance to that of a trim young male, including a mustache, which she thought made her look quite dashing. Then she took her rented aircraft out to Tora Kane’s neighborhood, timing her flight to be overhead when the archeologist came out the door. She had a cup in one hand and a leather case under her other arm when she got into her flyer and lifted off.

Kim monitored her flight until she was down at the dig site. Then she descended nearby in a glade, avoiding Kane’s landing pad because she didn’t want to take a chance of leaving a record of the aircraft with the house AI. There were only a few other dwellings in the area, but none within visual range. No one seemed to be abroad.

There was no way to be certain that she wouldn’t be recorded by a security system. If that happened, Tora would get a picture of a young man, and the plan would be blown, but
she
at least would escape detection.

She went behind the villa, got the ladder out of the shed, and used it to climb to the roof. She now removed her universal tap from a jacket pocket and secured it to a cornice. It
was painted the same dull brown, so it would be almost invisible to anyone arriving in a flyer.

Satisfied, she climbed down, put the ladder back, and left.

She returned home to work on Aquilla Selby’s lines, but had hardly gotten started when Matt called to ask whether she was okay, by which he presumably meant had she been arrested yet? He also reported that he’d found a lab they could use to examine the
Valiant
, but that it would be a couple of weeks before they could get access to it.

He asked again whether she would not relent and give him access to the “bric-a-brac.” He was so mysterious that she knew anyone listening would understand he was trying to talk in code.

“Best to leave things as they are,” she told him.

“I don’t understand why you don’t trust me,” he said.

And she said the usual things, it wasn’t that she didn’t trust
him
, but these things have a way of getting out, and they needed to concentrate on security, and so on.

He gave up, and informed her he’d pared the list of potential researchers to six.

“Three at most,” she insisted, knowing even that was too many.

They agreed that no feelers would go out until the lab was available.

After he’d disconnected she sat for a while studying the Kane print,
Storm Warning
. It was an ominous landscape, ruined towers in the distance, oncoming thunderheads.

She ran through the Selby script several times before she was satisfied. Then she downloaded it into a compupak, had dinner, and went for a long walk in the twilight. The tides on Greenway did not share the rhythmic aspect they would have had under a single satellite. These were up and down all the time, pulled constantly in different directions by Helios and the four moons.

They were at extreme low tide, the ocean far out, more beach exposed than would usually be visible in a month’s time. She strolled along the water’s edge, letting the waves
wash over her feet, watching the stars appear. They looked far away and she wondered again how anything capable of mastering those immense distances could behave so irrationally. Yet there had been the war with Pacifica.

Such things could happen apparently. The people who devised physical theory and constructed jump engines were not the same people who made political decisions, or who allowed themselves to be swept up by the current media craze, or to be ruled by centuries-old traditions that might once have served to hold nations together but had now become counterproductive.

Don’t assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals. Brandywine’s Corollary.

Maybe in the end she’d be remembered for some such principle rather than the discovery of the
Valiant
. She smiled and decided she’d be willing to settle for that.

The next morning she flew over to Bayside Park where she could use a private commbooth, ensuring that even if things went wrong no one would be able to track her down.

The booth was located in a mall along a gravel walkway off the ocean. It was still early in the season, and there were few people abroad: a few university students between classes, some locals taking their constitutionals. No tourists yet. The morning was bright and cloudless, and the air still cool, with a crisp wind coming inshore.

She tied in the Selby program and punched in Tora’s number.

The link chimed at the other end.

A couple of kids with balloons chased one another through the mall. She watched the long lines of breakers moving toward the beach.

“Hello?” Tora’s voice, audio only.

“Dr. Kane?” It was Kim who spoke, but Tora would be hearing the voice she’d constructed for Selby. “My name is Gabriel Martin. I was your father’s lawyer some years ago.”

Kim got a picture. Tora was wearing a light blue shirt and
baggy blue slacks. Working clothes. She looked puzzled. “What can I do for you, Mr. Martin?”

Kim sent Selby’s image and the construct lawyer, she knew, now materialized in Tora’s projection area. He was a tall, aristocratic figure. “Doctor, let me say first that Markis was a close friend, as well as a client. I owe him a considerable obligation. I won’t go into that at the moment; the details don’t really matter.

“Unfortunately, I can no longer do anything for
him
, God rest his soul. But I
am
in a position to pass along some information that
you
might find useful.”

God rest his soul.
That had sounded pretty good when she inserted it. Real lawyer talk to clients. But it sounded so artificial now that she bit her lip and waited to see whether Tora would recognize the charade. She didn’t.

“I appreciate the thought, Mr. Martin. And what information would that be?”

To Tora, the lawyer stood beside an expanse of desktop, covered with disks, pens, and a fat notebook. His wall showed a series of beribboned certificates, plaques, and a picture of Martin shaking hands with the premier himself. “I don’t know exactly how to put this, Doctor, because it’s only rumor, but I have it on quite reliable sources.”

Tora waited for him to come to the point.

Kim stretched the moment out by having Martin advise her that the information he was about to pass on was confidential, and that if she repeated it he would have no choice but to deny everything and to withdraw from any further participation in the proceedings.

“Yes,” she said, her impatience starting to show. “Quite so. So what is this about?”

“I understand the government has acquired the
Hunter
logs. The
real
ones.”

Tora paled and then recovered herself. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “What real logs? I understood the logs were filed in the Archives years ago.”

“Dr. Kane.” Kim allowed herself to sound simultaneously
sympathetic and well informed. “I understand your reluctance to discuss this. We are after all talking about violations of law, are we not? Violations to which you have been party.”

“I beg your pardon.” Her tone got cold. She had to be wondering just how much her caller knew, and probably more to the point, how much the government had.

“It’s quite all right,” Kim continued, in Martin’s persona. “This information came to me because your father had friends at the highest levels. There are those who don’t want to see more damage done to his reputation, nor any harm come to his daughter, nor see his estate embroiled in extensive litigation, as could be the case if certain charges could be shown to have validity. Or even if sufficient doubt could be raised concerning his role in the Mount Hope incident, and possibly in the deaths of Yoshi Amara and Emily Brandywine. I know you were your father’s sole heir. And you should be aware that whatever monies or tangible goods you received out of the estate could be attached in any adverse judgment.”

She looked cornered. Kim also squirmed under a sudden assault of conscience. But she told herself there was no other way. The woman could have avoided all this by cooperating. “Even at this late date?” asked Tora. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations?”

“I’m afraid not. In a case of this type, in which lives have been lost and deliberate falsifications made to cover up responsibility—” He shook his head sadly. Kim had no idea whether that was true, but it didn’t matter. Tora was buying it for the moment, and that was all that counted.

“How reliable is your information, Mr. Martin?”

Okay: time to close out. Kim had accomplished what she wanted to do. “It’s correct, Dr. Kane.”

Tora studied the lawyer’s image. “If I need your help, will you be available?”

“Certainly,” he said. “I’d be happy to do what I can for you.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was unsteady.

“I hope I’ve been of assistance. Good day, Doctor.” And Kim disconnected.

She left the booth but used her commlink to call home and tie in with her monitoring system. The tag on the flyer would alert her if Tora went anywhere, just as the tap on the roof would listen in on any calls.

She wandered through the mall. Only a couple of the shops had opened. One carried sporting gear and she was looking at swimsuits when her alert sounded.

“Yes, Shep?” she said into her link.

“She’s calling the Mighty Third. The museum. Do you wish to listen?”

“Please.”

She heard the far-away ringing. Then an automated voice answered.
“Good morning. Mighty Third Memorial Museum.”

“May I speak with Mikel Alaam, please?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Tora Kane.”

“One moment. I’ll see if he’s in.”

While she waited, Kim recalled Markis’s tenure as head of The Scarlet Sleeve. And Veronica King.

Hide in Plain Sight.

The Purloined Letter.

An observer would have seen a smile appear at the corners of her lips.
I’ll be damned,
she told herself.

“Hello, Tora. Nice to hear from you. How are you doing?” Kim recognized Mikel’s polite tenor.

“Pretty good, thanks, Mikel.” She paused. “It’s been a while.”

“Yes, it has.” He was embarrassed, Kim thought. This was probably the first time he’d spoken with her since her father’s display came down. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you were planning on being in the museum later this morning.”

“Yes. I’ll be here. I have a conference at ten-thirty. Are you coming over?”

“Yes. I thought I’d drop by if it’s convenient.”

“Tora, I’m sorry about the problem.”

“I understand, Mikel. It’s not your fault.” Her tone suggested otherwise. “When will you be free?”

“The meeting won’t last more than an hour. After that I’m at your disposal.” Kim detected a reluctance in his voice. He thinks she’s coming to plead her father’s case.

“Can we manage lunch?” It seemed as much a directive as an invitation.

“Yes. I’d like that. Very much.”

There was some small talk, it’ll be good to see you again, I’ve been meaning to call but we’ve been so busy. Then they agreed how much they were looking forward to seeing each other again and broke the connection.

Good. What to do next?

Hide in Plain Sight.

She’d hoped to follow Tora Kane to the
Hunter
logs. The risk was that she would destroy the records immediately upon recovery. Kim had hoped she would prove to be too much of a scientist to do that, but one could never be certain. In any case, she’d gotten lucky. She didn’t even need to follow the tag, as she’d expected to do. Instead, Kim had been given an opportunity to get there first. To arrange things so that Gabriel Martin’s dark warning looked valid.

But time was short.

She called Shepard.

“What can I do for you, Kim?”

“Shep, I want you to bring up a piece of correspondence from the Mighty Third. Duplicate their stationery and give me a letter from them agreeing to see one Jay Braddock today about the Pacifica War assignment. The letter should assure Braddock the run of the place.”

“What’s the Pacifica War assignment, Kim?”

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t exist.”

“You want me to sign it too?”

“Lift Mikel Alaam’s signature. He’s the director.”

“Kim, that’s forgery.”

“I don’t know any other way to put his name on the document.”

Shep’s electronics were making funny noises.
“You know,”
he said,
“you’ve become a professional bandit.”

“Can’t be helped.”

“Where are you going now?”

“Clothes,” she said. “I need a change of clothes.”

Kim arrived at the museum at ten-forty, again dressed in male attire and sporting her mustache. She wore a tight undergarment to contain her breasts and a loose-fitting embroidered blouse to hide what she couldn’t suppress. Her hair was now bright red. Her flesh tones had been slightly altered, and she wore dark lenses. Mikel himself, she was certain, would not recognize her. She also had two data disks, carefully labeled, in her pocket.

She flashed a congenial smile at a young woman in the administrative offices, altered her voice as best she could, and asked confidently for the director. “My name’s Jay Braddock,” she said. “I’m a researcher with Professor Teasdale.” Teasdale was
the
prizewinning historian of the Pacifica War era.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Braddock—” said the young woman.

“
Dr.
Braddock—” Kim corrected gently.

“
Dr.
Braddock, but he’s in conference at the moment.” Her name tag identified her as Wilma LaJanne. Kim decided she was a graduate student.

“This is unfortunate,” Kim persisted.

Wilma checked her computer. “His schedule isn’t free until midafternoon.”

“That can’t be right,” Kim said. With considerable dignity she produced the letter Shep had prepared for her. “I have an appointment. At ten forty-five.”