Strings (24 page)

“You and Devlin? Just the two of you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a ranger, or another witness.”

“I’ll tell you what witness!” Pandora shouted, suddenly inspired. “A truly independent witness. Me! I’ll come along and keep your friends honest. Show
me
! I dare you!”

The big kid started to laugh—and stopped, his mouth hanging open. Then his head twisted around and he glared at the blank space he had watched earlier. The nape of his neck was as hairless as a baby’s.

“You’re joking!” he told it.

He turned back to Pandora, suddenly red and glowering and mutinous. “You really want to come?”

For a moment she wondered if she might have stepped into—no, this rube could never fake a reaction like that. “Yes, yes!”

He pouted. “They say there’s one spare seat. Be at Cainsville at 0800.”

Triumph! Victory snatched again from the jaws of whatever…. “Okay?” Hubbard Cedric asked grumpily.

“I’ll be there!”

Without even a good-evening, he started to rise. He and his chair vanished.

That was a surprisingly abrupt ending.

Pandora found the blur that was the camera, although she could not bring it into focus. The room was swaying and weaving, and there was a throbbing sound in her ears. “Well, it’s certainly been an interesting evening! Maybe tomorrow we’ll know some more…and…wish you all a very…all wish…”

“Relax. You’re off.”

The signal light had gone out.

It was over, thank God. Over. She felt sick.

She tried to stand, and darkness poured into the room and the floor tilted. Take another pill—no, don’t.

How curious! She thought she might be going to faint.

Not surprising. She was not as young as she looked.

Cainsville, April 8

“YOU PLANNED THAT!” Cedric shouted, hurling the door open. In his fury he almost forgot to duck under the lintel. This was the closest to real anger that Alya had yet seen in him. “You set that up!”

All through his ordeal she had been sitting in a corner of the control room beside Fish Lyle. Bagshaw, the beefy security man, had been leaning against a wall behind them in silence. They had all been watching through a window. Fish had not spoken and had barely moved, an inscrutable gnome. Only once had he used his mike to prompt Cedric, and that had been right at the end, to extend the invitation to Eccles Pandora. Now Cedric crossed the room in two long strides and glared down at him, and was rewarded with a bland smile from the round, pallid face. Lights glinted on Fish’s shoe-polish hair and turned the thick glasses into empty patches of brightness. His face was a jack-o’-lantern carved from a grapefruit. He bore a scent of cologne.

“You did very well, Cedric.” His voice was a rustle of leaves.

“Well done, Sprout,” the security man growled. “Thanks.”

“Almost too good,” Fish added. “You almost convinced her.”

Alya stood up and smiled.

Ignoring her, Cedric again shouted at Fish. “But you knew she would want to come along on the trip tomorrow! Why let her?”

In another corner the technician arose and stretched. He was a sallow, spotty youth who had done nothing at all that Alya had seen except looked bored and pick his nose—System ran everything. He headed for the door, thumping Cedric on the shoulder in patronizing approval as he went by.

Fish rose also. “You overestimate my precognitive abilities. But yes, I did run a prediction…” He chuckled inaudibly. “System said that if you played your part as we discussed it, then there was a decimal seven three chance that she would react that way. I’d have guessed higher.”

“But why let her? Why do we want her?” Cedric had so far afforded Alya no more than a nod. That was a measure of both his anger and of a self-confidence that was growing astonishingly fast. In two days he had visibly matured, throwing off the childish cocoon in which he had been kept swaddled so long. He was filling in the holes in his knowledge, finding his strengths, and measuring them against the world. He had rolled with some of the roughest knocks she could imagine and gained strength from every success. It was a fascinating process to watch, but it did raise problems—such as the problem of where he was going to be allowed to sleep that night.

As though he had read her thoughts, Cedric turned with a shamefaced smile and hugged her, very softly. He was not always so gentle.

“You did beautifully!” she told him. “That horrid woman! You tied her in knots.”

“Did I?” He did not look totally convinced. Cedric being skeptical? That was new, and he was even eyeing Fish more suspiciously than he had before the interview. Obviously the unexpected ending still bothered him. He tugged at a cuff. “And this suit! I feel like I forgot my guitar somewhere.”

“I didn’t know you played the guitar!” she said.

He grinned. “I don’t, really, but—”

He pursed swollen lips and kissed her cheek. Again she wondered where he would sleep. She was badly bruised, as he was. Bruises could be used as an excuse for a night or two, maybe, but after that she might well be gone, never to see him again. A man who had saved his lover’s life might reasonably expect more than a peck on the cheek for thanks.

“Call for Deputy Director Hubbard from Dr. Quentin Peter of 5CBC,” System announced.

Cedric shied like a startled horse. “Yugh! Of course!”

Fish had already reached the outer door.

“Wait!” Cedric yelled, and lunged over to grab his arm.

“Correction,” System said. “Calls for Deputy Director Hubbard from Dr. Quentin Peter of 5CBC and Dr. Goodson Jason of NABC.”

“They’ll all want to come!” Cedric yelled.

Fish gazed up at him in opaque silence until Cedric released his grip. “I expect so.”

“What am I going—”

System interrupted. “Correction. The following five persons are standing by on calls…Correction. The following eight…”

Cedric howled. Fish made another attempt to slip out the door, and Cedric squeezed in front of him. Alya, impressed, wondered if the reptilian little man was surprised by the sudden new assertiveness he had provoked.

Cedric glared down at the chief of Security. “Not so fast, Doctor! You cooked this up! Why let Eccles Pandora have the scoop? What’s the purpose? We can’t take the entire world media along on—”

Ping
!

System’s mindless recitation of celebrated names was ended by an override and the furious image of Devlin Grant. One look at the inflamed beefy face, and Alya could imagine sparks flying from the moustache.

Devlin roared. “What the hell is going on? Hubbard, what right have you to make announcements about me going to visit Nile?”

Cedric put his arms akimbo, completely blocking the doorway. He stared down darkly at Deputy Fish’s shiny black hair, as if hoping to see through it to whatever sinister brew seethed within. “I was given to understand that it was all arranged.”

“Oh, you were, were you? Lyle?”

Fish looked from holo to Cedric and back again in surprise. “Has there been a misunderstanding? I assumed, Grant, that you would wish to handle the matter yourself, but I certainly suggested that Cedric check with you before making any announcement.”

Cedric’s expression showed that he might be recalling the conversation differently.

“Did you, now?” Devlin said through his teeth. “Well, I hadn’t even been advised that there was going to be another mission to Nile at all.”

“We must try to recover the body. We promised Gill’s next of kin that we would make the attempt.” Fish looked very innocent, very shocked by the disagreement. Doubts were already gathering in Cedric’s face like mud rising in a stirred pond…

And Devlin still resembled a volcano in the most unpredictable stage of an eruption. “I was not aware that my authority over operations had fallen into question.”

“Of course not!” Fish sighed. “Well, I surely do hope we don’t have to start going to formal memoranda and requisitions in this organization after so many years of striving to minimize red tape. As chief of the investigation into Gill Adele’s death, I requested that an attempt be made to recover her body. I would have sworn that the matter was discussed at our first board meeting after the tragedy. And I’m sure that Agnes told me she’d mentioned it.”

Devlin chewed his moustache. His tunic was unzipped, his hair awry, and the room behind him was a very frilly, pink bedroom. “She may have,” he admitted cautiously.

“Well, then!” Fish beamed. “And all I told Cedric was that he would make a good independent witness, since he had never had a chance to tamper with the equipment that killed the three victims, and that
I was sure
that you would not mind him coming along, but that he should check with you. He may not have heard me clearly. Well, the man’s had a busy day; we shouldn’t be too hard on him.”

“I—” Cedric said.

“What exactly are you demanding, Lyle?” Devlin asked.

A string of glowing words floated along past his knees: 16 INCOMING CALLS WAITING FOR DEPUTY DIRECTOR HUBBARD CEDRIC—CORRECTION: 21 INCOMING CALLS WAITING FOR DEPUTY DIRECTOR HUBBARD CEDRIC. Cedric stared at them angrily and began gnawing his lip. Even if he could not read fast enough, the voice coming through his earpatch must have been making the message abundantly clear.

Fish shrugged. “Just that you send out a skiv fitted with those grapple things for collecting samples. The body must be lying where she fell. Even if there are predators, they will not have destroyed the suit. Theories of cave men we can forget, but Eccles Pandora will not believe us unless she sees with her own eyes.”

“That slut!”

“Exactly. I thought we might make her eat a little crow, that’s all. Now, if you are too busy with the princess’s affairs, I see no reason why some junior ranger can’t drive the equipment. You must have some young lunk you can spare?”

Devlin’s image scowled, obviously thinking hard.

“There are twenty-one—no, twenty-seven—calls waiting for me,” Cedric said. “Every other network wants to send someone along, too. What do I tell them? And when? Can we have a press conference in the morning? Dr. Fish? If I let them all come up to Cainsville, can you handle the security?”

Fish beamed paternally. “Certainly! You have promised Eccles the seat, so the rest will have to be content with watching you leave and watching you return. Grant, what do you think?”

Devlin ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn you for a sly, creeping toad, Lyle! Well, I am very busy, but this won’t take too long.”

Alya mused that Devlin’s fondness for headlines was no great secret.

“But, as senior investigator,” Devlin added darkly, “you probably ought to come along with us yourself.”

“My doctors have advised against excitement,” Fish said sadly. “You will have Cedric.”

Devlin’s eyes narrowed. “I think maybe Baker Abel, also.”

Certainly there was some cryptic undertone there. Alya wondered why the glib-talking Ranger Baker should be significant. Cedric had not noticed—he was scowling at the visual message as it came around showing 32, then dropping back to 31. Someone had gone away mad.

“Your decision,” Fish said with a shrug. “We’d better let Cedric answer his mail, here. By all means, let them all come.”

“I’ll handle the press conference!” Devlin snapped.

Either Cedric’s assertiveness was not yet developed enough for a head-on confrontation with Devlin, or he just did not care. “Fine!” he said. “You can have ’em. 0700?”

Devlin grunted, then vanished.

System spoke at once: “Calls for Deputy Director Hubbard from the following thirty-one persons…”

Fascinated, Alya moved back out of the field of view as Cedric stepped to the com, biting his lip and tugging his cuffs down. Fish vanished out the door.

“
Collective reply
,” Cedric said.

“Go ahead.”

He took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and then put on an extremely convincing little-boy smile. “Hi! Sorry I can’t take your calls one at a time, but you’re all stacked up like firewood. There isn’t another seat available on the skiv, but anyone who wants to come to Cainsville to see us leave and then see us come back is welcome to do so.” He paused and gulped for a moment, then forced the smile back. “You’ll be able to watch us on monitors, I guess. Dr. Devlin will be available for questions both before and after…Let’s say 0700 hours? And we’ll provide breakfast. Thanks for being so patient. That’s all. Oh—no, I don’t know why Dr. Eccles got preferred treatment. It just happened that way. Good night.
Com end
.”

Bagshaw had neither moved nor spoken throughout the Devlin-Fish argument, but now he broke the ensuing silence. “You know, Sprout, there are times when you don’t act nearly as stupid as you look.”

“Like now, for instance!” Cedric said, wrapping Alya up in his arms and starting serious kissing procedures. He began as if he were planning to go a full three-minute round with her, but he broke off halfway through, gasping for air.

“Damned nose!” he said thickly.

“I’m bushed!” he said as the two of them climbed into a golfie.

Perhaps he was going to be tactful and considerate.

No, he was not. “I’d like to go to bed
very early
,” he added, and hope was written all over his face in flashing neon. “
Columbus Dome
!” he told System, wrapping Alya in an arm like a garden hose.

“I’m tired, too,” she said, and they fell to arguing over who had had the least sleep lately. It seemed they had both been missing out.

As a child Alya had been allowed to run wild in the Residence grounds, often unattended. With the
buddhi
, no guardian was ever necessary. For as long as she could remember, she had trusted her intuition to see that she came to no harm. Thus she had been an unusually vulnerable thirteen-year-old when a thickshouldered, broad-smiling gardener twice her age had led her into a dusty, cobwebby summerhouse and taken her virginity. That had been a shock—but not truly harmful. In fact he had been a very slick performer and the education likely valuable.

There had also been a rather wild party when she was sixteen, and the captain of the school basketball team—but she preferred not to remember that.

Since then she had been more discriminating, but she had paired briefly twice; and she had terminated both affairs as soon as they began to turn serious. She had known what her kismet was, and neither man had been the sort to take along on a oneway journey to another world.

So she’d had experience of four men before Cedric, but none of them had been as boisterous as he. He was big and powerful, and last night he had been extremely enthusiastic. She still felt sore inside, and her later encounter with the rope plant had left her bruised all over outside. She was not in the mood for love.

Cedric obviously was.

“Let’s eat,” she suggested, and they stopped at the cafeteria. He ate four times as much and as fast as she did, but he never took his eyes off her.

“Window to Orinoco at five,” she said. “I have to get up early.”

“I’ll nudge you,” he said, and waited hopefully.

She let that one go, but her conscience was squirming: He had saved her life, and paid for it with a smashed nose and all-over bruises. Injury deserved compensation.

They walked back toward the spiralator. “When you go to Tiber,” he said, “then you won’t be a princess anymore, will you?”

She agreed, automatically thinking of Jathro. She did not know where Jathro had got to, but his absence was a welcome improvement. It was true that the people of Banzarak had a strongly held belief in the infallibility of their royal family. Alya was not going to be a princess, but her opinions would continue to carry much weight with at least the ten percent of the colonists who came from her homeland. That was a good start on having a lot of influence in a society that would of necessity be fragmented and lacking overall leadership. That was Jathro’s assumption.