The Gordon Mamon Casebook (12 page)

“Sorry … uh, Warren, I don’t really see why you think I need to know this?”

“Looks like there’s a connection with Havmurthy. Or a possible connection, at least. According to some preliminary forensic evidence we’ve received under the radar, it appears that the explosion was set off by contact between a few micrograms of matter and a few micrograms of antimatter. A mutual annihilation reaction.”

“Big-league stuff,” Gordon conceded. “But I still don’t see—”

“There’s no way of knowing, at this stage, where they got the anticheese from. But the chemical signature of the cheese part of the explosive mix is definitely consistent with the Havmurthy product lines.”

“Meaning?”

“Look, Gordon, I don’t think anyone here knows what to make of this stuff. But I just thought you should know. Watch your back, huh?”

“Uh … yes, of course. Thanks, Warren.” He closed the call, and activated the handheld’s ‘settings’ function to select a less unsettling ringtone.

Maybe he should come down and check on the luggage later, in a better frame of mind.

Man up, Mamon
, he told himself, carefully lifting a large vac-resistant suitcase off a small plastimache shipping carton labelled ‘Fragile’ and ‘This Way Up’. The suitcase was light, but frustratingly difficult to heft. (
Must be one of those new models
with the gravity-reduction system
. They’d been introduced just in the last year or so, and several of the spacelines had complained that they would go broke in no time, severed as they would be from the pecuniary lifeblood of excess baggage charges …) He placed the suitcase carefully on the floor and pulled a cargo net out from the wall stanchion to fasten the item into place.

At which precise point, something beeped.

It was a very quick beep, fairly loud, and so high-pitched that one would have to be a pomeranian to properly appreciate all of its attendant nuances of tone and timbre. Among present company, it provoked puzzlement, not least because its brevity had made it more or less impossible to pin to any particular direction. But it also touched a sore point with Gordon, who, while in principle thoroughly comfortable with the notion of luggage that went ‘beep’, in practice held strong views on the undesirability of ‘beep’-uttering containers in close proximity to his physical person. Particularly so several hours after someone had rendered said physical person unconscious and decidedly lacking in raiment, and immediately following his enlightenment as to the unexpected lethality of coagulated dairy products. Accordingly, he did what any sensible individual would do in the circumstances. He pulled out his handheld again.

“Scan,” he said. “Urgent.”

Full-function emergency security sweep will commence after these messages from our sponsors
, advised the device, and then proceeded to ask him whether he preferred hard or soft cheese, and whether he’d tried any of Havmurthy’s offerings in this respect? He set the volume to ‘mute’—that really was the most annoying jingle he’d ever heard. Duly silenced, the handheld busied itself with the important task of showing him the process by which Havmurthy’s vintage wares were aged … in, Gordon was beginning to suspect, real time. But the cheesecam footage had, in fact, finished when the beep next sounded. As before, he had no hint as to its location (other than, it would appear, somewhere within the cargo deck), but this time he had a recording. He fiddled for several seconds with the handheld’s playback function, until he had isolated the fractional-second trace during which the beep had sounded.

“Identify,” he said.

Clarify
, came the response.

“Identify beep.”

Frequency seventeen-thousand three hundred and forty-one hertz. Duration twenty-seven point eight milliseconds. Apparent volume seventy-one point nine decibels. Margins for error on these measurements will be available after this brief message from our sponsors …

Gordon learned a lot about cheese in the next half an hour. He also learned, eventually, that there were only three corporations in known space which produced devices programmed to automatically emit such a ‘beep’ tone. Two of these corporations, both based in the far-flung zeta quadrant, had had an interstellar embargo placed upon their specialised asteroid-mining bots, and were respectively plaintiff and defendant in a bitter sonic copyright infringement suit. The major product marketed by the third such corporation was a stealth cloak.

Well, it fitted. But it also left Gordon severely disquieted, as well as provoking the dual questions of (1) how a top-of-the-range stealth cloak—exactly the kind of overgarment worn by whoever had attacked Havmurthy—would have found its way into the area set aside for Skyward 270’s passengers’ luggage, and (2) why such a cloak would be manufactured with an inbuilt, highly-audible, and frankly disconcerting ‘low battery’ indicator.

* * *

Gordon spoke into his handheld. “Sue? You busy?”

“A little,” she replied. “I have to reprogram dinner as gluten-free, low GI, non-dairy, and organic—or at least as something which will appear that way, if I turn the restaurant lighting down low enough. That ought to tie me up for the next hour or so. Then I’m supposed to be cleaning out that malfunctioning fridge unit, after which I’ll need to be finding somewhere to store all that cheese. What’s up?”

“Sorry, Sue, did you say cheese?”

“Uh, yes. Why?”

“What d’you mean, ‘store all that cheese’?”

“We’re carrying quite a large consignment. Havmurthy was running a special a week back, major discounts, and I was looking to re-provision the pantry for the next few ascent / descent cycles. Made perfect sense, until this fridge decided to pack a sad—but then I don’t suppose you contacted me to talk about cheese.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gordon said, quite unsure on the topic. “It
is
all cheese, though, I suppose? I mean, no anticheese?”

“What in heaven’s name is anticheese? Is that that new soy-based—”

“No. Uh, forget it.”

“OK. So what’s up?”

“I need you to build me a locator.”

“Lost your keys again, Gordon?”

“No. There’s a device on the cargo deck somewhere. I need to find it.”

“What kind of ‘device’?” Sue asked. Gordon could hear the sudden anxiety in her voice.

“It’s harmless in itself.”

“Gordon—”

“Sorry. Look, it’s a stealth cloak, emits a low-battery beep. I can give you the specs. I need to find out whose luggage it’s in, and I don’t have time to stand around on Cargo for the next few hours playing echolocator. Can you whip up some kind of detector for me, please?”

“Sure, give me a couple of hours. I should have it done by the time we hit thirty-one thousand, at any rate. But why—”

“—would it have a low-battery beep?” Gordon interrupted.

“Don’t know.”

“No, that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

“Oh.”

* * *

Gordon had a distracted dinner in 270’s sparsely-populated restaurant, striving all the while to find a setting on his handheld which would circumvent the device’s sudden fascination with the world of dairy protein products, then busied himself with lift-module maintenance and airlock safety testing for the next couple of thousand kilometres. When the ‘descent progress’ display had counted down to twenty-eight thousand, he went looking for the guests. He was particularly keen to make contact with Miharties, since she hadn’t come down to dinner, electing instead to stay in her room.

But there were the two in the bar, right next to the restaurant, so it made sense to talk to them first.

“Just four little words. And it wasn’t until I got to the showers, and the soap, that I realised the wisdom of—”

The voice was like gravel over a rockslide, and Gordon couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to pay to listen to it, but there was no accounting for taste.

Idovist was short, broad-shouldered, with an almost-military-standard salt-and-pepper crewcut, a slight paunch, eyes that were simultaneously watery and piercing, a nose which looked as though it had led a life sufficiently interesting as to merit a biography all of its own, and an impressive collection of vintage scars upon his forearms. He was seated at 270’s bar, which since last year’s refurbishment had been reinvented as a particularly unconvincing replica of a Hollywood-style western saloon, complete with buxom robotic barmaid, animatronic piano player, a
trompe l’oeil
poker-game backdrop, a moustachioed and black-hatted holographic sherriff that entered repeatedly through the swinging saloon doors in a manner reminiscent of nothing so much as a cuckoo clock’s eponymous bird, and a soundtrack featuring whinnying horses and occasional gunfire on much too short a repeat cycle. Ignoring all this and the plastic tumbleweeds besides, Idovist was deep in conversation with the other male guest—Ligotmi, wasn’t it?—when Gordon spotted them, and approached. He’d get to Ligotmi soon enough; but for now, according to the checks he’d run on his handheld, Idovist was his primary concern.

“Mr Idovist? Excuse me for interrupting,” said Gordon, standing a couple of places along from the men at the bar, and manfully resisting the urge to slide his thumbs in behind the band of his belt. “How are you finding things, this trip?”

Idovist turned to look at Gordon. “You mean the floor plan?”

“Well, no. I mean—uh—have you had a successful visit, to, er—”

“Uranus? Yeah, it went well.” Idovist twisted back to face Ligotmi. “Anyway, like I was saying—”

This wasn’t going as smoothly as Gordon had hoped. “Look, I’m sorry to intrude, Mr Idovist—”

“Call me Rhys. If you must.”

“Alright. Rhys. Thing is, as Entertainments Officer, I’m required to ask each of our guests in some detail about the—uh, well, the purpose of their visit, anything of interest they might have, uh, witnessed on their travels, how they found their stay on Skytop, their feelings about cheese—”

“Cheese?” asked Ligotmi, his hand poised ready to raid the bowl of salted nuts stationed between his and Idovist’s beers.

“Sponsors,” Gordon extemporised, retaining his focus on Idovist. “Sorry. And look, I know this is a nuisance, and believe me there are other things I’d rather be doing, but if we can just step through the questions so I can keep the powers-that-be happy …” He raised his eyebrows, hoping that he was managing to strike the appropriate tone of hassled employee, and therefore perhaps getting sufficient sympathy to encourage Idovist’s cooperation.

“Seriously, cheese?” asked Ligotmi, scooping his hand into the peanut bowl and missing.

“Yes,” said Gordon. “Mr Idovist—
Rhys
—I was wondering, in my capacity as Entertainments Officer for this descent, if you could just provide a little bit of detail on your movements—”

“What’s this got to do with entertainment?” asked Idovist.

“Why cheese?” asked Ligotmi.

“Like I said, Mr Ligotmi, sponsors. And, er, it comes under the heading of seeking to make your descent with us as enjoyable as possible, by ensuring that we’re best meeting the needs of the travelling public.”

“That’s never entertainment. That’s market research.”

“Multitasking,” said Gordon, with more than a twinge of desperation. “Rhys—if I may trouble you, in the interest of entertainment, or market research, or whatever you wish to call it, what is your line of business exactly?”

“Really?” asked Ligotmi, this time successfully connecting with the peanut bowl. “Cheese?”

“I’m an ex-con,” answered Rhys Idovist. “Best thing that ever happened to me. Set me up for life, it did. So to speak. I mean, you learn things inside what you’d never realise out here.”

“What kind of things?” Gordon asked, fighting the impulse to take a step back.

“It’s all in here,” said Idovist, reaching into his shirt pocket to pull out a small plasticback featuring a picture of himself on the cover. He brandished the book at Gordon. “Fifty-nine ninety-five, if you’re interested.”

Gordon turned the book over in his hands. It was called
Just Four Little Words
and was emblazoned with glowing tributes to the author’s prowess as a communicator. “Uranus, you said?”

“You’ll have to read the book,” replied Idovist.

“I’m sorry?” asked Gordon.

“Ah—yeah. Uranus. That’s a long slow flight, and no mistake. Couple of years each way. I was there for a speaking tour.”

“So what exactly did you speak about?”

“Pretty much what I learned from prison. You know, first time I got sent to the big house, me mum was pretty distraught, gave me this big long rambling speech, tearful, impassioned like, full of do’s and don’ts. Buggered if I can remember any of what she said. Pardon my French. But me dad, who’d been in stir plenty times himself, he just said four—”

“I probably don’t need that level of detail,” said Gordon, passing the book back to Idovist. “For the entertaiment report, I mean. But just out of interest—obviously it’s been useful for you, from a professional standpoint, but, ah, what were you in prison for?”

“That time?” Idovist said. “Aggravated assault, if I remember rightly.”

“Well, I was meaning more generally,” said Gordon, who was at this moment (a) pointedly not taking a step back and (b) trying to remember if it was ex-cons who could smell fear, or if that was dogs.

“Must say I’m not sure how this comes under the heading of entertainment. But, well, pretty much everything: theft, fraud, arson, larceny, kidnapping, malicious non-return of overdue library books, you name it. I probably tried my hand at pretty much everything, back in the day. Reformed character now, of course. I mean, the prison thing is fine for when you’re in your prime, but it doesn’t really count as a
career
.”

“Murder?” Gordon asked, watching the other closely.

“No, that was one box I always left unchecked, somehow. Why, you got someone you want killed?” Idovist asked, offering a quick forced laugh.

“No, I meant … look, never mind. Anyway, to keep our sponsors happy, what are your thoughts on cheese? Have you encountered any interesting cheese of late? Have you—er—had any cheese-related experiences this trip, and if so, how would you categorise them?”