Part 11 (1/2)

She hesitated on the curb. He didn't look back, but he had kept a few of his links on. He was using a camera chip to monitor several directions, making certain no one followed them. One of his other chips pinged for theft networks, the kind that searched for active links and stole information from them.

After a moment, Costard's shoulders sank. She hurried to catch up to him. Flint slowed down so that she could.

They were heading away from the bombed-out area, toward a group of shops and restaurants that catered to the university crowd. The shops claimed to have the latest Earth fas.h.i.+ons, while the restaurants advertised cheap food. A few downscale hotels crowded each other in the next block.

”All you had to do was tell me you don't want the case,” Costard snapped as she reached his side.

”No, that's not all,” he said. ”I learned a lot of things the last few days. One of them is that the Disty death rituals are a lot more complicated than you mentioned. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of variations of each law.”

”Are you telling me that we can pick which one applies?”

”I'm telling you that finding the children might not be enough. There might be other steps involved.”

She shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweater and stared straight ahead, almost as if she hadn't heard him.

Students poured out of a nearby building, laughing and holding some sort of fabric he didn't recognize. He waited until they pa.s.sed before continuing.

”I looked up your Disappeared,” he said. ”She's not Lagrima Jrgen.”

That caught Costard's attention. She glanced at him, eyes wide. ”Who is she, then?”

”I don't know,” he said, ”and we may never know. There are layers of ident.i.ty, and so far as I can tell, they were designed for one shady deal after another.”

”Shady,” she said. ”You mean illegal?”

He shook his head. ”She seemed to be working with a team that knew how to use laws to their own advantage, skirting the edge of the law's intent in such a way that the action would hold up in court if, indeed, the case was ever taken to court.”

”Like the M'Kri Tribesmen,” Costard said.

”Exactly.” Flint crossed another street, this time heading to the paths that wound through the university's main campus. ”And this is the problem. I think, in order to take the attention off of her, she invented that family listed in the court records.”

”Invented.” Costard breathed the word. She stopped near some oak trees. They were real and very tall, nurtured by the Environmental Department. ”She couldn't have invented them. Her pelvis had parturition scars.”

Flint stopped too. ”What?”

”A woman's pelvis actually shows how many times she's given birth. Jrgen's pelvis confirms the record. She had two children.”

He glanced around. No one stood near them. Flint had brought Costard here for a reason: The campus had pockets that had no links at all.

”Well,” he said, ”the family only shows up in the court doc.u.ments. The other information I found about Lagrima Jrgen doesn't mention family at all-and it should have.”

”That's impossible. She had children.”

”But we don't know if she raised them. We don't even know if they survived childhood,” Flint said.

A young woman carrying a pile of old doc.u.ments came out of a nearby building and started down the path.

”We need to move,” Flint said.

Costard looked at him as if he had told her she had to run in the Moon Marathon. ”I'm done with the conversation.”

”No,” he said. ”I need to tell you a few more things.”

”You've already said you're not taking the case. You've already said that things are much worse than I thought they were-and I thought they were awful. What else can you tell me?”

”Let's walk.” He beckoned her forward, into an enclosed area between the naturally growing trees. This was a modified greenhouse with open ends. The greenhouse wasn't designed to grow food, like the greenhouses outside the Dome. This one had only green, leafy plants that seemed very overgrown.

The university had dozens of these open-ended greenhouses all over campus. For the last several years, they had been running experiments on the production of pure oxygen.

This was the natural section, near the trees that had been planted decades ago by some environmental sciences students who believed that the Dome would be better off if greenery dominated the interior. Flint knew, because he had studied it, that the natural greenhouses worked on old-fas.h.i.+oned systems-no automation at all. The plants were watered by hand, nurtured by hand, and fertilized by hand.

No electronic devices were allowed near these greenhouses, and even the cameras, which kept track of the moment-by-moment growth, had to film from a distance of at least twenty feet. Because previous studies had shown how sensitive the plants were to what humans called white noise, no sound equipment was allowed nearby either.

Hand-painted signs tucked into the gra.s.s warned that anyone who entered this area had to shut down their links or be subject to huge fines. Costard started to turn away from the area, but Flint put a hand behind her back.

”Shut down your links,” he said, ”including emergency links.”

Her breath caught. It was a matter of trust. If she believed in him, she'd go into a secluded place with no outside access at all.

She touched the back of her hand. He waited until his system confirmed that hers was off before shutting down his own.

They stepped into the greenhouse proper. The air did seem cleaner here. It had a tang to it that Flint found nowhere else on Armstrong, not even in the artificially designed greenhouses. He sometimes came here to sit and think, especially after his injuries last year. He had found this a good place to heal.

”Why the secrecy?” she asked.

”Because,” he said, ”what I'm about to tell you can't go on any record.”

Her face hardened, almost as if she were bracing herself for his words.

”When you queried about Lagrima Jrgen, you aroused interest all over the known universe,” he said. ”There were news reports, most of which recycled the M'Kri Tribesmen case, but a few were about the skeleton itself.”

”Why is this bad?”

”We don't know who she was or who she worked for,” Flint said. ”Someone did kill her and plant her body on that site.”

Costard nodded. ”I've thought of that.”

”That someone may still be alive.”

”I thought of that too.”

”And may not be human,” Flint said.

Costard sighed. She obviously hadn't thought of that. ”Meaning they might have weird laws about people who discover the bodies of the dead.”

”Or something about pa.s.sing guilt through touch, or any kind of strange thing you and I can't imagine. The news stories weren't very specific. For all these people know, you could have found some incriminating evidence with that body, or something else that might frighten them.”

Costard reached for one of the long, thin leaves, nearly touched it, then brought her hand back as if she wasn't sure she could. She looked very small among the overgrown plants; the hardened expression had morphed into something resigned and sad.

”This frightens you, so you won't take the case,” she said.