Part 21 (1/2)

Those Disty had to know they were going to die.

She had heard, but fortunately hadn't seen, that the Disty were taking enclosed dune vehicles outside the Dome. Those vehicles wouldn't get the Disty far-maybe to Wells, if they were lucky. Real lucky. She had even seen a report that a few Disty were driving aircars out of the Dome, something astonis.h.i.+ng not just because aircars weren't designed for travel outside of a domed environment, but also because the Disty hated aircars. They hated the wide openness of human-designed vehicles, moving in human-designed areas. It had to be h.e.l.l for the Disty just to be outside the Dome. But to be outside the Dome in an aircar was as extreme as clinging to the outside of a train.

Scott-Olson washed her hands and started to scrub down her lab tables. It was all make-work. At this point, she didn't want to start an autopsy of the human remains. She wanted to keep the tables clear for the incoming disaster.

She hadn't felt this helpless in a long time. In some ways, she felt responsible. If she hadn't asked how to dig up the buried dead, the Disty might not have panicked. They might never have found out. But as soon as she had that thought, she knew it was wrong. She had done the best she could with the knowledge she had. She had no idea that this entire incident would, essentially, drive the Disty insane. She glanced up at the wall screen. Some human reporter had managed to get video of Sahara Dome's port. It didn't even look like the building Scott-Olson knew. The Disty were shoved against the doors, trying to get in.

From what she could tell, a trickle was getting inside, but that would create its own problems. The Disty section of the port was separate from the human section, just like the interior of the Dome itself. The Disty had their own s.p.a.ce traffic-control monitors and their own regulations. They let humans work their side (following Disty rules) because so many alien groups were used to dealing with humans. It facilitated what little s.p.a.ce traffic Sahara Dome got.

But Scott-Olson was certain the Disty in s.p.a.ce traffic control and the port authority and s.p.a.ce security weren't at their jobs. She had a hunch they had fled at the very first chance.

So a group of human controllers were trying to make sense of this mess, trying to make sure that s.h.i.+ps didn't collide with each other as they took off, that the exodus from Mars was as orderly as possible. Scott-Olson made herself focus on the lab. A lot of things could be moved to make extra s.p.a.ce. She could even rearrange some samples so she could use part of her wall lockers for even more bodies. Or body parts.

She was also going to have to triage. She knew without asking that the humans would want to know how each human victim of this stampede died. But she didn't know how to treat the Disty, where she should even keep their bodies, if if she should even keep them. she should even keep them.

She would have to ask the bra.s.s at the top about that, and at the moment, they were busy, so overwhelmed by not only the panicked Disty but also by the power vacuum the Disty had left as they tried to flee the Dome, that no one had time for niceties like how to handle the dead.

Handling the dead. The thing that had gotten all of Sahara Dome into this mess in the first place. Scott-Olson closed her eyes and sank into a nearby chair.

She wished it were all over. Instead, it was just beginning.

32.

After Flint left the Domeview Hotel, he walked toward his office. He needed time to reflect without dealing with public transportation or any problems that he might find once he got back to his side of town. He had shut down most of his links. He wanted silence, not that he could get much inside the city. People talked loudly in the streets, sometimes standing by themselves, forgetting to speak softly as they used vocal links. Music blared from sidewalk restaurants, and aircars honked above him. Some cars simply honked to express displeasure, while a few buzzed by, perhaps hoping to upset pedestrians.

Flint couldn't get any more upset. He had been prepared for Costard's disappearance. He hadn't been prepared for her death. From all her accounts and from his own double-check of her information, her relations.h.i.+p with the Disty had reached a plateau. They had sent her here to find a way out of her predicament. They weren't chasing her.

That was one of the reasons he believed she could safely disappear. The Disty were trusting her. What they didn't know was how impossible it seemed for her to solve the Jrgen case. Other Retrieval Artists probably wouldn't have been able to. Flint's police training, combined with his data-recovery skills learned in his first job, made his research go three times faster than most people's, probably much faster than the average Retrieval Artist's.

Of course, he still hadn't solved the initial problem: He hadn't found any of Jrgen's family. He wasn't even sure if Jrgen had had any living family when she began her life of crime.

He had most likely found the reason for Jrgen's murder, and that was about it. If he had it to do again, he still would have told Costard to disappear.

He was shocked that she failed.

Flint made sure he walked around the area ruined by last year's bomb. Usually, that made this long walk easier. But nothing was going to make it easy today. Not even the part he had just reached, his favorite part of the walk, improved his mood.

This section, far enough from the university to attract a higher-end crowd yet close enough to bring in some students, had become the new Restaurant Row.

The restaurants in the new row were a mixture of cuisines, many of them from Earth, but some from the far reaches of the known universe. Buildings, many of them remodeled to accommodate a large clientele, had windows that faced the street, windows that opened at certain times of the day.

Before Dome Dawn was the best time: So many bakers plied their trade that the entire street smelled of bread and cakes and various sweets. But even this late in the day, the row had an odor all its own-a mixture of ginger, garlic, and grilled beef in the lower quadrant, and an equally tantalizing mixture of hot peppers, chili oil, and lemongra.s.s in the next quadrant.

Often he stopped in this area for dinner, picking that night's place to eat based entirely on smell.

Only this afternoon, the cooking aromas didn't soothe him. They made him realize how queasy he had become.

The fact that Costard had been killed in the closed office of a Disappearance Service surprised him. No one should have caught up with her there. The service should have protected her.

He wasn't willing to believe that her death was random. The style of the death-the Disty vengeance killing, whether real or not-ruled out randomness. If Costard were just a victim of an unknown killer, the killer wouldn't have chosen this method of murder.

But the Disty wouldn't either. Costard's warrant said quite clearly that she was contaminated. The Disty wanted nothing to do with her. She hadn't been near any Disty since she had looked at Jrgen's skeleton.

No Disty would go near Costard, not even a member of the Death Squad, not even to exact vengeance.

The last few restaurants on the row gave off a honey-and-burnt sugar odor. The dessert restaurants, open from lunch until midnight, used to be his favorites. He felt a strange craving for a sugared coffee, but he let it go. He'd had enough coffee for one day, and it had been bad coffee at the university's law cafeteria. He didn't want to put something else on top of that.

Flint stepped down the curb and crossed the street, heading out of the row. He hoped that he had pushed Nyquist hard enough in the right direction. If Flint was right, someone else had killed Costard, probably someone human.

And he wasn't willing to guess who that human could be, except to acknowledge that the human had known about Costard's run-ins with the Disty.

The next block was filled with tiny shops, many of them so exclusive that they were open by appointment only. Flint didn't even bother to look at the windows displaying their wares. And he was glad that he had shut down most of his links. The irritating part about this neighborhood was that the shops could afford intrusion advertising-instant access to the links of anyone walking by, with a quickly chosen and usually appropriate appeal to the potential shopper's personal tastes.

Flint hurried past all of this.

This case wasn't over just because Costard died. He was being paid by the Human Government of Sahara Dome, not Costard. And there were people he needed to contact there.

He would probably be the person who let them know about Costard's death.

Flint sighed and stopped walking for a moment, leaning against one of those exclusive closed shops. He wasn't going to make that sensitive a contact on the streets of Armstrong.

It was time to get back to his office and focus on the work at hand.

If Costard were dead, then it stood to reason that the Disty might kill the other contaminated humans.

And Flint might have some of the keys to preventing even more deaths.

33.

Someone had purged the records from her files. They weren't in the official history either. It had taken Ki Bowles weeks to find the dirt she needed on Noelle DeRicci. The dirt came courtesy of one of DeRicci's partners, a broken man named Jack Levenbrook.

At first, Bowles thought Levenbrook was dead. No one had seen him in years. But she had finally tracked down his last-known address, talked to his estranged daughter, and found him in Tycho Crater, living as far from Armstrong as he possibly could.

Then it took him a week to grant an interview.

Tycho Crater was one of the Moon's smaller colonies. Difficult to get to from any major port, it had little to recommend it, outside of some excellent agribusinesses that took advantage of the areas around the crater itself.

Bowles hadn't been to Tycho Crater before. She'd taken a bullet train there the night before the interview, and had been startled at how long the ride took.

Once she had arrived in the domed crater itself, though, she had been charmed. Unlike most Moon cities, Tycho Crater had used a lot of the natural landscape in its urban design. Actual rocks poked up through the permaplastic or were used as decorative items in lawns. Some of the Crater's dips became parks, without the addition of non-native plants.

The entire effect was eclectic and rustic, almost like a moonscape with buildings and oxygen. She was finally beginning to understand why so many Armstrong residents retired here.

Levenbrook had. He had taken his pension at the earliest retirement date and fled Armstrong. Only his wife had come with him. His children had said good riddance and were happy to keep him away from his grandchildren.