The Spare Man, page 31
“Jalna! You didn’t.”
The tall woman switched to low and rapid Lunar French. Listening, Annie shook her head and then sighed.
Nodding as if he’d pieced things together, Wisor stalked down to the couple. “Ah … yes. One or both of you have been present at each of the deaths. Annie Smith, aka Annie Barnes, who was in the hallway when George Saikawa was killed. Who just happened to be onstage, with access to the apparatus that killed Nile Silver.”
Annie lifted her chin. “I was in full view of the audience the entire time.”
He smirked. “I’ve seen Ganymede Night. I know what you’re capable of.”
Mouth dropping open, Annie sputtered before getting out, “Thirty years ago, forty pounds lighter, and with editing to hide my position switches in a film that was fiction.”
“So you were onstage while your partner was backstage, according to her.” He jerked a thumb at Tesla as if he had never had any doubt about any of Tesla’s statements before this.
As Jalna settled back in her seat, she met Wisor’s gaze with calm. “While I am willing to cooperate, I would prefer to consult with my lawyer first.”
“You can’t possibly think Jalna had anything to do with any of this!” Annie ignored her partner’s attempt to stop her and surged to her feet. “Why would she?”
“Getting rid of business rivals is a popular motive.” Wisor ticked things off on his fingers. “She and Kuznetsova both make octobots.”
“Octopoids,” Ewen muttered, nearly in time with Tesla and Jalna.
“Then there’s Crane back there. Discrediting her and her husband would leave the playing field wide open for Ms. Tafani to be the leading robotics exp—”
Annie scoffed. “As if anyone takes Crane seriously as a developer after that PAMU disaster. Do you know how many systems failed on that—”
Stars and darkness spin past the edges of her vision. Tesla’s ears are ringing. The suit should autostabilize, and it’s not and she’s having trouble thinking and something is crushing her spine so all she can catch are short—
Gasping, Tesla looked up, trying to find something to catch hold of. I am safe.
Lighting grid. The smooth silver curve of the Mars balcony. Wisor was talking to her beyond the ringing in her ears. She was on the Lindgren. Above the Martian level lay the Lunar balcony. Scuffs on the polyamide laminate. Blue velvet seats.
Four things she heard. Her own breath whistling in her ears. Wisor talking. Servos whirring. Shal’s voice, “Tesla, you’re on the Lindgren.”
“I know.” Servos whirring. Tesla’s mind skipped back to the Rorschach of dents and scuffs on the Martian level balcony. Some of them looked like an engraver had drawn long lines down the side of the curve. Others were like a pointillist drawing an eight-note scale and—
Actually. That was the standard grip pattern for an octobot.
“Let’s reconstruct that first murder, shall we? We have—”
“Second.” Shal tilted his head back, following her gaze up to the Lunar balcony.
Wisor said, “Excuse me?”
“Second murder. There’s the body in the recycler.” Shal waggled his fingers at Wisor, drawing attention away from her. “Go on. I’m very interested in how we all gained access to a restricted area with a dead body. Also how we got someone aboard without clearing the manifest—oh. Dammit. That’s why Nile Silver was killed…”
Something moved in the darkness. She didn’t have to be able to see it clearly to recognize the quality of the movement. There was an octopoid on the Lunar balcony.
Shal leaned forward in his seat. “Yuki, do you know which containers Nile Silver used for smuggling?”
“No … but I know which crates we weren’t allowed to handle.”
“Any of them big enough to hold a person?”
“Or a dog?” Afraid to lose track of the octopoid, she didn’t turn to see their response. But someone who could smuggle a person on could also smuggle things off. A dog would be exotic anywhere that wasn’t Earth, and she could imagine a purebred Westie would be … tempting.
She felt Shal begin to rise. “With Chief Wisor’s permission, of course…”
“Why … why would he be smuggling dead bodies?”
The octopoid was moving down the stairs, coming in and out of shadows. This seemed very wrong. “Excuse me.” It was a fashionable muted purple, exactly the same shade as her acubot. Tesla grabbed the chair in front of her, using it to brace as she leaned and carefully twisted for a better view.
Shal continued, “Interesting thing … the interesting thing about that kidnapping case was that the police thought the kid was dead. They’d gotten close once and there was a fire. Everything burned except a couple of teeth that were verifiably the child’s. But kids lose baby teeth—”
That was her acubot. “Shal? There’s a—”
It flung something toward the stage. Tesla grabbed Shal and yanked him down.
The theater went black. Something hissed past. In the row behind them, someone grunted and then was silent.
DANGEROUS WORDS
.75 oz Green Chartreuse
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Shake ingredients over ice for 15 seconds. Strain into coupe.
Shal’s weight knocked Tesla to the floor between the seats. The pressure of his body intersected with hers in ways that locked them both in place for a moment. The safeties on her DBPS muffled the incoming bruises and the yellow-green knots of pain where her back had wrenched in the fall.
Wisor shouted. “Lights! Get me lights!”
Beams of waving light cut through the gaps between chairs as people turned their handhelds on.
“Oh God!” Immanuel shouted. “Candy! Help me!”
“Where did it—?”
“The stage!”
Shal scrambled back, trying to get off of Tesla, and still made the pain spike past what the safeties could muffle.
“Coriolis.” Tesla grabbed his arm blindly, overriding the safeties so the pain vanished under a dull blanket. ::Lunar balcony. My acubot. ::
“Shit.” He hesitated, half over her. ::Will you be—?::
::Yes. Go. ::
He grimaced, using the arm of a chair to push the rest of the way up. “Maria!” He pointed up. “Coriolis effect.”
And he was gone, running up the aisle with one arm wrapped around his ribs. Tesla dragged herself out of the valley between rows one joint at a time.
“Ewen! Get back here.”
The kid appeared over her, hands flexing as if they needed to do something. “Do you need help?”
The spoofer zone meant the octopoid could not have been remote-controlled by the kid. Or Ory for that matter. Tesla stretched her hand out to Ewen. “Thank you. Yes.”
They tried to pull her to her feet but were too teenage lanky to do much more than steady her. Tesla needed that. They bent down, digging under the chairs, and came up with her cane. She took it and leaned heavily on the handle.
Behind her, Candy was bending over Josie, who was slumped back in her chair. Immanuel held a light over them, which made the blood spattered across the bartender vividly red. Hundreds of silver nails glittered among the red, making a pincushion of her face, neck, and chest. Even though Tesla knew what they had to be, it still took too long for her brain to recognize the piercings as hundreds of acupuncture needles, driven deeper into Josie’s body than they were designed to go. The needles were incredibly fine, but puncture an artery or the lungs and it was possible to kill someone. It wouldn’t be fast, but slow death was still death.
Down the aisle, a cluster of people were running for the stage. The stage didn’t matter. The Coriolis effect meant that any object thrown in a straight line would continue its path while the ship rotated around it, making it appear to turn in the air.
On this ship, if someone had actually thrown the needles from the stage, the Coriolis effect would have twisted their path to hit the wall to the left of the theater. Instead, they’d hit Josie.
No—wait. Josie had been seated behind them. Those needles passed through the air where Shal had been. They tried to kill Shal. Tesla’s pulse thundered in her ears and adrenaline shook every joint in her body.
They’d tried to kill Shal. And she’d just sent him running up to the balcony.
She swallowed the sour terror rising in the back of her throat and looked up. She was never going to be able to catch up with him. And she didn’t have to. The octopoid didn’t matter.
What mattered was the person running it.
The way the ship was built, it was a Faraday cage, which the cruise line masked by installing signal boosters everywhere. But boosters introduced lag, and for the kind of precision throw the octopoid had just done, the operator would need to be close.
Only two people sat in the front row now. In the darkness, it was hard to tell who they were. With their heads bowed, it looked like they were praying, but no telling what conversation they were having on their own local network.
“Ewen … Will you go back to sit with your dad?”
They looked to the end of the aisle, where Ory was backlit by the emergency lights. “Is he?”
“I…” She grimaced. “I’m so sorry. But I need to see if someone was in the range of your spoofer fields. So I need—”
“The conditions to be the same as when the lights went out.” The teen nodded, shoulders slumping, and turned to walk back to the person who had raised them, and apparently stolen them.
Leaning on her cane, she limped down the aisle toward the people in the front row, throwing out a constant string of network requests to see when she was outside the spoofer field.
Connection unavailable.
She fumbled for her handheld, but her fingers were too numb to find the edge of her pocket.
Connection unavailable.
At the end of the row, her left foot caught on the carpet, and Tesla stumbled, knocking into a chair. She caught herself and dialed the DBPS back down a notch. The edge of her vision seemed to go a dull greenish purple that matched the queasy ache in her spine. She gripped the edge of the chair, breathing in golden sunlight until she could see again.
The auditorium was in chaos, and in the uneven emergency lights it was hard to tell where anyone was. A calm voice echoed through the theater.
“Delta, gamma, seven seven four. Delta, gamma, seven seven four.”
For all the good that would do with Wisor and most of his team already here. The security chief had run onto the stage with Bob, leaving a couple of junior staff members to try to corral the remaining passengers. One had gone to assist Candy. The other was blocking the end of the aisle to keep Ory from standing. Ewen was slumped in their seat.
Connection unavailable.
She had a better view of the people in the front row now. The twins were gone. Tesla turned in place, looking for them in the echoing shadows. Nothing. And it was too dim to tell who was still seated. She limped across the front row.
Connection unavailable.
Tesla stopped in front of the pair, who were little more than shadows in the dark. In silhouette, Jalna raised her head and her eyes caught the yellow beam of an emergency light. Mahjabin held her hand. Annie was not with her.
Connection unavailable.
The spoofer field apparently reached far enough to surround them. Tesla swallowed. “Where’s Annie?”
Jalna looked at the seat next to her and her eyes widened. “I—I do not know. She was just here.”
“What did Annie do after she stopped acting?”
“What?”
“Did she just retire or change fields?” Tesla glanced up to the lunar balconies, catching sight of Maria Piper running under an emergency lamp. Where was Shal?
“She—she came to work for me.” Jalna frowned. “Why?”
The operator had to be—they had to be close. Where could someone be reasonably assured of not being interrupted and still be close? Backstage.
Except that if you wanted to misdirect people, you wouldn’t make the needles appear to come from your actual hiding place. “Do you know where the bathroom is?”
Mahjabin twisted in her chair, pointing with her free hand to a door at the back right of the theater. “Just off the lobby.”
“Thank you.” Tesla rode the DBPS, letting enough sensation through that she wouldn’t trip over her own feet as every fiber of her back lit up with alternating distress signals. As she walked back up the aisle, she braced herself with cane and chairbacks.
Her route took her past the bar, and in line of sight to the door to backstage. Most of the main theater was obscured by a sidewall that curved around the back row of seats, so she didn’t have a clear view of what was happening in the audience. Back here the emergency lights cast harsh yellow puddles that created a path to the exits.
Connecting …
From the auditorium, she could hear the occasional shout. Once she heard Shal yell, “Clear.”
Connected.
Without chairs, Tesla pressed her hand against the sidewall to steady herself. She got to the lobby door and the bathroom door stood just to the side.
It had an Out of Order sign across it.
She rotated the cane in her hand and made a call to Fantine. “Hi. I’m about to do something very stupid. I know you’re surprised.”
She took a breath and put her free hand on the knob. Twisted. The door was locked.
Grimacing, she looked down the aisles for anyone on staff who might have a key. The curtain billowed onstage and she thought she heard Bob shout, but no one useful was in view. Not even Wisor. Fine, then. Kneeling with a straight back, she pulled the eyeglass-repair kit out of her pocket.
She didn’t have the battery charger, but she had her handy. She didn’t have chewing gum, but she had her anklet. Gold was a damn good conductor. Bending to reach the anklet sent lightning shooting down her leg in ways that screamed of new damage. Fine. She set the DBPS so she felt nothing. She had to watch her hands to unhook the anklet, but she got it off. Breathing through her teeth, she lowered the DBPS again so she could feel her hands and set to work. This would fry her handheld, but it was fast. She transferred the call to her HUD. “Sorry to cause problems. Just … keep Shal safe and out of trouble, please?”
She set the handheld on the floor and shoved the screwdriver into the edge of the case, popping the lid off with a quick twist. Another twist popped the cover off the lock.
As soon as the anklet was in place, her finger hovered over the Power button. With a grimace, Tesla used the doorknob and cane to drag herself back up to her feet. She was stupid, but not quite stupid enough to open the door while she was kneeling. She gripped her cane with one hand and the handheld in the other.
Power.
Sparks flew. She closed her eyes, darkness spinning around her.
She was in the theater. The person who had tried to kill Shal was on the other side of this door. Tesla pushed the door open with a quiet pop.
Light from a portable lamp bled under the accessibility stall at the far end. She stepped into the bathroom, left leg stuttering and dragging like an engine out of oil. Being stealthy wasn’t an option. The person at the end had to have heard her.
“Come out.” She tried to infuse her voice with the faintly annoyed sound she used during corporate takeovers. “You’re caught and the game is up.”
From the stall, a leather shoe squeaked against the tile floor. A man sighed. “Tesla, baby…”
Her heart stopped. “Shal?”
He sighed again. “Yeah…”
“But you were … but you were beside me.” Sweat poured down her back. She had assumed that the needles came from the octopoid, but how much simpler they would be to throw from one row away.
“I can explain.”
“You can explain?” The room spun around her as her collar seemed to tighten around her throat. Everybody has secrets. Everybody lies. “Explain what?”
“I need you to know that I love you.” He sighed again. “But I also had a job to finish.”
“Oh my God!” Tesla shoved the door to the stall open.
His hand, in a bright-blue nitrile glove, grabbed her and shoved her against the wall of the bathroom, with her face pressed against the tile. The DBPS fought to keep the pain at bay, but her vision still went red and white.
Something cold pressed against her temple and Shal whispered, “I loved you so much. I’m so sorry.”
Click.
The DBPS turned off. Jagged purple blue bolts twisted through her spine and ribs. Bruises and torn muscles and layers and layers of pain lit up long-deadened pathways. Tesla convulsed. Her knees gave out.
Connection lost.
She dropped to the floor and felt every piece of her knees and forearms slam against the cold tile. Keening, she tried to push back up, but pitched over on her side.
Haldan Kuznetsova stood over her.
“Well, damn.” He sounded like Shal. “I did not expect turning off your subdermal systems to drop you like that.”
“What—” Why did he sound like Shal?
He kicked the cane away from where she’d dropped it. “Still, your lawyer—who I’m assuming you had on speed dial, since you always do—should have heard my little confession, so that’s something. What to do with you now…”
She pressed her hand against the floor, and a piece of rebar seemed to wedge into her vertebrae. Tesla gasped, blinking aside tears. Goddammit. She was not going to just lie here while, while Haldan Kuznet—
Now. When she couldn’t use it, her brain pointed out that this man hadn’t remembered that he owned the Lindgren. He hadn’t known that you could convert a matter printer to be a scanner. He owned an octopoid. And all of that gave her the useless answer to who the dead body in the recycler was. “You aren’t Haldan Kuznetsova. Who are you?”
He grinned and offered a little bow. His voice shifted and he sounded like Chief Wisor. “A very good actor with an uncanny resemblance. And while it’s nice to briefly have the recognition of my skills, that’s all the monologue I’m going to do now.” He opened his coat and pulled out a steak knife. “Best to be consistent.”
