Solve Gorgoni, page 6
A minute later she returned with a small, pyramidal shaped object in her hand and stopped before him. The object was damaged.
Jules reached out for the vase of flowers on the hall table. His hand found it easily.
Satisfied, he turned to Mooney and pinched her cheek.
“It’s all right dear, come on out of it,” he soothed. “Wake up now.”
Suddenly, the light of consciousness that had been absent in Mooney’s eyes returned. She blinked.
“So, you think hypnosis will let one of us navigate the quantum field and find the scrambler?” she asked.
“I’m positive.”
“How can you be so sure? Maybe neither of us is susceptible to hypnosis.”
“Well as it turns out, you are.”
“Huh?”
“Look in your hand.”
Mooney looked and saw that she was still holding the scrambler.
“Is this it? How...?”
“You proved easy to hypnotize. Sorry, but I thought it’d be easier to try it on you without warning so you’d offer the least conscious resistance.”
“It was that easy to hypnotize me, huh?”
Jules nodded.
“Doesn’t say much for my strength of character, does it?”
Jules allowed himself a laugh out of relief that the trap had been so easy to overcome. “Has nothing to do with strength of character. Only on conditions and, like I said, the subject offering no conscious resistance.”
“The funny thing is, I still remember everything you were saying about hypnosis and eye induction,” said Mooney. “What happened after that?”
“I asked you to search the first floor and you did. I think you found the scrambler on the kitchen counter or something. In any case, I doubt it was hidden. It’s turned on and off by a simple telcomm signal, the reason why you had to disable it physically.”
“Hard to believe a little thing like that could give us so much trouble.”
“I don’t think it’s meant to be a permanent solution to anything but only a temporary one,” said Jules, turning the damaged scrambler over to reveal a label on the bottom. “Quantum Security Systems” he read, followed by a serial number.
“Sounds like those things are commercially available.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I think what we have here is a clue.”
“Besides the fact that someone here didn’t want any snoopers stopping by?”
“Speaking of snooping, let’s do some.”
Quickly, they made the circuit of the downstairs. They found nothing as Jules expected. No one would remain behind with the scrambler in operation.
Upstairs, they’d find a different story.
They mounted the main staircase cautiously, ion pistols at the ready even though Jules believed no one remained in the house.
The first room they checked, looked as if a whirlwind had been through it. Items were spilled over the floor, drawers ripped from bureaus, bedding scattered. It was the same story in the second room.
But in the third room, there was something different. All around was the same evidence of a hasty search as in the first two rooms, but this time a new element had been added: there was also a body.
“I think we’ve seen this cinevid before,” deadpanned Mooney.
Jules admired his wife’s sang froid but knew it was a bluff. Murder continued to disturb her as much as it did him.
In the room, the body sprawled grotesquely on the synth-carpeted floor. It lay face down, arms beneath the body, apparently held where it had been shot. There was a tiny hole about midway up the torso, nearly between the shoulder blades.
“Bikari?” Suggested Mooney.
“Most likely,” replied Jules, slipping his pistol back into his suit jacket and crouching next to the body.
Mooney, her own pistol still at the ready, made a quick search of the bedroom including adjoining bath but found nothing amiss.
Meanwhile, Jules had rolled the body onto its back.
It was Bikari all right. He’d been shot in the chest by an ion pistol set at maximum. Leaving little blood to stain the carpeting, the weapon left a needle thin hole in its target, obviously the heart, which went on to pass completely through the body and out the back.
“Here’s where it hit after coming out his back,” said Mooney, fingering a small hole in the wall beside the bedroom door.
“An amateur,” said Jules.
No one properly trained in the use of an ion pistol would be so sloppy as to use it at maximum which allowed the beam to pass through multiple objects after hitting its primary target.
Jules rummaged through the man’s pockets. Nothing.
“No telcomm in the room?”
Mooney shook her head.
“Well, whoever killed him was at least professional enough not to leave his telcomm behind,” said Jules. “Which doesn’t help us of course.”
“But why was he killed in the first place?” asked Mooney. “Doesn’t make any sense. He must have been one of them.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. The fact that he was killed suggests not. Remember, in its later stages, Humanism devalued life. The unborn, the elderly, were done away with in the name of unburdening the planet. Suicide was encouraged as a means of ridding society of the mentally and emotionally disturbed. Overpopulation was considered a burden on Gaia that needed to be relieved. It’s only a sign of how important it is that we catch up to these people because obviously, they’ve already absorbed the Humanist mantra that the ends justifies the means.”
“And what were the ends being met here?”
“Covering their trail,” said Jules. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that no one ever does as good a job of covering as they think they do. For instance...” he reached into a pocket and pulled out the remnants of the scrambler.
Mooney smiled. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get to work!”
“I’ll take the bathroom,” said Jules, heading in that direction.
“Suit yourself.”
With experience behind them, it didn’t take long to conduct a very thorough search including HVAC venting, carpet edges, lighting fixtures, and window sashes. They conducted electronics and digital sweeps using a special function of their telcomms. Finally, they checked out the work station using a highly secret MI ‘cloud chaser’.
After all that, only the more obvious places were left and when those had been eliminated as well, Jules couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Been saving the best for last,” said Mooney, walking over to a bird of paradise, one of several small indoor trees resting in large planters in different places around the bedroom.
Removing a wooden support stick from one of the planters, she used it to probe the soil.
“Where’d you learn that trick?” asked Jules.
“A girl has to have some secrets.”
Finished with the first planter, Mooney repeated the operation with the second, a miniature bamboo palm and struck something.
“Bingo!”
“Got something?” asked Jules, joining her by the plant.
In answer, Mooney dug her fingers into the moist potting soil, and when she pulled them out again, was holding a small object in the palm of her hand.
“I do believe I’ve found a clue,” she declared, before heading to the bathroom sink to wash the object clean.
“What is it?” asked Jules, looking over her shoulder.
“A vanity compact,” replied Mooney. “It’s usually keyed to the owner’s voice so it can’t be used by anyone else, but often owners don’t bother and leave it at the neutral setting. Since this one was likely hidden by our Mr. Bikari, it follows that he could open it.”
“Making it likely that the feminine owner never keyed it to her voice alone?”
“Right. Open,” Mooney said, holding the pearl tinted compact to her lips.
There was a standard musical sound and a holographic image of a vanity space appeared in the air over the compact and, with some adjusting of her hand, Mooney was looking into an area that reflected her face. Holo slides and rules beneath the mirror image allowed adjustments with a sweep of the hand.
“Not bad,” said Mooney, admiring her own image in the holo-mirror.
“I could have told you that,” flirted Jules.
“Why thank you, kind sir,” replied Mooney, ordering the compact to end program. “Can we assume that this compact did not belong to Bikari?”
“You assume right,” said Jules. “But he must have had a reason for hiding it in the planter.”
“Insurance?”
“I’d say so.”
“Which leaves the question: whose compact is it?”
“Girlfriend? Mistress?”
“Or seductress.”
Jules looked at his wife. “You’re bad.”
“Just putting myself in Bikari’s place. There’d be no need to hide a compact belonging to a girlfriend or mistress. But if he were conspiring with a woman to steal a certain book...”
“No honor among thieves, huh? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time partners in crime didn’t trust each other. But the picture begins to get clearer. Bikari meets a woman who becomes his lover. Somehow, she convinces him to use his position at the Archives to steal the book. She might have suggested they could sell such a rare item and run away with the proceeds to live happily ever after...”
“Everyone knows how dangerous that book is,” said Mooney. “It would take some convincing to get him to steal it.”
“She was probably real convincing, if you catch my drift.”
“Now who’s being bad?”
Jules shrugged.
“Anyway, turns out Bikari is no fool, or at least not a complete fool. He doesn’t fully trust his partner and holds onto the compact as insurance. But how did he intend on using it if he was forced too? Was he going to use it as proof of some kind that it wasn’t his fault, that he was tricked somehow?”
“Probably.”
“But why was he killed? Why would this woman kill her willing partner?”
“Seems right now that he was merely a means to an end.”
“Unless, the woman noticed her compact was missing and suspected Bikari.”
“If she were part of a Humanist underground, that’s all it would take for her to eliminate a possible threat,” suggested Jules.
“An underground?” repeated Mooney, startled.
Jules nodded. “This wasn’t simply a theft by Bikari acting alone with the potential threat of ideas in the book infecting him, spreading to acquaintances. and so on. If this woman, as we suspect, seduced him into stealing the book, I’m sure she wasn’t acting alone. Eliminating Bikari suggests the covering of tracks. Look at the way these rooms were turned inside out. She was desperate not to leave anything behind that could be traced. For sure, she didn’t get ahold of something as sophisticated as the scrambler on her own.”
“Makes sense.”
“That quantum trap was meant to delay an investigation of the theft,” guessed Jules. “It was never intended to stop anyone permanently. Hopefully, whoever set it, won’t have expected us to escape as quickly as we did. That means time is of the essence. We need to catch up to this woman as soon as we can before she has a chance to disappear completely.”
“Are you suggesting I do the catching up?” asked Mooney, still holding the compact in her hand.
Jules nodded. “While I follow up with Quantum Security Systems.”
“Well, I can already tell this item is pretty high end,” said Mooney. “I think I’ll go do some shopping...”
Chapter Five
A Flaw in the System
For the second time in several days, Jules found himself looking out the window of a stratoliner. This time however, the view wasn’t of a formerly American city but that of Toronto, at one time a part of old Canada. Already, the near silent whine of the ‘liner’s engines signaled its final descent as the city’s gleaming, multi-colored towers rose higher and higher in his vision. Located on the shores of Lake Ontario, the city had once been a major North American metropolis but after a hundred years under the domination of Humanist culture even more severe than that experienced by the United States, it had fallen on hard times. Its vast population of nearly ten million had been reduced by half due to socialist policies that left the city devoid of jobs and opportunity. Those who could, fled. The rest festered and died in poverty, starvation, and freezing winters. However, once normalcy and common sense had been restored by the Constitutionalist armies and Ontario entered the Consortium, Toronto’s resurgence was remarkably swift until it had once again assumed its place as an entrepreneurial entrepot with a rising population.
Which was why Jules was not surprised to find the company he was coming to investigate, Quantum Security Systems, was headquartered here.
It had been simple enough to find it. There had not even been any need to have MI do any checking for him. A simple search of publicly available business listings via his telcomm yielded an address and contact information. A few jumps away, and Jules was able to learn all he needed about QSS from its own cloud site. From there, posing as an interested client, he had made an appointment with the company’s sales representative for a personal meeting and demonstration of its chief product, ‘quantumguard’, what Jules continued to refer to himself as a quantum scrambler.
The irony, of course, was that Jules would need no demonstration of the device’s effectiveness. He’d had, after all, firsthand experience with how well the damn thing worked.
Recollection of his experience with the scrambler reminded Jules of the absent Mooney. Though he knew perfectly well that she could handle herself, she was still his wife after all and that gave him the right, if not the duty as a husband, to worry about her. As it was, being left on Earth and on the trail of the mystery woman in Alfo Bikari’s life, seemed, on the face of it, a low risk task. There was nothing to worry about.
Or was there?
Staring out at the rapidly approaching ground, Jules recalled past assignments that he’d shared with Mooney and how seemingly safe avenues of pursuit quickly turned into potentially deadly situations. No, there was nothing about this business that he or Mooney could afford to be complacent about.
Suddenly, there was an increase in the tempo of the engines as the ‘liner eased to a stop over its assigned landing apron. Horizontal thrust was exchanged for the vertical and the big aircraft slowly settled to a stop. Jules braced himself for the inevitable rush of his fellow passengers to get off the ‘liner and on with their lives and just as inevitably, a human traffic jam resulted.
It was some minutes before he was given the space to leave his seat, gather his carry-on bag and exit the ‘liner through the extension corridor. Wasting little time, he made his way through the terminal and found himself a robo-cab, giving it the QSS address.
The drive was uneventful with the cityscape around him little different from many of those elsewhere in the world. Pity. For real departure from architectural monotony, one had to visit the cities of Europe which had been largely successful in preserving their cultural heritage despite ravaging by their own versions of humanism. Cities in the rest of world, particularly in Asia, had mostly rebuilt themselves in early twenty-first century glass and neon which now seemed quaint and old fashioned in comparison with the new glassite towers of the West.
It was still before noon when the robo-cab deposited him at an older office building on the outskirts of Toronto’s downtown. From information derived from his telcomm, Jules knew the way to the offices of QSS on the building’s nineteenth floor. An up capsule took him there in seconds and a pair of genuine glass doors emblazoned with ‘Quantum Security Systems’ on one leaf.
Inside, a pretty secretary smiled and asked his business.
“I’m here to see Mr. Jarel,” said Jules, trying his best to look like an eager customer. “I have an appointment.”
The secretary made a show of checking her records before confirming the appointment.
“Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Conroi?”
Jules did as she advised, considering his decision to pose as a client rather than as himself. He didn’t want to take the chance of spooking Mr. Jarel, or worse, if he was involved in the theft of Elements of Humanism, to allow him a chance to disappear or warn others who might be implicated in the plot.
“Mr. Jarel will see you now,” the secretary was saying.
Jules rose and headed for the old fashioned door with Jarel’s name on it.
Pushing it open, he was met by a man wearing the latest cut of synthsuit, presumably Mr. Jarel.
He was right.
“Mr. Conroi, is it? Pleased to meet you. I’m Donka Jarel,” said the man, extending his hand in welcome.
Jules took it and then the pneumachair indicated by Jarel. The manager himself resumed his place behind the big work station that Jules suspected was more ornamental oak than actual holo-console and touchscreen.
“Now then, Mr. Conroi,” began Jarel, smiling. “I see by your inquiry, that you’ve expressed interest in our quantumguard home and business security unit. Let me assure you that it’s the best, most reliable product on the market, recommended and endorsed by police departments throughout the consortium. Here, let me show you some of its more salient features.”
So saying, Jarel motioned over the holo-console embedded in his work station surface and one of the stereopticals on the office wall shifted from an abstract image to the company’s latest sales pitch.
“As you’ll soon see...” began Jarel before Jules interrupted.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just stop you there,” said Jules.
“Freeze program. Am I going too fast for you?”
“Not at all, it’s just that buying your product isn’t the reason I’m here.”
“Not the reason? I don’t understand,” said Jarel, turning to face Jules more fully.
Behind him, the auto-curtains had been pulled back to allow a generous view of Toronto’s downtown area. The blue skies with the occasional fleecy white cloud reflected soothingly in its forest of glassite towers. It all made for a warm, peaceful atmosphere in the QSS offices.
