Melissa Scott - Mighty Good Road

Obediently, Santerese triggered the media wall, throwing the final projection onto its central field. “This is the complete reconstruction,” she said. “We made a full recording of all procedures used, of course, but this is what we got.”

Max stared at the slowly rotating crystal, his face without expression. It didn’t look like much, Heikki admitted to herself, just a rough cube, its corners sawn off to create smaller planes, and those corners sawn off as well, creating smaller and smaller facets. She leaned past Max to touch keys on the nearest workboard, throwing a second, similar image onto the wall beside the reconstruction.

“That’s a simulated core crystal from a class-5 freighter—just a sample of the approximate form, not a real one.” She touched keys again, and produced a third image. “This is a schematic of the type of crystal used in the Exchange Points’ PDEs.”

“All right,” Max said again, “they’re obviously very similar. What did Lo-Moth tell you this one was, again?”

“A matrix for a possible universal center crystal seed,” Heikki answered.

“Mmm.” Max returned his attention to the media wall. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, and drew out the disks Heikki had given him. “Can you copy these?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the screen. “And then play back the copies?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Santerese said. She took the disks, slid them one by one into a diskprinter, then fed the copies into her workboard. Max tucked the originals back into his jacket. He had never taken his eyes off her during the entire process, Heikki realized abruptly, and wondered if she should be insulted.

“Put it on the big screen, Marshallin?” she said instead, and Santerese nodded. Another window opened on the media wall directly below the slowly rotating crystals, and filled with text that flickered past at an almost blinding rate.

“This is just the record of Slade’s movements,” Santerese translated. “I’m looking for the data on the original crystal.” The text, mixed now with strings of numbers and flashing images, flickered past for a few minutes longer, and then Santerese said, “Got it.”

The flow of data slowed, and then stopped, a delicately drawn schematic filling a quarter of the image. Santerese adjusted her controls, and the schematic expanded, until it had pushed the last bits of text out of the window. It looked surprisingly familiar.

“Bring up the schematic we created, would you, Marshallin?” Heikki said slowly. Santerese smiled grimly, and did so. The two diagrams were very similar.

“So,” Max said, almost to himself, sounding satisfied.

Heikki reached for her own controls, adjusting the images until the two schematics overlapped. There were minor differences, of course, there always would be between plan and actual crystal, but the main lines merged impeccably into one. “So Galler was right,” she said aloud, and Max leaned back to look at her, a crooked smile on his face.

“That’s assuming you’re right, Heikki, in your reconstruction.” He held up his hand, forestalling her automatic protest. “Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you—but please remember, I have to go to the courts with this, and Tremoth’s lawyers are—well, experts is the politest word I’ve heard used. This is nice, but I’d like to have something solid in evidence to back it up.”

“What about the records of Slade’s movement, this stuff?” Santerese asked. “And his politics?”

Max shrugged. “Again, useful, but not conclusive. The source is tainted, after all.”

He was right, of course, and Heikki looked down at her workscreen, not really seeing the array of figures it displayed. By now, Slade would have covered his tracks, both within Tremoth and on Iadara. Though it might be more difficult on Iadara, where a substantial local population hated Lo-Moth, and not all of Lo-Moth supported its parent…. She frowned. FitzGilbert, in particular, had disliked Slade, and, more to the point, she’d lost people of her own when the latac was shot down. She had not approved of Heikki/Santerese being taken off the job—and even putting all that aside, Heikki thought, with an inward grin, she’s the likely scapegoat if Slade decides to dump the blame on Lo-Moth. All of which just might make her willing to cooperate with the authorities.

“Max,” she said, “what if I told you there was someone on Iadara, in Lo-Moth, that just might be able to come up with the hard evidence you need—if you approached her the right way, of course.”

Max eyed her warily. “If it was true, Heikki, I’d be very happy, naturally. What makes you think anyone in Lo-Moth would have anything useful, even if they were willing to give it up?”

Heikki took a deep breath, marshalling her thoughts. “My contact on Iadara was a woman named FitzGilbert. She’s the operations director on-planet—it was her latac that was shot down, and her people who were killed.” There was a faint look of amusement in Max’s eyes, and Heikki said, stung, “Yes, people still take that sort of thing seriously in the Precincts, Max.”

Max waved a hand in apology. “Go on.”

“I think she suspected something of what happened, and she wasn’t happy when we were pulled off the job. Plus she doesn’t like Slade at all, or at least she didn’t seem to.” Heikki paused, pulling herself back to the main line of her argument. “As director of operations, she has to know a good deal about the crash, and about Slade’s behavior immediately afterward. She might have what you’re looking for.”

“I’ve tried to contact Lo-Moth personnel,” Max said gently. “In fact, I have spoken to some of them. But I haven’t been able to pry any of them loose from their company-appointed lawyers—they don’t want to be pried loose, most of them—and I’m not going to get anything useful from them under those circumstances.”

“Ah.” Heikki could not restrain a smile of sheer pleasure, and then laughed aloud as Max’s brows drew together into a frown. “You are a suspicious sort, Max.” She sobered quickly. “Max, a woman named Alexieva, Incarnacion Alexieva Cirilly, rode back to the Loop with us, she’s staying with Jock Nkosi right now. She is, or at worse was, FitzGilbert’s agent while she was on Iadara. If anybody could get you a private conversation with FitzGilbert, she could.”

“But would she?” Max said, and Heikki smiled again.

“I think you could persuade her.”

Max nodded, and pushed himself away from the console with renewed energy. “But you’ll make the call, Heikki, just in case.” He smiled, and this time there was no humor in it, just the predator’s bared teeth. “I don’t care what company secrets he was trying to protect—I don’t even care if Tremoth crystals did cause the EP1 disaster. That was a hundred and fifty years ago. You don’t kill, what is it now—the latac crew, and the hijackers—almost a dozen people, for a stale secret.” His smile shifted, went lopsided and wry. “And if you ever repeat that, Heikki, I’ll reveal your first name to the Loop.”

“No one would ever mistake you for an idealist,” Heikki said, her voice more gentle than her words. She was tired, her eyes gritty from staring at the screen, but forced herself to stand upright. “I’ll make the call.”

To her surprise, Nkosi was both in and accepting contact, though he did not switch on his cameras. Heikki could hear someone moving in the background as she made her appeal, asking him and Alexieva to come by the office suite as soon as possible, and hoped it was the surveyor. There was a moment of silence when she had finished, and then Nkosi said, a faint note of surprise in his voice, “But of course, we will be there within the hour.”