Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“I don’t think I want you as my defense attorney, Julian,” said a relaxed Silverman. “The truth is that Malena Graham was a thief and a traitor. She was a Memphis colonist, a partner in a quadrillion-dollar hijacking of the Earth’s treasuries. She shares in the blame for every sin and excess committed by Allied Transcon over the last three decades.”

“So you murdered her as a revolutionary statement.”

“I executed a criminal for her crimes.”

“Will that be your defense?”

“The courts are controlled by Allied’s bedmates. They won’t allow the truth to clutter up their rush to judgment. Which is why I’m talking to you.”

“But I’ve talked to you before, haven’t I?” asked Minor.

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you Jeremiah?”

Dryke sat forward, riveted.

“No,” said Silverman.

“You talk like the man who calls himself Jeremiah,” pressed Minor.

“Jeremiah is the prophet,” Silverman said, frowning slightly. “It shouldn’t be a surprise if you hear the same words from his disciple.”

“Is that what you call yourself? A disciple? Is this political or religious?”

“I’ll let you apply the labels as you choose,” Silverman said with a shrug.

“But you’re trying to say that what you did is part of something bigger.”

“It is.”

“Were you under orders to murder Malena Graham?”

“Execute,” corrected Silverman. “My hands are Jeremiah’s hands. I do his work.”

“Not any longer.”

“There are ten thousand for Tau Ceti—ten thousand minus one. There are ten billion Homeworlders standing for the Earth. How can they think that they’re safe from us? In that ten billion there are ten times ten times ten thousand who will gladly do what I’ve done.”

“The cost—”

“We are many, and they are few. In a war of attrition, one of us for one of them is a victory. We’ll cheerfully pay that price until the last of the ten thousand is gone.”

Julian Minor was scoffing with his eyes. “Do you seriously think that you can announce a plan for this kind of mass murder and still expect to carry it out?”

“Jeremiah’s soldiers are everywhere,” said Evan Silverman with easy confidence, looking directly into the camera. “There’s no place our enemies can go that we can’t reach them.”

Dryke had seen enough. “Log it for me. Kill the screen,” he said, and the skylink went dark. But he did not move to leave the flyer.

For, listening to the interview, Dryke had finally understood the weight of discouragement that had settled on him that morning, that had taken him under as he sat on the edge of his bed, the fading images of a disturbing dream cross-channeled with the jarring sounds and images of the flash alert.

Now the dream came back. The siege had gone on forever. Each morning he walked the ramparts, reviewing the defenses and looking out at the broad grassy meadows where the enemy’s campaign tents stood and campfires burned. Each morning Dryke found a post or two abandoned, a familiar face or two among the enemy, dead allies reborn as adversaries.

Then came a morning when he woke to find himself the last bowman on the ramparts. That was the morning the assault began in earnest—uncounted enemies attacking the fortress at a thousand points. And the last archer knew full well as he nocked his first arrow that neither will nor heart nor skill would count enough to carry the day.

Writ the chronicler on the day he died, Too few on the ramparts, too many outside—

Inside the post, Dryke was stopped at a security gatelock, then escorted to a Captain Norwood’s office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open.

The office was no more than half a dozen paces in any dimension. At one end, a man in a brown uniform sat behind a small boomerang desk, beneath a Scale 3 wallscreen. “Captain Norwood,” Dryke said. “I’m Mikhail Dryke, Allied Transcon.”

“You’re late,” Norwood said curtly, pushing back his posture chair and rising. He gestured past where Dryke was standing. “I understand you know Lieutenant Alvarez.”

Stunned, Dryke turned to follow Norwood’s gesture. A woman with a vaguely familiar face was seated there on a cushion couch.

“Mr. Dryke,” said Eilise Alvarez. “I was just telling Captain Norwood about your personal contribution to the Martinez case.”

A dozen replies passed in review of Dryke’s wary censor before he finally spoke. “Then I’ll have to make a point of telling him my side of it sometime,” he said, looking back to Norwood. “I’m a bit confused. How are the Houston Transit Police involved in this?”

Norwood settled in his chair. “Lieutenant Alvarez is representing a special operations unit working on controlling civil unrest aimed at Allied Transcon and its personnel.”

“We’re also seeking transfer of the prisoner to our jurisdiction on commencement-of-crime.”

“Which probably won’t be granted,” Norwood said, nodding. “Anyway, you both asked for briefings on the Graham case, so I thought I’d spare myself the repetition. I assume you don’t object?”

“No,” said Alvarez.

“No objection,” said Dryke. He gave Alvarez a sideways glance as he took the free chair along the far wall.

“Fine.” Norwood glanced down at the desktop, which had the muted gleam of a flat tank display. “Recorders on if you’ve got them. Victim, Malena Christine Graham of Great Bridge, Virginia, age twenty. Oh, and she was a crip, restricted to an airchair. According to witnesses, she was picked up by Evan Eric Silverman, twenty-eight, of Houston, at a bar called Magpie’s on Old Spanish Trail about ten forty-five last night.”

“Twenty December,” Alvarez said quietly for the benefit of her recorder.

“Silverman took the girl to a field about three kilometers west of Magnolia, off State Route 1488, where he stripped her and beat her with a dragon’s tail. That’s a club with a pattern of razor edges embedded in the top third. Illegal as a weapon. Silverman had a license for his—apparently he’s a juggler. Cause of death: You’ve got your pick until the coroner wraps up. Most likely the head injuries killed her before she bled to death. Time of death is twelve twenty-one a.m. That’s the twenty-first,” he added. “You want to see the evidence tape?”

“Yes,” said Dryke.

“Is there any point?” asked Alvarez.

Norwood opened his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Not for me to say. I don’t know what you’re after.”

“All right,” said Alvarez. “Show it.”

The assault had been savagely cruel, and the body was grossly disfigured. It was the same kind of mindless violence he had seen in the incident at the observation platform, but turned up one notch from brutality to butchery. Looking at the evidence video, Dryke could not even tell if the young victim had been attractive.

“Jesus. Did he do all that?”

“Not quite. When they found her, the fire ants were having their fill. It’s a mercy she was dead.” Norwood shook his head. “At least I hope she was dead.”

When the recording ended, the lights came up. Alvarez was pale, but when Dryke raised an eyebrow in her direction, she shot a withering look back.

“That’s about it at this point,” said Norwood, who had never turned to watch the wallscreen. “Nothing I didn’t have to release to the media, really. Frankly, I’m still not clear on what you’re after. There’s not much here to finesse.”

“What about this ‘Jeremiah’s hands’ business?” asked Dryke.

“He has been talking a lot, that’s a fact,” said Norwood. “You obviously caught his spotlight performances. I can’t let any of his private showings leave the building, but I could set you up with a screen somewhere. Are you interested?”