Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

“Yeah, when I was, uh, working in my prior career, this planet used to be a favored source for untraceable false ID’s,” said Miles-san. “It was the only reason I’d ever heard of the place, before this investigation.” He squinted and pointed to a line. “What the devil’s that unpronounceable polysyllable?”

Raven-sensei looked. “Debilitating blood disease. Might have been why she chose to freeze a bit early.”

“Cause of death, do you think?”

Raven-sensei shook his head. “No, it shouldn’t have affected her revival. She would have needed treatment later, though.”

“Could she have had it? Effective treatment, that is?”

“Oh, yes, that one’s under control these days.”

“So what,” said Miles-san, “was a woman frozen nearly half a century ago doing in Lisa Sato’s cryo-drawer with Lisa Sato’s ID tag on her foot? It’s plain she didn’t get there by herself. While someone could have just cooked the drawer file numbers in the data banks, that damn tag pretty much guarantees it must have been a physical switch.”

“Where are your Madame Chen’s remains now, by the way?” said Consul Vorlynkin. “They really ought to be returned to her next of kin at some point. There may be an inheritance tied up, or who knows what. And her death is recent enough that someone still alive may have an emotional interest in her fate.” He hesitated. “Not that I’m looking forward to the lawsuits.”

“She’s tucked away downstairs at Madame Suze’s, for now,” said Raven-sensei. “Tenbury helped out.”

“Will she keep?” asked Miles-san.

“Indefinitely.”

Miles-san opened his hand to Vorlynkin. “Keep she must, till I’ve untangled all this. But hold that thought. So, now we have two ends, our straying dead lady and Dr. Leiber. It remains to follow them up and see if they meet in the middle. Was she frozen by NewEgypt, by the way?”

Johannes scrolled down. “By one of the cryocorps that NewEgypt later took over, I think.”

“On that same site?”

“I don’t think it was built out there yet, forty-five years back.” Johannes bent to a flurry of searches. “Ah, here we go. The place she was originally kept seems to have been decommissioned about ten years ago. Torn down. They moved her out to the new facility at the Cryopolis then.”

“That would certainly have made it easy for someone to swap her out,” said Miles-san. “Especially if the swapper was already on the inside, like an employee. I’m thinking Madame Chen was chosen at random. Who they wanted was Lisa Sato.”

“Are you saying somebody stole Mommy?” asked Mina, a quaver in her voice.

“It’s beginning to look that way…” Miles-san narrowed his eyes at the vid screen.

Vorlynkin’s grip on his shoulder and exasperated head-jerk toward Mina returned Miles-san’s attention to her. She looked like she was trying not to cry.

Miles-san made quick revision. “Although you have to figure, whoever took her had to care about her. You don’t steal something you don’t value. Suggests they would be careful with her.”

Grownup lies? On the whole, Jin liked that Miles-san didn’t talk down to him and Mina, but this was all just too weird.

As Mina failed to look encouraged, Miles-san babbled on, “After all, the portable cryochamber I was in was lost for a time, but it all came out right in the end.”

“Lost from your side’s point of view,” said Raven-sensei. “From our point of view, it was found.”

Miles-san gave Mina a big There, see? sort of smile, which faltered at her blank stare. Vorlynkin and Johannes were gazing at him in horrified fascination.

Miles drew himself up. “I’m going to go talk to this Dr. Leiber. In person. Not at his work, I think,” he added, his voice slowing in thought.

Roic’s mouth set in a grim line. “You will have a proper security perimeter.”

“Certainly. We’ll even take Johannes, so you won’t have to be the perimeter all by yourself.”

“It’s a start.”

Miles-san studied Mina, who was still shifting fretfully. “The connection between Dr. Leiber and your mother exists nowhere in the records I’ve seen so far—only in your witness, Miss Mina. If anything comes of it, it will be entirely due to the valuable intelligence you supplied.”

She cheered a little at this, or at least her lip stopped quivering. “Really?”

“Really. And valuable ImpSec informants get paid, you know. So do couriers, I am reminded,” he added with a glance at Jin.

“But I didn’t finish the job,” said Jin.

“Capture by the enemy rates hazard pay, actually.”

“How much?” asked Mina, brightening a lot more.

“Ah, I like the way you think, kid. There’s actually an official pay schedule. In Barrayaran marks, of course. It has codes for various services. I’ll have Roic check it, and do the conversions to Kibou-daini money.”

“You propose to pay them adult rates?” asked Vorlynkin. Jin thought he sounded more startled than disapproving, and hoped he wouldn’t try to talk Miles-san out of this wonderful idea.

“Damn straight.” Miles-san added, “My case budget allows for a lot of discretion, you know.”

“Then I wish you’d buy some,” snapped Vorlynkin. He shut his mouth abruptly, as if startled at what had fallen out of it.

Miles-san merely grinned at him. His stiff consul-face back in place, Vorlynkin shepherded Jin and Mina back up to the kitchen to feed them again. Jin glanced back over his shoulder at the four men turning intently back to their comconsoles, as that heavy door swung shut. He hoped the consulate had good spy stuff.

Dr. Seiichiro Leiber proved to live in a rented row-house in a residential district on the west side of Northbridge, not far from his work. Miles had Johannes, driving the lift van, circle the block to give him a feel for the neighborhood. On this pleasant weekend morning, not a few folks were out tending their tiny plots of greenery; a gang of children raced noisily across the lawns, got yelled at by a gardener, and vanished, giggling, around the corner. Jin and Mina might well have grown up in a place much like this.

Miles’s more focused researches last night had mainly turned up Leiber’s school records, with police records drawing a bland and virtuous blank. He wasn’t listed on any of Lisa Sato’s rosters of supporters or contributors, nor did his name appear among the arrestees at the rally riot, most of whom had been released without being charged. Charges had been made but later dropped against the two dead and the three, including Sato, who’d been suspiciously frozen. All tidy and quiet now.

This Dr. Leiber had acquired his Ph.D. at the unprecocious age of twenty-eight, and gone directly into employment with NewEgypt for the four years subsequently. His thesis, which Miles had read—well, skimmed—had focused on improvements in cryonics fluids, which, given that a consortium of cryocorps had funded his scholarship, seemed perfectly reasonable. Several of the larger cryocorps maintained research departments that, in addition to overseeing quality control, worked on proprietary advances in their procedures designed to lure customers from their competition. Nothing odd about that, either.

Miles had Johannes pull up at the corner. “I think our biggest problem here is going to be nosy neighbors, not electronic surveillance. You aren’t going to be able to sit or stand around without people coming out to see what you’re up to. So I’ll run an open comlink to you, Johannes”—Miles set his to record while he was at it—“and you find a place to pull in and buy coffee or something. Drop Roic around back on the way.” Miles eyed his bodyguard, dressed fairly neutrally but not quite locally. “I wish we could disguise you as a lamp post or something.”