Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

“I’ll manage,” said Roic.

Miles nodded, waved Raven to follow him, and descended to the sidewalk.

The door buzzer was answered by a dark-haired, blinking fellow with a tea mug in his hand, wearing a T-shirt and trousers, barefoot. Despite the weekend jaw shadow and lack of a lab coat, he was immediately recognizable as Miles’s quarry.

Miles smiled. “Dr. Leiber?” Not giving the man time to answer, he continued, “My name is Miles Vorkosigan, and this is my associate, Dr. Raven Durona of the Durona Group.”

A flash of recognition crossed Leiber’s face at the latter name, followed by puzzlement. “Durona?” said Leiber. “From the Escobar clinic?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of us?” Raven smiled sunnily.

“I read the journals.”

Miles forged on, “We were both in town for the inter-Nexus cryo-conference last week, and hoped to see you. May we come in?” Leaving implied that the associate was bio-research . Miles would save the insinuation of interstellar cops for after they’d made it through the front door, and only if needed.

At this reasonable-sounding explanation, Leiber gulped down his last swallow of tea and gave way. Miles hustled gratefully inside. He let his host guide them into his little living room, and took a seat promptly, the harder to be dislodged. The others naturally followed suit. “Did you attend the conference? I don’t recall seeing you.” In fact, Miles had checked—Leiber hadn’t been there.

“No, but I was sorry to have missed it. Were you fellows caught up in that mess I saw on the news with the N.H.L.L.?”

“I wasn’t, but Raven here was—” Miles gave Raven a go-ahead, and Raven supplied a few ice-breaking anecdotes about his brief adventures as a hostage, with the Barrayaran connections downplayed. Raven then went into a technical riff about the conference, drawing Leiber into questions in turn, equally divided between biochemistry and scurrilous gossip. He also touched on Leiber’s thesis, which Raven had actually read all the way through last night without his eyes glazing over. By this time Leiber seemed fully at ease.

Miles decided on a direct approach. “I’m actually here this morning on behalf of the next-of-kin of Lisa Sato. I believe you had some dealings with her eighteen months ago, just before her arrest?”

Shock and dismay bloomed unconcealed on Leiber’s face. Well, he was the scientist type, not a con artist, nor, probably, a very good liar. Fine by me .

“How do you know—what makes you think that?” Leiber fumbled, confirming Miles’s judgment.

“Eyewitness testimony.”

“But no one saw—there wasn’t—but Suwabi died .”

“There was one other.”

Leiber gulped and seemed to pull himself together. “I’m sorry. It was an awkward time. A frightening time.”

Miles prepared to utter something soothing, but his witness leaped to his feet. “I’m sorry, you’ve rattled me a bit. Some tea. I’ll fix some more tea. Would you like some tea?”

Miles would rather not have given him time to invent lies, which they would then have to spend more time pulling apart, but he was already headed to his tiny kitchen. Miles waved an assent that Leiber didn’t even look back to see.

Raven raised an eyebrow at Miles. “Congratulations.”

“Indeed, a hit, a palpable hit.”

Dishes rattled, water ran. A faint squeak and quiet tick of a door opening and closing…

“Whoops.” Miles grabbed his cane and lurched to his feet.

The kitchen was empty, silent but for the simmering electric kettle. Only one door led out. Onto the patio, its alley gate swinging.

Miles lifted his wristcom to his lips. “Roic? Our suspect just ran out the back.”

“I’m on him, m’lord,” Roic said grimly.

The thump of big footsteps, quick gasps. A yelp, not from Roic. More footsteps. “ Crap .”

That last had been Roic. “What happened?” Miles demanded.

Roic, a little breathless, returned, “He just dodged into a neighbor’s place. Gone to ground. There’s a woman and two kids staring at me out the glass. Now she’s arguing with Leiber. Well, she’s arguing, he’s wheezing.” And, after a moment, “You don’t want me to go in there. Trespassing. Assault.”

Roic’s very firm tone of voice discouraged Miles from descanting on diplomatic immunity. He continued, “Now she’s gone off. To call the police, I’m guessing. What did you two do to the fellow?”

Nothing was plainly not the right answer. “I’m not sure,” Miles said. “Well, withdraw for now and rendezvous with Johannes.”

“Understood.”

Miles turned to Raven. “All right, we have maybe five minutes to go over the place here. You take downstairs, I’ll take up.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever he’s hiding.”

Upstairs held a bedroom, a bedroom-turned-office, and a bathroom. An endearingly tame, by galactic standards, porn collection in the bedroom was out in plain sight, suggesting Leiber did not have a girlfriend at present. The closets held clothes and shoes, and a residue of old sporting equipment. Miles was just eyeing the comconsole in the next room in frustration—he likely didn’t have time for a stealth download before the locals arrived, and besides the ImpSec devices that made such tasks a snap were back at the consulate—when Raven’s voice came from his wristcom.

“Miles?”

“We’ve got to fly, Raven—I expect the police are on their way by now.”

“I don’t think he’ll have called them, actually.” An arresting remark, for all that it was delivered in an amused drawl.

“What have you found down there?”

“Come look.”

Miles made his way down the stairs with rather more care than he’d pelted up them, collecting his cane on the way.

The lowest level—it was not quite a basement—of Leiber’s townhouse was much as one might expect: a laundry area, the mechanical and electrical guts of the dwelling, a larger room left half-finished for dirty projects or whatever were the owner’s needs. Leiber’s need seemed to be for a great deal of junk stowage. Raven stood between a dusty exercise machine and a long shape covered with an old bedspread.

“Tah-dah!” he cried, and whisked off the bedspread. Revealing a portable cryochamber. Plugged into the house power. Running, and apparently occupied.

“Do we know what we’re both thinking?” asked Raven.

“ Yeah, ” said Miles, with proper admiration. “Although… could it be it normal to keep frozen people in your basement? Around here, I mean?”

“Don’t know,” said Raven, running his hands over the machine in a search for identifying marks. “You’d have to ask Johannes, or Vorlynkin. Or Jin. What I wonder is how he ever got it in here.”

“Dark of night, at a guess.”

“No, I mean how he got it down the stairs. It would never make the turn. There has to be—ah, garage door. That’s better.” Raven climbed over some junk, opened it, and stuck his head through. “Ooh, nice float bike.”

Miles checked underneath the cryochamber. It was a less expensive model, without a built-in float pallet, but it was propped up on stacks of miscellaneous bricks, concrete blocks, and a wedge of squashed flimsies—the top one seemed to be a scientific paper—revealing where a float pallet had been slid out from underneath. No sign of the pallet in the other piles.

He raised his wristcom. “Johannes?”

“I just picked up Roic, sir,” Johannes returned at once. “Should we swing around to get you now?”

“One question, first. Do you still have the float pallet on board that we used the other day?”