Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

He bent to the comconsole and began composing an Auditorial requisition to the Barrayaran embassy on Escobar for a security team, to be dispatched immediately, with a heads-up to put an ImpSec forensic accountant and, perhaps, legal team on stand-by. He knew nothing of his invisible enemy but that they played for keeps. Five days for the squad to get here, at their best speed . Had he known enough, five days ago, to ask for this? I suppose not .

Miles called up the background data on NewEgypt Cryonics once more, and began to slog through it. Lisa Sato could not regain her voice soon enough.

By mid-morning of the day after Madame Sato’s successful revival, when Dr. Leiber still hadn’t contacted the consulate, m’lord allowed as how he might have been mistaken, and dispatched Roic and Johannes to find the man. Roic thought it might have made his job easier if m’lord had come to that conclusion earlier. He began with the two obvious first ploys, calling the man’s residence—no answer—and his work, where he learned that the researcher had called in sick the morning before, some stomach bug, he’d told his assistant, and he’d likely be out for a couple of days. Right .

Roic then had Johannes pack up some of the consulate’s better surveillance equipment and drive him back out to Leiber’s townhouse. A complex under construction that had caught his eye the previous trip did so again, as they passed. Roic cranked his head around to study the sign. Century Estates , it read, and Were you born between 150 and 130 years ago? See us! “What’s that all about?” he asked Johannes.

“A generational cohort enclave,” said Johannes. “You see them here and there in the bigger cities. Revives, at least those who wake up with enough money and health for it, often find they don’t like the new Kibou so much after all, and end up clustering together trying to recreate their youths.”

“Huh,” said Roic. “A sort of do-it-yourself historical reenactment? At least you’d have someone to talk to who gets all your jokes.”

“I guess,” said Johannes, a little doubtfully.

Roic had Johannes pull in the van at the back of the house row while he tried Dr. Leiber’s front door. No answer. After a few minutes Johannes opened it from within. “He left the garage unlocked. Float bike’s gone.”

“Right. Let’s take a look around, then visit his comconsole.”

No room, closet, shower, cupboard, or dustbin large enough to hold a body did so. M’lord’s thoughtful burglar’s note was gone from the refrigerator, which was still stocked with an assortment of bachelor rations. The kitchen was tidied, the bed upstairs more-or-less made, or at least the quilt pulled up. Clothes and shoes might have been taken—enough to fit in a duffle strapped to the back of a float bike?—but there was still a good bit left. Toiletries were absent.

Johannes had started on Leiber’s comconsole, sucking a copy of its contents through the umbilicus of the secured cable onto his ImpSec recorder, watching the progress on his holoscreen.

“Hey!” he said after a moment. “This thing is monitored. I wonder if Leiber knew that?”

Roic leaned in. Hey, indeed! “This process won’t stir up his watchers, will it?”

“It shouldn’t,” said Johannes.

Not very reassuring. “Can you trace the bug?”

“Partly. I might be able to finish the job from the tight-room.”

“Give us a look at his communications over the past two days, since our first visit.”

There were only three. Yesterday morning, Leiber had called in sick, purchased a jumpship passage to Escobar, and emptied most of his remaining savings account onto a couple of universal credit chits. There were no personal messages to relatives or friends. He might have left a door key or instructions with the folks next door, Roic supposed, but on the whole he thought not, and he was unwilling to go stir up trouble by asking around. People might remember their visit from day before yesterday. He wondered what tale Leiber had told his neighbor lady about them. Not the truth, he suspected.

“This jumpship doesn’t leave till tomorrow evening,” Johannes pointed out.

“Yeah, I see.”

“Think he might have gone aboard already?”

Roic frowned at the schedule. “Ah. No. That one doesn’t even make inbound orbit till this afternoon.” He thought a moment. “The minute he passes inside shuttleport security, he’s back on the grid, lit up for anyone who can look. And if we can spot him then, belike his enemies can, too—I don’t think they’re operating on a shoestring, not if they’re backed by one of those cryocorps. He’ll wait to the last to board. So he has to have gone to ground somewhere.”

“With a friend, maybe? Could be hard to find.” Johannes squinted at the comconsole. “Although this could help.”

“If he’s in as much fear for his life as this flight suggests, he might not want to endanger a friend,” said Roic slowly. “He didn’t strike m’lord as the ruthless type, he said.”

“It’s a big city,” observed Johannes.

“So, let’s start with the obvious.” Roic climbed to his feet. “Pack up here and drive us out to the shuttleport.”

In the lift van, Roic opened its—ImpSec secured—comconsole and ran a search on lodgings around the shuttleport. Two were inside the security perimeter, half a dozen scattered in the surrounding light-industrial area. He balanced closest against cheapest , and decided to start with cheapest . As they threaded their way to it, he had time to reflect on how Nexus-wide transportation tech had shaped the cities it served, giving more sameness planet to planet than he’d expected, before he’d ever left Barrayar. This provincial boy’s come a long way . In a way, he was glad no good fairy had ever endowed him with the future he would have picked for himself when younger. It would have been so much smaller.

“Now what?” asked Johannes, as they swung into the budget hostel’s lot. “Stake the place out? Ask at the front desk?”

“Not sure anyone would remember Leiber even if they saw him,” said Roic, “and this is one of those self-serve places.” Not as cramped as some Roic had encountered on space stations, where sleep cubicles, rented by the hour, seemed a cross between a closet and a coffin, but the building’s utilitarian lines didn’t invite lingering. It was a shadowed place even in the mid-morning, huddled down below a long concrete road abutment and some sort of manufacturing plant. “Circle the lot. We’ll look for his float bike.”

Around the building’s back, an open-faced shed sheltered a float bike lock-down. Roic recognized Leiber’s bike nestled among half a dozen others.

“Right the first time!” said Johannes, in a tone of admiration.

“I’ve had some practice, trailing m’lord around,” said Roic modestly, leaving out the dumb luck part. Well, smart luck, perhaps. Roic would have been surprised not to have turned up something within his first three tries. They sat in the van for a few minutes while Roic tried to think it through the way m’lord would. No, scratch that idea. He’d likely do better trying to think it through like Leiber. Or better still, like Roic.

Would the enemy send cops or goons to collect their quarry? If it was a cryocorp, they could likely get all the cops they wanted—charges of employee theft would do the job—they had only to wait at the pinch-point inside the shuttleport and pick the man off as he scurried through. But that would leave a trail, names, security vid recordings, a whole lot of witnesses not under anyone’s direct control. A private goon squad pick-up before Leiber hit the port, that would be the quieter way to go about it. And if Roic could figure out where to look for the fellow, presumably all those smart men in the fancy trousers could, too. Roic wasn’t the part of his team born with the silver tongue in his mouth—could he persuade Leiber to come to the safety of the consulate, when m’lord had not? Guess I’ll have to try . He glanced up. “What’s that?”