Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"Let me see that." She looked at the map. The area still struck her as familiar, but she still could not see why. "Great," she said. "So who do you think that was?"

"Maybe there was a security guard on the premises after all?"

"Took long enough to come look for us."

Derec looked back the way they had come. "This was awfully easy. You'd have thought they'd change the ID codes for the ambulance."

"Who would think to look for it?"

"Maybe. They seem to be pretty open so far."

"Really? Then why try to kill Mia? For that matter, why put a fake body in the morgue?" Ariel asked.

"Two fake bodies, if what you told me is true." He shook his head again. "And that doesn't make a lot of sense. They shot Eliton once at Union Station and then twice more afterward? Why?"

"Maybe the replacement body didn't want to die. "

"The second body… reconstructive surgery or a clone?"

"Either way. The same ambulance that picked him up did not deliver him to Reed."

"Seems less a cover-up than a confusion. Which might work even better." Derec hefted the crate. "These probably won't be there for long, whatever they are. As for the ambulance, after a point they probably just don't care what anyone finds out. The cover-up is only short-term. The question remains, how much is being covered up and from who? Is it all Special Service or just the two agents that assumed control of the investigation? Who do we ask without alerting Cupra and Gambel-"

"They'd never manage it," Ariel said. "Besides, could two agents on their own bar you from working on the RI?"

"I wouldn't have thought so." Derec stood. "And how far is it really to the next strip?"

Ariel sighed and opened her datum. After studying it a few moments, she also got to her feet, pointed, and began walking.

Mia forced herself to walk across the apartment again, her right leg aching in protest, pain stabbing up to her hip with each step. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine and around her neck.

"Please refrain from further exercise, Ms. Daventri," R. Jennie asked her again. "You are clearly in distress. It is my duty-"

"I understand your duty, Jennie," Mia said through clenched teeth. The wall was only a couple of meters away now. Then she had to turn around and make it back to the sofa. "I have to do this to build strength and recover. If I don't, I will be confined to the sofa or bed longer than necessary."

"You could also cause further injury to yourself and extend that period of confinement."

Mia came up against the wall and paused, breathing hard. "Are you medically qualified to diagnose, Jennie?"

"I am certified for nursing and emergency medical administration."

"But…?"

"I do not have the same qualifications as a medical specialist."

Mia turned and let her back rest against the wall. The sofa was maybe four meters away. "Then kindly let me decide for myself how much I can manage."

R. Jennie stood near the hallway that led to the bedrooms, motionless, arms at its sides, and yet somehow managed to convey doting concern. It looked briefly at Bogard standing near the apartment entrance, as if looking for support from a fellow robot. But R. Jennie had already tried to enlist Bogard's aid in making Mia see reason and had been rebuffed. Bogard understood what Mia was doing; if it disapproved it kept that opinion to itself.

Mia launched herself toward the sofa. The pain made each step seem to take forever. She staggered the distance and fell onto the pillows.

She lay very still while her leg gradually stopped hurting. When she felt able to move again, it was only a dull throb, like a bad bruise. The painkillers in her system did not eliminate the aches completely, but seemed to work on a graduated system designed to keep her from overdoing physical activity. As long as she remained relatively motionless, the sensation was there but distant, like a strained muscle. The more she worked it, though, the more it hurt. She supposed that was a good thing, otherwise she might stress it to the point of reinjuring it.

Spacer thinking.

R. Jennie stood beside her now with a tray bearing a glass of cold water. Mia suppressed her irritation and took the glass.

"Thanks," she said.

"Will you be stationery now?" R. Jennie asked.

"Yes. I think that's enough for the time being."

"Is there anything more I can do for you?"

"No, not yet. Has Ariel called in?"

"No, Ms. Daventri."

"Call me Mia, please. Let me know as soon as she does."

"Of course."

R. Jennie returned to the kitchen. The last few days had been an education for Mia. She had never spent this much time around positronic robots and she was beginning to think that their banishment from Earth had less to do with any moral or ethical revulsion than with their constant fret ting.

The water felt wonderful going down her throat.

She straightened on the sofa and looked across the living room. It was a good twelve meters wide and she had managed ten laps, one side to the other. Yesterday she had only managed six. Good progress by any measure, but Mia was impatient with her slow healing. She needed to be mobile. Too much longer in this apartment, in the dutybound company of R. Jennie, and she might change her mind about Eliton's dream of bringing robots back.

Eliton. She wondered now about that dream. Even if they managed to discover who had engineered the assassinations, it seemed thoroughly dead, the true victim of the violence.

On the table before her the datum showed the signal notation WORKING. The algorithm had been running for nearly two hours now, searching for a series of connections which, if there, may only be tenuous, insubstantial coincidences. The tenuousness of her hunches had made her reluctant to even begin such a search, but some of the names on the lists generated in the last two days struck her as odd. She doubted anything would turn up, but for lack of any other ideas and a dependable leg it seemed worth the trouble. In her studies at the academy it had amazed her how many crimes in recorded history had been solved due to serendipity. All this training went for nothing if chance failed to manifest. The good investigator was one who knew how to take advantage of the coincidences that presented themselves.

For instance, the fact that not one of the DyNan Manual Industries people had been shot.

Going over and over the recordings from the newscams, Mia returned to that oddity time after time. She had had Bogard run trajectory analysis several times, and she could not explain away the curious fact that no shots had been directed at any member of the DyNan party. There had been only three executives and one security, but they had been right alongside Imbitek and Porvan-StandardMech, another company that built supplemental technologies like conveyors, lifters, tractors, and a variety of other moving equipment. Two people in the Imbitek group had been wounded and three people in the PSM group, plus one dead. In spite of being sandwiched between these two, Rega Loom's people had survived untouched.

Unable to go to them to ask her questions, Mia worked the data.

Now that she was satisfied that none of the injuries and deaths had been accidental, that indeed the assassins had been good enough to hit exactly what they aimed at, she found herself trying to figure out what each victim meant in the scheme of cause and effect.

Humadros and Eliton represented the primary targets, obviously. Without them, the conference died, even though several parties worked valiantly to keep it alive. There would be a meeting, certainly, but how much could realistically be accomplished now? The bulk of Humadros's legation had died. Those remaining were junior members, more diplomats-in-training and gophers than real negotiators. Of course, there was the anomaly of Ariel's acquaintance, Tro Aspil, being both dead and en route back to Aurora, but even he had not been a significant member of the legation, not in the larger schema.