Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

"Desk, see if you can get me an update on Mr. Looms' itinerary for the next three days. "

"Yes, sir."

"Play Sipha Palen's message, please."

This time the flatscreen slid up from the desk top and winked on. Sipha's face filled the field.

"Coren, we've got prelims on the autopsies. Atropimyfex, an atropine-based neurotoxin. Basic crystalline structure that gasifies on contact with moisture-in this case, the humidity of all those exhaling lungs. It has the same profile as certain beneficial pharmaceuticals, but my pathologist says it didn't need the camouflage since the rebreather's filter system wouldn't have caught it anyway. Baxin is really impressed, by the way. Says this is very sophisticated stuff, high profile. It's used mainly in terraforming work, suppression of indigenous fauna. Very expensive and not available legally on Earth. Someone way up the chain wanted these people dead. He's doing work-ups on all of them just to be sure, but he estimates that death came within five minutes of the first seizures. Paralysis in under ten seconds, then gradual destruction of the autonomic nervous system. It starts breaking down, then, and becomes very difficult to trace in a few days. "

She glanced off-screen briefly. "Nyom Looms is a different matter. She was evidently smart enough to carry her own breather. We found it in one of the couches, crushed. She died from a broken neck. I'm having Baxin go over her for any foreign material-he found some fabric under her fingernails-but he says you can rule out the robot we found. Whoever killed her was still on board; there's no sign that anyone got out. So we have a suicide/murder. I know that's not what you thought we'd find, but…"

She shrugged elaborately. "No sign of the robot you told me about. The only thing we've gotten out of there are corpses. No telltale handprint on Nyom, either. This was a very clean break; anyone with the hand strength and the training could have done it. That's all the good news I have, Coren. I'm sending you an encrypted data package with everything we've got so far. Let me know what you turn up down there. I hope you come back up soon."

Coren suppressed a mild shudder. A return flight?

He had not hoped to find the second robot, but if the seals were intact from the inside, then someone had to have accompanied the baleys up. So one of Nyom's own baleys had committed the crime? It strained credulity.

But there was a missing passenger… "

Desk, code a reply to Sipha Palen, use same encryption. Sipha, we may still be looking at a robot, just not the one we have in the locker. The second one got out somewhere, and someone else might have gotten in. We don't know what the exact procedure is for this kind of smuggling. Keep me apprised of what you find under Nyom's fingernails. I'm still trying to find my informant. She's disappeared, of course. I'll comm you later. Desk, send."

"Yes, sir. Message encrypted and sent. You have one message remaining."

"Wait."

Jeta Fromm posed a problem. Without her, tracking down the people Nyom worked with would take days, weeks. Finding the dockworker, Yuri Pocivil, would be even harder.

For now, though, he had no answers. Maybe she would contact him, but he doubted it.

"Desk, do a records search for Yuri Pocivil. Last known residence in the Petrabor District. Now play the last message."

Appearing on the flatscreen was a face Coren did not recognize, with a wide brow and short, black hair. Large, moist-brown eyes stared out at him.

"Mr. Lanra, please forgive the presumption. I'm Myler Towne, current administrative head of Imbitek. You may know our company. " He smiled slightly at his own false modesty. "I'm familiar with you, of course, and with your record. We'd like to discuss the possibility of acquiring your services ourselves. If you're interested, please give me a little of your time and we can talk. My code is appended. I hope to talk with you soon. "

The screen went blank and slid out of sight.

Coren laughed out loud, then sobered. Surely this was a joke! Or was Myler Towne, temporary mouthpiece for the company that had nearly ruined Rega Looms, so ignorant of circumstances that he thought this was a good and accept able offer?

It might be amusing to meet with him and see how it goes…

"Do you wish to send a reply, sir?" the Desk asked.

"No. Not yet. Do you have that itinerary for me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me see it."

A list of destinations within the northeastern quadrant of the continent appeared on the desk surface. He skimmed it quickly, then touched one. Baltimor District. That would be convenient, but Rega would not be there for another two days.

Still, lacking any other worthwhile possibility…

"Desk, send a message to Rega Looms, informing him that I'll talk to him in Delfi. Then find the code for Brun Damik at Immigration and Trade Enforcement. "

"Yes, sir. Do you wish me to connect you?"

"No, just give me a location."

"Baltimor District ITE headquarters, Level Five, unnumbered private office."

"Thank you. "

Coren leaned back and considered what to do next. Brun Damik would be a place to start, at least until he found Fromm.

If he found her.

Time, time, too damn little time…

He really did not want to speak with Rega. He could put that off for a day. Brun Damik, though…so the man had a private, unnumbered office now. Coren chastised himself for not keeping better track of people he still knew in government service. The trouble was, he had left originally out of a desire to have no more to do with government service, so he was unmotivated to pay close attention.

Not very professional, Coren. Not very professional at all…

That was the reason he had bought the Desk in the first place, so he could overlook details like this without losing track of them altogether. He appreciated his Desk-it was the closest thing to full sentient awareness he could afford to buy on Earth, just shy of illegal positronics.

Illegal, but not unobtainable. Nyom had gotten hold of a robot, had even owned it long enough to name it and work with it under the noses of ITE.

Spacers kept robots within their own districts. The ban on positronics had many, many holes in it. There were even Terrans who owned robots-fetishists and self-indulgent social rebels who enjoyed flaunting the law and custom, even if only in private.

Holes Rega Looms wanted to fill in, an ambition that would suffer should his daughter's ideological treason become public.

Coren stood and went to the door to his workroom. A sofa sprawled the length of one short wall to the right, a low table before it. An alcove contained changes of clothes. To the left, three sets of shelves held a variety of boxes, bags, and objects-tech Lanra used from time to time, some of it illegal even for him to possess. He absently took a replacement optam from one shelf.

He locked the door and sat down on the sofa, folded his hands beneath his chin, and studied the shelves. After a time, he heaved himself to his feet and went to a lower shelf. He pulled out a shallow box and placed it on the table.

He took out a set of images and spread them over the table. Nyom Looms: laughing, smiling, contemplative, seductive, playful, clothed, naked, painted, bathed in light. The kind of pictures meant for one other person, exposed and cloistered at once. Old pictures-Coren checked the dates, though he knew it without thinking-from five years ago.

One image showed them both, together, holding each other.

"Frivolously romantic, " so Nyom had pronounced them afterward, when it ended and she chose a life that discluded him. Disclusion-left out, overlooked, omitted-rather than excluded. She never barred him from joining her, but she did not invite him, either. Probably because she already knew what he would say.