Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

"Hard copy, names, places, dates, and cause of death." Coren watched while the Desk produced a disk for him. "Give me current disposition of surviving members of the list."

"Of the eighty-nine remaining names, forty-three are serving sentences in rehabilitation clinics, eighteen have emigrated to Settler colonies, and five are residents in hospice centers. Displaying list of remaining twenty-three."

Coren read down the rows until he came to a name he recognized. He whistled.

"Alda Mikels…interesting." He read on. "A few of these people are prominent public figures. I-" He stopped, startled. "Rega Looms."

Coren stared at the name for a long time. He retrieved his hemisphere then and set it into its niche on the desktop.

"Desk, download contents of last recorded exchange."

"Done."

"Play back." Coren listened to his conversation with Ree Wenithal again. When he reached the point where he told Wenithal that Nyom Looms was dead, he said, "Stop there. Subject said something below normal range of hearing. Amplify and enhance. "

From the desk speaker he heard Wenithal, in a raspy whisper, say "Both of them now."

"End playback." Coren looked at Rega's name on the screen. "'Both of them now.' What does that mean?"

"Unknown," the Desk said. Rega had said something very similar. Both of whom?

"Desk, give me a hard copy on these names, then file and return to standby. "

Coren went into his private room to clean up and change clothes. He wanted to go back to his apartment and stretch out for several hours' decent sleep, but he lacked the time.

He slipped the disks into his pocket and drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. Several years ago, Coren remembered, Alda Mikels and a few others invited Rega Looms to join a business consortium which seemed to Looms at the margins of legality-gray market at least, if not black market. Some of those people were on Wenithal's list. Considering Looms' attitude toward most of them, Coren wondered why they would have approached him in the first place. Perhaps the association went back further than Rega had told him.

"Desk, I want a review of the last twenty-three names, those surviving and still on Earth. Initiate a records search and correlate common associations for the past twenty years. "

"Parameters?"

"Education, business, investments, public service, children." He hesitated. "If nothing turns up, expand search to thirty years. "

"Yes, sir."

Coren disliked investigating his own employer. Sometimes, though, protecting Rega Looms required that he know things Looms probably preferred he did not.

"Also, get me a thorough background on Ree Wenithal. Retired, law enforcement, currently runs his own import-export firm."

"Public file previously referenced-"

"I want a deeper background."

"Yes, sir."

"Also…also, display crime scene image from Sipha Palen's data."

The view spread across the screen. He stared at the bodies as the view rotated slowly through three-hundred-sixty degrees. Fifty-two people.

"Give me a copy of this, too, " he said. One more disk extruded from the slot.

He ran down the list of instructions just given and tried to think of anything overlooked. Nothing came to mind but he could never quite shake the feeling that he had missed something. Without Jeta Fromm or the dockworker Pocivil, all he had was Nyom's collapsed robot.

There's never enough time to do this right… The Spacer Embassy occupied a huge area on the eastern edge of D.C., in the heart of the government districts. Embassies, really, as the structure contained the missions for all the Spacer Worlds. Most had one set of offices, usually unoccupied. Of the Fifty Worlds, only a dozen maintained full-time staffs on Earth, Aurora and Solaria being the largest.

Just living on Earth marked these people as unique. Most Spacers disdained other worlds, especially the one that spawned them so long ago. But no group is completely homogeneous, and Spacers proved no exception. The total Spacer population on Earth never exceeded a few tens of thousands-a handful compared to populations in the many millions-but their presence made a powerful impression on Terrans.

Of them all, Coren reflected as he entered the main gallery of the Embassy, he preferred the Aurorans-they were the most approachable, the least defensive, compared to the xenophobic Solarians. To be sure, those Solarians living here did not share the degree of paranoia exhibited by most of their people in dealing with outsiders, but they still came across as standoffish and mistrustful.

Coren signed in at the reception desk and patiently received directions to the Auroran arm of the embassy building. He then retraced his path from the previous day.

Hofton met him in the reception lounge of Ambassador Burgess's offices. "The Ambassador is expecting you, Mr. Lanra. Mr. Avery is here as well. I trust this is acceptable."

"Completely."

Hofton escorted him into Burgess's office and closed the doors.

Ariel Burgess looked tired, with the beginnings of dark circles under her eyes. Derec Avery seemed much the same as he had yesterday.

"Mr. Lanra," Burgess said, rising from her seat and coming around the desk to clasp his hand. "Thank you for giving us a second opportunity to discuss your problem with us."

"Thank you, Ambassador. I have to tell you, I'm a little dismayed. "

"I'm a little surprised myself. It seems we have a parallel interest in your situation."

"Parallel interest…quid pro quo, then."

"If that's satisfactory."

"I don't have the luxury of time, Ambassador. What I need is a roboticist to see if anything can be salvaged from a collapsed positronic brain-the robot I told you about yesterday."

"It allegedly witnessed a mass murder," Derec Avery said. "Which would probably have precipitated the collapse."

"Possibly. "

"Let me guess," Burgess said. "You think the robot itself committed the crime. "

"A robot, certainly."

"Why?"

"We have no other viable suspect," he said. "Everyone who boarded the cargo bin used to shuttle the victims to Kopernik is accounted for-all dead. There was no way for a human to get out of it without breaking the internal seals in place inside the bin. So we're left with a suicide-murderer, or…" He pursed his lips. "I saw another robot board the bin with the victims. It was…unusual."

"A second robot," Ariel said. "You didn't mention this yesterday. "

"I didn't know if you'd be helping me or not."

"That might have changed our minds sooner." Coren held up his hands apologetically.

"You said it was unusual," Derec said. "How so?"

"It didn't register through my surveillance equipment. I could see it, as I see you, but through an optam it was invisible. Masked-what they used to call 'stealthed.' "

"We don't make robots like that," Ariel said. "That function is useless except for military or criminal purposes, and we don't-can't-use robots for either of those things."

"Nevertheless, I witnessed just such a robot."

"And when the bin was opened?" Derec asked. "Was it there?"

"No. Only Nyom Looms' robot was present. Here." He handed the disk containing Sipha's reports. "Go to the crime scene."

In a moment they huddled around Ariel's desk, gazing at a full holographic image of the interior of the cargo bin.

"This is what the security people on Kopernik found when they opened it up," Coren explained.

"What is that the robot is working on?" Derec asked.

"A rebreather unit. It contained a poison that caused neurological damage and paralysis."

"Who is this?" Ariel asked, pointing to the body hanging from the bin ceiling.

"Nyom Looms. She wasn't poisoned. She had her own rebreather. Her neck was broken, instead."

"Fifty-one others," Hofton said. "How did she get attached up there?"