Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

The palm monitor chirped at him. He had the code. He entered a command that turned the ID scan on the door into a recorder, pocketed the reader, and pressed his right hand against the panel above the lock. A second later, the door slid open for him.

He snatched his decoder from the wall and dropped his devices just inside the doorway. They scurried off to run interference for him as he proceeded on, into the plant.

Machinery hummed. Coren went directly to Wenithal's private office. As he stepped through the door, he thumbed his hemisphere for a little added security, set it in the middle of Wenithal's cluttered desk, and paused.

Where to start?

Coren did a slow turn.

It was a working office, that was clear. A few changes of clothes lay scattered over chairs, stacks of paper and disks filled corners, three empty cups sat on the desk.

Coren looked for a personal datum. He found it tucked in a desk drawer.

He took a disk from his pocket and inserted it into the datum's reader. The screen scrolled up, went cloudy, then blank. Coren waited, listening intently to the distant sounds of automated machinery.

Less than a minute later-a long time for the decryption 'ware Coren used-the screen presented a menu.

Letters, memos, profiles on clients, quarterly reports. Coren opened the latest of these and perused RW Enterprise's Profits and Losses statements. One of the largest customers, he noted, was a Solarian firm-Strychos-that bought nearly half a million meters of a synthetic fabric a year. The lot was identified only by a batch number. Coren opened his palm monitor, switched it to record, and began taking notes.

Far down the menu he found a file named GRATUITES. Coren grunted in surprise. Well, he never thought anyone would open this…

The file contained what it suggested: a list of people to whom Wenithal paid bribes.

Brun Damik was halfway down. A very generous allocation.

Gale Chassik appeared several lines further.

Coren copied the list and closed the file. Studying the menu, he wondered how much more he needed to know about Ree Wenithal.

Why you resigned after becoming a hero would be useful…

He saw nothing that would seem to contain the answer to that, so he closed the datum down and returned it to the desk drawer.

So Wenithal was paying bribes to Damik. Coren still did not understand what any of this had to do with baleys… though he felt he should know.

There were several files of correspondence. Coren opened each one and perused addresses. He found several to a location in Petrabor. The documents themselves proved cryptic-evidently a code Coren did not recognize. Still, messages to someone in Petrabor seemed suggestive enough. He looked for replies and found them attached to each document-all of them were initialed either T.R. or Y.P.

Yuri Pocivil…?

Coren swiveled in the chair, searching the office walls. Nothing.

He closed up his palm monitor and left the office. Sitting down at one of the secretarial stations, he accessed the production records. He located the batch number for the synthetic, and went into the main plant to look for it.

The synthesizers looked like huge columns of dark gray segments piled high to the ceiling. Heavy conduits ran from their bases back into the shadows of the cavernous chamber. They hummed with activity, though only a few seemed to be outputting product into the deep troughs below their extrusion slots.

Coren followed the row of machines to the one marked "Line 18" and stopped. It was on-they all were, it cost too much to shut them down completely and restart them-but nothing was coming out. Coren studied the control panel.

"Imbitek," he noted, recognizing the logo. He keyed for access. The screen gave him a list of options. He entered the code for a sample.

Less than a minute later, a meter of black fabric oozed from the 'machine into the trough. The cutter came down with a heavy thud to chop it off, and Coren picked up the sample.

It was remarkably thin, almost insubstantial, and he found it difficult to hold, its surface friction nearly nonexistent. He managed to fold it down to a square that fit into his pocket with no more bulge than a handkerchief.

He walked away from RW Enterprises as if he were late for an appointment, briskly but not so fast as to look culpable. Outside the mall, he called Ariel. Ree Wenithal lived modestly for his income. His apartments occupied two floors of an old warren complex that had once been a barracks for factory workers, then converted into luxury apartments nearly a century ago, and now had evolved into many things: apartments, clinics, retail shops, storerooms, offices. Coren was amused to find two private investigation agencies listed.

Ariel waited across from the arched entry to Wenithal's warren, sitting at an autochef with a cup of hot cocoa, doing a reasonably effective imitation of someone who had just gotten off-shift and on her way to well-earned sleep.

"Did you follow him all the way in?" Coren asked; sliding onto the stool beside her.

"No. I'm not altogether certain he didn't see me, so I thought I'd better not. Did you find anything?"

"Some, but I'm not sure if it means much. He runs a business." Coren shrugged. "He's paying bribes to Chassik."

Ariel frowned. "He does business with Solarians?"

"A couple. Pretty big accounts."

"Solaria manufactures its own textiles. What are they buying from Earth?"

"A half-million meters a year of a synthetic." He showed her the sample. "If I'm not mistaken, this is myralar."

Ariel ran a finger over its slippery surface. "I'd have to analyze it, but it feels right. Hm. Half a million meters a year? That's a lot, but not enormous." She shook her head. "Maybe I'll ask Chassik."

Coren drummed his fingers on the counter. "I've got his P amp;L records, we can go over them later. I don't think we'll find anything conclusive, though. He was bribing Damik, too. The bribe is unusually large, more than I would have guessed Damik would be worth."

"Did Damik have something over Wenithal?"

"It's a thought…but that's not the feeling I got when I followed Damik to his meeting with Wenithal. Everything about it said Wenithal was the one in charge." He glanced at her cup. "Are you done?"

Ariel held up the cocoa and wrinkled her nose. "Before I started. Let's go talk to your ex-policeman."

They passed under the archway and started down a path lined with poorly-tended shrubbery. A number of the growl amps above them were out. Coren glanced around the area, and frowned.

"What's wrong?" Ariel asked.

"Hm? Oh. Nothing…" He glanced up at the tall windows to his right. Balconies and walkways hung higher up. "That's not true. I'm not sure if I can explain it."

"Try. I'm always eager to learn new things."

Coren looked at her. He saw no sign of sarcasm in her expression. Indeed, she seemed intent only on their surroundings.

"Well," he said, "usually when someone has a connection to a case-I'm talking like Service now-you might find someone through one source, one link, but when you look, if there is a connection, there's more than just one."

"And with Ree Wenithal?"

"There are suggestions of more connections, but I still have only one: Brun Damik. And his connection was tenuous."

"Until he died."

"That was a pretty strong hint, but not really a connection."

She frowned at him. " Just what do you count as a connection?"

"Something with steel cables tying it to something else."

"Isn't that a bit unrealistic?"

Coren stopped. Ariel continued on a few more steps, then turned to him.

"Early on," he said, "I arrested an innocent man. It wasn't a big deal, nothing bad happened to him, he just spent a few nights in confinement, went through a lot of humiliating interrogations and filled out a lot of forms. It was a mistake. I think I felt worse about it than he did."