Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

"So you vowed never to make a mistake again?"

"No, but I got into certain habits after that. I made fewer mistakes. I became pretty good at it. And I got overconfident. "

"And made a big mistake."

"Very. It cost me the life of a friend."

"You're talking about Nyom Looms."

Coren nodded.

Ariel pursed her lips. "High standards are good."

They continued on to Wenithal's apartment in silence.

The door stood open.

"Come in," Wenithal called. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever get here. ". Ree Wenithal sat on a long couch, slippered feet propped on a low table, a glass in his left hand and a pistol in his right. He scowled at them for a long moment, then laughed.

"You! I thought it would be someone else." He set the pistol aside. "Close the door if you're staying."

Ariel pressed the contact.. The light from the balcony shrank to a narrow line and vanished.

The room smelled of alcohol.

"So," Wenithal said, "did you go through my files?"

Coren hesitated.

"My career," Wenithal said, stressing each syllable. "My exploits. They're all in the public record. They'll tell you all about me, about my life, my accomplishments, my…my…" He waved a hand vaguely. "Everything."

"I looked at them," Coren said.

Wenithal waited. When Coren said nothing more, he got ponderously to his feet. "Are you going to introduce me to your partner? Oh, if you want a drink, help yourselves. I keep a good stock. Even some Spacer stuff."

"Brun Damik is dead," Coren said.

Wenithal nodded. "I was questioned about it."

"Uh-huh. Do you have any idea why he was killed?"

"Do you?"

Coren crossed the room in four strides and snapped his palm into Wenithal's chest. The older man sat back down heavily, his wind wheezing from his mouth.

"We were attacked earlier tonight," Coren said. "I'm in no mood for repartee, Mister Wenithal, so do me the courtesy of answering my questions directly."

"I don't have to tell you shit," Wenithal said breathily.

"Fine. Then when the people you were expecting come to kill you, I hope you have some friends to attend the services."

Wenithal glared up at Coren, but his eyes wavered moistly and Coren caught the distant shimmer of fear behind them.

"Something killed Nyom Looms and Brun Damik and fifty baleys who just wanted to get off Earth," he continued. "Something tried to kill me tonight, and something is coming after you. You used to be a cop. Pretend you still are for the next ten minutes and do the right thing." He paused. "Or do you already know who these people are?"

Wenithal tried to heave himself up, but Coren rapped him in the sternum again. "You're a bastard," Wenithal hissed.

"Do you know that for a fact, or just speculating?"

Wenithal slapped at Coren half-heartedly, missing. Coren watched the old man warily, but it was obvious Wenithal would do very little now.

"What do you want?" he asked grumpily.

"The same thing I wanted the first time we spoke: information."

"I don't have any to give you."

"Bullshit." Coren wanted to shake Wenithal. "How long would you have played games like this when you were a cop?"

"When I wasn't pretending, you mean?" Wenithal grunted. "I wouldn't have played them at all. " He shrugged, tried to sit up straighter, then nodded. "All right…what do, you want to know first?"

Coren picked up Wenithal's glass and smelled it: Akvet. A Theian drink, a variation on absinthe. No wonder Wenithal was so intoxicated so quickly.

"What were you going to do when the bad guys came?" Coren asked. "Play dead?"

"Very funny…"

Coren looked at Ariel. "Would you see if there's any stimulant around? Coffee, capvitane, sniff, whatever."

Ariel raised an eyebrow speculatively, then nodded and headed further into the apartment.

"There's coffee," Wenithal called after her. He looked up at Coren. "What do you want to know?"

"First, why did Damik see you after I talked to him?"

"What did you ask him for?"

"I wanted to know who ran the whole baley enterprise. The real managers, not the dockside people."

"Ah." Wenithal grinned again. "That's clever. He never believed he could get caught. Ex-Special Service, you know about that. So he wasn't ready when someone came asking the right questions. Of course, you realize, it got him killed. "

"We were screened. No one overheard our conversation."

"So? It's all connections. People looking for other people. Links get made, conclusions drawn. Brun was killed on spec."

Ariel returned with a cup of steaming coffee and set it down on the table before Wenithal. He stared at it for a long time, then lurched forward to grasp it.

"I don't drink much anymore," he said. "Not used to it."

"Seems a suicidal habit to start up again just now," Ariel said.

"If I'm drunk enough it might not hurt so much." He lifted the cup to his lips and held it there, poised.

"Brun was an orphan," Coren said. "You sponsored him. Why? Did you know his parents?"

Wenithal stared at him.

"The Holmer Foster Gymnas Cooperative," Coren said.

Wenithal focussed on him. "You knew?"

"We did work together once," Coren said evasively.

"Mm. I suppose that counts for something." He took another drink and scowled. "Something about the acids never mix right with the wormwood…" He set the cup down and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "There was a kidnapping. Oh…when was that?… twenty-something…a long time ago. A district manager for a company that no longer exists. Very high profile. Like an idiot he went to the news nets first, made everything very difficult for us. The thing was, no ransom demand ever came. The child just disappeared and that was it. It wasn't my case initially, I was called in later, but. I. anyway, we had nothing to go on, no thread to follow through the maze. When we started looking through the database for similar cases, a pattern began to emerge. Hundreds of unsolved kidnappings allover the world over the previous decade, none of them with a common denominator other than the complete absence of further contact. " Wenithal grinned crookedly. "The problem with databases-AIs, smart matrices, logic systems-is that if you don't ask just the right question you never get the answer you need. "

"Hundreds," Ariel said. "That many, they had to be going somewhere."

Wenithal raised a finger. "Absolutely. But where? After canvassing and recanvassing witnesses, acquaintances, associates, total strangers who might possibly have seen or heard something-anything-I started expanding the search. I started looking at schools, hospitals, orphanages. "

"You found the link in orphanages."

Wenithal nodded. "Not all of them, though. Special ones, ones that took in and maintained 'problem' children. Infants with defects, genetic problems, congenital and chronic illnesses. Children turned over to the institution and their records sealed or, in some cases, erased. It was difficult to detect, actually, but I found several of them doing a backdoor business in what they delicately termed 'material."'

"Selling the children?" Ariel asked.

"Basically. Oh, they claimed they were selling cadavers, but the numbers were too high and the age groups too coincidental. It took a long time to finally prove what I knew was going on. "

"And Brun?" Coren urged.

"I didn't know his parents very well. They were part of a series of interviews I conducted in relation to the case, but they didn't really have anything to do with it. They'd tried to adopt, that was all. After Brun they'd been told not to try another natural birth, not without a complicated gene therapy they couldn't afford. Shortly afterward, there was an accident. A semiballistic struck an old piece of orbital debris. Ninety or so passengers and crew. Holmer Foster was the local institution. I felt…an interest, I suppose. Brun was bright, nine years old. When I checked on him two years later, he was running a kind of black market in his facility, using smuggled-in recordings, access codes, food allotments. I thought it was a waste of natural talent. So I sponsored him."