Timothy Zahn - A Coming Of Age

Lisa squinted momentarily against the glare; and as her eyes adjusted she saw with some surprise that Sheelah was fully clothed. "Why aren't you ready for bed?"

"I thought I might have to go out looking for you," Sheelah told her. "What happened to you, anyway? Are you all right?"

"Oh, terrific." Lisa walked to her bed and sat down heavily. "Did you report me?"

"Well... not really." Sheelah's mouth puckered into a grimace. "But I went to Gavra half an hour before lights-out and told her you'd been gone all day. I was worried about you."

"What did she say?"

"That you were off doing something private that I gather I'm not supposed to ask questions about. She said you'd be okay."

Lisa nodded and closed her eyes. If Gavra told the police she'd been out late... but at the moment she was too drained emotionally to even care. "Thanks for waiting up," she told Sheelah. "You'd better get to bed."

The other hesitated for a second, then stepped over and sat down beside Lisa. "You're in some kind of trouble, aren't you?" she asked gently. "How about letting me in on it?"

Lisa shook her head as fresh tears blurred her vision. "I've gotten enough people in trouble already," she mumbled through a tight throat.

"So what's one more?" Sheelah countered, the lightness of the words in sharp contrast to the solemnity in her face. "Come on, Lisa—telling each other our troubles is what best friends are for."

And suddenly all the tension, fear, frustration, and anger turned to water and came pouring out; and leaning into the warmth of Sheelah's shoulder, she began to cry, sobbing with an intensity of anguish and loneliness she hadn't felt since the day after her fifth birthday, the day her parents had brought her to the hive and left her....

And later, after all that remained of the tears were damp shirts and aching eyes, Lisa told her all about it.

"Palmer was just barely conscious when the ambulance took him away, but he was able to tell us what happened," Officer Carylson said tightly as he and Tirrell walked down the hall toward the detective's office. "He was headed for Hob Paxton's office to see if Weylin was having any trouble with his informant when he noticed light coming from under your office door and went over to investigate. By the time he opened the door the room was dark, and the next thing he knew he was waking up with two parameds kneeling over him."

"No idea what hit him, huh?" Tirrell asked, just to get the question out of the way.

"He didn't, no, but we know it had to be the kid Weylin brought in. You can see a dent in the doorjamb where she must have teeked his head into it."

Tirrell nodded. They'd reached the office now and the detective paused for a moment outside, taking it all in. "Anything been touched?"

"Nothing but the door—and Palmer, of course. We wanted to let you look things over before we sent in a shakedown squad."

"Thanks. Shakedown'll probably be useless anyway—if she was smart she wouldn't have touched anything."

"True. Nothing to lose by trying, though."

Tirrell nodded again. His eyes lingered on the torn-up section of rug by the door, on the open window, and on the soil-types listing on the floor by the survey map. Stepping carefully into the room, he did a quick mental inventory of his desktop papers. Nothing seemed to be missing, at least nothing of any importance. "How did she get by Weylin?" he asked over his shoulder.

"He said he let her into Paxton's office and she immediately clobbered him with something. We found an ashtray off in the corner with a trace of blood on it."

"Was he unconscious when you found him?"

"Just coming to," Carylson said. "Mad as hell, too—wanted to go right out with the others and look for her, headache and all. I had to order him into the ambulance."

Squatting down, Tirrell lifted one end of the soil-types folder with a pen and peered at the edge where the pages met the binding. If any of them had been torn out, it had been done one at a time and far between; he could see no obvious gaps. "How long did it take you to get someone up here after the open-window alarm went off?"

"Half a minute, tops. And we were onto the kid outside sooner than that."

"So there wasn't any time to bring a camera in through the open window," Tirrell concluded, more to himself than to the other.

"Camera?"

Letting the folder back down, Tirrell stood up. "This was a very slick job, Carylson. The torn-up rug means a spy-scope or some kind of fancy mirror setup was used to get the lock open; the fact the righthands lost her implies a preplanned escape route—and all this after knowing enough about one of Paxton's cases to sucker Weylin into getting her inside. Slick operators usually get what they go after. But if she didn't physically take anything out of here and didn't use a camera, then what did she get?"

"Maybe she broke into your office by mistake, thinking it was someone else's," Carylson suggested.

Tirrell shook his head. "According to your numbers, if she clobbered Weylin right away, she had nearly twenty minutes alone up here. Even if it took her five to open the door, figuring out she was in the wrong place shouldn't have taken the other fifteen." He looked around the office again. "I guess you might as well wake up the shakedown squad," he said, moving toward the door. "Maybe they can read things differently than I—"

He froze right at the doorway, his mind spinning furiously as he tried to track down the thought that had suddenly brushed him on the shoulder. Carylson, who had already taken three steps down the hall, hurried back. "What is it?" he asked.

Stepping back to his desk, Tirrell opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick stack of paper. All the interdepartmental memos, notices, and low-priority info sheets—the sort of paper that was usually skimmed once and then relegated to wastebaskets or taken home as fireplace kindling. Setting the pile on his desk, Tirrell leafed quickly through it. "Would you describe the girl again?" he asked Carylson, pulling out the sheet he wanted.

"About a meter sixty, slender build—probably somewhere short of forty-five kilograms—dark off-shoulder-length hair, dark eyes, maybe thirteen years old," the other said, frowning at the paper in Tirrell's hand. "You have something?"

"Take a look," Tirrell said, handing the sheet over. "The picture at bottom right."

Carylson glared at the paper as if it had just insulted his mother. "I'll be damned," he growled. "That's her, all right." His eyes shifted to the top of the sheet. "And I read this damn thing when it came out, too."

"Uh-huh." Tirrell took the sheet back, feeling cold inside. Lisa Duncan, 14, of Dayspring Hive, he read silently. Has learned to read and write, proficiency unknown. Level 10. So that was why she hadn't bothered to take anything from the office—for her the soil-types listing would have been just a dangerous nuisance to carry. How very convenient for someone to have had her available... and there was just one person who might be interested in his progress who also had the chutzpah and the skill to set something like this up.

"I think we can safely bump her up a few levels now, don't you?" Carylson cut into his thoughts. "Say, to level one?"

Tirrell tuned back in. "Put an all-points pickup out on her? Don't be silly—we can't afford to let anyone know we're on to her." He thought a moment. "All right. Seal my office until the shakedown squad can go through it—you might as well leave that till morning; there's no hurry now. Let me come down to the desk with you and use your phone for a couple of calls." Without waiting for a reply he headed off down the hall.

Carylson hurried to catch up. "Shouldn't we at least move her up to level eight? If someone spots her they should at least call it in."