Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

Legroeder slumped in a chair in Harriet’s office, picking with a pair of chopsticks at a nearly empty carton of Fabri takeout food. An hour ago, he had been starving; now he had no appetite.

Morgan glanced at him sympathetically. She was still busy copying and scanning the hundreds of pages of material they had brought from McGinnis’s house. The data on the cube had already been encoded and distributed for safekeeping on the net.

Legroeder started as Harriet snapped off her phone; he must have dozed off. “You were right, Legroeder. There is no Symmes Hospital in the town of Arlmont. The town itself is nothing more than a trading post for lumbering interests in the northern forest.”

Legroeder grunted, unsurprised. Maris really was gone, then. Either dead… or in the hands of the same people who had tried to kill him.

“Peter will give a report to the police, of course. But I doubt they’ll be able to do much.” Harriet consulted her notes, then continued grimly, “We need to think very carefully about what your next move should be.”

“Meaning—”

“Meaning, whoever these people are, they seem to have connections in more places than I’d guessed. We may not be safe here for long.” Harriet ran her fingers through her hair in agitation. “But who the hell are they? Someone in Spacing Authority? Some outside group? There’s a note here from Peter. It seems that spaceship hangar where Jakus Bark worked is owned indirectly by Centrist Strength. I wonder if they’re involved.”

“Centrist Strength again! Where do these people come from?” Legroeder asked in annoyance.

Harriet looked as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. “Mainly Faber Eridani, though there’ve been rumors of offworld connections outside their own organization. It began years ago as a particularly strident, and racist, lobbying group—then they started getting into paramilitary activities. Their members all have military-type ranks and titles. And they’ve got wilderness training camps—which is where they’re causing that trouble with the Faber aborigines I told you about. Lately, they seem to have been trying to improve their public image, but I haven’t heard of any change in their human-supremacist outlook.”

“I wonder how Jakus got mixed up with them.”

“Good question. And I wonder how, or if, they’re connected with your problem.”

Legroeder grimaced. “May I make a suggestion?”

“By all means.”

“We’re not going to solve this by wondering. Let’s contact that Narseil historian that McGinnis told us about. El’ken. Maybe he knows some things. And we’ve got to read the rest of this material. What are we doing for security?” Legroeder looked around, as if terrorists might leap out of the closet.

“Peter is proofing my house right now,” Harriet said. “I think we’ll be safe there for the time being. He’s the best in the business. Morgan, you’re staying with us.”

Morgan nodded, sorting pages.

“Then let’s study while we can. And let Peter do his work.”

Peter met them at the office to escort them to Harriet’s house. Among humans, Peter was the only name he used. He was a Clendornan—a silver-blue-skinned humanoid with a wedge-shaped head, wide and flat on top. His nose was all angles, and his eyes looked like clear orbs with luminous steel wool at the backs of the eyeballs. He smiled only once, briefly—a zigzag smile beneath an angular brow, and then was all sober concentration. He had two bodyguards with him—a long-armed, almost tentacled Gos’n named Georgio; and a Swert named Pew, a brawny individual with a head like a horse’s and an astringent smell. “We take no chances from now on,” Peter said, after introductions. “We’ve scanned your house, I’ll leave Georgio and Pew to look after you for the night, and I’ll stay in touch with them, but I have many investigations to undertake tonight. Are you ready to go?” The words spilled out of his mouth like marbles out of a bag.

“We need to get these spare copies stored safely,” said Harriet, showing him the datacubes.

“The bank vaults won’t be open at this hour. But if we each keep a cube, that will give us a measure of security. You’ve dispersed a copy on the worldnet, right? Good—and the originals?”

“Right here. Peter, we might need to make a trip to the asteroid belt. Can you arrange that?”

Peter blinked; the effect was like a lighted sign going off and on. “I can arrange it if necessary.” He peered at Legroeder. “Is it your intention to become a fugitive?”

“Could I be more of a fugitive than I am now?”

Harriet cleared her throat. “I believe Peter’s reminding us of your bail conditions—namely, that you won’t leave the planet. And of my responsibility, as your attorney, not to encourage you to violate the law. Is that correct, Peter?”

The PI turned up his long-fingered hands. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. But I wanted to remind you, not just of Mr. Legroeder’s bail, but of the fact that he is a potential suspect in both the disappearance of Jakus Bark and the possible death of Robert McGinnis. It would not appear to help his case for him to vanish from the planet. That is the sort of thing that fugitives do, no?”

“You’re absolutely right, Peter,” said Harriet. “But frankly, we’re in some pretty deep manure here. Whatever is going on, I’m convinced that someone in the Spacing Authority is involved. And maybe Centrist Strength—who knows? We certainly can’t trust the RiggerGuild, and the police are less and less likely to believe us, as all this circumstantial evidence piles up. I hate to say it—you can’t imagine how much I hate to say it—but I’m afraid if we follow all the rules, we’re going to wind up squashed. The same way I believe Mr. McGinnis has been squashed. Have you learned anything more about him?”

Peter’s eyes flared with light. “Nothing, really. We can’t get near the house, and all the regional authorities will tell me is that the fire’s still burning inside the forcefield, and they can’t do a thing until the forcefield generator fails.” He shrugged and tilted his large head. “With all the smoke, they can’t even tell me if the rental flyer is still intact.”

“The rental flyer is the least of our worries,” said Legroeder.

“The rental company won’t think so,” Peter chided. “Anyway, the burn mark from the missile may be about the only evidence on your side in this entire business.”

Legroeder grunted.

“So one or more of us should go to visit this El’ken,” Harriet said.

“And you would be taking Rigger Legroeder with you?” Peter asked.

“Damn right she is,” said Legroeder.

“The reason being—?”

Legroeder answered irritably, “I’m only going to beat this by finding out what the hell’s going on. And what it all has to do with Impris .” He paused a moment. “Someone wants it kept quiet pretty badly. Badly enough to frame me. Badly enough to kill and kidnap people. I can’t help Maris directly, it seems. So where would I rather be—out in the asteroid belt looking for information, where at least it’ll take them a while to catch up with me—or here, waiting to be arrested?” He looked at Harriet. “If anyone should stay here, it’s you.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked quietly.

“You’ll become an accessory if you come with me. Aren’t you a little old to become a criminal on the run?”

“I could go with him,” said Morgan.

Harriet turned and squinted at her daughter.

“That way, you could keep working here. And if he needs legal advice while he’s there—”