Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

“Very good, Harriet!” Peter said. “It took us much longer to figure it out. But look at this—” He pointed to the screen, where the dog was now pawing at something on the side of its head. The camera zoomed in, and something twinkled behind the dog’s ear.

“An implant! I remember now, Legroeder noticed it.”

“Exactly.” Peter fast-forwarded the playback. “There’s more of this stuff, which you can watch later if you want. But once we realized that it was trying to get us to notice the implant , then we started getting somewhere.” The playback resumed, with Norman whispering soothingly to the dog and gently touching the implant. He murmured, almost inaudibly, “—get you hooked up. We’ll get some equipment on you, boy.” With those words, the dog’s ears perked up and he began licking Norman’s hand frantically.

“The dog understood,” Morgan said in astonishment.

Peter stopped the playback and changed cubes. “Exactly. We didn’t have the right equipment on hand, so we had to do some hunting around. Once we had him hooked up to the right implant com-gear, this is what we heard.”

The second vid started with the dog being connected, with some difficulty, to a modified headset. Rufus remained calm during the hookup procedure, but as soon as the equipment was turned on, he became excited. He barked sharply, twice. And then—not from the dog but from the speaker on the nearby console—came a human voice. Strained and distorted, it was nonetheless recognizable as the voice of Robert McGinnis.

“If you can hear these words, know that the information I am about to give you is extremely urgent—and extremely dangerous. If possible, forward it to Rigger Renwald Legroeder, or attorney Harriet Mahoney—or failing that, anyone looking for the historical truth of the lost starship Impris. Be aware—this information concerns not just Impris, but also present-day interference in local spacing affairs by agents of the so-called Free Kyber Republic.

“Time is short…”

Harriet felt her breath tighten, as Peter paused the playback. “McGinnis must have been recording this at the same time he was getting you out of the house,” Peter said. He unpaused the vid. As the dog sat utterly still, with a strange look of intense concentration, McGinnis’s voice continued:

“I do not know if I will survive the next minutes or hour. I am… under heavy attack from the Kyber pirates who installed these damnable implants in my skull. Thirty years ago they tried to make me their agent on Faber Eridani, and nearly succeeded. I have endeavored to make them believe that they succeeded, while safeguarding the Impris records that they wanted destroyed or altered. With great difficulty, I have managed to deceive my own implants. But no longer.

“I repeat: I am under attack from within—possibly driven by external transmission. The implants have discovered my deception. I am… resisting… under great duress… an almost irresistible command… to kill… Rigger Legroeder and Mrs. Mahoney, to whom I have just released the Impris records. I made a hurried judgment as to their trustworthiness, and I pray I made the right decision. I must resist long enough to let them get clear. I wanted to tell them so much more. But I may have only minutes now before I must end this battle… for good… if I am to keep from destroying them.

“I’ll upload what I can into Rufus’s implants, and hope that it may do some good, if it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. But if it does… to hell with… what can you do to me that you haven’t done already?” The voice became terribly strained. “ You… bastards!”

For a moment, there was silence, and then he seemed to regain strength.

“Do not allow this recording to fall into the hands of the Spacing Authority or the RiggerGuild. Both are under the influence of the Free Kyber, the Golen Space pirates. Insidious bastards! For years, they’ve distorted the events of history, betraying their own people to the Kyber. I do not know who to trust in positions of authority—or if you can trust anyone. I only know, the infestation goes very high…”

There was another break in the recording. The dog’s ears twitched, and he seemed about to whine. Peter raised a finger to wait, and then came a last, gasping sentence.

“I will now upload the data log. Take care of Rufus for me…”

His voice trailed off, and there was a rasp of static. Rufus emitted a long howl. Then he lay down and rested his chin on his forepaws, seemingly oblivious to the com set strapped to his head.

Peter turned off the recording. “That was recorded yesterday. My people are working now to see if they can retrieve the data upload. It’s some kind of neural-net recording—very difficult to decipher.”

Morgan’s eyes were wide. “There are some pretty damning statements in there.”

Peter’s eyes glimmered. “Yes, indeed. But no names, no dates, no events. Not yet. That’s what I’m hoping we can get from the recording.”

Harriet nodded, listening with only half her mind, as she remembered: …pray I made the right decision . She heard a voice, and only slowly became aware that it was her own. “He killed himself… so he wouldn’t kill us…”

Peter was preparing to leave when a call came on his collar-com. It was Pew, his Swert associate. “What have you got?” Peter asked. And to Harriet and Morgan: “I sent him up to Forest Hills, near the Fabri preserve. Remember the car that took Maris O’Hare was spotted there… some sort of traffic thing?”

Harriet nodded, as Pew reported in a foghorn voice, distorted by the com. “Nothing from the traffic incident, Peter. But it transpires they made a fueling stop here. An attendant remembers them—that two people got out and walked around the car—the attendant does not recall looking inside the vehicle.” But the attendant did remember their being joined by a local, someone new in town, who lived up in the hills nearby. The attendant was suspicious of newcomers and outsiders, including Pew. “But I persuaded him to tell me which way they headed.”

“Do you have the location?” Peter asked.

“General area. Going to check further, now. I wanted to apprise you.”

“Don’t get too close,” said Peter. “I’m going to send some backup. Where are you now?”

“At the hydrostop.” Pew gave him the address and number.

“Stay put until I contact Georgio. I’ll call you back.”

Peter smacked a fist into his hand and gazed at Harriet and Morgan. “The rental car was returned two hundred kilometers west of here. But only after it went north to a rendezvous in this little town. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“It certainly does,” said Harriet. “That’s near the Fabri native lands. I wonder if Vegas has any connections there.”

“I don’t know about that. But it suggests to me that I’d better go with Georgio,” Morgan said.

“Why, in Heaven’s name?” asked Harriet, a knot tightening in her stomach. “You’re not a detective.”

“We’ve been over this before, Mother. If we find the people holding Maris, we’re going to have to line up the legal case fast. You can’t be there, but I can. I’ll start by producing the hospital documentation showing that they claimed they were taking her to this other hospital in—wherever it was. Arlmont?” Morgan paused only momentarily as Harriet frowned at her. “Then we can call in the local or provincial police. If they’re honest, we can at least get Maris into protective custody in another hospital.” Morgan hesitated. “Assuming she’s still alive, of course.”