Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

“Maybe not. But if you had it analyzed, you might be able to figure out what Voskresenye’s game is.”

I don’t think we’re going to have time to worry about that, I said.

But then again, you can’t just leave blood lying around on tables. You might frighten people. So, hating myself for doing it, I picked up the vial. I put it in my pocket and tried to forget it, but it pressed against my leg, a cold accusatory finger, all the way from the Horseman home.

This, of course, you can see on your moistdisk, but you will find strange gaps, and paths of memory that lead to nothing—remnants of an erasure Keishi never finished. I would rather complete the job she started, but if the story must be known—and it is known—then it is better it be known fully.

I was sitting in the kitchen, with moistdisks strewn across the pitted tabletop and lengths of cable hanging from the backs of empty chairs. I had split my field of vision into quadrants, and was trying to splice together a conclusion to my series on the Guardians. I was hoping to give them a prefabricated segment, already in the can. It would mean a fight; News One hates it when you don’t go live. But they’d never wanted to do this series anyway, so maybe they’d let me get away with it this once.

When the phone rang, I switched off my fourfold vision. I hate those first few moments coming out of a sightsplit, when your head feels like it’s breaking up and you develop a deep sympathy for honeybees. Blinking heavily, I stared up at the ceiling and walked to the vidphone by memory. When the walls finally started to look real to me again, I touched the plate.

“Hey, Maya? It’s Terentev. Forensics.”

“Even if I hadn’t recognized your face,” I said, still blinking, “I think the bodies in the background might have tipped me off.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” As he fiddled with the controls on his phone to hide the tableau of the dissecting room, I caught a glimpse of a bone-white face being wheeled past.

“My God—how long’s that one been dead?”

He looked around, then laughed. “Oh, him? I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes.” Terentev dabbed at imaginary make-up on his flat Asiatic cheekbone. “It’s face paint. He’s a mime.”

“Trying to find out who the medal goes to?”

The creases of laughter around his eyes disappeared into seriousness. “You know, Andreyeva, you’re colder than anything I’ve seen wheeled in here.”

“It was just a joke,” I said. “You don’t have to take everything so literally.”

He kept his eyes on mine a moment, then averted them and shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

“So what do you have for me?”

“Oh, your paternity suit?” His face was jovial again. “Unless the kid has scales, you’d better settle.”

“It’s a fish?”

“It’s a dolphin.”

Well, that made sense. Dolphin blood would not be hard to find, and Voskresenye might have hoped that it would pass a cursory inspection. A simple hoax. I would have preferred to know why, but for the moment, I’d just have to set aside my curiosity.

“Okay, Terentev. Like I said before, I owe you one.”

“What’s your rush, Andreyeva? Don’t you even want to know what kind of dolphin?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Good. Because we can’t tell.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t match up with anything. It’s in the general neighborhood, but we can’t quite pin down the address.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Hey, it’s not that big a deal. It’s probably some microspecies that got stranded in a river somewhere. Nothing to write home about, unless you’re a marine biologist. What is this, anyway? New gig for you, Andreyeva? ‘Maya on biotech’?”

“Can you check it against whale DNA?”

“What did you say?”

I realized I’d whispered. “Can you check it against whale DNA?” I repeated.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Whale?”

“Just humor me, all right?”

“Well…” His eyes unfocused as he consulted the Net. “There were a few sequences mapped before they went extinct. I can give it a try. It would help if I knew what I was trying to prove, though.”

“Ask me afterward.”

He frowned. “What does this have to do with that Calinshchina thing of yours? Or did News One pull the plug on that? After all, it’s not their sort of thing—”

“Just run it,” I said. “Then if I’m right, I’ll tell you.”

He frowned. “OK, if that’s the way you want it. This’ll take a while.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

He signed off. I stood by the phone for a while, drumming my fingers against the coffee table. Then I went back into the kitchen and swept all the moistdisks into the recycling bin. When the phone chimed I ran for it.

“Tell me,” I said.

“You know, my granddaughter carries a stuffed whale everywhere she goes? When I was a kid it was horses, before that it was tigers, dinosaurs come around again every twenty years—she’s got a whale. She’s got whale T-shirts, whale pajamas, a whole goddamn whale ensemble. This is way beyond owing me a favor. This is going to cost. ”

“Red? Green?”

“Not even close.”

“All right, Terentev, you can use my dacha. But if there’s one stain on the carpet, they’ll be centrifuging you .”

“This is bigger than that. You may have to give me your dacha.”

I inclined my head and watched him silently. There was not a trace of laughter in his face; and Terentev was not a good liar.

“How about a spot as an expert witness in the story of the year?”

He nodded solemnly. “That, Maya Tatyanichna, will do just fine.”

Keishi! I called out, through the Net. I need you online now.

“Hang on, I’m crossing the street,” she said. “Is this urgent enough for me to just sit on the curb?”

This is urgent enough for you to sit on —but no; this was all on the record— anything that comes to hand.

“If you say so,” she said dubiously. “But if I get socket-jacked, I’m holding you responsible.”

A familiar warmth announced her presence. “Dr. Terentev,” I said, “the other day, I gave you a blood sample to analyze. Could you tell me what kind of animal it belongs to?”

“A humpback whale,” he said, then added nervously, “genus Megaptera. ”

Just what the audience really wants, a scientific name. Why do people turn into boring encyclopedias the minute you light your Net-rune?

“How big would this animal be?”

He hesitated—asking the Net, probably. “About fifteen meters when full grown.”

“And that would be about the size of…” I prompted.

“Oh. Umm, a small yacht.”

“Or for those of our viewers who don’t own yachts, about the size of two bullet train cars placed end-to-end.”

He nodded nervously. “Yes, that’d be about right.”

“When did humpbacks become extinct?”

His eyes unfocused, and long seconds passed before he had his answer. You try to take a stand against passing off Netlinked actors as “experts,” you spend years cultivating contacts, and then your real experts consult the Net anyway—except when they do it, it’s obvious. “They were one of the last to go,” he said, finally. “There were a few around as late as Guardian times.”

“And how long will blood keep in the fridge, before it rots?”

Now he was back in home territory. He said confidently, “About eight weeks. Nine at the outside. That is, in this condition. You can keep it usable indefinitely if you’ve got the equipment, but not like this. Those cells are frisky. ”