Buried Deep Part 9

"The early years with the Disty were rough," he said. "I've heard that there's a lot that happened that never made it into the official histories."

She shook her head. "These can't be victims of the Disty. These corpses are intact."

"At least the first three," he said.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "They don't kill like this."

"Even in battle?" he asked.

"Especially in battle. The Disty have always preferred distance weapons, things that incinerated, so that the area would be purified and no part of the corpse would remain. The Disty could build here then. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to."

"Not even if the information was lost?" Batson asked.

"I don't think the Disty would lose this kind of information," she said. "But this is all speculation. I have no idea what killed these three or how long they've been here, or even if they all died of the same thing. I need to work in my lab. I need good people to disinter the corpses, and I need to work with the evidence."

"How about training us?" Batson asked. He was sincere, but she could hear the reluctance in his voice. He wanted her to say no, even though he would do the work if she agreed.

"Maybe," she said. "But I can't supervise you, and frankly, I'd worry that you'd be doing things wrong. Besides, how're you going to keep this secret-eight people coming to work at this site every day, digging up the dead? Eventually, someone will investigate."

"What do you suggest?" he asked. "We can't let the Disty learn of this."

"Why not?" she asked. "What'll they do? They emptied out three square blocks for one human skeleton. What would they do for this many corpses that have been here this long? Evacuate the Dome?"

"Maybe," he said.

"And that would harm us how?" she asked.

He looked at her. She could see the thought penetrate, then he blinked, frowned, and shook his head.

They'd been afraid of the Disty for so long that they couldn't imagine life without them. What would happen if the Disty left the Dome? Humans could reclaim it.

"Mars is theirs," he said. "I doubt they'd abandon any of it."

"They abandoned these blocks fast enough."

"And demanded that we fix this," he said. "It's the fixing that scares me, Sharyn. They could incinerate the whole Dome, purify the place somehow, do something to the ground, and kill us all. Who'll argue with that? It fits into their laws."

"Does it?" Her voice remained calm, but she shuddered just the same. She didn't know how their laws worked on something this extreme. All she knew was that she was trapped here now, facing an even more uncertain future.

"What do you suggest?" he asked. "I'm out of ideas."

She slipped on her gloves, then picked up a handful of sand. Who knew that it hid so much?

"I don't think we should make the decision," she said after a moment. "I think we take it to the chief."

Batson was shaking his head even before she finished her sentence. "There's too much corruption in the SDHPD. They'll tell the Disty."

"Maybe they should tell the Disty. Maybe they should insist that the Death Squad get involved."

"But the Death Squad wouldn't touch fegen. They're not going to get near this."

"We don't know." Scott-Olson was pouring sand from one hand to another. The repet.i.tive motion was almost hypnotic. "If they already knew about this, they might."

Batson continued to shake his head. "I'm not going to the boss."

"Everyone'll find out. No matter what we do, Petros. Better to control the outflow of information."

He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "What about the mayor of the human section of Sahara Dome? What about the Dual Government?"

"The Disty laws take precedence with them."

"They'll take precedence with the Alliance too. The Alliance always goes with local laws." Scott-Olson balled her hands and pressed them against her knees.

"No," Batson said. "The Alliance goes with the laws prevailing at the time of the act. If you can show that this occurred before Disty took over Mars, then we might have a shot."

"I don't know if this occurred then."

"Lie," he said.

She looked up at him. She had never lied about her work. Not once. Her stomach muscles tightened. The hunger turned to nausea. "What if I get caught?"

He turned toward her, his eyes bright. "It won't matter. We'll be news by then. The entire solar system will want to know what happened to these humans. If the Disty mistreat the investigators, we might get protection. Or a place to go. We won't be at their mercy."

"Unless we're needed to clear the contamination."

He froze. He knew about those strange rules as well. And unlike Aisha Costard, he hadn't flinched when he heard what would happen to them if the relatives weren't found.

Scott-Olson stood. "I'll work. You go upstairs. You tell them that this happened before the Disty took over. If you're wrong, no one'll care."

"And you can deny that you told me."

"Yes," she said. "Don't let them come to me until they decide to help."

He looked at her. She saw hope in his eyes for the first time in weeks. She wished her eyes reflected the same thing. But she didn't feel hopeful. She felt overwhelmed and strangely sad, as if all these corpses, all these former living and breathing humans, had infected her with their great tragedy.

She had been right: In the end, the work mattered most. She wanted to know what happened here. She wanted to know how many were dead and who caused it, and why it happened.

Batson stood. His hand brushed her shoulder. "We're going to get out of this."

He sounded like he believed it.

She was glad he did. One of them had to.

15.

It took Flint nearly two days to finish his work on the Disty. He didn't like what he found. The Disty death rituals were complex and violent. They also seemed to benefit only the Disty, and in ways that Flint didn't entirely understand.

Costard had been right; family members were her best chance out of this crisis.

Now that he was certain that Costard was who she said she was and that her problem was as bad as she had claimed, he was ready to research Lagrima Jrgen. Only he wouldn't do most of the work from his own network. Instead, he would go to a public system that required no identification, and work from there.

One of the first things Paloma had warned him about was that Retrieval Artists left tracks in the system. Trackers often traced the work of Retrieval Artists, then went after the Disappeared before the Retrieval Artist could do so, collecting the bounty on the Disappeared and moving on to the next case.

Trackers didn't care whom they gave the Disappeared to. Flint and most of the other Retrieval Artists would do everything they could to make certain no Disappeared was found by someone who meant them harm.

The public information on important Disappeareds was often monitored by the very governments that wanted them. A Retrieval Artist's tracks sometimes let those governments know the Disappeared was still alive or might come home or might actually be on the move again.

Flint was always careful, not just because of the Trackers and the alien governments, but because he knew that bringing up old material sometimes brought back old animosities. Even if the Disappeared was never found, the arguments that sent the person away might be revived, and others-the families, friends, even business a.s.sociates-could be hurt in the resulting crossfire.

Touching the records was probably all right in this case since Jrgen was already dead, but there were others involved-missing children, perhaps even more family living safely off Mars somewhere. Flint hoped that they remained unharmed and unnoticed, despite any preliminary work that Costard had done.

For his first foray into researching Jrgen, he went to the main library at Dome University's Armstrong campus. The library had screens in all of the carrels, and the screens used university identification to access information.

Flint had gotten several student identification numbers over the years, and routinely varied his use of them. He also updated from time to time, so that even those IDs wouldn't lead anyone to him.

The library was in the very center of campus. The building was rectangular and was one of the few buildings in the entire city that had no windows at all. Initially, the building had been built to house rare books only-actual volumes, many of which had been brought to the Moon after the original settlers had colonized Armstrong. The books were gifts, a sign that the city would remain stable and would be able to handle such esoteric and expensive things as paper books.

But over time, the university realized that it would never get enough paper volumes to fill the large building. The students needed a place for group study, and the coffee shops and cafes, which were not under the control of the university, didn't provide the quiet that the students needed.

Most public places also charged for access. Students who didn't have enough money for good personal networks, which allowed them to feed off the public ports wherever they went, also didn't have enough money to pay the exorbitant access fees charged by these places.

So the university covered the fees at the library for anyone with a student identification. Money wasn't the issue for Flint. Identification was. So he made certain he donated a large sum of money every year to the university's library system. In return, he cadged student identifications and used them as his very own.

He had a favorite carrel on the second floor, the main study floor of the library. Here students worked in silence, touching screens, marking their own pads, tapping silently at keyboards as they learned how to put their thoughts into writing.

The second floor also had a few books locked up in clear plastic cases. The cases ran from floor to ceiling and had special shading that protected them from glare.

Flint's carrel was between two of the cases. The carrel faced outward so that he could see around it into the floor itself. People could see that the carrel was full only by seeing his feet and an arm, but they couldn't see his face. He could see theirs, though, and he would know if any trouble approached.

He slipped inside the carrel, entered one of the newer student IDs into the special keyboard at the base of the desktop, and waited while the system booted up. That was a university fail-safe, something someone told them would prevent ident.i.ty theft. It prevented the amateurs, but made things easier for practical people like Flint. All he had to do was stand behind a student as the student typed in the code. Oddly enough, because of touch screens, very few people worried about something that simple anymore.

The system blinked on, the touch screen directly in front of him glowing blue for a moment before linking to the university network. A canned welcome message said h.e.l.lo to the student he was pretending to be and asked for the identification number again.

This time, Flint pressed numbers on the touch screen.

The system winked out one more time. He glanced around while he waited. Only half of the carrels were full. Most of the students were in cla.s.s or goofing off. This was midsemester, and a lot of the students didn't begin serious work until a week or two before the semester's end.

The screen winked back on, a specialized menu providing a full range of options. Because the second floor was quiet s.p.a.ce, the vocal processors on the machines had been shut off, which was another reason Flint liked to research here.

He had very little information to start with. Jrgen's name, her connection to BiMela Corporation, the writs against her from the M'Kri Tribesmen, and the judgements of the Fifth Multicultural Tribunal. He quickly realized that Jrgen hadn't worked for BiMela. They had bought the mineral rights from her. She had negotiated those rights for Arrber Corporation, which Flint couldn't locate at all.

A legal representative of Arrber Corporation showed up at all of the proceedings of the Multicultural Tribunal to represent both Jrgen's interests and Arrber Corporation's, but Flint couldn't even find the name of the representative in the records. The representative was listed only as Legal Council for Arrber Corporation. Legal Council for Arrber Corporation.

He had other problems. Not only could he find no other listing of Arrber Corporation, he could find no listing of Lagrima Jargen's children outside the M'Kri Tribesmen's writs.

In those writs, Lagrima Jrgen supposedly had a large family, consisting of two parents, two stepparents, several aunts and uncles (not counting the relatives of the stepparents), many cousins, and two children from her first marriage.

The mention of the first marriage led him to believe there were other marriages. He wondered if the spouses from those marriages counted as family under the Disty definition. Perhaps saving Costard would be as simple as finding an ex-husband of Jrgen.

If, indeed, that was her name. None of these family members were listed by name, nor was their location mentioned. Flint couldn't access the M'Kri Tribesmen records- apparently, that required some sort of legal proceeding, since the Tribesmen did not consider themselves part of the Alliance (even though they were, by M'Kri law).

The more he dug, the more confused Flint got. As far as he could tell, Lagrima Jrgen came into existence shortly before the negotiations with the Tribesmen started, and stayed in existence as long as she was needed for the various court cases. When the writs came down, Jrgen did disappear off the public records-only to reappear a few weeks ago as an orange skeleton in Sahara Dome.

It unnerved Flint that Jrgen's reappearance had made the news in several smaller markets. Some of the larger markets covered it as a two-second item, something that might interest scholars and news junkies who remembered the M'Kri Tribesmen cases from the Fifth Multicultural Tribunal.

Apparently, a number of people followed the rules of all the various Multicultural Tribunals, believing the rulings to be skewed in favor of the corporations, rather than following the agreed-upon rules for interstellar law.

Flint sighed. He had more than enough information at the moment. He had to let it soak in. If he was going to get deep into this case, he would have to learn a lot more about the law and the tribunals, as well as the Tribesmen and the Disty.

Obviously, Costard had done a small search and had answered questions to do so. That was how Jrgen's name hit the various media.

But that small search had probably caused more problems than it solved. It had flagged the Jrgen case for anyone who was watching, it had reminded people of the interstellar implications, and worst of all, it had given Costard hope.

Flint no longer believed that hope was justified in this case. He would wager there were no children, and if there was family, it would take years to find.

He logged off, and the screen went down. Then he stood, stretched, and stared at the old books.

Once, people could record all of their laws between bindings, keep track of each minute detail, and know to whom they would answer if they did something wrong.

Life was no longer that simple.

And he would have to remind Costard of that this very afternoon.

16.

Ki Bowles hadn't expected him, this shy, dumpy little man with his wide brown eyes and his hesitant smile. He hovered over the chair, his hand on the heart-shaped faux ironwork along the back. "Join me," Bowles said with a warmth she didn't feel.

She was at an outdoor cafe near the far edge of the Dome University. Outdoor Outdoor was a misnomer-she was a misnomer-she was still inside the Dome. But the cafe's designers had gotten special permission to push up against the dome's edges and to use the dome's wall as their own. Real flowers tumbled out of planters built into the waist-high stone fence that separated this cafe" from the sidewalk. The air smelled of perfume and baking bread, a combination that Bowles couldn't resist.

Ezra Farkus sank into the chair. She'd never seen anyone collapse into a seat like that, almost as if he had no spine. He rested his elbows on the clear tabletop and leaned forward so hard that two of the table legs rose off the ground.

Bowles had to catch the edge of the table to keep it from tipping over.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Farkus," she said.

He nodded. Maybe he was too tongue-tied to talk with her. That would be a disaster. "I'd like to make a recording of the conversation," she said. "Do I have your permission?" He nodded again.