CHAPTER III CHAPTER III
SHADOWS
Grief honored no boundaries. When it stepped into our lives, it could hit like a hammer, smother like fog, or crouch like a beast, waiting to attack. As soon as I saw Lukas Quida, I knew it had invaded his heart and left him no refuge.
We met at the mansion. He was pacing in the media center, a white room that produced a pleasant, almost inaudible hum. Holoscreens on the walls projected starscapes of interstellar clouds in vibrant colors against the backdrop of space. The room consisted of wide spaces with luminous white consoles and smart-chairs that resembled modern sculptures. A crystal vase on one table held three green stalks with red flowers. Normally I appreciated clean, brisk architecture full of light and space, but when Lukas stopped pacing and stood there, watching me with exhausted anguish on his face, all that pristine beauty seemed barren. His wife’s absence felt tangible in the air.
“Major Bhaajan!” He strode over to me. “Have you heard anything?”
“My honor at your presence, Del Lukas,” I said. “That was actually my question for you. You still haven’t received a ransom demand?”
“Nothing.” Disappointment flooded his face. He took a breath, then let it out slowly. “My apology. I don’t usually yell at people when they walk into the house.”
“No worries. I’d have reacted the same.” I actually tended to become very quiet when I worried, but I sympathized with his reaction. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news.”
His assistant was standing a few paces away from us, a young man who looked like he wasn’t long out of university. He asked, “Would you like me to stay, sir?”
Lukas glanced at him. “No, that’s fine, Bessel. I’ll comm you if I need anything else.”
Bessel bowed and left the room. He had an assured air, one that didn’t blend into the background. He also had the black hair and eyes prized among the Cries elite because it meant you looked like Skolian nobility. I wondered if he knew he also had the same name as an ancient mathematician from the planet Earth.
“Why hasn’t anyone contacted us?” Lukas asked. The dark circles under his eyes were even worse now than last night. I wondered if he’d slept at all.
“We’re working hard to find her.” I did my best to sound reassuring, but I doubted I fooled him. It had been too long; if she had been taken for a ransom, her kidnappers would have made contact by now. “No news is better than bad news.”
He twisted the cuffs of his shirt. “I can’t stand not knowing.”
“It would help if I could ask some more questions.”
“Anything. But I’m afraid I’ve said everything I can think of. I talked to you, security, the police, everyone.” He took a ragged breath. “Hell, I’d talk to the walls if it would help find her.”
I motioned toward the chairs. “It’s quieter now, with less people. Let’s go through it again. Maybe we missed something last night.”
Lukas dropped into a chair, sitting on its edge. He looked like a model, but he handled himself as if he had no clue how he appeared and didn’t care. He’d worked as a financial advisor before he married Mara Quida. From what I’d seen of his background, he seemed more of a reticent scholar than any sort of glitterati. I sat in the chair opposite him, and it shifted, trying to make me more comfortable. Both our chairs were working overtime in their futile attempts to do their jobs.
“Did you get the police analysis?” Lukas asked. “I asked them to send it to you.”
“Yes, I got it.” So it had been him, not Talon, who had the reports sent. Lukas had guts, asking the police, who didn’t have to do squat about what he said, particularly given that he was their top suspect. Even more interesting, they had done what he wanted. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t find him credible as a suspect.
“Their analysis included a DNA scan of the entire mansion,” I said. “Hundreds of people have been in your house, far more than at the party last night.”
“We entertain a lot.” He made it sound more like a duty than a pleasure. “Scorpio Security went through the list with me. We can account for everyone.”
Although I hadn’t found anything unusual either, I didn’t know all of the names. “Was anyone listed who shouldn’t have been at the gala?”
“Yes, many.” He raked his hand through his hair. “The analysts tell me they can’t time-stamp most of the ID scans to say for certain if the DNA came from last night or an earlier time.”
“What about visual records?” They’d sent me interminable recordings showing rich people having fun while everyone else, human and robotic both, worked hard so the partygoers didn’t notice how much effort it took to host the event. “Did you see anyone you didn’t expect?”
“No one. Everyone there was supposed to be there.”
I leaned forward. “What about those few minutes in the master bedroom when your wife disappeared.” Convenient, how all trace of those records had vanished.
“Whoever deleted the record knew what they were doing. No one can reconstruct the missing part.” He sounded so tired. “And yes, I know, I’m one of the people best positioned to dispose of them. I didn’t do it, Major. I’ll take any lie detector test you want.”
“No need. I saw the results of your tests with the police.” They’d found no indication he was lying. I wasn’t surprised. His appearance made it difficult for me to be objective, though. Those sculpted cheekbones, his perfect skin, the dark coloring valued by the aristocracy, and his luxuriant hair, which was black today instead of silver—it was difficult to see past his exterior. I’d grown up in a place where that kind of beauty didn’t exist. Life in the Undercity destroyed perfection.
“I realize lie detector tests aren’t enough to clear me,” he said. “But surely it’s enough to motivate considering other possibilities.”
“Yes, it is.” I wondered how hard the other investigators were coming down on him, that he seemed worried we wouldn’t investigate anyone else. “I see several possibilities. The kidnappers may have been guests at the party. Or maybe they found a way to get in and out without leaving a trace.” I didn’t tiptoe around the last option. “Or your wife left by her own choice.”
“She wouldn’t do that!” He lifted his hands as if showing me his frustration. “Major, I know I’m a cliché, the youthful husband everyone thinks married his powerful wife for her money. And yes, I know the whispers, that people think she wanted to trade me in for a newer version.” He dropped his hands. “I doubt anything I say will change what people want to believe. But it wasn’t that way between Mara and me. We were good together.”
I hated what I had to say next. Lukas didn’t deserve any of this. But I had to speak. “Unless she wanted to disappear, even fake her death. She could have set you up to look guilty so she could run off in secret with her lover.”
He stared at me for a full five seconds. Finally, he spoke in a slow, cold voice. “You know nothing about my wife, to accuse her of something that cruel. She didn’t have an unkind atom in her body. Yes, she could be hard-hitting in her job. But she was a good person, the kind of good that goes deep.”
Two facts jumped out at me: He defended her without a word about himself, and he used the past tense. He already believed, at least subconsciously, that she had died.
I spoke quietly. “Del Lukas, are you a Kyle?”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“Are you a Kyle operator? A psion. An empath or a telepath.”
“Well, no. I’m not.” A smile gentled his face. “Mara was a strong psion. She was like—like a presence in my mind. An incredible presence. She became part of me.”
His words sounded like what Jak used to say about me when we were young. I spoke with care. “Why do you think your wife died? Do you feel her absence?”
“She’s not dead!” He rose to his feet. “She can’t be dead.” He sounded more desperate than convinced.
“I’m sorry.” I hated these questions. “We still have the other option, that the kidnappers took her without leaving a trace.”
He took a deep breath and sat down. “As far as I know, that’s impossible. Our security is better even than the best military protections.”
It didn’t surprise me. I’d seen the high level of protection these technocrats could claim. “What about option one? Could it be someone you invited?”
“I didn’t personally know every guest who attended. But we have recordings of what everyone was doing when she disappeared.”
“Except in her bedroom.”
His mask of restraint slipped, and for a moment I saw the man terrified for his wife. Then his expression shuttered as if he had closed a door. I understood. The elite of Cries were known for their emotional reserve, and he would honor that custom even if it came less naturally to him.
“The only DNA the police found in the bedroom was mine and hers.” Lukas spoke as if that were good rather than yet more evidence against him. He saw only that it meant she had been true to him and their vows.
“That assumes security here is as good as you think,” I said. “If someone did get in, then the lack of evidence means they could eliminate any trace of their presence. It’s difficult to erase all hint of a person’s DNA, but not impossible. High-end nanobots can be programmed for specific DNA. If they’re well shrouded, they can fly in, do their job, and leave without anyone knowing.”
He lifted his hand, palm facing me, as if to block my words. “This house can counter all bot species.”
“All known species.” It could be something new. “Is it possible someone threatened her? Or you? If she feared for your life, would she do what they wanted?”
“Yes, I think so.” He spoke awkwardly. “Our marriage started as a financial merger, but it soon became more. We were well suited. Do I believe Mara loves me? Yes, absolutely. I can’t imagine being without her, and she often said the same about me. If they threatened me, I believe she would do whatever they wanted.”
“You clearly mean a lot to her.” I actually had no idea how she felt, but the words needed saying. Although he might be the world’s greatest actor, I didn’t think so. He wasn’t faking how he felt about his wife.
“She would never have destroyed that scroll,” he added. “If someone took her, they must have ripped it up. But why? It serves no purpose.”
“Maybe they tried to subdue her. They might have ruined the scroll to show they meant business.” On the surface, it seemed the most plausible explanation, but at a gut level, I wasn’t convinced. It looked like the fringes of an explosion had caught that scroll. “Del Lukas, I’d like you to think back to your conversations last night with your guests. Did anyone say anything that struck you as odd? Not necessarily hostile. Just strange, off-kilter, not the usual.”
“Not really.” He considered the idea. “Even Jen Oja was on her best behavior.”
“Who is Jen Oja?” The name sounded familiar.
“Another Scorpio exec.” He shook his head. “She resented Mara. Jen felt she deserved the Metropoli contract. She didn’t like Mara, but she’s always professional in her interactions.”
“What was Oja doing when your wife vanished?”
“Getting dessert, actually.” Lukas sounded calmer now. Talking about last night seemed to help. “I looked for her because I feared she might, well, I don’t know. Try to undermine Mara’s success. But she didn’t do anything. She seemed to enjoy the party.”
Max, I thought. Do you have records of a Jen Oja from last night?
Yes. Nothing is flagged as suspicious.
Have the files ready for me to check. To Lukas, I said, “I’d like you to put a list together.”
“All right. Of what?”
“Anyone who didn’t like your wife.”
“I did for the police. It should be in the files they sent you.”
“It is. But I want you to think about it again. Include anyone you don’t trust.”
He spoke dryly. “That’s a long list. My wife is a powerful executive in a harsh business.”
“You never know what will help.” I had one last request. “Do you remember the crystal sphere at the top of the banister? The one I thought someone had turned.”
He nodded. “The police checked. Apparently one of the housecleaning bots turned it.”
“Apparently?”
“The deleted record includes that area just outside the bedroom.” He rubbed the back of his neck, working the muscles as if they ached too much for even the nanomeds in his body to relax. “We have a record of a bot cleaning the banister just before the deletion.”
It sounded routine. But still. “Would you mind if I took the sphere with me?”
“What for?”
I wasn’t sure myself. It bothered me, that one detail in their perfectly arranged house. “I’d like my people to take a look at it.”
“Sure, you can take it. Whatever you think will help.”
Lukas took me through the halls and up the sweeping staircase. At the top, on the banister, the sphere sparkled, refracting light into prismatic colors. He unscrewed the orb and gave it to me. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” I was glad he didn’t ask what I was going to do with it, because I doubted he would approve of what I planned for this pretty chunk of rock.
I walked across the bluestone plaza that bordered the outskirts of Cries. Beyond the plaza, the red desert stretched to the mountains that edged the horizon. Cries lay behind me. I’d amped up my biomech sensors, and I carried a backpack with a jammer that shrouded me from would-be assassins. I hoped.
Max suddenly spoke through my wrist comm. “I’ve made contact with your green beetle-bot.”
Finally. “Where has it been hiding?”
“It’s currently flying over the city. I don’t know yet where it was before that.”
“Send me its memory files.”
“All of them? It’s been sixty hours since you released it at the mansion.”
“Yah, I’d better look at it all. For now, condense it down for me.”
“Working.”
I continued walking. “I keep thinking someone is going to try shooting me out here.”
“Even if you weren’t shrouded,” Max said, “it would be difficult to manage, given the increased security in the city.”
I grimaced. “That doesn’t do me much good if the people who attacked are in charge of the city defenses.”
“True,” Max admitted. “However, I am also monitoring this area.”
“Good.” I trusted his sensors. “You get anything useful from the green beetle?”
“It was hiding because its target had good sensors. The beetle wanted to evade detection.”
“Smart little bot. What did it find?”
“It encrypted its records in case they caught it. I am doing a decryption.”
“Let me know when you finish.” I kept walking. I longed to jog, but Doctor Raven insisted I take it slow while the specialized meds she’d injected did their repairs. My knife wound still ached.
“Someone is tailing us,” Max said.
I turned around, surveying the landscape. It looked empty. This was the middle of the forty-hour daylight period, so most people were in their midday sleep. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Your follower is coming from the city.” Max activated my heads-up display. Crosshairs appeared in my view, centered between two buildings on the outskirts of Cries, about a kilometer distant. “They’re using a holo-shroud.”
“Is it Jak?”
“I don’t think so.” He magnified my view until it seemed like I was only a few meters from the target. Now I could see a ripple in the air, the faint outline of a human figure.
“That’s not tall enough for Jak.”
“Whoever it is, they are headed toward you.”
I turned and resumed my walk toward the desert. “I’m supposed to be hidden.”
“So are they,” Max said. “I almost didn’t detect that you had acquired a shadow. However, I am good at my job.”
“So you are.” Interesting. He’d never simulated pride before. “Keep monitoring them. Let me know if they speed up.”
I headed for the entrance to the Concourse in the desert beyond the plaza. The Concourse supposedly served as the highest level of the Undercity. Yah, right. The wide boulevard offered a tourist trap where boutiques sold fake Undercity goods and cafés served fake Undercity food. Taxes on the goods offered a lucrative source of income for the city, and the upscale vendors made a fortune from tourist shoppers. The Cries police monitored the Concourse to make sure no person who actually lived in the Undercity ever sullied the boulevard with their presence.
It pissed me off. The Cries authorities fought my efforts to secure licenses for Undercity vendors, but our merchants had every right to sell their goods there. Even if my people could get licenses, though, they seemed unable to fathom the idea of selling goods to outsiders. We did everything with bargains, just among ourselves. City vendors didn’t want us there, either. It wasn’t only that they considered us the lowest of life. The savvier merchants also knew genuine Undercity goods could outsell their fake goods. They didn’t want the competition, not even on commission. I was fed up with it all and determined to make changes.
“Max,” I said. “Is my beetle close enough to check out whoever is following me?”
“Yes, it’s in range.”
“Good. Have it spy on them.”
“Will do.” Max paused. “Perhaps you should run.”
I set off at a jog, relieved to get moving. Air brushed my cheeks, hot and dry. “Why?”
“Your shadow has speeded up.”
“Won’t my jogging give away that I know someone is there?”
“She probably can’t tell how fast you’re moving, since you’re also shrouded.”
“She?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I kept running. Although it strained my bandaged abdomen, it wasn’t too bad. To save energy, I thought to Max instead of talking. Any sign she’s armed?
She hasn’t drawn a weapon.
Send me a heads-up display of whatever my beetle is recording.
Done.
An image appeared in front of me like a ghost moving through the air. It showed a woman jogging across the plaza. She looked fit and athletic, but without the upright carriage I associated with the military. Like most people in Cries, she had dark hair. Her eyes were harder to see in the blurred image, but they looked hazel, which suggested she wasn’t related to a noble House.
Can you ID her? I asked.
Not yet. She’s hidden her mesh footprint. No worries; I will defeat her obfuscations.
I smiled. I didn’t know anyone else who actually used the word obfuscation. Good work. Let me know if she does anything threatening.
I will. Right now, I detect no weapons on her person.
Although that didn’t mean she had none, Max had excellent sensors, especially with the beetle augmenting them, and the city had ramped up security since yesterday. My shadow would be hard-pressed to hide anything dangerous.
I reached the edge of the plaza and ran down the short staircase to the desert. Red sand swirled around my feet. A few meters away, an archway rose out of the ground, glowing like moonstone, a contrast to the barren land that surrounded it. It had no door, just a shimmer that hid whatever lay beyond. I tried to step through the shimmer, as I had done hundreds of times—and it pushed back, refusing me entry.
“What the hell?” I said. “What’s with the barrier?”
Max spoke aloud, taking his cue from me. “The shimmering effect you see is a molecular airlock, a modified lipid bilayer with nanobots doping its structure. Applying an electric potential across the membrane causes enzymes within it to alter shape and lock into receptor molecules. That changes its permeability. Such airlocks can be made impermeable to air, solids, even people—”
“Max, for flaming sake, I know how it works.” I pushed the membrane. “It’s not supposed to stop anything here. It’s just for show or an emergency.” I stiffened. “What’s going on? Is there a problem down on the Concourse?”
“I find no indication of a problem.”
I glanced toward the city. I couldn’t see my pursuer.
“She is still there,” Max said. “I calculate a ninety-percent probability that she hacked this archway and sent a signal to change its permeability. She’s trying to slow you down. I am sending a signal to reset the membrane.”
I was tempted to go ask my shadow why she was following me. Toggle combat mode.
Toggled, Max thought, unfazed by the way I switched between thought and speech. I’d become so used to communicating with him, even I didn’t always know why sometimes I wanted to talk and sometimes I wanted to think.
As my body switched into combat mode, I became aware of every sound. The wind keened. Pyro-geckos scuttled through the sand and hissed out their fiery breath. The desert came into sharp focus, its grains of sand distinct, with the sparkle of blue azurite scattered in the red.
I’d advise you not to engage your pursuer, Max added, as if he could read my mind, which he sort of could.
Maybe she just wants to talk to me.
Max wasn’t fooled. It’s not her I’m worried about.
He knew me too well. After the attempts on my life, talking ranked low on my list. I wanted to hit something.
If she just wanted to talk, Max continued, she could easily contact you. You shouldn’t take risks. You could tear open your wound, damaging your internal organs and suffering a blood loss that could become life-threatening—
All right! I’ll behave. My hand, which was resting against the membrane, suddenly passed through the shimmer. You fixed the molecular airlock.
Yes. You can use it now.
As I walked through the membrane, it trailed along my skin like a soap bubble. I came out at the top of a staircase, and I ran down the stairs to the spacious lobby below. Bright images glowed on the sky-blue walls of the lobby, ads showing people laughing, dining, and shopping. Soft voices told me I wanted to buy this or that, especially expensive bottles of filtered water.
I jogged across the lobby and through a wide archway that led to the Concourse. The many tourists who thronged the wide boulevard spared me no more than a glance. In my trousers and pullover, I probably looked like a guard. A few did watch me uneasily, as if they weren’t sure I belonged here. Even when I dressed like a Cries citizen, apparently I never looked fully civilized.
I passed many upscale boutiques at first, but I soon entered the maze of back streets behind the glitzy shops. Narrow alleys snaked between the buildings, with arches spanning the roofs above, turning the passages into tunnels. The Concourse sloped downward slightly. The avenue was long enough, over a kilometer, that by the time I reached the end, I would be hundreds of meters below the surface. As I ran, the buildings became dingier and the clamor of voices from the main boulevard receded. Even the most naive tourist knew better than to go this far down the avenue.
Max, I thought. Is my shadow still following me?
No, you lost her after you left the main Concourse.
Good. Have you figured out who she is?
Not yet. But I will.
I kept going, headed for my true home—assuming no one else showed up to kill me.