9
Nosey felt relieved that Stephanie Harrington and Karl Zivonik were taking him seriously. He knew his occasional criticism of the SFS—although he preferred to see what he’d written less as criticism of the organization than as criticism of its sinfully minimal budget—rankled its members.
“Accidents,” Karl said. “According to your column, there have been a lot lately. Honestly, though, are there really more or are you just finding what you look for?”
“You know that better than I do,” Nosey said. “I’ve stopped writing about the accidents, but I’m continuing to track. Your own sister was involved in a rather peculiar accident not long ago, along with Loon Villaroy. That incident was another reason why I selected you and Stephanie. You’ll know firsthand whether what happened to Nadia was something that surprised you or one of those things where your whole family sighed and said, ‘Again?’”
Karl frowned. “Maybe we’d better start at the beginning, so I can better answer that.”
Nosey thought Karl’s refusal to answer was as good as an answer in itself. If Nadia Zivonik was the family klutz, or even the one known for getting into scrapes, Karl would have said so.
“All right,” Nosey said, reaching for his notepad, “let me give you some details.”
The two young people listened intently as Nosey related the sequence of accidents he’d researched, including those that had received no more than a passing reference in his column.
“Eventually, I started feeling as if I was hearing the same sort of story over and over, yet, really, no two incidents were alike. Once I started reviewing my notes, I realized that what was creating the sense of similarity was how many of the accidents seemed to have been caused less by carelessness or ignorance—say of the consequences of living on a high-gee planet—or bad luck than by a singular, unbelievable stupidity.
“Maybe I hit on it before anyone else did because while any accident is newsworthy, some types of victims are more likely to attract interest and sympathy. Basically, it’s the man-bites-dog principle.”
“What?” Karl and Stephanie said as one.
Nosey laughed. It hurt, but he couldn’t help it.
“It’s an old adage in the news business. Dog bites man, that’s not news. Man bites dog, that’s news. A lot has changed about reporting since somebody first coined the phrase, but one thing hasn’t: the readership has only so much time, so much attention. If you want them to follow your feed, you need to catch them with something a little unusual or at least something that’s going to tug on the heartstrings.”
He sipped his coffee, then continued. “So, if I had a choice between interviewing a promising young athlete whose chance of playing in the upcoming season was threatened or a construction worker who dropped a bucket on his foot, I picked the athlete. I was also biased, I’ll admit, because I also cover the local sports scene. If I interviewed someone involved in sports or the arts or whatever, then I’d be connecting to my established audience’s interests. Since Sphinx doesn’t have professional sports, that meant I was talking to a lot of young people. Over time, I began to consider how unlikely it was that any of these people could experience these sorts of injuries. If they’d all been on the same team or the same sport, well, I’d suspect someone was doing something unsafe in an attempt to get an edge on the competition, but they weren’t.”
“Edge?” Karl asked, his voice tight. Nosey wondered if the young ranger hadn’t already had suspicions of his own.
“To be blunt,” Nosey said, holding up one hand to forestall the protest he anticipated. “I began to suspect that some of these people had been doing drugs.”
“Drugs?” Stephanie blurted out. “What? That’s crazy. Anyhow, hospitals run tests for drugs. Surely they’d find something like that.”
“They’d find it if they knew to test for it,” Nosey countered. “You can’t test for something that you don’t know might be there.”
“So a new drug,” Karl said stiffly. “One that I haven’t even heard rumors about at work. But that you just manage to stumble on. Where do you think it’s coming from?”
Nosey shook his head. “I haven’t gotten that far. At first I assumed from off-planet, but the more I noticed that young people were involved and how the ‘accidents’ seemed to cluster right around Twin Forks, the more I wondered if it might be something local—maybe something cobbled together by a kitchen chemist, being shared by friends.”
“That makes a sort of sense,” Karl admitted grudgingly, “but I’m reluctant to believe we have a spreading drug culture, targeting the young. Maybe it’s something else entirely. A new fad for taking dares or pushing limits.”
Stephanie cut in. “Karl, wait. If Dia wasn’t possibly”—she carefully stressed the word—“involved, what questions would you be asking?”
Then, clearly to give Karl a chance to consider, Stephanie asked a question of her own. “Nosey, why didn’t you tell this to the town constables? Surely they interviewed you.”
“I didn’t want to turn up dead,” Nosey said bluntly. “The men who attacked me made it very clear that I was being beaten up as a warning. I’d guessed that the warning was meant either for someone I’d talked to or someone I might talk to or both. Also, well, this is going to sound cowardly, but I wasn’t sure anyone would take me seriously. Oh, if I got killed, then, sure, but I really didn’t want to die just to prove my point.”
“What else didn’t you tell the constables?”
Nosey forced his swollen lips to smile, although he suspected the expression was grotesque rather than winning. “I didn’t tell them one of them held me at gunpoint specifically so I could be beaten, and I didn’t tell them that they threatened me with worse if I told anyone what had really happened. I didn’t tell them that the two men who beat me up were dressed so that, from a distance, they resembled Forestry Service rangers, either. That’s why I set down my air car where I did, rather than parking it in the garage. Since the weather wasn’t bad, I didn’t want to be rude and keep them waiting. Otherwise, the only outright lie I told was that I’d parked my air car outside and surprised the carjackers in the act. That when I tried to stop them, they beat me up and took the car.”
“Hold on,” Karl said, his momentary annoyance vanishing. “Did you say that the men who beat you up were dressed as SFS rangers?”
“Enough to pass from a short distance. Right colors, styles, but no obvious insignia. When I came home, they were standing on the porch, near the front door. In the shade of the overhang, any details would have been lost anyhow.”
Stephanie had called up the official police report and was skimming it. “This says you didn’t see their faces.”
“That’s right. They were wearing some sort of distortion mask. And, no, before you ask, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t recognize them. I didn’t. Maybe if we’d talked longer before they started hitting me, I might have but, even though I’ve studied some marital arts, I’m no action hero. It’s one thing to take a punch in the dojo, a whole lot different when someone’s hurting you on purpose.”
Nosey shifted uneasily and glanced at the clock. “I’m worried I’m being watched. How long can we justify this meetup?”
Stephanie grinned. “Oh, I’m super-eager, super-annoying when I have a hobbyhorse to ride. Don’t worry about that. It would be more suspicious if we left soon.”
“And,” Karl added, “if you agree, from this point on, you’re going to be under surveillance. I have some motion-sensitive recorders in my air car. We use them all the time for the job. Let me run outside now and grab them. Steph, come to the door and yell at me not to forget the spare concept uniforms or something.”
“Two birds with one stone,” Stephanie said. “We’ll get you set up for surveillance and reassure the watchers that you’re really researching a perfectly innocuous article.”
The two young rangers grinned at each other, then Stephanie added, “Karl, what do you think about letting Lionheart and Survivor out to get some exercise? We can’t tell them what we want, but if there are any humans watching, the ’cats will find them.”
Forgetting his injuries, Nosey tried to spring from his chair, then sank back, a moan of pain slipping out before he could stop it.
“Don’t do that! These people are horrible. The treecats might get hurt.”
“I don’t think so,” Karl said. “The forest is the ’cats’ natural hunting ground, and whatever else they are, they’re smart enough to avoid attacking just anyone. They’d be more likely to go up a tree and drop nuts or cones to flush someone out of hiding.”
Nosey still didn’t like it, but he also knew he couldn’t forbid them. And he would feel better about the young people being here if he knew they weren’t being spied on by anyone close enough to do them harm.
“All right,” he said. “Do your act, then come back. I’ve made copies of my research files. Now that I’ve told you my suspicions, I’ll let you review the material and see what conclusions you reach.”
They spent another hour with Nosey, with the young people going outside periodically to “check on the treecats” during which time some very discreet surveillance equipment was hidden.
“I’ll set you up with a link to the feed,” Karl said, “because it’s got to be creepy wondering if someone is watching you from just outside the range of your home security system. Don’t let this make you careless, though.”
“I won’t,” Nosey promised, placing one splinted hand over his heart, “I definitely won’t.”
Stephanie had been reviewing the data summaries, and now she looked up, her expression so serious that Nosey suddenly knew what she would look like as a mature woman.
“I can see what you’re getting at,” she said, “but I’m not sure I would ever have come to the conclusion that drugs were involved. I mean, aren’t drugs a problem for crowded urban societies, places where people are bored, or feel as if they lack opportunity, or maybe are chasing after the next big thrill? Sphinx is full of challenges. Even if you’re not into hunting or sports, just making a place for yourself on a frontier world should be enough, shouldn’t it?”
If Nosey had been a different sort of adult, he would have laughed at her naiveté, but the fact was, he felt about Sphinx the way she did. He knew he’d have loved to be a reporter anywhere, but knowing that his newsfeed was one of the first attempts of the sort on his home world made him feel as much of a pioneer as someone who found a new species of plant or animal. His sense of kinship with the people who were making Sphinx what it was had been one reason he’d started sharing news. He wanted everyone to see all the varied and wonderful projects going on. But he’d also seen how what was an exciting frontier for him was a prison for others.
“I wish boredom and decadence were the only reasons people take drugs,” Nosey said, “but that’s far from the case. Some people take drugs because drugs make them feel more confident or to help them relax or even as a reward for working hard.”
Karl nodded. “Don’t forget, alcohol and tobacco are drugs, even if most people don’t think of them that way. And one name for drink is ‘liquid courage.’ My Aunt Irina has a sneaking fondness for frontier tales set on olden times Earth. She gave me a couple and I noticed that a bar or tavern seemed to be the one standard structure in any newly settled town. Even if the town was too small to have a doctor or a judge or a jail, it had a bar.”
Nosey reached for his coffee, thinking as he sipped it that caffeine was also a drug, but he didn’t want to get off the point. “So, people take drugs to feel more confident, or to relax, or even to have a little chemical stimulation after a hard day—and there are lots of hard days on the frontier. But, Stephanie, you’re making a mistake if you think that everyone on Sphinx is as happy to be here as you are and I am and, I presume, Karl is. Especially among the younger population there are many who feel trapped. They may have been brought here by their parents. Or they may have been born here, and imagine all the wonderful things they’re missing ‘out there.’ Many of the younger ‘stupid’ accident types I interviewed fit this category. The last one—Eldora Yazzie—was flat-out hostile about being stuck on Sphinx. Moreover, the whole time we were talking I had a feeling that she was waiting for someone, and that it was someone her family didn’t know was going to be dropping by. That was just an impression. I could be wrong.”
Stephanie started to reply quickly, then stopped and nodded slowly, instead. Yes, Sphinx was full of exciting challenges, and, yes, she was deeply happy meeting those challenges. Especially with Lionheart at her back. But before Lionheart, when all she’d been able to see was the way her parents’ decision to emigrate had “stolen” her chance with the Meyerdahl Forestry Service… Oh, yes, indeed. She’d been miserable enough to embrace any escape then, hadn’t she?
“But you think a supplier?” Karl said, following up on Nosey’s last sentence. “That’s interesting. I don’t know how this would fit in with Dia’s accident, but it’s possible Loon slipped her something. If so, he didn’t know how hard it would hit them. I think detailed blood panels were run on them both. Since she’s my sister, I can probably get a peek at her results. Or at least ask my dad and mom discreetly—very discreetly—about them.”
He grimaced at the thought, and Stephanie hid a smile of mingled sympathy and amusement. As a mere sibling, Karl couldn’t get around the patient confidentiality rules to view his sister’s records, and it was clear he could imagine only too well how Aleksandr Zivonik would react to the notion that his errant daughter might also have been using drugs. Dia would be lucky to get off the Zivonik claim again before she was thirty!
“I’m sure you can think of a way to be discreet,” she told him in an encouraging sort of tone. “I don’t see any way to get a peek at Loon’s, though.”
“I could just ask him. And not in any ‘official capacity,’ either. Just a big brother who’s still less than delighted with him.” Karl clenched one large fist and looked down at his knuckles, and his smile turned nasty. “I wouldn’t worry about being discreet with him, Steph! Not after sneaking off with Dia that way!”
Stephanie laughed, and Nosey eased back in his recliner, feeling as if he was relaxing for the first time since the attack. He knew he’d passed on his information to the right people. He could rest now. He just hoped that he hadn’t just put these two winning, intelligent young people into danger.
When Karl asked if she could meet him to discuss something very important and very, very sensitive, Cordelia didn’t really know how she felt. She liked Karl, maybe even more than just liked him, but was she ready for dating? She thought about talking it over with Dana, but Dana was at that stage in her own love affair where, having found love for herself, the only thing that could be more wonderful would be for everyone else to be in love. Mack was out for similar reasons, although Cordelia wasn’t sure that his nerdy new boyfriend was going to be his One True Love. Based on how Zack was reacting to Mack’s new attachment, Zack was definitely too young.
Cordelia might have tried talking to Natalie, since Natalie had spent so much time with Dia and Anastasia—and because of that, with Karl, who often did drop off and pick up, when his job permitted. But Nat was moody lately. Dia’s injuries had been relatively minor, thanks to the many seasons of pine needles that had padded the gully, but Mom had come down hard on Nat, showing her maybe a little too clearly that were it not for luck, Nat might be dealing with a friend crippled or raped or even dead because Nat hadn’t spoken out.
This was definitely not the time to put Cordelia’s maybe sorta kinda romantic feelings for the dashing Karl Zivonik on Nat’s young shoulders.
“I’ll do this,” Cordelia said to Athos as they took Barnaby out for what everyone in the family called PT, but to the big, affable dog was just a delightful walk. “If Karl asks me on a date, I’ll accept. But if he suggests anything too, well, romantic, like dinner at Elegant Edibles, I’ll suggest something less heavy like a drive up to Yawata Crossing for seafood at Bay Baskets. That way I won’t seem like I’m pushing him off, and, even better, we won’t be in Twin Forks where there just might be gossip.”
“Bleek,” replied Athos, patting the side of her face with one of his true-hands. “Bleek, bleek, bleek.”
He made the sounds in a conversational rhythm but with no change of sound, so Cordelia didn’t think he was actually talking, just mimicking her talking, maybe to let her know he was listening? The members of the Great Treecat Conspiracy had spent a lot of time discussing just how treecats communicated, but even more on how to maintain the general impression that treecats were dog smart or even Terran chimpanzee smart, capable of learning a wide variety of “tricks,” and even using primitive tools, but not a lot more than that. However, everyone agreed that the more time they spent with treecats, the more confident they became that they had a genuinely intelligent nonhuman species living right here on Sphinx.
When, later that day, Karl came by to pick Cordelia up, she was surprised to see that Stephanie was with him. Had the younger girl tagged along at the last minute or had Cordelia completely misunderstood what Karl’s “very important, very, very sensitive” matter might be? That Stephanie spilled into the back seat, giving Cordelia the front seat, further confused the issue, but as soon as they were underway, Karl’s first words made the matter clear.
“Stephanie and I have been given some really sensitive information that we need to investigate. We’ve talked about it, and if what we’ve been told is correct, then your family has already been impacted, even if indirectly.”
Stephanie cut in, “It seems we’re always asking you to keep secrets, but if everything works out, this one won’t be forever, like it might be with the treecats, just until we find out how much truth there is in Nosey’s suppositions.”
Karl set the air car to self-navigate and called up data from his uni-link on the car’s heads-up display. Now Cordelia understood that Stephanie had given her the place up front so she could see the screen more easily. A list of names, each followed by a short description, came up in blue.
“This is what Nosey started us with,” Karl explained. “The names with the yellow star next to them are the ones he did articles on. This overlay, coded in green, are cases I pulled using SFS databases where formal incident or accident reports were filed. This, in purple, is a little less official. We convinced Jessica to raid the hospital files for incidents that fit the parameters but hadn’t been officially reported. She’d only pass the information along if we didn’t push her for names or very specific incident descriptions, but she didn’t mind giving the numbers, age, and gender of the people involved, and descriptions like ‘fall with broken bones’ or ‘sports injury.’”
Cordelia scanned the material. “There’re quite a lot of accidents and just over the last six T-months, too. I had no idea there’d been that many, and I’ve been sort of supersensitive on the subject since I had my own ‘accident.’ If he dug this kind of uptick out of the background noise, then maybe he’s more of a genuine reporter than I thought he was!”
“I agree,” Stephanie said, and there was nothing in her tone to indicate that she begrudged her sometime rival his victory. “He does have ‘a nose for news,’ and he notices a lot of stuff other people miss. I even agree with him about treecats, just not how he’s handling the issue. And I might not mind even that as much as I do if it weren’t for the Treecat Conspiracy…which he doesn’t know anything about. One of the things we wanted to ask you was what you thought about all of this. Take your time.”
Cordelia started reading, then stopped. “Uh, I just realized. I have no idea where you’re taking me. Not that I mind the outing, but Karl was very cryptic.”
Karl laughed. “Sorry about that. I was so focused on what we’d learned, I guess I did sound like someone out of a spy thriller.”
Or an awkward hero from a romance novel, Cordelia forbore from adding. Why did she feel sort of sad that Karl hadn’t had romance in mind? Hadn’t she been determined to put him off? Athos thrummed at her so softly that she felt, rather than heard, his comforting purr, and she ran her hand down his back, feeling the silk and velvet of his patchy coat.
“We’re going up to Yawata Crossing,” Stephanie said. “Ostensible excuse is to pick up some stuff from SFS headquarters for the SFS Explorers. Actual reason is to have a meeting with Chief Ranger Shelton. We wanted you along for two reasons: the first is that we needed someone smart who we could run our data by and see what conclusions she reached. The second is, we want to know if you’re interested in being recruited into our task force. We already know you’re trustworthy, and although Nat wasn’t actually involved in the incident with Dia and Loon, you’ve seen firsthand how this can impact families.”
“Shut up, Steph,” Karl said with obvious affection but equally obvious exasperation. “Much more and you could be accused of leading a witness.”
Stephanie shut up, but Cordelia was aware of her leaning forward, those intense brown eyes focused on the data display, reviewing as intently as if she’d never seen it before. As Cordelia worked her way through the layers of data, occasionally tapping an entry for more detail, she found herself feeling increasingly confused. From time to time, she asked a question, but otherwise Karl and Stephanie kept silent, determined to let her draw her own conclusions.
They were approaching the outskirts of Yawata Crossing when Cordelia said, “Honestly? Especially after reading some of the specific incidents, these people would have had to be on drugs to be so dumb. I mean, I know some of these people. They’re behaving like the worst sort of new visitor, but in a lot of cases they’ve lived on Sphinx for years—maybe their whole lives.”
Karl’s tone was very, very careful as he asked, “I want you to think hard about what you said. Do you mean it?”
Cordelia ran her own statement through her mind, trying to figure out what she’d said that Karl was taking so seriously.
“Do you mean ‘be on drugs’? I didn’t really mean it. I mean, it’s just one of those things people say, but it would explain this plague of stupid, wouldn’t it? Steph, did Jessica find anything out when she checked the hospital records?”
Stephanie shook her head, but was nonetheless beaming in pleasure. It took Cordelia a moment to realize that Stephanie wasn’t happy because Jessica hadn’t found anything in the records, rather because Cordelia had confirmed a conclusion Stephanie and Karl had both already reached.
“She didn’t,” Stephanie went on. “Nosey didn’t find anything either, and because he does a lot of work as a confidential courier for medical supplies, he has some pretty good connections of his own. But, as Nosey himself pointed out to us, not finding anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find. A skimmer rider who falls and breaks his back while doing something too daring isn’t going to be tested for drugs. The same with a dancer who’s known for pushing the limits of what should be tried in high-gee.”
“And,” Karl said, “drugs metabolize at different rates. It’s completely possible that someone like Dia—who was drug-tested because I asked for it, because Loon was saying loopy things—might already have the drug out of her system by the time a test was done.”
“I get it,” Cordelia said. “And in Dia’s case, we don’t know for sure how long she was there, knocked out. Karl…I’ve got to ask this, but is Dia, y’know, the kid who raids the family liquor cabinet?”
“I don’t think so,” Karl said, “and that’s not just big brother wanting to put everything in the best light where little sister is concerned. Staysa would almost certainly have at least an idea if Dia was experimenting like that, or sneaking Dad’s pipe tobacco or whatever. Our folks came down hard on both of them, and they both insisted they didn’t do things like that.”
“So if Loon slipped her something,” Cordelia said, hesitating, because she couldn’t really imagine slightly goofy Loon slipping a fifteen-year-old drugs. “Well, she wouldn’t have any experience to guide her, would she?”
“There’s no evidence to indicate that he did,” Karl said. “I didn’t talk to him. That would have been more than useless, but Stephanie did. She can be very sympathetic, can our Steph, when needs drive. Loon was a wreck, worse than a wreck. He really likes Dia and knew that she liked him, but that he was in a position of authority and all that. People with crushes can be incredibly clueless, but I don’t think he’s the sort to roofie a girl—and even if he was, that doesn’t explain what happened to him.”
“We’re setting up a database,” Stephanie said, “to sort the reports by various parameters: by age of victim; type and severity of accident; gender; how long the victim has lived on Sphinx; prior illegal drug use; excessive/irresponsible alcohol use. We’re still working on how to classify ‘stupid behavior’—that takes a value judgment. But one thing we’re seeing is an uptick in accidents involving younger people: mid-teens to early twenties.”
“To do this right,” Karl said, “we really need a better comparative database, one that goes back a couple of years. One thing we want to ask Chief Ranger Shelton for is access to that information.”
“Couldn’t you just get it?” Cordelia asked. “I mean, you are a full-ranger and Steph’s sort of on staff, too.”
“Probably could,” Karl agreed, bringing his air car down to rest in the staff parking field at SFS headquarters, “but the Old Man notices an amazing amount about what goes on. I’d rather brief him in advance than have him call me in and ask what I’m doing. Besides, if there is anything to all this, he has to be brought onboard. Officially, I mean. Drugs or not, what happened to Nosey constitutes criminal assault for purposes of intimidation. That’s extortion under the Crown law code, and that’s a felony.”
From the way he glanced over his shoulder at Stephanie while he was speaking, Cordelia guessed that they’d disagreed on this point.
Stephanie caught her looking and shrugged. “I just thought we’d have a better case if we compiled more data first, that’s all.”
“Getting more data without telling the authority figures in your life—even when you had enough to go on—” Karl said, sounding grim, “is what led you to crashing in a thunderstorm and nearly getting eaten by a hexapuma. Yeah, you were eleven then, but you’re nearly sixteen now. There’s a time to stop being the smartest kid in all the classes, and try to be part of the team.”
“I agreed we need to bring in Chief Shelton,” Stephanie said. “You win.”
Brother and sister or nearly married? Cordelia thought ruefully as she followed the pair into SFS headquarters. I wonder if even they know how they feel.