Quiet Invasion (25 page)

His stomach tightened.
It’s happening already. The idea’s taking hold. Nothing to do but clear it out, one way or the other.

Josh got his case down from its bin and brought it back to the analysis table, setting it down next to his half-finished beer. He jacked the case in, turned it on, took another swallow of beer, swore to himself, or maybe at himself, and started typing.

M
ICHAEL RUBBED THE HEELS
of both palms into his eyes. When he lowered them, he blinked hard and read Josh Kenyon’s note again.

Dear Michael,

Sorry I can’t do a v-mail, but this has got to be kept quiet. I spent the day working with Dr. Hatch, and she spent the day getting convinced that the Discovery is a fake.

I want to laugh at the idea, but I can’t. She’s making some good points, especially about the fact that there is nothing down here a human couldn’t have made, given resources and time. There’s also the fact that some facets of this laser we’re studying don’t make sense.

I know I’m not a Veneran, and I’d never tell you your job, but can you let me know you’ve checked everything out? The money’s good, the logs are good, and so on? If I don’t get something to tell Dr. Hatch, she might just go straight to the media drones.

Thanks,

Josh

Michael could picture Josh in the scarab, hunched over his case, swearing as he typed, not wanting to believe, but not being able to dismiss a reasonable premise without checking it out.

A hazard of the scientific mind.

And the security mind.

Had they checked for the possibility of fraud? Of course they had checked. That was the first thing they did after the governing board had come back up from the Discovery while the implications still made them all dizzy. Helen had run the money down. Ben had done the personnel logs. Michael had checked their checking, and everything looked fine. In the meantime, Helen had sent their best people down to the Discovery to start cataloging and looking for any sign of human intervention.

They’d turned up nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

Only then had Helen called the U.N.

So what was Veronica Hatch seeing? What possibility had they left open? Or was she just playing for the cameras? She might be the type. She certainly acted like the type.

It didn’t make any difference, though. If this went into the stream, the accusations were going to fly, and everything Venera did regarding the Discovery would be called into question.

Michael stared out at the world beyond his desk. Administration was Venera’s brain, even if the Throne Room was its heart. Unlike most of the workspace on the base, administration was not divided up into individual offices and laboratories. Each department had an open work section with desks scattered around it.

The arrangement made this one of the noisiest levels on Venera, second only to the education level. The idea was to keep everybody out in the open, so the left hand always knew what the right hand was doing. It met with limited success, but by now everyone was so used to it, no one really worked to change it.

As always, the place was a hive. A noisy hive of a thousand competing conversations, some with coworkers, some with residents or visitors who had complaints. His people wore no uniform, but they all had a white-and-gold badge pinned to their shirts to identify themselves.

He had forty people working for him right now, counting the U.N.’s contribution of Bowerman and Cleary. Since it was the day shift, about half of the security personnel were at their desks, dealing with complaints or paperwork or helping Venerans fill out forms for passports, marriage licenses, or taxes.

Only a handful of those people knew exactly how close they’d come to losing their home.

Or how close they still are,
Michael chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip.
If the validity of the Discovery is called into question, the money flood is going to dry up, and we’ll be right back where we started.

Enough. The accusation had been made. The only question left was what to do about it.

First thing, revisit the evidence. Make sure the investigation was as complete as he thought it was four months ago. Second, check out Dr. Hatch. If she was doing this to call attention to herself, maybe she’d done similar things in the past. It might help to have that to hold up to her, or to anyone else who came calling.

Of course there was somebody on the base who knew all about Dr. Hatch. Michael pictured Philip Bowerman—a big man, serious, but with a sense of humor that ran just below the professional surface. From the beginning Bowerman and Cleary had been polite, circumspect, and very aware that they were unwelcome. Michael, in return, had made sure his people were polite, circumspect, and very aware that Bowerman and Cleary were just doing their job.

Still, the idea of going to the yewners with this made his stomach curdle.

And not because you’re worried you might have let something slide past that they’ll catch. Oh, no.

Michael straightened up. “Desk. Contact Philip Bowerman.” Bowerman was wired for sound, as were most U.N. security people. He and Cleary had given Michael their contact codes within minutes of his meeting them.

“Bowerman,” the man’s voice came back. “How can I help you, Dr. Lum?”

“I’ve got one or two questions about the U.N. team to ask you.”

“Okay,” said Bowerman without hesitation. “I’m in the Mall, but I’ll be right up.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll come down.”

Eleven years as head of security had given Michael a refined appreciation of how Venera’s rumor mill worked. There would actually be less talk if Michael “ran into” Bowerman at the Mall than if he sat closeted with the man at his desk behind sound dampeners. Lack of talk was something much to be desired right now, especially with Stykos and his camera band roaming the halls.

“Desk,” said Michael as he stood. “Display Absence Message 1. Record and store all incoming messages, or if the situation is an emergency, route to my personal phone.”

“Will comply,” said the desk. Its screen displayed the words AT LUNCH, LEAVE A MESSAGE.

Michael tucked his phone spot into his ear and threaded his way between the desks, heading for the stairs.

Michael walked down past the farms, past the gallery level with its harvester and processing plants, its winery, brewery, bakery, and butchery, past the research level, and past two of the residential levels with their concentric rings of brightly painted doors, and past the educational level where the irrepressible sound of children’s voices rang off the walls. Below the educational level waited the Mall.

From the beginning, Venera had been designed to support whole families. Helen had wanted people to be able to make a long-term commitment to their work. The open Mall with its shops, trough gardens, food stalls, and cafe-like seating clusters was one of the features that made the base livable for years at a time.

The Mall was about half full. An undercurrent of voices thrummed through the air, along with scents of cooking food, coffee, and fresh greenery. Meteorologists clustered around a table screen, probably getting readings of a storm from the sampling equipment Venera carried in its underbelly. Off-shift techs and engineers played cards, typed letters, ate sandwiches, or sipped coffee. Graduate students took advice and instructions from senior researchers, and senior researchers tossed ideas back and forth between each other. A pod of science feeders held a whispered argument among themselves. If the gestures were anything to go by, it was getting pretty heated. Families, knots of friends, and loners drifted in and out of the shops or stood in line at the food booths. Around the edges of the hall, a couple of maintenancers spritzed the miniature trees and dusted off the grow-lights. A cluster of children played with puzzle bricks at their parents’ feet. If anyone’s gaze landed on him, they waved or nodded and he returned their greetings reflexively. Michael no longer knew the names of everyone on Venera, but he knew most of the faces, and he couldn’t bring himself to think of anyone aboard the base as a stranger.

This was his world. It was not the only one he had ever known, but it was the only one that had ever truly known him.

Spotting Bowerman took only a quick scan of the room. The man stood out in his subdued blue-and-white tunic. Venerans went in for bright colors.

Bowerman had picked a table near the far edge of the Mall under a pair of potted orange trees. He spotted Michael before Michael was halfway across the floor and lifted a hand.

“Please, sit down.” Bowerman gestured toward the empty chair as Michael reached him. “Mind if I go ahead?” he nodded at his lunch—soup, fresh bread, a cup of rich
chai
, spiced Indian tea that Margot at Salon Blu imported.

“Please. I’m actually going to meet my wife for lunch right after this.”

“You two have kids?” asked Bowerman, breaking apart his small loaf of sourdough bread and spreading it thickly with butter.

“Two boys,” said Michael, going with the conversation and not bothering to mention that Bowerman surely knew this from reading Michael’s files. “You?”

Bowerman shook his head. “Not yet.” He bit into the bread, chewed, and swallowed. “This is good. I didn’t expect such good food, or so much space.” He gestured with the bread. “I’ve only been to Small Step on Luna, and on Mars once. I got used to the idea that colonies are cramped.”

Michael noticed Bowerman did not say where he’d been on Mars. “Our one real luxury,” he said, repeating the stock phrase.

“So.” Bowerman put the bread down and picked up his soup spoon. “How can I help you?”

Good question.
Michael hesitated. He’d made up his mind to do this while he was behind his desk, but now that he faced Bowerman, he had trouble putting the words together. He was about to tell the U.N. there might be a problem aboard Venera. Venera was a colony, and the U.N. looked for excuses to make life difficult for colonies. That was a fact. What if Michael was about to give them such an excuse?

Bowerman wasn’t looking at him. He concentrated on his soup, making little appreciative slurping noises as he ate.
I could get up and leave. I could invent something small and leave, go tell Helen what’s going on, and let her handle it. I could do that.

“One of the investigative team has raised a question about the validity of the Discovery.”

Bowerman paused and set his spoon down. “Oh?” The syllable could have meant anything from “Oh, really?” to “Only one?”

Going to make me say it, aren’t you? Okay, I’d do the same if I were you.
“We investigated this exact question extensively when the Discovery first came to our attention. I assume you saw the reports?”

Bowerman’s gaze turned sharp. Michael had his full attention now. “They looked thorough. Do you think you missed something?”

Michael sighed. He appreciated the lack of judgment in Bowerman’s voice. Just one pro talking to another. Anybody could miss something. It happened. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But if a fraud accusation is going to be made, that isn’t good enough. I have to know.”

Bowerman nodded soberly. “How can we help?”

Michael studied his fingertips. The scent of beef and tomatoes reached him from Bowerman’s soup and his stomach rumbled. “If this is a fraud, it cost money,” he said slowly. “And Venera was running on a wing, a prayer, and short credit. If somebody did this, they got money from somewhere.”

“Or shuffled it from somewhere,” said Bowerman quietly.

Michael just nodded.

“Who could do that?”

“Most easily?” Michael didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see Bowerman’s eyes, weighing, calculating, running ahead with different scenarios to see how each of them might fit. “I could. Ben Godwin or Helen Failia. After us, the department heads.”

“But Dr. Failia is in charge of base finance, isn’t she?”

Michael nodded again. Helen had kept that position for herself. She raised the money, she counted the money, she divvied the money up. It was no small task, but she would not delegate it. Occasionally, Michael suspected Helen did not want to admit she was not entirely in control of this city of ten thousand.

Bowerman was silent for a long time. “All right. I’ll call down to Earth and start a trace on the incoming funds for, say, the year before the Discovery’s announcement. Will that do?” Now Michael looked up. Bowerman’s face was understanding but not pitying, which he also appreciated. “How quiet can you keep this?”

“I’ll do my best,” he shrugged. “But I have to tell my boss.”

“Who will have to tell the Venus work group?”

Bowerman nodded one more time. “But trust me, they will not want to let this out until they’re sure. There’ve been a lot of speeches made about your Discovery, and nobody’s going to want to look like they bought vaporware. We’ll sell it as double-checking your facts. Just doing our job.” He smiled thinly. “Everybody knows we don’t trust your kind.”

Michael gave a short laugh. “So they do.”

“I’d recommend two other things.” Bowerman tapped the table gently with his spoon. “First you let the ask my boss, Sadiq Hourani, to order an audit of Venera’s books. If we go over it all, when we find nothing, no one will be able to accuse you of hiding anything. Also, if Angela and I do it, well…” He smiled again. “We can be obnoxious. We don’t live here and nobody likes us anyway.”

“Good idea,” admitted Michael. “What’s the other thing?”

“Let me get Angela checking around the team down there. See if anything suspicious is going on, let her talk to Hatch, and so on. See what the position is on the ground.”

“Also good,” Michael paused. “I don’t suppose you can let me have what you’ve got on Dr. Hatch, can you?”

Bowerman’s stirred his soup, considering. I might be able to leave a file unsecured here and there.”

“Thanks.” Michael’s phone spot rang the two-tone reminder chime. Michael tapped it in acknowledgment, gratefully. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting my wife.”

“Go.” Bowerman waved the spoon. “I’ll stop by tomorrow. Let you know what the preliminary view is.”