Strings (29 page)

How could she doubt? He was vertical and decently clad by then, so he clasped her tightly to him. “Of course I do. I’ll follow you anywhere. Pick a world, any world.”

It took some time to say goodbye after that. He insisted that she go to Tiber without him if necessary and let him find his own way there. She was determined not to go without him. They almost ended up back in bed again, to settle the argument properly, but obviously they had to discover whether Alya was a prisoner also. Apparently not—Cedric watched from a safe distance as the spiralator bore her swiftly down and out of sight. She had not been supposed to find him; she might not be allowed near him again. They had both known that. He sighed and wandered around the little hallway to the food machine. He punched for orange juice. He was chewing a breakfast of nut bars when he heard the com bell in his room and went in to see.

In the holo, Bagshaw Barney was stripping off his uniform. His face had a shocked, sleepless look to it.

“Just checking on you, Sprout. Need anything?”

“Liberty. Explanations. I’d like to be treated with a little consideration for my feelings once in a while.”

“So would we all, son. So would we all.”

“How long am I going to be here?”

Bagshaw’s face was smudged and haggard, but it bore no sign of needing to be shaved. He stepped out of his pants and from somewhere produced a suit of vast purple pyjamas. “Lad, I don’t know. But I think just till tonight. I know it’s rough. I don’t like it, but I gotta obey orders.”

“Do you really? That makes you feel all right?”

“Aw…” The big man gave him a look of pure exasperation. He started to speak, and it became a cavernous yawn. “Look, I’m bushed. I’m just going to bed. I’ve hardly slept in a week. You think I’d do this if I didn’t feel it was important? There’s a lot more folks than you involved in this—half of the world, seems like. I think you’ll be out tonight, for better or for worse, but I’m not certain. And you’re happier there than on Nile.”

“For sure,” Cedric said. “I expect it’s quick.”

Bagshaw took another look at him. “What is?”

“‘Better or worse,’ you said. The worse part would be handing me over to Hastings Willoughby, wouldn’t it? Or is that the better part?”

The bull sighed heavily. “Sprout, what in hell are you getting at?”

“You know! He said he hadn’t known he had a grandson, because he never did. I’m his clone. He lost most of his own legs years ago, and now the replacements are ready. Custom-made legs.”

“Aww…” Bagshaw shook his massive head as if to clear cobwebs and dead leaves out of it. “Sprout—
no
! I don’t get involved in shit like that. In fact—well, believe me. You are
not
Hastings’s clone.”

“System said I was.”

A faint mockery crossed Bagshaw’s face. “I don’t think so. Ask it to explain your ears. Now I’m going to bed. Good night!”

The screen went blank before Cedric could inquire whether Alya had been thrown in jail also.

Angrily he called up System and again demanded a comparison of his DNA and Hastings’s. He got the same answer as before—identical to three decimal places. Obviously no two things could ever be exactly the same. The lab guys might have added a few improvements, even. His greater height could be just an effect of childhood nutrition, and even Hastings’s flappy ears might be a birth defect or something. Cedric was still a clone, a nobody.

He went back out to the hallway and began to run. The space was too small to be a decent track and he became dizzy, even though he reversed direction often, but he needed the release and ran until his sweat glands were pumping and his heart thumping and the hallway spun circles around him. He stopped and flopped down on the floor just before he passed out from giddiness.

He had spent all the previous afternoon in this prison, and if they were going to render him down for parts, he wished they would get on with it. Apparently even incoming calls were blocked, for Alya did not call, and she did not return. He could not contact anyone or influence the spiralator, but he could play with the holo, for System still responded to him. Apparently his Class One priority remained intact for everything except making calls. He had a choice of every holodrama ever made, uncut. Three days earlier he would have jumped at the chance to see some of the things that had been censored at Meadowdale. Now he wanted none of them.

He reviewed all the Class Two worlds presently accessible, as far as he could understand the technical data—which was not very far. When he had thoroughly confused himself, he asked System for its opinions and discovered that Alya’s intuition seemed to be right on track so far. Orinoco contained carcinogens as yet unidentified, and Quinto’s life forms were based on exotic polymers whose building blocks were not the usual amino acids. Those were little understood, but known to be deadly. Rhine’s stereo chemistry was inverted. Usk was still an unknown. Tiber would be much better understood by next morning, after the overnighters’ reports came in, but further analysis of the early robbie data had found nothing suspicious. Po had been struck off the list; it was waning, its windows already very short. That left only Saskatchewan, the world that had almost killed Alya. She might reasonably hold a grudge against it, although every planet contained local dangers, but apparently even System did not care much for Saskatchewan. Its isotope ratios were unusual—unique, in fact, and the background radiation count was high. That might be another local phenomenon, or something to do with the isotopes. The unexplained was always suspect.

So Tiber was still the most likely. He located satellite images that had been taken by one of the rockets and radioed back just before the window closed. Brown and blue and white cloud—Tiber had the colors of Earth but not its shapes, and Cedric spent an hour or so naming its continents and oceans and ranges.

Abandoning science, he switched to criminology. He discovered that the records of the Nile disaster had not been locked away as Fish had told him—they were merely confidential to Grade One. So Cedric viewed them, both the scenes that Eccles Pandora had shown and also others that she had not received. He even skimmed over the murders of Chollak and van Schoening, and thereby almost made himself throw up. He saw the crazed Gill Adele reeling out into the deadly, unbreathable inferno of Nile, wearing a suit but no helmet. Then he knew that he had unwittingly lied to Eccles Pandora.

Gill Adele had not ransacked the skiv before leaving. She had not gone looking for the booby trap. She had not been carrying anything with her when she left.

Fish had given Cedric a lie; Cedric had given it to the world—and so he had deceived and snared the real murderer.

Cedric replayed scenes of the skiv’s recovery. He watched Devlin screaming and ranting in the dome. He watched a party of rangers led by Devlin force a way in, and Devlin himself discover the bodies. And somehow Cedric was not very surprised then to see Devlin shouting orders to his companions that would keep them distracted while he himself rushed into one of the bedrooms. What he did in there had not been recorded, but with the benefit of what he now knew, Cedric could guess. Obviously Devlin had not found what he sought. Someone else must have found it later.

Cedric could not imagine why a man might murder his own subordinates, but he had figured out why Devlin Grant had been left behind on Nile.

At 1516 hours the window to Usk was opened. Cedric scanned the operations and the data coming in from the robbies. It was all over very soon—Usk had two suns, a fact that had escaped notice on the first brief contact. Close binaries rarely had planets, especially Class Twos, but apparently the Institute had long ago experimented with the weirdly variable lighting that must result, and concluded that neither people nor their domesticated plants and animals were likely to thrive. Binaries were out; strike Usk.

But he had been able to monitor the conversation in the control room, and he had heard Alya’s voice. He felt better just knowing that she was all right.

He lay down on the bed after lunch and, much to his surprise, went to sleep. He awoke feeling musty and foul and bad tempered. He said, “What? Er,
repeat
.”

System spoke again. “Message for Deputy Director Hubbard Cedric from—”

“
Accept
.”

It was his grandmother, stiff-backed and cold-eyed as always. His viewpoint was at the far side of her great table, so that there was an expanse of polished wood between them. Somehow that seemed like a defense, as though she wanted to keep him at more than arm’s length. Stupid! He was not awake yet, not thinking straight.

“Good afternoon, Cedric.”

“Is it?” He sat up and put his feet on the floor.

She gave him the same sort of look Bagshaw had, full of weary exasperation. “Oh, don’t start behaving like a fool. I’m fighting several life-and-death battles just now. I have no time for childish tantrums.”

“You tested me once to see if I was a ninny. I’m not, but you treat me like a rat in a lab cage. This is not a childish tantrum.”

“Yes, it is.” She paused to rub her eyes with finger and thumb, and he noticed that she looked almost as weary as Bagshaw had. He had not seen her show human frailty before. Cedric took the chance to yawn and stretch and work a bad-tasting mouth. Sleeping in daytime always made him feel as though he had been thumped with a rail.

Hubbard Agnes blinked a few times, as if adjusting her vision. “What do you want?”

“What do I—Tiber, with Alya.”

His grandmother studied him for a moment, and a wisp of a smile congealed on one corner of her mouth. “Who seduced whom? Who is the fast worker?”

“That is none of your business.”

She raised faint white brows in mockery. “My! We’re growing brusque. Very well. I have invested almost half a million hectos in you, over the last twenty years. Do you feel that I have been adequately repaid in the last three days?”

How could anyone ever answer that sort of question?

“What’s left on the bill?” he demanded.

She nodded appreciatively. “Businesslike! I approve. Just this: I need one more service from you, tonight. Then you’re free, at least insofar as I’m concerned.”

“Who else might be concerned?” he asked, knowing that he would not have talked that way or thought that way three days before.

“Ah, you misunderstood me.” She looked him over as if he were an unusually dull catalog. “I mean I shall not stand in your way if you wish to go with the princess.”

“What’s the service?” he asked. “Another murder?” She had evaded the question.

“That is exactly the sort of juvenile smart-aleck remark I do not need!” She paused then, as though waiting for an apology.

“Tell me the service,” he said. What service could be worth half a million hectos?

“To accompany me to a meeting. To look intelligent and say as little as possible. Can you manage that?”

“That’s all?” It was far too good to be true. She was going to throw him into another lions’ den; maybe a snake pit.

“That is all. I need a witness. No reporters, just a private meeting with two men. Private, and secret.”

“Obviously.”

She frowned. “Why obviously, pray?”

“Because I’m an unperson, aren’t I?”

“Ah, yes! Is that some of your hot little princess’s thinking? It sounds too shrewd for you.”

He thought about it, sitting on the edge of the bed, wriggling his toes and feeling hollow-headed and bad-tasteish. It did not make sense.

“I’m an unperson. You must send me away with Alya, or kill me, or keep me locked up forever—or else bring back Devlin and Eccles. I’m a witness to their murder. What use can I be as witness to anything else?”

She covered a yawn. “You’re as damnably pigheaded as your father was. No, a witness is not what I need. I don’t have time. But I’ll have to make time, won’t I? All right—I’ll run through it quickly. Important people almost never meet in person. It’s too dangerous. But this meeting is so vital, so confidential, that these two men are coming here, to Cainsville, in the flesh. They don’t trust me; I don’t trust them. I am old and getting frail. They are both much younger, and male. I want a bodyguard.”

He was about to snort out some skeptical reply when second thoughts prevailed. It was so absurd that it might even be true. She could certainly have invented something more plausible. He spoke softly then. “Why me? Bagshaw weighs twice what I do. He must know a million combat tricks I don’t.”

She nodded, but her eyes were annoyed that he had not worked it out properly. “And therefore
they
would not trust
him
! The sides must be about evenly matched. You underestimate yourself. I’ve seen the reports on you, and you’re much stronger than you look. I’m sure you could handle two middle-aged amateurs, long enough for help to arrive. Besides, our talk must remain secret.”

Why not Dr. Fish? “You’ve been setting me up as the court jester, haven’t you?”

His grandmother threw her head back in a flicker of earrings and laughed aloud. He could not recall ever seeing her do that. “Court jester? That’s very good! I admit it. You have a curious innocence about you, Cedric. Even I keep underestimating you. So they will underestimate you also.”

“Like Pandora?” he demanded angrily. “Why her? Just because she did a special and called you names—”

The director’s eyes dropped to stare at his chest, but he could guess that she was merely reading messages he could not see. “If you only knew how many people you’re keeping waiting,” she said. “You don’t mention Devlin? So you’ve uncovered that part of it.” She sighed impatiently. “It’s Eccles that bothers you?”

“Both of them.”

“Guilt is something you get used to. All right, I’ll explain quickly. I’m not in the habit of justifying my actions, Cedric.”

It would be good for her to learn, but he did not say so.

She leaned her elbows on the table. “First, as you know, she had herself cloned. She had the clone reared and then harvested. I see that as a particularly despicable, premeditated, cold-blooded murder.”