The Companions (7 page)

“Cecelia Hessing? I'd be surprised if that were true.” Shiela furrowed her forehead, looking worried. “I've known Cecelia for years, and she has jaws like one of those ancient turtles. The kind that didn't let go until sundown.”

“Well, if she has stopped…” I said, “…if she has, even with Witt gone, I think I can make it. I'll just have to make plans for when he comes back, and since I'll be living in the University Tower for the better part of a year, it's time I took some courses, some that would be of more value to our effort here. Would you suggest what that might be? I'm reasonably intelligent and did quite well at school so long as I stayed away from higher mathematics.”

“I'll ask around, my dear, and I do hope you're right about Cecelia Hessing. When did you see her last?”

“Friday a week ago.”

Shiela's face was still troubled. “I don't like the feel of any of this. Perhaps only because I'm not going to be here for a while, and you may need me. I've made plans to visit some
old friends in Mid-Europe North, but I'll give you the link where I'll be. Promise to let me know if there's a problem.”

Privately, I thought there'd be no more problems. Even Dame Cecelia had to realize eventually how ridiculous her behavior was. So I assured myself.

 

I was returning to the apartment a few days later, concentrating on some minor problem at the sanctuary, not noticing the two men outside my door until I was almost on top of them. They saw me coming, stepped back and held out their right hands in a motion so choreographed it almost made me laugh. The next movement should have been a dance step, but the only thing visible was the holographic splendor on their outstretched palms, marching letters that spelled out: INTELLIGENCE DIVISION.

The taller of the two said, “Jewel Delis. Come with us if you please.”

“Why?” I asked, baffled.

He took me by the arm, but I shook him off. “Let me at least put the groceries down.”

The door opened, and I set my burdens on the table. “Now what is this?”

They stared at the scattered coins, shared puzzled glances with one another before one of them demanded, “Don't make any fuss, ma'am. We've shown you our credentials…”

“Intelligence Division of what?” I demanded in return.

“Exploration and Survey, ma'am. We need to question you about the disappearance of your husband…”

“Witt?” I cried “Disappeared? When? Where? He was supposed to be on that new planet with PPI, the jungle world. What's happened?”

“You need to come with us.”

I thought they were going to show me his body. I almost screamed. It had to be that. Why else would they insist I go with them? If his body was there…then he had never left Earth. What had his mother done? What terrible thing had she done to him?

Holding myself in check, I went with them to Government Center, where they ushered me into a room with a table and a chair and left me alone. Hours passed. I counted the patterns in the flooring. I stood at the barred window and counted the leaves on the small tree outside on the terrace. I counted my heartbeats. Anything to keep me from thinking. I put my head down on my arms, trying to be hopeful. Obviously there had been a foul-up of some kind. They had someone else's body. It had all been a mistake.

Eventually, I had to go. The door to the corridor was locked, the other door opened on a toilet and basin, where I splashed cold water on my face and drank from my cupped hands. More hours passed. I fell asleep, head on arms. The taller of the two men came back and wakened me by pulling out the chair opposite me.

“Tell us what you know about your husband's disappearance?”

“He hasn't disappeared,” I said through the fog in my mind. “He went away, to that jungle world. You mean from there? When did he disappear? How?”

“A week ago. On the jungle world. How did you plan his disappearance?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I snarled at him. “I've never even been off planet!”

“We know you're responsible. We have a reliable informant. If you've never been off planet, then you're saying you paid someone else to do it?”

“With what?” I screamed. “My podfare money?”

From that point on, the nightmare only got worse. They let me sleep in a cell, questioned me again, let me go, picked me up the next afternoon and started again. When I returned to the apartment I found a strange device in the bathroom. I looked elsewhere and found others. I heard a buzz on my link whenever I used it, so I stopped linking anyone. My apartment was very obviously searched, so I'd know it. Twice my tiny cubby office at the sanctuary was searched, more surreptitiously. They wanted me to know, but they
didn't want Shiela Alred to know her privacy was being invaded as well. They wouldn't have dared if Shiela Alred had been home, but Shiela wouldn't return until late the following Tuesday. I resolved to see her first thing Wednesday morning.

By that time the newscasts were full of the story. Twenty-seven men from a PPI installation set out on a trail recently cleared by ESC forces, intending to walk a short distance to an observation point. The sixteen who arrived at the observation point found that the last eleven men in line had disappeared. A search was made. Nothing was found. The people at the base saw a brilliant flash of light, but such flashes were not uncommon on the jungle world and were generally ascribed to some electromagnetic discharge.

The two men from ESC wakened me late Tuesday night to question me again, in my own living room. Had I caused Witt Hessing to vanish in order to inherit his money? Had I conspired to kidnap him for ransom? Had I done this, or that? What did I know about the jungle world, the rock world?

“Eleven men disappeared!” I told them. “Eleven. What possible reason could I have for wanting eleven men to disappear? I didn't even know the other ten of them.”

“A cover-up,” said the shorter man. “To mislead us.”

That was too much. As soon as the men left, I put on a heavy jacket and slipped out of the apartment, wedging the door so it wouldn't record my departure. Down the hallway I detoured into the loading cubby for a disposal tube. Joram's stories of travel had made much of the fact there are no past-this-point recorders in areas designed for waste disposal. When Tad and I were just kids, we'd marveled at his stories and copied him, of course, traveling the tubes enough to learn it was both thrilling and dangerous. This time it was merely necessary. Certain times of day, the tubes were almost unused. You can put your ear against the tube and hear if anything is coming. If not, you slide in, put your padded knees against one wall, your padded back against the other,
and ease down to the next sorting floor. I did that, taking refuge in side chutes when I heard the chute rattle. On the mercantile floor I got out in a trash-sorting room moments before another load zipped out onto the sorting wheel. Half the cubic space in the towers is taken up by chutes and tubes and ducts and shafts that move people, their supplies, and their waste.

Joram said nobody monitors trash-sorting rooms. They don't monitor the freelink used by staff to advise residents of visitors or deliveries, either. So, I linked the sanctuary on one of the freelinks, then took a freight lift to the top floor, and crawled up the nearest air duct to the roof. It was harder climbing up than going down had been. I had to stop several times to wipe my hands, they were so slick with sweat. At the outlet, I almost panicked before I found the concealed latch to the heavy screen and climbed out only moments before Shiela's flit landed illegally in the maintenance area. No one who hadn't known Joram Bonner could have possibly suspected I might leave from the roof.

I should have been too exhausted to think, but I found myself mentally yelling at Witt: “See! You see! Some things are perfectly possible if you just decide to do them!”

Shiela Alred was waiting for me at the sanctuary.

“Now what is it, dear? I know about Witt. We all do. It's a terrible, terrible thing, but he still may be found, you know dear…” She reached out and I took her hands, so grateful that she was there.

“It isn't that. It's that they think I had something to do with his disappearance.”

Shiela was astonished. “But, dear child, she can't think that! Witt disappeared from that planet. It's a very long way from here. Weeks of wormhole travel.”

“They do think that, Shiela. It's ridiculous, but they do!”

“Who thinks you do?”

“These people from ESC.”

“Exploration and Survey Corps?” She urged me to come inside and seated me at a table where a pot of tea was steam
ing. Shiela used tea on all occasions. Since she got it from off world and it was always delicious, I understood why.

“Jewel, drink this. I fixed it as soon as I heard your voice. Come now, stop shaking, just sit here quietly and have a nice cup of tea, and tell me all about it.”

I was barely intelligible, telling it all backward, repeating myself over and over while Shiela nodded and murmured and questioned, remaining quite calm until I said, “…and they searched my office here at least twice…”

Shiela stood up, her face frozen. “On my property?”

“Up in my office, yes. They didn't toss stuff all over, the way they do when they search my apartment, but yes. I could tell, things had been moved and put into different order, and one of their gadgets is under my desk.”

“Stay here,” she said, lips pressed into a thin line. “I'll be back presently.”

When she returned, she brought a fresh pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches. She poured another cup for both of us and insisted that I eat something. “You look famished. Your cheeks are hollowed. Have you been eating?”

I told her no, I hadn't really. Not since Witt went. Not since Dame Cecelia's first visit.

“No, nor sleeping well, I imagine. The person I called needs a little time to sort things out. Why don't you lie down on the sofa there and have a bit of nap. It will do you a world of good, sharpen your wits, and I want you to make sense when you talk with my friend.”

Always after, I suspected that dear Shiela had dosed the tea, for I slept more soundly than at any time since Witt had left. When Shiela wakened me, hours had passed, and I only had time to wash my face before being introduced to a stocky man with a glossy dome of forehead above a thicket of eyebrows, melancholy eyes whose lids drooped slightly at the outside edges, and a firm, jutting jaw with incipient jowls. He had the look of a mournful but amiable hound. This, it turned out, was General Manager Gainor Brandt, now head of Earth Enterprises with direct control of ESC.

“Gainor's only had the job for three days,” said Shiela. “His predecessor was just about to retire when he caught some kind of off-world fever that he'll be lucky to survive. Gainor has just been promoted.”

Gainor Brandt patted my hand as though I were a small child. His hands were firm and thick, his fingers stubby and strong, very much in keeping with the rest of him.

“Shiela told me what has been happening. It took me a little time to find out who is involved and who is responsible for their involvement. It seems Witt's mother implicated you.”

“What is it she has implicated me in?” I cried in outrage.

He chuckled ruefully, “In every crime since the fall of man, according to Botrin Prime, a colleague of mine who heads up the Bureau of Order and happens to be Dame Cecelia's cousin or some such relationship. What is this Dame Cecelia thing he calls her?”

“Hereditary title,” I muttered. “Obsolete, according to her son. Her husband has one, too. He's a Sir something.”

Brandt gave me a sympathetic look. “According to Prime, the Dame had only one son to continue the dynasty—that would be Witt—and she was totally centered on his life. Her dynastic plans did not include his being liaised to anyone just yet, certainly not you, and seemingly she decided she could ease her grief by persecuting you. She accused you of doing away with Witt for his fortune. That is a ridiculous charge, and anyone with any sense at all would have rejected it, but to some extent Prime holds his job at BuOr through the support of the Hargess-Hessing family.

“Prime has a nephew who was heading up one of our ESC intelligence units. Botrin asked his nephew to make your life miserable, and the nephew seems to have assumed he could do a favor for his uncle without anyone noticing or, perhaps, without anyone caring.

“He was very nearly correct. My predecessor didn't notice, nor did I until Shiela brought it to my attention. As a manager, one must depend upon the good sense of one's subordinates, at least until they prove to have none. The
equipment in your apartment, in your office here—my people have removed it—has embedded source tags, and there are registries of such devices and who has custody of them. They could have been used for listening to your conversations, though according to the nephew no one bothered. The equipment was put there solely for harassment. No one seriously considered that you were involved in anything more nefarious than liking dogs. Which, these days, may be nefarious enough.

“At any rate, Boaty's nephew is no longer with ESC, and you won't be bothered again by
my
people.”

“Does this Botrin Prime person have any idea what his people have been doing to me?” I snarled, furious with frustration.

Brandt's voice was grim. “My dear, Botrin Prime never thought about you at all. Botrin Prime does not usually think about people unless they have something he wants, and the Hessings have many things he wants. His only feelings now are annoyance at the whole thing coming to light and anger because his nephew has been found guilty of abuse of authority, false statements to superiors, and unethical instructions to subordinates, all items that will permanently stain his record. The young man has been dismissed with an unfavorable rating, but Prime will no doubt find him a place in PPI, nonetheless.”