The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (20 page)

Chapter 29

Townsend had
never been good at waiting. He could do it if he had to, but it took a degree of effort that he resented. Normally, once he had worked out the details of a plan, he was like a greyhound at the starting gate, impatient to run.

That was how he was feeling right now. The meetings and briefings were all done. Everyone knew the part he or she would be playing in the mission to Zulu. Townsend as strategist was no longer required, and Townsend as mission coordinator had nothing to do until the team was on its way to the target. All that remained was the waiting, and he hated waiting, especially when he was the only one doing it. That was when he started second-guessing himself. His mind was never at rest, hadn’t been since he was a child. In times of forced idleness, it reexamined decisions already made, problems put aside, plans set in motion. It criticized and analyzed, and made him wonder whether he could have done things better, sooner, faster, and with at least a decent chance of success. It painted worst-case scenarios and made him doubt himself, and in his current situation, self-doubt was something he simply couldn’t afford.

Drew craned his neck and saw the top of Lydia’s blond head bobbing beyond the wall of filing cabinets beside his desk.

“Lydia, I need the most recent crew status report,” he called out.

“It should be on your unit,” she replied. “I transmitted it this morning.”

Unable to think of a way to draw her into conversation that didn’t make him sound either incompetent (
I can’t work
the InfoComm. Come talk to me.
) or pathetic (
I’m assailed
by uncertainty. Come talk to me.
), he sighed and pulled up the report on his screen.

Most of the crew, it revealed, were busy getting ready for the show. O’Malley was on K Deck with Hagman, Tate, Flanagan, and DeVries, installing the sound system. Other teams had spontaneously formed to take care of the lighting and build the stage and specified sets. Ruby had put herself in charge of Teri’s costumes. Even the Doc was helping out, making props. And there was a backup band, presumably hand-picked by Teri and led by Soaring Hawk, rehearsing on A Deck.

“Soaring Hawk plays an instrument?” he wondered aloud.

Lydia poked her face around the corner of the farthest filing cabinet. “Tenor sax,” she informed him, adding in a playfully scolding voice, “and if you’d joined the party instead of sequestering yourself the last time the
Krronn
paid us a visit, you’d know that. Hawk has picked a name for them, too — The Daisy Hub Powwow. It’s kind of catchy, don’t you think?”

They’d all gone stage-crazy. So much for Khaloub’s morale problem, Townsend thought as he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head indulgently. “Tell me, is
any
one working on the mission?”

Lydia sighed and flopped down into a seat across the desk from him. “The mission?” she echoed, brow furrowing and head tilting in a parody of puzzlement. “The mission…” She spoke slowly and licked her lips, as though the words she was pronouncing had left a taste behind and it was the taste that finally jogged her memory. “Oh, right! The mission. Let’s see. Jason Smith is on L Deck with Spiro and Dev, learning how to use the paintbrush, just in case. When they’re done, Dev and Hawk are going to set up the jamming gear on L and J Decks and the vidcams on A Deck, as you ordered,” she continued. “Gavin is in his quarters, looking over the schematics for the Ranger station. He’s asked not to be disturbed. Meanwhile, Ruby has discovered the joy of sequins, and Rob’s probably finding creative ways to avoid climbing ladders.” She made a wry face.

“He’s afraid of heights?” Drew guessed.

“Only in the presence of gravity. Unless you plan to add Yoko to the team, I believe that’s everyone.”

“Everyone except Nestor Quan.” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. He’s not available for missions,” she told him flatly. “Our Disease Control Officer spends all his time being invisible.”

“What?” Drew started erect in his chair, smelling a con in progress. But Lydia’s smile was broad and open, and she
had
so far kept her earlier promise to be truthful with him. “Why invisible? Because he’s not supposed to be here?”

“Actually, he is. He was apparently posted to the Hub when Angel of Death broke out in our sector about five years ago. The biodata arrived, but the man never showed up. Well, protocol aside, you and I both know why and how people get sent out here. I waited for an error correction from the Relocation Authority, never received one, and figured that Mr. Quan had somehow found a way to give them the slip.”

“So you just left the name on the crew manifest?”

“Sure, why not? If they think he’s on Daisy Hub, they won’t be looking for him anywhere else. And for good measure, every once in a while I send a report over his name to Disease Control back on Earth,” she said, confirming Drew’s worst fears by adding gleefully, “Wherever he is, I hope he’s having as much fun as I am.”

Townsend closed his eyes for a moment, his heart dropping as his imagination leaped into overdrive. “Who else knows about this?” he demanded urgently. “O’Malley?”

She shook her head. “Just me. And Jovanovich, I guess. Or maybe not. When I told him about the biofile arriving, he was in Med Services. The Doc had dosed him rather heavily with pain medication, so I don’t know whether he actually heard me.”

Probably not, thought Drew grimly, but it was a safe bet that the Doc had been somewhere in earshot at the time. That would go a long way toward explaining her reaction to Quan’s name earlier on.

So, they had a ghost on the Hub. An ‘invisible man’, according to Lydia. Most of the crew were completely unaware of his existence. Drew hoped that Lydia’s theory was correct: that Disease Control hadn’t questioned any of her forged reports because they honestly believed the transmissions were coming from Daisy Hub’s assigned DCO, and that the real Nestor Quan was tooling around in alien space somewhere, enjoying his freedom. Because the only other explanations that fit the facts were disturbing to contemplate.

First, it was possible that someone had fabricated this identity and planted it on the Hub. Like the Meniscus Field generator and the paintbrush. Like Drew Townsend himself. They were all there to further someone’s hidden agenda. Whose purposes might it serve to have Nestor Quan’s biofile aboard Daisy Hub? Not Earth Intelligence’s, he was certain, nor SISCO’s. In either case, Drew would have been briefed about the shell identity. Quan had to have come from one of Earth’s Authorities — Relocation or Space Installation. Or perhaps there was an agency even darker than the EIS, infiltrating Earth’s outposts and no doubt delighted to have found a creative, unwitting ally in Lydia Garfield. That was assuming, of course, that she
was
unwitting. Drew felt a chill trickle down his back and decided he really didn’t want to go there. Not yet.

The other possibility, equally painful, was that there had in fact been two deaths aboard Daisy Hub, one years earlier and one just intervals ago. The investigator in Drew Townsend immediately began sketching possible crime scenarios. Disease Control Officers were itinerant, regularly patrolling the inhabited planets in their sector; Quan would normally have spent most of his time away from his base of operations. However, the Hub would have been the first place he certified as plague-free, so the entire crew should have known who he was — unless he was killed before anyone but his murderer even knew he’d arrived. It could even have happened on Zulu.

More loose ends. As if Townsend didn’t have enough to keep him awake at night!

Chapter 30

It was
show time. Townsend stepped off the tube car on C Deck and looked for Lydia at her station. She waved. He nodded. And his gut kept right on twisting. Damn. He’d hoped that having her there as back-up would calm his nerves.

Drew had run literally hundreds of cons, but never one involving this many people. Now, the stage was built and the band was in final rehearsals. Teri was humming non-stop, overjoyed at returning to showbiz (and U-Town). The interference field surrounding K Deck and surveillance cams on A Deck had been thoroughly tested and pronounced ready. The incursion team had spent days doing sims in the SPA room and felt prepared for any contingency. Lucas Soaring Hawk had performed a complete overhaul and tune-up of
Devil Bug
’s Human-made components, and had put the PLS suits, toolkits and paintbrush aboard. O’Malley had downloaded all the necessary programming and data for the mission into a compupad. And now it was Townsend’s turn. Drew sat down at his desk, stared at the blank screen of his InfoComm unit, and felt a chill wrap him like a blanket.

In detention, he had once seen an old flat-screen video of a novelty act that used thousands of dominos, placed on edge so that as each one fell, it would knock over one or two more. It had taken hours for the artist to arrange the dominos and about three Earth minutes for all of them to fall over. The dominos had been plaincoated so that as they fell, seen from above, they created a replica of a famous painting by some French artist, either Monet or Degas, he couldn’t recall exactly. But as he watched, the thought that had kept running through Drew’s mind the whole time was how powerless the artist was once those dominos began to fall. If even one of them spun the wrong way, the entire act would fail, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to salvage it.

That same thought was running through his mind again, only this time, Drew was the artist. His dominos had all been carefully positioned, awaiting the flick of a finger that would set the con in motion. The only sure way to prevent failure was to walk away and leave them all standing. And that simply wasn’t an option. Never had been.

“Lydia,” he sighed, “hail Zulu, please. I need to speak with Bonelli.”

There were comm relay satellites sharing orbit with Zulu and Daisy Hub. As he waited for Lydia to set up the connection, Drew remembered something Ruby had said to him the day he and Teri had arrived on Zulu: “They don’t call it the Zoo for nothing, and some people get along with animals better than others.” Drew had never thought of himself as an animal-lover; but the timing was right and the mission had to take priority. Always, he reminded himself firmly, the mission had to come first.

“Captain Bonelli on-screen, Drew,” Lydia announced. “I’m sending the signal to your unit.”

Drew had prepared himself to face the Ranger in a variety of moods. Friendly Bonelli. Arrogant Bonelli. Wrathful Bonelli. Disgusted Bonelli. Never had he expected to see the face that now appeared in front of him.

Bonelli’s left eye was purple and swollen almost shut. His lip was cut, and his nose had definitely been broken again. Drew stared at him for a long moment, speechless. The Ranger finally broke the silence, in a voice that nearly made Drew wince, it sounded so weary. “Well?” he sighed. “You’re the one who called
me
, Townsend. Is there something we can do for you?”

“Actually, Captain, there’s something we’d like to do for
you
.”

Bonelli’s lips twitched briefly. “Does it involve an explosive device and an escape pod?”

Not that the thought of blowing up Zulu had never crossed Drew’s mind. The EIS had trained him well. They would not have sent him out here if they weren’t confident of his ability to take whatever actions were necessary, up to and including the destruction of Daisy Hub itself, in order to accomplish his mission. Naturally, he hoped that matters would never spiral that badly out of control. But the pragmatist in him recognized that if the time ever came for desperate measures, destroying the Zoo might be a useful, not to mention an extremely soul-satisfying, thing to do.

With an effort, Drew cleared the fiery image from his mind. “This is on the level, Bonelli. You know that we have a former singing star on our crew manifest. Teri Martin.”

“We’ve met,” came the terse reply.

“Well, she’s agreed to give a concert tomorrow at 1900 hours, station time. You and all your men are invited.”

“And how much are the tickets for this little shindig going to cost us?”

“Nothing. It’s a free show. Think of it as a gesture of good will. An olive branch. I may have overreacted a bit the last time you were here.”

Bonelli’s attempt to chuckle ended in a grunt and grimace of pain. “A bit? You practically tore my head off.”

Drew shrugged. “I was establishing my turf. You understand.”

“I’m afraid I do.” Bonelli nodded thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing in a way that effectively killed any sympathy Drew might have begun to feel for him. “You said we’re
all
invited?”

“All of you.”

There was a pause, during which Drew’s stomach began slowly tying itself into a knot. This was the make-or-break moment for the con. All the Rangers had to make the trip, or there was no point in inviting any of them.
Come on, Spike
, he prayed silently.
Let your people go.

“Okay. We could certainly use the break. And Zulu can operate for a few hours on automatic. Thanks, Townsend.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“So we’re a go?” Drew glanced up, startled, and saw Lydia hovering beside him, gnawing her lower lip. He didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking. She was Eligible. She’d seen Bonelli’s battered face on the screen and realized, as Drew had done, that there had probably been a mutiny on Zulu.

“We’re a go,” he sighed. “We’ll have to be careful, though.”

“Do you think he won?” she asked in a small voice.

Fresh out of reassuring lies, Drew told her, “I’m sure he didn’t. Cops never joke about blowing up their own precinct house. That crack about explosives was his way of warning us that he’s no longer in charge.”

She frowned delicately. “So if not Bonelli, then who?”

“I guess we’ll find that out tomorrow evening, won’t we?”

Chapter 31

Officially, it
took four hours to travel by short-hopper from Daisy Hub to Zulu. In fact, any competent pilot could make the trip in three; and if the pilot was Ruby McNeil, and the shuttle was Hawk’s pet project,
Devil Bug
, that number dropped to two. Unfortunately, the Rangers en route from the Zoo to Daisy Hub were traveling in standard-issue Earth-made shuttles, forcing Ruby to slow to half-speed in order to keep Helena’s bulk between
Devil
Bug
and their convoy.

Holchuk had taken an end seat in front of the viewport. He turned it ninety degrees, putting the bronze-colored bulkhead at his back, and alternated between watching the activities of the incursion team and gazing at Helena, rotating serenely beneath them. That was what he was supposed to do, after all — observe. He was the reliable witness, the only one aboard
Devil Bug
who carried no responsibility for the ultimate success or failure of Operation Shutdown. The rest of the team had practiced every move and nuance of this mission, every predictable error and emergency. They were as ready as they could possibly be expected to be. But they were at least another hour away from Zulu. All they could do for now was wait. And waiting, Holchuk could clearly see, was proving to be the most difficult part of the operation.

Singh had tethered himself to the deck at the far side of the cabin and sat cross-legged, his upper body surrounded by a small swarm of parts and fasteners. He was checking out the paintbrush, for about the twentieth time — the components of it that he knew how to put back together, anyway, and therefore dared to take apart. The engineer’s concern was understandable — the paintbrush was the linchpin of their mission. If it malfunctioned, all their planning and hard work was for nothing. On the other hand, the alien device was a machine, and even alien machines were assembled from parts that could get lost or wear out. What if the paintbrush failed aboard the Zoo because Singh had checked the thing out once too often before their arrival?

Jason Smith occupied the seat farthest from Holchuk, at the other end of the viewport. His eyes were closed, and at first glance he appeared to be sleeping; then Holchuk noticed that his lips were moving. The Fleet officer was reciting something to himself, over and over and over. He was making mistakes, too, jerking his head and cursing himself each time and then starting again from the beginning. Smith would be leading the mission. How reassuring.

O’Malley was sitting next to Smith, fondling the sides of his compupad and wearing an insufferably confident grin. O’Malley viewed life as a game of chance — the bigger the risk, the larger the payoff — and he’d so far been luckier than he deserved.
He doesn’t understand
, Holchuk realized sadly. Eventually, the kid’s luck would run out, and people would die, perhaps in great numbers; and O’Malley, if he survived, would still not understand. That alone made him the most dangerous person on the mission. They may as well have brought an armed warhead aboard the shuttle with them.

Gouryas, bristling with recording devices, was sitting directly in front of Holchuk, testing and retesting them as compulsively as Singh was doing with the paintbrush. Had he tried out his gear while wearing a PLS suit? Holchuk was willing to bet that he hadn’t.

Ruby, meanwhile, had her hands full flying the shuttle — not so much controlling the ship as controlling herself. It was difficult for a speed demon like ‘Mom’ to fly slowly. Her impatience kept threatening to flood the cabin. Holchuk undid the restraint around his seat, maneuvered his face close to her ear, and murmured, “Make sure you match their speed, Ruby. If their sensors detect us while they’re in transit, it’s game over.”

It was probably game over anyway. Everything about this mission was a disaster waiting to happen. That was why Holchuk had been so insistent about going along — if O’Malley’s luck held, and Townsend’s crazy plan worked, and the alien gear behaved itself, and the team actually managed to return to Daisy Hub undetected by the Rangers, it would be nothing short of a miracle.

And if there was going to be a miracle, Holchuk wanted to be there to see it.