The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (5 page)

The suspect list was growing by the minute. Earth Council itself might be involved; or, even worse, the Nandrians. And what about the man beside him, the patronizing lech wearing a Ranger’s uniform? Drew was reasonably certain there were no criminals on Daisy Hub. What about the bad apples on Zulu? How bent did a space cop have to be to end up there?

“…desk boy.” Pulled back to the moment by the sound of Bonelli’s voice, Drew noticed that the Ranger was pointing at the screen of the overhead monitor. Someone was debarking from the short-hopper. It was time to return to the landing deck and meet the pilot from Daisy Hub. Bonelli had already thumbed the hatch control. The door was opening with agonizing slowness. With luck, the luggage would be transferred over quickly and they could depart Platform Zulu without delay.

“There now, that’s better!” The voice and energetic footsteps approaching behind them belonged to Teri Mintz. No, Drew corrected himself, this was Teri Martin. Her hair now fell in thick, shining waves to her shoulders, her eyes and lips had been emphasized with makeup, and she was wearing a striking green outfit, a skirt with matching sequined vest over a filmy pale green blouse. There was sparkle all over the blouse as well. It looked like a stage costume.

It
was
a stage costume. Drew cursed under his breath. A wildcat he knew he could handle, but a singing star? On Daisy Hub, where his mission was to get everyone working together as a team?

All the way from Earth, Drew had done his level best to convince her that the showbiz phase of her life was over, that this posting was an opportunity for her to reinvent herself. Teri had listened attentively to him, frequently nodding agreement. Conning him, he now realized. Making him think he was getting through to her. And all along, she’d just been biding her time until she could make her grand entrance on Daisy Hub and be a star again.

Bonelli turned at the sound of her voice and looked her slowly up and down, the wolfish grin on his face making Drew wish he could have brought his own sidearm along on this mission. And — was that a fresh bruise under the second Ranger’s left eye?

“Stevie-boy!” called another voice, a rich, full-bodied female voice, from the direction of the landing deck.

Bonelli lurched like a charging pit bull that had suddenly run out of leash. “Hey, Ruby!” he cried, making hasty repairs to his smile as he spun to greet the new arrival. “I wasn’t expecting you to come all this way yourself.”

“I know,” she replied. Ruby McNeil was a tall, rangy woman in her late sixties, Drew guessed, with a cap of smooth gray hair, a stern mouth, and a devilish twinkle in her eyes. Not a mom so much as a mischievous grandma. She obviously had Steve Bonelli’s number, for she continued, “You figured I’d send Ozzie and Sky, and the three of you could drink and play cards for a few hours while these weary travelers cooled their heels. Sorry, kiddo. Not while one of them’s the new station manager and the other one is a woman.” Ruby paused and stared expectantly at Bonelli, who finally, reluctantly, responded to the cue.

“Well,” he sighed, “I guess I’ll just go supervise the transfer of your luggage.”

“Don’t forget the other cargo,” Ruby warned. “And my special order — five barrels.”

“Five barrels, yes,” he repeated, leaving the word ‘Mom’ hanging unspoken in the air. “It was a pleasure meeting you folks. I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

Drew waited until Bonelli had moved out of earshot to mutter urgently to Ruby, “Will we?”

“I’m afraid so. But whether you personally have to deal with Captain Bonelli depends entirely on you,” she replied. “Karim felt it was his duty to represent the Hub in all interactions with the Rangers. But the manager we had before him, a fellow named Jovanovich, avoided contact with them at all costs. They don’t call this place the Zoo for nothing, and some people get along with animals better than others. Part of the assistant manager’s job is to run interference in situations like this. So just take your time and settle in. By the way, I’m—”

“—Ruby McNeil,” he cut in. “I’ve already reviewed the crew manifest. I’m Drew Townsend. And this is—”

“Teri Martin!” gasped Ruby, her hands flying involuntarily to her cheeks. “I knew I recognized you from somewhere. I took my last vacation on Riviera Hub. You were the opening act in the Broadway Room. You were just a kid at the time, barely in your teens, but, what a voice! Honey, I knew you were going places, but I never expected to see you out here.”

In the presence of a genuine fan, Teri seemed to grow taller. She smiled graciously. Her entire demeanor warmed and softened. Drew watched with a mixture of amusement and resignation as the last remnants of Teri Mintz melted away, revealing Teri Martin, star of hub lounges and InfoCommAds. “It was a surprise to me, too, Ruby. I thought I was going to Vegas Hub, but—”

“—but somebody with connections had other plans. Tell me about it. My son-in-law worked for the Relocation Authority for six Earth years, maneuvering himself into a management position just to be able to send me somewhere. Now I’m the perfect mother-in-law — healthy and productive, and three Gates away. Hold it!” she called to the deck crew. “I want to count those barrels before you close the hatch.” Ruby turned back to Drew and Teri and said in a quieter voice, “Why don’t you two climb aboard? As soon as I’ve finished giving these guys a math lesson, we’ll go home.”

The short-hopper’s outer hull was shaped like the carapace of a kind of scavenger beetle Drew had often seen scurrying around the garbage bins behind his building on Lamont Street. He and Teri ascended a narrow embarkation ramp that extruded like a stinger from the ship’s rear end, then had to duck to enter a cabin that seemed to occupy the entire length and width of the vessel, but only half its height. The ceiling inside was uncomfortably low. Drew had to stoop to protect his neck and shoulders from its bumps and protrusions, and Teri, though shorter than average, couldn’t stand upright without hitting her head. Strange, then, that the shuttle’s interior should feel so welcoming. No, Drew amended, it wasn’t strange — it was the entire purpose of the decor. Soft amber light reflected off bulkheads plaincoated in warm autumn colors — rust, yellow, golden brown. The deck plating gave slightly under their footsteps, the carpet-like feel belying its metallic appearance. At the front of the craft sat a row of four generously-padded armchairs on pedestal bases, facing a broad, curving viewport. Clearly, this was where passengers were meant to be — sitting, not standing.

As they eased themselves into two of the seats, Teri observed, frowning, “No control panels?”

She was right. If they were facing frontward, then one of these seats had to belong to the pilot.

“Everybody settled?”

Startled, Drew whipped around in his seat in time to see Ruby lie down on the deck behind them. She reached over her head and pulled a recessed lever in the bulkhead, and, slowly, a section of ceiling panel swung down on top of her, containing an array of colorful multifaceted knobs. “This is the original pilot’s console,” she explained, moving her hands over the controls. Then, as the engines hummed to life, she added, “You’d better buckle up, kids — I’m still driving with a learner’s permit.”

Without warning, the little ship sprang straight up and spun 180 degrees, then made a dash for freedom, banking steeply at the last second to avoid hitting the edge of the landing deck door on its way through.

If Drew’s breath hadn’t caught in his throat just then, he might have screamed. There had definitely been advantages to traveling in a metal bucket without viewports.

“All right!” Ruby whooped with exhilaration and banked again. “Now we’re flying!”

Without warning, the shuttle breached the perimeter of Zulu’s gravity field at full speed, hurling itself into space and its passengers into weightlessness. Struggling to swallow, Drew unclenched his right hand from the armrest of his seat and began prying open Teri’s death-grip on his other arm. Her eyes were like saucers. Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. So much for not being a space virgin.

“This isn’t an Earth-design short-hopper, is it?” he remarked unsteadily to their pilot.

“Very observant, Chief. It’s Corvou,” she called back. “We got it from a Nandrian ship that was passing through.”

“The Nandrians gave it to us?” Drew recalled the description he’d skimmed from the datawafer in his briefcase: two-and-a-bit meters tall, green skin, jaws like a T-Rex…

“Well, they didn’t exactly give it to us,” she amended.

Drew thought for a moment that he would faint. “You stole it?”

“Steal from the Nandrians? Do I look suicidal?” she scolded. “We traded for it. One short-hopper in exchange for a standard year’s supply of lemon juice.”

Lemon juice? That didn’t sound right. Even if it came from an off-Earth source…. “Aren’t they allergic to our citrus products?” he asked.

“Is that what you’ve heard?”

“Yes. Did I hear wrong?”

“Not exactly. Citric acid affects Nandrians the same way that alcohol affects Humans.”

Now he was sure he would faint. “They get drunk on citric acid? On the Hub?”

“They used to,” Ruby confirmed with a smile in her voice. “But Karim pretty much put a stop to it when he imposed a five drink limit on them.”

They couldn’t have been happy about that, Drew realized. He hadn’t wanted to put the Nandrians on the suspect list. Now it appeared they had a possible motive for murder, leaving him no choice but to question them. According to the datawafer, Nandrians spoke in riddles. How was he supposed to get a straight answer out of a huge sapient reptile that spoke in riddles? He heard a strange gurgling sound beside him. It was Teri, stifling laughter.

“Lemon juice is their favorite,” Ruby went on, “although they’ve been known to settle for fresh limes or grapefruit juice. They’re itinerant merchants, Mr. Townsend, buying and selling on hundreds of worlds. Whenever a ship of theirs docks at the Hub, they let us shop in their cargo holds. There’s a lot of exotic stuff in there.”

And, by extension, on Daisy Hub as well, he realized. This could be a very interesting assignment, indeed. “And those five barrels Bonelli put on board?”

Ruby chuckled wickedly. “Barter currency, Earth’s finest. ETA Daisy Hub in two hours, Chief.”

“Two? I thought it was four.”

“On paper, maybe,” she told him. “On
Devil Bug
, it’s two. Let me show you what this little space bomb can do.”

She spun and accelerated again, as though trying to escape the engines buzzing angrily behind them. It was like driving full speed through the Zone at night, without headlights — surrounded by blackness, the body aware of movement but the eyes denying it. Helpless to prevent the collision that his every instinct insisted was only a breath away, Drew stiffened in his seat.

Beside him, Teri was silent. Maybe she had been lucky enough to pass out.

As the universe continued to spin around him, Drew forced himself to think, about anything that would take his mind off his current predicament. Unfortunately, there weren’t many memories he cared to recall. Louelle Truman, perhaps, at the Security barbecue where he’d first met her shortly after being partnered with her husband. She’d been wearing a bib apron over her hot pink bikini, flipping burgers one-handed and sucking lemonade-flavored punch through a straw…. Lemonade-flavored! Drew bolted upright in his seat, cursing himself for slow-wittedness.

There had been barrels — barrels! — of precious lemon juice in the hold of that long-hopper from Earth.

For the past several years, CommNews had been reporting massive citrus crop failures over most of the world. Only Isrusalem and Java still had healthy orchards, and their fruit was going to the highest bidders. In most places on Earth, even the wealthy and powerful were making do with chemically-flavored juice substitutes. But real lemon juice was being shipped out here by the barrelful, on demand and apparently without question, so that a bunch of bad apples could trade with the Nandrians. And, by strange coincidence, Earth was now secretly in possession of a piece of Nandrian technology for which the price could have been measured in only one thing.

Lies, he thought disgustedly. Earth High Council lied to the Great Council and to all the Regional Councils. SISCO lied to the High Council and to the Relocation Authority and to Earth Security. Anyone in power lied to the media, who then lied to the public. The Relocation Authority routinely lied to everybody. Lying convincingly had been a survival skill for Drew on the streets of New Chicago, long before it became just another tool in his crime-solving kit. And he was pretty sure Ridout had purposely withheld information from him during his briefing for the SISCO mission. No wonder the EIS chose to remain a secret organization: it had been formed to gather and store — and take action on — truthful intelligence, which was in frustratingly short supply these days.

That was the reason for Drew’s mission to Daisy Hub. If anything happened to compromise the position or integrity of the EIS on Earth, the organization would need a remote cell, a place to regroup, a base from which to launch an offensive if necessary.

In the words of Stephen Vincent Benét, truth had always been “a hard deer to hunt”. Now it was an endangered species, needing to be protected at all costs. And the latest of many ironies in Townsend’s life was that he, a convicted criminal and unregenerate con artist, was the man entrusted with the responsibility of laying the groundwork for its preservation.

Chapter 5

Zulu and
Daisy Hub had been placed in high synchronous orbit on opposite sides of a gas giant circling a medium-sized yellow star on the edge of Earth space. Some puckish fellow had named the planet Helena, after a character with two unwilling suitors in a Shakespearean comedy. At the height of an Earth mania back in the mid-twenty-second century, the star had been named as well, for the wife of a philanthropist on the occasion of her hundredth birthday. The residents of the Hub, however, had changed “Marvella Labatt” to a name they considered more appropriate — Purgatory.

The Relocation Authority had planned Zulu and Daisy Hub to be completely self-contained and self-maintaining — it was officially labeled as an experiment in isolated deep space living. Purgatory and Helena had so far suited their purpose admirably. For half of each planetary day, one of the installations was exposed to Purgatory’s stellar winds and radiation, providing an opportunity to recharge power cells. As well, being aligned lengthwise in stable orbit meant that minimal energy had to be expended for attitudinal adjustments, including the slow, constant rotation necessary to avoid sunburn.

“And what about the Meniscus Field?” Drew asked.

Sitting to his right, Ruby blew out a sigh and shook her head slowly. After half a standard hour of showing off
Devil Bug
’s maneuverability, she had activated the autonav computer and joined him and Teri at the forward viewport. “To be honest, I don’t really think it gives us any kind of advantage. Airlocks are more effective at conserving our atmosphere and take less energy to operate. When the field generator was first installed, I thought somebody back home was simply gadget-happy. Now, I wonder whether there isn’t something else going on, something more sinister.

“You’ve studied Earth history, Drew. When we began mining the asteroid belt, back in the 2040s, it was common knowledge that Earth’s government was crewing the operation with convicts, because the technology was buggy as hell, accidents were a certainty, and convicts were considered expendable. Nowadays, we’re the expendable ones, and Earth wants to know whether this alien technology will work for Humans. Okay. But it’s being tested under a blanket of secrecy, and I’ll bet you anything they don’t plan to install it on landing decks.”

She was probably right, Drew realized. Back on the Zoo Bonelli had vaguely hinted that there had been at least one accident. He’d also made a thinly veiled threat, no doubt to discourage the new station manager from even thinking about blowing the whistle on Earth Council. Could that have been why Karim Khaloub died? And if so, how many cover-ups would Drew have to cut through to get at the truth?

“There are technicians aboard the Hub,” he remarked casually. “Have they tried to—?”

“Probably, knowing this bunch, but not to my actual knowledge.”

“You know I’m going to keep asking questions.”

She smiled. “Honey, you wouldn’t be out here if all it took to stop you was a warning. Just be sure you’re asking the right people. Don’t take it personally if they tell you to go swimming in Purgatory. And if you decide to talk to the Nandrians, get Gavin Holchuk onside first. They like him; if he vouches for you, they may even give you a straight answer.”

Impressive, Drew thought, and puzzling. What was a woman as knowledgeable and as obviously respected as Ruby McNeil doing in the position of assistant station manager? She had certainly been on Daisy Hub long enough to know the place — and its crew — inside and out. There was nothing in her biofile to suggest that she couldn’t have done just as good a job as Khaloub. Why hadn’t she simply been promoted when his position had opened up?

Because SISCO had pulled strings to put Drew Townsend into it, that was why.

Great. Even ‘Mom’ had a motive now. This assignment was making him paranoid.

Drew glanced to his left, where Teri sat, curled in her chair and peacefully dozing after the stress of their journey.

“You’d better wake her up,” Ruby advised, pointing at the viewport. “She’s going to want to see this.”

Riviera Hub, Vegas Hub, and Ginza Hub were vacation resorts named for popular tourist destinations in Earth’s past. Shakespeare Hub was one of several communications centers, each named for a famous and prolific author. Patton Hub was a Ranger headquarters, named for a revered military leader. And Daisy Hub…?

Supposedly, the station was called Daisy Hub because the docking modules arrayed around the large comm dish at its north end had reminded someone of flower petals.

What a trivial and insulting way to name a space station, Drew thought as Ruby brushed past him.

Then a huge golden blossom seemed to ascend from behind Helena’s curved horizon, its petals sculpted out of Purgatory’s light and radiating an otherworldly glow, and Townsend had to remind himself to breathe. Unable to tear his eyes away from the viewport, he groped for Teri’s shoulder, found her arm, and squeezed it.

“What—?” she gasped, startled. Then she saw. “Oh, my,” she sighed, and fell silent. There was nothing more to say.

“That’s what we think, too,” said Ruby, by now on her back at the pilot’s console once more. “But we can’t stay out here all day admiring it, folks. Better brace yourselves. I have to remember how to park this thing.”

They were approaching the Hub end-on, but the short-hopper landing deck was located behind the docking modules, a third of the way to its midsection. As Ruby veered out of orbit for her final approach, Drew was able to see the entire length of Daisy Hub.

It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic.

According to the datawafers, the average hub could run from one to five kilometers in length. The core of Daisy Hub was barely six hundred meters long, but still managed to contain living quarters, rec facilities, and evac pods for sixty people, along with the Med Services Unit, the kitchen and cafeteria, an automated life support system, thrusters, power cells, supplies storage, a hydroponic garden and meat lab, reclamation and recycling units, a landing deck, a utilities deck, an admin and communications deck, and a gravity field generator. It had looked like a tight fit on the schematics printout in his briefcase. It looked even tighter now that bay doors were visible apertures in the Hub’s matted metallic skin.

Ruby banked the little ship to match their orientation, then set
Devil Bug
down with smooth precision in its own marked spot on the landing deck. The shift to gravity was expected this time, and Drew and Teri were comfortably cushioned by their seats. Auto Traffic Control couldn’t have done a better job.

Still held by his seat restraints, Drew heard the hum of the pilot’s console as it folded itself back into the ceiling behind him. “You may as well relax — it’ll be ten or fifteen minutes before we can debark,” came Ruby’s cheerful voice.

Beside him, Teri stretched luxuriously, forcing him to duck her backhand.

“That was excellent parking, Ruby,” he commented with a smile. “How long have you been practicing?”

“About four station years, or standard years, same thing. Technically,
Devil Bug
belongs to the Hub, but I seem to be the principal pilot.”

“So all that — that—” Speaking Gally was hard work right now; but it was like riding a moto, he reminded himself. The extensive vocabulary he’d learned when he was younger had remained in his brain, filed away. With practice, a lot of it had already come back to him. As well, someone had thoughtfully included a bottle of somno when packing his briefcase. A little more of the drug and another night’s sleep were all he needed to finish unlocking his long-term memory, making him once more as fluent in Gally as he’d been at the age of thirteen.

Drew smiled as the word he’d been trawling his brain for finally dropped onto his tongue. “All that showing off back there was for Steve Bonelli’s benefit?”

Ruby pursed her lips before replying demurely, “Well, partly. Partly, I just like to cut loose once in a while. But I do have an image to maintain. Teri knows what that’s like.”

The wildcat nodded sagely.

Right. Drew sighed and leaned back into his seat. The Zoo was being run by a wolf. His assistant station manager enjoyed stunt flying an alien-built shuttle called
Devil Bug
. The cafeteria of Daisy Hub was now a citrus bar for Nandrians, but the huge aliens had to leave after five drinks. (Sure. Tell a T-Rex with a buzz on that he’s had enough and it’s time for him to go home now. That should work really well.) The crew of Daisy Hub had been trading with the Nandrians, probably through Gavin Holchuk, for at least four station years, possibly longer. Earth Council was beyond doubt supplying citrus juices to the Nandrians in payment for a piece of alien technology which it was secretly testing on the Zoo and the Hub for purposes not yet made clear — and that deal might have been brokered by Holchuk as well, since the Nandrians
liked
him.

His first report to the EIS was going to raise blood pressure, guaranteed.