The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (6 page)

Chapter 6

“Mr. Townsend?”
The voice emanating from the comm unit just inside the door to his temporary quarters sounded tinny and nasal.

He wasn’t able to answer right away. He’d been unpacking and had come across Bruni’s gifts tucked in among the clothing and personal items inside his trunk, and a sudden powerful wave of remembered loss had swept through him, robbing him of speech and blurring his vision with unwelcome tears.

At the sound of his name, Drew forced himself to suck in a long, steadying breath. Then, once he could trust his voice again, he replied gruffly, “Yo! Who’s there?”

“Jason Smith, Life Support Engineering Specialist. There’s a problem with this piece of — of carpet you brought aboard, sir.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant to call it. In spite of himself, Drew was smiling as he gently extracted all the precious parcels from their hiding places in his trunk and arranged them in a pile on the bed. “Really? And what problem would that be, Mr. Smith?” he called over his shoulder.

Drew already knew what the problem was. He’d known what it would be even as he was rolling and tying the rug in his erstwhile apartment. ‘Mom’ had raised an eyebrow when she saw the thing emerge from
Devil Bug
’s cargo hatch but had said nothing, just stood aside to let the decon crew pounce on it. If anyone understood the significance of that piece of luggage, it would be Ruby McNeil.

An audible sigh preceded the engineer’s reply. “Carpeting aboard a space installation is impractical and dangerous, sir. We’re in a closed environment, constantly recycling atmosphere. Carpet fibers trap dust and debris, overworking the air purification system. Pumps can overheat, even burn out. I cannot in all conscience—”

“—obey a direct order, Mr. Smith?” Drew cut in imperiously. Part of him felt sorry for the young engineer. Smith was just doing his job. He was being logical and reasonable, and he was right; but Townsend was establishing his cover, and in the larger scheme of things that had to take precedence over everything else.

“Are you ordering me to install it, sir?”

“No, I’m ordering you to unroll it on the floor in my office and stick a desk on top of it.”

“Because I want it understood that I’m doing this under protest, sir.”

“Your protest is acknowledged, Mr. Smith. Now go away.”

Another sigh. “Yes, sir.”

Sir, sir, sir. Strangely polite behavior for a bad apple, Drew mused. Then he recalled the final entry in Smith’s biofile: reason for reassignment to Daisy Hub — assault on a fellow officer. Jason Smith had graduated with honors from the Fleet training program. He evidently had no difficulty taking orders. He’d served for five standard years on a starship, working his way up to Assistant Engineering Specialist. And then something had happened. Smith had thrown a punch at a superior officer, and had promptly made things worse for himself by verbally assaulting the other man in front of witnesses. Clearly, he’d been provoked, but an officer should have been able to control his anger. So, Jason Smith had a hot button and had evidently been given a choice: return to Earth as an Ineligible or take reassignment to Daisy Hub. Might Khaloub have inadvertently pushed that button? Could that be why he had died?

Adding the engineer’s name to the now-burgeoning suspect list, Drew realized it would probably be in his own best interests to find out more about young Mr. Smith.

Townsend pulled the last of his personal effects out of the trunk and pushed it aside with his foot. For a moment he regretted having brought the brass-studded, leather-covered box. In his apartment it had made an interesting piece of furniture; here, in a guest room only slightly larger than his bathroom back on Lamont Street, there was space for only a bed and a built-in desk. Everything else was concealed behind smooth, sliding panels in the bulkheads. The trunk was too bulky to hide behind a bulkhead. It was too high to conceal under the bed and too wide to fit under the desk. It was too long to serve as a nightstand and too low to double as a chair.

It was a damned good thing these were not his permanent quarters.

The station manager’s suite was on the other side of Deck E, and, according to the station plans, was larger than three of these cubbyholes put together. That was where he should have been unpacking. However, the Rangers who had initiated the investigation into Karim Khaloub’s death had designated the victim’s quarters a possible crime scene and had sealed them off immediately to prevent evidence contamination. There was only one way for Townsend to claim the living space that was rightfully his, and that was by concluding the investigation and solving the case, precisely what SISCO had sent him there undercover to do.

In that respect, he wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or annoyed that Steve Bonelli was a real cop. Drew not only understood the Ranger’s attitude toward the man with the “make-work desk job”, but prior to the reinstatement of his Eligibility he had also shared it. Trained Security officers had no patience for Eligibles marking time, and with good reason: the job was dangerous enough without an amateur getting in the way. In Bonelli’s eyes, that was all the new station manager was — well-meaning, perhaps even talented, but an amateur nonetheless. A hazard. A liability. It was galling to be thought of this way. Still, Drew reminded himself grimly, he was working undercover for a reason. He would have to conduct his own investigation to the best of his ability — with or without the cooperation of the Rangers — and report his findings to SISCO.

That was where the upside came in. Bonelli, a seasoned professional, had obviously discerned more than one possible crime scenario, and had moved in quickly to protect potential evidence. It made Drew shudder to imagine what might have been awaiting him otherwise, Earth weeks after Khaloub’s death.

Something buzzed sharply, twice. Drew carefully placed the containers of exotic foodstuffs on a wall shelf, then slapped the sliding panel shut. “Now what?” he wondered aloud.

A reply came through the speaker beside the door. “Are you decent, Chief? I’m here to take you on that tour.”

Ruby had promised to show him Daisy Hub ‘by the letters’, from top to bottom, Decks A through M, introducing him to whichever crew members were on duty at the time. “They need to listen to you speak, see your face, shake your hand,” she’d explained earlier. Now, as they rode the tube car to Deck A, she elaborated, “They need to get a sense of who you are and what you might do. For starters, they need to hear that improbable accent of yours for themselves.”

“I’m working on it,” he shot back, stung.

But she had already moved on. “You’ll be invited to join the
tekl’hananni
pool. Pick any number except nine. That was Karim’s number. When he died, it became cursed.”

“According to whom?”

“The Nandrians.
Tekl’hananni
is their planetary sport. The standings are posted every couple of intervals, and the leading House gets free docking privileges for its ships at Daisy Hub until the next scoreboard goes up. So far, Trokerk is the House to beat — Nagor and his crew are regular visitors here. This is A Deck,” she announced, as the tube car doors sighed open on a large circular area ringed by arching portals.

These were entranceways to the docking modules, he recalled from the deck plans. Inbound ships had to stop here for cargo inspection before being allowed to proceed into Earth space. And outbound vessels had to be checked for stowaways, now that the plague had hit their sector. Glancing around, Drew counted eight archways — wishful thinking for a hub this small and isolated, he realized, but perfect for a remote EIS base.

“There’s a full set of auxiliary controls concealed under this floor plating,” Ruby continued, “in case we have to evacuate the lower decks. We can even separate the Hub into three sections in an emergency. But you probably know that already.”

He nodded. On purely technical matters his briefcase had briefed him quite thoroughly.

“All right, then,” she sighed. “B Deck is Lucas Soaring Hawk’s workshop. You met him when we first arrived — the fellow with the long hair and sweatband who was barking orders at the techs in the short-hopper landing bay? Hawk is our resident propulsion systems genius, so Jason put him in charge of maintaining and repairing the short-hoppers and Personal Life Support suits as well. Half of the suits are stored on B Deck, the other half are kept on L Deck. That way, exterior maintenance crews can exit the Hub near either end, using the airlocks.”

Airlocks. Drew visualized the station plans. There were six airlocks altogether, three on Deck B, three on Deck L. He couldn’t help wondering in which one Karim Khaloub’s body had been found. There had been mention in the preliminary incident report of pajamas, but not of any Personal Life Support suit. Drew made a mental note to question Lucas Soaring Hawk about that.

“The short-hopper landing bay you’ve already seen. So, our next stop will be C Deck,” Ruby declared, nudging him back into the tube car. “That’s the Admin and Communications center, AdComm for short. Lydia Garfield’s in charge of data management, InfoComm maintenance, and SPA programming. She’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

“SPA?”

“Shared Programmable Activities — it’s a virtual reality playroom, on Deck D. Fools us into thinking we’re in the mountains, or strolling through a forest, or quarterbacking a football game. Great for mental health. Not bad for physical health, either. And it can be customized. Lydia has imprinted personal SPA wafers for everyone on the Hub. Just tell her what you used to do for fun — or what you’d like to do for fun — and she’ll set you up, no questions asked.”

That one he couldn’t ignore. “It sounds as if she’s received some unusual requests.”

“Unusual back on Earth, maybe. Not here.”

“What if one went beyond unusual, to immoral, or even frightening, like wanting to play at being Jack the Ripper? Would questions be asked then? Would a report be filed?”

An ominous silence suddenly blanketed the tube car. “That sounds like a Ranger talking,” Ruby said quietly. The door slid open at that moment, but she made no move to step onto the deck.

Strangely, he felt powerless to step past her. Which part of what he’d said was she reacting to? Had a Ranger already asked her the same question? Or did someone on Daisy Hub fantasize about being a serial killer?

“I’m not a Ranger, Ruby,” he told her at last. “I’m just the dead man’s replacement. If Khaloub was a target, I may be one too. So I’d really like to know what happened to him.”

She thought for a moment, then slowly nodded. “And you probably don’t like living in guest quarters, either. I guess that’s fair. But there’s something you need to understand, Mr. Townsend. The Rangers are not well liked on Daisy Hub. We try as much as possible to give them no reason to come here. Lydia even went so far as to design and install a SPA for them over on the Zoo, so they couldn’t use ours as an excuse.

“Still, Bonelli insists on sending his new arrivals over here for ‘orientation’. They strut around and play ‘bad cop’ for half a day. Then Fritz Jensen, our head chef, serves them two-day-old macaroni for lunch, to discourage them from hanging around until dinner. So you see, everyone on Daisy Hub knows what it’s like to be interrogated by a Ranger, and no one enjoys it. You can still ask questions — but make certain they’re honest questions. That way, you have a better chance of getting honest answers.”

And he did want honest answers, Drew acknowledged, even if he had to lie to everyone on the Hub to obtain them.

AdComm took up all of Deck C and was, literally as well as figuratively, the nerve center of Daisy Hub. It was also the most haphazard arrangement of office trappings Drew had ever seen. Glancing around, he was able to identify an assortment of display consoles, several stacks of security monitors, a half-dozen or so InfoComm units, two work tables, a couple of desks, five or six stray chairs, and a sprinkling of shoulder-high gray metal filing cabinets.

“Where was Khaloub’s workspace?” he asked.

“All of C deck,” Ruby replied matter-of-factly. “Except for my console and Lydia’s station, which is over there.”

As his gaze followed Ruby’s pointing finger, Drew realized why he hadn’t noticed the other woman before. He could barely see her now.

Lydia Garfield sat, fortressed by furniture, in a pie-shaped cranny just large enough for one person and a row of monitor screens. She was slim and very blonde. And she was shrinking. From the moment Ruby had pointed her out and the two of them had begun walking toward her, Lydia had grown visibly shorter behind her desk. She was a data nerd, Drew guessed, more comfortable around numbers than in the presence of living people. Perfect choice for a virtual reality programmer. And she’d been looking forward to meeting him? Sure, she had!

As Ruby made the introductions, pretending to ignore the younger woman’s anxiety, Drew couldn’t help wondering how Lydia Garfield managed to function, let alone hold onto her Eligibility. Her eyes were darting all over the room, as though seeking out her next hiding place, a safer haven than the one in which she had just been discovered. Her shoulders shook. Her hands drew nervous figures in the air. And her discomfort was contagious. Drew had to stifle the impulse to grab her and hold her still — he was afraid she might die of fright, like a trapped bird. He shared her obvious relief when Ruby suggested continuing his tour on Deck D, maybe getting a bite to eat in the caf while they were there.

The crew of this hub had quirks, Ridout had said. Eccentricities. But Lydia’s behavior went beyond eccentric. It strongly reminded him of those female vics who called Security after being sexually assaulted and then locked themselves in the closet. Clearly, there would be some further investigating to do once his mission for SISCO was accomplished.

Chapter 7

“What can
you tell me about Karim Khaloub?”

In response, Ruby took another sip of her java, glancing up as Chef Jensen, a rotund man in his forties with a shock of frizzy brown hair, sank into the third chair at their small round table. The Daisy Hub caf was empty at this hour, and Jensen was obviously glad of the opportunity to get off his feet.

“The man was a saint,” he declared.

“No, he was a manager,” Ruby corrected him patiently. “Since I arrived here, there have been six individuals with the title of Station Manager, but only two of them have actually managed the station with any effectiveness — Nayo Naguchi and Karim Khaloub.”

“Then Naguchi was a saint,” Jensen decided. “If he hadn’t made me a chef, I’d still be a grunt, inspecting airlock seals and replacing lightbars. He came in one day while I was fixing myself lunch, saw how much I enjoyed cooking, and asked if I would like to do it all the time. The very next day, I was reassigned to the kitchen and informed that I’d been enrolled to take Cordon Bleu courses via interactive Gate transmission.”

Ruby was nodding agreement. “Nayo believed in order and discipline, but he also felt that people functioned best when they were working toward a goal. He organized the various departments, established protocols and duty cycles, and saw to it that everyone kept learning. That was his greatest gift to us. The man was brilliant. He had degrees in medicine, psychology, and engineering. He personally trained half the techs on this station, then designated them engineers and stepped out of the way so they could teach the other half.”

“And Khaloub?” Drew reminded them.

“Karim was more into health and safety,” said Jensen. “Order was his first priority, though. Had to be. He replaced Jovanovich, who had just spent four years hiding under his desk—”

“—after being traumatized by the Nandrians his first day on the job,” Ruby cut in. “He was looking for Gavin, and found him negotiating a trade with some of Nagor’s crew. Jo barged into the discussion and accused Gavin of being a black marketeer, which cast a slur on the Nandrians as well, who responded in typical Nandrian fashion by biting Jo, here and here.” She indicated the midpoints of both thighs.

“Nandrian venom is actually a digestive enzyme,” Jensen explained. “It’s how they feed. See, the paralyzed prey begins dissolving from the inside out, and—”

“I get the picture,” said Drew with a grimace.

“Fortunately, Doc Ktumba had some antivenin on hand. She got to him quickly enough to prevent any serious permanent damage to his body.”

“He limped a little after that,” Jensen clarified. “It was hardly noticeable, except when he walked.”

“Mostly, he scurried.”

“Scuttled, actually, like a crab.”

“It was very sad,” said Ruby, by now unable to keep a straight face. As she made eye contact with Jensen across the table, they simultaneously burst out laughing.

Drew looked from one to the other of them and sighed patiently. His first impression of Ruby McNeil had apparently been correct. “I can see you really sympathized with him; but tell me, what happened when Khaloub arrived?”

“Things were pretty chaotic around here, so he knew he had to lay down some rules,” said Ruby, struggling to regain her composure. “Karim was no slouch in the smarts department. First thing he did was consult with Gavin Holchuk. Together they cooked up a plan. They waited until a shipload of Nandrians was aboard the Hub, celebrating their latest
tekl’hananni
victory. Then the two of them went down to L Deck and put on PLS suits with null-G microgenerators. They raised the gravity on the station to 3Gs, not enough to immobilize the Nandrians, but sufficient to slow them down a little. Then Karim circulated around the Hub and explained the new five drink limit. Gavin had coached him on how to say things without appearing to insult the aliens’ honor. Finally, just to seal the agreement, Gavin and Karim presented the Chief Officer with a lifetime certificate entitling him to free drinks on Daisy Hub.”

“A temptation?” The puzzled silence that greeted his question told him he’d better try again. “They gave him a — a bribe?”

“Call it what you like,” said Ruby. “It worked. The Nandrians have followed the rules ever since.”

“Of course,
our
crew was pretty upset about being flattened on the deck for nearly an hour,” Jensen added, chuckling. “Karim hadn’t warned anyone beforehand, but he did explain everything later on. That was another reason why I liked him. He never gave us the mushroom treatment — you know, keep ‘em in the dark and pile on the manure? — and we never had to wonder about his priorities. Daisy Hub always came first for him.”

Ruby had finished her java. As she moved the empty mug deliberately to the middle of the table, Drew summed up, “So, Naguchi was intelligent, but Karim was smart. Naguchi cared about discipline and learning, and Karim…?”

“Karim cared about morale,” Jensen supplied. “He knew how important that was, especially to people like us — stuck all the way out here and incredibly overqualified for most of the duties available. Well, if you can’t laugh, you’re going to cry, right? So he did what he could to make life bearable, if not enjoyable. He encouraged us to develop our interests, use our imaginations, make our own fun. And it worked. Kept us all sane, at any rate.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ruby scolded playfully before adding, “Karim was into sports and fitness. He spent a lot of time in the SPA room. He even tried to organize virtual reality baseball games and soccer matches among the crew. He failed, unfortunately. Still, he cared enough to make the effort, and you have to respect him for that.”

Drew’s gaze wandered once more to the wall behind Jensen’s seat, where someone had apparently painted a mural. About one meter square, it depicted a deep space hub, much larger than this one, amid a swarm of docking and departing ships. The style was impressionist, and the colors were richly metallic golds, platinums, and bronzes, with the occasional splash of Chinese red or peacock blue. But the most impressive color was no color at all — it was utter blackness. The artist’s depiction of space held not a hint of blue or brown. After staring at it for several minutes, Drew was half-convinced that there must be a breach in the hull. “And whose interest does that represent?” he asked, pointing.

“Nobody knows,” said Jensen, shaking his head. “And no one seems anxious to step forward and take credit for it, either.”

“There are pictures like it all over the Hub,” Ruby added, “and they’re making our Structural Integrity Specialist crazy.”

“How does a painting affect structural integrity?” Drew wanted to know.

“It isn’t a painting,” Jensen replied. “Take a closer look at it. That isn’t smart paint — it’s plaincoated metal, and nothing has been applied onto it. Someone has found a way to change the refractive index of the individual molecules of that bulkhead.”

Ruby pursed her lips. “It’s probably the work of an alien device. Some kind of molecular paintbrush.”

“The only way to know for sure is to catch the Midnight Muralist in the act.” Jensen’s voice lowered conspiratorially. “But you can never be sure where he — or she — will strike next.”

“Well, we’d better let you get back to work, Fritz,” said Ruby. “I want to show Drew the SPA room, and then take him down to Med Services to meet the Doc.”

“Meeting the Doc on his first day? Her bite is even more venomous than the Nandrians’,” the chef observed with a grin. “As a condemned man you’re entitled to a last meal, Mr. Townsend. Any requests?”

Drew returned the smile. “As a matter of fact, yes. Does your—” He wrestled with his memory for a moment. “—your hydroponics unit. Does it grow citrus fruit trees?”

The other man stiffened visibly. “For consumption only, sir. My fruit is not for bartering.”

“Good. Because it’s been years since I had a fresh orange with my morning meal.”

Jensen glanced uncertainly at Ruby. “Years, Mr. Townsend?”

“Citrus is scarce on Earth these days, Fritz. A Jaffa orange costs almost as much as a video wall.”

Suddenly sober, the chef told him, “They’re clementines, sir. I’ll see that you get one every day.”

“We had no idea, Drew,” Ruby apologized as they left the caf. “We don’t get much news from Earth out here. And anytime I’ve requisitioned lemon juice, it’s arrived, no problems. What happened to the citrus crop?”

He wanted to tell her. He wanted someone else aboard Daisy Hub to be as angry as he was. As angry as Jovanovich had evidently been when
he
first arrived. But Drew had no hard evidence yet, only circumstances and conjecture, and it could be fatal to his mission if anyone aboard the station acted prematurely.

So he ducked the question. As they strolled along the gently curving corridor rimming D Deck, he asked Ruby instead, “When did the Nandrians make first contact with Daisy Hub?”

She shrugged. “It happened before my time, and I’ve been here longer than I care to think about. With all their comings and goings, they were bound to stumble on us eventually, I guess. But we didn’t become a regular port of call until shortly after Gavin Holchuk arrived.”

“Why then?”

“Naguchi was the station manager at the time. Nayo valued order and discipline, and Gavin was grieving and angry. Not exactly an ideal fit. My guess is that Naguchi wanted to give him something difficult to do that would distract him and maybe dissipate his rage. Learning all about the Nandrians was the perfect assignment for Gavin. He threw himself into the work and, over the years, has compiled an enormous amount of data on them. He can even speak a little of their language. Just the fact that a Human would devote so much time and energy trying to understand their culture seems to have impressed the dickens out of them. So when I told you the Nandrians liked him, I didn’t mean—” Abruptly, she stopped walking. “Uh-oh!”

There was another mural on the wall, a moonscape with planet ascendant, this one just as artfully drawn as the last.

“Let me guess — this wasn’t here yesterday?”

Ruby found a wallcomm and thumbed the blue button.

“Spiro? This is Mom, honey. Check out D Deck thirty degrees clockwise of the SPA room. The Muralist has struck again.”

An agonized cry drifted out of the speaker as Ruby turned with a grin. “Like the man said,” she reminded him, “we make our own fun around here.”