Chimera

Nineteen

Coren almost reached for her, to pull her into Wenithal's apartment. Jeta Fromm tensed, looked left and right, then, with a harsh sigh of frustration, stepped forward.

"Shut the damn door, gato," she muttered.

She stopped halfway between Coren and Wenithal, who still held his pistol in her direction. Coren closed the door, the soft snik bringing her around to face him again. Her long, almost gaunt face showed anger and fear. She blinked nervously. Coren glanced at Wenithal, who now looked away, hands clasped in his lap.

"You've wrecked my life," Jeta said suddenly. "That's going to cost a bit more than my usual fee. "

"Where've you been?" Coren asked. "I tried to find you right after-"

"Right after you gave me away to the sanitaries? What happened, did they offer you more credits than your wildest imagination? Or did you just decide to piss on some warren rat for fun and see how long it took her to die?"

"The 'sanitaries'?" Ariel asked.

Jeta glared over her shoulder. "Who are you?"

Coren cleared his throat loudly. "Sanitaries are enforcers. They clean up things. Sanitation workers."

Ariel made a silent "Oh" and nodded. "How clever," she said. "I'm Ambassador Ariel Burgess from the Auroran Embassy. Pleased to meet you, Ms…?"

"This is Jeta Fromm," Coren announced. "The freelance data troll who found Nyom for me…then vanished before I could thank her for doing basically what she's accusing me of."

"Me?" Jeta shouted. "You vatdrip! Someone's tried to kill me twice since I talked to you, once right after you left with the data I got you. Second time was at the Lyzig tube station, morning after I took off."

"Did Cobbel and Renz tell you I was looking for you?"

Jeta frowned uncertainly, just for a moment, then looked away. "I was looking for you myself."

Coren caught Ariel's eye and gave a slight shake of his head.

"Who did you tell about the baleys?" he asked.

"You," Jeta said.

"Who else?" Coren took two quick steps toward her. She backed up only one. "They were all murdered, Jeta! Fifty-two dead baleys! Someone knew they'd been found, and killed any possible witnesses! If I'm the only one you told, then how did they know?"

"I'm asking you the same question! How did they find me?"

"I don't know who 'they' are. And if I'm one of them, why would I have to ask 'them'? You're not making sense."

Jeta glanced from Ariel to Wenithal, then back to Coren. "I didn't tell anybody."

"Then you were traced. "

She scowled. "I'm better than that, there's no way-"

"My system was compromised, and I can afford a hell of a lot better protection than you can."

Jeta shook her head. "Don't brag on it, gato-that's how I found you. "

It took Coren several moments to understand her meaning. "You broke into my system?"

She nodded. "It was hard, you've got a good one, but…"

Coren looked at Ariel. "But-"

"Someone piggybacked in with you," Ariel said. "Your system's still compromised."

"Who are they, Jeta?" Coren asked. "Who's trying to kill you?"

"Ask them, gato, I got my own problems!"

"I'd love to, but it could be fatal. Who are they?"

Jeta swallowed loudly. "All I know is, I handed over the data to you and went back to my hole! Two of 'em were waiting for me before I got there!" She looked at him narrowly. "I thought you'd had them standing by for after you got what you wanted."

Coren shook his head. "Then why follow me? If I set you up, this is the surest way to get yourself killed."

"I said that's what I thought. I thought it then, not now."

"What changed your mind?"

"I checked you out. It's not too often you find an honest cop."

"Then-"

"Good cops go bad."

"That still doesn't explain why you're here." He looked at Wenithal, who seemed to be pointedly ignoring them, drinking his coffee. "If I went bad-"

"I didn't know where else to go! All right? I don't trust any of my usual contacts! I thought I could make an arrangement with you. "

"If I were still a good cop, I'd help you. If I were bad, we could do business."

"Something like that."

"I've been trying to find you for over three days."

"I know. Why?"

"I thought you'd double-marketed the data."

Jeta's face hardened. "I don't do that."

"Then how did they know about the baley shipment?"

Jeta let out her breath slowly. "I'm a good troll, Mr. Lanra, very good, but I'm not the only one. If I could find out, so could a dozen others, easy. If I was you, though, I'd ask the people running the baleys to begin with. If anyone'd know…"

"I thought about that. I've been trying to find them. "

"No luck?" A mocking smile tugged at her thin lips, even though her eyes still showed fear. "Maybe you need to hire a professional. "

"Fine, then," Coren said tersely. "You're hired."

"My fee's doubled," Jeta said.

"I don't mind, I have an expense account."

"I have expenses, we're even. What you want to know first?"

"First? What are you doing here?"

"Following you."

"So you say. You want to tell me why? The truth this time."

Jeta looked around. "Do you mind if I put my stash down? Thanks." She set her pack on the end of the table by the sofa, then dropped into the cushions with a loud, relieved exhalation. "You botched my ride, gato. Then you almost got me killed. I thought that, anyway. I figured if anyone could solve my problems, it'd be the gato who caused them all to begin with."

"What do you mean, I botched your ride?" She gave him a guilty look. "Confession time: I found that data for you as fast as I did 'cause I already had it. I was slated to go on that shipment. I had a berth with them. " "I've been trolling for almost sixteen years," Jeta explained. "It's not a bad life if you don't mind the occasional hassle from police-public and private-and planning for the very long term. Some of us get good enough that we get hired as staff somewhere, go completely legitimate. Finding lost data is a full-time industry in some quarters. Can I have something to drink?"

Ariel went into the kitchen again and returned with a glass of water. Jeta sniffed at it, frowned, then shrugged and drank.

"Anyway, you have to understand how much data there is on this planet. I'm talking centuries of accrual. It never entirely disappears. Overwritten, archaic storage media, just plain misplaced, misfiled, or misremembered. It sits in layers, piling up, lumping together. Whole AI systems are devoted to sifting through it all, but it occasionally takes a deft hand, intuition, a lucky guess-human qualities you just don't find in a machine. There are specialists who do it, going through stuff that's really old. Some of them start out legit and move into freelance, but for most of us it's the other way around. There's a hardcore bunch that never go legit.

"Mostly though, it's not much more dangerous usually than any other job. It's been understood for a long time that the troll isn't a target; you don't damn well shoot the messenger. Killing us hurts everyone. And then there are the clearing houses that offer protection and anonymity, and some corporations keep their best trolls on retainer and offer defence. Worrying about sanitizers is just not a big issue. I've been beaten up a couple of times, but no one has ever-ever-threatened my life.

"Till now. About three months ago I was retained to find some old minutes from a board of directors that no longer exists. This kind of thing isn't my most common job, but I've done a few. It's surprising how careless some corporations are with old data like this. I think it's just arrogance-that was the old board, they didn't do anything right, why bother keeping the minutes around, and if there's no legal reason to do so, they just shove them somewhere. A new board is like a new government and anything that happened before them is by definition full of error. Nothing unusual, standard fee, I got a few leads where to start, and I went trolling. Turned about to be a real challenge. I could find traces of it, but it was obvious someone had gone to some trouble to hide it. Took me nearly a month to recover enough of it to make any kind of sense. I found it hiding in stockholder reports, maintenance logs, spread out through portfolio surveys, resumes, spread sheets. Bits of it even turned up in vacation itineraries. The program that hid it was sophisticated enough to actually reconstruct it all with the right command sequence, so it was obvious someone wanted to be able to recover it, otherwise a lot of it would have been corrupted beyond recognition."

Jeta grinned proudly. "But I did it. I found it all and reassembled it and put it into a package for the client. I was finishing it all up when I got a message on my comm that said, 'If you deliver what you have, we will kill you.' Very simple, very direct. Somehow, I didn't think it was crank. We don't get them often, but we do get threats, and there are procedures for dealing with them. I turned it over to my controller at the clearing house and delivered my package per our contract. When I got back to my hole I found a new message: 'You were given fair warning.' That's all it said. "

"No signature?" Ariel asked. "No source?"

"That's all it had to say, 'cause it wasn't the words that scared me, but the timing. I knew then I was being monitored-closely-and that my own system had been hacked."

"Did you try to trace it?" Coren asked.

Jeta scowled. "Of course I did! It ate at me. I've been scared before, especially back when I started out, but this was different-this had an edge to it. After a couple of days and I was still scared, I started making plans to disappear. I did my accounts, added things up, and it looked like I could make it work. I reconfigured my system three times to purge the intruders, then made inquiries to emigrate. I always wanted to, anyway-it was one of my two or three top retirement options. This decided the issue for me.

"No way I'd get my assets through ITE. I'd have to go baley and smuggle what I could. Meantime, I just kept on as always, living my life, doing business like I always had, making no moves I'd never made before. No flags, no warnings, nothing to tell anyone that anything had changed. The final vetting came through Baltimor for the Petrabor Egress-that's what they called it-and I started arranging everything to be ready to transfer at a heartbeat.

"Then you showed up with your request for data on the same baley group. I knew if I refused, you'd just use another troll and in the end it'd be the same result. I had to change my plans. I thought first maybe you were working for the gatos who'd threatened me. So I ran your profile. Imagine my surprise when I saw 'Special Service' pop up, then DyNan Manual Industries. What I saw, it didn't make sense you'd be hunting down a troll for anybody."

"I appreciate that," Coren said with mock sincerity.

"That didn't change anything. I couldn't know what I'd find if I turned up for my ride out."

"You might have asked me for help. "

Jeta shrugged. "Couldn't. Not then."

Coren nodded. "I understand."

"Yes, well. So I left everything as it was, kept the arrangements intact, and made different plans. I did your job, handed over the data, and headed home to disappear. That's when I was attacked. I got away by being just small enough for some crannies others can't use.

"No one waited for me at my hole, so I cleaned up, packed my stash, and ran. I made plans to go to the Bering port. I don't know how they figured that one, but the same gato found me at the tube in Lyzig."

"How did you escape that time?" Ariel asked after a long silence.

"Screamed." Jeta gave them a wan smile. "Too many people, too much attention. He walked away. I felt like a fool standing there in the middle of the platform yelling at the top of my lungs. But not so foolish I wouldn't do it again if I had to. That's when I decided to find Mr. Lanra here. I thought to myself, 'He started all this, he can fix it: "

"I wish I could, Jeta," Coren said. "I had no idea."

"I saw that pretty quick-you weren't part of those gatos trying to kill me. But you fouled up my egress. You drew attention to it. For all I knew, you were going to show up with immigration cops and arrest them all. I couldn't take the chance. Now…" She swallowed loudly. "I want out, Mr. Lanra. I want away from Earth. I want my life. I'll work for you till you can do all that for me. "

"I'll try, Jeta. I can't promise. I don't even know who these people are. They hacked my system, too."

Jeta blinked, her eyes moist. She nodded calmly and looked at Wenithal. "Who are you?"

"Forgive me, I've been remiss. I'm Ree Wenithal. This is my apartment."

"Ah. Nice place."

"Thank you. "

"Jeta." Ariel leaned on the back of the sofa. "That job you did, the minutes…who was it for?"

"Umm…there's a small matter of confidentiality involved. I'm not sure-"

"Someone is trying to kill you over those minutes," Ariel said, her voice intensely reasonable. "I think it would be understandable for you to set confidentiality aside in this instance."

Jeta nodded. "Yeah, well…it was an intermediary, you understand, but I checked into him before I accepted. The contract was from Myler Towne of Imbitek." Jeta claimed to be dead tired. Wenithal showed her into his bedroom and let her sleep. He went into the kitchen and returned with another cup of coffee. His hand shook slightly as he poured it.

Coren said nothing. He joined Ariel on the sofa and spoke quietly.

"That's not Jeta," he said.

"Then who is she?"

Coren shrugged. "Maybe we'll find out. It's interesting, though-Towne tried to hire me away from Looms. Someone tried to assassinate Towne. He doesn't trust his own security anymore."

Wenithal came back into the room and, cup in hand, sat down in a chair.

"Alda Mikels is being released from prison in a couple of days, " Ariel said.

"If you're wondering if there's a connection, I've been wondering that, too. But what would a disagreement between Mikels and Towne have to do with a bunch of baleys?"

"Perhaps," Wenithal said ponderously, "the connection is sleeping in the next room."

"Seems rather heavy-handed," Ariel said, "to murder fifty innocent people just to get one. Especially after the thing you're trying to prevent has already occurred."

"You mean the delivery of the data she found?" Coren asked. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, but…we have more murders to explain, though."

"Brun's," Wenithal said. "Ms. Fromm said she went through the Baltimor District to set up her egress?"

"She said that, yes," Ariel confirmed.

"Brun headed the ITE customs office in Baltimor, " Coren said. "But…"

"Ghost connections," Wenithal said. "Implications, suggestions, hints-nothing solid. Except that Brun is dead." He stared down at his coffee, eyes narrowed.

"Nyom had nothing to do with any of them," Coren said.

"But her father did," Ariel said. "Maybe Nyom's mystery brother did, too."

"Oh, definitely," Wenithal said.

Coren looked at him. "When I told you Nyom had died, you said something about 'both of them now: What did you mean?"

Wenithal scowled. "You heard that?"

"I cheat a lot," Coren said. "You're not denying it. What did you mean?"

"Rega Looms did have a child before Nyom. A son. A very sick son. A UPD."

"I've heard that abbreviation before," Ariel said, "but I've never been clear on what it means."

"Untreatable Physiological Dysfunction," Coren said.

"I know what it stands for. But what's untreatable? Even if Terran medicine can't deal with something, we have some agreements covering humanitarian aid. Spacer medicine is-"

"Unable to deal with these," Wenithal said. "I'm not clear myself on what they are, but some of them are horrible. Most are just chronically debilitating illnesses; a good portion of them are transmissible. The only recourse is quarantine. Looms' first child contracted one when he was barely a year old."

"So it was institutionalized?"

"Had to be. The law. And it died shortly thereafter. I imagine it crushed him. It would me."

"How did you come to know about it?" Coren asked.

"Rega Looms was one of the principle investors in Nova Levis," Wenithal explained. "A research firm established to take advantage of some of the first influxes of Spacer med tech. Everyone thought it would take off on the market, but it didn't do well the first couple of years. Then, suddenly, it had almost unlimited cash flow."

"Black market?" Ariel asked.

"Worse. It turned out to be the main channel for all those missing babies. We shut it down."

"That's not what the record says," Coren pointed out. "Nova Levis was cleared and operated long after your investigation. "

"The record often disagrees with reality," Wenithal said. "The truth was that too many important people had invested in it and too many of them had embarrassing connections with it. Very simple: We turned off the pipeline, told the public it was clear, and then put it on the market. We disassembled it without harming any of the major shareholders."

"That must have been an impressive list of shareholders, " Ariel said.

"Oh, it was! You'd be shocked."

"Looms divested early, though," Coren said. "Quite some time before it closed."

"I think he did it out of extreme disappointment. They couldn't cure his child, so he wanted nothing to do with it. I can't imagine how he must feel right now."

"Why did you retire after all that?" Coren asked.

"Because I wasn't finished and they weren't going to let me finish. I traced the kidnappings to Nova Levis, but they were going somewhere. I thought it had to be offworld. To save those prominent citizens' reputations, I was not allowed to follow the leads. I was feted, medaled, and promoted-and basically told to drop it. It ate at me till I couldn't stand it anymore. I presented an ultimatum: either I'm allowed to pursue the case or I quit." He raised his hands, palms up, and let them fall.

"You didn't try to look into it yourself?"

"Not very aggressively. I was already known to those involved. I knew I wouldn't be very effective." Wenithal shook his head. "No, this was the only way: wait for someone new, with no attachments to the old case. We couldn't go looking for anyone because that might set off alarms in all the wrong places. "

Coren turned all this over in his mind. It sounded just a bit glib, rehearsed, but that did not make it less true. To be sure, Ree Wenithal had been living with this for a long time. In his place, Coren believed he might have it well worked out by now.

But Coren found it unconvincing. It did not explain Wenithal's connection to Brun Damik, or why Damik would go to Wenithal after Coren confronted him.

"Where was Nova Levis?" he asked.

"Hmm? Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, one of the undine enclaves. Um…Teluk Tolo, Indones Sector."

"Maybe it would be worthwhile to take another look at it," Coren said.

"It's gone. There's nothing there anymore, just a shell. It was all sold off. I think it was converted to a processing plant for raw materials or something."

"You won't mind if we try, will you?"

Wenithal sneered. "Don't be sarcastic. I'm doing you a favor telling you any of this."

"Of course," Coren said. "You're such a model citizen. If I had more time I'd be more polite about it."

"Mr. Wenithal, " Ariel cut in, frowning at Coren, "you're expecting trouble. Have you been followed?"

"Not that I know of, but they killed Brun. I'm next, logically. What would you think?"

"I think you should move somewhere safer."

"And where might that be?"

"The Auroran embassy. I don't think you can be gotten to there."

"You think?"

"I don't know what exactly we're up against. Do you want me to lie and guarantee your safety?"

"We wouldn't want you to do that. " Wenithal shook his head. "I've never run from a fight. Besides, it might look odd."

"You'd look very odd crushed to death," Coren said.

"Crushed?"

"Judging from the victims we've seen, it looks like crushing is the favored method."

Wenithal considered that and shuddered. "I've never been to the Auroran embassy." He shrugged. "If it would put your minds at ease…"

"I could always leave you here with Jeta," Coren said then.

Wenithal frowned at him.

"How long have you known her?" Coren asked.

"I don't-"

"Stop it. She didn't follow me here. She came to see you."

Wenithal laughed. "Why would a data troll want to see me?"

"I can't think of a single reason. But she's not a data troll. You were waiting for someone to show up tonight, someone you thought might kill you. So far, we've shown up, and Jeta Fromm has shown up. " Coren held up his hands. "Is there a mistake in my logic?"

"You're guessing," Wenithal said.

"So, do you stay here, or do we go to the Auroran Embassy?"

Wenithal sighed. "All of us?"

"I'm not letting Jeta-or whatever her name is-get away from us."

"If she's not Jeta," Ariel said, "then who-?"

"I'm guessing a woman named Tresha," Coren said. "You've done business with her before, Mr. Wenithal. but I imagine you've never done any with her partner-Gamelin. "

Wenithal stared at Coren now with undisguised resentment. "Like I said, I've never been to the Auroran Embassy before. "

"If I'm right, getting there might be an interesting problem," Coren said.

Ariel smiled at him. "Leave that part to me."

Coren turned away, muttering under his breath, "I knew you were going to say that…"