Infinity Beach

11

The package arrived at midafternoon. They checked the contents, a single filmy glove which was carefully packed in a translucent case. Kim put the case, with the glove still in it, in the pocket of her jacket.

They spent the day sightseeing, although Kim was too nervous to enjoy it. She picked at her meals and, as the sun began to fade, they took one of the moving skyways into Kaydon Center. The temperature was dropping and the wind had risen.

The Archives looked bleak in the hard dusk. The last visitors were filing out, their coats pulled tight around them. The pebbled walkways and the landing ramps had been swept clear of snow. A cab was lifting off as they approached from the direction of the reflecting pool. A thin layer of ice had formed on the surface. Solly was uncharacteristically subdued as they walked.

“You’re sure there’s no visual surveillance?” she asked, for the third or fourth time.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Only in Freedom Hall, or if the system doesn’t like your DNA.”

She considered what getting caught would do to her career. Indeed, she’d thought of little else for the past day.

And she’d have felt better if they had a flyer available, in case they needed to leave in a hurry. But parking a flyer on the pad might draw attention. If things went wrong, Solly had insisted, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. The authorities would know who they were before they could get out of the building.

“You still sure you want to do this?” he asked yet again.

“What do you think they’ll do to us if we get caught?”

“Work farm for several months. Probably a couple of days in the cube.” The cube was a transparent cell located in a public place, so that everyone who knew a convicted criminal could observe the sad state to which he or she had fallen. Relatives, family members, and friends were all notified, and they could come in person or watch the humiliation from their living rooms. It was, she thought, a particularly cruel mode of punishment for a supposedly enlightened society.

She could see the headlines:

They approached the front entrance and turned right onto a pathway that circled the building. “There’s no point in both of us going in,” said Kim. “I know what I’m looking for. Why don’t you wait outside? I mean, we’re—”

“—I’ve come this far,” said Solly. “You may need me.”

They turned off at a secondary entrance, climbed a ramp, and stood before a glass door. Inside, a corridor was lined with offices.

The reader clicked open and a line of instructions appeared:

Kim glanced around to be sure no one was watching. She took the container from her pocket, lifted out the glove, slipped it on, pulled it tight, and showed it to Solly.

“Perfect,” he said.

She placed her fingertips on the designated spot. The lock clicked and the door opened. She and Solly stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind them.

The corridor was long and shadowy, lined with doors, its high ceiling gray and in need of repairs. The doors were translucent. Digital numbers and designators blinked on as they approached to identify what lay behind each. They passed Standards, Personnel, General Maintenance, Scheduling, Security, Special Operations.

No one else seemed to be in the building. “There are only nine or ten employees in the whole place,” said Solly. “During regular work hours.”

“The assistant commissioners.”

“Right. And a few directors. And systems analysts. Everybody has a title. All the routine work is automated. As far as I could determine, nobody hangs around after closing time.”

It was of course the cue for contradiction. They’d gone only a few meters farther when a lock clicked behind them, in the direction of Freedom Hall. They watched an office door open. A man in a green worksuit stepped into view and looked curiously at them.

Kim felt her heart stop. Her natural impulse was to bolt.

“Walk naturally,” whispered Solly, taking her firmly by the arm, inspecting one of the designators, nodding as if he’d found what he wanted, and turning directly toward the worker.

The man frowned. He was olive-skinned, with wide shoulders, and an expression that suggested he’d been having a difficult afternoon.

“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

Solly waved an ID in his general direction. “Security check,” he said. “Everything quiet here?”

“Far as I know.”

“Good.” Solly glanced meaningfully at one of the office doors. “Thanks.” He pushed gently against it and nodded his satisfaction that it didn’t open. Kim took the hint and tried one on the other side of the corridor. They proceeded past the man in the worksuit, and strolled down the passageway, continuing the process of periodically testing offices.

He watched them until they reached a cross corridor and turned out of his field of view. “What do you think, Solly?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we were very smooth.” They listened for footsteps. When they heard none, she peeked around the corner and saw that he was letting himself out of the building. “I think we’re clear,” she said.

Solly consulted his notes and led her down to the next cross passage and turned left. They came to a section marked RECORDS, and found a door whose designator read,

Solly produced a batch of universal keys in a wallet. They were plastic chips, each coded to fit numerous interior locks then in service. He had to try four or five in the dex before the lock moved and the door opened.

“You’d have made a good burglar,” she told him.

He looked pleased. “They just don’t worry about break-ins. Not back here. Out front, where the Instrument is, yes. If a mosquito gets in, alarms go off, guards come running, the doors come down. But back here, it’s a whole different game. Nobody cares about old files.”

They went in and closed the door behind them.

It was a cubbyhole. A small window looked out into a tiny courtyard. Kim sat down at the lone terminal and brought up the menu. She needed less than two minutes to locate EIV 4471886 Hunter, Arrival Date 30 March 573, Command Log.

“Got it,” she said. She inserted a disk and instructed the computer to download.

Solly held a finger to his lips. Footsteps outside. He moved behind the door so he’d be out of sight if anyone looked in. Kim scrunched down behind the desk.

Voices.

Two people, talking, and then laughing. They moved on.

Kim was surprised to discover a sense of elation. She squeezed Solly’s shoulder. “What?” he asked.

“We should do more of this,” she said.

Sheyel adjusted the cushions in his dragon chair. “Kim, it’s good to hear from you. Do you have news?”

“Probably not. I wanted to thank you for tracking down Yoshi’s shoe size.”

“It was nothing. Now will you tell me why you asked?”

“We found a grip shoe at Kile’s villa. Fits the size.”

“Oh?”

“That’s all we have for the moment. And it probably doesn’t mean anything.”

He was silent.

“I need more information.”

“Of course. If I have it.”

“Was there anything artificial about Yoshi’s body? Anything that a sensor might detect?”

His eyes slid shut. “I don’t think so.”

“Any kind of artificial enhancement, maybe? Or something that had been repaired?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing that I know about. She had an accident once playing wraparound. Had to get a couple of her teeth capped.”

“I don’t think there’s anything there we can use. Okay, Sheyel. I’ll see if I can find another way. In the meantime, if you think of anything, give me a call.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Kim. I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

She switched off, poured herself a drink, glanced at a code she’d written on a piece of paper, and punched it in.

“Hello?” Mike Plymouth’s voice. She left the visual off.

“Hi, Mike.” She made her voice as soft as she could.

“Hello, Kay. I thought I’d hear from you.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I can’t make it tonight.”

“Oh. Well—You are all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Another night, maybe?”

She’d pushed Solly out of the room. Now she wished he were there. “I don’t think so. There’s really no point.”

“Oh.” He was fumbling for something to say. Something to retrieve the situation. Or save his pride.

“I’m sorry.” She thought about making up a story. Something to spare his feelings. I’m already committed. I was cheating yesterday. But she let it pass. “I’m just really tied up right now.”

“I understand.” The room grew still. “Goodbye, Kay.” Then he was off the line and she was staring at the link.

“Goodbye, Mike,” she said.

They arranged to have the hotel deliver some cheese and wine and settled back to watch the Hunter logs. Kim put the disk into the reader, set it for the screen, sampled the cheese, and turned to Solly. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded and she started the program.

Titles appeared, identifying the ship, setting the time and place, listing commercial cargo (“None”), and describing the general nature of the flight. The date, translated to Seabright time, was February 12. Date of departure from St. Johns.

The early visuals were from the outstation, depicting technicians and maintenance staff working on the Hunter. Solly described what they were doing, these checking life support maintenance, those topping off water supplies.

“We’ll get two sets of records,” he explained. “One will be the data flow from the various shipboard systems, life support, navigation, power plant, and so on. The other will be a visual record of what’s happening in the pilot’s room. The imagers will only record movement. If the room is empty, or if the pilot’s asleep—” he held out his hands, palms up, “—nada.”

“How much work is there for a pilot to do, Solly?”

“It’s a tough profession, Kim. It takes a high level of intelligence, extensive knowledge, great reflexes—”

Her eyes closed. “Solly—”

“Trade secret?”

“Go ahead. You can trust me.”

“You could jettison the pilot at any time and be perfectly safe.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The pilot does three things: he talks to the ground, tells the AI where to go, and takes over if the AI blows up. Which never happens.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. And the AI can talk to the ground.” He fast-forwarded past the technicians. They whirled through their tasks, and then disappeared and the screen went blank. The clock leaped forward two hours. The next sequence gave them Markis Kane coming into the pilot’s room.

This was Kane more than forty years after the war, but there was of course no physical difference between the man who sat in the cabin of the Hunter, and the man whose image was prominently displayed at the Mighty Third Memorial Museum. This later version might have been a little less lean, and his features might have been a trifle harder. Otherwise, he was the same person.

He wore a blue jumpsuit with a shoulder patch depicting the Hunter orbiting a ringed planet, with the motto PERSISTENCE. His black hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven. He had a natural youth and vitality that rendered him quite attractive, Kim thought. He was a war hero, and he had the soul of an artist. Quite a resume.

The pilot’s room was not radically different from the one she’d seen during her inspection of the Hunter. The two chairs were different, the carpeting was lighter, the walls darker. But the instrument layout did not seem to have changed.

Kane sat down in the left-hand chair and picked up a notepad. Kim watched him go methodically through a checklist. The procedure lasted about ten minutes. When he’d finished, he got out of his chair and left the room. She recalled the layout of the Hunter, and knew that the pilot’s room opened onto the upper level of the rotunda. The imager stopped recording. The clock jumped ahead sixteen minutes and Kane reentered, eased into his seat, and began touching blinkers.

“Hunter ready to depart.”

“Hunter, you are clear to go.”

He touched a stud on the chair arm. “We are thirty seconds from departure, folks. Buckle in.” His own harness came down over his shoulder and locked in place. The chair moved to face forward.

At the time of the Hunter flight, St. Johns was on the edge of known territory. That was still true. No deeper outpost existed. Several hundred missions had gone beyond, but that was a trivial number spread against so vast a region. There was an ongoing argument among the Nine Worlds about who should bear the financial burden of maintaining the outstation. Traffic had fallen precipitously, and the station no longer supported itself. There was talk of closing it down.

The Hunter edged forward. Kim watched the umbilicals detach. The dock began moving past on the overhead screen and in the windows, moving quicker, and then it dropped away. The acceleration pressed Kane back into his chair. He spoke briefly with the operations people, and noted for the record that the ship was clear, on course, and all conditions were nominal.

Solly moved the record forward. Kane remained alone in the room, watching his instruments, occasionally talking to the AI. Then, about a quarter-hour into the flight he spoke into his intercom again: “We are going to initiate acceleration to jump status in five minutes. Emily and Kile know about that. Yoshi, once it begins you won’t be able to move. It’ll last roughly twenty-five minutes. Anything you need to do, this is a good time to take care of it.”

“The jump engines feed off the mains,” Solly explained. “Most systems require almost a half hour of steady one-gee acceleration before they can lock in enough power to make the jump to hyperspace.”

Kane got on a channel that was probably private and told Kile Tripley that Hunter should be scheduled for a general overhaul on her return. Kim fast-forwarded the record until a bank of green lamps lit up the console. “Going hyper,” Kane said.

Lights blinked, dimmed, brightened, blinked again.

Kane looked at his instruments and, apparently satisfied, told his passengers that the jump was completed. He asked each of them to check in, and informed them they were free to walk about as they liked. He got up, stretched, and left the room. The imager shut down.

The clock ran off seven minutes and he was back in with Tripley. The mission leader had been rethinking the destinations, and was considering going here instead of there. A larger number of old class Gs in one area, too much radiation thrown off by nearby young supergiants in another. Here was a new order of places he’d like to visit. They’d still go to their initial series of targets. But after that he wanted to make the adjustment. Could Kane manage it without undue difficulty?

The captain suggested he leave the list. “I don’t see any problem, Kile,” he said. “We’ll need to work out what it’ll do to the duration of the flight. Otherwise—” He held out his hands to indicate he’d go along with whatever Kile preferred.

During the balance of that first day, and for much of the time following, the pilot’s room was empty. The clock leaped forward over durations of several hours at a time. The calendar began to click off numbers. At precisely 8:00 A.M. daily, Kane entered, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or another of the crew, and studied the control panel. He talked to the AI, in effect asking it whether there were any anomalies, whether it foresaw any difficulties, whether there were anything it wished to call to his attention. The interactions acquired a ceremonial quality.

“It’s a precaution,” Solly said. “Required by the regs. They’ve built in a lot of redundancy, so it’s hard to imagine any sequence of events that could lead to trouble without alarms going off in plenty of time. Still, we all go through the same routine. Truth is, I think it’s intended to make the pilot feel as if he’s got something to do.”

Here for the first time Kim saw the living Yoshi Amara. She was vibrant and alive and full of enthusiasm for the mission, absolutely convinced that they would not come home without success. She was, Kim thought, a gorgeous young woman. Dark hair, dark eyes, offset by a gold chain and a gold bracelet.

“She must have had money,” said Solly.

Kile Tripley seemed to enjoy the pilot’s room. Other than the pilot, he spent more time there than anyone, often slumped back in the right-hand chair, his long legs crossed, usually reading, sometimes making notes. When Kane was present, or one of his colleagues, he tended to talk about what it would be like to round the curve of a new world, gliding into the night, and see patches of light across its continents. Kim understood that he’d made that run countless times, and that the night had always remained unbroken. As it had through the whole of human history.

“Can you imagine what it would mean,” Tripley said over and over, “if we can find them?” Not whether they’re there, but if we can find them.

Kim saw what Tripley apparently did not, that Kane did not believe there was anything to find; or if there was, that it was so thoroughly lost among the stars that there could be no realistic hope for success. We could continue crossing the terminators without result, his dark eyes implied, until we get tired of it and find a more useful outlet for the Foundation’s resources.

But he must have seen no point in actively discouraging his employer. Yes, he said, the Golden Pitcher’s rich with class Gs, yellow suns like Sol and Helios. Travel time among them would be relatively short. They could cover a lot of ground in a year.

We will cover a lot of ground, Tripley would say. And: “We’re going to do it this time, Markis. I know it.”

Kane inevitably responded with a nod and an abstract gaze, agreeing with Tripley but informing Kim that this was the conversation they always had. And nobody had ever found anything.

She was looking for an indication of tension between the two, but there was nothing to imply they did not get along, even though the personalities of the two men were vastly different: Kane was cool, deliberative, skeptical, methodical. Tripley was a believer, inclined to follow his emotions. But his instincts were good, and he was generally rational, other than his fixation on celestials. He had his own vision of the world and did not allow reality to intrude. Had he been devoted to religion, he would have been among those who argued that there was a God and a heaven, because otherwise what would be the point of life? Kim’s overall impression was that he was a man who had never quite grown up. But it was clear he was utterly devoid of malice. She discarded the possibility that he might have killed Yoshi. Or anyone.

She glanced at his record. He had completed twenty-nine missions in search of his grail, totaling almost twenty-five years off-world. That qualified him as a fanatic, an Ahab. No wonder Hunter’s motto was Persistence.

Later, to Emily, Kane delivered a more realistic assessment: “We’d need a hundred of these boats,” he said. “A thousand. Headed every which way. Then there might be a chance.”

Emily too had understood the odds.

This was the first time Kim had seen her sister in private interactions. They were three days into the flight before she came into the pilot’s room and Kim was finally able to observe her. Kane was already there, doing his morning routine. She strolled up behind him and squeezed his shoulder. Kane looked back at her and Kim understood that the presence of the imager, recording everything, was an impediment to them.

Solly glanced over at her but said nothing.

Emily slipped gracefully into the right-hand seat. She wore the mission jumpsuit, open at the neck just enough to reveal the curve of her breasts.

Kane commented that everything was going well. It was a nondescript remark, small talk, but his voice had dropped an octave. “They’re lovers,” Kim said, more to herself than to Solly.

There was nothing overt, of course. Kane and Emily gazed at each other with the kind of forced indifference that can only be displayed by people in love who are trying to hide the fact.

Yoshi was just out of her teens. Her grades had suggested promise, but she too was caught up in chasing the Dream. Kane took time whenever the opportunity offered to caution her that the missions had gone out many times. That it looked easy when there were hundreds of class Gs within a narrow field. That, despite the assumption that it was just a matter of finding the right one, there was no guarantee that there was a right one. No assurance that any star anywhere, other than Sol, had produced life. Accept the possibility, he told her. “We may be alone.”

“It could not be,” she said. “It’s a basic scientific principle that nothing is unique.”

Kim noticed that the crew of the Hunter never talked about finding an amoeba. Judging from all the conversation about how to handle a first encounter, what kind of technology to look for, what dangers might be posed by an immensely advanced celestial, she saw that the discovery of a blade of grass, everybody else’s ambition, would have been a distinct disappointment to this outfit. At the very least, they hoped to unearth ruins somewhere, evidence that another intelligence had existed.

“Until we show that it can happen somewhere else,” said Kane, “we have to accept the possibility that the human race was divinely created.”

She laughed at the idea, but Kane smiled back. “How else would you explain it?” he asked. “The universal silence?”

She had no answer.

Kim listened as they discussed their strategy. First step was to calculate the area of a given sun’s biozone, and then to find the elusive blade of grass. Once they had done that, had found a living world, then they would proceed to hunt for evidence of intelligence, past or present.

It was all very optimistic. But after all, Tripley said at one point, that’s what makes it worth doing. “It wouldn’t really be very sporting, would it, if there were life in every other system?”

By four A.M. Kim and Solly had reviewed the first six days of the mission, looking for hostility among the members of the research team, for indications of anything that might lead eventually to murder. It might have seemed a handicap that they were barred from overhearing conversations anywhere other than the pilot’s room, that in fact those who spoke for the record knew they were doing so, yet it was evident that the crew members got along well. Kane was almost always present during these dialogues, and there was never more than one other person with him, except on one occasion when Yoshi and Tripley arrived with sandwiches and beer.

There were some differences of opinion, minor and unavoidable among a group of people who talked politics and history, science and philosophy, apparently ran a book discussion group, and engaged in virtual gaming. Kim and Solly were never privy to the games, but they judged by what they heard afterward that they included a fair amount of sexual byplay. There was, however, no evidence of tension between Kane and Tripley, or between the women. Apparently there was an arrangement, but Kim couldn’t sort out its precise nature.

Solly had fallen asleep. Kim was weary but she wanted to hang on until she found out what would happen. If indeed anything would happen. She’d begun to fast-forward through the conversations, planning to come back later and listen more closely. Sometimes Kane was alone in the pilot’s room, reading, writing in a notebook, occasionally doing sketches on a pad which he kept on a side table. She thought she detected an early version of the Autumn.

She was moving quickly through the record when she saw, for the first time, an empty pilot’s room. A klaxon was sounding and lights were blinking. She noted the time: 11:17 P.M., February 17, the fifth day of the mission.

The picture went to a split screen, adding a shadowy area that she recognized as the engine room.

She woke Solly.

“Problem with the jump engines, looks like,” he said.

“But they’re in flight, right? Coasting. The jump engines aren’t actually doing anything at this point, are they?”

“They’re still online,” Solly explained, “and any of a number of things can go wrong.” He brought up the data stream and examined it for a few minutes. “Auxiliary feed system,” he said. “It’s a redundant safety feature. Monitors the antimatter flow controls during the jump. If there’s a problem, it takes over.”

“You mean the engines would still work okay without the system in place?”

“Oh, sure. But you don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because antimatter is a cranky fuel. It has a tendency to blow out controls. If the secondary system isn’t there, and you get any kind of overload at all, you can kiss your baby blues goodbye.”

Solly switched back to the visual record in time to see Kane come down the stairs into the engine room. Emily, wrapped in a robe, was right behind him. He paused before a console, touched it, and the alarms died. “It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re not in danger.”

He sat down at a monitor and was paging through schematics when the others arrived. “It’s the auxiliary feed system,” he said. “We’re going to have to abort the mission.”

“Abort?” Emily looked stricken. “Is it really that serious? Can’t we fix it?”

Kim knew she would have asked whether they were in trouble.

“I can jury-rig it temporarily. But we don’t want to be running around the Golden Pitcher with a busted AFS.”

“Why not?” asked Tripley. “What exactly is the risk?”

“Hard to put a number on it. It’s a safety device that we won’t need unless we need it. If you follow me. But my opinion doesn’t matter. The regs require us to head back.”

“Who’d ever know?”

“I would. We die out here, it’d be my responsibility.” He took a deep breath. “It’s not the end of the world, Kile. There’ll be another day.”

“Yeah.” Tripley glared at the engine as if it had deliberately betrayed him. “Okay, what do we do now?”

“I need a few hours to work on it. Make some temporary repairs. We’ll get out of hyper and do the job. When I’m finished, we’ll jump back in and head for home.”

“They have to get out of hyperspace,” Solly explained, answering the question he saw in her face, “in case something goes wrong. It’s a precaution against getting stranded.”

“Bingo,” said Kim. “This is where the encounter happens.”

“Home?” Tripley said. “Why not St. Johns? Why go all the way back home?”

“It’s a major job. Not the kind of thing they do out there. They’d do what I’m about to, put together a patchwork solution. But to get recertified for flight, we need Sky Harbor.”

Emily gazed up at Tripley. “I’m sorry, Kile.” She made a sympathetic face.

“Okay,” he said. “Do it. Goddammit.”

Kane opened a channel to the AI. “Hunter, abort TDI. Take us out.”

“Wait a minute,” said Kim. “Are they near a star?”

“Don’t know,” said Solly. “Depends how you define near. If you mean inside a planetary system, I’d say it’s real unlikely.”

“Then this isn’t right. They have to go sight-seeing. They have to decide to come out near one of the seven stars.”

Solly shook his head. “It’s not going to happen.”

She watched Tripley leave the pilot’s room, watched Emily and Kane belt down. The AI counted off the minutes, and then they sailed out of hyperspace. They were in a heavily populated area of Orion, and the sky was filled with great clouds of stars. She couldn’t see enough of it to determine whether there was a nearby sun.

They fast-forwarded. Kane used two hours to make his repairs. Then he alerted the others they were ready to go, and they began the acceleration toward the jump. Twenty-five minutes later they slipped uneventfully back into hyperspace and started the long journey to Sky Harbor.

The eastern sky was beginning to brighten, and a brisk wind rattled the windows. “I just don’t believe it,” she said.

He shut off the computer, glanced meaningfully at her, slid back on the sofa, and closed his eyes. “Looks like it was all a false alarm,” he said.

Her commlink woke her. “Kim?” It was Matt’s voice. Flat. That set off alarms. “Where are you?”

“In Salonika,” she said.

“Were you planning on checking in any time soon?”

“I assumed you’d call if you needed me, Matt.” She kept it on audio.

“I need you.”

She sighed. “Okay. What are we doing?”

“A delegation of physicians and surgeons is coming in tomorrow. We’ve offered them a tour of the Institute.”

“Okay. I’ll be there. What time?”

“Ten.”

“I’m on my way.”

“It’s an opportunity to do some good public relations. Media will be here. And Johnson.”

World’s leading cosmologist. Guarantees lots of attention.

“We’re going to spring for lunch. I’d like you to accompany the tour and talk to them over the salad.”

She listened, said she’d take care of it, and started to disconnect.

“I’m not through yet.”

“What’s wrong, Matt?”

Solly knocked softly and stuck his head into the room. She waved him in.

“Have you been nosing around Sara Baines? Asking questions?”

“Sara Baines? Who’s Sara Baines?” She looked desperately at Solly.

His lips formed the words Deny everything.

“Tripley’s grandmother, for God’s sake. We got another complaint from him. Says somebody was out to interview his grandmother for a book. She can’t remember the title. But I don’t guess Tripley trusts you very much. He showed her your picture.”

“And?”

“She says no. But Tripley thinks it was you. Was it?”

“I guess I did it, Matt.”

She heard him let out his breath. “Kim, what am I going to do with you? Are you determined to lose your job? We’ve been through this before, and it’s not going to happen again. You will keep away from Tripley. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you.”

“Don’t take that tone with me. This is your career you’re playing with. If there’s a third round of this nonsense, I’m going to be forced to put you out on the street.”

“Matt, I don’t really have a choice—”

“You damned well do, Kim. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, but your sister’s a long time gone. Ease up, okay? For everybody’s sake.”

She was staring up at the imager. “Matt, we may have found one of Yoshi’s shoes in Tripley’s villa. At Severin.”

That got a long pause. Then: “You got a DNA match?”

“No. All we have is that it’s her size. But it’s a grip shoe.”

She could hear Matt thinking it over. “That sounds like lawsuit country. Kim, we’re talking about something that happened a long time ago. You’re grasping at straws.”

“I know,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

“He’s right,” Solly said.

She looked at him. “We need to find the body,” she said.

“Yoshi’s? How do you plan to do that?”

“It might not be all that hard. She wore gold.”