Infinity Beach

13

It was close at both ends.

When Air Rescue finally got to Solly they found him pinned against a gate in the powerhouse penstock. He had been in the water almost four hours.

He was not happy.

Nevertheless he and Kim were both on the scene next morning when police brought up a mummified corpse. It was wrapped in a plastic sheath.

The salvage operation was directed by a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired official who introduced himself as Inspector Chepanga. “Tell me about it,” he said.

He wore a black pullover sweater with a rolled collar. His beard was trimmed to a point, and he studied Kim with a world-weary attitude, suggesting that he fished corpses out of the Severin with depressing regularity. In that age of general prosperity and respect for law, the numbers might actually have run to once every few years.

“It’s Yoshi Amara,” Kim said. Solly was trying to signal her to be quiet, but she could see no point in that. She had no reason to protect Tripley or to hinder any investigation that might take place.

“How do you know? How did you know she was here?”

Kim explained about the shoe and the gold, and how they had conducted the search.

Chepanga listened, nodding occasionally, frowning frequently. At last he looked over at Solly, as if he at least should have known better. “You two are damned lucky to be alive,” he growled, suggesting he’d have been just as happy if Kim hadn’t created a problem for him.

The body had been weighed down with rocks. There wasn’t much left except teeth and bones. And a bracelet and a necklace.

“Tripley’s place?” asked Chepanga.

“Yes.”

He stared out over the river. “The trail’s a long time cold.”

Solly and Kim celebrated their escape from the Severin by treating themselves to lunch in the most expensive restaurant they could find. They toasted each other’s courage and good fortune, and Kim sat back to relish the moment. She assured him that he had behaved heroically, even if the rescue hadn’t gone as planned. She was genuinely touched by this new evidence of his willingness to put himself on the line for her. He seized the first opportunity to grumble about her foolhardiness and she admitted she’d been less than prudent. But there was much that was charming in his insistence that next time he’d appreciate it if she’d try listening to him for a change. She smiled and squeezed his hand and insisted on refilling his drink from the decanter. Solly looked at her as severely as he could manage. He was, in his own way, the most charming person she knew. Well, maybe not quite as charming as Mike Plymouth. But Solly was unique. Toward the end of the meal, one of Chepanga’s assistants called to confirm it was Yoshi Amara.

Afterward they returned to the hotel, and she tried to reach Sheyel. The reception wasn’t good, trouble on the lines somewhere, and her old teacher’s image, when it finally appeared, lacked definition. It was fuzzy around the edges, particularly up around his shoulders, and occasionally he faded to near-transparency. Add his gloomy demeanor, and the result was spectral.

“I’m sorry,” Kim said, the words inadequate as always even though the victim had been dead almost three decades.

“Murdered?” he asked.

“The police are looking into it. But, yes, I’d say that’s a safe assumption.” Kim had given few details, had in fact few to give.

“In a river,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know how else to respond.

“Thank you, Kim. I appreciate what you’ve done.” He looked empty. She realized that until that moment he’d never really given up hope.

“What will you do now?”

“Wait for the results of the investigation.”

“I don’t want to sound discouraging, Sheyel, but with the principals dead, I doubt there’ll be much of an investigation.”

The picture cleared up. “Surely they’d want to establish the truth about this,” he said.

“Maybe. I have my doubts.”

“I see.” The image faded again, down to a silhouette. “Kim,” he said, “have you finished?”

“You mean, do I plan to pursue this any further?”

“Yes. That is what I mean. Because I honestly don’t understand—can’t imagine—what happened. I’ve done a lot of research on Tripley and Kane. I mean, I’ve looked at everything that’s available. I just don’t believe either of them is capable of murder.”

“Those are my thoughts exactly.”

“So are you going to continue?”

“To the extent that I’m able.”

“Then I want you to be careful. Yoshi’s killer may still be out there.”

“After all these years?” She tried to sound skeptical. “You have someone up there with you?”

“Yes,” she said. “A colleague. Solomon Hobbs.”

“Good. Stay close to him.”

Chepanga conducted a virtual interview that afternoon. He asked Kim to repeat her story in tedious detail. When she was finished he asked why she had become interested in the case. “End of the century,” she told him. “It got me reminiscing about the sister I’d lost.”

He had clearly hoped for more. He asked Solly whether he had anything to add.

Solly did not. “I was just trying to help a friend,” he said.

“How did she die?” Kim asked.

“Her neck was broken.”

“And what do you plan to do now?”

“We’ll conduct a thorough investigation, of course. Although we have to face the reality that it’s been a long time. A case of this nature—Well, we’ll do what we can.” He thanked her and blinked out.

“I think he’s telling us it’s over,” said Solly.

“He thinks Tripley did it, and Tripley’s dead. At least he’s legally dead.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess.” Solly fixed her with an odd look.

“What?” asked Kim.

“You promised Sheyel you’d press on. How do you go about pressing on?”

“I don’t know. There ought to be something we can do.” She still felt exhilarated after her derring-do in the river. Who’d have ever thought little Kimmy had that in her? “How about going out on the town?” she said.

“Absolutely.” He made drinks for them, swallowed his, excused himself, and went back to his bedroom. Minutes later he reappeared in a lemon-colored jacket. “The new me. What do you think?”

“Dazzling.”

“Bought it last week. For a special occasion.”

“Good. It should put us in the right frame of mind for taking the next step.”

“Us? How do you mean us?”

She canted her head and gazed steadily into his unblinking eyes. She was sending out a subliminal call for help and she knew it and Solly knew it. “I wouldn’t put any pressure on you, Solly,” she said.

“Of course not. And what,” he asked cautiously, “would the next step be?”

“To find out what happened to the relationship between Kane and Emily.”

They went to a show. Dancers, live music, a celebrity troop of singers, a comedian. The place was packed. Afterward they strolled along the skyways, enjoying the fountains and the bistros.

They stopped by the Top of the World for dinner. But they’d hardly been seated when a text message came in from Matt: We understand police found Amara’s body in Severin. Some of us are wondering how it happens that Institute personnel are involved.

“Some of us” translated to Philip Agostino, the onetime physics whiz who’d realized his tastes ran more to power than to science and who was now director of the Institute. “I suspect,” Solly said ominously, “there’ll be some fallout.”

After the experience in the river, trouble with her boss seemed of minor consequence. Kim ordered a bottle of wine far more expensive than she could afford, filled both glasses, and raised hers to Solly. “For all you’ve done,” she said.

Later, back in the hotel room, she looked again at the final conversation between Kane and Emily, as the Hunter approached Sky Harbor. The lights were dimmed in the pilot’s room, and they spoke in the casual manner of longtime colleagues.

“Thanks, Markis.”

“For what?”

“For getting us back. I know we put some pressure on you to continue the mission.”

“It’s okay. It’s what I would have expected.”

“As always, Markis, it was nice to spend time with you.”

She stopped it there, backed it up, went to get Solly, who was trying to read in another room, and reran the line.

“As always, Markis, it was nice to spend time with you.”

“Okay.” She went to a split screen, Emily and Markis again, from a conversation seven weeks earlier, shortly after Hunter had departed St. Johns. “Watch.”

Neither spoke. Emily squeezed Kane’s shoulder and slipped into the right-hand seat.

“We’re right on schedule,” he said.

She leaned toward him, as close as the restraints would permit. “Maybe this’ll be our time.”

“I hope so, Emily. I really do.”

“Listen to his voice,” Kim said. “Watch the body language.”

The two sat several minutes, talking about incidentals. But the manner of it, the tendency of each to reach out and touch the other broadcast their mutual passion. Kim froze the picture at a moment when they gazed soulfully at each other.

“I don’t know,” said Solly. “What are you trying to prove?”

“Inconsistency.”

She replayed the conversations in her mind and stared out at the skyline.

“Let me change the subject,” said Solly. “The Institute called a while ago. Harvey’s asked for some time off. They need a replacement pilot.”

“For—?”

“Taratuba.”

The black hole near the Miranda nebula. The genesis candidate. The Thomas Hammersmith was scheduled to leave in eleven days.

There was a suspicion, but little hard evidence, that Taratuba had created a false vacuum, had collapsed into a new big bang. A baby universe. The event, if it had in fact occurred, would have erupted into a different space-time continuum, forever separated from this universe. But theory held that if it were in fact happening, Kung Che radiation would be detectable around the hole. It might be a chance to touch the fires of creation. To make some progress on precreative conditions.

“You’d be gone quite a while,” she said.

“Several months.” He looked at her. “What do you think? Does it make a problem for you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I mean, this thing has lain fallow for thirty years.”

“Of course.”

“You think there’s anything to it?” he asked.

“To what?”

As if he’d been reading her thoughts: “Alternate worlds. A place where you and I are sitting in this same room, having this same conversation, except maybe we’ve figured out what’s going on.”

She shrugged. “Not my field, Solly. But I’d like to compare notes with the other Brandywine.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I wonder,” he said suddenly, “if there’s a place out there where we’re lovers?”

He blurted it out, as if he had to say it before some prohibition intervened. He looked uncomfortable in the wake of the remark, and she knew he would have called it back if he could.

She took his hand, not knowing quite what to say. There’d always been an unspoken understanding between them, a distance created by the knowledge that they would not risk a long friendship to a sexual encounter. But there were occasional hints, suggestions from Solly that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the status quo. Still, he was all the family she had, and she did not want to lose him. “I’d hope so,” she said cautiously, smiling, but using a neutral tone.

While Solly called the desk and booked tickets on the Snowhawk in the morning, Kim parked herself in front of the display and began running the Hunter logs again. Emily and Kane.

I love you, the early encounters said, the passion reciprocal. There was no way to miss it.

And: “As always, Markis, it was nice to spend time with you.”

The nonverbal cues were almost professionally correct, no suggestion of sexual tension, no touching, no wistful smiles. Nothing. Even the voices were friendly but detached. Pass the coffee.

“It’s all wrong,” she said aloud.

“If you figure it out,” said Solly, stretching, getting up from the sofa on which he’d been spread out, “let me know. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Kim put up her split screen again, Kane and Emily from early in the mission on one side, Kane and Emily saying goodbye on the other. She ran both sequences forward at normal speed, then backed them up and ran them again at one quarter. And then she saw it.

My God.

She reversed it and watched it again. There was no question.

She knocked on his door. “Solly.”

He came out with a sigh, securing his robe, wearing an expression of infinite patience. “Yes, Kim?” he said, emphasizing the aspirate.

She killed the sound and ran it for him. “Watch the seats,” she said.

He lowered himself onto the sofa. A table lamp burned steadily beside him. “What am I looking for?”

On the left side, the early conversation, the encounter coming to an end and Emily shifting her weight and beginning to rise. Kim stopped the picture.

On the right, the talk also winding down. Again Emily shifting her weight and getting up. Kim restarted the sequence, both images synchronized, both in slow motion. In each, Emily flicked the harness open with a graceful left hand and used the other to push off the chair arm.

She hit the pause function. “Do you see it?”

“I give up,” said Solly.

“Look at the seat.” The polymod fabric in the early sequence contained the unmistakable imprint of a human bottom. On the right, it was perfectly smooth.

“That’s strange,” he said.

They ran other sequences. Whenever anyone sat in the right-hand chair, the seat showed the imprint afterward before returning gradually to its own shape.

Anyone except Emily. Emily on the return flight.

But outward bound, she always left the imprint. Kim looked at the first conversation on the return flight:

“Can’t really expect to hit it right away,” said Markis. “We have to be patient.”

“We’ve been patient.”

“I know.”

Emily sat silently for several minutes. Then unbuckled. “Gotta go.”

Kane nodded as she rose.

Kim stopped the picture.

No imprint.

“Tell me what I’m thinking, Solly. You’re good at that.”

He scratched his head. “I’d say that on the return flight we’re looking at a virtual Emily.”

“So the logs are faked.”

Solly took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’d say so. But a missing crease in a seat isn’t compelling. Maybe the light wasn’t right.”

“How hard would it be to do this? To falsify a ship’s log?”

“It wouldn’t be easy. You have to get all the visuals right. You also have to make sure the data streams reflect the story you’re telling. When the Hunter makes a jump, the instruments have to show that.”

“Could you do it?”

“Fabricate a log?” His teeth glittered in the lamplight. “Yes. I think I could manage it. Given some time and the cooperation of my colleagues.”

“So why would they use a virtual Emily?”

“Because the real one wouldn’t cooperate.”

“—Or wasn’t functioning.” They stared at each other.

“It could be,” said Solly. “Look, no fraudulent log can stand up to a serious investigation. So, if you’re right, we should be able to show it convincingly. Everything on the visual record has to be consistent. The lighting is always about the same, but it changes as people move around in it. You’d have to match that up. There are too many details and there’s just no way to get them all absolutely right.”

She turned away from the screen and looked out at the city. “Kane?”

“Oh yes. It would have to be Kane. Have to be somebody intricately familiar with the ship.”

“Which brings us to the bottom line: What happened to Emily?”

“Let’s go slow, Kim. Let’s have the lab do an analysis and make sure you’re right.”

She nodded, sat down at the phone, and brought up the directory. She was looking for the Customs Service office at Sky Harbor. When she found it, she called through.

A uniformed officer appeared onscreen. “Greenway Customs.”

“Hello,” Kim said. “My name’s Brandywine. May I ask a hypothetical question?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Arriving passengers,” she said. “If anyone is supposed to be on a ship, but isn’t, you’d know, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. They have to pass physically through customs.”

“How about crew members?”

“They do too.”

“You have a manifest, then, and you check everyone against the manifest. And if someone doesn’t get off—”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I misunderstood you. If a person doesn’t get off, we don’t really care. We’re only concerned with people seeking entry onto Greenway.”

She decided to try another tack. “Does Customs keep a record of persons debarking from arriving vessels?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you interview everyone?”

“Not in person. Customs declarations are usually taken electronically.”

“If I were on the manifest, and I submitted a declaration, but I did not get off, would you know?”

“No, ma’am. We would not.”

Kim thanked him and disconnected. “I’m beginning to understand why Emily never got to her hotel.” She poured herself a drink but only stared at it. “She never got off the Hunter, did she?”

“We don’t know that.”

“Solly, what’s the penalty for falsifying logs?”

“It can be criminal, depending on circumstances. The very least penalty would be disbarment. Logs are sacred.”

“So it’s not something you’d do without a very good reason.”

“You got it.”

“All right, let me ask another question. If you created a bogus set of logs, what would you do with the originals?”

Solly’s brow wrinkled while he thought about it. “It would depend,” he said. “If I’d murdered somebody and thrown her out the air lock, then I’d certainly lose the originals. But if somebody else had done something, if my only participation in whatever this is about was as, say, part of a cover-up, then I’d keep the original logs in case I eventually needed to prove I didn’t do the murder.”

“That’s exactly the way I see it. Solly, who can we get to do an analysis of this thing? Somebody discreet?”

“I have a friend,” he said.

“In Seabright?”

“Yes.”

“Take it to him tomorrow, will you? Swear him to secrecy, but see if you can get confirmation. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Hard to say. Depends how busy he is. How much we’re willing to pay.”

“Okay. Make it worth his while. Call me when you get a result.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hang around here for a bit. See what else I can find out.” She opened a line to the desk and canceled her reservation on the morning train.