Marooned in Realtime

TWENTY-ONE

Yelén gave him the promised two days off and even removed the autons from his house. When he walked near a window, he could see something hovering just below the sill. He had no doubt it would come rushing in at the smallest sign of erratic behavior. Wil did his best to give no such sign. He did all his research away from the windows; Yelén might see his return to the diary as a bad method of recuperating.

But now Wil wasn't reading the diary. He was using all the (feeble) automation at his command to study it.

When Yelén came around with her list of places to visit and low-techs to talk to, Wil begged off. Forty-eight hours was not enough, he said. He needed to rest, to avoid the case completely.

The tactic bought him a week of uninterrupted quiet-probably enough time to squeeze the last clues from Marta's story; almost enough time to prepare his strategy. The seventh day, Yelén was on the holo again. "No more excuses, Brierson. I've been talking to Della." The great human-relations exert? thought Wil. "We don't think you're doing anything to help yourself. Three times the Dasguptas have tried to get you out of the house; you put them off the same way you do me. We think your 'recuperation' is an exercise in self-pity.

"So"-she smiled coldly —"your vacation is over." A light :,teamed at the base of his data set. "I just sent you a record of the party Fraley threw yesterday. I got his speech and most )f the related conversation. As usual, I think I'm missing nuances. I want you to —"

Wil resisted the impulse to straighten his slumped shoulders; leis plan might as well begin now. "Any more evidence of Nigh-tech interference?"

"No. I would scarcely need your help to detect that. But —"

Then the rest scarcely matters. But he didn't say it out loud.

Tot yet. "Okay, Yelén. Consider me back from psych leave."

"Good."

"But before I go after this Fraley thing, I want to talk to you and Delta. Together."

"Jesus Christ, Brierson! I need you, but there are limits." She looked at him. "Okay. It'll be a couple of hours. She's beyond Luna, closing down some of my operations." Yelén's holo flicked off.

It was a long two hours. This meeting was supposed to be a surprise. He wouldn't have forced things if he'd known Lu was not immediately available. Wil watched the clock; now he was stuck.

Just short of 150 minutes later, Yelén was back. "Okay, Brierson, how may we humor you?"

A second holo came to life, showing Della Lu. "Are you back at Town Korolev, Delta?" Wil asked.

There was no time lag to her reply. "No. I'm at my home, about two hundred klicks above you. Do you really want me on the ground?"

"Uh, no." You may be in the best possible position. "Okay, Della, Yelén. I have a quick question. If the answer is no, then f hope you will quickly make it yes.... Are you both still providing me with heavy security?"

"Sure." "Yes."

That would have to be good enough. He leaned forward and spoke slowly. "There are some things you should know. Most important: Marta knew who murdered her."

Silence. Yelén's impatience was blown away; she simply stared. But when she spoke, her voice was flat, enraged. "You stupid jerk. If she knew, why didn't she tell us? She had forty years to tell us." On the other holo, Della appeared to be swapped out. Has she already imagined the consequences?

"Because, Yelén, all through those forty years she was being watched by the murderer, or his autons. And she knew that, too."

Again, silence. This time it was Della who spoke. "How do you know this, Wil?" The distant look was gone. She was intent, neither accepting nor rejecting his assertions. He wondered if this were her original peace-cop personality looking out at him.

. "I don't think Marta herself guessed the truth during the first ten years. When she did, she spent the rest of her life playing a double game with the diary-leaving clues that would not alert the murderer, yet which could be understood later."

Yelén bent forward, her hands clenched. "What clues?"

"I don't want to say just yet."

"Brierson, I lived with that diary for a hundred years. For a hundred years I read it, analyzed it with programs you can't even imagine. And I lived with Marta for almost two hundred years before that. I knew every secret, every thought." Her voice was shaking; he hadn't seen such lethal fury in her since right after the murder. "You opportunistic slime. You say she left thoughts you could follow and I could not!"

"Yelén!" Della's interruption froze Korolev in midrage. For a moment, both women were silent, staring.

Yelén's hands went limp; she seemed to shrink in on herself. "Of course. I wasn't thinking."

Della nodded, and glanced at Wil. "Perhaps we should spell this out for you." She smiled. "Though I suspect you're way ahead of us. If the murderer had access to realtime while Marta was marooned, then there are consequences, some so radical that they caused us to dismiss the possibility."

"The killer did more than meddle with the length of the group jump; he did not even participate in it. That means the sabotage was not a shallow manipulation of the Korolev system; the killer must have deep penetration of the system."

Wil nodded. And who could have deeper penetration than the owner of the system?

"And if that is true, then everything that goes through Yelén's db's — including this conversation — may be known to the enemy. It's conceivable that her own weapons might be turned against us.... In your place, I'd be a bit edgy, Wil."

"Even granting Brierson's claims, the rest doesn't necessarily follow. The killer could have left an unlisted auton in realtime. That could be what Marta noticed." But the fire was gone from Yelén's voice. She didn't look up from the pinkish marble of her desk.

Wil said softly, "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"... No. In forty years, Marta could have outsmarted one of those, could have left clues that even I would recognize." She looked up at him. "Come on, Inspector. Get it over with. 'If the murderer could get into realtime, then why did she let Marta survive there?' That's the next rhetorical question, isn't it? And the obvious answer — 'It's just the sort of irrational thing a jealous lover might do.' So. I admit to being a jealous type. And I surely loved Marta. But no matter what either of you believes, I did not maroon her."

She was on the far side of anger. It was not quite the reaction Wil had expected. It really affected Yelén that her two closest colleagues —"friends" was still too strong a word-might think she had killed Marta. Given her general insensitivity to the perceptions of others, he doubted her performance was an act. Finally he said, "I'm not accusing you, Yelén.... You're capable of violence, but you have honor. I trust you." That last was a necessary exaggeration. "I would like some trust in return. Believe me when I say that Marta knew, that she left clues that you would not notice. Hell, she probably did it to protect you. The moment you got suspicious, the murderer would also be alerted. Instead, Marta tried to talk to me. I'm totally disconnected from your system, an inconsequential low-tech. I've had a week to think on the problem, to figure how to get this news to you with minimum risk of an ambush."

"Yet, for all the clues, you don't really know who the killer is.

Wil smiled. "That's right, Della. If I did, it would have been the first thing I said."

"You would have been safer to keep quiet, then, till you had her whole message figured out."

He shook his head. "Unfortunately, Marta could never risk putting solid information in her diary. There's nothing in any of the four cairns that will tell us the killer's name."

"So you've told us this just to raise our blood pressure? If she could communicate all you say, she sure as hell would tell us the enemy's name." Yelén was clearly recovering.

"She did, but not in any of the four cairns. She knew those would be 'inspected' before you ever saw them; only the subtlest clues would escape detection. What I've discovered is that there's a fifth cairn that no one, not even the murderer, knew about. That's where she wrote the clear truth."

"Even if you're right, that's fifty thousand years ago now. Whatever she left would be completely destroyed."

Wil put on his most sober expression. "I know that, Yelén, and Marta must have known it could be that long, too. I think she took that into account."

"So you know where it is, Wil?"

"Yes. At least to within a few kilometers. I don't want to say exactly where; I assume we have a silent partner in this conversation."

Della shrugged. "It's conceivable the enemy doesn't have direct bugs. He may have access only when certain tasks are executing."

"In any case, I suggest you keep a close watch on the airspace above all the places Marta visited. The murderer may have some guesses of his own now. We don't want to be scooped."

There was silence as Della and Yelén retreated into their systems. Then: "Okay, Brierson. We're set. We have heavy monitoring of the south shore, the pass Marta used through the Alps, and the whole area around Peacer Lake. I've given Della observer status on my system. She'll be running critical subsystems in parallel. If anybody starts playing games there, she should notice.

"Now. The important thing. Della is bringing in fighters from the Lagrange zones. I have a fleet I've been keeping in stasis; its next lookabout is in three hours. All together that should be enough to face down any opposition when we go treasure hunting. All you have to do is lie low for another three hours. Then tell us the cairn's location and we'll —"

Wil held up a hand. "Yes. Get your guns. But I'm going along."

"What? Okay, okay. You can come along."

"And I don't want to leave till tomorrow morning. I need a few more hours with the diary; some final things to check out."

Yelén opened her mouth, but no sound came. Della was more articulate. "Wil. Surely you understand the situation. We're bringing everything out to protect you. We'll be burning a normal year's worth of consumables every hour we stay on station around you. We can't do that for long; yet every minute you keep this secret, you stay at the top of someone's hit list-and we lose what little surprise we might have had. You've got to hustle."

"There are things I have to figure first. Tomorrow morning. It's the fastest I can make it. I'm sorry, Della."

Yelén muttered an obscenity and cut her connection. Even Della seemed startled by the abruptness of her departure. She looked back at Wil. "She's still cooperating, but she's mad as hell.... Okay. So we wait till tomorrow. But believe me, Wil. An active defense is expensive. Yelén and I are willing to spend most of what we have to get the killer, but waiting till tomorrow cuts the protection per unit time.... It would help if you could say how long things might drag out beyond that."

He pretended to think on the question. "We'll have the secret diary by tomorrow afternoon. If things don't blow up by then, I doubt they ever will."

"I'll be going, then." She paused. "You know, Wil, once upon a time I was a government cop. I think I was pretty good at power games. So. Advice from an old pro: Don't get in over your head."

Brierson summoned his most confident, professional look. "Everything will work out, Della."

After Della signed off, Wil went into the kitchen. He started to mix himself a drink, realized he had no business drinking just now, and scarfed some cake instead. Under all this pressure, it's just one bad habit or another, he told himself. He wandered back into the living room and looked out. In his era, letting a protected witness parade in front of a window would be insanity. It didn't matter much here, with the weapons and countermeasures the high-techs had.

The afternoon was clear, dry. He could hear dry rustling in the trees. Only a short stretch of road was visible. All the greenery didn't leave much to see. The only nice views were from the second floor. Still, he was getting fond of the place. It was a bit like the lower-class digs he and Virginia had started in.

He leaned out the window, looked straight up. The two autons were floating lower than usual. Farther up, almost lost in the haze, was something big. He tried to imagine the forces that must be piled up in the first few hundred klicks above him. He knew the firepower Della and Yelén admitted to. It far exceeded the combined might of all the nations in history; it was probably greater than that of any police service up to the mid-twenty-second. All that force was poised for the protection of one house, one man... more precisely, the information in one man's head. All things considered, it wasn't something he took much comfort in.

Wil reviewed the scenarios once more; what could happen in the next twenty-four hours? It would all be over by then, most likely. He was barely conscious of pacing into the kitchen, through the pantry, the laundry, the guest room, and back into the living room. He looked out the window, then repeated the traversal in reverse order. It was a habit that had not been popular with Virginia and the kids: When he was really into a case. he would wander all through the house, cogitating.

Ninety kilos of semiconscious cop lumbering down halls and through doorways was a definite safety hazard. They had threatened to hang a cowbell around his neck.

Something brought Brierson out of the depths. He looked around the laundry, trying to identify the strangeness. Then he realized: He'd been humming, and there was a silly grin on his face. He was back in his element. This was the biggest, most dangerous case of his life. But it was a case. And he finally had a handle on it. For the first time since he had been shanghaied, the doubts and dangers were ones he could deal with professionally. His smile widened. Back in the living room, he grabbed his data set and sat down. Just in case they were listening, he should pretend to do some research.