Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (14 page)

“You do a fair number of … religious works.” That was a calculated guess on Roget's part. “Are those mainly for local people?”

“Not necessarily local, but Saint-inspired,” admitted Parsens.

“You were fortunate to be able to inherit this. I take it that you've made some improvements.” Roget gestured at the heavily tinted windows on the south side of the studio.

“I've made some, but those windows were already here. Felicia was the one who really made the improvements.” Parsens paused. “Could I interest you in one of the smaller pieces?” He gestured toward a glass-fronted case on the west end of the studio.

“You could interest me,” Roget said, “but monitors get transferred a lot, and we don't get that big a weight allowance in moving. I tend to pick up projection print art. I did want to see your work, though.” He nodded toward the roughed-out form beside the sculptor. “Might I ask?”

“It's a replica of an old work—John D. Lee. He was a rather controversial Saint during the founding period. Not sure I would have chosen it, but,” Parsens shrugged, “when it's a good commission, you do your best.”

Roget could sense a certain unease, but not whether that was because of the subject of the commission or for other reasons. He didn't want to press. “I won't keep you, but I appreciate your time.” He nodded, then turned and headed back up the stone ramp to the door.

As he walked back around to the path down to the wash trail, he studied the building closely. Although it wasn't obvious, there was a lower level, not under the studio, but under the western side. Yet it would have made more sense to have the lower level on the east where, with just a little work, obtaining natural light would have been easier.

Roget returned to the trail and his bicycle where he mounted and pedaled down along the wash, investigating the bottom at four other locations. All he found was dry sand and drier hard red sandstone. When he reached the Virgin River and the parkway, he took two measurements—one upstream of where Middleton wash joined the river, and one fifty meters downstream.

Then he went on to his other monitoring assignments. Again, he didn't get back to the FSS until after five. He wheeled the bike through the security gate and down the corridor to the office. He had to unlock the office and set the bicycle in a corner before he could unlock the system and upload his readings for the day.

The residential and commercial monitoring results were the usual mixture of false positives, probable mechanical failures, and carelessness. The thermal spike from the reading taken just downstream of Middleton wash was the most pronounced of any of the river readings taken over the past two weeks. The system offered a 64 percent probability that a geothermal plume of heated water was entering from beneath the stream bed, with a likely temperature of some thirty degrees, well above the river's twenty-degree norm.

A low-grade geothermal plume made perfect sense, since St. George was in fact situated in a geothermal basin. What bothered Roget was the lack of water anywhere else in the wash, and the fact that the plume appeared in midstream. Usually nature wasn't that tidy.

There wasn't anything that he could do about it, not yet. He'd talk it over with Sung in the morning. Even so, he had the feeling that Parsens had something to do with the situation. He finished up, including copying the data back to his own flash storage, then locked down the system.

A minute or so before quarter to six, he stepped out into the corridor … just in time to encounter Marni Sorensen again. The encounters couldn't have been coincidental.

“Good afternoon, Marni,” said Roget.

“You did remember my name.” Her smile was disarming.

“How could I forget when we keep meeting this way?”

“Oh … and do you have another way in mind?”

“We could try lunch some day … like tomorrow.”

“You're never here.”

“That's because I have no reason to be. If you give me a reason, I certainly will.” He paused. “Lunch tomorrow?”

“I could do that.”

“I'll meet you here.”

She smiled. “I'll see you then, Keir.” She stepped back into the office from which she had come. The door closed.

Roget nodded, then walked down the corridor to the security gate. She'd wanted him to initiate something. The question was why, and he was afraid he knew, even if he couldn't prove it.

After he reached the apartment, he used his other personal monitor to run a search on Delbert Parsens. The results showed nothing out of the ordinary. That was what Roget had expected.

Then, to take his mind off Parsens and Marni, he transferred a copy of
Hildegarde in the Sunlight
to the image projector. It took almost a quarter hour before he decided on the right location and dimensions. He opted for a life-size image of Hildegarde. He knew it was an illusion, but the sunlight from the image seemed to spill into the apartment, and Hildegarde was better company than most as he ate his replicated dinner.

 

13

18 MARIS 1811
P. D.

Breakfast was in a small bistro around the corner from the guesthouse. Roget didn't see the name anywhere, and it wasn't on the menu. He wore the gray singlesuit, again with his heavy boots. He had French toast, strips of crispy bacon, orange slices, and a flavorful hot tea that any Sinese would have envied. Lyvia gave him a range of information about what was located where in Skeptos and little else. She wore a pale cranberry singlesuit with a deep gray sleeveless vest, one without the flashing light-threads, Roget noted. The faintest hint of a light fragrance drifted about her, but the scent was so light and fleeting that he'd never have noticed had he not been trying to detect it.

When they stepped out of the bistro, Roget was aware that the amber light filtering through the orbital shields seemed noticeably brighter than it had on previous days. “Variable star? Or variable shield translucency, for seasonal purposes?”

“Some of both,” replied Lyvia.

“Did the original settlers know that?”

“They built the shield system with that in mind, I understand.”

That was so like most of her answers, never quite complete or directly responding to his inquiries. Was that his problem in framing questions, her avoiding the thrust of his inquiries, or a little of both?

“We're headed back toward the central square. MEC is north of there,” Lyvia said. “Just a few blocks.”

As they walked northward, Roget could see a steady flow of pedestrians fanning out from the central square ahead of them. All sorts of differing clothes styles were present, from ancient ankle length skirts and long-sleeved blouses for women to shorts and formfitting shirts that left very little to the imagination. The same range was present on men, although Roget didn't see any togas or Mandarin-style robes, and more men seemed to opt for singlesuits, although the variety of colors and cuts, not to mention the light-threads, was considerable.

From the southwest corner of the square, Lyvia walked briskly past Dorinique.

“I see they're not open,” said Roget.

“Just from noon to midnight. That's always bothered my cousin Clarya. She works nights, and she doesn't like starting out with a heavy meal. With her schedule, most days that's her only option if she wants to eat there. Besides, she says, who wants to spoil such exquisite—and expensive—fare with the thought of work to follow?”

Roget laughed. He could understand that.

When they reached the northwest corner of the square, Lyvia turned eastward until she reached the midpoint of the square. There she gestured to her left at the wide walkway north.

Roget had to take three quick steps to catch her, but she did not say more until they reached the end of the block.

“The building on the right holds the Ministry of Transportation, and the one on the left is the Ministry of Finance.”

“Is your space force under transportation?” asked Roget.

“Your question makes assumptions that I can't really address.”

“Can't or won't?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Not really,” Roget admitted, keeping his voice cheerful, although he couldn't help but feel frustrated. He was in the middle of the capital city of a planet, and for all the time he'd spent with Lyvia, he felt he didn't know all that much more than he had a day earlier. That wasn't entirely true, but it was definitely the way he felt.

As they neared the next corner where the walkways intersected, Lyvia said, “The one on the left is the Ministry of Education and Culture.”

The structure was a full five stories, a story above the others around it. “What other ministries are in buildings that tall?” asked Roget.

“The Ministry of Science has about as much space, and so does the Ministry of Environment.”

“How many ministries are there?”

“That's it. We don't need any more. Some people think that five is five too many. Probably most do, but that's just my opinion.” Lyvia headed for the main entrance on the south side, pushed open the glass door, and walked into the entry hall. There were no guards—just a series of shimmering consoles as tall as a person, each set a good yard from the adjoining one. She stopped before the one on the right end.

“Lyvia Rholyn and Keir Roget. We have an appointment at eight thirty.”

“Please enter your confirmation code.”

Roget didn't see Lyvia do anything, but the console replied, “Please take ramp three to the third level. The door there will respond to your code. No other door will.”

Roget accompanied Lyvia as she walked past the console toward the wall that held five doorways, each with a silver number above the stone square stone arch that held a shining steel door. The door slid open as they approached, then closed behind them. Illuminated as it was by amber piped light, the wide ramp with its gentle circular turns allowed them to ascend side by side.

At the third level, beside the door was a screen and keypad. Again, while Lyvia seemed to do nothing, and Roget's internals detected no energy flows, the door clicked, and she pushed it open. The two stepped out into a small reception area where several chairs were arranged in a semicircle that faced the wide window overlooking the east side of the building. The doors on both the south and north sides of the chamber were closed.

After a moment, Lyvia took one of the chairs in the middle and sat down. “It shouldn't be long.”

Roget took the chair to her left. He grinned. “Even you organized Thomists make people wait.”

“Not any longer than necessary.” The words were in accented but clear Federation Stenglish. A tall sandy-haired woman stood in the now-open doorway on the south side of the chamber. She wore a silvery green singlesuit with a dark green vest.

Roget stood. So did Lyvia.

“Agents Rholyn and Roget, this way, if you would.”

Roget followed the two women along the corridor that slanted toward the middle of the building, past one closed door to the second door on the left, already open. The space held little more than a small circular wooden table, around which were four wooden armchairs. The window overlooked the north walkway from the central square.

The older woman closed the door and took the seat on the south side of the table.

Lyvia and Roget settled into the chairs facing her.

The woman looked directly at Roget. “I'm Selyni Hillis, and I'll be interviewing you for the Ministry of Education and Culture. This interview will be recorded.”

“Interviewing? Education and Culture?” asked Roget.

“Why not an interrogation for a Ministry of Defense or War or a Dubietan Ministry of Security? Is that what you mean?” Hillis's laugh was surprisingly low and rough, yet not harsh. “Interview sounds so much better. Besides, interrogation implies either criminal behavior or a wartime situation, and to date, you've committed no crimes on Dubiety, and we're certainly not aware of a state of war. Should we be?”

“I'm not aware of any hostile action either undertaken or planned by the Federation,” Roget replied.

“You'll pardon me if I don't find your words terribly reassuring,” replied Hillis. “Your awareness is most likely ignorance. Not only does the Federation's left hand not know what the right is doing, but adjoining fingers are unaware of each other's actions.”

“I can't help that. I only know what I know.”

“What sort of ship dropped you?”

Roget shrugged. “A Federation ship.”

Hillis shook her head. “You're not a green agent. You're probably an agent-captain or an agent-major. You know the class ship. So do we.”

“Then you tell me,” suggested Roget.

“A Federation light battlecruiser of the history class, most probably the
WuDing, MengTian,
or
DeGaulle.
”

Much as he had expected some accuracy, the identification of three cruisers of the same class brought Roget up sharply. Her response concerned Roget more than if Hillis had identified the
WuDing
directly. “Why do you even need to interview me? You know more about Federation naval vessels than I do, and you obviously trained Lyvia to deal with Federation scouts long before I even knew Dubiety existed.”

“That may be, but what happens to you depends on you. That is, of course, true of all individuals in all situations.” Hillis cleared her throat, gently. “When we learned that the Federation had located us, it seemed prudent to train a few individuals who would be able to make the first contact, as necessary.”

“I only knew that Dubiety had been discovered just before I was dropped. You had to have known for years. How long have you known?”

“Two centuries or so.”

Two centuries? “That seems unlikely as well as improbable. You knew the Federation had discovered you, and all you did was train people for contact?”