Marooned in Realtime

visitor status on the high-techs' systems. The enemy never had a chance at Della; she was gone from the Solar System since just after the Singularity.'

He looked across his audience. The low-techs hung on every word. It was harder to tell about the others. Tammy wasn't even looking at him. Wil could only imagine the analysis and conversations that were going on in parallel with his words.

'So. An expert, using expert tools, must be behind this. But Yelen's GreenInc shows that none of the high-techs have such a background.'

Tunc interrupted, 'Which only means the killer rewrote history to protect himself.'

'Right. It needn't have been much, just a fact here and there. Over the years, the killer could manage it. Della's A's are the only ones that might contain the truth. I spent a lot of time with them after we were rescued. Unfortunately, her general database for the late twenty-second is badly jumbled, so badly that Della herself didn't use it. But after the battle, I knew what to look for. Eventually I found an opening: Jason Mudge. Mudge was just the religious fanatic we knew, though toward the end of the twenty-second he actually had some disciples. Only one of them had sufficient faith to follow him into stasis. That was Juan Chanson. Juan was a wealthy man, probably Mudge's biggest catch.' Wil looked at Chanson. 'You gave up a lot to follow a religious dream, Juan. Della's db's show you were head of Penetration and Perversion at USAF, Inc.' In Wil's time, USAF had been the largest weapons-maker in North America; it had grown from there. 'I don't doubt that when Juan left, he took the latest software his division had invented. We were up against industrial-strength sabotage.'

Juan was trembling. He looked up at Yelen. She stared back for a second, then looked at Wil. She wasn't convinced. 'Yelen,' Wil said, keeping his voice level, 'don't you remember? The day Mudge was killed, he claimed Chanson had been a religionist.'

Yelen shook her head. That memory was three days gone.

Finally Chanson spoke aloud. 'Don't you see how you've deluded yourself, Wil? The evidence is all around you. Why do you think Lu's record of civilization was jumbled? Because she was never there! At best those records are secondhand, filled with evidence she would use against me or whoever else was a threat. Wil, please. I may be wrong about the details, but whatever the Lu creature is, she's proved she would sacrifice us all for her schemes. No matter what she's done to you, you must be able to see that.'

Monica's laugh was almost a cackle. 'What a pretty bind you're in, Brierson. The facts explain either theory perfectly. And Della Lu is chasing off into interstellar space.'

Wil pretended to give her comment serious consideration; he needed time to think. Finally he shook his head and continued as calmly as before. 'Even if you don't believe me, there are data Juan never thought to alter. Marta's diary, for instance.... I know, Yelen, you studied that for a hundred years, and you knew Marta far better than I. But Marta knew she wasn't marooned by simple sabotage. She knew the enemy saw what she left in the cairns, and could destroy any of it. Even worse, if she slipped a message past the enemy, and you understood it, the act of understanding might itself trigger an attack.

'But I am a low-tech, outside all this automation. Marta got my attention with the one incident that only she and I could know. Yelen, after the Robinson party... I didn't — I never tried to take advantage of Marta.' He looked into Yelen's face, willing belief there.

When there was no response, he continued. 'The last years of her life, Marta played a terrible double game. She told us the story of survival and courage and defeat, and at the same time she left clues she hoped would point me at Juan. They were ere subtle. She named her fishermonkey friends after people in our settlement. There was always a Juan Chanson, a solitary creature that delighted in watching her. Marta's last day alive, she mentioned that he was still out there, watching. She knew she was being stalked, and by the real Juan Chanson.'

Juan slapped the bench. 'God damn it, man! You can find any message if the coding scheme is nutty enough.'

'Unfortunately, you're right. And if that's all she could do, this might be a stalemate, Juan. But for all her misfortunes, Marta had some good luck, too. One of her fishermonkeys was a freak, bigger and brighter than any fisher we've seen. He followed her around, tried to imitate her cairn-building. It wasn't much, but she had an ally in realtime.' He smiled wanly. 'She named him W. W. Brierson. He got lots of practice building cairns, always in the same position relative to Peace Lake. In the end, she took him north and left him in a normal forest beyond the glazed zone. I don't know how close you were monitoring, Juan, but you missed what that animal took with him, you missed the cairn he built, where Marta never went.'

Juan's eyes darted to Yelen, then back to Wil, but he said nothing.

'You've known about that cairn for four days, ever since I told Yelen. You were willing to show your full power — and kill half the human race — to prevent me from getting it.' Wil stepped off the platform and walked slowly toward the little man. 'Well, Juan, you didn't succeed. I've seen what Marta had to say when she didn't have to write in parables. Everyone else is free to see it, too. And no matter what conspiracies you blame on Della Lu, I suspect the physical evidence will convince Yelen and her lab autons.'

Yelen had backed away from Chanson. Tunc's mouth was compressed into a thin line. Even without a confession, I may be able to win, thought Wil.

Juan looked around, then back at Wil. 'Please. You're reading this all wrong. I didn't kill Marta. I want the settlement to succeed. And I've sacrificed more than any of you to preserve it; if I hadn't, none of us would have survived to fifty megayears. But now that's made me look like the guilty one I've got to convince you....

'Look. Wil. You're right about Mudge and me; I should never have tried to cover that up. I'm embarrassed I ever believed his chiliastic garbage. But I was young, and my nightmares followed me home from work. I needed to believe in something. I gave up my job, everything, for his promises.