Bennett shrugged. “Like he said, he thought we were the best. We were available at short notice.”
“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that this is a dangerous mission. Penumbra is a stormy world.”
“Perhaps. Who knows? I can handle those weather conditions.” He smiled. “Hey, don’t worry, Ten.”
Ten Lee regarded him blankly. “I’m not worrying, Joshua—just wondering.”
“Whatever you say. Sure I can’t offer you a lift?”
But she had turned and was walking off towards the terminal building, a tiny barefoot figure with her rucksack secured on both shoulders.
Over the next couple of days Bennett, Mackendrick and Ten Lee worked on the Cobra, running maintenance checks and systems analyses. On the eve of departure Bennett recorded a short message of resignation and sent it off to Redwood Station. He expected an immediate reply—Matheson threatening him with legal action for breach of contract. When his com-screen chimed five minutes later, he touched secrecy. It was not Matheson, but Julia. He elected not to reply.
Just before sunset he steered his car from the garage and drove across the desert. He parked outside the dome where he had grown up and walked around the decrepit habitat to the memorial garden. He thought about summoning Ella’s image and talking to her, telling her about the latest turn of events, but he had a better idea. He crossed to the mock-timber bench, knelt and lifted the lid of the seat. Secreted inside was the simulated identity hologram’s memory circuit. He lifted it out and moved around the garden collecting the miniature projectors and receivers. Rather than leave Ella here and be without her company for who knows how long, he would take her with him, allow her to share the experience.
When he returned to this dome, he found that Julia had left a recorded message.
“Joshua…” She stared out at him, biting her lip. “I’ve only just heard about your father. I’m sorry. You should have told me when we met the other day. Look, about what I said. I don’t know… perhaps I was too harsh.” She paused, considering her words. “I was wondering… can we meet sometime? Perhaps after the funeral?”
Bennett stopped the recording before she finished, wiped the memory and deactivated the screen. Then he sat for a long time in silence and stared out across the darkening desert.
8
Seven days into her new job Rana Rao was still familiarising herself with the ways of the Homicide Division.
For the first five days she had worked noon till ten, going through standard practice and routine with Varma Patel, a sergeant in her fifties who had been in the department for ten years and knew the answer to everything. Varma seemed content to be office-bound, doing her investigations via powerful computer networks and her com- screen. After three days of Varma’s company in the stuffy offices, Rana had had a waking nightmare: this would be her in another ten years, gone to fat and happy to see out the rest of her police life working in the claustrophobic confines of the eighth floor. Varma had laughed when Rana admitted that she would find just one year of this kind of work more than enough. “Don’t worry,” the sergeant had confided. “Vishwanath has you marked out for better things. Investigations, so I’m told.”
“He has? Does that mean I’ll get out of this prison some day?”
“Be patient. Learning the ropes takes time. You need to walk before you can fly.”
It seemed that some of her desk-bound colleagues on the eighth floor had hard about Vishwanath’s plans for her; either that or they resented her because she was a woman.
A couple of officers made it known that they found her attractive. One afternoon Varma had nudged her and said, “What do you think of Naz over there? I think you’d make a fine couple, and I’m not the only one. Naz thinks you’re the best thing to happen to the department in years.”
Rana had sighed. “I’m not interested in anyone at the moment. I’m too young to think of anything like that. I need to concentrate on my work.”
A couple of days later Naz had found an excuse to talk to her. It wasn’t long before he asked her out to dinner. He was sneering and arrogant even before she refused his offer. “So it is true what the boys in the computer room say. You really are the virgin queen. Or perhaps you prefer women, ah-cha? What a waste!”
The best course of action, she knew from the past, was to ignore him. She had concentrated on the new computer systems she had to learn, the system of filing and cross-referencing she had had no need for in her old job. Indeed, the more she learned of her new posting, the more she realised it had nothing at all in common with her previous police work. In Child Welfare she had been left alone to get on with her own projects; she had been her own boss with no one constantly looking over her shoulder to check if she was following orders. Here, it seemed that she had to have her every breath okayed by her colleagues. She could not open a file without being briefed by the officer working on the case. It was daunting to have her every idea and initiative stifled by authority. She felt like a schoolchild who would never be allowed out into the real world.
She had spent her third day in the shooting range beneath the police headquarters, learning how to use a handgun on a variety of targets, stationary and moving. At the end of the day she had been handed a body-holster that fitted beneath her jacket, and a small pistol. Despite its size, the gun felt bulky next to her ribs. She had never carried a weapon in Child Welfare, and the thought of actually using it filled her with dread.
On the morning of the sixth day she had attended a seminar on interview technique on the tenth floor. She’d sat through a fascinating two-hour talk on how to go about extracting information from a murder suspect. In the afternoon she’d been ordered down to the fifth floor where a technician was giving a demonstration on what he called the “crawler’, the latest model of forensic robot which investigating officers took with them to the scenes of crime. She’d been picked out to recite what she had learned and to demonstrate the new model, and after initial apprehension she had performed reasonably well. Rana felt that at last she was getting somewhere.
Halfway through her shift on the seventh day, Investigating Officer Vishwanath emerged from his office, made straight for her desk and pulled up a chair.
He was a tall, imposing figure in his sixties, with an eagle’s beak of a nose, thin lips that seemed cynical and eyes that had seen everything. He was feared by Rana’s colleagues on the eighth floor, and something of their trepidation when in his presence—though Rana had yet to speak to him—had rubbed off on her.
She felt her mouth go dry and her face burn as he regarded her.
“Lieutenant, you come highly recommended from Commissioner Singh. I hope you accord to expectations. How are things at the moment? Settling in?”
She managed barely a nod and a meek “Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Things a bit different from Child Welfare, no doubt.”
“Very different. Of course the work here is more pressing, but I’m learning.”
“Very good. Oh, and if Naz and his cohorts bother you again, tell them that I’ll have them back in the basement quick sharp, ah-cha?”
She nodded, suppressing a smile of delight.
“Have security checked your apartment yet, Lieutenant?”
“No. I didn’t know they had to—”
Vishwanath waved. “Routine procedure. I have the premises of all my staff swept every few months. We’re dealing with killers here, don’t forget that. In the past, criminals have been known to bug the homes of investigating officers. The next security sweep will be in about a month’s time, so your apartment will be searched then, ah- cha?”
Rana nodded.
Vishwanath slapped the desk and stood. “Oh, and one more thing. There are a few files I’m too busy to look over at the moment, concerning cases I think might be connected. Could you go through them, correlate likely significant factors, and download the files and your report to my terminal before ten?”
“Ah-cha, sir. Right away.”
Vishwanath called over to Naz to send the files to Rana’s terminal, nodded at her and strode away. Rana watched him go, aware of the flutter of her heart. Now if someone as mature and polite as Vishwanath were to ask her to dinner… She dismissed the thought. She was being stupid, indulging her fantasy of being swept away by a
