exchange for the freedom to be an even bigger ass.”
D’Onofrio raised a hand, cutting Li-Tsan off before she could further elaborate on her distaste for all matters related to Lastogne. “I’m sorry, Counselor. Nobody likes to feel useless for as long as we have. It’s made the three of us a little bitter, I’m afraid. The fact is that we’re not sure how we can help you. None of us have been allowed inside the Habitat for months—in poor Robin’s case, for almost two years Mercantile. We can’t tell you anything about the way those women died.”
I said, “Fair enough. I’ll be satisfied with hearing how the three of you got mustered out.”
Li-Tsan’s silence, provisional at best, failed her. “See, Nils? She doesn’t a give a damn about the truth! She’s just trying to make this about us!”
Whenever I question three or more people at the same time, one of them takes the role of the volatile hothead who serves as the self-appointed keeper of all of their shared paranoia. Only sometimes does it indicate that the hothead’s hiding something. Just as often, the amount of truly relevant data being huffed about equals zero. Either way, the hothead needs to be cuffed down. I heaved a deep breath, took my sweet time sitting down on the one of the crates the three height-sensitives had drafted into use as chairs, and said, “You know, bondsman, I don’t claim any great dedication to the truth. I don’t even have all that much empathy for the problems of the unjustly accused. No, I’m afraid my only real objection to concocting transparently flimsy cases against innocent people has always been that I prefer to look like I have some talent for my job. Picking unlikely suspects at random means looking capricious and incompetent and sloppy. Doing the job right the first time, and finding the
The three height-sensitives stared at me.
Li-Tsan spat. “Next you’ll be telling us you don’t bite.”
I’ve long reserved my sweetest smiles for my nastiest moments. “Oh, I bite, all right. And once I clamp down, I’m like a snake. You have to cut my head off to get me to let go. Please don’t test me, Li-Tsan. I promise you, I leave marks.”
The height-sensitives consulted each other in silence, then came to a mutual decision and joined me at the round table. Even then, they pulled their crates together so they could sit elbow to elbow, presenting a united front. D’Onofrio and Li-Tsan wore attitudes of bored defiance, Fish a darker form of beaten resignation. I couldn’t tell whether the other two were supporting Fish or simply bracketing her. I did notice that Fish didn’t seem to want to face either one of them. It wasn’t fear, but something else: A recent argument? An old one? Even an old-fashioned love triangle? “Why would you believe the Corps wants to make this about you?”
“No reason,” Li-Tsan growled. “Except for treating us like Tchi shit for something we can’t help, holding us prisoner in this hole for months on end, and refusing to transfer us out of here to another assignment where we could make ourselves useful instead of going slowly insane from boredom, the Dip Corps has always been scrupulously fair to us. I can’t possibly imagine why we wouldn’t expect more of the same. Not at all.”
“So you don’t think they have any actual evidence against you.”
Li-Tsan’s eyes went small and dangerous. “You’re the investigator. You’d know what they have and don’t have.”
I was really beginning to hate her. “I arrived yesterday, Li-Tsan. Assume I know nothing.”
“They have worse than nothing. They have actual, genuine impossibility. They may think we’re lower than Tchi shit, but they also know we’re stuck here and never have anything to do with anything that’s going on. But they’ll make this about us. They’ll do it just to see the looks on our faces.”
The other woman’s intensity was a little bit like being jacked into a pleasure node at full voltage. I rubbed my temples. “Gibb says he considers the AIsource responsible, and never gave me any other impression.”
She made a rude noise. “You know he can’t let the AIsource take the blame for this. It would mean a major diplomatic incident, even war. Better to strut around looking tough and then come up with some solution that inconveniences nobody but the trio of likely suspects you keep preserved in cold storage.”
I remembered Bringen’s briefing, with its unsubtle agenda.
Did he already have these three in mind?
It was possible. He must have read Gibb’s reports from on-site and found references to three people whose fates would not be mourned, if a case could be made against them.
But I didn’t want any part of it. I’d already done more than enough to merit the Monster label, thank you. I was in no hurry to add any additional interest to that account. So I treated Li-Tsan to my most unpleasant grin. “Well, before I officially make up my mind to accuse you of multiple murders and have you shipped off for trial, I should at least go through the motions. Maybe we should just start with how you developed your respective problems with high places.”
She studied me with resentful, half-lidded eyes. “Why would that make a difference?”
“It got you where you are. You were chosen for this assignment because the Corps thought you could function under local conditions. Now, for whatever reason, you can’t. That makes it an interesting subject. So tell me. What made you such good recruits? And what changed you?”
The three height-sensitives stewed in silence: D’Onofrio slumping in disgust, Fish staring at her hands, Li- Tsan stewing at the edge of another explosion.
There was no questioning which of the three had the most volatile temper, but that meant nothing, not when the murders would have required too much cold planning to be believable as crimes of sudden passion.
I pointed at D’Onofrio, who seemed the most even-tempered. “You first.”
He relaxed. “Yeah, might as well. You can read my records and find out the same thing, right? I come from a planet called Agali Vespocci. You know it?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Not surprised. It’s only borderline habitable, and nothing of any importance ever happened there. The thing is, it resembles this nasty hellhole. One One One, I mean. The lower atmosphere is hot as hell and contaminated with caustics that make the surface next to unlivable, but the temperatures drop and the poisons thin to traces as you get to the higher latitudes, so we do most of our living on the mountaintops.”
It did sound a lot like One One One. “I don’t see why you had a problem.”
“It’s not exactly what you’d expect, is it? But even on Vespocci we had solid ground to walk on, when we needed it. There were terraces, cliff dwellings. You could turn your back on the heights whenever you needed to. There were times of year, brief times, when the weather was almost pleasant. Here, there’s nothing. I was fine here for more than a year, but after a while I started thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Then one day, on the Growth, I froze up, started crying, and couldn’t stop. Gibb pulled me in, called me every possible name for coward, and sent me out here to stay with Robin and Li-Tsan.”
“They were already here, then?”
“Yes. This was only about six months ago Mercantile.”
“Was there anything in your past, at any point, to indicate that such a breakdown was possible?”
“No.” He spread his hands. “But I guess we don’t know our limits until we reach them.”
It had been a while since I’d seen anybody quite as defeated, and in this chamber I didn’t have to look far to see another one. “Who was the first to arrive here? Robin or Li-Tsan?”
“Robin.”
“All right,” I said. “Li-Tsan, you’re next.”
She started. “Not Robin?”
“No, I’ll work my way back. What’s your story?”
“Like Nils just told you, you can get all this from our records—”
“I want to hear it from you. Go on.”
Li-Tsan rolled her eyes again, just to stress that she still considered this all a tremendous waste of her time, but warmed up as she began to talk. “I worked in orbital construction for a Bursteeni company producing wheelworlds for the Tchi holdings. It’s tough going. Everything’s free fall to start with, of course, but the silly ass- backwards way the Bursteeni do it, the rotation starts up before the project’s half finished, and you have to work in and out of the skeleton while the spin’s trying to fling you against the outer walls. The third time a friend of mine got reduced to a fine red paste I contacted the Dip Corps to have them buy out my contract. They figured my background made me a perfect match. They didn’t know I sold out because I was losing my nerve already. I made it
