The Quiet Pools

He smiled to himself. “Call reply,” he said.

A dozen or so seconds later, Loi’s face returned to the screen. She was tousled and raccoon-eyed, and a beautiful sight.

“Hello, Loi.”

“Christopher?” She squinted off-screen. “Prodigal lover, it’s after four in the morning.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Never mind. Bad manners to do it, worse to complain. Where are you? How are you?”

“On Sanctuary. I didn’t think about the time difference. I’m not even sure what standard we’re on.”

She did not seem to need any explanation about his whereabouts. “Chris, this is showing a conference call. Who else is on?”

“The station censor. Probably being looped, too—I don’t know if this lag is normal.”

“Special treatment?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. “I’ve missed you, Loi.”

“The house has been empty. Jessie moved out this weekend.”

“She went to John’s?”

Loi nodded, then rubbed an eye. “Kia was here last night, but mostly I’m alone here now. Are you coming back soon?”

“Tomorrow, I think. I haven’t talked to the Entry staff about openings on the shuttle yet. And I may have to borrow a nickel or two for the fare.”

“It’d be worth a nickel or two to have you back,” she said. “Let me know. Chris, have you been avoiding Daniel Keith?”

“Why?”

“He came by the house tonight, late, wondering if I knew how to reach you. He said he had to reach you before seven tomorrow morning. I mean this morning. He must not think me very bright, because he said it three times.”

“Everyone’s off-net up here. You need special permission just to order out for nachos,” Christopher said. “I’m surprised that Daniel tried to get me, though.”

“You’ve been popular with the oddest people. The Oregon State Police called. A lawyer in Portland. Roger Marshall even asked about you.”

“Who’s Roger Marshall?”

“The L.A. developer. He called to talk over a commission for the lobby of Daley Tower. He said he was sorry to hear about your father, wondered how you were doing.”

“I’ll be damned,” Christopher said. “How did he hear about that? Unless they moved faster than I thought— Loi, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to find out what this means, and this phone can only do one thing at a time.”

“You’re still in trouble, aren’t you, Chris?”

“Some. It’ll all sort out. Maybe it already has.”

She knew the optimism was misplaced. “I have a lot of friends. Come on back and let’s fight it together.”

“I like that idea,” he said. “I like it so much I had it myself a few hours ago. Look, when did this Marshall call?”

“Ah—Friday. Three days ago. Chris, I think you’d better talk to Daniel first. It’s almost five o’clock. And he seemed upset. Angry might be a better word.”

“Do you know what he was upset about?”

“No. If I was going to guess, I’d say it had something to do with what happened to Memphis.”

A chill touch prickled the skin on the back of Christopher’s neck. “What happened to Memphis!”

“You don’t know?” Her expression turned grave. “Homeworld hit it with some kind of missile yesterday morning. A hundred and six dead, twenty percent destroyed, two-to-three-year delay, according to some reports. Some are saying she’ll never leave.”

It was there on all the services, just as Loi had described, complete with Takara-supplied pictures of twisted metal and construction plastic. The list of the dead had not been released yet, but the reports showed their bagged bodies stacking up in Takara’s medical stations.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” he breathed to himself, angry tears welling as he watched. “Not Memphis. Why couldn’t you have just let them go? Why couldn’t you have just let her be?”

With a full day already passed since the event, the live coverage had deteriorated into talking heads debating in a vacuum. No reporters had been admitted to Takara, Memphis had been turned away from prying eyes, and the flow of information from Prainha had tightened down to a trickle. That helped Christopher escape becoming a prisoner of the screen.

“Did you pick this story up for local use?” he asked the censor.

“They did two hours on it yesterday morning.”

While I was still on vacation, he thought.

Time was slipping away, but he was not ready to face Keith, knowing what he must be thinking. Instead, Christopher went back to the mail stack and tried to focus on problems he could touch, and to answer a nagging question raised by his talk with Loi.

The first message from the Oregon State Police informed him that there’d been a fire on the ridge, that his father could not be located, and would he contact Detective Brooks with any information he might have? The second, the one with the receipt tag, was only a day old, and a bit more terse. An investigation into William McCutcheon’s disappearance had begun, and Christopher’s participation was considered crucial—would he please make himself available within the next forty-eight hours to answer questions?

But still no fugitive warrant or grand-jury subpoena, which meant no body. Which meant no way for Marshall to know that William McCutcheon was dead—except hearing it from either Allied or Homeworld.

Christopher could not tap DIANNA from orbit, and he was not welcome in Sanctuary’s library, which probably didn’t contain the data he needed in any case. But he sent a query through to Codex, a subscription information service, and had an answer in a few minutes: Roger Marshall was a member of the Diaspora advisory committee.

Surprised as he was by that discovery, it explained plainly enough how Marshall knew. But the rest of it made no sense. Was there some kind of message in Marshall calling Loi? An apology? A confession? Or just a bit of carelessness? Christopher could not make the picture come together.

The clock caught his eye, warning him that he was running out of time to reach Keith. Keith’s message gave him a clue what to expect: It was short and foul, beginning with “You shit-mouthed son of a bitch—” and going downhill from there. It was time-stamped several hours before Loi would have seen him; Keith’s emotions had apparently cooled, though his judgments had likely hardened at the same time.

In the end, Christopher could not let those judgments stand unchallenged. He was surprised to find Keith on the move, in his flyer rather than his bed. But Keith’s cold tone and hard words were no surprise. “Fag off. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Fine. Just listen. This is the truth: I only just heard about Memphis. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Do you think I’m that big an idiot? You don’t get another chance.”

“How many ways can I say it? I feel sick about Memphis. I didn’t do it, I didn’t know about it, and I didn’t want it to happen.”

“This is Dan Keith you’re talking to. I know you, remember? Sorry. Your eleventh-hour conversion fails to convince.”

“Daniel, I know where the last verse of ‘Caravan’ came from now. And it wasn’t a lie.”

That slowed him—Keith blinked confusedly. “What do you mean?”