“It is some kind of mistake!” Swan declared. “Reality made a mistake, and now you’re fixing it!” She gestured at the screens and cubes. “Right?”
He laughed and cried at the same time. “Right!” he said, sniffing and wiping his face. “It’s stupid. What hubris. I mean, fixing reality.”
“But it’s good,” Swan said. “You know it is. It got you seventy years with Alex. And it passes the time.”
“It’s true.” He heaved a big sigh, looked up at her. “But-things won’t be the same without her.”
Swan felt the desolation of this truth wash through her. Alex had been her friend, protector, teacher, step- grandmother, surrogate mother, all that-but also, a way to laugh. A source of joy. Now her absence created a cold feeling, a killer of emotions, leaving only the blankness that was desolation. Sheer dumb sentience. Here I am. This is reality. No one escapes it. Can’t go on, must go on; they never got past that moment.
So on they went.
T here was a knock at the lab’s outer door. “Come in,” Mqaret called a little sharply.
The door opened, and in the entry stood a small-very attractive in the way smalls often were-aged, slender, with a neat blond ponytail and a casual blue jacket-about waist high to Swan or Mqaret, and looking up at them like a langur or marmoset.
“Hello, Jean,” Mqaret said. “Swan, this is Jean Genette, from the asteroids, who was here as part of the conference. Jean was a close friend of Alex’s, and is an investigator for the league out there, and as such has some questions for us. I said you might be dropping by.”
The small nodded to Swan, hand on heart. “My most sincere condolences on your loss. I’ve come not only to say that, but to tell you that quite a few of us are worried, because Alex was central to some of our most important projects, and her death was so unexpected. We want to make sure these projects go forward, and to be frank, some of us are anxious to be sure that her death was a matter of natural causes.”
“I assured Jean that it was,” Mqaret told Swan, seeing the look on her face.
Genette did not look completely convinced by this reassurance. “Did Alex ever mention anything to you concerning enemies, threats-danger of any kind?” the small asked Swan.
“No,” Swan said, trying to remember. “She wasn’t that kind of person. I mean, she was always very positive. Confident that things were going to work out.”
“I know. It’s so true. But that’s why you might remember if she had ever said anything out of keeping with her usual optimism.”
“No. I can’t remember anything like that.”
“Did she leave you any kind of will or trust? Or a message? Something to be opened in the event of her death?”
“No.”
“We did have a trust,” Mqaret said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t have anything unusual in it.”
“Would you mind if I had a look around her study?”
Alex had kept her study in a room at the far end of Mqaret’s lab, and now Mqaret nodded and led the little inspector down the hall to it. Swan trailed behind them, surprised that Genette had known of Alex’s study, surprised Mqaret would be so quick to show it, surprised and upset by this notion of enemies, of “natural causes” and its implied opposite. Alex’s death, investigated by some kind of police person? She couldn’t grasp it.
While she sat in the doorway trying to figure out what it could mean, trying to come to grips with it, Genette made a thorough search of Alex’s office, opening drawers, downloading files, sweeping a fat wand over every surface and object. Mqaret watched it all impassively.
Finally the little inspector was done, and stood before Swan regarding her with a curious look. As Swan was sitting on the floor, they were about eye level. The inspector appeared on the verge of another question, but in the end did not say it. Finally: “If you recall anything you think might help me, I would appreciate you telling me.”
“Of course,” Swan said uneasily.
The inspector then thanked them and left.
W hat was that about?” Swan asked Mqaret.
“I don’t know,” Mqaret said. He too was upset, Swan saw. “I know that Alex had a hand in a lot of things. She’s been one of the leaders in the Mondragon Accord from the beginning, and they have a lot of enemies out there. I know she’s been worried about some system problems, but she didn’t give me any details.” He gestured at the lab. “She knew I wouldn’t be that interested.” A hard grimace. “That I had my own problems. We didn’t talk about our work all that much.”
“But-” Swan started, and didn’t know how to go on. “I mean-enemies? Alex?”
Mqaret sighed. “I don’t know. The stakes could be considered high, in some of these matters. There are forces opposed to the Mondragon, you know that.”
“But still.”
“I know.” After a pause: “ Did she leave you anything?”
“No! Why should she? I mean, she wasn’t expecting to die.”
“Few people are. But if she had concerns about secrecy, or the safety of certain information, I can see how she might think you would be a kind of refuge.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, couldn’t she have put something into your qube without telling you?”
“No. Pauline is a closed system.” Swan tapped behind her right ear. “I mostly keep her turned off these days. And Alex wouldn’t do that anyway. She wouldn’t talk to Pauline without asking me first, I’m sure of it.”
Mqaret heaved another sigh. “Well, I don’t know. She didn’t leave me anything either, as far as I know. I mean, it would be like Alex to tuck something away without telling us. But nothing has popped up. So I just don’t know.”
Swan said, “So there wasn’t anything unusual in the autopsy?”
“No!” Mqaret said, but he was thinking it over. “A cerebral aneurysm, probably congenital, burst and caused an intraparenchymal hemorrhage. It happens.”
Swan said, “If someone had done something to-to cause a hemorrhage… would you necessarily be able to tell?”
Mqaret stared at her, frowning.
Then they heard another tap at the lab’s outer door. They looked at each other, sharing a little frisson. Mqaret shrugged; he had not been expecting anyone.
“Come in!” he called again.
T he door opened to reveal something like the opposite of Inspector Genette: a very big man. Prognathous, callipygous, steatopygous, exophthalmos-toad, newt, frog-even the very words were ugly. Briefly it occurred to Swan that onomatopoeia might be more common than people recognized, their languages echoing the world like birdsong. Swan had a bit of lark in her brain. Toad. Once she had seen a toad in an amazonia, sitting at the edge of a pond, its warty wet skin all bronze and gold. She had liked the look of it.
“Ah,” Mqaret said. “Wahram. Welcome to our lab. Swan, this is Fitz Wahram, from Titan. He was one of Alex’s closest associates, and really one of her favorite people.”
Swan, somewhat surprised that Alex could have such a person in her life without Swan ever hearing of it, frowned at the man.
Wahram dipped his head in a kind of autistic bow. He put his hand over his heart. “I am so sorry,” he said. A froggy croak. “Alex meant a great deal to me, and to a lot of us. I loved her, and in our work together she was the crucial figure, the leader. I don’t know how we will get along without her. When I think of how I feel, I can scarcely grasp how you must feel.”
“Thank you,” Mqaret said. So strange the words people said at these moments. Swan could not speak any of them.
A person Alex had liked. Swan tapped the skin behind her right ear, activating her qube, which she had turned off as a punishment. Now Pauline would fill her in on things, all by way of a quiet voice in Swan’s right ear. Swan was very irritated with Pauline these days, but suddenly she wanted information.
Mqaret said, “So what will happen to the conference?”
“There is complete agreement to postpone it and reschedule. No one has the heart for it now. We will disperse and reconvene later, probably on Vesta.”
Ah yes: without Alex, Mercury would no longer be a meeting place. Mqaret nodded at this, unsurprised. “So
