Futures Near and Far (28 page)

The transport crossed above a ridge of crumbled, weathered
rock, revealing an oblong valley some fifty kilometers in length. Their course
straightened into a gently descending glide toward a mass of ruins.

Dimitri pointed at the vestiges of walls and bridges. “This
was quite a city when the Eridanin were
here. The region used to get more rain.
Signs indicate it may have been a government center of some sort.”

“Hence the archaeological interest,” Neil said.

“Well, yes, but there’s another reason why we started
digging here so quickly. Examine, please, the horizon.”

Neil scanned to the left and to the right, finding sudden
meaning in the configuration of the ridge. “We’re in a caldera.”

“Earth has at least two bigger than this that I recall,”
Dimitri continued. “Long Valley in California and Lake Toba on Sumatra. But
this is — how do you say it? A whopper?”

“I take it it’s not entirely dormant?”

“Not any more. Fresh magma is accumulating. The last
eruption was pre-Eridanin — at least thirty thousand years ago — but there is a
possibility the whole plug will explode within the decade.”

“Won’t volcanic activity that potent affect the weather?”

“Nothing we can’t deal with. Some cool summers. Some hazy
sunsets. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t found any permanent settlements nearby. The dig can be evacuated with
a few hours’ notice.”

The transport touched down and the pilot released the locks
on the passenger compartment. Neil and Dimitri stepped onto a landing field of
packed earth. No tarmac or concrete. Neil deliberately noted this. The charter
called for Terran presence on this world to remain as tentative as possible
until the Thwaa granted permission to colonize fully. What he observed here
today, the Thwaa would witness as well. It didn’t hurt to be sure humanity
received credit for the small ways in which it abided by its promises.

He might have no choice about being a Thwaa tool, but at
least he was free to maintain his loyalty to his own culture.

A lean, bony individual in khaki work clothes approached,
offering his hand. “Ivan Vereshchagin. I am the director of the team here,” he
said in English so precise as to be overly formal.

“This is Neil Moran, the, ah, the Thwaa consul.” Dimitri
winced at the hesitation he inserted into the introduction.

Vereshchagin’s youth was as perfectly sustained as that of
anyone under the age of two hundred fifty, but he exuded a dour studiousness
that implied he was older than either of his visitors. His unkempt aspect
reminded Neil of a university professor caught in the waning of middle age. His
handshake remained firm, but he failed to hide the eyelid flicker of unease
that others suppressed when first meeting Neil. He stared as if expecting Neil
to sprout Thwaalike cilia.

“Pleased to meet you,” Neil said.

Vereshchagin nodded. Neil waited for him to say something
more — “Welcome,” perhaps — but the archaeologist managed only to look
constipated.

“I hope you managed to get some sleep,” Dimitri added as the
lull grew awkward.

“A little,” Vereshchagin replied.

“I didn’t leave here last night until the wee hours,”
Dimitri explained to Neil. “If I’d known I had to return today to bring you, I
would have saved some of the on-site investigation for this morning.”

Always the caution, carefully veiled in ingratiating
language. Dimitri wanted the Thwaa to know that he hadn’t deliberately kept
them out of the loop. Neil believed him. Dimitri could not have known the Thwaa
wanted to send their native observer until Neil had received the directive and
so informed the governor. That summons had not come until the news of the
murder, leaked by one of the diggers, raced across the net just before
midnight.

“I won’t require more than a few hours,” Neil assured
Vereshchagin. “I just need to check on a handful of the basic aspects of the
case first-hand.”

“Very well,” the director replied. “With what would you like
to start?”

“I’ll want to see the body.”

Vereshchagin cleared his throat. “This way.” Rubbing his
neck and turning slowly, he guided them with a weary tread. They entered the
ruins, traversing a somber camp to a tent set apart from the others. Two men
stood guard, encased in the gray uniforms of the colonial police. At Dimitri’s
nod, they moved aside.

Vereshchagin held up the tent flap, eyes averted. Dimitri
stayed back, ostensibly to ask his men if anyone else had come by during their
vigil. Neil was left to enter alone.

The remains of a copper-skinned Asian male lay supine inside
a stasis coffin, hands atop his abdomen as if arrayed by an undertaker, though
he looked anything but peaceful. Until the body could be brought to the
forensics lab at the capital, no cosmetic adjustments had been made. No one had
replaced the dead man’s torn, dirtied, blood-splattered work fatigues. No one
had wiped the brains off his face. Gore encrusted the shovel they had placed
beside him.

Neil calculated the degree of force required to lodge the
blade of the tool so deeply into the skull with one blow. The image of violence
it engendered made him grimace. He backed out of the tent and turned away, and
was grateful to hear the canvas drop out of Vereshchagin’s fingers.

“You can put it in the transport now if you wish,” Neil
said. “I’ll talk to the coroner after he’s done his job, back in Landfall.”

Vereshchagin and Dimitri glanced at each other, as if
considering whose duty it was to handle this unpleasant detail. A moment later
Dimitri signalled to the guards.

“Where can I interview the witnesses?” Neil asked.

“I’ll show you,” Vereshchagin replied.

As Neil put distance between himself and the gruesome
evidence, he cultivated his queasiness into a seed of anger. The death had been
a waste. The dig worker had been about thirty years old, not counting hibernation. He’d had ninety percent of
his life expectancy left.

If the Thwaa took an interest in his emotional reaction, as
usual they gave no indication. All he could really sense was that the
transmitter was active, giving his overlords whatever information it was they
absorbed from him. Nevertheless it was important to Neil to insert as much
genuine, human feeling as he could muster. Not for the first time, he wished
the Thwaa had chosen someone less reserved than he as their liaison.

Their destination proved to be outside the encampment. They
struck out toward the mud flat upon which their aircraft perched. A lake had
once filled the center of the valley, its shoreline demarcating the western and
southern boundaries of the Eridanin city. Neil could make out a saline remnant
of that body of water some two kilometers away.
In the immediate foreground was a large pre-fab shed, evidently the only
true building erected since the archaeologists had arrived.

“We didn’t want to put structures over possible excavation
areas,” Vereshchagin volunteered. “The lakebed was the obvious choice — the
Eridanin never used boats and never built under water.”

The shed turned out to be the storage facility for the
artifacts the team had decided were worthy of longterm study off-site.
Vereshchagin led them past tables and shelving units arrayed with relics, some
already painstakingly cleaned and tagged, others crated and sealed for
shipment, but most lying in a raw state. Half the surfaces in the room remained
empty, attesting to the recent establishment of the dig.

They ended their journey in a small corner room. A table
equipped with an interface waited there, surrounded by four chairs. “My
office,” explained the director. “Forgive the spartan conditions. I seldom use
it. After fifteen decades in a hibernation tank I prefer to spend as much time
as possible outdoors.”

“I understand,” Neil replied. Which wasn’t to say he shared
the urge, though he had spent the same interval in coldsleep while the ark
inched its way across interstellar space. He meant he perceived why an
archaeologist could not resist being part of the race to discover, somewhere
within the ruined city or elsewhere on the planet, just how and why the
Eridanin had lost their claim to this world.

“Who would you like to question first?”

“The murderer.” Neil fed a data lozenge into the interface
and called up a screen full of names, faces, and pertinent information about
the case. “Barry Radner, is it?”

“Yes. Radner.” Vereshchagin’s posture slumped. Perhaps he
had hoped Neil might start with other, less volatile figures. Indeed, had Neil
been a normal investigator, he would have questioned the killer last, after
gathering the data that would allow him to poke holes in whatever excuses the
man tried to concoct to excuse his crime. But Dimitri had already seen to that
phase the day before, working his way through all five eyewitnesses, several
peripheral figures, and then to Radner himself. The Thwaa had not sent Neil to
comb every flea of evidence; all they wanted was to confirm the gist of the
events for themselves, through him.

“Is there a problem?” Neil asked.

“No. I can have him here in two minutes. He’s right down
there.” Vereshchagin pointed out the small window, which looked out over the
lakebed.

“I desired to have him kept where no one had any cause to
wander near,” Dimitri added. He stepped to the window, signalled, and moved
aside so Neil could see.

Looking down, Neil spotted what appeared to be a septic tank
in the early stages of construction. The pair of men guarding the pit — more of
Dimitri’s colonial police — lowered a ladder. Up came a muscular, red-haired
man broadcasting defiance. His escorts marched him up the low bluff atop which
the shed perched. Not long after the party slipped out of Neil’s field of view
a knock shook the office door.

As soon as the group had entered, the guards handcuffed
Radner to his chair and took up stations by the door. The accused man spared
the inspector general and the chief archaeologist the briefest of glances. He
regarded Neil unflinchingly.

“What?
More
questions?”

“A few,” Neil replied.

“Shouldn’t my lawyer be here by now?”

“Ordinarily. If it helps, I can confirm that you’ll have
legal counsel well before the arraignment, and I won’t ask any questions you
haven’t already been asked by Inspector Vlahakos yesterday.”

“Then why bother?”

“I am the Thwaa consul,” Neil explained. “Our patrons have
asked me to look into your case personally.”

A puff of astonishment jostled Radner’s head backward. Neil
half-expected a retort, but none came. Even a man such as this could be
disquieted to find himself the specific target of Thwaa scrutiny. Radner turned
to Dimitri, who nodded.

“I hope you understand that lack of cooperation today is
simply not an option,” Dimitri told the prisoner.

Radner shrugged.

“All right, then,” Neil said. “Let’s run through the events
of early yesterday morning. You and several members of your team were
excavating a building. You got into an argument with a co-worker by the name of
Farid Bilyang. It escalated. You struck him in the head with a shovel. Is that
correct?”

He grunted. Neil took it as a yes.

“Why did you argue?”

Radner continued to stare, but now his eyes glinted. “He
fucked my wife.”

Neil checked the interface. “That would be Christine Radner,
age 29, whom you married eighteen months prior to ark launch.”

“They met when the archaeological contingent was finalized,”
Vereshchagin interjected.

Neil waved the director silent. “Mr. Radner?”

“Yes. That’s my wife.” He spoke without affection.

“Did you actually witness Mr. Bilyang and your spouse having
intercourse?”

“She wouldn’t admit it, but I saw him with his arm around
her. Eric Denard joked with me about all the murmurs coming from my tent. He
said it assuming it was me in there with Christine, but I was unloading supplies off a transport that afternoon.
Pretty soon everyone was talking about that.” Radner’s anger continued
to radiate, but beneath it came an undertone of betrayal and humiliation.

Neil glanced at Vereshchagin, whose downcast eyes lent
credence to the description of the social dynamics.

Turning back to Radner, Neil asked, “Would you say then that
you not only had cause to believe they were having relations, but you felt that
the affair was being conducted indiscreetly?”

“Yes.”

“And during the argument, those circumstances became too
much to endure?”

Radner’s lips quivered violently. “A man like him had no
right. It wasn’t . . .” He swallowed. “I couldn’t let it go on.”

Neil gauged Radner’s reaction, and realized the interview
need not be prolonged. He had only the final question: “Are you sorry you did
it?”

“I’m sorry it had to be done.”

Neil nodded. “I see.
Thank you. That will be all.” Dimitri gestured to the guards, who
uncuffed Radner. The prisoner strode away chin up, eyes gazing straight ahead, apparently
unfazed by the tall musclemen at his elbows.

“I am sure in another day or two, he will realize what a
ghastly mistake he made, and wish he could undo it,” Vereshchagin said into the
silence.

“He may have regrets, but I fear they will not be the right
ones,” Dimitri said, beating Neil to the response. He brushed off his suit
lapels, as if finding contamination there.

“Tell me something,” Neil asked Vereshchagin. “Had you heard
the rumors about the affair?”

The director paled. “I had suspicions.”

Neil gestured at the background data still on the interface
screen. “You let an Australian be taunted with knowledge that an Indonesian was
humping his wife?” Radner was too young to have been caught in the Perth
massacre, but he would have grown up among the resentful survivors.

“Everyone on our team had been getting along profoundly well
since we arrived on-planet. I was lulled into a sense of security. I believed
the matter would sort itself out.” His expression could only be labelled
wretched. “What would you have done?”