Offspring (31 page)

The silence continued. Finally Salman sank down into a chair and covered her face with her hands. The tableau broke and everyone started talking again. Petrie snatched up a data pad and pecked madly at it. Ben crossed the room and knelt by his grandmother’s chair with her hand in his. Kendi was struck at how alike they looked. It wasn’t so much a physical resemblance as a similarity in posture and expression. They both resembled Ara.

After a while, Salman gave a heavy sigh. Ben released her hand and she stood up with a resolute look on her face. “Conference!” she said. “Top five in my office.”

Petrie, Ched-Mulaar, Yin May, and two other people Kendi didn’t recognize followed Salman into her office. They shut the door. In the living room, various hushed conversations continued. Ben came back to Kendi.

“We should probably get out of the way,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll call soon and have some speaking engagements for you.”

“Let’s go,” Kendi agreed.

No one spoke on the monorail ride home. Kendi wore sunglasses and a hat to remain more anonymous, though Gretchen and Tan remained vigilant. Their eyes darted about without stopping, examining this human, that Ched-Balaar. Kendi stared out the window at the blur of leaves and branches that currently resembled his life. Lucia was pregnant, he had discovered Silent children re-entering the Dream, a scandal had broken within Salman’s campaign, and Mitchell Foxglove had somehow managed to usurp her possession of Kendi’s secret.

Kendi tapped long fingers on his knee. How
had
Foxglove learned about that? Modesty aside, Kendi had never met another Silent who could sense and track people in the Dream nearly as well as Kendi himself could. That didn’t mean one didn’t exist, but in the post-Despair Dream? He doubted it. Kendi himself would have sensed such a person. Besides, Foxglove was publicly against the mixing of Silent and non-Silent, and had no Silent working for him. That meant Foxglove had gotten his information from a different source. So who had known?

Kendi himself, of course. Martina and Keith. Ben. Harenn and Bedj-ka. Salman. Wanda Petrie. And various people within Salman’s campaign circle. A lot of people, come to that, but no one who would blab. No one who—

Kendi sat up straight. It was obvious—Foxglove had planted a spy inside Salman’s campaign. But who was it? Kendi grimaced. That was a question more easily answered by Salman herself. Kendi only knew a few of the people who worked for her. She and her Top Five were in a better position to ferret something out. He would have to send her a message—if she hadn’t already come up with the idea herself.

When they arrived home, Harenn was waiting for them. Her middle was well-rounded these days, and the sight always made Kendi’s heart swell with fatherly anticipation. Was the baby a boy or a girl? Would it look a lot like Ben? What would the baby’s personality be? Would Kendi be able to cope with the pressures of parenthood? One way or another, he was going to find out. Twice over—Lucia was there was well, though she wasn’t showing, of course. Her face wore a solemn look.

“We saw Foxglove’s speech,” she said. “Council of war?”

“Council of war,” Kendi agreed.

They gathered around the kitchen table. Lucia took up her usual position at the counter, busily chopping sharp-smelling herbs she had bought that morning. When Harenn asked her to sit down, she shook her head. Cooking, she claimed, helped her to think better.

“And I want you to know,” she added, “that I don’t intend to do this full-time for a huge household. Ben and Kendi are going to take lessons.”

“From who?” Kendi asked, trying to imagine the logistics behind enrolling in a cooking class with bodyguards and a full schedule of speeches.

“From me.” Her gleaming knife whacked the stems off a bunch of greens. “Which means you’ll pay
very
close attention.”

“What do we need to talk about?” Ben asked. “Best to go about it methodically.”

“Two issues,” Kendi said. “Who’s trying to kill me, and who’s the spy in Grandma’s campaign.”

“Spy?” Harenn asked.

Kendi quickly outlined his thinking. Harenn pursed her lips. “I am not entirely sure of your reasoning. A great many people knew this so-called secret, Kendi, and it is likely that someone accidentally revealed it.”

“I thought about that,” Kendi agreed. “But there’s another factor—why was
Foxglove
the one to get the information? If one of us had said something by accident, it’s way more likely the information would’ve reached a reporter before it reached Foxglove. And what reporter wouldn’t kill to break
that
story?”

“True,” Harenn said, drawing out the word. “But I remain skeptical.”

“We also have no idea who killed Finn and Leona Day,” Lucia said, “or if their deaths are related to everything else that’s going on.”

Kendi drummed his fingers some more. “All my instincts say there’s a connection here. We’re just not seeing it.”

“The fact is,” Ben said, “we just don’t have enough information. We have no idea who murdered the Days. Just about anyone could be a spy in Grandma’s campaign. And lots of people would love to see Kendi dead.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Lucia got out a loaf of bread, a bowl of butter, two tomatoes, and a wedge of cheese. Her knife went back to work.

“What do all these elements have in common?” Harenn asked. “A single common vector would—”

“Who are the Days?” Tan rasped.

Silence. Lucia’s knife stopped moving. Kendi bit his lip. He had gotten so used to Tan and Gretchen following him around that he had completely forgotten that they didn’t know about Lucia’s illicit visit to the Day’s house and what she had found there.

“Are the Days connected with the attack on Lucia?” Tan continued. “Lars told me about that, but he didn’t have details.”

“You’re holding out on us, Kendi,” Gretchen said. “Come on—give. We might be able to help.”

Kendi glanced at Ben. His lips were set in a hard line and he shook his head the tiniest bit possible—
No way can you tell them
. Kendi grimaced—
We have to tell them something.
Ben spread his hands—
Just the minimum, then.
Who needed the Dream when you had private body language?

“The Days were the blackmailers,” Kendi said. “Ben and Lucia tracked them down and learned that Finn Day had a connection to Foxglove and the Federalists. Lucia...paid them a visit. When they weren’t home.”

“Broke in, you mean,” Gretchen said.

“She found the file the Days were threatening us with,” Kendi said. “She also found their corpses.”

“Murdered,” Tan said.

“The bodies were still warm,” Lucia said. She finished slicing tomatoes and went to work on the bread with a serrated knife. “I think the killer was trying to access their computer. I came in and frightened him or her away without realizing it. I downloaded the file, saw the bodies, and fled. On the way home I was accosted by a beggar. A few minutes later, someone hit me over the head and took the disk with the file on it. We were afraid the blackmail would start up again, but three months have gone by and we haven’t heard a thing. The mugger probably doesn’t know what was on the disk or can’t understand the information. At any rate, we believe we’re safe.”

“Unless the killer was the one who hit you,” Gretchen said.

Lucia blinked. Kendi stared at her.

“It would’ve been easy enough for the person to wait outside the Days’ house,” Gretchen continued. “In fact, it would make sense. The killer wanted something from that computer. Lucia may have scared the person into getting the hell out of the house, but a smart guy would hang around and wait for you to leave because he still needs that file. He—I’m gonna assume it’s a he—sneaks back into the house, discovers the file is gone, and figures you have it. He runs after you, coshes you, and takes the disk.”

“But how would he know where to find me?” Lucia objected. “The beggar girl delayed me, but not for long. By the time the killer got in and out of the house, I would have been well away. I was almost back at Ben and Kendi’s house when I was mugged, in fact. The killer couldn’t possibly have followed me.”

“You’re assuming,” Tan rasped, “that the killer didn’t know where you were going.”

“How could he know that?” Ben said.

“He would know where to go,” Harenn spoke up, “if he recognized Lucia.”

Kendi’s blood chilled. “The Days’ killer is someone we know,” he said. “All life!”

“This theory doesn’t hold up,” Ben objected. “The file is only valuable to me or to someone who might want to blackmail me, and no one has contacted us about it. Why go through all that trouble to steal a file and then not use it?”

“I don’t know,” Tan admitted. “But you have to consider that possibility.”

Ben dropped his head into his hands. “The blackmail might start up again, then. God.”

Kendi leveled Tan a harsh look. He wanted to hit her. It had taken weeks to persuade Ben that the file was gone, that no one was going to blackmail them or reveal the secret of his parentage, that he could sleep at night without worrying. Tan had raked it all up again.

“Ben,” she said as gently as her raspy voice would allow, “you can tell me what’s in the file. I’m not going to judge you, and the information might give us a clue to—”

“No.”

“Ben—”

“I said
no
,” Ben snarled. “And if you ask again, you’re
fired
, got that?”

Tan’s mouth hardened into a thin line. She nodded without answering.

“I think,” Lucia said, “that all this is worth investigating again. Kendi, if you like, I could put together a little team to start some spying. I believe it would be interesting to watch some of Mitchell Foxglove’s people. Gretchen is good at surveillance, for example.” She put a large griddle on the stove to heat and set to spreading bread slices with thick, yellow butter.

“I have a job,” Gretchen objected.

“We can add it to your job description,” Kendi said lightly, “and hire another bodyguard to pick up the slack. Who else were you thinking about for a team, Lucia?”

“The Vajhurs,” Lucia replied. “We know them, and we know they can keep quiet. Prasad and Vidya have worked for us before, and Sejal’s...talent at possession would be a big asset. Katsu is also trustworthy. And I’m sure they can use the money.”

“I’m thinking we’ll find a way to charge this one to Grandma,” Kendi mused aloud.

“It won’t even be difficult work,” Lucia said. “We can set up remote spider cameras and set them to alert us whenever someone enters or leaves Foxglove’s house. That way, the Vajhurs can monitor everything from home. No danger of getting caught.”

“What can I do?” Ben said. “I’m not going to sit at home all day doing nothing.”

“Use your computer,” Lucia said. “See if you can hack into Foxglove’s records.”

Ben thought about that. “It’d be a challenge,” he said at last. “Foxglove will be heavily guarded and encrypted.”

Lucia put together buttery sandwiches of tomatoes and herb-sprinkled cheese and dropped them sizzling on the hot griddle. “We never did discuss common vectors in all these events. What are they?”

“Kendi, for one,” Ben said. “He’s the target of the killer, he’s involved in the blackmailing, and he’s working for Grandma’s campaign.”

“That also makes Senator Salman a vector,” Tan said. “Kendi, the target, works for her campaign, which may have a spy in it.”

“This leaves out the blackmail,” Harenn said.

“It may be an attempt to discredit Kendi and render him useless to the Senator,” Tan replied.

“I don’t like it,” Kendi said. “If they want to discredit me, why strike at Ben? He’s the primary blackmail victim, not me.”

“The campaign itself is a vector,” Gretchen said. “Kendi-the-target works for it. Ben-the-blackmail-guy is the grandson of the Senator, and Finn-and-Leona-Day-the-corpses had connections to Mitchell Foxglove.” She scratched her nose. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to disrupt the campaign.”

“But not just Grandma’s campaign,” Ben said. “If the blackmail attempt may have been an attempt to hurt Grandma by hurting me, but the Days’ deaths
benefit
her and hurt Mitchell Foxglove.”

“So someone’s trying to disrupt
both
campaigns?” Kendi said.

“That would point to Ched-Pirasku.” Lucia slid a spatula under each sandwich and gave it an expert flip. The kitchen smelled of toasted bread, hot cheese, and baking herbs. “He benefits if the Federalists and the Tapers—Unionists—lose.”

“A possibility,” Ben said. “Should we watch Ched-Pirasku, too?”

“Maybe,” Kendi said. “But only if Foxglove doesn’t pan out. I still think it’s him.”

Lucia brought to the table a platter piled high with crispy grilled sandwiches filled with soft cheese, aromatic herbs, and juicy tomatoes. Everyone dug in with appreciative moans. Bedj-ka appeared from Ben’s office, where he had been playing sim-games, snatched a sandwich, and vanished back into the office again. Harenn, who solemnly maintained the most dangerous place to stand was between a pregnant woman and a plate of hot food, ate two sandwiches and started on a third while the group discussed approaches. Tan refused to get involved in the surveillance except as it might relate to the safety of Ben, Kendi, and Harenn.