Severance (13 page)

Stein frowned. It wasn’t because of some deep–felt
connection to Gabelman — she was already struggling to remember what the kid
looked like. But someone was doing something on her ship and wasn’t telling her
about it. She couldn’t believe she felt tired earlier this day. Until this was
solved, it was going to drive her up the wall. She hated secrets, despised
locked doors.

Stein eventually reached a conclusion. “Because I don’t like
being jerked around, and I can feel my leash getting tighter and tighter. That’s
why I want to do something.”

Bruce seemed to weigh that statement carefully. “Like a
couple of private detectives?”

“Yes. Don’t you think that’d be fun? Solving murders?
Running around with magnifying glasses and solving crimes, just like we always
talked about?”

“Fuck, yes!” Bruce said, genuine excitement in his voice. He
uncrossed his legs and sat up, flopping about excitedly. “We are so doing this!
Okay, what do you want me to do?”

Stein swallowed. “You’ll have noticed that our respected and
far–sighted chief engineer has just assigned us several weeks of tedious work?”

“Yes, sir. I will notice that, sir,” Bruce replied.

“It might be nothing, but I wonder now if Curts isn’t in on
this as well.” She looked at the ceiling, collecting her thoughts. “I mean, he
was acting strangely about the service requests. Told me not to look into them.
And when I did, the next day he springs this little chore on us. And babysat me
all day.”

“He’s also kind of a wiener,” Bruce observed. “That’s enough
reason right there to rough him up a little to see what he knows.”

“Heh. Or we could not do that, and do something smart.” She
paused, as Bruce held up his nose and pouted. “Here’s my thinking. If Curts is
assigning me make–work to keep me from investigating this any further, I’m
probably going to have him all over me for the next little while. Which means I
need you to look up this Arlo Samson and retrace what Gabelman was looking at that
day.”

“You want me to recreate the same series of events which led
to a man’s death,” Bruce stated.

Stein grimaced. “I’m aware this plan has some flaws.”

“Oh, good. It’d be rude of me if I had to point them out to
you.”

“I was hoping you could do everything Gabelman did that day,
and then at the end, omit the ‘dying gruesomely’ part.”

“I see.” Bruce sat back on his couch. “Okay. It’s done.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally done. I’ve already got a couple ideas.”

§

“Yeah, this is Bruce. Damper 2X–333–uh–3 is at, uh, three
percent,” Bruce called into his terminal.

“You mean Damper 4H–993–L, right, Bruce?” Stein’s voice
queried through the terminal.

“Uh, yes. That’s what I said.”

“Copy.”

Bruce was nowhere near either of those dampers. He was
instead in the garden well, walking down the center of America, amongst a crowd
of revelers dressed in horse costumes in the opening stages of what would
become a lengthy orgy. For better or worse, Bruce would be long gone before
anything interesting broke out, but for now it provided excellent camouflage.
Should anyone be watching, being surrounded by a hundred or so people in
costumes rubbing up on each other was a great way to appear uninteresting.

The ship–wide diagnostic had remained waiting for them when
they arrived at the office that morning, Curts still there, hovering over Stein’s
every move. This time, Stein had steered Bruce to a rarely visited corner of
the ship to trudge through the diagnostic process there. And as they had
discussed, he was doing nothing of the sort, radioing back completely fictional
results while he made his way through this slow–burning pool of phony equine
delight on his way towards the Bridge.

Located just beyond the aft edge of the garden well, the
Bridge was home to the seat of the civilian government, and in the levels above
it, much of the control apparatus for the actual operations of the ship. Back
when cavemen were sailing their ocean liners around the Earth, there was an
obvious purpose in putting the men in charge someplace up high, where the
visibility was best. But as there wasn’t a great deal to see in space, there
was little purpose in putting the ship’s brains on its outer surface, and,
consequently, the control apparatus of the Argos was buried right in its heart.
As anticipated, over time the decks underneath the proper control room had
become a type of city hall and was where the elected officials rummaged around
in the shit and mud of Argosian politics. Although the civilian government had
no direct control over ship systems, the whole general area still retained the
name ‘Bridge.’

As he approached the Bridge, Bruce reached into his pocket
and pulled out a little bottle. Gently opening it so as not to spill the
contents, he reached in and fumbled around, trying to grab one of the brightly
multicolored pills from within. After a couple of tries, he eventually fished
out a bright red pill and carefully recapped the bottle. The color of the pill
would reveal its function to anyone who saw it: Brash. Bruce looked at it
sitting in his palm, considering it for a second, before he reopened the bottle
and pulled out another red pill. He tossed the pair down his throat and
swallowed quickly.

“Whooo. Yeah. Everything is a gooooood idea!” he said to
himself as quietly as he could. His plan was to figure out where Arlo Samson
was and then look at the heating and cooling systems in that area. The fact
that this wasn’t much of a plan at all had started to bother him on the walk
over, which was what necessitated the chemical backbone infusion.

Reaching the main entrance of the Bridge, Bruce marched in
the front door and approached the reception desk. “I’m looking for Arlo Samson’s
office,” he said, choosing the direct approach.

“Sure,” the receptionist replied. “I’ll just call him now.”

“No, no, don’t do that. I need to go to his office. There’s
a problem with his heat.” Bruce looked at the young man, and realized he hadn’t
blinked in a long time. He blinked. And then once more, just to set the fellow
at ease. “I’d have gone straight to see him, but his address got messed up. Was
wondering if you knew where he sat?”

“Oh, I see,” the receptionist said. “Okay, he’s on the
second floor, office 238. You can take the stairs just back there.”

Bruce blinked again, then launched himself across the room.
This
is going great
. He noticed a bulky guy standing in an office doorway on the
other side of the reception foyer, studying him closely. Bruce gave him a
friendly nod, and then a blink for good measure.

The Bridge was one of the few places on board the ship where
civilians could access areas above the fourth level. The mayor’s office itself
was all the way up on the eighth level, although within the Bridge complex
itself, this was confusingly called the fifth floor.

Bruce climbed the stairs to the second floor. Walking down
the hall, he peered into offices, seeing various mid–level mandarins busy doing
absolutely nothing. Some of them looked up from their desks as he walked past,
startled to see him in his bright maintenance coveralls. He distributed some cheerful
blinks and kept walking.
This was a really good idea
. He congratulated
himself on the foresight he displayed in agreeing to it.

Bruce found office 238 with its door open and entered to see
a man at work over his desk. Arlo Samson was in his forties, slender, balding
prematurely. He looked profoundly unhappy, like a man who never understood
jokes. “Can I help you?” Arlo asked.

“Arlo Samson?” Bruce asked. The man didn’t make any
indication that this was incorrect, so Bruce continued. “You had a problem with
the heat?”

Arlo swallowed, his eyes widening. He stayed frozen for a
few more seconds before he quickly shook his head. “Nope, no problem here. I
think you must be mistaken.” He looked around the room, as if checking the
temperature of the room by sight. “See, perfectly fine.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean now,” Bruce said. “I meant a couple days
ago. You had a problem with the heat a couple days ago.”

Arlo tried to maintain a blank face, though he did a poor
job of it. “Nope. I haven’t had any problems with the heat in here that I
remember.” He paused, studying Bruce’s face. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve
got a lot of work to do.”

Bruce shot Arlo in the chest. Stunned at his own rapid
movement, Bruce froze, his eyes flickering from the unconscious form of Arlo
Samson to the stun pistol that had emerged in his right hand. “That was…brash.”
He reslotted the pistol under his arm, where it had been concealed in a pocket
underneath his tool webbing. He turned around to see the door yawning wide
open. Startled, he hurried over and closed it, leaning against it heavily. “Boy,
I sure hope stunners are as quiet as I think they are.”

After a few seconds passed without anyone inquiring why he
had shot a man, Bruce crossed the room again and grabbed Arlo under the
shoulders. He laid him on the floor behind his desk and looked up. Realizing
the desk had no front panel, that the top surface was partially transparent,
and that Arlo was still completely visible to anyone entering the room or even
walking by casually, Bruce grabbed and hauled him over to the wall the door was
on, rolling the unconscious bureaucrat into a nook, out of sight.

Things were still going great, but maybe, Bruce decided, a
bit less great than before. As he recalled, stun shots left people unconscious
for twenty minutes or so. They also had a nasty habit of causing heart attacks,
but he was glad to see that that had not appeared to happen here. He’d only had
to use a pistol once before in his life, eleven years earlier. He didn’t recall
it being so much fun, though he didn’t believe he was as incredibly high at the
time.

What would Gabelman have done now? Excepting the fact that
Ron probably hadn’t shot Mr. Samson in the chest, Bruce was now in roughly the
same situation Gabelman would have been in three days earlier — in a client’s
office investigating a complaint of too much heat. Well, one obvious place to
check was the thermostat in the room. Bruce checked it against his own sensor
on his webbing. No problem there. He looked at the main diffuser, then pried
that off and looked at the damper in the vent beyond. No problems there either.

Bruce then realized he wasn’t specifically looking for a
heating problem. He was supposed to be looking for whatever it was that
Gabelman saw, something that he wasn’t supposed to see, while he was investigating
a heating problem. Bruce looked around Arlo’s office. He poked and prodded at
various surfaces on and around Arlo’s desk, not finding anything of interest.
Arlo Samson appeared to be a government worker of middling importance, whose
sole job was managing slightly less important government workers. Bruce couldn’t
even tell what department the man worked in. A few minutes of poking around
convinced Bruce that nothing Arlo Samson did was of interest to anyone. Nothing
worth killing over.

A knock on the door. A second later, it slid open to reveal
a middle aged woman, who looked at Bruce in surprise. “Oh! Is Arlo here?”

“He had to step out,” Bruce replied.

“Oh.” The woman looked unsure about that for a bit, before
saying. “Okay. I’ll just drop this on his desk then.” She entered the room, terminal
in hand and walked over to Arlo’s desk.

Bruce sighed, and walked around behind her, closing the door
as she reached the desk. She turned around, an annoyed and self–important look on
her face as she saw Bruce blocking the exit. Her eyes drifted to the corner
where Arlo’s body was heaped. “Oh!” she said before being stunned to the floor.

Bruce surveyed the room, and finding nowhere better, hauled
the woman over and deposited her on top of Arlo. He stood up, wiping his sleeve
across his brow.
Detective work is hard.

The next place Gabelman would go if he couldn’t find a
problem here would be the air balancer servicing this area. Bruce checked his terminal
and found the air balancer down the hall from Samson’s office. It looked like
it was set correctly. Bruce left the office and walked down the hall a short
way, where he stopped, looked up at the ceiling, and popped out the access
panel. There was the air balancer. It looked completely normal. As he was
stretching up to replace the panel, he saw an older gentleman come down the
hall and stop in front of Arlo Samson’s door. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bruce said
under his breath. He hurriedly set the panel down and jogged down the hall as
the man entered the office.

A minute later, Bruce re–emerged from the office, locking
the door behind him this time. For a wienery little guy, Arlo Samson certainly
was popular. Bruce reset the access panel into place. So, he had committed
three assaults, and found absolutely nothing. A half hour ago, he had felt on
the cusp of uncovering an enormous ship–wide conspiracy, but now it dawned on
him that he might in fact be a psychopath. This troubled him.

“Well, in light of the fact that I can’t go backwards,” he
said, steeling himself, and looked up. Onwards and upwards. If Gabelman had
retraced all these steps and still had not tracked down the heating problem, he
would visit the fan room for this section of the ship, which was on the third
floor. Bruce found the staircase and made his way upstairs, managing not to
incapacitate anyone along the way. Following his terminal’s directions, he
found the fan room and entered it.

The fan room was tight and cramped, an awkwardly shaped
space dominated by a series of enormous fans enclosed in a mass of twisting
ductwork. Within these ducts, huge coils heated or chilled the air as it was
distributed to the surrounding rooms.

Bruce crawled into, over, and around the fans and ductwork,
looking for anything out of the ordinary. The fans looked fine. No dead bodies
or ancient secrets or anything. He did find a multi–tool on the floor
underneath a duct, identical to the one secured in his own tool webbing. There
was nothing to indicate that it was Gabelman’s, but there was nothing to
not
indicate that it was either. He checked the time on his terminal. He had zapped
Samson and the woman again when he had knocked out the old man. That meant he
had another ten minutes or so until they woke up, unless it had killed them, in
which case he had quite a bit longer.