Space Case (20 page)

“Of course,” Chang said. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“I heard he stole some ideas from you.”

Chang's avatar looked back at me, which meant that the real Chang had just glanced my way as well. Then, to my surprise, he laughed. “Yeah, he did. But that doesn't mean I'm happy that the guy's dead.”

A new sound arose from the woods to the side: an eerie guttural croak that made me shiver. “What was that?” I asked.

“A velociraptor, I think,” Chang said.

“
What?
There aren't any dinosaurs in Yosemite!”

“There are now. It's a new module I designed for the Head-to-Head. It provides motivation to run faster.”

Another guttural croak came from the forest, closer this time. Even though the dinosaurs were imaginary, they provoked a very real fear in me. I felt my adrenaline spike and reflexively picked up the pace.

Ahead of me Chang did too. He said, “I'll admit, I was angry at Dr. Holtz when I first learned he'd stolen my idea. I mean, big ideas don't just come to you every day. Holtz and I were both working at NASA, doing research. I'd thought of a way to increase our metabolism of oxygen in outer space and shared it with him—and a couple months later the guy's taking credit for it. Frankly, I wanted his head on a stick. But that was years ago. There's no point in holding on to that kind of emotion. It'll eat you up inside. So I dealt with it. Talked to my shrink, did some yoga. Eventually I realized that Dr. Holtz wasn't even aware of what he'd done. He hadn't stolen my idea maliciously. In fact I think he'd forgotten all about our conversation and thought he came up with the idea himself. Which happens more than you'd think in science. People are always forgetting where ideas come from. Whoa!”

Chang leaped aside as a six-foot-tall velociraptor lunged out of the trees at him. It shot across the trail in front of me, so close that I had to duck under its tail.

Another roar sounded directly behind me. I looked back and found two more velociraptors in pursuit. I ran even faster, my legs pounding on the treadmill. I didn't like this new motivator. I'd been perfectly happy in regular Yosemite without prehistoric carnivores to worry about. But I didn't want to bother Chang to shut it off. If I did, he might stop
talking about Dr. Holtz. As it was, he was eagerly unburdening himself, unconcerned by the dinosaurs.

“And then the chance to come up here presented itself,” Chang was saying. “And I wanted it. I knew Holtz was going to be here. He was a lock for this place, the only person guaranteed a trip. So I had to take whatever issues I had with him and chuck them once and for all. There were a lot of hoops to jump through to get up here. A million interviews. Psych reviews. Physical exams. And if there was a part of your body they could probe, they probed it. If anyone thought I had an ax to grind with Holtz, I wouldn't have made it past round one. And believe me, they asked. Over and over again. But like I said, I'm over it. The past is the past. What happened between Holtz and me is long forgotten.”

The way Chang said it, it sounded completely honest and convincing, though I was a bit distracted by the velociraptors pursuing me. I wished I could have seen Chang's face as he talked, rather than the back of his avatar's head. In retrospect, deciding to grill a murder suspect in a virtual world hadn't turned out to be such a good idea. But I didn't have a choice now.

I asked, “So, given that, then there's no way that
anyone
who didn't like Dr. Holtz could have gotten up here, right? NASA would have booted them.”

“Well, not necessarily,” Chang admitted. “That was certainly the case for me, because I was coming here solo and there was a lot of competition for my slot. In the vetting process they were looking for any reason to ding you. But there are others up here who didn't have such a rigorous assessment.”

A bear burst through the trees ahead of us and scampered across the trail. Normally, that alone would have been exciting, but now three carnotauruses emerged from the forest in pursuit. They plunged into the trees and disappeared again without so much as a glance at us.

“Who had an easy time getting approved for here?” I asked.

“The whole Sjoberg clan, for starters,” Chang replied. “Since they bought their way in here, no one really cared much that they were a bunch of twits.”

“Do you think any of them didn't like Dr. Holtz?”

“I wouldn't be surprised. Those Nordic dorkwads don't seem to like anybody. And then there's Dr. Marquez. Holtz tried to block him from even coming up here.”

“Really? Why?”

“'Cause Marquez is a lousy psychiatrist.”

“What?” I stumbled slightly on the treadmill in surprise. “But he's famous.”

“That doesn't mean he's
good
. The guy got his medical
degree from a sixth-rate school in the Bahamas. He couldn't diagnose a baked potato. Holtz thought he'd be a waste of space up here. But NASA trumped him. They wanted Ilina Brahmaputra-Marquez up here for her astrophysics chops—and they figured her celebrity husband would be good for publicity.”

“You mean they only wanted Marquez for his name?”

“Absolutely. Think about all the press coverage before we all came up here. Who got the most attention?”

I thought back to the time after all the Moonies had been announced to the public. We had all become famous—but Dr. Marquez had been at a different level. He'd been invited on hundreds of talk shows and been at every NASA press conference. “It was Dr. Marquez.”

“Right. The public doesn't care about astrophysicists or geochemists. They care about famous people. NASA probably would have sent up a movie star if it didn't mean bumping a scientist from coming here. Dr. Marquez was the next best thing. He was famous enough to get a lot of attention—and he filled the slot for a psychiatrist.”

“But wasn't anyone besides Dr. Holtz concerned that he's not good?”

“I'm sure someone was. But I know there were other people who felt it wasn't that important to have a psychiatrist here at all, so they might as well send a lousy one who
could get publicity for the moon base rather than looking for a good one who couldn't.”

There was a snort behind me, so close I thought I could feel the exhalation riffle my hair. I'd been so caught up in what Chang was saying that I'd momentarily forgotten about the raptors behind us. Now I spun to find three dozen toothbrush-size teeth ready to clamp down on my head, a strand of drool ominously dangling from them. I sprinted forward, pulling alongside Chang as the jaws snapped shut.

“That was close!” he laughed. “You were almost an appetizer!”

I didn't think it was nearly as funny. My heart was pounding. “Did Dr. Marquez know Dr. Holtz tried to block him?”

“Oh yeah. It wasn't a secret. Holtz wrote a whole report detailing why Marquez was bad at his job. Marquez was livid. And definitely embarrassed. Then when NASA okayed him to come here, he figured that vindicated him. But Holtz kept dissing him. And he refused to ever let Marquez assess him up here. In fact he wouldn't even talk to the guy.”

“So . . . if Dr. Holtz had a mental problem, no one would have caught it?”

“I suppose not. Although Holtz probably would have argued that Marquez wouldn't have been able to diagnose it anyhow.”

I wondered if a bruised ego was enough motivation to want to kill somebody. “Was there anyone else who didn't like Dr. Holtz?”

Chang's avatar shot me a sidelong glance. “Why are you so interested in this?”

“Up till yesterday, I thought everyone liked him. And then I started hearing that people didn't. It's pretty surprising.” This was an understatement. In truth I found the number of potential killers Dr. Holtz was racking up to be extremely disturbing. How could anyone who was so nice have so many enemies? I wondered. Or was Dr. Holtz not quite as nice as I'd believed?

“You're not thinking someone bumped Holtz off, are you?” Chang asked.

“No!” I said, way too fast. “I . . . uh . . . I don't know what I was thinking. It's really hard to concentrate with these dinosaurs chasing us.”

“You don't like it?” Chang seemed genuinely surprised. “I think they're cool.”

“They creep me out.”

“Oh.” Chang's avatar frowned. “You know they can't really hurt you, right? Even virtually. It's not like they'll eat your avatar if you don't run fast enough. They're only designed to stay right behind us and push our pace.”

“I can think of lots of less scary ways to do that,” I
argued. “Like,
we
could chase something. Rabbits. Or squirrels. Something that isn't dangerous.”

“You're sure you want me to shut it off?” Chang sounded disappointed. “It gets
really
exciting right about . . . now.”

We emerged into a clearing near Yosemite Falls—only we could barely see the cataract because there was a tyrannosaurus standing in front of it. It loomed over us, straddling the trail, and loosed a primal roar that jackhammered my eardrums.

“Yes, shut it off,” I said. “I'm done.” I snapped off my goggles and stopped running.

To my surprise, the readout said we'd gone almost two miles.

“Look at that!” Chang crowed, his goggles now perched on his forehead. “I
told
you those raptors were good motivators! Nice run!” He held up his hand for a high five.

I held up mine, and Chang slapped it so hard I thought it might come off.

“Could you half-wits shut your stupid mouths for once?”

I knew who'd spoken, even before turning to face him. There was only one person at MBA who was so relentlessly mean-spirited: Lars Sjoberg.

He stood in the doorway of the gym, scowling, wearing pajamas, slippers, and a fluffy robe emblazoned with an MBA logo. (The robe was part of the Sjobergs' deluxe tourist package.)
There still appeared to be some dried coleslaw crusted in his white-blond hair. “It's hard enough to sleep in this dung heap without imbeciles carrying on at all hours of the night.”

Chang's muscles tensed, though I could tell he was trying hard to restrain his temper. He undid his gravity belt, stepped off the treadmill, and hung his goggles on the wall by the resistance bands. “We weren't carrying on, Mr. Sjoberg. We were simply working out.”

“At two o'clock in the morning!” Lars snarled. “A time when normal people are in bed!”

“We couldn't sleep,” I told him. “We're too upset about Dr. Holtz.”

Lars snorted in disgust. “As if that old fool didn't cause me enough grief when he was alive.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Chang demanded.

“All of you put this man on a pedestal when he deserved no such thing,” Lars groused. “He was an adviser on this base. A man who supposedly specialized in improving our quality of life off earth. Well, given that there is no quality of life here at all, I'd say that makes your Dr. Holtz a complete and total failure.”

“Dr. Holtz's job was to assess the effects of low gravity and space travel on the human body,” Chang said. “Not to run a spa for rich dinks like you. If you're unhappy here, that's your fault, not his. He didn't ask you to come here.
In fact he tried to prevent you from doing it. You came on your own.”

“Only because NASA and its so-called scientists assured us this would be the adventure of a lifetime!” Lars stormed toward Chang, his pale blue eyes blazing. He seemed to be itching for a fight, every annoyance he'd felt at MBA now flowing out of him. “They all lied to us, including your precious Dr. Holtz. The man was a quack! A fool who knew nothing except how to shill for NASA.”

Lars was now face-to-face with Chang. I'd never realized it before, but Lars was a big man, as tall as Chang. Though he was flabby around the middle, Lars looked like he could handle himself in a fight.

“Take that back,” Chang said. “The man just died. He deserves some respect.”

Lars poked Chang in the chest with his finger. “Not from me.”

“Don't touch me,” Chang told him.

“I'll do whatever I want.” Lars poked Chang in the chest again. “My family and I are leaving on that rocket, so we'll only be in this godforsaken place a few more days. But during that time, you and your fellow so-called scientists will give us the respect we deserve.”

“Oh, I'm happy to give you exactly what you deserve.” Chang's hands clenched into fists.

Lars had been waiting for this. He was already swinging his fist. I could see the hatred in his eyes. It seemed he'd been wanting to punch Chang for a long time.

But Chang was ready for it. He sidestepped deftly. Lars's fist grazed Chang's nose and then slammed into the wall.

While Lars howled in pain, Chang grabbed the loose end of a wall-mounted resistance band and yanked the band tight across Lars's face, flinging the trillionaire backward into the wall. Lars's head banged into the cement so hard it staggered him.

Chang released the resistance band. The fight was already over. Lars reeled, struggling to focus on his opponent. “I . . . hate . . . you,” he gasped, and then collapsed face-first on the floor.

Chang looked at me. “You're my witness, Dash. This was self-defense—and technically, I never laid a hand on the guy.” He stepped over Lars Sjoberg's prone body and left the gym, whistling so cheerfully it was unsettling.

I stared at the unconscious trillionaire, worried. I'd just learned two very disturbing things.

Lars Sjoberg was a dangerous man who'd had a big grudge against Dr. Holtz.

And even though Chang Kowalski
said
he'd forgiven Dr. Holtz, he certainly wasn't someone you wanted angry at you.