The Venus Belt (11 page)

“You have some powerful allies, it appears.” He nodded microscopica
l
ly, indicating Koko who seemed unusually reserved in her brand-new ru
b
bery-looking smartsuit. “Miss Featherstone-Haugh assures me the President will vouch for you unquestioningly. There’s also Mr. Morr
i
son—I had a lot of trouble getting off the com with him last night, and several times this morning. He explained how the whole thing happened, though what it means...”

“I’d like to know that, myself. But you’re not letting me off on chara
c
ter testimony, are you?”

“Not a chance. Miss Featherstone-Haugh informs me you were a sec
u
rity guard in the United States, is that correct?” Was that approval in his eye or merely gas, as obstetricians like to claim?

I stifled the usual insulting answer. “As close as you can describe it in the Confederacy. I was the fuzz, a pig, a flatfoot—working Homicide d
e
tail.”

“Then,” the doctor interrupted, “you can view a deceased person wit
h
out...”

“Not too badly anyway.” I’d always been a little squeamish, one re
a
son I hate murderers so much. “What’s all this working up to?” Koko looked distinctly uncomfortable as she squirmed on the plastic wai
t
ing-room chair. Pololo led us to a back room where a silent, supine form lay draped upon a cold titanium table. He folded back the sheet. Koko doubled over and ran from the room, making funny mewling noises. I gulped and took another step forward.

“That’s her, all right. I never killed a woman before. Funny, it doesn’t feel too different, just sort of sad and stupid.”

“More sad and stupid than you may realize,” answered the stonefaced Captain Spoonbill. “Tell him, Francis.”

The doctor brushed aside a lock of the decedent’s hair. “Ever see som
e
thing like this before?” Curved tightly against a shaved patch on the scalp was a small, leech-shaped transparent plastic object, filled with nanocircui
t
ry. “Brain-bore,” the Healer enunciated with disgust. “Given the right drugs and commensurate skill, the perpetrator can create any reality of his choo
s
ing inside the victim’s mind, a twisted world by means of which the victim’s behavior can be manipulated. Maybe—maybe you Americans are right: in this case there
ought
to be a law.”

“Forget that, Doc, it’s habit-forming.” I peeked beneath the little i
n
strument where wires led into a nylon plug through the skull. “You mean this thing made her try to kill me?” And what was that discoloration on her thumb?

“Not exactly,” said the Healer, covering the girl’s face again. He pulled a small flat tin from his sporran, hinged it open, and offered me a brown Dutch cigarillo. “She could have been experiencing anything subjectiv
e
ly—believing you were Clarence the Ripper incarnate, say, or avenging some fictional evil you did to her or someone she loved.” I lit his smoke and my own. “Nothing—no one—
made
her do it, only created some illusionary case of the horrors, some context under which it was a foregone conclusion that she’d try.”

And I thought I’d heard of everything that was sickening.

“Seems I’m acquiring a sort of fan club,” I observed, “with
real
clubs. First the attack in my stateroom, now this. I’d be superhuman if I could avoid jumping to the conclusion there’s some connection.” I reached b
e
neath the sheeting to examine the cold dead hand again. A minute drop of dried blood glinted blackly on the thumbnail.

The physician gave me an odd look. “You’re the detective, but what connection could there be between a Soviet human female and a gorilla?”

“What?”

“That’s what the samples from your cabin say: a gorilla, also probably female, judging by cosmetic residue on the hair samples. And this poor child was Russian or I’ll throw my brand-new dental references out and sue the dealer who brought them through the Broach.” He started loo
k
ing absently for a place to flick his ashes, settled on an unused bedpan. “Look, if you ever get to the bottom of this...I’d
love
getting my hands on a brain-tapper, Hi
p
pocrates forgive me.”

“For my part,” said the Captain, “and without prejudice, Mr. Bear, I’ll be satisfied just to dock at Gunter’s Landing, where you can take your my
s
tery—and the violence that attends it—
off
my ship!”

This didn’t seem the time to mention the booby-trapped Webley or the near-miss belowdecks. And, thinking of another nearby Miss, I wondered how Koko was.

***

Upstairs, I tried organizing my recent escapades—with an accent on “escape”—for the daily call home. I don’t know how other couples handle it—actually, my first wife and I never talked about things that ma
t
tered—but Clarissa and I never hold back. It’s made for a wonderful life so far, with a few unpleasant minutes, followed by some supremely satisfying ones. Hours, even.

But there was that bit of extra evidence I’d noticed in the infirmary:
wood
is still rare enough out here in space that every scrap is eagerly r
e
ceived. Back home, they make packing boxes of plastic, but goods e
x
ported to the asteroids go timber-wrapped by specific request and as an extra sel
l
ing-point. There’d been a three-quarter-inch splinter underneath the Ru
s
sian girl’s left thumbnail. Must’ve hurt like the dickens (or did it, with the brain-bore?). It hadn’t been there quite long enough to fester, just long enough to give me an idea who’d levered that crate onto my head.

So how was I gonna tell my wife the Healer how badly Confederate f
o
rensics need an overhaul? Luckily, I had another call to make first—that little Bauer autopistol and the Woodsman Olongo was attacked with: obs
o
lete U.S.-type weapons, collector-rare in the Confed
e
racy. Why were they showing up over here?

Koko seemed to have other things to do. I was just as happy: it was ge
t
ting to be perilous in my vicinity, and I still have a few Neanderthal opi
n
ions concerning womenfolk and danger, even when the girls’re co
v
ered with fur and have ten times my strength. I shooed her off to a smartsuit le
s
son, promising to catch up later, and grabbed the com.

The lag was terrible now, but Captain Spoonbill grudgingly surre
n
dered his strongest beam for a solid hour, at only nominally rapacious rates. Tal
k
ing through a Broach is complicated by the weird influence it has on radi
a
tion, gravity, the very fabric of reality. Try sending regular radio or lase
r
gram through; they wind up, well, twisted, requiring special equipment to hammer them back into sense. I hired the appropriate gadgetry via Laporte Inte
r
world, and punched up a certain broom closet in the good old U.S.A.

“Jenny?” The picture was an informationless gray pudding. “I got a problem you could help me with.” I waited through the lightspeed lag, tr
y
ing to figure out which Jenny I was talking to.

“If I can, Win, but I’ve got a problem of my own right now...”

“The Fraser campaign—but this—” I stopped; she was still talking.

“
We’ve been ransacked!
They broke in last night, tore the place apart, and set fire to what was left. Even with Confederate fire-control sy
s
tems...”

“Jenny, something weird is going on all over. Attempted murders, break-ins, disappearances—we’ve got enemies, and I’m beginning to think they’re organized.” She didn’t much like the details I gave her, but then ne
i
ther did I.

Finally: “If I get any useful information on those weapons, I’ll relay it through Clarissa once you’re out on Ceres.”

“Right. She’s got a little digging to do—no pun intended—to find out if Olongo’s burglar was brain-bored.” A little more expensive gab and we rang off. The delay connecting with home was somewhat longer than could be accounted for by Dr. Einstein. An elderly chimp materialized: Captain Fo
r
syth, dirty and disheveled.

“That you, Win? Brace yourself, son, there’s bad news: someone broke into your house last night. Place is a wreck, though nothing I can tell is missing, except—hold on, son—
Clarissa.
Win, I can’t find her
a
n
ywhere.
For what it’s worth, there are no signs of, well, of blood or an
y
thing. I’m doing all I can to track her down, and— You listening, son? You haven’t said a word.”

What the bloody steaming hell could I say? Ayn Rand and Harry Browne and Robert Ringer can go on Looking Out for Number One: my only reason for living had suddenly evaporated.

Clarissa!

What else could possibly go wrong now?

Friday, March 12, 223 A.L.

We arrived at Ceres just in time for Lucy’s funeral. Concerning the r
e
mainder of the voyage, perhaps the less said the better. Maybe Lucy and Ed were the best friends I’d ever had, but Clarissa—well, she was
Clarissa
.
I was going straight home, if possible at something better than the one-tenth gee
Bonaventura
had tapered down to in the last few days—a stasis-tank aboard a three- or four-gee unmanned freight drone—I didn’t care.

Letting others steer me by the elbow, I wandered past the next ten days half-conscious, groping dazedly through the motions. Koko insisted I learn to wear a smartsuit; I argued feebly I wasn’t planning to hang around where I could use one; she told me to shut up and march to class. Amazingly, d
e
spite a soul-draining ache that never left me, I found the classes mildly i
n
teresting, enjoyed myself enough to feel guilty about it, and came to hate that moment each day when the practice sessions ended and I had to go back to my lonely, haunted cabin.

Smartsuits bear about the same relationship to space armor that modern scuba equipment has to cumbersome nineteenth-century hard-hat diving rigs. Everybody’s seen them on the Telecom, a rubbery, one-piece second skin, varying in thickness from a quarter to a half an inch, seemingly a frail barrier against the savage rigors of interplanetary space. But space had better look to its laurels—a smartsuit makes that hostile void as comfortable as an area mapmakers once labeled the Great American Desert: Colorado.

Despite appearances, the garment functions primarily as an elaborate and powerful computer. Of all the nanoelectronic miracles available to third-century Confederate civilization, it is the supreme achievement. Each square millijefferson within its multilayered fabric measures the wearer’s well-being, making appropriate corrections to air flow, humidity, temper
a
ture, half a dozen other nuances clear down to the molecular le
v
el. Each square millijeff
outside
selectively absorbs or reflects a hundred different forms of energy, powering the suit and protecting its owner. I guess what finally convinced me was the fact that, as a long-standing tradition, a smar
t
suit was included in the price of my ticket to Ceres. Seemed like a waste not to try it out. I picked it up at the tailor’s and hurried aft to meet my appre
n
tice.

“Mr.
Bear!
”
The instructor minced over, limply waggling his simian wrist-talker as a dozen students milled around the airlock, waiting just ou
t
side an empty cargo bay evacuated for instruction. “I see you’ve
finally
a
c
quired your smartsuit. Now, until you’re caught up with the rest of us, da
r
ling Koko here will help make sure you’re properly fitted.”

Darling Koko curtsied, twisting a fingertip in a nonexistent dimple.

I carried my suit over my back by its hanger, like a deep-space Frank S
i
natra. Heeling my cigar out on the deck, I looked around for a dressing room to change in. “Okay, but won’t that cost her instruction time?”

“It’s all right, Boss.” Suited up, she resembled a life-size silvery-gray Buddha. “I’ve been getting extra practice after hours with Francis—I mean, Dr. Pololo.” You can’t tell if a gorilla’s blushing, but she lowered her big brown eyes and shuffled a rubber-shod toe.

The instructor smirked exaggerated tolerance: “Don’t worry, dear, you’re making amazing progress, really, ‘extra practice,’ or not.” He i
n
haled a perfumed cigarette and blew a sultry puff in my direction.