The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (3 page)

Today was the last time he would be doing this as well. Drew made a mental note to commconnect with Barry Novak. Security not being the best paid of occupations, Bruni had arranged for Townsend to borrow a personal vehicle from Novak’s company, SecuriTech. The PV would have to be returned now that Drew had received his first off-world posting.

His first. Karim Khaloub’s first. Both as station managers. He and the victim had that much in common. And Khaloub had ended up not only dead, but suspiciously so. The Relocation Authority refused to put even potential troublemakers in positions of power, so Khaloub must have been squeaky-clean at the time of his appointment. If foul play was involved and the EIS wasn’t, then something must have happened on Daisy Hub, something that gave somebody a reason to kill the boss. According to Ridout, the Hub was crewed by “mavericks and misfits”, so Drew had to consider the possibility that perhaps the target hadn’t been Khaloub personally, but rather the position he held. If so, then whoever stepped in to replace him would be in danger as well.

Abruptly, he became aware that the vehicle’s flatscreen had been flashing a question at him:
Commence lockdown procedure? Y or
N

Drew thumbed the screen and scrambled out of the vehicle, his mind already sorting through his transportable possessions. There would be luggage mass restrictions on the long-hopper and probably on Daisy Hub as well. He would have to leave a lot of his favorite things behind, quite possibly forever.

Drew shook off the sadness of that thought before it could sink in. There would be time later for separation anxiety. His ship was scheduled to leave in less than two hours and he still had to pack and get out to the airfield. Swinging through his front door, he slipped out of his jacket and knelt to open the leather trunk that had been serving as his end table for the past eight years. Not many items had found their way inside during that time. With one exception, they were gifts from Bruni Patel. All of them were precious. None of them were staying behind. A jar of curry powder, a box of jasmine tea, a tin of cocoa paste, a vacuum-sealed bag of dried figs — literally a taste of the world travel Eligibles like Bruni were able to enjoy, dangled in place of the proverbial carrot to keep Drew working on getting his own Eligibility reinstated. Ironically, Townsend was about to travel much farther than Bruni ever had, to a place where none of these delicacies would be available.

As he was emptying the trunk to make room for clothing, Drew noticed the area rug. It was blue, almost the same shade of royal blue as the piece of carpet under the desk in Ridout’s private office. They had quirks, the Chief had said. Why not? This rug would have been replaced soon anyway. The pile was worn and pocked by at least twenty years’ worth of furniture legs. It was perfect.

Drew found a length of rope in the bottom of his closet, then proceeded to roll and tie the rug into a sausage for transport. Ten minutes later, the trunk was filled, locked, and sitting beside the carpet roll just inside the apartment’s front door. After arranging for his transportation to the airfield, Drew sent a comm note to the building super, who was usually unavailable but whose recording unit at least sounded apologetic about it. At SecuriTech, he spoke to a desk clerk who patched him through to Barry Novak’s private message recorder. Finally, Drew palmed the encrypting comm, squeezed gently to activate it, then squeezed again twice to send a ‘touch-base-all-green’ message.

It wasn’t the message he wanted to send. The one that most accurately described his current situation would be an eruption of profanity, followed by a string of exclamation marks. Unfortunately, his comm device provided a limited menu of tactile transmissions, none of them with frustrated or incredulous subtext. However, there was a ‘green’ aspect to report: Drew was in fact being sent to Daisy Hub, which was where the EIS needed him to go.

Turning the barrelful of bad apples on Daisy Hub into an off-planet EIS cell would, by definition, not have been an easy assignment even when it wasn’t complicated by a murder investigation for SISCO. Now, it could very well be an impossible mission.

And yet…

Drew had already done a couple of impossible things. He was the only field investigator in all of Americas and possibly on the entire planet to be hired by Security while still serving time in detention. And he’d managed to get his Eligibility reinstated, despite having a criminal record. If he could do that, there might be no limit to what he could accomplish on Daisy Hub.

Organize the cell and solve the murder, without breaking his cover. It was a tall order, to be sure, but Drew loved a challenge; and the more he thought about this one, the more confident he felt about his ability to handle it. After all, he was thorough and tenacious, a gifted investigator, and an experienced and very talented con artist.

Sometimes, he even conned himself.

Chapter 3

The long-hopper
did not lift off as scheduled. Something about waiting for a second passenger to board. Drew didn’t bother asking for details. He had found a slender briefcase under his seat, containing the promised materials and a palm-held playback device. By now he was engrossed in scanning the contents of the datawafers Ridout had given him, checking to see whether anything had changed since his most recent EIS briefing on Daisy Hub and its crew.

When fully staffed, the Hub had a complement of 53. It was currently operating with a crew of 46. Most of the names and faces on the station’s crew manifest were familiar to Drew by now, as were their reasons for being posted to the Hub: speaking out against the Relocation Authority, rocking the Earth Council boat, or just being an embarrassment to someone with influence, as described in both of Drew’s cover stories. SISCO’s version was almost identical to the one fabricated by the EIS, but the doctored video clips showed him picking out the ring for the daughter of a District Councilor. Nobody with any sort of clout wanted Townsend marrying into the family, it seemed. Ironically, although several of the Hub’s crew had been arrested, not one of them had ever been formally tried and convicted of a crime; in fact, once he arrived, the only one aboard Daisy Hub with a criminal record would be the cop sent to investigate the suspicious death.

There were a couple of new additions to the crew besides himself, and Drew read their bios with great interest. Someone named Nestor Quan was now the Hub’s Disease Control Officer. Evidently, there had been an outbreak of Angel of Death in that sector of Earth space. There was also a woman whose image on the screen stared back at him with an expression of mild reproach: Teri Mintz. According to her biodata, she had once been a well-known professional singer.

Gavin Holchuk was on the crew as well, listed as Chief Cargo Inspector. Drew had flagged that name the first time he’d seen it on the manifest.

Around the same time as Townsend was being in-processed by the detention facility, Holchuk became a hot CommNews item. An Eligible married to an Ineligible, he had been turning down off-planet postings for years, refusing to be separated from his family. Then Holchuk became the only survivor of a vehicular ‘mishap’ that killed both his wife and their young daughter. Crazed with grief, he loudly and publicly accused the Relocation Authority of engineering the tragedy in order to remove any further obstacle to his being posted off-world. More disturbing, however, was his insistence that his daughter was alive somewhere, that she had been stolen by the Authority and given to someone else to raise. He searched for her for more than a year before the Relocation Authority finally ended his investigation by shipping him off to Daisy Hub.

The settling-in period on the Hub had been “difficult and turbulent”, and, eighteen Earth years later, he still apparently resented having to follow rules and regulations. Understandable. In his place, who wouldn’t harbor a grudge against Earth’s Authorities and anyone who represented them? Karim Khaloub’s very presence must have been a daily reminder to him of what he had lost. Means, motive and opportunity, but especially motive, put Holchuk’s name at the top of the suspect list in Khaloub’s murder.

“Get your damned hands off me, you big ape! I’m telling you, there’s been a mistake!”

The second passenger had arrived. A woman. Her voice was low-pitched and hauntingly familiar. He was still trying to place it when three people suddenly burst through the door, two of them muscle in gray Airfield Security uniforms. Drew watched with interest as they maneuvered the frantically struggling third person into the passenger cabin. At first, all he could see of her upper body was a tossing whirlwind of long auburn hair. Her shoes were auburn as well, with pointed toes that painfully connected several times with the guards’ legs as she was dragged, pushed, and finally thrown, squealing and spitting, into the seat across the cabin from Drew’s. The two men had to plant her forcefully twice before she would stay put, enabling them to leave.

She tossed her head and the curtain of hair parted at last, and Drew recognized her from the crew manifest: Teri Mintz. Great. Just what every space station needed — a resident wildcat with a two-octave range.

The wildcat shot a venomous glare at two retreating gray-clad backs before sinking into her seat with a sigh of pure disgust, her generous bosom heaving beneath a now-disheveled beige shirt and jacket.

A low vibration began rising through the deck plating and into Drew’s boot soles. The craft was tilting into liftoff position.

Long-hoppers weren’t passenger shuttles or interhub liners; they were government transport vessels, stripped down to the essentials and equipped with a combination of atmospheric and deep space propulsion systems — no, that was too flattering. Long-hoppers were basically reinforced metal buckets hitching rides on fuel tanks with engines attached to them. They violated several Fleet Control safety protocols and were consequently banned from docking at any of the orbiting transfer stations. That suited Earth Council just fine. Long-hoppers launched directly from the planetary surface, carrying classified cargo, diplomatic couriers, agents on covert missions, and the occasional councilor whose transportation allowance had run dry. So, there might be an announcement to buckle up or there might not be, depending on the mood of the pilot.

Suddenly, Drew realized what it was he’d been smelling ever since boarding the ship — antiseptic cleaning solvent. No-frills space travel wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Quickly he threw all the loose items around him into his briefcase and stowed it in the locker at his feet. Then he reached overhead, found the restraining harness and snapped it around his seat, noting with satisfaction that the wildcat had already done the same. Good. She might be angry, but she wasn’t stupid.

And until the ship had escaped Earth’s gravity field, she wouldn’t be dangerous either. Recalling the instructions on his briefing ’pad, Drew forced himself to take long, deep breaths and did his best to ignore the strange, almost orgasmic sensation of blood rushing away from the front half of his body.

Several long minutes later, the long-hopper had broken free and they were on their way out of the solar system. The invisible rockslide that had pinned Drew to his seat was gone, up and down were back where they belonged, more or less, and the restraining harnesses had returned to manual control. A hardier and more experienced traveler than himself might unlatch at this point and try floating around the cabin like a fish; Drew felt his gorge rise and searched for the location of the washroom, and the spot on the bulkhead from which he would have to push off to launch himself toward it.

As he sat waiting for his stomach to settle, he watched the wildcat warily, half-expecting her to turn green and fill the cabin with globules of partly-digested dinner. Instead, her face crumpled into a portrait of frustration.

“Damn!” she muttered tearfully. “Damn, damn,
damn
you, Harry Mintz! I hope you rot in hell!”

Drew swallowed experimentally. It was probably safe to speak now. “You had a ticket for some other destination?”

She started at the sound of his voice. In an instant, her features recomposed themselves. Teri straightened her shoulders and tugged her jacket lapels square, but she was bobbing helplessly back and forth between her seat and the restraint, and must have realized her dignity was beyond recovery at this point. “Tell me you’re not from one of the tabs,” she pleaded.

Afraid of being misconstrued, Drew suppressed his smile. “I’m Drew Townsend, the new station manager of Daisy Hub.”

Her face fell even further. Of course. There was only one thing worse than having your life splashed across the tabs, and that was to have a knockdown battle with Security in front of your brand-new boss. “Terrific,” she moaned.

According to his briefings, this was going to be an interval-long spaceflight, through three Gates, with no amenities. He’d better at least try to put her at ease. “Well, I know what
I
did to earn this assignment. What’s
your
story, Ms. Mintz?”

“Teri. One ‘r’, ends in ‘i’,” she added wearily. “My stage name is Teri Martin — used to be, anyway, before I married that slimeball, Harry, seven years ago. When I divorced him last year, I decided to try kick-starting my career with a comeback gig on one of the resort hubs. I told Arnie — that’s my agent — I told him I’d take anything, even back-up singer to an opening act, just to get onstage, somewhere away from Harry. I warned him not to let Harry find out where I was going. He has friends, you know. Harry does. Big, important friends.”

Her expression was darkening. Best not to let her dwell on Harry and his friends. “So, Arnie made the booking?” Drew prompted her.

She nodded wistfully. “I was supposed to open for Vic Stratton in the Starlite Lounge on Vegas Hub. A twenty-four interval contract. It was perfect.” She paused, frowning. “Too damned perfect, now that I think about it. But it got me out to the airfield, with my luggage. Gawd, I’m such an idiot!”

Time to change tack again. “So, you’re a singer?”

“Used to be.”

“I think I’ve heard you sing. Not in person, but I recognize your voice—”

“—from the CommAd jingles,” she supplied bitterly. “Right. That was a little bone Harry threw me the first time I threatened to leave him. Hell of a way for a career to die. Later, I cringed every time I heard one of those ads. For months, I couldn’t even bear to look at the InfoComm screen. I missed Angela’s wedding, Soledad’s operation…”

“Excuse me?”

“U-Town,” she replied, in a voice that seemed to add, ‘and what cave have
you
been hiding in?’ “It’s my favorite interactive destination. I was a charter subscriber. All the characters knew me. Jake confided in me whenever he had a problem, even called me his second mother. And now, thanks to that rotten ex-husband of mine, the poor little tyke will have to carry on all by himself. And, worse, I’ll be bumped off the jury at Brock’s trial. Damn!”

Okay, enough, Drew decided. This woman was fretting at having to leave behind her a virtual town filled with fictional characters. Compared to some of the experiences described in the crew’s biofiles, her life had been a seaside picnic.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten all the other ways to use the InfoComm, Ms. Mintz.”

The sudden formality in his voice made her glance up. Her eyes were large and golden-brown, and they widened with puzzled apprehension as they locked with his. “What did you say?”

“Daisy Hub is a working station,” he reminded her sternly.

“So this is a placement interview, Mr. Townsend?” she asked, her chin acquiring a decidedly stubborn slant. “I hope the company can train me, then, because I very much doubt whether you’ll have any use for my previous job skills.”

Or her current attitude, Drew added mentally. But that was just a façade thrown up by fear. He’d erected enough of his own in the past to be able to see through them now, and what he saw in Teri Mintz had interesting possibilities.

She was Eligible, which meant she was highly intelligent; but she was smart, too, a survivor. He liked the fact that she was strong enough to stand up to a superior, albeit with a wobble in her voice. He liked even better that she couldn’t possibly have killed Karim Khaloub. He suspected he would need somebody like her on the Hub once he began his investigation. And he knew exactly where to put her to best use.

“I don’t imagine your skills will be an issue,” he replied. “I’ve been reviewing the crew manifest and I think I know which would be the best position for you.” He paused, and the angle of her chin increased perceptibly. Drew caught a flash of defiance in her eyes as well and for just a split-second sympathized with Harry Mintz. “I’m going to assign you to Gavin Holchuk’s detail. He’s the Chief Cargo Inspector, and—”

“—and what? He needs someone to sing him to sleep at night?” she bristled.

“That’s enough! You’re the one who mentioned job retraining. Do you want it or not?”

Still restrained by the harness, she collapsed and shrank, like a rapidly deflating balloon. “I want my life back, dammit,” she said tearfully.

“I’m afraid that’s not an option right now. Listen, I don’t know whether you’ll ever be a professional singer again, Teri, but I can tell you this: you’ll find a lot of kindred spirits where you’re going, especially Gavin Holchuk. You two have a lot in common.”

That sparked her interest. “You’re kidding. Someone else who ticked off Harry Mintz?”

“Not exactly. Holchuk ticked off the Relocation Authority.”

“Ouch!” Then, switching to Galactic Standard, she asked, “So how long until we get there?”

For the moment that it took him to translate her question into Ameranglo, and his reply back into Standard, Drew was speechless. But she was right to begin using the off-world language now, he realized, since it would be the common tongue spoken on Daisy Hub; and despite his bravado yesterday in the garage on Lamont Street, Drew hadn’t held up his side of an entire conversation in Standard in more than twenty years.

“We be — arrival — in one interval. That is ten plus one days of Earth,” he said at last.

Teri’s eyes were dancing. With visible effort, she managed not to laugh as she inquired, “Which Enclave are you from, Mr. Townsend?”

He was able to reply almost immediately. “No Enclave.”
Not recently, anyway.
Not since I was turfed out of Clearmeadow at the
age of twelve and left to survive as best I
could on the streets of New Chicago….
His jaw tightened momentarily at the memory.

“That explains it,” Teri declared. “We speak — spoke — Gally all the time in the Enclave. Fortunately,” she added, her lips now curving in a wicked grin, “we have ten plus one days of Earth to get you up to an acceptable level of fluency.”

She was batting her eyelashes at him from across the cabin. Drew felt his face grow warm and his stomach lurch again, but not because of weightlessness.

It was going to be a very long interval.