Children of a Dead Earth Book One Read online

  “Yeah? It’s maybe fifteen degrees in here and your forehead’s sweating.” The lock for the bio-lab came up on the right. “OK, wait here. Trust me, you don’t want to go through the ‘decontamination procedure.’ I won’t tell the lieutenant.”

  “Sounds good to me, chief.”

  Benson nodded, then brought up his plant menu and found Director da Silva’s entry. Of everyone on the crew, da Silva had the best reasons to help him find Laraby, so Benson had the least reason to suspect her involvement. He had questions only a crewman could answer and she was the one to ask.

  he said, once the call went through.

 

 

 

 

  she corrected.

 

 

 

  The line fell uncomfortably silent.

 

  After being cleaned off for a second, and even more thorough time that morning, Avelina da Silva met him at the door.

  “Hello again, detective. I’m sorry to be short with you, but you need to be quick.”

  Benson glanced around at all the techs straining to pretend they weren’t listening. He didn’t have many reasons to be here outside of Laraby’s investigation, and they were all interested in any news.

  “Actually, director, is there somewhere noisier we could talk?”

  She looked around and saw the same thing Benson did. “Don’t you all have projects to work on?” Avelina shook her head and nudged Benson towards one of the labs in the second ring. Inside, he was surrounded by centrifuges; some no bigger than a teapot, others as long as he was tall with row after row of seedlings spinning away. The electric hum filled the background.

  “Better?” Avelina asked.

  “Yes. What are all these for?” Benson asked.

  “The small units are just separators. The larger ones are incubators. Seeds need gravity to develop properly. Now, what ‘secret squirrel’ stuff brought you up here?”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but I wanted to extend my condolences for Laraby’s loss. I know he was a valuable member of your team.”

  She took a moment to compose herself. “Thank you. I heard while you were in Sickbay. I’m actually glad you came. I wanted to thank you for bringing Edmond back home. We can have a proper ceremony for him now. I know it wasn’t an easy thing.”

  Benson smiled. “That’s a bit of an understatement, but it’s the least I could do for him. I’m curious, though, did Edmond keep any logs at work? Notes about his projects, maybe?”

  “Of course. We all keep detailed records. Why, are you looking for a suicide note hidden in them?”

  Benson sighed. So that really was the “official” story. Amazing how quickly it made the rounds. “I haven’t determined cause of death yet. I’d like a look at his work records, just to be sure I haven’t missed anything.”

  “Erm, that’s fine, but I don’t know if you’re going to be able to make much sense of them.”

  “I might surprise you.”

  “OK…” da Silvia sounded dubious. “I doubt they’re going to do us much good anyway. We’re over-committed as it is. With Edmond gone, I don’t have enough manpower to actually finish his projects. I’ll upload his work files to your plant as soon as I break for lunch.”

  Benson nodded. “That’ll be fine, but it’s only half of the reason I came.”

  Da Silva cocked any eyebrow quizzically. “And the other half?”

  “You’re one of the best scientists alive.”

  “Well,” da Silva blushed at the compliment. “There’s a couple of grad students bucking for my job who might disagree with that assessment, but I’m pretty good.”

  Benson made a mental note to look into which of Laraby’s coworkers would have been in a similar position. Professional jealousy could be a powerful motive.

  “That’ll do. You may not have heard, but I was attacked after the game last night by someone whose plant was immune to my stun-stick and couldn’t be tracked by Command. Is there any way to reprogram a plant to be invisible like that?”

  Avelina considered the question. “Implants are like solid-state wetware. They can be reprogramed, but it’s not something you can upload. It’s a physical change that’d require surgery, which would mean somebody both writing the new program, and someone else doing the cutting. I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you could keep quiet.”

  The creases in Benson’s forehead deepened. “What if it wasn’t reprogramed? What if the original unit was made differently?”

  “You mean when it was implanted? Awfully long term planning, don’t you think?”

  Benson sighed. Putting a modified plant in a baby hoping they’d grow up to be a killer was an unlikely scenario, to say the least.

  “OK, I see your point. Thanks, and please keep that bit between us, will you? It’s not public knowledge yet, and I don’t want it getting out.”

  She crossed her arms. “You think a crewmember killed Edmond and attacked you? That’s why you wanted to talk in person and avoid the network. You think someone’s watching you.”

  Benson put up his hands. “I’m just trying to be careful.”

  “And yet you trust me?”

  “Gotta trust somebody. And you’re the only person who really seemed to care after Laraby went missing. I’m betting you want me to find out what happened more than anyone on this ship.”

  Avelina bit her lip. “God knows Edmond deserved so much better than what happened. Don’t worry, detective, I’ll keep your killer ghost theory between us.”

  Benson smirked at that. “Thanks, and I’ll look forward to reading those files.”

  “I’ll put them on a pad and drop it off at the stationhouse after the shift change. It’ll take a little longer, but that will keep it off the network.”

  “With Edmond gone, do you have enough time? I mean, to finish your assignments before Landing?”

  “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” da Silva shook her head. “God willing, but it’s going to be close.”

  Benson thanked her, then returned to the lock and met up with Korolev in the central corridor.

  “One down, two more to go.” Benson glided past the younger man and back towards the habitats.

  Korolev spun around and pushed off the wall to follow him. “Where to now, chief?”

  “Back to Avalon, constable. We’re off to see a magistrate.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Magistrate Jindal, and a few others within the cattle’s government with the perverse desire to do their jobs properly, was suspicious and resentful of the way crewmembers always seemed to, well, float above the fray, delicately tugging a string here, applying pressure there, a nice little reward for agreeable behavior where no one could see it.

  After hearing of the previous night’s attack and the odd pattern of interference, Jindal approved the warrant for Laraby’s personal files. Several hours later, Korolev was finally let off the hook as they crossed the door into the stationhouse.

  “Thank you for babysitting me, constable, but I think you should go home and get some sleep.”

  “Delighted to, chief.” He snapped a salute and span right back around and out the door again.

  “Package for you, chief,” the duty officer, Hernandez, said. “I put it in your office.
”

  Benson nodded, walked into his office and shut the door. He wasn’t trying to be rude, but in truth, he really didn’t have much to say. Hernandez and he had never quite hit it off. The man was a hothead, a little too quick to pull his stun-stick, and a little too slow to think about repercussions. Despite his seniority, Benson had passed him over for promotion twice, the last time giving Theresa the spot. Hernandez had made several not-so-private accusations about favoritism in the ranks, which hadn’t really helped his career prospects either.

  A tablet sat on his desk with a little red ribbon tied around it. That made him chuckle. So Avelina had come through with Edmond’s work files. Benson had another pad tucked under his arm, filled with everything the man was doing and thinking during the other half of his waking hours.

  He set the two pads next to each other and opened their files. Sixteen terabytes of data, arranged in dozens of cascading folders and directories exploded from the work tablet, while two more terabytes filled the other.

  “Holy shit…” Benson mumbled. “You were a busy little bee, Edmond.”

  The pile of data was… daunting. Going through it blind would take months, maybe a year. Needless to say, it was time he didn’t have.

  What am I even doing? he thought bitterly. The truth of his existence was starting to come into stark relief. He was no police detective. He was a figurehead, a public relations move by the crew to appease the cattle.

  Feng had tried to remind him, and so had the captain in her gentle way. The next reminder had arrived with a little more bite. Benson flexed the muscles in his forearm, feeling the sting of his stitches. They want me to roll over. They expect me to roll over.

  Benson nearly spat at the thought. He’d certainly not been shy about enjoying the rewards bestowed on him through playing Zero, but he’d earned them by working his ass off and becoming great at his job.

  His first day training with the Mustangs seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb, too. But coach always told him to ignore the mountain. Take everything one small step at a time. Enough small steps would climb any mountain, cross any desert.

  Solve any crime?

  OK, small steps. Little bites. Or bytes, in this case. What’s the first step? Show it wasn’t suicide.

  Benson opened his plant and linked it to both files, then opened the search menu. “Search all files and documents for terms suicide, kill, ah… and depressed.”

  New bubbles appeared on the tablets. Several seconds passed as even the immensely powerful computers took their time to search such large data caches. The hits rolled in, but not where Benson expected. Laraby’s work files returned forty-nine uses of the word suicide, over a hundred for kill, and three for depressed. Meanwhile, his personal files held none, nadda.

  “Display results for ‘suicide’ in reverse chronological order.”

  -Sample #8472 suicided three days after gestation. Severe deformation of the vascular system observed.

  -Sample #8435 suicided five days after gestation cycle started. Root growth failed after 14 millimeters.

  -Sample #8426 suicided seventeen days after the start of the gestational cycle. Leaves failed to unfurl properly.

  “OK, I can see where this is headed. Display results for ‘kill’ in reverse chronological order.”

  -Sample #8469 killed thirty days after gestation. Failed to meet revised absorption goals.

  -Sample #8461 killed sixty-three days after gestation. Failed to branch properly.

  -Sample #8448 killed fifteen days after gestation cycle began. Chlorophyll reverted to Earth norm.

  The list went on, with each incidence of the searched words relating directly to a failed experiment or new plant strain. Even where depressed was used, it was talking about “depressed levels of photon transference.” Benson was no psychologist, but he was pretty sure it had more to do with photosynthesis than suicide.

  It was the complete dearth of hits in Laraby’s personal files that really struck Benson as strange, however. The table contained not only Laraby’s private journal entries, of which he had been a prodigious writer, but transcripts of all of his plant conversations, and web correspondence since he’d turned eighteen. It was as close to a complete record of all his thoughts and actions as anyone but a psychic medium was going to get.

  Benson hadn’t expected anything as grandiose as a video recording of Edmond reading his suicide note, but the odds that someone wouldn’t say kill over the course of years had to be staggering. Who didn’t say “Let’s go kill a couple beers,” or “Ben’s really killing it on the drums,” or “Work almost killed me today” at some point in their life?

  Laraby was either some sort of superstitious, word-avoiding eccentric, or someone had gone through and cleaned up the files using the same mental checklist Benson was going through now. His suspicion growing, Benson opened Edmond’s last journal entry from less than a day before he went missing and checked the revision history.

  -Last Edited on 15/04/233PE 17:49. Edited by Laraby, Edmond, ID #C47-74205

  Less than four hours before he’d disappeared. Benson tried to call up the prior version, but, to no great surprise, it wasn’t available. He checked the next three older entries with similar results. How hard would it be to alter a time/date stamp and User ID? Probably not very, if you had the right permissions and knew your way around the Ark’s coding architecture. Covering up all of your digital tracks would be harder, but not impossible. Benson ran a few more searches that came to mind, but with identical disappointment.

  The only alternative was to read through each entry and transcript individually looking for whatever crumbs hadn’t been vacuumed up. It was an unappealing prospect, and he didn’t have enough time left anyway. It was exactly what Benson had feared. The delay gave whoever wanted the investigation stopped the time they needed to clean up their tracks. He wasn’t meant to find anything here.

  Benson threw the tablet at his desk in a fit of frustration. It caught a corner, sending spider-web cracks racing through the glass in an instant. He picked it up gingerly, gently tapping the screen, but the fractured, flickering image told him the tablet was beyond salvage.

  Benson sighed. In his anger, he’d just committed a crime. To be specific, a violation of Conservation Code Forty-Seven: The Negligent Destruction of an Asset Prior to the End of its Projected Design Lifetime. For an asset like a tablet, the fine was nearly a week’s pay at his compensation, and an equal length of time spent wasting his nights doing community service.

  Benson tucked the shattered pad under his arm and left the stationhouse. He had bigger crimes to solve than the mystery of who broke the tablet, and he wasn’t out of leads just yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I want him strip-searched.” Devorah’s arms crossed her chest tighter than steel barrel hoops. She was not a happy little woman. Her dour expression was matched only by the look of childlike delight playing across Salvador Kite’s face. He clearly enjoyed watching his old nemesis contort with disgust.

  “Devorah,” Benson chided, “he’s our guest. You want to know what he knows just as badly as I do. We’ll both be able to keep an eye on him, there are cameras everywhere, and we’re locking the doors behind us. Now, be a good host and let’s get started.”

  “Give me your stun-stick, then.”

  Benson shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

  Devorah tilted her head up and shook a bony finger at the smiling ex-con. “You try anything and I’ll chew your kneecaps off.”

  “I believe you,” Sal said in a crooning voice.

  Madame Curator scowled, but waved a hand to unlock the museum’s grand entrance. It had been three in the afternoon when Benson crossed over from Avalon, immediately flipping him twelve hours to three in the morning Shangri-La Time.

  The three of them were the only people on the museum grounds, on account of Devorah demanding complete control over the situation without any distractions or risk of accomplices hidden in the crowds. A v
ery private tour indeed.

  The silent darkness of night in Shangri-La made the three-story building loom that much higher. Its edifice had been designed with the great museums of the old world firmly in mind. Great marble columns in the Roman tradition, more than two meters across, “held” the massive stone roof and trio of domes aloft. Of course, the marble steps, columns, and giant quarried blocks that made up the museum’s walls were imitations, cleverly textured and painted stucco over lightweight composites and alloys, much like the rest of the Ark’s structure. Real marble carried far too great a weight penalty. Still, it was a masterful illusion, executed by the best, and last, set builders of Hollywood. Like the majority of workers who had built the Ark but hadn’t made the passenger list, it had been their final job before returning to Earth to await their fate.

  The show must go on.

  There was nothing illusionary about the museum’s contents, however. Every piece of art, every document, every artifact had a trail of documentation proving its provenance beyond all doubt. Every museum, gallery, and private collection on Earth had been scoured for the priceless treasures that filled the building.

  Benson marveled at the sights in the central atrium as the doors closed and locked behind the trio. In a place of honor at the center, Michelangelo’s David stood in his resolute magnificence, separated from viewers by the sort of barriers that once kept rampaging polar bears safely away from delicious children. The sculpture was, by weight, the largest object in the museum to have made the journey, and looking up at him, it wasn’t difficult to see why.

  The inventory held no collections. Only the very best examples of each artist, sculptor, and inventor had been preserved. It would be impossible to fit anything resembling a complete accounting of the accomplishments of the entire species into a single building otherwise.

  Benson forgot about Sal and Devorah as a familiar display caught his eye. Not far from David, on a small slope of artificial red sand, sat one of only a handful of contributions from the Mars Colony. The early twenty-first century NASA rover, Spirit, stared back at him through its binocular cameras. It had undergone a complete restoration more than a century ago by that year’s class of engineering students. Even now, it looked as new as the day it had left Earth.