They had removed the body before I got there, which was unfortunate, but then I was late. I’d been delayed at Chi’aniir with another case and didn’t arrive at police headquarters in Primus Five until almost two full daily cycles after the murder. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was murder they were dealing with. Obviously, or they wouldn’t have telecommed me.
The Desk Sergeant, an affable 7-J-3 security ‘droid, informed me that Chief Inspector Dagland was out and that Sergeant Corson would be handling the case. I found B.J. waiting for me in the brightly lit sterility of the detective division squad room, an unusual tension in his eyes. He and I had worked together for almost six years, ever since my first assignment as an intern in the OutBack Colonies—a godsforsaken sector with a plethora of ungainly and ill-equipped deep-space stations occupied by equally ungainly and ill-mannered asteroid miners. At the time he had speculated I was there because I was not a very good P.I..
Our first case together changed his opinion immediately: I’m one of the best, and he soon knew it. But it took three more cases before I told him that I’d asked to be sent to the OutBack Colonies; ten before he began to understand why.
B.J. led me to his office, punched up the official file on the murder, then left; but not because he had any of the squeamishness most cops have about working with a P.I.. He just understood what I needed: all the information he had on Lady Vandora Mar-Risardas. And solitude.
There’s always the apprehension at first. What if I can’t do it? What if I fail? What if the persona is so far diminished that even my finely tuned psychic skills can’t reach and assimilate it? Though in my ten years as a Psychic Investigator that, truthfully, has never happened. But still, there’s always the fear.
Being a psychic does have its drawbacks—you’re more attuned to the feelings of the cops around you; you’ve got their curiosity—after all, Psychic Investigators are as rare as a sober Sinderian miner. And apprehension, because you exist at all. I know cops who’d rather wrestle a quill-furred herhon in heat than shake my hand, afraid of what might be revealed by the contact.
But then there is Benjamin Jeremiah Corson the Second. A muscular bachelor in his late thirties, B.J. had decided rather early on in our professional acquaintanceship that the disadvantages of my being a psychic were overshadowed by the advantages of my being one ‘damn fine good-looking woman’. His description, not mine.
So at times the personal aspects of our acquaintanceship mingled with the business aspects. But as it was, he’d recently become enamored with a Naldian female (you can’t lie to a psychic, you know) and I’d not been in touch with him for almost three months. Or else I would’ve known first hand how important the Mar-Risardas murder was and wouldn’t have spent so much time on the double kidnapping on Chi’annir.
“You should’ve called.” I sipped at the thin synjav provided by OutBack H.Q. and waited for B.J.’s answer.
“I didn’t think it would’ve helped, Jynx. When he found her, she’d already been dead for four days. You once told me…”
I knew what I once told him, that impressions were more difficult to absorb the more time involved.
He shrugged. “I didn’t think another cycle would matter.”
Truthfully, it didn’t. After one daily cycle, the E.I.I.s, the Emotionally Intensified Images, were fading. A P.I. who could come upon a scene in the first cycle had a wealth of information to draw upon. Those cases were always the easy ones. This one was not.
I shoved the cup into the disposal and stood. “Then let’s not waste any more time.”
He nodded, his expression a bit chastised and I felt obliged to offer him a smile. “Your report was excellent, B.J.”
The dark eyes brightened and I remembered something he evidently found hard to forget: even though I was five years his junior, I was still, in status, his senior.
—
The Estates of Lord Kieran Risardas were located on Tas Elyr, a small world with a predominance of lush landscapes and rich residents. The Risardas estates, called Nidus Point, included several hundred acres of prime forest lands, hunting preserves, two lakes and a rapidly flowing river. All this had been acquired over the past three and a half centuries by the Risardas family, once known solely for their expertise in intergalactic piracy. But their infamous endeavors had long since fallen by the wayside in favor of more legitimate ways of investing their billions.
It was said that the present heir, Lord Kieran, in spite of the fact that he shared the same name as his infamous ancestor, wouldn’t know the stern from the bow of a hyperspace huntership. He was, however, known for his adeptness in choosing lucrative investments and beautiful women, as evidenced by the late Lady Vandora Mar-Risardsas. The daughter of a mining magnate in the Sinderian System, Vandora had never had a lack of male companions. Still, Lord Kieran had been considered quite a catch.
Most of this I knew from watching the gossips on the vid; the details of the Mar-Risardas syndicate, however, had been provided by B.J.’s painstaking investigative work.
The marriage had been a profitable alliance for both of them. Risardas had more than most could hope to achieve in a single lifetime. But the Sinderian System was expanding and their mines just now beginning to show the possibilities of tremendous profits. Risardas could withstand the losses of the next few years, writing them off as the Conclave allowed him to do, in hopes of later profits. And Nelsam Mar gained something for his daughter that he himself could never have provided: a place in society, a name, a connection with the privileged and wealthy. For a man who, only fifteen years prior, had been a nameless spacer haunting dark and musty mining-port bars, it was like a dream come true.
And it was a dream that was shattered by the brutal death of Vandora Mar-Risardas. Why? That was the question B.J. and I shot back and forth in the austere comfort of the police shuttle. He’d rid himself of his regulation brown jacket and leaned back in his seat, his broad face crinkling as his mentally argued over the possibilities.
I waited until he had his thoughts in line before speaking out. “So you don’t rule out His Lordship’s involvement in this, at all?”
“Hell, no!” He sat upright. “He’s a prime suspect. Jealous husband and all that, you know.”
I knew, but didn’t quite agree. “Jealous enough to slit his wife’s throat and dismember her body maybe. But then to leave it in her bedroom for the police to find? Surely a man of Kieran’s prowess could’ve found a more efficient way to arrange her death, if he did at all. From what I’ve read, they were the Perfect Couple. Capital P, capital C.”
B.J. snorted. “Visually, yeah. I guess they were. Attended all the right parties, had all the right friends. But something always struck me as wrong, right from the beginning. I know a little about the Risardases, you know. My uncle’s head of security at one of the Depots. And it just didn’t match. Risardas is a shrewdie; one smart son-of-a-bitch. I don’t like him, maybe, but I respect him. But Vandora, well, the chair you’re sitting in has a better personality and more of an I.Q., I’d say. My guess is he just got tired of her and…,” he drew his fingers across his throat in a cutting motion.
“Barbaric,” I commented. “Risardas may have pirate blood in him but he’s not a barbarian. Besides, he could have paid her off and divorced her.”
“Maybe,” B.J. conceded and crinkled his face into a frown again. I turned my attention back to the printouts, knowing nothing would be solved until we reached Nidus Point.
—
My work as a Psychic Investigator had taken me to a variety of places, from the hell-pits of Pan Chegan to the glittering casinos on Taythis. I’ve worked with panderers and presidents, junkies and jewel merchants. But I had never seen anything as elegant as Nidus Point.
The rented hovercar skimmed noiselessly over a long, white graveled drive, bordered on both sides by exotic flowering plants and bushes. Brightly plumed birds flitted from tree to tree and through a gap in the shrubbery I caught a glimpse of a pair of rare Keprian Peacocks in jeweled pinks and greens. The vista simulated a jungle effect but no jungle was ever so symmetrical and orderly.
A breeze rustled the low-hanging fronds and I could make out the glimmer of something white in the distance. As we approached I realized what I’d been staring at was the marble facade of the Risardas mansion.
Only one story in height, it was simple yet elegant, its tinted windows offset by beveled marble moldings, beneath which grew meticulously trimmed dark green and blue shrubs. Multifaceted carriage lights graced either side of the entranceway; a sparkling fountain filled the center of the drive. B.J. guided the car between the fountain and the doorway and as I stepped out into the warm sunshine the doors before me opened, revealing a pokerfaced ‘droid butler. We were expected and ushered inside.
Like most of my generation, I was station-born and station-bred. Hallways, to me, were something to be filled with a pressed concentration of bodies. Privacy was a luxury that even my substantial salary had not been able to procure for me. So when confronted with not only the vast expanse of hundreds of well-manicured acres, but an entrance hallway that could’ve housed half my neighborhood sector on H-level, I was, understandably, a bit taken aback. It seemed so strange not to have to contain, that is, not to have to martial my thoughts for fear of intruding upon a neighbor. Here there was only B.J., myself, the ‘droid—who registered as a nonentity with me—and the diminished presence further away of an unknown police officer, left on guard and bored with his job.
There was another presence, one I knew could only be Lord Kieran, but he was physically too far away at the moment for me to be aware of anything other than the immense size of the mansion.
We were led to a large room, bigger than my whole apartment, with heavily draped windows that looked out onto a formal garden. A second pair of the Keprian birds strutted into view with a calm grace as if their appearance were a common occurrence in every dirtsider’s back yard. Inside genuine Pavala holos hung suspended from the ceiling, shimmering as I moved around them. A single Pavala could cost more than a year’s budget at H.Q.. Risardas had three in this room alone.
B.J. excused himself to speak with the young officer who was now wondering how much longer he would have to remain in this elegant prison. Unlike myself, he became nervous when given too much space and his thoughts were now centered upon a crowded, dimly-lit pub on Primus that I’d been to many times as well. But I didn’t regard it with a similar affection.
B.J. returned a few minutes later to find me still luxuriating in my newfound solitude. Then suddenly something very painful shot through my mind. I cried out. B.J. was immediately by my side.
“Jynx?”
“I, I don’t know.” I faltered, steadying myself against an elegantly carved desk. “I guess I shouldn’t just let myself go like that. Sometimes you find…”
But I never did get a chance to complete my sentence because another image thrust into my mind. An image of something very controlled and yet, very weary. I scanned, labeled it as human and male and knew that Lord Kieran Risardas was about to come through the sitting room doors.
He looked exactly as he did on the vids: a dark-haired man in his mid-forties, yet he was taller that I expected, his height well over six feet. That was something the vids never could accurately portray. Something to do with the positioning of the cameras, I’m told. Whatever the reason, they had misjudged Kieran Risardas’ height but not his classic good looks: the square jaw, high cheekbones and dark-lashed pale gray eyes were just as I’d remembered. His hair, very thick, was worn a little longer than fashionable, yet on him the collar-length looked elegant.
He entered the room briskly with an air of confidence, and nodded to B.J. and myself.
“Sergeant Corson,” he said and the voice, I noted mentally, went with the body: deep, well-modulated, controlled. Too bad the emotional energy I was picking up didn’t corroborate that.
B.J. touched my elbow and nudged me forward. “Lord Kieran. I told you I’d be bringing along our best P.I.. This is Dr. Jynx San’Janeiro.”
“Doctor San’Janeiro.” He inclined his head. I felt him studying me, analyzing me both as a man analyzes a woman and a hunter analyzes his prey. My physical appearance he found more than adequately pleasing. Though his late wife had been a statuesque blonde, he still was open-minded when it came to a petite auburn-haired female. What bothered him was my age—I was younger than him by some ten years—and my occupation. I knew he was expecting to see a gray-haired old crone, carting a crystal ball. The image had been transmitted clearly the moment B.J. had introduced us. It had taken all my professional training not to burst out laughing.
It also told me he had evidently spent some time studying ancient Terran myths.
“Lord Kieran,” I began, moving away from B.J.. “First, let me extend my condolences on the tragic death of your wife, Lady Vandora. And I’m sorry to have to intrude upon you at this most difficult time, but there are several problems with the case and the police would like them brought to a resolution as quickly as possible. As I’m sure you would, too,” I added. He wasted no time in dismissing my offerings of sympathy. “Don’t feel you have to coddle words with me. I am not, and the police know this, your typical grieving husband. Though I suppose I don’t have to tell you that.” He shrugged, his vague acknowledgment of my abilities having now been stated. “Vandora and I were married for a little over five years. It was a marriage of convenience for us both. We each had something to offer the other, neither of which was any form of emotion. I can’t even honestly say I loved my wife. But I didn’t kill her.”
“I’m not saying you did,” I replied softly, but more to keep the tone of the discussion calm than as to any reaction to his admission. In spite of his casual stance, I sensed an anger roiling inside him. After three days of having the O.B.C. detective division living in his back pocket, he was no doubt getting tired of professing his innocence.
“But somebody did kill Lady Vandora, Lord Kieran, and that’s what I’m here to find out.”
He considered my words, leaned back against an intricately carved writing desk that looked like it belonged in a museum. “I thought you had to work with a murder right after it happened.”
“It is easier,” I admitted for the second time that day. “But there are always other methods.”
“Well, then.” He gestured towards the large, paneled doors. “Sergeant Corson knows the way. Unless you’d prefer—-”
“I would.” I wanted to walk through the same hallways that Vandora did with the man who had been responsible for her being there in the first place.
“I’d be happy to oblige. If you’ll come with me, Dr. San’Janeiro?” I followed him out into the long hallway, our footsteps echoing thinly against the cold marble tiles. Vandora Mar-Risardas had her own private suite of rooms in the east wing of the house: one of three that branched out from a central hub. The east wing also contained Lord Kieran’s suite, a well-equipped exercise room, an indoor pool and a small private dining room with large floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a vast expanse of flowering acreage for as far as the eye could see. Vandora’s bedroom had the same view with sliding glass doors leading out onto a wide wooden deck. I stood for a moment staring out at the vista, again aware of the tremendous internal silence despite the presence of the two men behind me. I basked in the sensation like a sun-worshipper on the beaches of Xinaine.
I turned to find Lord Kieran regarding me strangely.
“It’s very peaceful here,” I explained.
“That was my intention when I designed it,” he said. “A sanctuary. A haven. The word ‘nidus’ is old language for nest.”
“Some of your guests seem to have taken that literally.” I pointed to a flurry of wings over the flowers.
“Hummingbirds,” Kieran said with a nod. “They—”
“They’re extinct. At least, I thought they were.”
I felt a twinge of discomfort from him that didn’t make sense and looked at him, questioningly. He wiped his palm across his mustache and as his hand pulled away he smiled briefly. “You have caught me in one of my secret projects, Doctor. We’ve a breeding program here at Nidus. Rare birds. It’s something of a hobby.”
I nodded and pulled myself back to business. “Where was the body of Lady Vandora found?”
“In here.” Kieran motioned to an adjoining room which turned out to be a small study with silk-draped walls, a long, low reclining couch and an impressive array of vid equipment. The floor, like the one in the bedroom, was covered with a thick, white carpeting. Only here a series of dark stains and a crudely drawn outline of a human figure mottled its lush perfection. As I stepped towards the outline a wave of coldness passed through me. I shivered; a reaction not unnoticed by B.J..
When my eyes finally met his, I nodded. “Yes, there’s something,” I admitted, wondering how I could be so blasé at describing the intense hatred that still lingered in the room.
I moved past the outline and gingerly touched the surfaces of the vid player and speakers, then the shiny jackets of Lady Vandora’s entertainment collection. They offered nothing; inanimate objects rarely do unless they were directly involved in the incident. Still, everything would have to be touched, checked, entered. Especially the clothing.
But first, I wanted to hear the story as Lord Kieran would relate it.
He was only too willing to comply and he recited the events with a well-schooled efficiency: just enough detail to give credibility but not enough to betray any strong emotions. He was more in control here than during our first short talk in the large sitting room, perhaps because he had now accepted my presence. In any case, I heard his attorney’s prodding behind every word. But behind that there was something, a weariness I’d first hit upon before he had entered the sitting room. Then an odd mixture of fear and excitement. Were these the emotions of a murderer? Or simply the discomfort of a man with several “secret projects”, like his peacocks and hummingbirds. I couldn’t tell without further probing and without being more rude than I already was, only half-listening to the verbal end of his story.
So I decided to turn my attention back to the ‘outside’. There would be time for more ‘inside’ work, later.
He’d been explaining why he’d not been home for the four days while his wife was murdered.
“As Chairman of Risardas Intergalactic, it’s not unusual for me to spend a great deal of time in transit between our various depots, overseeing production and checking on personnel. It was also advisable that my visits be unannounced. That’s why no schedule can be produced for verification. We maintain thirty-seven depots within a two-days shuttle run in this quadrant alone, some a mere few hours apart. There’d never before been any reason for me to keep track of my visits to my own property.”
“And if one of your people suddenly needed to get in touch with you, how could they find you?” I could envision some hapless secretary frantically trying to contact all the small deep-space docks at once in an effort to locate her errant boss.
“I always wear a commlink. As long as I’m on company property, it has sufficient range to be activated by any main office signal.”
“And if you’re not…?”
He gave me the raised-eyebrow look that only a man who has rarely had his whereabouts questioned can give. “They wait until I am,” he said.
“And that’s why you say you didn’t know of your wife’s death until four days later, because you weren’t on company property?”
“Yes. As I told Sergeant Corson, I’d made a routine inspection of several depots, including Donas 3, 4 and 7 and Wileys 5 and 9. The latter put me just on the edge of the Ficaran quadrant and I decided to take some time off and spend it in T’garis.”
T’garis. The sister-city to the gambler’s haven of Taythis. A playground for the wealthy who wanted to remain anonymous. All transactions were in cash and no questions were asked. For years, the Conclave had been trying to force the City Keepers to set up some sort of identification system. But the lobbies of the privileged proved to be stronger that the power of the government.
“And when I returned from T’garis I found my wife had been murdered.”
It wasn’t quite that simple. I’d read the reports thoroughly on the shuttle from H.Q.. B.J. and his cohorts had managed to get verification of Lord Kieran’s visits to the Donas and Wileys Depots and a few others. But in between those visits there were large gaps of time, unaccounted for and unexplained, including his stay at T’garis. Long enough, B.J. had informed me, for a man to return to his estates and murder his wife.
I’d argued against B.J.’s theory, not because I believed so strongly that Kieran Risardas couldn’t have done just that; but because the meticulously garbed man standing before me struck me as someone who hadn’t gotten his hands dirty in a long time.
And whoever had killed Vandora had gotten their hands very dirty indeed.
I’d seen the holos at H.Q.. Her neck had been slit clean though to her spinal column; her chest punctured several times. Her left breast had been cut off as had all the fingers of her left hand; her right leg almost severed beneath the knee. From the coroner’s report, she had been alive when her fingers had been cut off. That had happened first. Then came her breast and several hours later, her leg. Finally, when she was already dead, her killer had tried to cut off her head.
That remained one of the puzzles in the murder. The coroner determined that her killer had evidently only started with a minor mutilation and then had withdrawn. B.J. favored this hypothesis, seeing the incident as an argument/attack between a husband and his wife that had gone on over the course of a day.
I argued that if he’d attacked her and departed, why didn’t she leave, go for help?
He’d argued back that if her killer had been anyone but her own husband, anyone but someone known by the ‘droid servants of the household, the servants surely would’ve intervened.
And we’d left it at that.
Now it was time to probe deeper. I needed to be alone.
At my signal, B.J. escorted Lord Kieran out of the suite and put as much distance between myself and them as he could. I followed them mentally for a short time as they walked together down the long hallway, B.J.’s thoughts on someone called “Viselle” (what ever happened to Naldian Norna?) and Kieran’s on business—perhaps too much so. I wondered how much of his mulling over of production figures was a defense his attorney had taught him to do in the presence of a P.I..
But Kieran was going nowhere as long as B.J. was by his side, so he could wait. Vandora, or what was left of her, was more important.
I wandered through her suite, touching her possessions, trying to get a sense of the woman, drawing conclusions visually as well as psychically. She was shallow, material and vain. But she also had an artistic sense about her, as was evidenced by her choice of clothing (four closets full) and her arrangement of perfume bottles on her vanity. A curio cabinet in the corner of her bedroom held more bottles, some encrusted with jewels, others with bright golden veins of cadium woven through them. All were in the shape of birds, elegant symbols, perhaps, of Lord Kieran’s home. Either her killer had no sense of value or he was no thief. I picked up one large cylinder shaped like an ascending bird, its elongated neck the neck of the bottle; its beak, the stopper. Its wings, spread as if awaiting flight, were laden with gemstones. Like the ones I’d glimpsed in the gardens, this bird, too was a rare, rather unique piece unlike anything I’d ever seen before, save in museums. It seemed somehow out of place in Vandora’s boudoir. I appraised it at over four thousand credits.
Yet I felt no pleasure on these objects, as if their placement had been by a hand other than her own. I wondered why she hadn’t used them in her defense, hadn’t hurled them at her attacker, hadn’t broken one of them for use as a blade?
What had she used? I touched everything I could find that held potential as a weapon and found nothing. What kind of person wouldn’t fight back?
If only I’d been called when they’d found her body! Then the answer to the question would’ve have been provided through her own eyes and through the E.I.I.s filling the air around her. Even now, there was still a latent presence, of hatred, of loathing. But not of fear.
With the sense of trepidation that always preceded immersing myself in someone else’s nightmare, I sank down onto the low couch and began to search for Vandora.
—
Everything around me was rich, paid for and mine. I looked at the room and felt the pride that came with ownership. The latest gadgets adorning the most expensive vid system, the pliable softness of the exotic leather of the recliner sofa, the sensuousness of the silk draping the walls… how I’d fought for that silk! I could feel the combating of emotions. Mine: desirous, petulant and demanding. His: annoyed, sharp, exasperated. How to explain that Naldian silk was something I’d always wanted to own, ever since I saw that Lisette Louri had had her living chambers at the vid studios decorated with it. People said I was prettier than Lisette. Why shouldn’t I live as good, if not better than she? Who cared if a yard of the precious fabric was equal to some people’s yearly earnings? Lisette had it and I wanted it. I stroked the leather beneath my fingertips. That, too, had carried a high price.
In the end, he had given in, as I always knew he would. Because I knew about him and Daddy. And that was something he didn’t want anyone else to know.
—
Abruptly, Vandora left me. I found myself reclining on the couch, my arms stretched lazily over my head, my eyelids heavy with sleep. I jerked myself upright, my mind swimming as I replayed what I had learned.
Her antagonism towards her handsome, successful husband and her power over him because of some secret she had known.
Something to do with Nelsam Mar, her father, the bastard son of a long line of bastard sons; a rough, crudely handsome man with a craggy face and large hands. Vandora had been tall and had inherited her father’s build: wide shoulders, long legs. On her it had looked fashionable and with her finely-chiseled angelic features, she resembled a thoroughbred filly. Her father, though, had filled out his lanky body with sinewy muscles from long years of working in the Sinderian mines. And though he now wore the expensive clothing of a man whose daughter was married to one of the wealthiest men in the System, he still bore the mien of a laborer.
I’d seen him on the vid half-a-dozen times. Lord Kieran’s wedding had been a highly publicized event. Even I had noticed that he looked to be almost a contemporary of his previously reclusive son-in-law. At B.J.’s office I’d reviewed holos taken at the funeral and mentioned later to B.J. how little the man seemed to have changed. If anything, he now looked younger.
B.J. had grunted. “Why not? He’s clear of suspicion in this, not that a man is incapable of murdering his own daughter. But she was his ticket to wealth and a tie to the Lord Kieran, something he couldn’t have done on his own. Plus he has an alibi for the time involved. As for his appearance, there’s only a five year difference in age between Kieran and Mar.”
I knew Vandora had been thirty-five when she died. That meant that Nelsam had fathered her when he was fifteen.
“Not a hell of a lot else to do on Sinderia,” B.J. had quipped.
What was the tie between this strange man and Lord Kieran? If anything, they were complete opposites. But then, opposites had been known to attract. I just didn’t know what the attraction was.
But Vandora did, or had and, for a moment, so had I. Then I had lost her. And the expensive couch and glistening walls had again become hers, and not mine, and no longer yielded even pleasure upon viewing them.
I rose and moved back into the bedroom. The study may have been where the crime had been committed, but the key to Vandora was here. I opened the first closet I came to and drew out a thin dressing gown of liquid black satin, shrugged off my jumpsuit and drew it on against my bare skin.
—
The first time we made love I’d put this on afterwards, then lay back on the bed and let him touch me through the satin, his hands gliding more softly this time, teasing the tips of my breasts until they were hard and pointed against the fabric. He wanted me again, then, but I wanted to play some more. So I kept the robe on and only let him touch me, enjoying the feeling of the softness all over my body so much better than the sweatiness of his skin against mine. He was too rough, too used to getting his own way. It was always better if I made him wait, let him know that I, Vandi, would get what I wanted, too. So I bought more of these robes in all different colors, so that while he waited he wouldn’t be bored. But this one was always my favorite because it had been the first time with him.
I don’t always wear the robes with the others. Some of them, I don’t have to. Like Pansie. She’s as soft as I am even if she’s only metal and plasteel underneath. And when I was younger on Sinderia there was Dak, who worked in the supply office. He was nice because after we made sex he’d always let me pick out anything I wanted in the catalogs. But Dak’s gone and now sometimes I have to wear the robe.
—
The robe slipped to the floor. I reached for a fur gown, full length with a low, tight bodice. Still in a daze, I draped it around me and let Vandora again take control.
—
I bought this for the Inverness Cotillion. Kieran had said buy anything you want and this is what I wanted. Daddy had called me the Ice Princess when he saw me because the fur is almost as pale as my hair. But he hadn’t meant anything bad by it because he has always called me his Princess. And we both knew that diamonds are also called ice.
I wore the diamond garlands that Kieran gave me, too. He told me they were antiques, over three hundred years old.
I remember this so well. Music was suddenly everywhere around me and I saw dancing, people swaying. And laughter and everyone around me in beautiful gowns and suitments but none as beautiful as I. I stopped dancing and Daddy gave me a glass of champagne and brushed at my fur where someone had ruffled it.
‘Daddy takes care of me, Kieran,’ I told him. But he didn’t laugh.
—
I carefully replaced the gown on the padded hangers, my movements automatic. There was something, something underneath all I was sensing and I couldn’t quite grasp it. In the black satin robe, Vandora had known. In the fur gown at the Cotillion, she had known. And when she’d died, she had known. I was beginning to wonder if that was why she had died. If it was, it could mean only one thing: Lord Kieran had killed her, or had arranged for someone to kill her. For, by her own admission, the ‘secret’ directly affected him.
I needed to find what she’d been wearing before she was killed.
The coroner’s report stated she’d been naked. But somehow I didn’t believe that. She loved clothes too much. She had four closets full and even wore clothes when she made love. A woman who did that would die with her clothes on. No, someone had removed, or made her remove, what she was wearing. All I had to do now was find it.
I touched each one of the satin robes, green, red, yellow, blue, all rendering some memory or another but nothing useful. Unless I had been doing a study of Lady Vandora’s sexual proclivities. The same was true of several second-skin stretch suits, their information as uniform as their appearance. Then there was a linen dress, linen! The last time I saw real linen was in a museum. The fabric felt too soft to be synthetic. I wondered what this rarity had cost Lord Kieran. But the dress, like my estimate, was blank.
It took me almost an hour to go through the entire closet, and there were still three more yet untouched. At that rate… at that rate I might make better time by calling his Lordship back in here and asking him just what Vandora would have been likely to have been wearing that day. Did she have something she normally wore around the house, something like my own faded tunic and stretchies that I always swore would have to rot off my body before I got rid of them?
He was surprised by my summons on the house intercom but arrived quickly, his face expressionless as I put the question to him. He thought for a moment and while he thought I probed, finding tiredness, a small amount of confusion (he thought I’d be looking for weapons not fashion) and then, again, that wall.
This time it was his intense concentration on the contents of the closet before him that proved impassable by a cursory probing. I was beginning to realize that Kieran possessed a very strong mind.
He picked out three outfits and tossed them on the bed behind him. “She liked to wear these,” he said, and waited, his eyes and thoughts on me now.
Fear. Why? I thought. What do you have to fear from me if, like you told B.J., you didn’t kill Vandora? What are you afraid of, Kieran Risardas?
“Thanks.”
“Anything else, Dr. San’Janeiro?”
“Yes.” I went to wide-scan as I asked the question, bracing myself against the high-backed chair behind me. I’d been known, in the past, to be knocked flat by the impact of some people’s emotions. “What are you so afraid of?”
He balked and I felt it, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Just a jolt, strong because he was standing close to me, but controlled. Like the rest of him.
“Afraid? I’m not afraid of anything in particular, I…,” and he stopped, suddenly realizing that by my very asking of the question I’d already had formed some sort of answer.
“All right, so I have some fears,” he said gruffly and he turned from me, as if that would make a difference. “But why shouldn’t I? My wife was brutally murdered in my own home, all my best alarm systems thwarted. I’m under suspicion by the police. You don’t have to be psychic to know that, Doctor.”
“That’s not what you’re afraid of. You’re not nervous about Sergeant Corson. Annoyed, maybe. But not nervous. No, it’s me you’re afraid of. Do you want to tell me or would you rather wait until Corson gets a warrant for a complete mind-probe?”
“You haven’t enough evidence for that!”
So. He had discussed that with his attorney. And his attorney had taught him about shielding. He was, as B.J. had said, a shrewdie.
“Now, no. But there is also a noticeable lack of other suspects, and a warrant wouldn’t be as difficult to get as Master Roggman might think.” I deliberately used the name of his attorney to let him know that I knew.
“You’ve never worked with a P.I. before, have you?” I asked when he said nothing, thought nothing but a blank wall, full of figures and statistics about depot production.
“No.”
He was telling the truth. Yet the admission was a strange one. Because of the nature of our business, all P.I.’s go through a training period where we’re required to work with the general public, almost an internship, in very mundane areas. Lost kids, keys, cats. Our services then, are free and sooner or later even the most skeptical come walking through the doors of the Psychic Collective’s offices to inquire about some small matter or another. And most of the major companies like to use us, too, in personnel hiring, if nothing else. As involved as Lord Kieran was in the daily operations of his depots, I found it odd that he had never before worked with a psychic.
“Why?”
“I guess… there was never one around when I needed one,” he said lightly, then, surprisingly, smiled. All I knew was that I’d somehow stumbled onto a private joke but didn’t know the punch line.
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “I don’t mean to make light of the situation. I’m well aware of how serious it is. I just don’t know if there’s anything I can tell you that will help you. I’ve told everything I know to the police.”
“You can tell me what you’re afraid of.”
Again, a wave of tension, cold, cutting.
I waited.
Finally, he ran his hand through his hair in an exasperated movement. “There is something. I will admit that, to you, because you know that much already. I just can’t tell you what it is other than it has nothing to do with Vandora. Can you accept that?”
“It’s a fear you live with, have lived with for a long time.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And you say it has nothing to do with your wife’s death.”
“Yes.”
“But she knew about your fear.”
This startled him. For a moment a flood of images was hurled at me with such intensity that I gasped out loud, the sound causing his mental wall to come back into place. But not before I had seen some things very clearly.
“All right, so she knew.” His voice was strained. “But it didn’t involve her. She wasn’t part of it.”
“If she hadn’t known, would she still be alive today?”
“Yes. No. Damn it, how can I answer that? Are you saying she was killed because of something I’d done? More likely, I’d be the victim, not her. No, if you want Vandora’s killer, find some wife, or some husband, she was cuckolding, not me. I never cared who she slept with. The police know that.”
I’d seen that in the reports. “Jealous spouses usually don’t dismember a body. A laser-pistol is quicker and quieter and just as effective.”
“Then why are you asking—?”
“I didn’t say you’re not a suspect, Lord Kieran. I just don’t think you killed her because of her sexual meanderings.”
“But you do think I killed her?” He looked pained as he said the words. For some reason other than the obvious one it was very important to him what I thought.
“She knew something that you don’t want known,” I said, avoiding a direct answer to his question. “Something that has created a fear in you. And something that her father knew, too. Shall I have Sergeant Corson have him summoned here?”
“No!”
“Then—”
“Then, damn it, you’re just going to have to believe that it had nothing to do with her death! You’re a psychic, can’t you tell that I’m telling the truth? Go ahead, ask me, point blank, about Vandora. Ask me if I loved her and I’ll tell you I didn’t. Ask me if I miss her and I’ll tell you I don’t. Ask me if I’m glad she’s dead and I’ll say, yes, by the gods, I am! But I didn’t kill her and that is the gods’ honest truth!”
I probed. It was, or else Master Roggman was a better attorney than I gave him credit for.
After he left I sat on the edge of the bed with its lace coverlet and satin pillows and tried to make some sense of the one unguarded glimpse I’d had into Kieran’s mind. Some things had been very clear and expected.
Nelsam Mar. Vandora. And a background that looked rough, like a mining office on Sinderia. But there was also something else I didn’t understand. Nelsam again, wearing a uniform I’d never seen. Around him were other people, all human, all unfamiliar. They weren’t miners. I don’t know how I knew that, I just did. But I didn’t know who they were.
I touched the first outfit Kieran had placed on the bed. A tunic and loose fitting pants in a golden hue. Nothing. Not even worth putting on. The second, a similar combination but in red. That tingled a bit more so I slipped it on and once again became Vandora.
A ‘droid servant brings me hot tea and a spice cakes every afternoon when I’m here and I like the feeling of being waited on. I could get it myself. A long time ago, I used to cook for Daddy, but now I don’t have to do anything. Anything but what I want.
Especially now.
When I first told Kieran he laughed. Not laugh, funny, but laugh, cold, the way Kieran can when he thinks I’m being stupid. Don’t laugh at me Kieran, or I’ll tell everyone and then you won’t laugh anymore. I’ll tell, unless you let me be part of it. I want some, too. I want to feel like that, to know what it feels like. I won’t be afraid like you.
Daddy’s not afraid. I watched once, he let me watch and he likes it, you know. Not like you, Kieran. Daddy said you won’t do it anymore and that’s why you agreed to marry me. A promise to Daddy.
I don’t care. I like being rich. I like all my lovers, especially Pansie. And now Syl.
I feel her warm against me as we sip tea and nibble on the spice cakes. I’m glad I’m rich and could hire her. She’s real, not like Pansie but like me. Full human and she got a lot of money when she was working at Taythis. But I said you’d pay her more, Kieran.
And you did because if you didn’t, I’d tell about Daddy and you and what I’ve seen.
I think, when you let me join, I’ll take Syl with me. She’s young, it’ll be good for her.
Come here, Syl, touch me now. Look how white your fingers are against my red blouse.
Vandora hadn’t been frightened when she’d worn the red outfit. Self-indulgent, hedonistic, passionate, maybe. But not frightened.
That left only the embroidered caftan, a material laced heavily with beadwork and sequins but nothing else. Suddenly, I was sick of Vandora. And like Kieran, glad that she was dead. What ever had possessed a man like him to take her as his wife in the first place? He could’ve had any number of women, probably still did. What did he need with Vandora Mar?
But it wasn’t Vandora. I’d forgotten she’d said that. It was Nelsam. A promise to Nelsam. Because of something he wouldn’t do. So instead he had married Nelsam’s daughter, assuring her status and wealth faster than her father could provide for her.
So why kill her? Types like Vandora were born to be bought off. He had more than enough money. Buy her a chateau in Taythis, furnish it with enough human and ‘droid lovers to keep her occupied for centuries, and forget about her. That would be more in Kieran’s style. And would’ve definitely been to Vandora’s liking.
And then someone had come into her bedroom and cut off her fingers. Her sense of touch.
Her breast. That someone liked to touch.
Her leg. To keep her from walking, from strutting as she did about a room? Then her neck. To silence her forever.
Why?
With a frustrated groan I threw myself back against her bed. I was tired, damn, how I was tired! I’d put in two weeks work in Chi’annir and before that spent almost a month on the Derhin case on Mano-3. P.I.’s rarely worked three in a row; there was only so much the body could take. I only came to Primus because B.J. had asked.
And now I was drawing a blank.
Oh, I definitely had more to go on. B.J.’s reports had covered Pansie, the ‘droid lover, but not Syl from Taythis. That was a good lead. Perhaps a former client or employer resented Vandora’s monopolizing their prize lady’s time. No doubt I could also come up with other names, other lovers, other stories. But I had a feeling that wasn’t where the answer lay and further searching would only serve to make me more frustrated. I liked to be touched, too, though my tastes, unlike Vandi’s, ran definitely towards the male sex. I thought of B.J. and how we’d been lovers until his amorous nature had set him to drifting again. Besides, he’d realized I was looking for something more permanent, and knew he couldn’t offer it. Not that I’d really expected him to. Not to a psychic, anyway. Cops weren’t the only ones who feared us. Perhaps B.J. would’ve liked Vandora.
No, scratch that thought. B.J. had more class than that. I tried to will my sleepy brain back into a working mode, away from my own problems, my own fears.
I’d always been so good at losing myself in a case, immersing myself in that “other person”, focusing on their problems instead of my own. Yet this time, Vandora’s problems only seemed to highlight my own estrangement. With a groan of frustration I forced my body back into action, stretching my arms overhead in response. My hands slid under the satin pillows and touched a piece of fabric.
I screamed.
Not loud. What I found frightened me but I was still a professional and managed to control some of the intensity that shot through me like a laser-bolt. But enough that I was now wide awake and my heart was pounding. Gingerly, I pulled the mini-dress from under the pillows. A short, black silk tunic with a gathered waist and low-cut bodice. Shoulder straps tied at the neck. One strap was still knotted, the other ripped where the dress had been forced from her body. It bore no other visible signs of damage. But psychically, psychically it screamed louder than I ever could have.
I didn’t even have to slip it on.
I held it against me, aware for a moment of the sweet scent of Vandora’s perfume before losing myself in its memory, woven now forever into the fine threads of its fabric.
“You can’t tell me no. I won’t take no for an answer. Not now. No longer. Do you understand me?”
“Vandi…”
“Don’t ‘Vandi’ me! I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman. You know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“So?”
“The answer is still no, my darling.”
“But why? I want to!”
He came up behind me and slid his arms around my waist. “Haven’t I gotten you everything else you’ve wanted? Haven’t I, my Princess?” His lips found my neck and he kissed me lightly, his hands coming up to cover my breasts, knowing, as he always did, just how I liked to be touched. “Why don’t you go put on your black robe and we can talk about this later, hmmm?”
“Don’t you like this dress?”
“Of course. It’s beautiful. Like you.”
“And I want to be beautiful for you, forever. And I want us to have beautiful things. That’s why you have to let me go through the Channel.”
“No.” His voice was suddenly sharp. “There are things you do not understand. Things you should not see.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me down next to him. “Besides, you will always be beautiful to me,” he said, softer now. “We have more than enough. And we will always be together. I made sure of that. Through your marriage. Through Kieran.”
“But why does everything have to always involve him!” I cried. “Why is it his home, his name! Don’t you understand that I want some of that, too? I want the power—”
“No. Kieran is right. We have to close the Channel for good now. It’s served its purpose, brought us here, made us wealthy men. We—”
“We, we, we! I’m sick of your talk about we! You don’t owe Kieran anything anymore, don’t you see that? The mines are starting to do really good and you don’t need his money any more. We can leave him.”
“He’s my captain, Princess. It’s something you can’t understand. You’re from this time. He and I go back a long, long way.” And he laughed at the private joke he and Kieran always made.
I pouted. “You have to.”
“Anything else, my love, but—”
“No. You have to let me go through. You can’t let Kieran destroy the Channel.”
He sighed. “Now, Vandi…”
“No!” I wrenched from him and stood up. “You listen, now! And listen good. Everything you know about the Channel, I know. And unless you take me through, I’m telling the Conclave. Do you remember what they labeled you—a ‘dangerous psychopath’. They’ll destroy you, Elam Kessel Nor. If the Conclave doesn’t kill you for all the murders you committed five hundred years ago, they’ll kill you for what you’re doing now: using this Channel to steal things from the past. It’ll solve a lot of old police cases, my dearest father!”
He paled visibly. “No, Vandora, you wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I? And why not? Aren’t I your daughter, bred especially for you in the Naldian colonies? That’s illegal, too. See, I know all this! And I have it all down on file.” He stood slowly, his eyes hard on mine. “You bitch.”
“You made me that way,” I taunted, running one hand up his broad chest.
He slapped me hard. I fell back, my face throbbing. No! He wasn’t supposed to hurt me! Only in play, only in play would I let him hurt me and even then it didn’t really hurt. I could feel blood trickling down the side of my mouth.
Oh, gods! What if there was a scar!
“I’ll tell! You can’t stop me! And if you try, then Syl will tell. I told her all about it, who you really are, what you’ve done! She wants to go too and she will! You’ll take us both through the Channel or, or….”
“Or what, Vandora? No one is going to believe you. They’ll say you made it up.”
I laughed at him and it hurt my face. “Will they? Then what will they say when they see the tapes I made of the datafiles from the Sorca? You talk too much when you’re high, Nelsam. I found them and copied them and I’ll send them to the Conclave unless you take Syl and I—”
Nelsam reached down and grabbed my wrists, dragging me to my feet. I tried to twist in his grasp but couldn’t, so I kicked at him with my high-heeled boots.
He swore out in pain then threw me back on the bed and grabbed my ankle.
“I should break your pretty leg for that, my dear,” he growled.
I kicked at him again, but he was quicker than I was and suddenly I felt a searing pain as he twisted my knee backwards. I screamed.
“Go ahead and scream, Vandi. Kieran can’t hear it, not that he’d care. And the servants won’t dare interrupt us. We always play rough and they’re used to it.”
“No! Let me go!”
“I want those files. Where are they?”
“No!”
From the pocket of his jumpsuit he withdrew a long, sharp dagger. “Where are they?”
“No, please, please. Just take me through the Channel. You don’t even have to take Syl. Just me. Please, Daddy.”
“Where?” He ripped down one side of my dress and lay the cold metal against my breast. “Where, or I’ll start cutting.”
“I, I don’t have them.”
“Liar!” He slapped me again. The room began to spin.
“I don’t!” I sobbed.
“Take off the dress.”
“What?”
“Take it off!” He was breathing heavily.
My leg throbbed. “I can’t,” I whined.
“You can, Vandora. You can do anything I tell you to. You always have.” Slowly, painfully, I slid the black dress down my body…
—
I came back to myself, abruptly. I was standing in the middle of Vandora’s bedroom. The black dress had slipped through my fingers and fallen to the floor.
I was shaking.
Elam Kessel Nor. I knew the name, but knew it only from legend and history. A brilliant but cruel man, Elam Kessel Nor served as the First Officer on the Sorca; in its time, the deadliest pirate ship in inhabited space, under the command of Captain Kieran Risardas. The original Kieran Risardas. That had been when the System was young and technology had gotten ahead of humanity. Risardas and Kessel Nor had the power and the skill to use that technology to try to claim the quadrant as their own. They’d been ruthless barbarians, murderers, pirates. The Sorca and her sister ship, the Rei, had brought the young colonies to its knees. The Conclave was still in its infancy and could offer no protection. But then somehow, Risardas had simply disappeared. Rumors said he was killed by one of his own men. But his body was never found.
Because he was still alive.
It sounded absurd, but he and Elam Kessel Nor, now Nelsam Mar, had found a way to travel through time. Not jumpspace, like the FTL ships did. That was in small segments. But large blocks of real time with the help of something they both called the Channel, something that had granted them life, and Vandora, death.
I had B.J.’s answer for him, as unbelievable as it was. And Lord Kieran was right. He hadn’t killed Vandora. Hundreds of others, yes. But not Vandora. I wondered if he knew who did.
I went back to the study, where the outline of Vandora’s body seemed to watch me from the floor. I looked over her collection of viddisk again, the most logical place for her to hide the datafiles. She’d told Nelsam she didn’t have them, but she was lying. I knew that. But she also had stubbornly refused to think of where she had put them. I tried to think like Vandora had.
The disks revealed nothing. I pulled the vid cabinet away from the wall and felt behind it. Nothing. Same for the inside of the speakers. I pulled the cushions off the couch. I searched the study thoroughly for at least a half an hour. And found nothing.
I ransacked her vanity, her closets, her bathroom. I looked in every nook and cranny until I was sure there were only two possibilities: either she’d finally told Nelsam where the file was, or else Kieran had removed it before the police had arrived.
I had to face him again, but not here.
I returned to the sitting room and found Kieran seated behind the large antique desk (the Channel was evidently capable of some pretty heavy-duty transporting), sipping a dark liquor out of a fluted crystal glass. He glanced nervously up at me as I entered. I turned away, nodded to B.J. who was perusing through an gilt-edged album on the sofa table but looked up when I’d entered.
“Jynx?”
“I’d like to speak with you for a moment, Sergeant. And will you bring my briefcase?”
He did, and came out into the hall.
‘Leave the door open,’ I told him telepathically, ‘and keep an eye on Risardas.’
B.J. winced. He hated when I did that. But he complied.
“Well?” His voice was hushed.
“He’s not your murderer. Her father is.”
“Her fath—!”
“Sssh!”
“Then why…?” And he glanced back at the dark-haired man behind the desk who was staring at some nonexistent point on the far wall.
“Because I need him to lead me to some evidence that will tie this whole thing up for you nice and neat.”
I stepped away from the door and opened my briefcase, pulling out the small pistol I was licensed to carry as part of my job. B.J.’s eyes widened.
“You’re kidding! You need that with him? Ol’ facts-and-figures Risardas?”
I checked the power pack and flicked off the safety. “Some people don’t like to discuss their past,” was all I said.
I slipped the pistol into my pocket and shut the sitting room doors behind me. Lord Kieran took his gaze from the wall. The fear coming from him now was so thick I could’ve cut it and sold it as mattresses. I said nothing, but stepped towards the sofa that B.J. had recently vacated and leaned against the arm. He put his empty glass down on the desktop. “Have you been successful?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know who killed her.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know I’m not the murderer.”
“I didn’t say that, Captain Risardas.”
He froze, started to speak, then stopped.
“Do you know who killed her, captain?”
He stared at me. “No,” he said finally. “But I have my suspicions.”
“You lied about what you were afraid of, that it had nothing to do with her death.”
“I wasn’t sure. She knew who I was, but I didn’t know how much else she knew.”
“Everything.”
“And now, so do you.”
“Yes.”
He twirled the empty glass in his fingers. “I know what you think of me, Doctor. I don’t have to be psychic to know that. I’ve read your history books, know what was said, what you have been taught to believe. But there is another side. I don’t suppose it would matter if I tried to explain.”
“About Captain Kieran Risardas and how he destroyed Sinder Station, killing ten thousand innocent men, women and children because they stood between him and the mines? That was five hundred years ago. I’m interested in a more recent murder.”
I flicked the safety off my weapon. “The man who killed your wife was after something, something she had hidden away. Copies of datafiles from the Sorca. Where are they, Risardas?”
He seemed confused. “Copies? I don’t know. I didn’t know she had copies. I have the only originals.”
“Here?”
He nodded.
“So she had access to them and made copies. That’s what she threatened her killer with. If he’s to be brought to justice, I’ll need those files.” His face hardened. “Don’t ask me for those, San’Janeiro. If you know about them you know why I can’t give them to you.” Then suddenly, he seemed to realize what I said.
“Gods, no. Not Nelsam!”
I didn’t move.
“But she’s his child, his daughter, his—”
“They were lovers.”
He blanched. Evidently there were some things that sickened even Captain Risardas of the Sorca.
“You’re lying. You’re trying to trick me.”
But I knew he was doubting his own words even as he said them. I shook my head wearily. “I wish to the gods I was. But it’s true. They’ve been lovers for a long time, longer, I’d guess than you’ve been married to her. I don’t know exactly why Nelsam arranged her marriage to you, other than it was a bargain they both made long before you knew about it.”
He stared past me for a moment, his eyes focusing on a time that only he could really see. “I, I felt I owed Nelsam something. He’s the only person I have left who… remembers. Who knows. In spite of his nature—and he is, he can be a brutal man—he would’ve given his life for me, before. And he was the one who actually found the Channel, though he didn’t know how to use it. I figured that out. For me, it was an escape from something that had gotten out of hand.”
He ran a hand through his hair as he gathered his thoughts. “There was a revolution, you see. One that was never recorded in your history books, never will be. All you know is that Risardas and the Sorca plundered the System; you didn’t know why and who for. Your Conclave wasn’t always the righteous group it is now, striving for the common good. Five hundred years ago, Doctor, they were just another faction striving for control, like I was. And if I was cruel, then they were vicious. Specifically, a few in their leadership, like Paro Bennita, Cortleen Branc and others.”
He was right. The names meant nothing to me.
“I was young and cocky and had a good ship and a damned fine crew. That was my only recommendation. And yes, we lived by taking the cargo off of Conclave freighters, raiding settlements. But the Conclave then was Branc and her kind and they were talking about a system of slavery, of imprisonment for anyone who didn’t fall in their category of the ‘chosen’. And that was most of the quadrant.”
“But Sinder…?”
He sighed, leaned back in his chair and briefly closed his eyes. “That was unfortunate, but they’d pushed me to the edge and I had to do something to prove to them that I meant business.” His words sounded crazy, but that wasn’t what scared me. What scared me was that I knew he was telling the truth.
“But what happened, what changed things?”
“Branc killed Bennita, her lover. The movement split widely after that and evolved into those people your history vids now claim as heroes. People I backed, put in power, like Ty St. Carins. Micha Lorte. But Risardas remained an unpopular name, so I used the Channel that Nelsam had stumbled upon quite by accident in mid-jump, and left. I didn’t know until six years ago that he had followed.”
“In the meantime—.”
“In the meantime, my less illustrious relatives had set about making honest citizens of themselves, creating a minor empire that was here for the taking when I arrived for the first time, about three hundred years ago. But my relatives lacked the drive, the ability to make the Depots truly successful. So I played the part of a long-lost Risardas cousin and began to build an empire for myself. Over the centuries, I’ve been my own father, brother and son. Everything you now see around you is because of my own hard work.”
“With a little help from the Channel,” I added. He touched the ornate desk. “Well, yes. Some habits do die hard. But if it’s any consolation all that I have was purchased fairly. My only advantage was the knowledge of what would become valuable in time and what would not.” It was like knowing what horse would win the race before it was run. No wonder he spent so much time in Taythis.
“And the files?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t give them to you. It’s been too long. I can’t give up my life just yet.”
“And when the police have me question Mar—? The truth will come out either way.”
“Let me handle him,” he said after a moment. “He’s one of my own people. I give you my word. He will not go unpunished.”
“You’re not the law, Risardas.”
He looked at me a long time. “I could have been, you know. There were times, in the past; chances that came to me. I could have been very powerful, could have used my knowledge to influence. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because inside I always knew I didn’t belong where I was. I was different. And exploiting that difference was not going to bring me peace.”
I understood about exploitation and being different. It was what had drawn me to the OutBacks six years ago.
“We’re much alike, you and I,” he said as I rose to leave. “Both anomalies in our time. Rara avis. Both caught up in the past. Me, in my own and you, in other people’s. Don’t you ever wonder if Jynx San’Janeiro really exists?”
“Constantly,” I said, as I flicked the safety back on the pistol in my pocket.
“And maybe someday I’ll even find out the answer.”
—
An O.B.C. officer found Nelsam Mar’s lifeless body two days later in T’garis. He’d evidently been working on a project for his mines at a laboratory there. There’d been an explosion, with almost all of the equipment destroyed. At first it had looked like an accident, but then a holovid had turned up, giving a full confession of the murder of his daughter. He could no longer abide his own incestuous impulses, he’d said, and planned to take his own life in a way in which there would be no chance he’d still be alive. After his lifeless body had been found in the power chamber, there was no doubt that he had kept his word. I accompanied B.J. to T’garis, knowing that what I was looking at was the remains of the Channel. Vandora had said that Kieran had intended to destroy it and so he had. Or rather on his instruction, Nelsam, ever the faithful crew member, had.
Which had also provided him an honorable means of death, in his own eyes. There would be no more going back for Lord Kieran now. He would have to live out his days in this time, fitting in as best he could.
Rara avis. Rare bird. It was a term so ancient I had to look it up when I left Risardas Estates with B.J. that day. I’d told him of Nelsam’s complicity and incest and that had gotten his police instincts so excited he forgot to ask more, for got to ask why I had carried the pistol into Kieran Risardas’ study. Then, when Mar’s body was found, he became caught up in the glory of his promotion and my past actions no longer mattered.
I still outrank B.J., though it doesn’t bother me anymore. Kieran, at one time the captain of one of the most powerful hunterships in the galaxy, has taught me a lot about rank and authority. How it can be used or abused and what can come from it. He has seen it all in the past five hundred years. We talked a lot about the past, at first. But not so much, anymore.
Now, we talk about the future.