Concept YUS (Cross-World Murder Cases Book 1) Page 10

  I crossed my arms and leaned on the edge of the desk.

  “Did you have an opportunity to have lunch yet?” Vernie asked after a long silence, obviously uneasy for him.

  “Why shouldn’t I have had that opportunity?”

  “Well, it’s just an expression.” He suddenly assumed a determined expression. “Look, Simon, let’s be honest! You shouldn’t think I have anything against you. But Odesta—she is our psychologist—decided it was a good…”

  Just then, Larsen appeared at the door. It’s noteworthy that, instead of turning his attention to me—the newcomer, the IBI inspector, etcetera—he stared at Vernie. His eyes grew dark and fixed; his mouth stiffened as if restraining a desire to curse. I would feel very uneasy if somebody looked at me like that. But Vernie, who the night before had impressed me as being nervous and vulnerable, wasn’t at all bothered. On the contrary, he gave the commander an impudent smile and sprawled more comfortably on the leather love seat.

  Finally Larsen stepped into the room. He came closer and shook my hand. “You can go, Vernie,” he said, taking his seat in the chair behind the desk.

  “I came here on business,” Vernie said firmly. “It’s about the defractor.”

  Larsen frowned. “I thought we agreed that—”

  “Oh, no! You are wrong.”

  “OK, but we’ll talk about this later.”

  “And why not now?” Vernie glared at him. “The inspector will excuse us, I’m sure. And maybe he’ll learn some interesting things.”

  His provoking tone was so uncalled for that I realized I had missed something earlier. He was very, very frightened. But of what?

  “You know perfectly well,” Larsen began, “that I approved the project for the defractor under the explicit condition that you build it without me.”

  “Yes, but that condition can’t be valid here—especially when imposed by the base commander!”

  Now I was sure Vernie was purposely provoking this quarrel so I could hear it, but that made it all the more interesting. A hound dog has to be ready for the rabbit to jump out from under any bush, as the old saying goes.

  “I will decide what’s valid here and what’s not,” Larsen said evenly. “And I ask only one thing from you now, Vernie: to understand that I have no time to waste.”

  “You’re an opportunist, Larsen!” Vernie accusingly raised his voice. “You care only about yourself. You don’t want to be bothered despite our difficulties with the pending test of the defractor—”

  “It’s perfectly clear to me,” Larsen interrupted him, “that your problems, if there are any at all, can be solved without me.”

  “Even so, your participation itself would solve other problems.”

  “There is no point in trying to interpret your last phrase,” Larsen said firmly, as if Vernie was simply trying to confuse him. “I didn’t give you any other assignments, and your team can use eighty percent of the resources of the base. Don’t you agree, to want more than that—”

  “Yes, you’re right!” Suddenly Vernie became apologetic, remorseful, and almost tearful. “You really provided us with everything we need, but I panicked. Well, I’m sorry! I’m way over the limit. What can I do? Good-bye. Good-bye, Simon.”

  He left the room, but there was something left unsaid, something subterranean and dark that lingered on, as if he still stood between us. I looked at Larsen questioningly, hoping for some kind of explanation, but he volunteered nothing. Instead, he stood up, crossed to the window, stuck his hands in the pockets of his impeccably ironed trousers, and leaned against the window frame.

  He was a typical Scandinavian, big and blond, with that slightly unnatural whiteness characteristic of people who live in the far north. His weather-beaten face with high cheekbones bore an unmistakably intelligent look, but his furrowed forehead and square, massive chin added a ferocious touch that no doubt complicated his contacts with more timid people. His low, bushy brows formed almost a straight line above his impenetrably cold blue eyes; his nose was slightly crooked and gristly, apparently having been broken before. On the left side of his neck an old purpled scar stretched from beside his ear to his short-cropped hair. Despite his age—as far as I could tell he was about fifty—Larsen had the well-built body of an athlete, and under his short-sleeved shirt bulged muscles that nobody would like to see aimed at themselves.

  It was apparent that the man in front of me had enough energy and willpower to withstand even more dangerous quakes than the ones that had shaken the Eyrena base. And since he had already been a career military officer when the Yusians first landed on Earth and was chosen for the Eyrena mission exactly because of his military training and experience, I had no doubts about the obedience he commanded here. Yes, but if so, Vernie must have had serious concerns to create such a contrived, daring confrontation.

  “I’m not going to ask you what the situation is on Earth.” Larsen broke the silence. “When I left, it was very bad. The best-case scenario would be that it is still the same—”

  “But it’s not,” I interrupted.

  “After we started killing each other.” He seemed to be finishing my sentence.

  I knew all along the unlikelihood that I was sent to investigate an accident, but his confirming words still disappointed me. “We killed each other before we met Yusians,” I said, “but since they showed up, this ancient method of solving arguments has become very ineffective.”

  “Yes, ineffective,” Larsen repeated dully. “Ineffective.”

  When I am trapped in a depressing conversation, I feel the need to start reasoning “in principle.” Such arguments always sound serious and important while providing an opportunity to stall without being obvious. At the moment I was seriously tempted to start such a discussion, and something told me that Larsen would be happy to join me, but…

  “Good self-discipline doesn’t guarantee success, but without it, failure is certain,” my boss always says, and he is absolutely right. That’s why I decided to stick to the concrete facts.

  Chapter 11

  “When and where were Fowler and Stein killed?” I asked.

  After circling the desk and settling into his chair, Larsen answered me mechanically. “A day on Eyrena lasts twenty-five hours and two minutes, but it was more convenient to make that twenty-four, so we set the clocks at the base, including the computer clocks, to lose two minutes and thirty-five seconds every hour. As far as the killings are concerned, they happened at approximately the same time, somewhere between eight o’clock on the twenty-sixth and ten fifteen on the twenty-seventh of last month.

  “Couldn’t you determine the time more accurately?”

  “No. The temperature of their bodies was very high.” Seeing my surprise, Larsen explained, “We found them in the forest; dead organic matter doesn’t decompose or decay there but somehow heats up in the morning hours.”

  “And what is the reason for these—occurrences?”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t even have a working hypothesis about this process, or about many other questions, for that matter.”

  “And somebody told me that Eyrena is no different from Earth!” I sighed.

  “If they meant physical characteristics, that’s so, despite the two suns and other discrepancies. But the plants—while their cell structure is very close to that of Earth flora, their behavior, life cycles, and the anomalies they cause around them drive our biologists to the brink of despair.”

  “But they would rather fall off that brink than ask the Yusians for help, right?”

  “There are no beggars here, Simon,” Larsen noted coldly.

  I decided it was time to change the subject. “Tell me all you remember regarding the deaths of Fowler and Stein.”

  “OK then.” He instinctively unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and began, “At the base we follow a strict schedule, and that morning, as usual, we were all having breakfast at five o’clock—that is, about forty minutes before the rise of Ridon. We need to get up
early because, when we are awake, it’s easier to fight the first signs of the euphoria—which, I’d guess, you also experienced today.”

  I made a short vague gesture. Larsen continued, “Nothing unusual happened at breakfast, or later, when everybody left for their work stations. Nothing even suggested what was going to happen. And after that—”

  “But you must have had some conversations at breakfast,” I interrupted him. “Tell me everything that was said, no matter how insignificant it seems to you.”

  “We eat in full silence in the morning, Simon. We need to maintain complete concentration. Sometimes even the slightest distraction causes the waste of an entire morning.”

  “Didn’t you notice anything strange in Fowler or Stein’s behavior? A gesture, a facial expression?”

  “In moments like this, none of us can afford the luxury of watching other people,” Larsen said. “One’s own behavior is troubling enough. So, on the morning of the twenty-sixth, Elia, who was on duty at the base for the day, left to inventory the laboratories. Odesta was busy in the medical building, Reder drove Stein in the jeep to the biosector, where they separated and Reder continued on to his experimental field. Vernie went to the defractor site, and I went to the research field. Fowler was supposed to pick up a package from Earth the Yusians had told us about the night before, but later we learned that he never made the pickup. We found the trailer he used hidden on the side of the road.”

  “Where exactly? And what do these trailers look like?”

  “They are Yusians cargo machines. Probably they could also fly, but we use them instead of trucks or tractors. The one Fowler used was found between the rocks in the lowland beyond the eastern ridge. That’s almost the opposite direction from the part of the forest where we found the bodies.”

  “So Fowler and Stein were together, is that so?”

  “Yes, I think they met there for some reason, in the forest. But then…then…they must have parted forever.”

  This melodramatic expression seemed out of character, which he apparently realized, because he immediately switched back to his terse, dry recitation of the facts.

  “The first to know that Stein had disappeared was Reder. They had planned to begin some experiment at noon, but Stein was late, and he didn’t respond to any of Reder’s attempts to reach him by radio. Then Reder questioned the robots and found one that had noticed Stein, as early as seven forty, leaving for the sector where Reder worked in the morning. But we still don’t know why he didn’t get there or even why he headed in that direction.”

  “And what did Reder do under these circumstances?” I inquired.

  “He called me and told me that Stein was missing.”

  “Were you still at the research field?”

  “Yes.” Larsen said, not offended by the question. “I was there from six until twelve ten. After Reder’s message, I immediately returned to the base. Naturally I sent an SOS from the field, so pretty soon we were all at the base—all but Fowler and Stein.”

  “Did you interrogate the robots here?”

  “At that time, there were no robots here. They were busy with the construction of the defractor.”

  “How did you organize the search?”

  “Using the only logical method, which turned out later to be a big mistake.”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way. But let me explain a few things first so you can understand me. First, the Yusians have already built four settlements for the colonists, at one hundred kilometers to the east, west, north, and south. Second, everyone but Reder uses Yusian shuttles. We have to, since we work in remote areas. Third, when we return to base, we land the shuttles in the parking lot in front of one of the garages. And fourth, for security reasons, each of these shuttles carries the personal code of the person using it and is connected to the server so that their location can be quickly determined—as long as they are not airborne.”

  “What if they are airborne?”

  “Then, an atmospheric distortion forms around them or—who knows what? But the connection is lost.” Larsen frowned and stopped talking. Obviously, he was uncomfortable with the mysteries of Yusian technology.

  “Are these facts related in any way to the deaths of Fowler and Stein?” I asked him.

  “To their deaths probably not, but they are very relevant to the misdirected search. The thing is Stein’s shuttle wasn’t in the parking lot. And, since in the morning Stein and Reder both went to the biosector in the jeep, we concluded that later Stein must have returned to the base on foot and taken the shuttle. Of course we located it right away, and to everybody’s surprise his shuttle turned out to be in the southern settlement.”

  “And Stein hadn’t been there before?”

  “No, only I have visited those settlements,” Larsen said. “Yusian creations are not something toward which humans feel spontaneous affinity.”

  I couldn’t disagree with this statement even if I wanted to.

  “That’s why our search became a wild-goose chase,” Larsen continued. “First we tried again to reach Fowler and Stein by radio, and then Odesta and Reder stayed at the base, in case Fowler and Stein showed up or tried to contact us, while Elia, Vernie, and I left for the southern settlement. The empty shuttle was parked in the middle of the city square, but we found no traces of Stein or any other clues in the vicinity to aid our search. We brought ten robots from the defractor site to help us and ten more later. Actually, we just wasted a lot of time. And if Elia hadn’t thought of the rug—”

  “Rug?” I was puzzled.

  Larsen’s slight smile couldn’t cover his embarrassment. “I don’t know how you traveled from the Yusian starship to the meeting spot, Simon, but if it was in something like our shuttles, you can probably understand.”

  “I see. Yes, of course! That transparent floor—”

  “Makes travel very uncomfortable,” he finished. “And since our life here is already complicated, we do what we can to make it more—comfortable.”

  I quickly nodded in agreement. “Does everyone use such—rugs when traveling?”

  “Everyone but me.” Larsen’s answer was merely informative. I sensed no intention on his part to claim superiority. “And that’s exactly why, when Elia realized the rug in Stein’s shuttle was still folded, we finally made the connection. Fowler must have programmed the shuttle to fly to the southern settlement just to confuse us.”

  “But why Fowler? Wasn’t that Stein’s shuttle?”

  Larsen shook his head. “Stein couldn’t have programmed it. Not that the calculations are very complicated, but his fields were biophysics and exobiology. And, unlike Fowler, he wasn’t interested in Yusian technology. The plants on Eyrena demanded all of his attention.”

  “And what was Fowler’s profession?”

  ‘He was an engineer and a cybernetics specialist.”

  “OK,” I said, “it must have been him. What did you do next?”

  “When we concluded that the shuttle had landed without any passengers, we returned to the base. Before I landed, however, I checked the surrounding areas and located the trailer hidden between rocks. We found Fowler, and later Stein, the next day.”

  “Who found them?”

  “Odesta.”

  “What made her search in the opposite direction from where you found the trailer?”

  “It’s true she was the only one to search that part of the forest. Later she claimed that her intuition had guided her.” Larsen thought for a while and then said firmly, “I don’t know if it was intuition or coincidence, but I’m sure there wasn’t anything suspicious about it.”

  I try to avoid listening to other people’s conclusions, especially at the beginning of any investigation, so I moved on quickly. “How was Fowler killed?”

  “He had a deep cut on his right temple. His attacker must have been nearby.”

  “What was the murder weapon?”

  “A laser flexor. Everybody used to carry flexors then. They’
re good for almost anything: cutting, drilling holes, heating materials to any temperature, marking things from a distance, and so on. Yes, a very useful instrument; nevertheless, I banned them after the killings.”

  “Didn’t the others object to the ban? After all, flexors could also help them defend themselves.”

  “You probably haven’t noticed yet, Simon, but we have peace and order on this base,” Larsen noted gloomily. “My people are taught to hold their tempers. And everybody is convinced that Fowler was the murderer—”

  “And killed himself afterward because he was struck by remorse!”

  “Was that irony?” Larsen’s eyes turned icy blue.

  “More like bitter skepticism,” I answered. “In cases of a double murder, we do check this possibility first, but it usually proves to be wishful thinking—except in love dramas, of course.”

  Larsen turned even colder. “This is not Earth, Simon. Dramas that could end in a suicide are much more numerous here.”

  “Can you give me examples?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  He looked at me very carefully and suddenly smiled. His teeth were white, even and healthy, just like mine. I smiled too.

  After that I resumed our unpleasant conversation, “What were the positions of the bodies at death?”

  “That couldn’t be determined. They had been shifted repeatedly by the morning movements of the tree roots.” Larsen lowered his voice, remembering the scene. “But the distance between them was only two hundred meters, and Stein had a flexor cut on the back of his head, so he must have been killed while he was walking.”

  “Walking where?” I asked.

  “We determined that he was headed for the defractor site, because he died at the forest edge next to that site. But we don’t know why he headed that way because, at the time, he had no business there.”