Stealing the Elf-King's Roses Read online

  Lee shook her head. She touched her desktop and brought up once again the list of dil’Sorden’s projects at ExTel. “There’s a thought,” she said, as the characters flowed by under the surface of the desk. “Did he get promoted over someone’s head? Does someone hold a grudge?”

  “Worth looking into.”

  The project descriptions kept flowing by. Lee shook her head again. “I keep running into these references to fairy gold all through his proposals,” she said. “FG network lattices, FG core bindings…”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Gelert said. “Without a room-temperature superconductor, you’ve got no broadband comms, no high speed computers. No interstellar travel, no intersystem spacing, no gating facilities…”

  That brought Lee’s head around. “Oh, come on now, there was gating before there was fairy gold. How did our version of MacIlwain break through to his first alternate universe, otherwise?”

  “By accident. And supercooling. Lady of the Hunts, Lee, imagine what it must have been like. Liquid nitrogen everywhere: it’s a wonder the poor man didn’t wind up as an ice cube. But you can’t tune an accelerator ring predictably for interdimensional location without fairy gold for the inner winding on the dees. Without superconductor winding, there’s no telling which world out of seven you’d wind up in once you walked through a patent gate locus. Think how long it took poor MacIlwain to duplicate his results! That was the first thing Earth secured through Huictilopochtli when the two worlds came into phase again: the tuning technology, and enough fairy gold to make one gate that could be counted on, in phase or out. The Alfen even donated it.” Gelert grinned, a predator’s look. “So altruistic of them. They knew they were getting yet another universe’s worth of customers for their most expensive export…”

  “I should do some more reading on this,” Lee said, mournful. She had been hoping to avoid it.

  “You should.” Gelert grinned at her, shaking his ears until they flapped. “Instead of dancing around technology the way you dance around the tarantulas in my driveway. Sometimes I think your mother was frightened by a math textbook.”

  “Sometimes I think your mother was a—”

  “Now, now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not, so don’t say you are. You’ve been bad-tempered for the last month or so, but you’ve had an excuse, and you’ll get over it. It’s not interfering with work, anyway, which is the important thing.”

  They were quiet for a few moments. Lee looked up at her commwall again and watched the list of dil’Sorden’s next five years of planned projects go spilling by: work he would never now do. “You know what I keep coming back to?” Lee said.

  “What?”

  “Hagen,” she said. “Why he’s so antsy about this murder being ‘cleared up’—I assume he means solved—in such a hurry. Though I understand your explanation about the markets perfectly well.”

  “I’m not sure you do,” Gelert said. “Lee, I know it sounds dumb…but the markets always do overreact, and ExTel in particular has been waiting for this particular set of circumstances for a long time. Hagen’s boss was offered any number of golden parachutes over the last few years, attached to fat offers from other companies, and he refused them. He was waiting for the antitrust case to end, waiting to be the president of the biggest multiuniversal comms corporation in town. Now this happens. Naturally it feels like a thorn in his paw, and he wants it out. We’re just the tool that’s nearest to hand.” He grinned at her. “Your fault for being so good on that job six months ago.”

  “Thanks so much,” Lee muttered.

  “So here’s dil’Sorden,” Gelert said. “By all accounts a team player, a nice guy, well liked by his fellow employees, good performance ratings. Up to his ears in profitable work, stock options—”

  “Do we know that?”

  “It’s a commonplace at his level of employment. We should probably ask Hagen for access to dil’Sorden’s workspace to confirm it.”

  “You think he’d give us that?” Lee said.

  “If he’s really so hot about wanting this case ‘solved,’ let’s dangle the suggestion in front of him tomorrow,” Gelert said. “The worst he can do is tell us to go chase our tails…Anyway, dil’Sorden’s not hurting. Nice apartment, nice car, all the perks. But when we see him for the first time ourselves—he’s down. Upset, would you have said?”

  Lee closed her eyes and replayed her recording of her “sniff’ of the inside of the nightclub. “Yes,” she said. “Depressed. Extremely anxious about something he suspected was about to happen. Not the murder: something else, in the near but not immediate future.”

  “I concur. He goes outside with his mind on that trouble ahead of him. Then turns around, sees the guy with the gun—”

  “And thinks, ‘I never thought they’d go this far.’ ”

  “I concur again. That’s certainly how I read it. But this is stuff that I don’t think a jury is going to be able to hear with you from your recording. It goes by awful fast in mine. If you can catch it more clearly when you run the site one last time—”

  “All I can do is try,” Lee said. “Truth is out there. All we have to do is catch her.”

  “If possible. These impressions are very general at the moment: they don’t lead anywhere specific.” Gelert lay back on his pad and stretched, long legs waving in all directions before he came upright again and lay there looking like an oversize statue of an albino Anubis. “So. A human lies in wait for dil’Sorden, shoots him, and escapes. An Elf watches, and leaves. And dil’Sorden was half expecting it. Why? What has he done wrong? Or done right, after which he can’t be allowed to live longer? What has he not done that he was supposed to do?”

  They both sat with the thought for a while. “Too soon to know,” Lee said. “But this was no accident: no mugging that went wrong. It was him they meant to kill… And you’re right about his computer workspace. I’ll ask Hagen tomorrow morning, after I sniff the site again.”

  “How many more runs on it do you think we have?”

  “One each,” Lee said. “There won’t be much left to read afterward. But I’m going to milk my last run for all it’s worth.” Once again she saw it, that shadow by the corner, watching, satisfied, gone.

  “You always were stubborn,” Gelert said, getting up and stretching again.

  “It takes over where smart runs out,” Lee said, “and sometimes it’s worth more. Let’s go get some supper.”

  *

  Lee was in early the next morning, earlier even than Mass, which she knew was going to cause some teasing: but she didn’t care. She spoke to the alarm system, had it bring the lights and office services online, and went back to the coffee room to make herself a cup of something strong. The shadow by the corner building had kept her awake for a long time, and when she’d finally slept, she’d gotten no good out of it.

  She had dreamed about Matt again last night: one of those intense and very physical dreams that left her awake and swiftly mortified, amid soaking wet sheets. The mortification was shortly replaced by anger, for in the dream everything was as it had been when everything was fine—the intimacy, the profound sense of trust. It was as if her traitor brain was intent on pretending that that last terrible night had never happened, the night all the talk about looks not being such an important thing had been laid bare for what it was, just talk; the night she let herself into Matt’s apartment to pick up some clothes she’d left there, and found Matt kissing a face with which Lee instantly knew she could never compete, embracing a body that made it plain why he had been so busy after hours for the past couple of weeks.

  Lee stood there stirring sugar into her coffee and brooding. The dialogue from that night kept replaying itself, as if there were some way it could be corrected. Lee, let me explain. No, I understand perfectly well. Why didn’t you ask me to give you back the key to your apartment? I didn’t want you to think—I was trying to find a way to break it to you. Well, it looks like you found a w
ay. She had collected those of her things that she could quickly lay hands on and taken herself away before she found herself looking again at that lovely face, and cursing it.

  There were enough people in the DA’s Office who knew what Matt had been up to and had said nothing. Lee found that this hurt her, though she could understand their own conflicts about the situation. He was their boss: though the way he had been acting embarrassed them, they were still loyal to him. Some of them defended him, while still trying not to hurt her. You know how guys are, Lee. Well, I do now. No, seriously. It’s not their fault, they’re just wired up that way. A relationship gets old…or something else is going on, work is tough, they’re under stress…and they see a pretty face, some new young thing, and they…

  Lee sighed, took a drink of her coffee, and made a face. There were three sugars in it, maybe four. Lee started to throw it out, then thought that her blood sugar could probably use that much help right now. She dumped some more milk in the coffee to make it at least marginally palatable, and took it back to her desk.

  She actually found herself able to smile a little as she considered the situation. There, in a department theoretically devoted to making sure people took responsibility for their actions, just about everyone was earnestly exculpating Matt for not having had the guts to simply tell her it was all over, and that he was ditching Lee in favor of a “trophy babe.” None of them seemed to see the incongruity of it. Finally, Lee had let it be known that the subject was closed and that they all needed to get on with “business as usual”: if indeed there would ever be such a thing for her again. The way she felt at the moment, Lee had her doubts, but work had to be done, and she was carrying on with it. She wasn’t going to give Matt the satisfaction of thinking that his thoughtlessness had enough power to ruin her life.

  She sat and gazed “out” the commwall, running as usual on its default view of Saturn rising over Titan’s methane snow. I guess what makes it seem so unfair is that there are some of us who just never will be able to compete…not that way . We have many other accomplishments and talents, successful careers, good friendships, brains and talent and humor… but no matter what we do, we will never have that, that classic beauty that everyone claims not to really care about…and secretly does.

  Out in the front office, the comm alert shrilled. Lee looked that way in surprise, then glanced down at the desk: the clock under the surface said 0716. Who the hell’s calling at this hour of the morning? she thought, for if it had been Gel or Mass or anyone else directly associated with the office, the call would have routed straight through to her wall.

  Lee reached out and touched the spot on her desk that routed control of the switchboard to her. “Reh’Mechren and Enfield, good morning,” she said.

  The wall came alive. It was Hagen. “Lee,” he said. “Another early riser, I see. Good to see it. Have you got anything for me yet?”

  She blinked. “We’ve got some very early indications, Mr. Hagen. We’ve seen the murderer, at least.”

  “You have?”

  It wasn’t just surprise in his voice. It was alarm. Lee kept her face as immobile as she knew how when answering. “That’s not to say we have ID as yet,” she said. “The conditions made the envisioning indistinct: we’re having to depend on physical forensics as well. Gelert did find the murder weapon, which appears to have been used by a human male.”

  “That’s great,” Hagen said, sounding more natural, more enthusiastic this time. “I told them it was a good idea to bring you two onto the case.”

  Why am I not mentioning the Alfen to him? Lee wondered. As she thought about it, the disinclination to mention it got even stronger. Definitely a hunch, if a negative one. So follow up on it; take the initiative, don’t let him run this conversation. “Mr. Hagen,” Lee said, “I mentioned to you yesterday that we might need to call on you or someone at ExTel for some additional information—”

  “Sure. Name it.”

  “It would help us if we could have access to Omren dil’Sorden’s computer workspace. I know it’s unusual, but we need to—”

  “No problem with that at all,” Hagen said. “I’ll have someone from network management port the whole thing over to you at the start of business. Sooner, if someone with the right access-level privileges is onsite at the moment.”

  “Thanks very much—we appreciate it.”

  “You’re likely to run into proprietary information in there, Lee. I know you’ll keep it confidential. Meanwhile, I appreciate what you and Gelert are doing. Keep up the good work. When do you think you’ll have a suspect in custody?”

  “That’s going to depend on the DA’s Office,” Lee said. “Once we get them the data, it’s up to them.” There you go, Matt. Let him warm up your commlink a little. Lee felt guilty, but only slightly.

  “That’s fine. I’ll be in touch later. Best to Gelert.”

  He vanished, and the cold serenity of the methane snows and the crescent Saturn reasserted themselves.

  Lee carefully put down the coffee cup she had been holding with both hands and found that her hands were actually trembling slightly with the kind of reaction she got after having looked at something judicially. There was no chance of such a thing happening down a commlink, of course, but Lee knew that she had correctly heard and interpreted the alarm in Hagen’s voice.

  Why would our having seen the assailant frighten him? Supposedly it’s what he wants.

  The most obvious possible answer to the question was that Hagen knew more about the murder than he was saying. Lee clenched her fists on the desk. I wish Gelert had been here to hear that, she thought. I don’t think the desk was recording. Unless the switchboard protocol’s recording routine caught it—

  She brought up its control menus in the desktop, ran down them, and swore softly: the “record” function had been off, as it normally would have been for legal reasons. It’s not like I understand the comm system perfectly…but then that’s Mass’s job, not mine. Well, I won’t touch anything until he comes in: maybe he can do something to retrieve that call…

  But when Mass came in around eight-thirty he checked the system and just shook his head. “Sorry, boss lady,” he said, “but it defaults to ‘off’ when the initial configuration comes up. I have custom configs that I bring up afterward, but even in those you have to trigger the record function on purpose. Was it important?”

  “No…” Lee sighed. Yes! the back of her brain shouted at her. But now there was no proof…

  Gelert came in around nine. Lee asked Mass to hold all their calls, and when the two of them had locked the office space down in private mode, Lee told Gelert about Hagen’s call. Gelert sat there in the middle of the floor and looked at her oddly.

  “You don’t believe me,” Lee said.

  “Did you miss your breakfast? You look terrible. Of course I believe you,” Gelert said, as Lee opened her mouth to answer him. “What we have to do now is figure out what to do with the data.”

  He put his ears down flat. “Did he pick up anything from you, do you think? That you noticed his unease, I mean?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then as far as he’s concerned, we keep playing it as we have been. But I’m starting to agree with you now, Lee. He does seem awfully eager to see something happening fast: too fast. And now this…”

  Gelert slowly lay down and gave one forepaw a few meditative licks. “All we can do is see how things develop, in light of what you noticed. It leaves us with questions, though. If he’s somehow involved in this murder, or knows something about it that makes him nervous, why is he so damn eager to get it investigated at all? Is he grandstanding for someone’s benefit? And whose?”

  “Someone human?” Lee said. “Or someone Alfen?”

  Gelert looked up at her. “I wonder,” he said. “It’s an interesting spoor to follow. But I’m not sure it goes anywhere…yet.”

  “I’m not so sure, Gel. I didn’t mention our second figure.”

  “Oh
?”

  “No. A hunch. When all I mentioned was a human with a gun, Hagen sounded relieved.”

  Gelert thought about that for a moment. “All right. Let’s take care of the day’s business. I have to go chase down that bus this morning. Whereas you—”

  The intercom link beeped softly. “Yes, Mass?” Lee said.

  “Boss lady, there’s a whole lot of storage just come in for you.”

  “Who from?”

  “Omren dil’Sorden…”

  Gelert’s ears pricked up. “I was expecting that,” Lee said. “Have my own workspace encapsulate it, would you?”

  “I’ll take care of it now.”

  “Thanks.” Lee looked back at Gelert. “You were going to say that I have to go down to the corner of Eighteenth and Melrose and see what I See,” Lee said. “The Tooth Fairy…or something I can’t explain either.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I may as well do it now,” Lee said, getting up, “before it gets too hot out there. Do you want to put some search terms into my workspace and have it start going through dil’Sorden’s material?”

  “I’ll do that,” Gelert said.

  Lee headed for the door.

  “And Lee—”

  She turned to look at him.

  “It will be all right eventually,” Gelert said quietly. “So go do your work.”

  Lee went.

  *

  Behind her, traffic roared up and down Melrose as it always did this time of morning: on the far side of the street, cars and buses and hovs came and went in the bright sunshine, and the occasional pedestrian stared at the slender woman in jeans and a short, loose top who stood at the corner, inside the yellow police tapes, looking down Eighteenth Street as if waiting for something: a ride, someone she was supposed to meet…

  Eyes closed against the day, Lee said to the Source of her vision, The psychoforensic field here has to be nearly depleted now. There’ll be no other chances. For the sake of the murdered, let me see truly.