Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (14 page)

“Part of the larger Tangent conglomerate?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“The principals of the meeting-Kuchinsky of KuchinskyBabylon Behn, and Roland Hammerstein from this firm? Is Mr. Hammerstein available?”

“Oh-no, I’m sorry. Mr. Hammerstein has been reassigned to the Sandakan office.”

“Perhaps later, then. But you have a transcript of the meeting.”

“Oh, of course. Would you like a copy?”

“Please.”

Turning to her computer, she called up the file, printed it out, and handed it to him.

“Thank you, Ms. Noy. That will be all for now. I’ll probably want to speak to you again.”

“And of course, I’ll be happy to be of what help I can.”

“We’ll show ourselves out.”

Back in the hall, with no one around, Davion put her smile back on.

“I have decided you will take me to get something to eat, Mr. Vacit,” she informed him.

“Ms. Davion, we have much to do. If you need something, I’m sure they have a dining room here, or you can order room service-“

“Look at the time, Mr. Vacit. Six o’clock. Work time is over, I believe, and you will find no one else here to interrogate. Now, please, you don’t want me to confirm those rumors about you, do you? I had hoped to be able to laugh in their faces-tell everyone that it only took a French key to unlock the wit lurking inside of you.”

“Ms. Davion, I’m working on what is proving to be a difficult matter. I am not, by training, a detective, and yet I am being asked to do the job of one. l-“

“You are frustrated. Your mind is as tightly wound as your ass. Unwind the one, and the other will uncoil as well. So said my grandfather, a very wise Andorran man. Really, I must insist for the good of the investigation.”

He nodded in sudden understanding. “For the good of the investigation.” Outside, strolling down a sunlit walkway, he glanced at her. “Okay. What didn’t you want to say in the building?”

“You can be a bit thick at times, can’t you, Mr. Vacit?”

“I suppose. I’m sorry it took me so long to catch on. So what was it?”

“I don’t feel in the mood for conversation just yet. As I remember it, you’ve agreed to take me to dinner.”

“I thought we’d just established that that was only to get us out of the building.”

“Oh, no, I meant everything I said. And I think Italian will do quite nicely.”

“Ms. Davion, I have no idea why you’ve become so fixated on this quest to `unstuff’ my shirt, but I assure you-it isn’t at all appropriate.”

Davion showed her dimples.

“Not bad, for Italian wine. It has a certain primitive vitality.”

“We could have found a French restaurant, I suppose,” Kevin replied, steadily. She made a face.

“I do not eat `French’ food when I am abroad. It is too brutally disappointing. With Italian, the potential for disappointment is so much smaller.”

“You do not like food, do you?”

“I eat it. It keeps me alive.”

“As I said. You do not like it.” In response he took another bite of his cannelloni.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Delicious. It makes me want to sing.” He put his fork back on the plate. “Now, will you please tell me what you discovered back there?”

She rolled her eyes-yet again-and set her glass down.

“You are so determined not to enjoy yourself. Here you have the company of a very beautiful woman-“

“Yes, I do.”

She stopped, clearly surprised.

“Really? You find me beautiful?”

“Of course. But you work for me, and-“

“Ah. And I am like the food, nest-ce pas? Very well. Two things. First-do not bother to read the transcript of the transaction Raskov monitored-it is a fake.”

“Really.”

“Really. The second thing is this what’s-his-name-Hammerstein -wasn’t really assigned to the Sandakan office. She doesn’t know what happened to him, and she’s more than a little worried about herself.”

“About her job?”

“Her life, I think.” He picked at his food, avoiding Davion’s challenging eyes. “So we have a teep who monitors a business deal. It was a secret transaction , probably … illegal, and they killed him.”

“I think so. But we cannot prove any of it. We cannot prove the transaction is a fake. We likely will be unable to find either of the principals to subpoena, but if we do they will simply quote the forged transcript. A simple scan will show they are lying, but of course such information is not admissible in court.”

“Spectral evidence,” he murmured.

“Say again, please?”

“Nothing. But what has this to do with the security breach in lab 16?”

“Perhaps nothing. A coincidence.”

“I have very little faith in coincidence.”

“Or anything else, it seems,” she mused. Her green eyes flickered devilishly. “I believe after dinner I should like to have a walk on the shore.”

“Fine. I hope you enjoy yourself. I’ll be in my room, trying to work this out.”

“Take your shoes off,” Davion said. “Get your feet wet in the surf.” She was doing just that, playing tag with the edges of the breakers, shoes in hand, slacks rolled to her knees.

“I’m allergic to seawater.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are.” She came back to him, and to his alarm and discomfort, took his arm. “You have an interesting mind, Mr. Vacit. Did you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Oh, really? What was her name? Should I be jealous?” When he didn’t answer, she squeezed his arm. “Ah. A secret. Another secret. You are a man of secrets, Kevin Vacit. You are made of them. I do not even think a telepath could pry them out of you.”

“Have you tried?”

She laughed.

“Yes, of course, I’m trying right now. But I haven’t scanned you. That’s what I mean-I don’t think I could. Certain normals have the equivalent of blocks-nothing telepathic , just a kind of order, of discipline. Your mind hums like a clock, Mr. Vacit. I would not dare try to scan it for fear of being pinched by a gear.”

“Aside from the fact that such would be illegal,” he reminded her.

“Besides that, yes. I like my job, and would not care to lose it.”

“You do, don’t you? And you do it well. I hardly recognize you when you are working.”

She laughed and kicked at the spray. “I’ll take that as a compliment . Two compliments from Mr. Kevin Vacit in a single day. Quite an accomplishment, you know.” She let go his arm and ran back out into the surf. “I love the sea. It is very alive. I love the feel of it. All the little voices.”

“Voices?”

“Well, not voices, actually, just a sort of-something. I suppose only a telepath would notice it. There’s nothing to read there, of course, nothing intelligent-though I should like to scan a dolphin someday. No, it’s just a kind of-loud quietness.”

“But telepathic? You get impressions from non-Human life?” He knelt and ran his fingers in the water.

“I do not think it is my imagination. I suppose everything living must have a mind, in a way. I can sense animals, of course. Not understand them, really, unless it’s something simple like hunger or fear. The ocean I don’t understand at all, though I touch it and listen very hard, but something is there. It is.” She considered him. “Poor normals. It must be like missing a sense of smell, or something.”

“Yes,” Kevin said absently. “Yes, it must. Thank you, Ms. Davion.”

“What for?”

“Me evening. And perhaps the solution to our puzzle.”

“I don’t understand,” Dr. Stoddard said. “You’ve already seen them.”

“I have. I wish to see them again. It’s about the security breach.”

“I’ve explained about that.”

“Oh, yes, I know. Would you care to explain why the records of the hour during the breach ware erased?”

“What? They weren’t erased”

“Oh, yes, they were. Very professionally done, but when I had my own people go over them again, with finer analysis, we found evidence of it.”

“But nothing’s missing. Nothing was disturbed.”

“No. No, I think that’s correct Tell me, Dr. Stoddard, what does one need to enter these vaults?”

“DEGf he right key codes. The right retinal prints.”

“If someone entered the right key codes-but without the retinal prints-what would happen?”

“An alarm would go out”

“And that would register as a security breach.”

“I—yes.”

Kevin nodded distractedly.

“Let me tell you what happened, Dr. Stoddard. On May I or thereabouts, you asked Mr. Raskov to do you a favor, one somewhat outside his function as a business telepath. You had developed a suspicion about the Syria Plenum artifacts, and on a lark you decided to test your hypothesis. You brought him in here, and he touched one of the artifacts.”

“Why? Absurd.”

Kevin ignored him.

“Two days later, Mr. Raskov was contacted again, this time to monitor a business deal. He was chosen because the deal concerned the artifacts, and what he himself had discovered about them. Rather than expose another telepath to that discovery, you chose to use the one you had ah-eady tainted. This meeting was a secret negotiation-perhaps to sell technologies , perhaps to position certain stocks for what you think may be coming soon-and by `you,’ I mean both yourself and 1PX, Dr. Stoddard.”

Stoddard was turning pale. He wasn’t good at this.

“In any event, it wasn’t easy, but knowing what to look for, I was able to trace a flow of funds, so I can prove this part of my story, too. When Mr. Raskov conducted his monitoring task, perhaps someone grew concerned He may have looked-drawn, fatigued , as if he hadn’t slept in several nights. He may have said strange things, acted a bit unstable. Maybe he even demanded to touch the artifact again. Our records show he had a strong artistic-and somewhat romantic-streak. You probably refused. He lifted your key code from your mind and tried to break into the tab the night of May 5. He didn’t succeed, of course, but that was alarming enough that someone here-perhaps you, perhaps a superior-thought it best that he quietly expire. And so he did.”

Stoddard was still pale, but managed an insincere smile.

“I don’t believe you can prove any of that.”

“I don’t care if I can. Open this door. I want to see one of the artifacts.”

“You don’t have clearance=’

“Of course I do. I have presidential clearance. I’ve shown it you once. Do you want to see it again?”

“No.”

“Then open the vault.” With obvious reluctance, he did so, and gestured for them to enter. “No, you first, please.”

Stoddard stepped in, and they followed behind him. At his nod, Davion removed her gloves. She went to the strange torus, hesitated for an instant, then touched it lightly with her fingertips. She jumped back as if stung.

“Oh, my God, yes!” Her green eyes were the size of coins. She stepped forward again, tentatively , and touched it again. Her face worked through a variety of strange expressions before she removed her hands. “It is.-it’s very faint, you understand. My reaction was from the strangeness, not the intensity. But yes. This thing-I can feel it, as if it might be alive.”

Stoddard looked as if he were very close to tears.

“Some men are coming up, with guns,” Davion said, suddenly. “He signaled them with some kind of silent alarm on his link.”

“How far do they have to come?”

She stared at Stoddard until a sweat broke out on her forehead.

“A few floors.”

“Five minutes or so?” He shrugged. “Dr. Stoddard, by that time our own team will have the building secured. You didn’t think I would accuse you, here, without adequate preparation? You’ve played a violent card for no good reason.”

Now Stoddard started to cry in earnest. Tears ran down his face.

“There, there,” Kevin said, without any actual sympathy in his voice. “It isn’t as bad as you think. Stand your troops down so we can avoid any unpleasant little firefights, and I’m going to explain to you how you’re not only going to avoid prosecution, but retain your position, as well. Do you understand? Is this getting through? The only difference is that you will no longer be dealing with Kuchinsky-Behn, or anyone outside IPX. Anyone, that is, save us.”

Stoddard’s eyes were beginning to clear.

“But Raskov-“

“Died of natural causes. Though I will insist that the Authority receive very high compensation for what was obviously a work-related accident. Am I clear on this?”

“Yes.”

“Stand them down.”

Stoddard went to a wall phone, punched in a number. “Code 4. Cancel,” he said.

“There,” Kevin said. “You see what happens when you jump to conclusions?” He looked back at the artifact. “Organic technology . It’s been tinkered at for centuries, with no results. Do you really think you can reproduce it?”

“I - I honestly don’t know.”

“But it seemed worth the risk.”

“Yes.”

“Next time-when you want to take a risk-come to us. I think you will find it much less dangerous-and much more profitable-than any alternative. Do you understand this?”

“Yes, Mr. Vacit.”

“Ms. Davion, will you walk Dr. Stoddard outside?”

“My pleasure, Mr. Vacit.”

When they were gone, he regarded the artifact for a long moment. “Who made you?” he murmured quietly. He reached his fingers out and touched the surface. For a moment he felt the most profound wonderment he had ever known, a surge, accompanied by that nagging feeling of familiarity. And insects, beautiful, creatures of starlight and mist, seemed to dart behind his eyes. He withdrew his fingers and went to join the others. He had just removed his shoes when the knock came at his door. It was Davion, of course.

“Ms. Davioo-“

“Now, now, Mr. Vacit. I have come to congratulate you.”

“No need. It was you who gave me the solution.”

“Ah, oui, but you put it all together so prettily. The biotech firm. The drawings. Wonderfully done—and I had begun to suspect you had no imagination. And your bluff about our forces already being in the building-magnificent.” Somehow, as she was talking, she had slipped in the door, was standing very close. He could feel her breath on his face.

“Ms. Davion,” he said, gently, “I really-* But she stood on tiptoe and kissed him, very lightly, and it felt like lightning jolting though him.