Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [93]
"Huh," said Roic. "A sort of do-it-yourself historical reenactment? At least you'd have someone to talk to who gets all your jokes."
"I guess," said Johannes, a little doubtfully.
Roic had Johannes pull in the van at the back of the house row while he tried Dr. Leiber's front door. No answer. After a few minutes Johannes opened it from within. "He left the garage unlocked. Float bike's gone."
"Right. Let's take a look around, then visit his comconsole."
No room, closet, shower, cupboard, or dustbin large enough to hold a body did so. M'lord's thoughtful burglar's note was gone from the refrigerator, which was still stocked with an assortment of bachelor rations. The kitchen was tidied, the bed upstairs more-or-less made, or at least the quilt pulled up. Clothes and shoes might have been taken-enough to fit in a duffle strapped to the back of a float bike?-but there was still a good bit left. Toiletries were absent.
Johannes had started on Leiber's comconsole, sucking a copy of its contents through the umbilicus of the secured cable onto his ImpSec recorder, watching the progress on his holoscreen.
"Hey!" he said after a moment. "This thing is monitored. I wonder if Leiber knew that?"
Roic leaned in. Hey, indeed! "This process won't stir up his watchers, will it?"
"It shouldn't," said Johannes.
Not very reassuring. "Can you trace the bug?"
"Partly. I might be able to finish the job from the tight-room."
"Give us a look at his communications over the past two days, since our first visit."
There were only three. Yesterday morning, Leiber had called in sick, purchased a jumpship passage to Escobar, and emptied most of his remaining savings account onto a couple of universal credit chits. There were no personal messages to relatives or friends. He might have left a door key or instructions with the folks next door, Roic supposed, but on the whole he thought not, and he was unwilling to go stir up trouble by asking around. People might remember their visit from day before yesterday. He wondered what tale Leiber had told his neighbor lady about them. Not the truth, he suspected.
"This jumpship doesn't leave till tomorrow evening," Johannes pointed out.
"Yeah, I see."
"Think he might have gone aboard already?"
Roic frowned at the schedule. "Ah. No. That one doesn't even make inbound orbit till this afternoon." He thought a moment. "The minute he passes inside shuttleport security, he's back on the grid, lit up for anyone who can look. And if we can spot him then, belike his enemies can, too-I don't think they're operating on a shoestring, not if they're backed by one of those cryocorps. He'll wait to the last to board. So he has to have gone to ground somewhere."
"With a friend, maybe? Could be hard to find." Johannes squinted at the comconsole. "Although this could help."
"If he's in as much fear for his life as this flight suggests, he might not want to endanger a friend," said Roic slowly. "He didn't strike m'lord as the ruthless type, he said."
"It's a big city," observed Johannes.
"So, let's start with the obvious." Roic climbed to his feet. "Pack up here and drive us out to the shuttleport."
In the lift van, Roic opened its-ImpSec secured-comconsole and ran a search on lodgings around the shuttleport. Two were inside the security perimeter, half a dozen scattered in the surrounding light-industrial area. He balanced closest against cheapest, and decided to start with cheapest. As they threaded their way to it, he had time to reflect on how Nexus-wide transportation tech had shaped the cities it served, giving more sameness planet to planet than he'd expected, before he'd ever left Barrayar. This provincial boy's come a long way. In a way, he was glad no good fairy had ever endowed him with the future he would have picked for himself when younger. It would have been so much smaller.
"Now what?" asked Johannes, as they swung into the budget hostel's lot. "Stake the place out? Ask at the front desk?"
"Not sure anyone would remember Leiber