Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [109]
“Really?” Solari came back, feigning incredulity.
“Verstehen,” Dulcie Gherardesca put in, softly. “Intuitive understanding. The basis on which members of a human society can obtain understanding of other societies, with different norms and rules.”
“And individuals of one another,” Matthew added. “I can’t believe that a man like Bernal would ever have planned to perpetrate a scientific fraud. I think he was trying to put himself in the place of an alien, by doing the only thing that he knew for sure that the aliens did: making tools out of natural glass harvested from local plants. Maybe someone who found out what he was doing leapt to the wrong conclusion, but we mustn’t be tempted to do the same.”
“I’m prepared to buy that,” Solari said, although Matthew immediately recognized it as another ploy, inviting a confession. “It was an accident, then. A misunderstanding.”
No one offered a confession, or gave any sign of wanting to do so.
But we’re not all here, Matthew thought. And Vince has only talked to one person since last telling me he had no suspect. Maybe Blackstone has the wrong suspect in mind. But if Solari’s fishing, he must think he’s fishing in the right pond. Which implies that Maryanne Hyder didn’t do it—but that she might know who did.
When the silence had gone on long enough, Solari let out a slight sigh, and said: “Okay. Nobody wants to come clean. Nobody wants to know. Nobody wants to hold up the boat trip. Fair enough—if the excursion means more to you than the murder, you might as well exercise your priorities. I’m just a humble policeman, after all. You’re scientists.”
Even Matthew felt the contemptuous sting of that remark, but he also felt compelled to leap to the defense of his new colleagues. “There really are bigger questions at stake, Vince,” he said. “And there’s a point that Tang didn’t make. Whoever killed Bernal reacted atypically, and part of the reason they reacted atypically is that everyone here is in a radically alien environment, isolated from the main body of the investigative team. Everyone here is uneasy and anxious, and no matter how ashamed they are of being frightened—because walking on the surface of an alien but Earthlike world is exactly what everyone here signed up for—they can’t help being prey to fear. The world played its part in Bernal’s death, and it might yet be the cause of many more. No matter how determined we may be to follow through our good intentions, there isn’t anyone here who doesn’t know that the crew jumped the gun in their haste to be rid of their inconvenient cargo. This world might be a potential death trap, not just for the nine of us but for everyone at Base One and everyone still in SusAn.
“We need to know what the chances really are of establishing a colony here, and we need to know it sooner rather than later. Milyukov shouldn’t be exerting further pressure on us with arbitrary deadlines, but that’s a trivial matter: the real deadline will be set by the world itself, and we have to make haste to meet it even though we haven’t the slightest idea when it will fall. This trip downriver might not tell us anything definite, but it’s an opportunity we have to seize. It’s more important than knowing who killed Bernal, and far more important than figuring out what we ought to do with the murderer. If that’s a scientist’s view rather than a policeman’s … well, so be it. Bernal was my friend, but I have far more important things to worry about just now than wreaking vengeance on his killer.”
Solari considered this, and then shrugged. Matthew had been fairly confident that he would. He’d already tested the policeman’s response to the phrase “potential death trap.”
“Okay,” Solari said. “The boat sails tomorrow, with the agreed crew. I stay here with Rand, Tang, Godert, and Maryanne. I do my best to make myself useful. No arrests, no charges, no reports to Base One or Hope. Until you get back, at least. If you get back.”
“If we don’t,” Ikram Mohammed said, quietly, “I think we’ll have proved that there are issues that