Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [110]
It was the closest anyone had come to naming a name or making an admission, but it stopped there. The genomicist said nothing more, and no one had anything further to add. It said something for the tolerance of the assembled suspects that they were perfectly happy to eat together, with Solari in their midst. The main course was imitation pizza whose toppings were spread on a base that combined imported wheat-manna with local produce; Matthew was glad to discover that the synthetic cheese and tomato masked the inadequate palatability of the base. Had the conversation been less tense it would certainly have been the most enjoyable meal he had had since waking from SusAn—but he put both those circumstances down to the fact that he had had an unusually tiring day.
When the assembly finally broke up and Matthew returned to his bunk, accompanied by Solari, he took the first possible opportunity to say: “Okay, it’s just you and me now. Who did it?”
He was only mildly astonished by Solari’s reply, which was: “There is no just you and me, Matt. You sided with them. You endorsed their willful ignorance. If you want to know, you can work it out for yourself. All you have to do is look closely at the data in the automatic logs, compare the alibis and ask the right people the right questions. Never mind the motive: concentrate on the opportunity.”
“Fair enough,” Matthew said. “Maybe I’ll go see how Maryanne’s feeling before I turn in. I could probably do with a few words of advice about how to cope with worm stings, in case the worst comes to the worst.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Maryanna Hyder was alone in the accommodation she had shared with Bernal Delgado, but Matthew was not the first visitor she had had since Solari had played his hand. Godert Kriefmann had left the common room before anyone else in order to check her condition.
“God’s already asked me,” she said, as soon as she saw Matthew. “I didn’t finger anyone and I certainly didn’t confess. If it was something I said that tipped the policeman off it was something whose significance I didn’t realize myself.”
“How are you feeling?” Matthew asked, figuring that he might as well go through with his cover story anyway. He sat down on the folding chair that had been set beside the bed to accommodate visitors.
“Much better,” was the answer. “No pain, thanks to my IT, but the cost is that I feel somewhat disconnected from my body—not quite here, even though there’s no place else to be.”
“I know the feeling,” Matthew confirmed.
“They have much better IT on Earth now, allegedly,” she told him. “A member of the new human race probably wouldn’t even have felt the sting, and certainly wouldn’t be laid up with it.”
“The new human race,” Matthew echoed. “Is that what Tang calls them?”
“It’s what they call themselves, according to Captain Milyukov.”
“You seem a trifle skeptical,” Matthew observed.
“Do I? Everything we’ve been told about the state of affairs back home comes from Milyukov. Milyukov has a vested interest in persuading us that we can get better support from home than we can from Hope, if we can just hang on until the cavalry arrives. Not that we’ll know that it’s even set off for another hundred-and-thirteen years.”
“Do you think Milyukov’s lying?”
She moved her head slightly from side to side, stirring the silky halo of her blond hair. She didn’t think that the captain was lying, exactly. It was just that she was reserving judgment as to the manner in which he had filtered and organized the truth.
“Tang thinks that we should be content to hold the fort until they arrive,” Matthew observed.
“I know. Lately, I’ve begun to agree with him, albeit reluctantly.”
“Why reluctantly?”
“If we withdraw to orbit, we’ll be lucky to live long enough to see the beginning of serious colonization, let alone its completion. The crew signed on for a multigenerational enterprise, but I didn’t. And look what it did to the crew.”
“What did Bernal think?” Matthew asked. It was an innocent question, but she didn’t take it that way.