Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [56]
“Dulcie Gherardesca, anthropologist,” Solari reported. “The most recent arrival at the base, sent to study the ruins of the city in the hope of building a fuller picture of the technological resources and folkways of the humanoids. Spent less time safely enclosed in the bubbles than most of the others, although Hyder and Mohammed both picked up more injuries. Probably better equipped to fake alien artifacts than any of the others, and with more opportunity to do it, but everything else in her background makes her just as unlikely a murderer as the others. A victim of plague war in infancy, very nearly died—said to be fiercely dedicated to her work.”
The last remaining picture showed a blond man wearing a hat and a wide smile. He was carrying a rifle.
“Rand Blackstone,” Solari reported. “Specialist in survival skills. Professional soldier, served with UN forces in half a dozen shooting wars—all spinoff from the plague wars. Argumentative type, but most of his arguments seem to have been with Tang, not Delgado. No doubt at all that he’s capable of killing, but he was there to protect the people at Base Three, and losing one of them is a blot on his reputation. If Milyukov’s right about there being a conspiracy to protect the murderer, it’s difficult to believe that he’d be in on it. Insofar as there’s been an investigation, he’s done it—but he’s no detective. He seems to have made up his mind very quickly that it wasn’t any of the people stationed at the base, and must therefore have been an alien, even though he hasn’t seen the slightest sign of a humanoid since he was commissioned to help set up the operation—he was part of the original group sent over from Base One, along with Mohammed, Gwyer, and Delgado. The others shuttled down a couple of weeks later.”
“Does anyone except Tang have family still in SusAn?” Matthew asked, curiously.
“No, but Kriefmann has a wife, also a doctor, at Base One. Gwyer’s ovaries were stripped and the eggs placed in storage in the gene banks, so I suppose she could be said to have potential children up here—but then, all the males have made sperm donations. Gherardesca’s the odd one out on that score. She was sterilized by a plague-war agent that nearly killed her. Nothing as refined as a chiasmalytic disruptor—an artificial variant of systemic lupus erythromatosus, whatever that is.”
“A very nasty virus,” Matthew told him. “That would explain the scars—although she could have had them removed by elementary somatic engineering.”
“Making a political point, apparently,” Solari told him. “Thought the effects of plague war on the disadvantaged ought to be made manifest. Made herself into a kind of walking ad. Your friend Gwyer would presumably have sympathized.”
“There’s no need to sound contemptuous,” Matthew objected. “I sympathize.”
“You would,” Solari observed. “As an adman yourself, I mean.”
“I wasn’t an adman,” Matthew told him. “If I was a trifle over-theatrical it was because I was trying to ram home an unwelcome message. As William Randolph Hearst himself was fond of saying, the news is what somebody wants to stop you spreading—it’s the rest that’s the ads. I was spreading the news. So was Lynn Gwyer. So, apparently, was Dulcie Gherardesca. We had to work hard at it because it was news that a lot of people seemed determined not to hear. We had to make them pay attention. Apparently, we succeeded. If we hadn’t, Earth could have been devastated all the way down to the bacterial level.”
“Okay,” Solari conceded. “I’m not trying to pick a fight. Well-intentioned or not, Gherardesca’s an oddball. She was frozen down not long after you—part of the same intake as Delgado. Lucky to be here, I guess. She might have been eliminated from consideration if Shen and his collaborators hadn’t been so idiosyncratic, although I suppose she’s as clonable as the next person. Why do you think that someone having family