Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [79]
“He’s right about Lityansky,” Matthew said, carefully.
“I know. Aboard the ship, everything’s too controlled, too organized, too neat, even after the expectable deterioration and the civil war. There’s not enough chaos, not enough spontaneity—not the right kinds, anyway. Bernal said that if he couldn’t figure out what had happened here, and what was still happening, there was only one man who could. He meant you.”
“I’m flattered,” Matthew acknowledged, generously, “but I understand your reservations. I didn’t mean to suggest that Lynn, Ike, and you weren’t competent to interpret whatever you might find downriver.”
“I’m just an anthropologist,” she said. “I’m the one who brought your breakfast because I didn’t have enough real work to keep me busy. The only thing I’ve discovered since I relocated here is that a background in anthropology doesn’t give you much of a head start in the attempt to understand an alien culture on the basis of archaeological evidence. That’s another reason why I’m desperate to go downriver to the plain: sheer frustration. There’s no reason to believe that we’ll find anything to which my expertise is relevant. I suppose that if Tang won’t give way, I ought to be the one to step down in your favor.”
“But you don’t want to?” Matthew said, stating the obvious.
“No,” was her bald reply.
Ikram Mohammed came into the room then. He seemed slightly surprised to find the anthropologist there, but it was Matthew he was looking for. “I thought you’d be up by now,” he said to Matthew. “Lynn’s right behind me and Rand’s bringing in the last load from the shuttle with Maryanne. Tang was with them, but he’s under interrogation now. I know the policeman’s only doing his job, but we’ve already been through it all a hundred times between ourselves. If we’d been able to figure out who did it, we would have.”
“Captain Milyukov seems to think that you have figured it out, and that you’re keeping quiet about it,” Matthew observed.
The genomicist made a disgusted face. “Milyukov’s seriously disturbed,” he said. “Not to mention seriously disturbing. He wants to use this business in one of his convoluted political games, although I doubt that any reasonable person could work out how or why. We always knew that there was a chance that the crew would develop weird ideas after several generations of space flight, but who could have figured that it would be so difficult to straighten them out again? This insistence that we have to learn to fend for ourselves on the surface within a single generation, in order that they can get rid of all the Earthborn sleepers and take complete control of their militarized socialist republic is crazy.”
Dulcie Gherardesca had slipped out while Ikram Mohammed was talking. Matthew got up from his chair and stretched his leaden limbs. He took advantage of what might prove to be a rare moment of confidentiality to say: “I don’t suppose, Ike, that you have a theory as to who killed Bernal and why?”
“No,” Ike retorted. “All I know for sure is that it wasn’t me.”
Matthew decided to believe him, even though there was something in his manner that suggested that it was not the whole truth. Even if he had wanted to challenge the statement, though, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity, because Rand Blackstone’s strident voice could already be heard, calling desperately for help.
NINETEEN
Blackstone had entered the dome before sounding his clamorous alarm, and less than three seconds passed before he burst into the room where Ikram Mohammed and Matthew were standing. He was cradling Maryanne Hyder in his arms, trying to hold her still.
The small woman seemed to be in a bad way. Even with the aid of her IT she seemed barely able to suppress screams of agony. Her face was contorted and flushed, and she was trembling