Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [98]
Matthew already knew that Solari was no fool, and he knew that Solari was absolutely right to say that no one who had only been awake for a matter of days could possibly comprehend the complexity of the evolving situation into which they’d both been precipitated—but Bernal Delgado had been his colleague, his rival, his collaborator, his fellow prophet, his mirror image in all but private and personal matters. Matthew could not imagine any circumstances in which he might be led to commit the kind of betrayal that Solari had imagined, so he was extremely reluctant to accept that Bernal might have been led to it. But to what hypothetical extreme would he have to go in order to construct a story that could conserve Bernal’s innocence?
Could the evidence Solari had found so very easily, as soon as he began to look, have been faked, just like the arrowheads themselves? Could the conspiracy of which the murder was a part be far more complicated than Solari was yet prepared to suspect? How complicated could this mystery be? Was it not far too complicated already?
“They could have been planted,” he said to Solari, although he knew exactly how desperate the suggestion was. “Given that we all wear heavy-duty smartsuits, you can’t have much in the way of forensic evidence. Maybe this whole setup is fake—rotten through and through. Maybe the bubble’s logs have been altered too.”
“So who did fake it all?” Solari countered, plainly exasperated. “Why? Which of the seven had the motive, the time, the skill to do the murder and the cover-up? Come on, Matt. We have to do better than that.”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said, helplessly, knowing that if he had to stay ahead of the game he had to improvise something much better. “What I want to think is that Bernal really did find the artifacts, that they really are evidence of the continued existence of the indigenes … but that someone didn’t want him to reveal that fact. Maybe the artifacts are real. That’s another thing neither of us is competent to judge.”
“Unfortunately,” Solari observed, drily, “it’s difficult to think of anyone who is. But it still won’t wash. If they really were made by aliens, Delgado would have shouted the news from the rooftops the moment it broke. Nobody could have imagined, even for a moment, that they could keep it quiet—and if they had they certainly wouldn’t have used one of the alien artifacts to commit the murder while they had a perfectly good stainless steel knife in their belt, would they?”
Matthew had to concede that it was all true. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself. He had always thought of himself as an unusually accomplished improviser, especially under pressure. He knew that he ought to be able to make up a better story, even if he couldn’t actually intuit the truth. He was recently arrived on an alien world, exhausted and ill-fed, but none of those circumstances constituted an acceptable excuse.
“I’ll work it out,” he told Solari, grimly. “I promise you that. I’ll work it all out. Every last piece of every last puzzle. I’m Bernal’s replacement as well as his friend. It’s up to me to carry through his plan, whatever it was, and that’s what I intend to do. You can spread that around if you like, on the off chance that it will make the murderer take a pop at me. But either way, I’m going to sort this mess out. Properly.”
Solari finally cracked a smile. “That’s what I