Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [104]
“Change our minds.” Ignoring the cautioning looks he was receiving from Nadurovina, Rothenburg challenged the other man openly. “Make us look stupid. Go on, do it! Shove the truth right in my face.”
Mallory held the Major’s eyes for a moment longer, then dropped his gaze and looked down at the bed. “I can’t. Not yet.”
An exasperated Nadurovina kept her voice level. “Why not? You said you had proof.”
“That’s the right tense, Colonel. Had is the operative word here.”
Rothenburg wanted to lurch forward, to shove the seated nurse away from the bed, reach down, and violently shake the infuriating man hiding beneath the covers until he made sense. “All right. You ‘had’ proof. What kind? It would have to be convincing beyond doubt.”
Mallory coolly met the officer’s angry glare. “How about a few hours of verifiable media-grade recording of the Pitar ravaging Treetrunk? Shooting down adults and children, razing buildings, stalking through the streets in body armor? Surgical teams carefully eviscerating women and preserving their internal organs?” His body had begun to tremble again, but his voice held steady. “How about it, Major? Would that constitute sufficient ‘proof’?”
“Yes.” Rothenburg straightened. “Yes, once cleared beyond doubt of possible falsification and professionally verified, that would probably suffice. Where is it?”
The man in the bed was shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t…?” Rothenburg began, but held himself back when Nadurovina grabbed his shoulder.
“I mean,” Mallory muttered as he struggled with himself, “I know, but I don’t know. I think I can find it.” He wore a look of honest helplessness. “I hid it.”
Glancing up at a small dot in the ceiling, Rothenburg barked directives. “Security recheck! I want to know that this entire building is scan-shielded, not just this room. Do it now.” When a reply in the affirmative sounded from a concealed speaker, he nodded sharply and turned back to Mallory. “Very well. You have a recording, but you hid it somewhere. You think you can find it. Where do we look?”
“You’d never locate it. I’ll have to do it. Retrace my steps.” He smiled wanly and gripped Tse’s hand tightly. “It’s the only way.”
“Why?” Rothenburg prompted him. “Just tell us where on Treetrunk you concealed this recording and there’ll be a recovery team on site within days.”
“It’s not on Treetrunk,” he told the officer. “It’s on the inner moon.” His expression turned apologetic. “Under a rock. I didn’t want to leave it on the lifeboat in case the Pitar detected my emissions and picked me up.”
Rothenburg looked like a fighter who had just taken a combination to the head and body. “After the Unop-Patha delivered you to the Ronin, your lifeboat was brought aboard and thoroughly checked over. Nothing was found, of course. But if that was your reference point for what you buried, how are you going to find it now? As moons go, I understand that Treetrunk One is pretty small. But it’s still a moon.”
“All I can do is try.”
“You’ll have help.” Rothenburg’s mind was racing ahead—planning, directing, plotting logistics. “What kind of container did you bury the recording in? Metal?” he concluded hopefully.
“Sorry. I used a small composite sealtight. Impervious to extremes of heat and cold, maintains a good vacuum.”
“What was the recording medium?” Nadurovina asked.
“Standard home-recording mollysphere. A big one, centimeter in diameter. High grade—I could afford quality stuff. Also composite material, of course.”
“Which means we’ll have a hard time running a materials scan through rock.” The major took a step back from the bed. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find it if we have to take the whole planetoid apart grain by grain.”
“I think I can save you a lot of time.” Mallory leaned back against the pillows. “At least, I hope so.