Engineman - Eric Brown [189]
Gassner, of course, is shielded. It wouldn't be good policy for someone who employed a telepath to go about with his head open. I'm shut out, persona non grata in his meatball. Times are when I'd love to read my master. Then again, times are when I'm glad I'm barred entry. I read too many screwballs in the course of a day without Gassner opening up.
Seconds later Mr and Mrs distraught roll in.
The guy is Kennedy, and he's playing it cool. I'll be lying if I call him distraught; on the Richterscale of personal upheaval he'd hardly register. He's chewing djamba to calm himself and he carries his bonetoned body with a certain hauteur. Or call it arrogance. Under one arm he has the silver envelope containing the evidence, and under the other his wife. She's Scandinavian, beautiful in better circumstances, but grief plays havoc with good looks and right now Mrs Kennedy is ugly. I get the impression that Mr Kennedy is embarrassed by the degree of his wife's distress.
They sit down while Gassner murmurs pleasantries, then jerks a thumb up at me. "Bangladesh," he says. "My assistant."
My name's Sita, but ever since the invasion I got the national tag. Here in the West they reckon it's kinda cute. I'm just glad I wasn't born in Bulgaria.
My presence, perched aloft, surprises Mrs Kennedy. She flickers a timid smile, then sees the connected-minds symbol on my cheek. She recoils mentally; she has no wish to have her grief made any more public than she can allow. I think reassurance at her, telling her that I have no intention of prying - at least, not too much. There's no way I'm probing deep into the angst-ridden maelstrom of her psyche. Grief and regret and self-pity boil down there, and I have my own quota of these emotions to contend with at the best of times.
As for Mr Kennedy... He's shielded, so I don't waste sweat trying to probe. And anyway I already know enough about him, everything I want to know, and even things his little Oslo-born third wife doesn't know.
He nods at me, his gaze coolly observant.
I give him my best wink.
And my presence here is token, now. Gassner questions them and they answer, and I probe Mrs Kennedy to ensure veracity, not that I really need to. I had the facts of the case even before she crossed the threshold.
Becky Kennedy was snatched inside an uptown gymnasium at ten this morning, her bodyguard taken out with a neural-incapacitator. Their assailant came and went so fast that the bodyguard saw nothing. Around noon the Kennedys, waiting anxiously in their suburban ranch, received a silver envelope.
Kennedy glances at Gassner, who nods. He lays the envelope on he desk and amid fresh whimperings from his wife slides out a glossy photograph. I lean forward. It isn't pretty. The still shows a young girl, spread-eagled in a leotard, with a massive bullet wound in her pubescent chest. Here dead eyes stare at the camera, frozen with terror.
"No note or message of any kind?" Gassner wheezes.
Kennedy replaces the photograph in the envelope. "Nothing. Just this," he says, and adds, without the slightest hint of appeal in his tone, "Can you get my daughter back, Mr Gassner?"
My boss fingers the folds of fat at his neck. "I'm almost certain we can, Mr Kennedy."
"Within the three-day limit? She's due on the Vienna sub-orbital next month. We'd like her to make it."
And Mrs Kennedy breaks down again. She knows that the majority of missing kids are never found, except after the three-day limit. Despite Gassner's reassurances, she can't believe she'll ever see her little Becky again.
Gassner is saying, "The fact that your daughter's abductor sent you this photograph indicates to me that what we have here is no ordinary abduction." By which he means that Becky might not end up as the meat in a necrophilic orgy.
"My guess is that you'll receive a ransom demand for your daughter