Engineman - Eric Brown [83]
"I've seen the light, Ella," his voice boomed around the room. "I need to see you-" There was a second of static, and then loud music; Mahler's fifth. Hunter forwarded the disc, played it again - still music. He ran it to the end, but still his words were lost beneath the symphony. She had heard his voice, and quickly obliterated it with the integral recording facility tuned to a classical channel.
Which, he guessed, pretty much summed up her feelings on hearing his voice again after ten years. But what about the photograph? Surely she would not have bothered to straighten it out if her feelings towards him were purely ones of hatred? Perhaps her recording over his message had been an impulsive response. like her screwing up the photo, but one which she could not undo, and which maybe later she regretted?
Or was he being baselessly optimistic?
He was startled by a noise from the hall. Ella, returning? He jumped up and moved to the door, his pulse quickening. At first he thought it was an animal perched on the sill of the open window - an escaped primate - but in the light spilling past his from the bedroom he made out the figure of a small girl, staring at him.
"What do you want?" she cried in rapid French.
Hunter said, "I might ask the same of you." The girl was perhaps ten or twelve, tiny, bird-boned and filthy.
"I'm looking after the apartment for Ella! Who are you?"
He gestured to the paintings in the room. "I'm an art dealer. I buy her work."
She looked at him, suspicious. "Ella feeds me, gives me creds."
"Do you know where she is?"
The girl cocked her head. "Might do."
Hunter pulled out his wallet, counted fifty credit notes. The girl stared, open-mouthed. He held out the notes, just beyond her reach. "Where's Ella?" he asked.
"She left Earth," the girl said. She made a grab for the credits and almost fell from her perch.
Hunter was aware of his increased heartbeat. "Where did she go?" he heard himself asking.
"To the Rim. Don't know which planet. Went to see her father. She told me."
Hunter considered the irony of it, the cruelty. He felt himself rocking on his feet. "When did she go? How long ago?"
The girl shrugged. "Two, three days ago. Gimme the creds!" She made a grab, snatched them this time, and leapt from the sill and down the fire-escape.
Two or three days ago...
Hunter ran from the apartment and down the stairs. Only when he was halfway down the last flight did he remember Sassoon. He slowed his pace, resumed his dignity.
Sassoon was kicking his heels in the hall. "Find what you wanted?"
Hunter brushed past him without replying. He turned to say. "On the top floor you'll find a room full of paintings. Tomorrow I want you to ensure they are safely taken into storage."
Sassoon looked at him oddly. "Very good, sir."
Hunter hurried back to the car, his mind a confusion of ugly thoughts. He felt like one of Ella's diffracted, annihilated subjects. He sat in brooding silence as the Mercedes purred at speed through the darkened Paris streets.
Once back at the morgue he told his team that on no account was he to be disturbed, and retreated to his room. He sat in the darkness and stared through the window at the infrequent points of light.
Ella had left for the Reach two or three days ago. Yesterday the interface had been sabotaged, isolating the planet... His only hope was that they had turned her back as a Disciple, but he knew that this was unlikely. As the daughter of Hirst Hunter, the most wanted man on the Rim, Ella would have been allowed entry and followed, in the hope that she might lead them to him... And when she failed to do so, they would take her in for questioning.
His hands were shaking. "Ella. Oh, Ella..."
There was a knock at the door. He