Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [167]
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
Tora Kane lived in an isolated cottage situated in an oak grove about ten kilometers northwest of Seabright. Kim rode out on several consecutive days and strolled through the area early in the morning, recording when Tora left for the site, nine-fifteen, and when she returned, usually at around six-thirty. She noted that Tora owned a flyer, but not a dog. As far as she could determine, the archeologist lived alone.
She found a toolshed behind the house, which would provide a ladder when she needed it. That was a piece of good fortune: she’d expected to have to climb a tree.
The walks had been hard enough on her: despite modern medicine, she was not yet fully healed, and she knew her doctors would have complained angrily had they known what she was doing.
At home, she worked with Shepard to create a virtual lawyer who would be credible and persuasive. She settled on Aquilla Selby, the famed criminal attorney of the previous century. Selby had not believed in capital punishment, and had specialized in defending the indefensible, rescuing a long line of murderers and sadists from the extreme penalty, and in some cases even springing them loose on an unsuspecting public.
Selby had allowed his years to show, had very carefully orchestrated the aging process to acquire silver hair and a wrinkled brow, gaining the visible appearance of maturity that counts for so much in the courtroom, while simultaneously maintaining the medical state of a healthy thirty-year-old.
Kim touched him up a little bit, changed the color of his eyes from blue to brown, cut his hair to agree with current fashion, got rid of his beard, took a few pounds out of his midsection. She tightened his face somewhat, opting for trim cheeks and a narrow nose.
“What do you think?” she asked Shep, when the finished product stood before her.
“He looks good,” the AI said. “He’d get my attention.”
The image completed, she went to work on the voice, eliminating its distinctive Terminal City accent, the mellifluous tonality that, to a seventh-century ear, sounded cloying. She added some gravel and adjusted the pacing. When she was finished, he sounded like a modern native of Green-way’s Ruby Archipelago.
Next she looked at her equipment.
Included in the package with the microtransmitter was a receiver and a flex antenna for long-distance reception. She rented a flyer and mounted the antenna on it, then went to bed and slept peacefully.
In the morning she heard from Chad. “It’s ready,” he told her.
She flew out that afternoon and picked up the tap.
“Remember,” he cautioned, after showing her how it worked, “if you get into trouble, I don’t know anything about it.”
She promised they wouldn’t be able to beat it out of her.
That evening she flew to within a kilometer of Tora’s home, landed, and walked the rest of the distance. The lights were on when she arrived, and she saw movement inside the cottage. Tora had a guest. Several guests, in fact. Three flyers were parked on or just off the pad.
But she knew that the sleek orange-and-black Kondor belonged to the archeologist. She watched for a few minutes to be sure no one was outside, then circled around to the pad and taped the microtransmitter to the top of a tread, where it disappeared into the well. When she was satisfied, she retreated into the woods and turned on her receiver. The signal came through loud and clear.
27
No treasure should be thought secure against thieves so long as any one person knows where it lies.
—The Notebooks of Colin Colin, 2440 C.E.
Kim was up early next day. She had a light breakfast, and then changed her appearance to that of a trim young male, including a mustache, which she thought made her look quite dashing. Then she took her rented aircraft out to Tora Kane’s neighborhood, timing her flight to be overhead when the archeologist came out the door. She had a cup in one hand and a leather case under her other arm when she got into her flyer and lifted off.
Kim monitored her flight until she was down at the dig site. Then she