Up Against It - M. J. Locke [120]
Glease and Mills. Mobsters. Hired by Ogilvie & Sons. The people who had scrawled graffiti on his family’s tent in the park last night.
Xuan reeled back from the door—mouth spitless, vision greying, heart beating hard. You idiot! he thought. Jane warned you, but did you listen?
But last night (had it really been only last night?), some hypothetical thugs leaving amateurish doodles on a tent had not grabbed Xuan’s attention with the same intensity that the feral sapient lodged in their life-support systems had. Nor the imminent destruction of Kukuyoshi. Nor, for that matter, the impending death by suffocation of two hundred thousand people, including himself and nearly all those he held dear.
He swam over to the vicinity of the workstation, pulled himself down into the chair, strapped in, and forced himself to consider the problem calmly. Do these people know Jane is my wife? Could they have engineered this to use me against her?
He doubted it. In the first place, now that she had been fired, she was no threat to them. Second, his decision to take this sugar-rock call had been his alone, and spontaneous—a need to escape the furtive stares of his colleagues and the silent, oppressive presence of the “Stroider”-cams. All the cluster’s surveyors and astrogeologists had gotten sucked into this rush of sugar-rock claims. No. This was simple happenstance. Bad luck. Xuan’s number had come up.
In which case, how much danger was he in? What did they hope to accomplish? And how could he thwart them?
He thought back to Jane’s words the night before, as well as discussions they had had in the past about her experiences with the mob on Vesta. If Ogilvie & Sons were behind the original warehouse disaster—so she had told him, and he had no reason to doubt it—they must be trying with this trip to forestall discovery of any major sugar-rock claims. Mills’s presence on this trip suggested they had serious concerns about this particular claim.
This claim had best turn out to be a bust, he thought, no matter what.
As to how much danger he was in, as long as they assumed he was just some researcher from the university, and as long as the sugar-rock claim was a bust, they would have no reason to harm him.
I had better brush up on my acting skills, Xuan thought. And there were some serious technical challenges to overcome. This was almost certainly not the first time they had taken a geologist out to check a claim, so they would know the basic routine. Whatever he did to muck around with the ice content measurements for this rock, it had better be subtle.
He strapped himself back in, and spent the next hour or so visualizing the process, considering how to obscure his intent from any watchers.
The pilot announced over the intercom that deceleration would begin shortly. He thanked him, and then asked to speak to Mr. Mills.
Crackling; a pause. Then: “Mills here.”
“Now that we are approaching our target, I’d like to set up and calibrate my equipment. Would it be possible for me to visit the hold?”
Another pause. “You can check your equipment once we touch down. Wait in your cabin. My assistants will escort you.”
Xuan scowled. So much for mucking with the equipment in transit. He would have to come up with something that he could rig quickly once at their destination, in full view of Mills & Co. “All right. I can set up once we arrive. But perhaps you could forward me any information you have on this asteroid. Maps or the like. It will help me prepare, and will save you time.”
A longish pause. “All right. Here you go.”
His inbox filled. The files gave him everything he should need to lay the groundwork. He got started.
* * *
Jane wanted to leave the boot lozenge in her office for Aaron to find. But this was no time for lax security. She knocked on Aaron’s office door. He worked inwave, murmuring, moving through arcane pantomimes as he furrowed fields