I said nothing.
“Many people expected you to go into politics,” he said. “Did your father’s suicide dissuade you?”
“It wasn’t suicide,” I said.
“No?”
“All the news reports and the inquest said it was,” I said tonelessly, “but they were wrong. My father never would have taken his own life.”
“So it was murder?”
“Yes.”
“Despite the fact that there was no motive or hint of a suspect?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” said Johnny. The yellow glow from the loading dock lamps came through the dusty windows and made his hair gleam like new copper. “Do you like being a detective?”
“When I do it well,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Then let’s get some sleep. You can have the couch.”
“Do you do it well often?” he said. “Being a detective?”
“We’ll see tomorrow.”
In the morning Johnny farcast to Renaissance Vector at about the usual time, waited a moment in the plaza, and then ’cast to the Old Settlers’ Museum on Sol Draconi Septem. From there he jumped to the main terminex on Nordholm and then ’cast to the Templar world of God’s Grove.
We’d worked out the timing ahead of time and I was waiting for him on Renaissance V, standing back in the shadows of the colonnade.
A man with a queue was the third through after Johnny. There was no doubt he was Lusian—between the Hive pallor, the muscle and body mass, and the arrogant way of walking, he might have been my long-lost brother.
He never looked at Johnny but I could tell that he was surprised when the cybrid circled around to the outbound portals. I stayed back and only caught a glimpse of his card but would’ve bet anything that it was a tracer.
Queue was careful in the Old Settlers’ Museum, keeping Johnny in sight but checking his own back as well. I was dressed in a Zen Gnostic’s meditation jumper, isolation visor and all, and I never looked their way as I circled to the museum outportal and ’cast directly to God’s Grove.
It made me feel funny, leaving Johnny alone through the museum and Nordholm terminex, but both were public places and it was a calculated risk.
Johnny came through the Worldtree arrival portal right on time and bought a ticket for the tour. His shadow had to scurry to catch up, breaking cover to board the omnibus skimmer before it left. I was already settled in the rear seat on the upper deck and Johnny found a place near the front, just as we had planned. Now I was wearing basic tourist garb and my imager was one of a dozen in action when Queue hurried to take his place three rows behind Johnny.
The tour of the Worldtree is always fun—Dad first took me there when I was only three standard—but this time as the skimmer moved above branches the size of freeways and circled higher around a trunk the width of Olympus Mons, I found myself reacting to the glimpses of hooded Templars with something approaching anxiety.
Johnny and I had discussed various clever and infinitely subtle ways to trail Queue if he showed up, to follow him to his lair and spend weeks if necessary deducing his game. In the end I opted for something less than the subtle approach.
The omnibus had dumped us out near the Muir Museum and people were milling around on the plaza, torn between spending ten marks for a ticket to educate themselves or going straight for the gift shop, when I walked up to Queue, gripped him by the upper arm, and said in conversational tones, “Hi. Do you mind telling me what the fuck you want with my client?”
There’s an old stereotype that says that Lusians are as subtle as a stomach pump and about half as pleasant. If I’d helped confirm the first part of that, Queue went a long way toward reinforcing the second prejudice.
He was fast. Even with my seemingly casual grip paralyzing the muscles of his right arm, the knife in his left hand sliced up and around in less than a second.
I let myself fall to my right, the knife slicing air centimeters from my cheek, hitting pavement and rolling as I palmed the neural stunner and came up on one knee to meet the threat.
No threat. Queue was running. Away from me. Away from Johnny. He shoved tourists aside, dodged behind them, moving toward the museum entrance.
I slid the stunner back into its wristband and began running myself. Stunners are great close-range weapons—as easy to aim as a shotgun without the dire effects if the spread pattern finds innocent bystanders—but they aren’t worth anything beyond eight or ten meters. On full dispersal, I could give half the tourists in the plaza a miserable headache but Queue was already too far away to bring down. I ran after him.
Johnny ran toward me. I waved him back. “My place!” I shouted. “Use the locks!”
Queue had reached the museum entrance and now he looked back at me; the knife was still in his hand.
I charged at him, feeling something like joy at the thought of the next few minutes.
Queue vaulted a turnstile and shoved tourists aside to get through the doors. I followed.
It was only when I reached the vaulted interior of the Grand Hall and saw him shoving his way up the crowded escalator to the Excursion Mezzanine that I realized where he was headed.
My father had taken me on the Templar Excursion when I was three. The farcaster portals were permanently open; it took about three hours to walk all the guided tours on the thirty worlds where the Templar ecologists had preserved some bit of nature which they thought would please the Muir. I couldn’t remember for sure, but I thought the paths were loop trails with the portals relatively close together for easy transit by Templar guides and maintenance people.
Shit.
A uniformed guard near the tour portal saw the confusion as Queue cut through and stepped forward to intercept the rude intruder. Even from fifteen meters away I could see the shock and disbelief on the old guard’s face as he staggered backward, the hilt of Queue’s long knife protruding from his chest.
The old guard, probably a retired local cop, looked down, face white, touched the bone hilt gingerly as if it were a gag, and collapsed face first on the mezzanine tiles. Tourists screamed. Someone yelled for a medic. I saw Queue shove a Templar guide aside and throw himself through the glowing portal.
This was not going as I’d planned.
I vaulted for the portal without slowing.
Through and half sliding on the slippery grass of a hillside. Sky lemon yellow above us. Tropical scents. I saw startled faces turned my way. Queue was halfway to the other farcaster, cutting through elaborate flower beds and kicking aside bonsai topiary. I recognized the world of Fuji and careened down the hillside, clambering uphill again through the flower beds, following the trail of destruction Queue had left. “Stop that man!” I screamed, realizing how foolish it sounded. No one made a move except for a Nipponese tourist who raised her imager and recorded a sequence.
Queue looked back, shoved past a gawking tour group, and stepped through the farcast portal.
I had the stunner in my hand again and waved it at the crowd. “Back! Back!” They hastily made room.
I went through warily, stunner raised. Queue no longer had his knife but I didn’t know what other toys he carried.
Brilliant light on water. The violet waves of Mare Infinitus. The path was a narrow wooden walkway ten meters above the support floats. It led out and away, curving above a fairyland coral reef and a sargasso of yellow island kelp before curving back, but a narrow catwalk cut across to the portal at the end of the trail. Queue had climbed the NO ACCESS gate and was halfway across the catwalk.
I ran the ten paces to the edge of the platform, selected tightbeam, and held the stunner on full auto, sweeping the invisible beam back and forth as if I were aiming a garden hose.