Sixteen
The robot caused Ariel to flinch every time she saw it. She brushed past it, impatient with her own reactions, and strode into her living room, Derec close behind.
Mia was still on the sofa, her datum in her lap, the subetheric on, frozen at a scene from the massacre. It showed, magnified, a clutch of people huddling together, faces stretched in panic, bodies twisted and angled as if about to fall to the floor. From the clothing, the group was Terran. Ariel recognized no one. The image was so different from the scene she had seen in Union Station not two hours ago that it seemed from another reality.
Mia looked up.
"And?" she asked archly.
Ariel stared at the image. "All present and accounted for, including you. Someone has thoughtfully put a burned body in your morgue stasis drawer."
The expression on the younger woman's face made Ariel immediately regret her words. Mia's mouth fell partly open and she paled visibly, her eyes seeming to go darker still and more desolate.
"We checked at Union Station," Derec said, "and someone calling himself Tro Aspil did show up to take his seat on the shuttle. So either the corpse in the morgue is Aspil and someone else is heading for Aurora-"
"-or Aspil's body is a fake," Mia said, nodding. "Like mine."
"But your double doesn't even have to look like you," Ariel said. "The only way to prove it isn't you would be a DNA scan."
"I'm sure that has already been flied," Mia said. She gave her shoulders a twist as if to relieve tension, then pointed at the screen. "I've been doing a tally."
Ariel sat down on the sofa beside her. Mia's datum screen showed two columns of names.
"Bogard had a master list of everyone scheduled to be at the ceremony," Mia said. "I pulled a list of casualties from the newsnets and started running the vids for a match."
"Any discrepancies?" Ariel asked.
"None so far, but I began doing trajectories. When we found out that several of the assailants were just projections, I wondered then just how many real shots were fired. Bogard helped me edit the newsnet recordings you have into a single composite."
"How are you doing the tracking?" Derec asked. "Bogard's sensory net is as good as it gets, but even subetheric recordings don't have that kind of detail."
"Bogard was able to identify nine actual shooters out of the twenty-one apparent assailants. By studying the recoil of their weapons, it gives us a reliable estimate of how many shots were actually fired. Then it's just a matter of tracing the consequences."
"Nine," Ariel mused. "You caught three of them. Three of them were killed on the scene."
"So we can assume three of them are still at large. There may have been accomplices outside the gallery waiting to facilitate an escape. We don't know."
"Six bodies I couldn't identify are in the morgue, in the same section with all the victims," Ariel said. "I have a list of names and tracking codes."
Mia frowned. "The three I captured were still alive when Bogard brought us back into the gallery."
"These six may not be anything more than innocent bystanders who got in the way. We have to check the names."
Mia shrugged. "I've tried running enhancements on them, to see if facial features show through the masks, but they padded the masks. What I have found so far is an emerging pattern of targeting. I'm not finished, so this isn't final, but it appears they were working from a specific list. It wasn't just a capricious act of terror."
Ariel blinked at the image on her subetheric. "Well, we know they wanted Humadros and Eliton…"
"Maybe. At least, yes, they were part of it. Let me finish this before I say any more." She turned to the robot. "Bogard? Let's continue."
"At some point," Derec said, "I'm going to have to have Bogard back to do a full diagnostic and debriefing."
Mia did not look up from her datum, only nodded. Ariel saw clearly that she did not like the idea of giving up the robot. Not yet.
"How are you feeling?" Ariel asked. "Can you walk yet?"
"Oh, I hobbled to the bathroom twice while you were gone. Things are improving. Your medical robot said another three days for the healing accelerants to work through completely."
"No problem. I can guarantee privacy for that long. Of course, this is ruining my social life."
Mia smiled thinly. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. I didn't have anything this exciting planned for at least another month." She stood and gave Derec a significant look, then headed for her bedroom.
As she had hoped, Derec followed.
She closed the door behind him.
"Stop pestering her for Bogard," Ariel said.
Derec frowned. "Excuse me?"
"She's terrified. Right now Bogard is the only thing making her feel safe. Every time you ask to have it back she gets scared. Stop it."
"Look, Bogard has data we need. We can't just ask for it, I have to download it from its buffers. In order to do that, I need Bogard back at Phylaxis."
"Give it a little time-"
"How much do you want? We have a situation here and I don't think we have the luxury of a few days or a week before we get at the information Bogard has."
"Right now we have' more information than we know what to do with. None of it's making sense."
"And neither are you. Since when can you have too much information?"
"When most of it's useless-noise. Like that mess you've got from the Union Station RI."
Derec drew himself up and Ariel braced for a fight. She knew that look and could predict all that followed it, and suddenly she felt extremely tired. She held up her hands.
"Just back off asking for Bogard for now. I'll talk to Mia in the morning and see what I can do. She's my friend."
Unexpectedly, Derec let out a long breath and nodded.
"All right. I need to check in with Rana, anyway." He turned away, hands on hips, and surveyed her bedroom. "Nice," he said. "You've been doing well for yourself."
"If I had time to enjoy it, life would be wonderful," Ariel said. She winced at the sharp look of hurt he gave her. "Derec, I'm too tired to think straight anymore."
"I'm going."
She followed him to the apartment door.
"I'll call first thing," he said. "This whole situation…"
"A mess, isn't it?"
Derec grunted.
"Watch your back," Ariel said.
He nodded, lingering a moment longer, as if he had something more to say. But he only smiled tightly and left.
On the sofa, Mia typed at her datum while Bogard stood motionless before the subetheric. People moved on the screen, molasses slow, dying again.
Ariel went back to her bedroom. She did not remember lying down.
"Ariel."
"Hmm?"
"Wake up, Ariel. Ariel."
"Wha-who-?"
"Ariel, wake up. I have to ask you something."
"Go 'way."
"Ariel."
Someone grabbed her right shoulder and shook her. Ariel's eyes snapped open and she rolled away from the touch. "What?"
"Ariel."
She rubbed her eyes, groggy and disoriented. "Mia? What time is it?"
"You don't want to know. I need to ask you something."
"What?"
"Who made the final list of invitees for the podium?"
Ariel sat on the edge of her bed. She noticed then that she still wore her clothes. "Jennie," she called, "bring me a cup of coffee." She stood and stretched. Her limbs vibrated from weariness; not enough sleep. Again.
Mia stood on the opposite side of the bed, waiting.
"Who made what?" Ariel asked.
"The final list of invitees. Who did that?"
"You don't know?"
"We're just security-all we got was the finished list and a set of orders."
"Well… it was a joint decision… Humadros had her end already finalized and simply sent us a copy of her list… then Ambassador Setaris and Ambassador Chassik worked with Senator Eliton on the list here. Why?"
Mia hobbled toward the door. "Someone else must have gotten hold of it. Like I said before, from what I can tell the targets were preselected. They knew exactly who they wanted to take out. Bogard verified that assumption."