“You are suggesting that your sib was engaged to work on a secret bookkeeping program, yes?” Serjeant Bull said slowly. “And her employer panicked when they learned of your impending arrival and k— removed her. Is that what you think? But then why did they leave these books, if they were both secret and valuable enough to justify removing Ana Graulle-90?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were interrupted, or forced to run, before they could destroy them. They’re certainly bulky. Or maybe they—whoever removed her—didn’t realize what they were; if she was working in secrecy, and her employer sent thugs to take her, they might have assumed she was keeping everything on a soul chip. Or maybe they learned I was coming and decided to remove her before she told me whatever she was doing.” I shook my head, unreasoningly upset: Serjeant Bull was barely going through the motions of trying to conceal from me the fact that he and his colleagues thought Ana was dead. And after a year of her absence, how could I gainsay them? “The ink. And the paper. Where do they come from?”
This time Serjeant Bull was quiet for longer. I was about to repeat my question when he looked at me. “The leaves are made from bleached and macerated fibers extracted from various species of leviathan grass, presumably harvested nearby and processed into, um, paper. Traces of leviathan grass were found in the feedstock processor by the dining niche downstairs, and a tub of the stuff was present in the vestibule, so it was assumed that Graulle-90 was manufacturing the material as she needed it. There is a household fabricator and some unidentified mechanical parts that had been manufactured in it were found nearby, so perhaps those were part of her ledger factory. The pigment was more of a puzzle. A forensic tech finally determined that there was microscopic tissue debris in it and extracted a genome sequence; it is a naturally occurring substance extracted from the ink sacs of feral sepiidians—another of the invertebrates from Old Earth that adapted to life in the upper waters here. The stuff is called sepia, and it has a long history as a pigment used for dying this paper stuff.”
“Did the investigators find any containers of it here? Or pens, brushes, styli? Other writing implements?”
“Oddly, no.” Bull seemed to come to a decision. “Thank you, Ms. Alizond. You have been most useful, and we must now continue this investigation without you. We will need to remove these books to safekeeping as evidence before we probe whatever is above the false ceiling. Such as, perhaps, a water tank? Is that what you think? Primed to drench these shelves of books, rendering them useless?” I nodded. “It’s a little excessive, but I have heard of stranger things.” He looked around. “So this is a secret archive, maintained by hand in an archaic code and designed to be hard to detect and easy to destroy, eh?” He looked at me. “You’d better go now; I’ll call you when I need you again. Please do not speak of anything you have seen here. It would be unfortunate to have to charge you with interfering with an investigation.”
I shivered. “Thanks, but no thanks.” Whoever Ana had been working for—and I was still convinced that this was not where she’d been living—news of my impending arrival had caused them to kidnap or kill her. I began to wonder if perhaps the safest thing for me to do wouldn’t be to depart Shin-Tethys as soon as possible. Helping out a sib in their time of need might be the done thing, but putting my own life on the line was another matter entirely. And so as I headed for the stairs, I resolved to do what I could to help the Serjeant’s continued inquiries from the safest possible distance . . . preferably on another planetary body.
Recidivision
There is a time for the prudent traveler to give the appearance of being of no great means; and there’s a time when the prudent traveler should book themselves into the most discreet and securely guarded guesthouse they can afford, to hire bodyguards, and to ignore the expense.
I decided that now was the latter time. So I left Ana’s rented pod and took myself directly to the Grand Imperial Hotel Ariel, where I marched up to the concierge pool, and said: “Hello, I would like you to arrange an escort to take me to the nearest bureau de change, please? And then some assistance opening a local bank account, checking into the best available suite you’ve got, and hiring a bodyguard.”
The concierge surfaced briefly, to blink a saucer-sized eye at me. “Excuse me,” buzzed the transducer at the poolside: “Am I to understand you would like to check in?”
“Yes,” I said patiently, “but in order to pay you, I will first need to liquidate some slow money. I’m a little short on the fast stuff right now.” Which was entirely true—Medea’s kingdom ran on its own evanescent scrip, backed by fiat royalty, and Rudi hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to fork out the salary he claimed to owe me before we climbed into that capsule. “I believe there is a branch of SystemBank Taj in this town?”
A brief flurry of underwater activity made the concierge pool heave and splash: A coil of thick, muscular, sucker-lined flesh broke the surface briefly. I took a nervous step backward across the slippery tile mosaic as the transducer buzzed again. “If you would care to check in first, guest services would be happy to assist you with your requirements. Billing can be deferred for up to one day, subject to credit checks.” A dactylus with disturbingly fingerlike palps flopped over the edge of the pool and twitched toward me. “Please consent to handshake . . .”
I extended my hand to the teuthidian concierge, palm to suckers, exchanging identity tokens with him. His skin was cold and rugose, clammy with an undertaste of static electricity. Despite his superficial resemblance to a giant squid from Old Earth, he was no less human than I; his body was assembled from mechanocytes to a design pattern better suited for life in the hydrosphere of Shin-Tethys, but the brain—modulo some cunning somatic translation layers—was largely unchanged. “I am Krina Buchhaltung Historiker Alizond-114,” I said. “I would like to rent the use of your facilities for not less than ten days, including full personal security service. I also need full identity verification at all times—I have a stalker. And I need assistance in organizing a fund transfer via SystemBank Taj.”
“We can organize that for you.” The concierge—a discreet sign by the transducer informed me that I was welcome to call him Chen—floated close to the surface, his skin flickering between violet lines and yellow spots. “I will ask the bank to send a clerk over to your suite. Which is being prepared now; it will be ready in a few minutes. For the bank’s information, in confidence, what sort of financial instrument are you intending to convert?”
I kept my face still. “One New California dollar. Hitherto unbroken.”
The concierge sank to the bottom of his pond, tentacles flashing crimson: Evidently this was the manner in which giant squid demonstrated their embarrassment, or at least a double take. “Excuse me. Did you say you want to convert one New California slow dollar?”