Rudi hissed at me. “It was a very expensive policy.” For a moment, I saw a flash of anger, and I recoiled: He becalmed himself almost immediately. “We sold it to her for little more than goodwill, Krina. Because—I believe it’s safe to tell you this—I very much wanted her to succeed in uncovering her treasure trove.”
I gaped at him. “Her what?”
Rudi cocked his head to his left and stared at me. “Come, now! Have you forgotten that she has lived in Dojima System for many years?” I shook my head. “And can you consider the possibility that she might have undertaken consultancy work, on the side, for various enterprises? Including, dare I say it, the Permanent Crimson?” I paused for a moment, then nodded. “I’ve met Ana,” he said, before archly adding: “I probably know her better than you do.” He tilted his head to the right. “You’re very similar in some ways, you know.”
“What!” I glared as I tried to recover my poise. “What did she tell you?”
“Quite a lot, once I gained her trust. She told me about your upbringing, and your mother. She told me about your shared interest in retrieving and rolling back lost slow money transfers. She told me about your interest in, ah, a certain long-term project investigating what really happened in Atlantis System.” All mannerisms fled; his expression achieved an impressive level of impassivity.
“What did you tell her to get her to tell you all that?”
In truth I only asked him because I wanted to keep him off-balance and talking, but Rudi seemed to take it as a legitimate inquiry.
“I told her about a banking scandal from a very long time ago. Ivar Trask-1, a founder of Dojima SystemBank at Taj Beacon, who went missing, carrying one end of a transfer of a huge quantity of slow dollars that Ana seemed to think could be traced back . . . to Atlantis.”
Oh snap, I thought, feeling a sinking sensation at my core. “And what did you tell her about this scandal?”
“Everything I had on file. At which point, for some reason, she decided it was a good idea to try to track down whatever happened to master Trask. I told her it was probably impossible, that he had disappeared centuries ago somewhere in the wild waters of Shin-Tethys, and there had been numerous searches at the time, but she was peculiarly insistent. Refusing to be deterred, she sought to find work here as a plausible explanation for her presence. The life insurance policy”—he folded and refolded his wings about himself agitatedly—“will cover her restoration from a decade-old soul dump, and a ticket out-system. I may, perhaps, have overstated its value: I am more drawn by curiosity as to what she found that caused various parties to make her disappear.” Was that a faintly guilty expression I read into his foxy muzzle?
I was still having trouble admitting it to myself: My sib had come here in pursuit of the evidence we so sorely needed but had been drawn into some sort of very shady operation and had clearly been made to disappear by its owners—probably permanently. I took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can achieve anything more here. If anyone can find her, it’s Medea’s police. I don’t think you can achieve anything useful, either. Let’s be honest: You hoped she was going to retrieve part of a certain uncommitted transaction, and you wanted to be in on it yourself. But I can tell you, if she was entangled with a chunk of the, what we’ve been calling the Atlantis Carnet, it’s beyond our reach. She’s been kidnapped or killed, and either her kidnappers or the Queen have their hands on anything she had. I have no idea who her abductors are, and I submit that neither you nor I are in a position to hold Her Majesty to account. So I intend to cut my losses and run—unless something turns up in the next few days. And when I say run, I mean I intend to leave Dojima System completely, cut short my pilgrimage, and go directly home.” I attempted a bright smile, but I don’t think he was fooled by it. “I believe she is dead. Thanks to meddling treasure hunters like yourself.”
I found I was on my feet again, glaring at him, despite a faint sense of embarrassment at accusing him so bluntly. Rudi, to his credit, looked abashed. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “More sorry than you imagine, perhaps.” He paused uncomfortably before continuing. “I believe I also owe you some back wages. Should I understand that you do not want to extend our arrangement?” He glanced around the room: “I assume you have found some alternative source of funding.”
“You understand correctly. As for the wages, I was planning to invoice you.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary.” He held out one hand, glowing green: “If you would care to shake?”
We shook hands, and I blinked: The amount he’d transferred was rather larger than I’d expected. “Come now, Ms. Alizond,” he said. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to pay a professor an unskilled ship-hand’s salary?” His incisors briefly revealed themselves again: “I believe in fair dealing. If you should ever find yourself in need of a privateer for hire, you’ll know who to call. Good-bye!” He shuffled toward the door and let himself out.
I shook my head and checked at his deposit. He wasn’t joking about having paid me a professorial salary for the year I’d spent aboard his ship. If I’d known he intended to, I might not have converted that slow dollar. But on the other hand, he hadn’t paid me until he knew I had an alternative source of funding: Perhaps he only did it in order to cultivate my goodwill?
Still shaking my head, I started toward my suite. It had been a long and disturbing day, and I could feel my mood dropping. My arrival in Dojima System appeared to have triggered a feeding frenzy among grave-robbing treasure hunters and opportunists. If Andrea was to be believed, the intrigue had its poisoned roots in a power play back home, and it had followed me all the way to the stars, waiting to catch up. Ana was gone, the entire primary purpose of my pilgrimage was wrecked, and with a stalker trailing me, I really needed to think about chartering a yacht and making a course back to Taj Beacon, and meanwhile reconsider my entire future. (If there was less of a security issue, I’d simply upload myself from here and relay via the beacon, but the risk of, shall we say, nonaccidental data corruption was significant. In contrast, physical space vehicles are much harder to intercept than a helpless upload transmission.)
Thinking these gloomy thoughts, I made my way to the elevators and dropped toward my suite. Security doors opened, recognizing me: Finally, I reached my destination. Here, the outer door required a physical handshake to check my identity. I turned the door handle and pushed, then froze.
“Good afternoon,” said the fellow on the sofa in the lobby, rising. “You requested medical services?”
I relaxed. “Yes,” I said. “You’re the hotel doctor?” He nodded. And indeed he looked the part: a modified surface dweller, with just the package of extras I needed on display everywhere from his hands to the discreet fringe of gills at his throat. “I need to arrange for some phenotype modifications.” The door closed behind me as I continued: “Finger and toe membranes, better oxygen retention, and depth tolerance. Nothing fancy. I was told you could order the necessary design templates—”
“Oh, absolutely,” he reassured me. “So you’re wanting a basic package of hydrosphere modifications suitable for a land dweller visiting the upper waters, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m after,” I confirmed.
“Good. I work with a couple of local suppliers; if you’d like to sit down and plug in this diagnostic cable, I can dump your body’s structural layout and ask them to tender—”