“Sounds like a good idea,” I said. But I couldn’t imagine it happening.
We stopped at Cormoral to refuel and return the armored suits, had dinner on the space station, and wandered through the concourse for a couple of hours. They had a bar with a stand-up routine. The comic was a woman, Gladys Evans, whom I’d never heard of before. She was brilliant, had everybody laughing, and sometimes in tears. It was a performance we both needed.
XXXIV.
.
We arrived home at the start of a weekend, and Alex wasted no time sending Lashonda Walton a message: .
Two days later, Jacob informed me we had a call from DPSAR. Alex was out of the building. “Put them through,” I said.
A young man appeared in my office. he said.
“Hello, Mr. Camden. Alex isn’t here at the moment. Can I help?”
Alex didn’t like taking calls when he was out. He carried a link, but if I used it, I usually had to explain myself. “He’s in the middle of an interview.”
“I will. He should be back shortly.”
Camden told me that would be fine and disappeared out of the room. I suspected this might be our last chance at moving forward.
He got back an hour later without having responded. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” he said. He made the call from my office. Camden apologized and explained that the director wasn’t available.
“I’d like to set up an appointment with her when convenient. Can we arrange that?”
“Good. I’ll be there. And please inform her that my associate Chase Kolpath will also be present.”
After they disconnected, I asked why he’d included me.
“In case I miss anything else, Chase.”
The Department of Planetary Survey and Astronomical Research is located in Hanover, about sixty kilometers south of Andiquar. When one considers the influence and sheer size of the organization, spread across eleven worlds, the structure that houses its Rimway branch comes as a surprise. It’s a three-story white marble building about the size of a small courthouse, surrounded by open fields. Doric pillars line its entrance beneath a gabled roof supporting several antennas.
Seven or eight skimmers were in the parking area when we arrived. We climbed out, passed between the pillars, and went inside. The doors closed behind us and a young woman in a green uniform blinked on and invited us to sit down. We were in a lounge. she asked.
Alex gave her our names and explained we were there to see Dr. Walton.
she said.
She blinked off. The walls were covered with pictures of interstellars, space stations, planetary rings, nebulas, and, surprisingly, Walton standing arm in arm with a couple of Mutes. Side tables had displays that would have allowed us to watch approaching comets and docking starships. But we were given only a couple of minutes before a door opened and Arthur Camden entered. In the flesh this time. “Ms. Kolpath, it’s good to see you. And Dr. Benedict. Please come with me.”
Alex was about to correct the title but we were already on the move. Camden took us up one floor into an empty office. “The director,” he said, “will be with you in a minute.”
He went out and closed the door. Moments later a second door opened and Walton entered. “Hello, Alex,” she said. “It’s good to meet you. And Chase. Please make yourselves at home.”
“Good morning, Director,” Alex said.
She waved it away. “Lashonda, please.” She smiled at us, and there was no evading her amiability. She was not at all like the woman I remembered on . “So the two of you went out to the black hole. I assume you visited the cannon.”
“Yes, we did,” said Alex.
“I wish we could dissuade people from doing that. We’ve not really had a problem, but I’m just not comfortable with sightseers hanging around a black hole. Not that I’d think of you in that way.” She managed a smile that implied she’d appreciate it if we didn’t do it again. “Can I get you some coffee?”
That brought Arthur back in. When he was gone and we’d all started on the coffee, she sighed, signaling she knew what was coming and had long since tired of the subject. Nevertheless she asked what had brought us to see her.
“Do you have any theories,” asked Alex, “that would explain what happened to Octavia?”
She bit down on her lower lip. “You don’t waste any time getting to the point, do you?”
Alex didn’t reply, but simply sat with his coffee cup raised halfway, inviting her to respond.
“Let me turn this around, Alex,” she said. “You’ve been out there. I haven’t. Do have any idea what happened?”
“Lashonda, if I knew the answer to that, we wouldn’t be here wasting your time.”
“I’m sure that’s true. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked about it. Over the last twelve years Octavia has come to dominate my life. The truth is, I don’t know why it disappeared. I have no idea. None whatever. Can I make that any clearer? If it was some sort of government plot, I was kept out of it. And I can tell you, if I knew what really happened, I would gladly go on HV, call in the media, tell everyone I see, do anything I could to get the word out. There is nothing I would like more than to get rid of this thing.”
They both fell silent. Then Alex leaned forward. “What did the AI, the one in the cannon, say?”
“I’m sorry. What do you mean?”
“When you listened to Verona, what did you learn?”
“Nothing. I never even heard more than a few minutes of it. There was nothing there. She reported on the efforts to locate the pods, and finally how happy everyone was when they were located. Otherwise it was mostly just her reactions to idle conversations.”
“Between Charlotte and Housman?”
“Mostly, yes.”
“And you only listened to a few minutes of it?”
“My people sat and played the rest of it out. I had work to do. They found nothing of concern.”
“I can’t believe you’d have trusted them that much. Lashonda, you were running the investigation at the time. You wouldn’t have pushed listening to the AI off to your assistants.”