“Red? Green?”
“Not even close.”
“All right, Terentev, you can use my dacha. But if there’s one stain on the carpet, they’ll be centrifuging you.”
“This is bigger than that. You may have to give me your dacha.”
I inclined my head and watched him silently. There was not a trace of laughter in his face; and Terentev was not a good liar.
“How about a spot as an expert witness in the story of the year?”
He nodded solemnly. “That, Maya Tatyanichna, will do just fine.”
Keishi! I called out, through the Net. I need you online now.
“Hang on, I’m crossing the street,” she said. “Is this urgent enough for me to just sit on the curb?”
This is urgent enough for you to sit on—but no; this was all on the record—anything that comes to hand.
“If you say so,” she said dubiously. “But if I get socket-jacked, I’m holding you responsible.”
A familiar warmth announced her presence. “Dr. Terentev,” I said, “the other day, I gave you a blood sample to analyze. Could you tell me what kind of animal it belongs to?”
“A humpback whale,” he said, then added nervously, “genus Megaptera.”
Just what the audience really wants, a scientific name. Why do people turn into boring encyclopedias the minute you light your Net-rune?
“How big would this animal be?”
He hesitated—asking the Net, probably. “About fifteen meters when full grown.”
“And that would be about the size of…” I prompted.
“Oh. Umm, a small yacht.”
“Or for those of our viewers who don’t own yachts, about the size of two bullet train cars placed end-to-end.”
He nodded nervously. “Yes, that’d be about right.”
“When did humpbacks become extinct?”
His eyes unfocused, and long seconds passed before he had his answer. You try to take a stand against passing off Netlinked actors as “experts,” you spend years cultivating contacts, and then your real experts consult the Net anyway—except when they do it, it’s obvious. “They were one of the last to go,” he said, finally. “There were a few around as late as Guardian times.”
“And how long will blood keep in the fridge, before it rots?”
Now he was back in home territory. He said confidently, “About eight weeks. Nine at the outside. That is, in this condition. You can keep it usable indefinitely if you’ve got the equipment, but not like this. Those cells are frisky.”
“When I gave them to you, they’d been unrefrigerated for at least a day. Does that narrow it down?”
“In that case, I’d say it’s fresh. A couple of weeks, maybe less.”
I frowned, to simulate a skepticism I no longer felt. “Not that I doubt your expertise, Dr. Terentev, but this is a little hard to accept. Is there any chance it could be a hoax? Could you fake it with nanoconstruction?”
“No way,” he said emphatically. “You’d never get all the bug byproducts out of the blood without killing the cells.”
“So somewhere in the world is a live humpback whale.”
“Live or very recently dead, yes.”
“Well, I’m sure everyone who saw The Day of the Whale has the same question: could you clone more whales from this?”
He shook his head. “No. Not from blood. Blood doesn’t have that much DNA, and what there is, is all jumbled up. It’d be like trying to put together a book that had been cut up into single words.”
“But if you had a tissue sample? If you had a live whale?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not a marine biologist, but I’d say it’s possible in theory. It would take a lot of trial and error to get the fetus to grow in vitro, but given enough time, it could probably be done. And if the whale were female, certainly.”
“Thank you, Vladimir Terentev.”
He smiled. “Always a pleasure, Maya.”
“Hypocrite,” Keishi said as I signed off.
At least he didn’t say hi to his mother. How soon can you be here?
“How soon is this?”
I turned around to face her. “I meant in person.”
“My person is in Moscow. While you were putting together a backup story, I’ve been trying to figure out where you could hide a whale.”
If she had been corporeal, I would have clapped her on the shoulder. “Always the true believer. What did you find out while I was wasting my time?”
She frowned. “I mostly wasted my time, too. Voskresenye had his signals bounced through here, but it was apparently just a false trail. My best guess is that the whale might be somewhere in Arkhangelsk.”
“Where he was imprisoned.”
“Exactly.”
I nodded. “Are you still sitting on the curb?”
“I’m in a cab on the way to the trainport.”
“Okay, go to full-link. I’m going to call Voskresenye.”
Keishi disappeared as I turned to the videophone. “Pavel of null hearth, clan Darkness-at-Noon.” The phone chirked and purred for long seconds. Then Voskresenye’s face appeared, in an unusually tight close-up, as though to hide the background. “Well,” he said, “Maya Tatyanichna. What a pleasant surprise. So glad to have a chance to say good-bye before the mother ship takes me back.”
“When can I see the whale?”
He smiled at my haste. “Arkhangelsk. Five o’clock tomorrow.”
“That’s not my time slot,” I said.
“Maya Tatyanichna, you have the last whale in the world. They will give you any time slot you want.”
I gave him a calculating look. “How secure is this line?”
He touched something on his videophone. “I will vouch for it against a Weaver.”
“All right, then. If I tell News One about the whale, they’ll take this story away from me so fast I’ll get friction burns on my camera chip. Now if you want to sit across from a smooth-head, that’s your option, but—”
“Oh, no, Maya Tatyanichna!” he said with ardor. “No other camera in the world will suit so well.”
“Well, then. Let me come up with something to tell News One, and we’ll do it in my usual time slot.”
“Your time slot is far too obscure,” he said. “Tell News One whatever you like; but it must be at five.”
“I can’t just commandeer prime time. If I called in favors I might get it, but slots between five and six are only ninety seconds long. Is that enough for you?”
“Ninety seconds?” he said. “Why so much? Ask them for ten, if it’s easier. When you show them the whale, do you think they will cut you off?”
“No,” I said, nodding slowly, “I guess they won’t at that.” I had been thinking much too small. “Where do I go?”
“If you come to Arkhangelsk alone, at the proper time you will be guided to the whale. If anyone else comes with you, you will never find me.”
“My screener—”
“Of course,” he said. “Naturally your screener may accompany you.”
“Can I meet you, at, say, four o’clock? I’ll need to set up shots, and plan what we’re going to cover. And since I won’t have time to run the whole story about you and the Guardians, I’d like to have you finish it in advance, so we can put it in as memory.”
“I am afraid that I cannot allow that,” he said. “You may be followed. I accept it as inevitable that my sanctuary will be found after your Netcast is finished, but I will not have them barging in while we are still on the air.”