"So, why? We're back to motive. Why'd she try to kill us and, presumably, Miles Bowman?"
I thought on it until, at last, a mouse brought me the answer. “When you were married, Shad, before your flying days, did your wife ever bring you a sweetie when you were feeling low, some sort of little treat to bring you out of your doldrums?"
"Sure—” He aimed his light at me. “The mouse! That doesn't happen with real critters and their mates."
"She tried to kill us, Shad, because she didn't want us to discover that she killed Bowman. She killed Bowman for the very noblest of reasons: to protect her family. She's Archie Quartermain's mate and is about to become a mother. I think if you check inside those EMU capsules you'll find fox hair that won't match up with Quartermain's. Have you seen that image implanter?"
"I haven't found it, and I looked."
"Unfortunate."
"Jaggs, don't you think Archie's in this with her?"
"No. I believe your old roommate thinks his mate is a genuine vixen. Why should he think anything else? He's not a proper fox himself. Where's his den?"
"When I was mapping the dirt tunnels, I found a couple of wide spots, but nothing like a place to sleep or make little foxes. No little animal bones—"
"Can you get us back to Old Bones, where Quartermain first talked to us?"
"Sure, but it'll take hours to go back the way we came."
"Let's take a shortcut. We can get out through the mail slot."
I led the way and we hurried. There was no telling what Shirley Wurple might do with that image implanter once she awakened and found out she was dead.
Once we left the mail slot, it was a mere thirty meters south to reach the entrance to the burrow. After reaching his rather lean receptionist, I led the way over Old Bones's ribcage to the back of the chamber and into the hole between the two rock slabs. According to Shad's map, the hole turned abruptly down, then zigzagged generally southwest until it entered an inclined shaft carved by groundwater. The shaft led to a small grotto illuminated by two very dim cracks of natural light from the surface. There was not even enough room for a man to stand upright, but the tiny cave averaged between one and two meters wide and well over forty meters in length where it began sloping down, the overflow pouring into a rubble-filled channel that presumably found its way to Becka Brook.
"When the vixen brought Quartermain his mouse, this is where she came from. This is to where Quartermain followed her after leaving me.” I turned and aimed my lens at Shad's micro. “Something I don't understand. With the research Quartermain did on foxes and the hunt, your old roommate had to know about that mouse—that it didn't fit. Is it possible that Archie Quartermain deluded himself into thinking Shirley Wurple is a real vixen?"
"You should've seen me stalking that hooded merganser all over Maine. It's a good thing she was a real bird or she would've taken out papers on me. When you're lonely and desperate, you can talk yourself into believing anything. Archie lives in a hole in the ground. By the time he could afford to buy himself a designer meat suit he was already a fox in his head. Trouble is, when we copy into one of these ams, we bring that human need for companionship along with us. After a lonely couple of years by himself, running before the hounds his only meaning in life, along comes this warm, cute, sexy little vixen who wants to rub, cuddle, bring him mice, and make little foxes. You bet he could delude himself—Hold it."
After Shad's warning, we both fell silent and streaked for cover. We were behind a small ledge, our lights off, our sensors on. A warm mass was entering the chamber from above. “I heard that,” said a voice. It was Quartermain. Shad and I moved our mechs out from behind the ledge. The fox was standing beside the pool of water. “What are you two doing here?” he demanded.
"Where's your mate, Arch?” asked Shad.
"My mate?"
"The vixen who's fixin’ to make you a pappy."
He walked a few steps in one direction, then turned and walked back, leveling his gaze on Shad's micro. “What do you want with her? She's a fox—a real fox."
"She's nothing of the sort,” I said. “She's a Fantronics bio imprinted with the engrams of a woman named Shirley Wurple."
Quartermain was so still he could have been a taxidermist's showpiece. “Doctor Shirley Wurple?” he said to my micro.
"Yes."
"The person who ... Bloody hell.” He sat next to the water and stared deep into the pool. “She killed Miles, didn't she?"
"Yes,” I answered as Shad crossed the pool to investigate something. “I don't know if this helps, Quartermain, but I think she believed she was doing it for her family: you and the coming cubs."
"How did she do it?"
"During the run, after you passed that spot in Quik Grove lane, she cut your scent trail with probably some sort of chemical, then laid a drag trail into the thick woods, probably with one of your former body parts from a previous hunt."
"She has an old tail of mine. A bit morbid, but I thought it was kind of touching."
"When Miles reached that particular spot in the grove, she hit the horse with an image implant that drove the animal insane. Champion saw Miles Bowman as a threat—"
"—and then Champion trampled to death the man who loved him more than anyone else in the world,” completed Quartermain. “This is insane. Back in the Fantronics lab, that woman—I thought she was joking. She made like she was flirting with me when she was getting me ready to print into my fox suit—making jokes about buying my human self and bringing it home with her for fun and games—She must've been sixty! You don't suppose she actually bought me."
"No,” Shad said from the other side of the pool. “The old you is in Hollywood right now under the name of Trent Scanlon playing the feature role of Saddam Hussein in the black comedy Uday and Qusay are Ed-day. Principal photography began last February."
"Hollywood,” the fox repeated. Again he was motionless, no doubt having one of those life-assessing moments. Lifting his head, at last, he faced me. “How can you be so certain she did it?"
"She tried to kill us, too.” I explained how the vixen had tunneled into Champion's stall and how we discovered her expired human meat suit below the phony National Park Information Center. He shook his head at last, got up on all fours, turned toward the back of the chamber, jumped up on a ledge, and seemingly vanished into the rock. We heard his voice say, “This way."
I moved up to where Quartermain seemed to have vanished and saw a shelf of stone. Just beneath it was an opening that was impossible to see unless one was right up on it. “This way, Shad."
"I found something,” he said.
I moved back down and crossed the water to where Shad's light was illuminating something the size of a dinner roll that looked sealed in waterproof plastic. “Is that the missing portable image imprinter?"
"She tried to hide it in the water. The vixen carried it down here holding the plastic bag in her mouth. Tiny, sharp, little teeth. Water got in the bag. We'll be able to match Wurple's bio to the bite mark impressions."
"We'll need the tracked mech to bring it out, Shad. Before we do that, call it in to Police Constable Lounds for the arrest. That ought to raise his esteem in the park constabulary."
"I'd love to see his boss's face when he finds out his case fell apart."
"Let's get to Quartermain's den. Your old roommate is about to give up his mate."
"Why did you kill Miles?” we heard Quartermain demand as Shad and I came out of the tunnel into a chamber where the only illumination was provided by our lights.
"I didn't mean to at first,” answered the vixen's tearful voice. She looked at us, her eyes wide. Looking at Quartermain she said, “Really I didn't. I'd hoped to frighten him out of the—Oh, I can't look at you and tell you this!"