I glared at him. Tic grinned. "Or else," he said, "she started babbling about peacock thingies, and they thought she was a total loon."
"Did they call me that in the police report?" I asked, reaching for the file.
"Of course not," Tic replied, moving the file farther away from me. "Not in so many words. At any rate, the police believe in peacock thingies now. To a modest degree. Considering how the navy went berserk and kidnapped you, the constabulary has decided you weren’t completely crazy, vis-a-vis mysterious tubes of light. Which is too bad — it’s high time I worked with someone more tico than me."
I gave him a long hard look. "I’m strongly beginning to suspect you aren’t tico at all."
Tic looked offended. "Ms. Smallwood," he said, "I’m tico as a terrijent… which is a little brown beetle not noted for odd behavior, but it was the first alliteration that came to mind. More to the point, I am by far the oldest proctor in the entire Vigil. If I’m not approaching a state of Zen by now, there must be something wrong with me. Do you understand? In the normal life cycle of proctors, I’m at a point where I should be One with the universe. Or at most 1.0001. I should be asymptotic to apotheosis. Holding regular conversations with the major deities. Feeling the infinitesimal flux of the cosmological constant. Speaking the mystic language of the wind. If I’m not ecstatically demented with otherworldly bliss, Smallwood, a good many people will lose their faith that there is such a thing as Zenning out. Including myself; and I hate disappointing poor crazy old men."
Despite the intensity of his words, he’d spoken with precious little emotion. Precious little emotion you could identify anyway. Was he joking at his own expense? Confiding a deep dark secret? Speaking straight from the heart? "Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Why not?" he replied. "When it crosses my mind to do something, I don’t ask why, I ask why not. And usually there’s no reason not to, so I just go ahead." He paused, then added, "It’s given me the strangest collection of hats."
I stared at him a moment, then said, "You’re tico enough for me. Don’t lose faith in that Zenning-out business."
He smiled. "What a sweet girl. Now let’s talk about Chappalar’s death."
Outside the window, the shadow of our tree stretched off on a diagonal, reaching far across the rooftops as the sun set behind us. The street straight below had already gone dark enough for safety lights to be turning themselves on: children skipping past in jackets that shone bright orange so they couldn’t be missed; adults with coats phosphorescing in more prudish colors, or the occasional curmudgeon with no lights at all — clods who preferred to get run down in traffic rather than stand out in the darkness. ("What if someone’s following me?" I once heard a man say. "Why wear clothes that make me an easy target?" As if snipers were a daily danger and careless drivers no trouble at all.)
Tic picked up the police file packet from my desk and idly turned it over in his fingers. "Chappalar’s death," he said again. "The police neglected a vital line of questioning, and as discriminating proctors we should consider whether to draw this to their attention." He glanced up at me; the lowering dark made his face even pouchier. "Who knew where you and Chappalar would be?"
I’d barely registered his question the first time he asked it. Now it settled down more solid in my mind… and I realized Tic had hit on a serious point. The androids struck the pump station before Chappalar and I arrived; they’d taken out all the staff by the time we showed up.
So how did they know where we’d be?
We hadn’t given the station any advance notice of our visit. Even Chappalar and I didn’t know very far ahead — we’d only decided the previous evening, just before leaving our office for the night.
So who did know where we were going?
None of the other proctors, that was sure. Chappalar and I headed out together, without talking to anybody else. And we hadn’t logged our intentions with the office computer — Chappalar had a case of the stubborns about that, always wanting to leave things open so he could change his mind on the spur of the moment.
So who knew? Only the people Chappalar and I might have talked to after work.
I’d told my family I was going out on a scrutiny — the first of my career, and the whole house was excited. But I’d made a joke of teasing them, keeping it a big secret: can’t tell, Vigil business, might be a bust-their-balls raid that’ll hit all the broadcasts. I’d held out till little Livvy’s bedtime, when I whispered in her ear I was just going to a water-treatment plant; she proudly-loudly announced the news to everyone else, they laughed, and that was that.
"As far as I can remember," I told Tic, "I never mentioned Pump Station 3 to anyone. I just said I was going to a water-treatment plant. Five of those in the city."
"As far as you can remember?" A squidge of emotion flickered across his face; but thanks to those blasted goggles, I couldn’t tell which emotion it was. "Ms. Smallwood… you realize your link-seed can delve into—"
"I know," I interrupted. "They explained at mushor."
The same way my link-seed could package up memories for the police, it could rummage through my mind for forgotten minutiae stashed below the conscious threshold. The process wasn’t perfect — our brains are lazy buggers who adjust memories for easy storage, throwing away some details and approximating others with images that are already in our mental cupboards. Still and all, the night in question was recent enough that I shouldn’t find too much distortion.
"It’s rather imperative for us to be sure on this," Tic said. "If you explicitly told anyone you were going to Pump Station 3…"
"Yes!" I snapped, "I know it’s important!"
He peered at me owlishly through his shaded goggles. Then he asked, "Stick or bag?"
"Excuse me?"
"When I was a dewy-eyed novice," he said, "my mentors took the direct approach in helping me deal with my fears. Whenever I hesitated to use my link-seed, they either hit me with a stick or put a bag over my head. I hated the bag most, so that’s what they usually used." He sighed dramatically. "Such barbaric days — I swore I’d be more enlightened. By which I mean I’m giving you the choice. Stick or bag?"
I boggled at him, wondering if this was just a joke. So far as I could see, he didn’t have either a stick or bag… but then, he wore the usual Oolom tote pack, a flat ort-skin pouch positioned at groin level, held in place with straps up around the neck and down to the ankles. The pack was just big enough to hold some escrima rods, and a sack or two.
Even as I watched, his hand drifted down toward the tote pack’s zip-mouth.
"No stick, no bag," I said jump-quickly. "I’ll do this. Just give me time."
"At your convenience." Tic folded his hands in front of him: the picture of a man willing to wait.
Waiting for me to invoke my link-seed demon. To tweak fate’s nose by hooking up again.
Look. This is getting stale for me too — the constant whining about my link, "Oh, woe, what if my brain goes splat?" You must be saying, "Snap out of it, honey. The seed is a gift, not a curse. And anyway, the thing is so thoroughly twined around your neurons, you have no choice but to live with it."
The same words I kept saying to myself.
I hated the fear. It was so daft childish — to train seven whole years, then melt into drippy dread when I finally got what I wanted.