CHAPTER TEN
“Cooking may be chemistry, but it’s no fun to eat a chemistry experiment.”
—Irfan Qasad
The house was absolutely still. No one moved, or even breathed. Then a roar crashed through the room as everyone talked, clattered, hooted, and chattered at once. Kendi swore. Ben stared with open mouth. Petrie gesticulated madly at Ched-Mulaar and shouted something incoherent. Tan and Gretchen watched from the walls, looking unhappy.
“QUIET!”
Everyone froze again. Salman stood tall and terrible in the middle of the room, her face a thunderhead. The hologram of Foxglove continued to speak, though the sound had been muted.
“How did he find out?” Salman demanded. “How?”
No one answered. The room remained frozen like a stage tableau. Kendi swallowed. It didn’t take a political analyst to figure out that Salman’s plan to distract the public from her criminal donor lay in ruins. If Salman publicly claimed that she also had known about children re-entering the Dream, it would look like desperate whining. Salman would have to answer to Foxglove’s charges on her own, with nothing to back her up.
The silence continued. Finally Salman sank down into a chair and covered her face with her hands. The tableau broke and everyone started talking again. Petrie snatched up a data pad and pecked madly at it. Ben crossed the room and knelt by his grandmother’s chair with her hand in his. Kendi was struck at how alike they looked. It wasn’t so much a physical resemblance as a similarity in posture and expression. They both resembled Ara.
After a while, Salman gave a heavy sigh. Ben released her hand and she stood up with a resolute look on her face. “Conference!” she said. “Top five in my office.”
Petrie, Ched-Mulaar, Yin May, and two other people Kendi didn’t recognize followed Salman into her office. They shut the door. In the living room, various hushed conversations continued. Ben came back to Kendi.
“We should probably get out of the way,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll call soon and have some speaking engagements for you.”
“Let’s go,” Kendi agreed.
No one spoke on the monorail ride home. Kendi wore sunglasses and a hat to remain more anonymous, though Gretchen and Tan remained vigilant. Their eyes darted about without stopping, examining this human, that Ched-Balaar. Kendi stared out the window at the blur of leaves and branches that currently resembled his life. Lucia was pregnant, he had discovered Silent children re-entering the Dream, a scandal had broken within Salman’s campaign, and Mitchell Foxglove had somehow managed to usurp her possession of Kendi’s secret.
Kendi tapped long fingers on his knee. How had Foxglove learned about that? Modesty aside, Kendi had never met another Silent who could sense and track people in the Dream nearly as well as Kendi himself could. That didn’t mean one didn’t exist, but in the post-Despair Dream? He doubted it. Kendi himself would have sensed such a person. Besides, Foxglove was publicly against the mixing of Silent and non-Silent, and had no Silent working for him. That meant Foxglove had gotten his information from a different source. So who had known?
Kendi himself, of course. Martina and Keith. Ben. Harenn and Bedj-ka. Salman. Wanda Petrie. And various people within Salman’s campaign circle. A lot of people, come to that, but no one who would blab. No one who—
Kendi sat up straight. It was obvious—Foxglove had planted a spy inside Salman’s campaign. But who was it? Kendi grimaced. That was a question more easily answered by Salman herself. Kendi only knew a few of the people who worked for her. She and her Top Five were in a better position to ferret something out. He would have to send her a message—if she hadn’t already come up with the idea herself.
When they arrived home, Harenn was waiting for them. Her middle was well-rounded these days, and the sight always made Kendi’s heart swell with fatherly anticipation. Was the baby a boy or a girl? Would it look a lot like Ben? What would the baby’s personality be? Would Kendi be able to cope with the pressures of parenthood? One way or another, he was going to find out. Twice over—Lucia was there was well, though she wasn’t showing, of course. Her face wore a solemn look.
“We saw Foxglove’s speech,” she said. “Council of war?”
“Council of war,” Kendi agreed.
They gathered around the kitchen table. Lucia took up her usual position at the counter, busily chopping sharp-smelling herbs she had bought that morning. When Harenn asked her to sit down, she shook her head. Cooking, she claimed, helped her to think better.
“And I want you to know,” she added, “that I don’t intend to do this full-time for a huge household. Ben and Kendi are going to take lessons.”
“From who?” Kendi asked, trying to imagine the logistics behind enrolling in a cooking class with bodyguards and a full schedule of speeches.
“From me.” Her gleaming knife whacked the stems off a bunch of greens. “Which means you’ll pay very close attention.”
“What do we need to talk about?” Ben asked. “Best to go about it methodically.”
“Two issues,” Kendi said. “Who’s trying to kill me, and who’s the spy in Grandma’s campaign.”
“Spy?” Harenn asked.
Kendi quickly outlined his thinking. Harenn pursed her lips. “I am not entirely sure of your reasoning. A great many people knew this so-called secret, Kendi, and it is likely that someone accidentally revealed it.”
“I thought about that,” Kendi agreed. “But there’s another factor—why was Foxglove the one to get the information? If one of us had said something by accident, it’s way more likely the information would’ve reached a reporter before it reached Foxglove. And what reporter wouldn’t kill to break that story?”
“True,” Harenn said, drawing out the word. “But I remain skeptical.”
“We also have no idea who killed Finn and Leona Day,” Lucia said, “or if their deaths are related to everything else that’s going on.”
Kendi drummed his fingers some more. “All my instincts say there’s a connection here. We’re just not seeing it.”
“The fact is,” Ben said, “we just don’t have enough information. We have no idea who murdered the Days. Just about anyone could be a spy in Grandma’s campaign. And lots of people would love to see Kendi dead.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Lucia got out a loaf of bread, a bowl of butter, two tomatoes, and a wedge of cheese. Her knife went back to work.
“What do all these elements have in common?” Harenn asked. “A single common vector would—”
“Who are the Days?” Tan rasped.
Silence. Lucia’s knife stopped moving. Kendi bit his lip. He had gotten so used to Tan and Gretchen following him around that he had completely forgotten that they didn’t know about Lucia’s illicit visit to the Day’s house and what she had found there.
“Are the Days connected with the attack on Lucia?” Tan continued. “Lars told me about that, but he didn’t have details.”
“You’re holding out on us, Kendi,” Gretchen said. “Come on—give. We might be able to help.”
Kendi glanced at Ben. His lips were set in a hard line and he shook his head the tiniest bit possible—No way can you tell them. Kendi grimaced—We have to tell them something. Ben spread his hands—Just the minimum, then. Who needed the Dream when you had private body language?
“The Days were the blackmailers,” Kendi said. “Ben and Lucia tracked them down and learned that Finn Day had a connection to Foxglove and the Federalists. Lucia...paid them a visit. When they weren’t home.”
“Broke in, you mean,” Gretchen said.
“She found the file the Days were threatening us with,” Kendi said. “She also found their corpses.”
“Murdered,” Tan said.
“The bodies were still warm,” Lucia said. She finished slicing tomatoes and went to work on the bread with a serrated knife. “I think the killer was trying to access their computer. I came in and frightened him or her away without realizing it. I downloaded the file, saw the bodies, and fled. On the way home I was accosted by a beggar. A few minutes later, someone hit me over the head and took the disk with the file on it. We were afraid the blackmail would start up again, but three months have gone by and we haven’t heard a thing. The mugger probably doesn’t know what was on the disk or can’t understand the information. At any rate, we believe we’re safe.”
“Unless the killer was the one who hit you,” Gretchen said.
Lucia blinked. Kendi stared at her.
“It would’ve been easy enough for the person to wait outside the Days’ house,” Gretchen continued. “In fact, it would make sense. The killer wanted something from that computer. Lucia may have scared the person into getting the hell out of the house, but a smart guy would hang around and wait for you to leave because he still needs that file. He—I’m gonna assume it’s a he—sneaks back into the house, discovers the file is gone, and figures you have it. He runs after you, coshes you, and takes the disk.”
“But how would he know where to find me?” Lucia objected. “The beggar girl delayed me, but not for long. By the time the killer got in and out of the house, I would have been well away. I was almost back at Ben and Kendi’s house when I was mugged, in fact. The killer couldn’t possibly have followed me.”
“You’re assuming,” Tan rasped, “that the killer didn’t know where you were going.”
“How could he know that?” Ben said.
“He would know where to go,” Harenn spoke up, “if he recognized Lucia.”
Kendi’s blood chilled. “The Days’ killer is someone we know,” he said. “All life!”
“This theory doesn’t hold up,” Ben objected. “The file is only valuable to me or to someone who might want to blackmail me, and no one has contacted us about it. Why go through all that trouble to steal a file and then not use it?”
“I don’t know,” Tan admitted. “But you have to consider that possibility.”
Ben dropped his head into his hands. “The blackmail might start up again, then. God.”
Kendi leveled Tan a harsh look. He wanted to hit her. It had taken weeks to persuade Ben that the file was gone, that no one was going to blackmail them or reveal the secret of his parentage, that he could sleep at night without worrying. Tan had raked it all up again.
“Ben,” she said as gently as her raspy voice would allow, “you can tell me what’s in the file. I’m not going to judge you, and the information might give us a clue to—”
“No.”
“Ben—”
“I said no,” Ben snarled. “And if you ask again, you’re fired, got that?”
Tan’s mouth hardened into a thin line. She nodded without answering.
“I think,” Lucia said, “that all this is worth investigating again. Kendi, if you like, I could put together a little team to start some spying. I believe it would be interesting to watch some of Mitchell Foxglove’s people. Gretchen is good at surveillance, for example.” She put a large griddle on the stove to heat and set to spreading bread slices with thick, yellow butter.
“I have a job,” Gretchen objected.
“We can add it to your job description,” Kendi said lightly, “and hire another bodyguard to pick up the slack. Who else were you thinking about for a team, Lucia?”
“The Vajhurs,” Lucia replied. “We know them, and we know they can keep quiet. Prasad and Vidya have worked for us before, and Sejal’s...talent at possession would be a big asset. Katsu is also trustworthy. And I’m sure they can use the money.”
“I’m thinking we’ll find a way to charge this one to Grandma,” Kendi mused aloud.
“It won’t even be difficult work,” Lucia said. “We can set up remote spider cameras and set them to alert us whenever someone enters or leaves Foxglove’s house. That way, the Vajhurs can monitor everything from home. No danger of getting caught.”
“What can I do?” Ben said. “I’m not going to sit at home all day doing nothing.”
“Use your computer,” Lucia said. “See if you can hack into Foxglove’s records.”
Ben thought about that. “It’d be a challenge,” he said at last. “Foxglove will be heavily guarded and encrypted.”
Lucia put together buttery sandwiches of tomatoes and herb-sprinkled cheese and dropped them sizzling on the hot griddle. “We never did discuss common vectors in all these events. What are they?”
“Kendi, for one,” Ben said. “He’s the target of the killer, he’s involved in the blackmailing, and he’s working for Grandma’s campaign.”
“That also makes Senator Salman a vector,” Tan said. “Kendi, the target, works for her campaign, which may have a spy in it.”
“This leaves out the blackmail,” Harenn said.
“It may be an attempt to discredit Kendi and render him useless to the Senator,” Tan replied.
“I don’t like it,” Kendi said. “If they want to discredit me, why strike at Ben? He’s the primary blackmail victim, not me.”
“The campaign itself is a vector,” Gretchen said. “Kendi-the-target works for it. Ben-the-blackmail-guy is the grandson of the Senator, and Finn-and-Leona-Day-the-corpses had connections to Mitchell Foxglove.” She scratched her nose. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to disrupt the campaign.”
“But not just Grandma’s campaign,” Ben said. “If the blackmail attempt may have been an attempt to hurt Grandma by hurting me, but the Days’ deaths benefit her and hurt Mitchell Foxglove.”
“So someone’s trying to disrupt both campaigns?” Kendi said.
“That would point to Ched-Pirasku.” Lucia slid a spatula under each sandwich and gave it an expert flip. The kitchen smelled of toasted bread, hot cheese, and baking herbs. “He benefits if the Federalists and the Tapers—Unionists—lose.”
“A possibility,” Ben said. “Should we watch Ched-Pirasku, too?”
“Maybe,” Kendi said. “But only if Foxglove doesn’t pan out. I still think it’s him.”
Lucia brought to the table a platter piled high with crispy grilled sandwiches filled with soft cheese, aromatic herbs, and juicy tomatoes. Everyone dug in with appreciative moans. Bedj-ka appeared from Ben’s office, where he had been playing sim-games, snatched a sandwich, and vanished back into the office again. Harenn, who solemnly maintained the most dangerous place to stand was between a pregnant woman and a plate of hot food, ate two sandwiches and started on a third while the group discussed approaches. Tan refused to get involved in the surveillance except as it might relate to the safety of Ben, Kendi, and Harenn.
“And to Lucia’s safety, come to that,” Tan finished. “I’ll definitely have to put more staff on this one.”
“Doing our bit to improve the economy,” Kendi observed wryly.
“And increase the Silent population,” Ben added with his mouth full. Lucia gave him a playful slap on the top of the head.
They outlined plans and options. Kendi called the Vajhurs, who were happy to accept the surveillance job, and Harenn went to work on a schedule. A few minutes later she put her stylus down.
“I should not bother with this until I have had a chance to speak with Sejal,” she said. “He spied on Foxglove’s campaign, after all, and is more likely to know who we should be watching.”
“We’re not watching Foxglove himself?” Kendi asked.
“The media keep a close eye on him, which restricts his movements,” Harenn said. “Foxglove’s lackeys are the ones who will lead us to anything illicit.”
“Attention! Attention!” said the computer. “Wanda Petrie is calling for Father Kendi Weaver.”
Kendi accepted the call, and Petrie’s face appeared on the kitchen wall. She looked even more tired and frazzled than before.
“I have a new speaking schedule for you,” she said. “Check your messages for the details, but it starts in three days.”
“Good,” said Lucia. “Three days’ worth of cooking lessons before you disappear again.”
“The Senator is giving a press conference at four,” Petrie said, “if you’re interested in watching.”
“Is she going to answer to the charges?” Ben asked.
“Certainly not!” Petrie said, aghast. “That would be tantamount to admitting guilt at this stage. In a couple days we will address that problem in public, when we have more information and some of the crisis has calmed down, but not until then. In the meantime—”
“Don’t talk to any reporters,” Kendi said. “I know.”
“When do you want us to start watching Foxglove’s people?” Gretchen asked after Petrie signed off.
“As soon Harenn finishes that schedule,” Kendi said. “What are you writing, Lucia?”
“A shopping list,” she said. “You and Ben are cooking me breakfast tomorrow morning.”
Kendi stared at the recipe text floating above the new data pad Petrie had given him. Outside, the sun had risen, tree lizards were chirping, and birds were singing. A fire extinguisher sat conspicuously on the cupboard. Ben’s idea, not Lucia’s. Ben himself stood in the corner, looking like a deer ready to flee a forest fire.
“Are you sure about this?” Kendi asked. “I’m warning you—I couldn’t even get a kitchen job as a slave. My mother was a cook, and she tried twice to get me out of mucking ponds, but I was so horrible in the kitchen that the manager put me right back outside again.”
“You can read directions, can’t you?” Lucia said.
“Yes.”
“And you can do as they say, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you can do it. Cooking is nothing more than following a recipe and caring whether or not it comes out. So. The recipe says beat two eggs in a large bowl with a fork.”
Kendi picked up an egg and cracked it so hard against the cupboard that it squelched into a yellow shambles. Lucia didn’t move to help him clean it up. Once he had taken care of the mess, he cracked a second egg more carefully and it dropped neatly into the bowl. He followed with one more. Lucia nodded approval. Kendi scrambled the eggs with a fork.
“How long do I do this?” he asked.
“Read the recipe,” she said.
A ‘Beat until fluffy,’ “ he read, and checked the bowl. “Looks fluffy to me.”
“What comes next, then? Ben, don’t you leave. There is ham in the refrigerator. Check the recipe database to see how you should prepare it for breakfast.”
Kendi, meanwhile, got out the milk and started to pour some into the bowl. Lucia caught him by the wrist before he could begin.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“The recipe calls for milk,” he said.
“How much?”
“I can measure it by eye,” he protested.
Lucia wordlessly handed him a measuring cup and watched while he poured the correct amount and emptied it into the bowl.
“Seems stupid to pour twice,” he grumbled.
“You are not pouring twice. You are measuring once and pouring once.”
She watched while he also measured out flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. While he stirred the mixture with a wire whisk, Lucia turned to Ben, who had put a frying pan on the stove with a bit of butter in the bottom. It was melting into a golden puddle.
“Very good,” she said. “And the right heat. Set the ham on the cutting board and slice it as thick as you want it. Don’t look at the slice—keep your eye on the part that remains, and you’ll be more even.”
“Just for the record,” Ben said, “I’m not a bad cook. I just hate cooking.”
“Perhaps because you associate it with being alone in the kitchen doing something boring,” Lucia said. “If you and Kendi cook together, it’ll become a family event and therefore more interesting.”
“Maybe,” Ben said dubiously, “but what about—”
Lucia’s hand shot out and caught Kendi’s wrist again. He was holding a spice container over the bowl of pale pancake batter. “What are you doing now?”
“Just adding some cinnamon,” he said plaintively. “My mother always put cinnamon in our pancakes.”
Lucia removed the container from Kendi’s hand and set it firmly aside. “I think this is why you always fail at cooking,” she said. “You make changes in the recipe before you understand what you’re doing. It’s perfectly fine to tinker with a recipe, but only after you know how the original works. Never, ever change a recipe until you’ve tried it once or twice as it’s written. Besides”—she held up the spice container—”this is chili powder, not cinnamon.”
Under Lucia’s gimlet eye, Kendi heated the griddle and poured spoonfuls of batter into a light coating of sizzling oil. Ben, meanwhile, dropped thick slices of ham into the frying pan. The kitchen began to smell of salty meat and hot pancakes. While they were cooking, Kendi tried to turn away, but Lucia stopped him.
“Don’t leave the stove.”
“But they’ll be a while,” Kendi said. “I just wanted to check my messages real quick.”
“Another reason why your earlier attempts went wrong,” Lucia said. “Let me guess—you get engrossed in something else and only remember your meal when the smoke alarm goes off.”
“That’s the way of it,” Ben said. “One time he put a loaf of store-bought bread dough in the oven and left it there for seven hours. It was a crust brick all the way through.”
“That was just one time!” Kendi protested.
“And then there was the molasses cookie crisis,” Ben said, “and the donut disaster and the spaghetti—”
“All right, all right.”
“You’re burning,” Lucia pointed out.
The first batch had turned black. Kendi thought the pancakes might still be salvageable, but Lucia ordered him to pitch them and start over.
“A hint of burned taste ruins everything,” she said.
The second batch came out golden-brown and fragrant. Ben finished frying ham while Kendi started a third batch and Lucia set the table. In the end they sat down to a delicious breakfast of crispy pancakes, sweet syrup, and rich ham.
“A fine meal,” Lucia said. “The nice thing about cooking is that the reward is usually immediate and delicious.”
“I hear that,” Kendi said, waving his fork.
“And we have just enough time,” she added, checking her fingernail.
“Time for what?” Ben asked warily.
“To start a batch of bread for lunch.”
Over the next three days, Lucia taught the two men how to make bread, pasta, simple sauces, fried chick-lizard, mickey-spike stew, roasted potatoes, stuffing, cookies, and more. To relieve the surplus of food, they fed Tan, Gretchen, Lars, Harenn, and Bedj-ka. One day Ben invited Mother Mee up for lunch. She accepted with pleasure and gave them a few recipes of her own. Even Gretchen grudgingly admitted that the food was “more or less edible.”
“I’m better at this than I ever thought I could be,” Kendi admitted as they put the last of the dishes away late on the third day. “Thanks to an inspired teacher. How about you, Ben?”
“I don’t loathe it,” he said. “Though I’ll admit to a mild dislike.”
Harenn, meanwhile, set up a twenty-four hour surveillance schedule on Foxglove’s campaign. It wasn’t difficult—the cameras did most of the work, and Gretchen and the Vajhurs could keep an eye on the monitors from their own data pads. Ben worked on finding a way into Foxglove’s personal and financial records. Tan, Lars, and a few others continued rotated guard duty on Kendi, Ben, Harenn, and Lucia.
More time passed, and the winter rains began. Salman’s campaign dragged in a dismal third place, and the dreary weather mirrored everyone’s morale. The trial of Willen Yaraye began, and the prosecutors dragged Salman into it, forcing her to testify. She swore that she knew nothing of his criminal connections, but the media portrayed this as an appalling ignorance rather than an innocent mistake—especially in Othertown, where the few feeds Foxglove didn’t own were trying to curry his favor—and Salman’s poll scores dropped even further.
Despite the depression hovering over Salman’s campaign, Bellerophon itself enjoyed a lift of spirit. The news that children were once again entering the Dream stormed across the planet, bringing hope to thousands. The news spread through the Dream as well, and Kendi could feel the excitement when he walked there. Bedj-ka transferred to school at the monastery, where he took classes in meditation and memory training in a special accelerated series of courses designed to ready him for Dream communication work as soon as he was old enough. He took to the exercises as if he had been born to them, and Harenn bragged of his progress to anyone who would listen.
No adults among the Silenced found their way back into the Dream, whether they were human, Ched-Balaar, or members of other species. Dream experts set forth a great number of theories about this, most of which followed Martina’s reasoning—that children’s brains were more resilient, able to weather the Despair better than their elders. Foxglove, of course, referred to “his” discovery at every opportunity on the campaign trail, and his popularity soared even higher.
Ben, meanwhile, continued poking around with his computer system. Although he wasn’t able to hack into Foxglove’s records, he did discover through other sources that Foxglove was wealthier than anyone imagined because he owned most of the mines surrounding Othertown. The situation tugged at Kendi’s instincts, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. Not that he had much time to ruminate, with the endless rounds of speeches, fund raisers, and rallies. Fewer and fewer people showed up as the months wore on, and it got harder and harder for Kendi to muster up the energy to keep speaking.
There was no word about the missing file, and Kendi was relieved to see Ben able to sleep through the night again, though he still occasionally came out of the Dream with cuts and scratches on his hands. He brushed aside Kendi’s questions about them, saying they were side-effects of “stress relief.”
[COMMENT1] Harenn entered her third trimester and Lucia entered her second. Harenn’s movements were slower and more deliberate as her middle grew larger and heavier. Regular check-ups showed the fetus was developing perfectly, with no complications, and the baby was expected to arrive right on time—a few weeks before the election, as it happened.
“I am not sure which event is more momentous,” she said from the rocking chair Ben had installed in the nursery. “The gubernatorial election or this baby’s birth.”
“Depends on whose household you’re in,” Kendi said. He aimed his data pad at the wall and thumbed it. The walls swirled into a talltree forest setting, complete with smiling, child-sized dinosaurs roaming among happy flowers and grinning bushes. He frowned and thumbed the data pad again. The forest disappeared and an ocean scene washed over the walls in its place. Fish and merfolk danced among waving kelp, pausing to wave at Kendi and Harenn every now and then. Bubbles made smiley faces. Kendi made another frown and aimed the data pad at the wall.
“Just choose one,” Harenn said. “The child will not care.”
“I want it to be perfect,” Kendi objected, gesturing at the offending room. Two cribs awaited occupants. Two dressers were filled to bursting with baby clothes, and the shelves beneath the changing table bulged with baby supplies. More shelves were filled with playthings ranging from simple stuffed toys to interactive holographic animal playmates which adjusted themselves to meet the child’s stage of development. Outside, the sun had set and dark shadows pooled under the talltree branches.
“The main thing is that you love the child and pay lots of attention to it,” Harenn said. “Everything else is secondary. Ah—it’s moving.”
Kendi set down the pad and knelt next to the chair with his hand on Harenn’s stomach. He felt the movement beneath his palm.
“Hi, Baby,” he said as he always did. “I’m your Da.”
“Bedj-ka is becoming more and more impatient,” Harenn said. “He wants very much to be an older brother.”
“We’ll have to remind him of that when he’s a teenager and complains about getting stuck babysitting,” Kendi grinned.
The baby stopped moving. Kendi stood up and surveyed the walls. “All right. We’ll go with the underwater theme.”
Ben poked his head into the room. “Hey you guys—Gretchen’s here.”
“What? Isn’t she on surveillance duty?” Kendi said.
“She said she left early because she has big news, but she won’t spill until we’re all there. Hurry up!”
“Help me out of this chair,” Harenn said. “Medical science may have overcome many of the discomforts associated with pregnancy, but the laws of physics have not changed one bit.”
Kendi gave her a hand and they headed for the living room. Kendi’s curiosity was piqued. He had almost been ready to give up the surveillance on Foxglove’s people as a bad job. Still, he kept his excitement in check. They had had false alarms before, and this was probably one of them.
One look at Gretchen changed his mind. She was pacing about the living like a nervous blond lion, a mixture of excitement and agitation playing across her square-cut face. Ben was sitting on the edge of the sofa beside Tan.
“All right, Gretch,” Kendi said. “We’re here. What’s going on?”
“I was following Foxglove up-close and personal instead of using the spider-cams,” she began. “I saw him go into the house he uses in Treetown, and there weren’t any reporters around. A while later, he snuck out the back door by himself. Not even a bodyguard. He was wearing a rain hat and sunglasses, and I only knew it was him because I recognized the way he walks.”
“Cut to the chase,” Tan said. “Some of us are old.”
“Right.” Gretchen took a deep breath. “He took the monorail and a gondola to a little house near the border of Treetown and the monastery. He went inside. I climbed up a level and watched from there. “bout half an hour later, this woman came out.”
She tapped her data pad and conjured up the image of a Ched-Balaar.
“She looks familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her, so I did a computer search. Ben’s face-recognition software turned up an ID image. She’s a judicial clerk at the High Court.”
“So?” Kendi said.
“So?” Gretchen’s tone was incredulous. “Don’t you see what this means? It means Foxglove has connections with someone at the High Court who probably knew what the mining rights decision was going to be several days before it was officially handed down.”
“In other words, he knew how the Court voted before the decision was made public,” Kendi said. “Which is why he bought all those mining companies when he did. He knew they’d be worth billions.”
“It’s the source of all that money,” Gretchen said, “and how he managed to buy Othertown in everything but name.”
“It’s not enough evidence to bring any kind of charges,” Ben mused. “Though Grandma can probably use it. Did you get any images of him going into the house?”
“Yeah.” Gretchen grimaced. “But he was in disguise and you can’t really tell it’s him. Won’t hold up. But now that we know where to search, we can find evidence.”
“Nice work,” Tan rasped. “I don’t suppose you got any footage of Foxglove leaving the house? Maybe he’s recognizable.”
“Not really,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you.” She tapped the data pad and the scene with the holographic house sped up. The house’s door popped open and Gretchen returned the image to normal speed. A human in a rain hat and a long coat emerged, turned to speak briefly with a barely-visible figure in the doorway, and walked away.
“See?” Gretchen said. “You can’t tell for sure that—”
Ben leaped out of his chair. “Back that thing up! Back it up!”
“Ben?” Kendi said. “What’s wrong?”
In answer he snatched the pad away from a startled Gretchen and reset the image to the beginning. “gain Foxglove emerged from the house in his rain hat. Ben froze the hologram, then zoomed in and enlarged it. His lips were drawn into a tight line.
“Ben, what—?” Kendi began.
“Shut up,” Ben snapped. “I just have to—oh. Oh my god.”
He set the pad on the coffee table and backed away as if it were a bomb. Kendi and the others turned to look. Harenn and Tan looked puzzled. Kendi gasped. The display showed the image of an old man, hawk-nosed and white-haired.
“It can’t be,” Kendi whispered. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“Who is it?” Tan demanded. “I don’t recognize—”
“It’s Padric Sufur,” Ben said. “The bastard who killed my mother.”