Metered space, p.6
Metered Space, page 6
I closed the door softly. It would be the first time Claire and I had talked since Annie's death. I could have killed for a cigarette.
"Hello, Claire."
She stiffened, slammed her book down on the work top, and whipped around.
"Jack! How did you get in here?" Her eyes narrowed.
"Through the door," I said. "How've you been?"
"Get out." She turned her back to me.
I crossed the room and leaned on the counter beside her. She moved away, picked up a slide and inserted it onto the platform of a microscope. She sat on the stool in front of it and glued her eyes to the binocular head.
"I hear you came to visit me in the loony bin," I said. "I don't remember seeing you, but I was touched all the same."
She lifted her head from the eyepiece and turned to face me.
"Don't flatter yourself," she said. "I wanted to make sure you were really there. I'd hoped you'd become a permanent resident. I'm very disappointed."
"Don't be shy, just tell me how you feel about me, won't
you?"
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Are you sure? That's not the way it looks from here."
She ignored me, returning her eyes to the eyepiece of her microscope.
"I'm not leaving, Claire."
She kept silent.
"Face it," I continued, "one of these days you'll have to talk to me. Might as well get it over with."
She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. "Fine. You want me to say it, Jack, I'll say it. Annie's dead and you're alive. We both know it should be the other way around."
She jumped up, paced to the door and back to the counter, her features set in a rigid mask. I imagine it took a lot of effort to keep a lid on the Pandora's box of her emotions.
When she spoke again, her voice was controlled. "Annie was all I had, and you took her away from me. I was left alone, with all the gory details of the inquest and the funeral arrangements. I had to go to the morgue and identify her.
She...she barely had any face left. Then I had to bury her while you hid in that padded room in a safe world of your own making. So, yes, you bastard, I was glad to see you suffer. They ought to have kept you there forever. Now, if you don't get out of here in the next ten seconds, I'll call the guards."
She smiled viciously and pointed to my breast pocket. "You don't have a visitor's pass. I'd enjoy having the NARC security guards question you. I hear they hit first, ask questions later."
"Sure, why don't you call them? But, if you do, you'll never know why I came to visit."
"What makes you think I care?"
"Curiosity. Can't be a good scientist without it. And you're good, aren't you? You wouldn't have it any other way. Admit it, Claire, you're dying to know what I want."
"In your dreams," she said. "Look, you've disrupted my work long enough. Just get out of my lab."
Her reaction puzzled me. Before Annie died, we'd established a relationship of what Annie had laughingly called "aggressive tolerance." It was a mix of simmering contempt on her part and jeering condescension on mine. Of the two of us, Claire was definitely the smarter and had taken great joy in finding creative ways to heap abuse on me. I was always the one who gave up first. Now, she couldn't wait to get rid of me and was really forcing the issue.
"No way, Claire," I said. "I need answers and I know you've got them." I smiled at her. "I can always come visit you at your place tonight. Which would you prefer?"
If her eyes had been shotguns, I would have ended up a colander for cooked spaghetti. My smile grew bigger.
"Annie used to say she could read your face like a book. Did I make you mad, sweets?"
Claire's rage slammed into me, and I felt it burn through me like liquid ice. A sharp cracking sound made me look down. She'd crushed a microscope slide. When she opened her hand, the shards stayed embedded in her palm. She frowned at the crimson drops splattering the counter.
"Jesus, Claire. Next time try to punch me instead," I said. "It might be more satisfying and less messy."
She didn't say anything; I could tell she was still distracted.
"Yo, Claire. You should treat that cut."
She nodded absently, walked to the sink and rinsed the cut. I followed her to make sure she did a thorough job. Her hands shook as she dragged the first-aid box from a shelf in front of her.
"What do you want?" Her voice was rough, as if she hadn't spoken for a week.
"Here, let me do that." I picked up a dressing and some antibiotic ointment and grabbed her injured hand. She didn't resist. I worked in silence while she stared at a point above my right shoulder.
"There," I said, "the cuts looked worse than they are." She nodded absently. "Listen to me, Claire. I need you to tell me what Annie was working on before she died."
She turned her head and looked at me. Emotion flickered in her eyes then died. "I don't know."
"Right."
"It's the truth. We're discouraged from discussing our research, except on a need-to-know basis. Annie and I had separate projects, we worked in different divisions. There was no reason for her to discuss her work with me." She pointed to the door with her thumb. "Now that you have your answer, you can leave. Goodbye."
"Come on, Claire, you can do better than that. Even in a place like this, people talk, speculate, gossip. Tell me what you've heard."
She didn't answer, so I continued, my voice hard.
"Let me give you some facts, sister. Annie was involved in something big, maybe something dangerous. I can't go into details about it, but I came across information that confirms it. Then, one day, there's an explosion in her lab and she gets blown to pieces. What's the connection?"
"I don't know, Jack, you tell me. You're the one with all the answers. Tell me why the police were searching for someone connected to you. Tell me what you did to make somebody mad enough that he would want to kill Annie to teach you a lesson. Tell me why he didn't kill you instead. Can you do that?"
"The police could never find proof it was a hit directed at me, and they never will. If you think seriously about it, you'll see it, too. Use your head, Claire. Better yet, put your scientific mind to it."
"I'm sure there are dozens of people who'd like nothing better than to get rid of you. You knew that, but you didn't care. You placed everybody who knew you in jeopardy. You didn't deserve Annie."
I said nothing, just stared at her. She looked away.
"If it makes you happy," I said finally, "I agree with you."
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her until she turned her head back to me. Her eyes were filled with tears.
"Listen to me, Claire. If you won't use the brain you were born with, I'll lay it out for you. I had a lot of time to think about this. If Annie was killed as a form of revenge against me, I can't make all the evidence fit."
She shrugged my hands away. I started to pace.
"In my business, you can't help making enemies. Maybe one of them was out for revenge, but it takes a brain to plan a hit like that and get away with it. Besides, I didn't receive any threats before Annie was killed, which is usually what they do. They hassle you — they like to play with your nerves."
"Sometimes revenge is enough," Claire said through clenched teeth. "It'd be for me."
I stopped in front of her. Her eyes gleamed like green crystals in her bleak features.
"Sure," I said. "But revenge is a bullet in the back of the head or broken bones. To blow someone up takes preparation, malicious intent, a desire for show. You don't just do it, you take credit for it. Recognition is part of the game."
"They put you out of commission, didn't they?"
I shook my head. "How could they have predicted I'd react that way? If putting me out of commission had been their goal, they would have hit me, not Annie. And, believe it or not, I don't have that many enemies. The cops know the signature of most bomb experts. This bomb didn't have a signature, and the explosives couldn't be traced." I raked my hands through my hair. "More to the point, Claire, why did they choose Annie's lab to do it? The apartment or the car would have been more logical. The NARC labs aren't impenetrable, but they're not easy to get into, either.
"No, that explosion wasn't directed at me. I think someone wanted to protect something big, something Annie had discovered. The only way to do that was to destroy her research. The cops told me the damage to her lab was so extensive they couldn't even find a pen."
Claire nodded. "It was more an implosion than an explosion. The rest of the building was undamaged, but the inside of Annie's lab was.melted. They had to use cutting torches to clean it up."
I thought about Aplin's visit. "I thought they used gelignite."
"The police said the gelignite was used to start the explosion. It took very little."
"I don't know of any explosives that create an implosion. How about you?"
"No. Neither do the police. Or maybe they know and they won't tell." She looked at me curiously. "You've really been out of it, haven't you?"
"Yeah. Hey, Claire, don't hold your breath, but I think we're having our first real conversation."
"A temporary aberration, I'm sure. Are you leaving now?"
"I don't think so. You still haven't answered my question. You knew what Annie was working on, didn't you?"
"Why should I help you? It won't bring her back, and there's certainly no love lost between us."
"So, she did tell you about it."
She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at me. I sighed.
"Aren't you interested in finding out who killed her?"
"Is that what you're trying to do? That's police business." She walked around me toward the door. I grabbed her forearm.
"After two years, Annie's file is in the unsolved murders pile. They won't reopen it unless they find new evidence or someone comes forward, which may never happen. I didn't know where to start before, but now I have a chance to make it right. That's why I need your help. This case I'm working on, by some weird coincidence, involves Annie. I don't believe in coincidences, Claire. They make my skin itch."
"That's usually lice."
I shrugged. I didn't want to get into that kind of useless argument. I pulled up my sleeve and showed her the tele-carb. The multitude of colors swirled on my arm.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?"
She blanched, and I thought she was going to faint.
"Where did you get that?" Her voice was so low I could barely hear her.
"You've seen one before."
She put a hand to her throat and shook her head violently. "No."
"Sounded like a 'yes' to me. You care to tell me what has you spooked?"
She tensed. Then, as quickly as it had come, the fight left her. She bit her upper lip, closed her eyes and dropped her chin.
"I keep telling myself I should have done more to help her," she said, her voice a whisper. "I've asked myself a million times, would she still be alive if I'd insisted?" When I didn't respond she continued, her tone stronger. "Two days before she was killed, Annie came here to my lab. I was surprised, since we'd always made sure to keep our friendship separate from work. I don't think anyone was even aware we knew each other."
"How come?"
"I liked to keep it that way. When your.. .lifestyle.. .is different, people tend to paint everyone you know with the same brush."
As she talked, Claire moved away from me and stood in front of a cabinet at the back of the room. She opened the cabinet doors and started removing beakers and other chemistry equipment from the shelves.
"What did Annie want?" I said.
"She told me someone had been tinkering with her research, but she said she couldn't tell me any more at that point. I'm sure she knew who it was. I insisted she tell me, but she was adamant. She said she was asking too much of me already, but that I was the only one she could trust.a-part from you."
I took her last words as a small peace offering on her part. I knew Claire had been in love with Annie. They'd spent a lot of time together, even though Annie was straight. Then I'd appeared on the scene, and she had lost her. She was grieving for Annie, and blaming me was easier than accepting the truth. I could relate to that.
She removed three of the shelves from the cabinet and laid them on the floor. She took a key from her pocket and unlocked the back panel. Behind it was a safe, from which she took a rectangular wooden box about the size used for wine bottles.
"She left me this, made me promise not to touch it, said it was dangerous. She added that if something were to happen to her you would come here. I was to show this to you."
I already knew what it was. She handed me the box, and I slid open the lid. A long cord, more like a sash than a belt, lay coiled on black velvet. It was pure white. I passed my telecarb over the sash and it stayed white. I touched it with a finger. The same infinity of shades as the ones in my telecarb swirled around. A faint tingle raced up my arm.
"The colors moved like that when Annie placed it in the box," Claire whispered. "What is it?"
"Annie didn't give you a message for me? Just gave you this box for safekeeping?"
She nodded.
My mind was going a mile a minute. This sash was different from my telecarb. Annie could remove it, which meant it could be worn by anybody. But if she thought she was in danger, why would she leave it with Claire? If she hadn't stolen the sash, why not give it back to Trebor? At least, my suspicion there might be a link between Annie's visits to other worlds and the explosion in her lab seemed more and more grounded in facts.
I turned on Claire.
"You knew. All this time you knew there was a connection between her research and her death."
"I knew of no such thing. As far as I was concerned, she was much more likely to have been killed because of you than because someone was trying to steal her data. Industrial espionage I can accept. Murder for numbers? I don't think so."
"Is that what she told you? Her data was stolen?"
"No. I assumed that's what she meant."
"Right. I take it that tantrum earlier was designed to avoid giving me this?" She blushed. "Did you tell the cops about the sash?"
"No. Annie made me promise not to say anything unless I was asked specifically about it."
"Not even to me?"
"No."
I was suddenly very angry. What the hell had Annie been thinking?
As soon as I asked, I knew the answer. It had been her problem. She had to fix it. I could see her, a teasing smile on her lips, saying, "If our roles were reversed, what would you have done, Jack?"
I was jerked from my thoughts by Claire's voice.
"What is it all about, Jack? You owe me an explanation. I know you—now that you have what you wanted, you'll just leave me dangling." She yanked the box out of my hands and snapped the lid shut. "Annie didn't tell me to give you the box, just to show its contents to you. I don't trust you. I never have. Maybe, deep down, she didn't trust you, either."
I lunged for the box, but she was too quick for me. She stepped aside and put the lab counter between us.
"Start talking, Jack. I want to know what's in the box."
"I don't know, exactly. All I know is that if you keep it, it puts you in danger. Just give me the box, Claire. You don't want to get involved."
While I was speaking to her, I'd managed to whip around the counter and stalk her until her back was flat against the cabinet.
"Ha! That's a laugh," she said. "A few moments ago, you were asking me to help find Annie's killers. Now you tell me to play dead."
I winced. "Bad choice of words, Claire. It's not a game, and that's the way you could end up. Dead. I can only tell you that I think Annie was working on a project that related to some kind of space travel and that I think it was more dangerous than she thought."
"I don't care how dangerous it was." She clutched the box close to her body. "Annie was my friend, and I want to be involved."
"Forget it."
I straightened and moved away. The sash had stayed hidden for the past two years, which meant no one knew about Claire's connection to Annie. The sash was probably as safe here as anywhere else as long as it stayed in that cabinet. I could always come back, get the box later when I'd decided what to do with it. My priority now was to talk to Trebor. This time he would give me the real answers. I had a bargaining chip.
"Put the box back in the cabinet and forget about it. I'll come back for it eventually." I walked to the door.
"Come back here, Jack. You can't casually mention Annie and space travel in the same breath then expect me to forget the whole thing."
"Why not? You certainly did it once."
She flushed.
"Anyway, where I'm going, you can't follow."
"You said Annie was working on a space-travel project. Is that what this sash is used for? Is it the same thing as whatever you have on your wrist?"
I pulled up my sleeve again and looked at the telecarb. Although my touch had activated the sash, my telecarb had not reacted to it. Leinad had mentioned the other telecarb and mine weren't attuned to each other, and I was pretty sure the sash wasn't, either. I shuddered to think what would happen if Claire wore the sash. There was already one loose cannon out there; I didn't need a second one. I decided to give her a bit of slack.
"I think the sash is an earlier prototype of what I have."
"What does it do?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"I could put it on and find out."
"Don't you dare." I bore down on her. "I knew you were stubborn, Claire, but I didn't think you were stupid." I plucked the box from her fingers. "If you won't believe me, believe Annie. She made you promise not to touch it, remember?"
"And you're naive enough to think that telling me this thing is dangerous will scare me? No way. I don't trust you." I could hear what she left unspoken. Annie had trusted me, and she was dead.
"I don't care if you trust me or not. You're not getting your hands on this box again." I walked to the door and opened it. "Nice chatting with you, Claire."
