As it happened, they didn’t, but one of them did have a bag of Mahjong tiles. After a brief struggle, they agreed to the Old Hong Kong rules to give Benson a fighting chance, then proceeded to embarrass him in successive games anyway. It was just as well the Ark didn’t use hard currency, because they would have cleaned him out.
“I think you three are ganging up on me.”
They all flashed their best “who, us?” looks and laughed. One of them even slapped Benson on the back.
“No, you just bad player.”
“Maybe, but I’d wipe the floor with you at cribbage.”
On cue, one of them reached into a backpack and pulled out a small cribbage board and a deck of cards.
“You know cribbage?”
The man shrugged. “Lot of time to kill.”
“Wait, you said you didn’t have any cards!”
This was met by another round of laughter. They were enjoying jerking the foreigner around.
“Yeah, yeah.” Benson set up the board. “Which one of you jokers am I going to beat first?”
He’d just started to shuffle the cards when the phone rang in his head. It was Doctor Russell.
<Jeanine, you have something for me?>
<Well, hello to you too, Bryan.> She didn’t bother hiding the sarcasm in her voice.
<I’m sorry. How are you today? Lovely weather we’re having. Is that better?>
<Loads. Where are you? Your voice is patchy.>
Benson smirked as he dealt the cards. <I’m about to run the board with some cribbage newbies over in Shangri-La.>
<Shouldn’t you be sleeping?>
<Shouldn’t you? Whadaya got for me?>
<Well, I stayed up late and ran the tests you asked for. Laraby’s torso is still frozen solid, but his legs and… remaining arm are thawed, along with most of his dermal layer. I can already see some bruising and other signs of physical struggle.>
<And you’re sure it’s not from decompression?>
<No, vacuum and freezing leaves uniform damage to the capillaries across exposed flesh. These aren’t uniform, and they’re deeper in the tissue. They’re consistent with handprints, like someone squeezing his wrist and shoulder. But there’s more. I found skin cells and traces of dried blood under his fingernails.>
The man who had volunteered to play slapped him on the hand, pulling him back to the scene in front of him. Benson glanced down and realized he’d misdealt the hand. <Hang on, Jeanine. Really sorry.> He picked up the cards and reshuffled, then dealt them properly.
<OK, go ahead.>
<Sorry, am I interrupting your game?>
<No, it’s… complicated. Anyway, fingernails?>
<Yes, Laraby had someone else’s skin and blood under his fingernails when he died.>
Benson’s excitement almost boiled over. <Enough material to run a DNA match?>
<More than enough, and I already ran the test. The skin cells belong to–>
<Don’t say it!> Benson mentally blurted out. <Not over an open com. Are the results accessible on the net anywhere?>
<Well, yeah, but they’re firewalled behind medical privacy protocols.>
<That’s not enough. Put a copy on a tablet, then pull the file from the central database and delete it. Power down the tablet, take its battery out, then hide it somewhere. Do you understand?>
<Yes, I think so.>
<Good. Don’t tell anyone about the test results until you see me in person. I’ll be down as soon as I can.>
It probably wouldn’t be enough, Benson knew. Everything about the case was being monitored, he was sure of that. Whatever advantage surprise could have given him was gone. Still, saving a copy offline should keep it from being altered or deleted, provided Jeanine was quick enough. It would have to do.
<You mean as soon as you’re done with your game?>
<I’m chasing a lead. I’m waiting to speak to someone.>
<Rough job.>
Benson looked around at the dust and decay surrounding him. <Rougher than you might think. I gotta go.>
<OK. I’ve already stayed up too late and I have another shift in five hours. I’ll drop it off at your stationhouse on my way home.>
<Ten-four.> Benson cut the link and picked up his hand, and smiled. Four, six, jack of spades, a two, and a pair of fives. It was a good start. He picked out the jack and two to throw in his crib. He’d be giving up points no matter what he threw down, but the crib had nobs at the very least, and a good chance of–
“Agong will speak with you.”
The girl’s voice gave Benson a start. He’d been so focused on his conversation with Jeanine and dealing the cards right, he hadn’t heard her approach.
Benson looked down at his hand and sighed at the lost chance for retribution. He stood up and turned it over to the man sitting next to him. “Here, play for me until I get back.” The man looked at the cards, then gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Benson followed the young lady as she led him deeper into the darkened basement level. The third man not playing cribbage fell into formation behind him, but kept a respectful distance.
“Agong.” He knew the term. It meant “grandfather” in Mandarin in a generic sense, but it was more an informal title than a direct family association. They walked for a few minutes at least, weaving back and forth through the labyrinth of pipes that formed Shangri-La’s circulatory system. Benson wasn’t sure, but he got the feeling they’d circled back at least once, probably to confuse him and make it that much harder to find their hideout if he should ever try to return with ill intentions.
These people were as clever as they were cautious. Then again, you’d have to be to spend decades hiding right under the nose of what was probably the most invasive surveillance state in human history.
“What’s your name?” Benson asked the young lady leading him.
She pointed to herself. “Mei.”
“Yes, you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Mei.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Have you always lived here, Mei?”
“Agong will talk to you.”
“Yes, I know, but I want to talk to you as well.”
“Agong says not to.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Ahead, light shone through a bramble of pipes. The air took on the distinct odor of ammonia the closer they came to the… settlement. The smell came from stacks of trays from floor to ceiling, tended by young members. Benson stepped off to take a look. The trays slid out to reveal a layer of dirt and perfectly white, round–
“Mushrooms.” Morel, shitake, and a half dozen other varieties poked up out of the rich, dark soil. He picked a small button mushroom from the bed and snapped off the stem, then popped it in his mouth. “Can’t beat farm fresh.”
The youth tending the stack of mushrooms looked up at him with a mix of terror and impotent rage. Mei came over and calmed the boy, then gently herded Benson back down the path. They passed more racks of mushroom beds, something that looked like a large, multi-stage still cobbled together from spares, and even small shacks and lean-tos complete with beds, reclaimed tables, and patchwork rugs made from carpet remnants.
It felt just like a refugee camp from the vids on old Earth. Except the people here didn’t look desperate and hopeless. They seemed earnest, yet determined. The few children around pointed and laughed at the strange man passing through their village.
Then Mei stopped at the foot of what looked like a small chapel built into the pipes and bowed. A chill trickled down Benson’s spine like a bead of ice water. Staring back through eyeless sockets, nine human skulls sat in three rows of three. Ever the detective, Benson reached out and scratched one of them with a fingernail to see if it was genuine bone, but Mei’s hand shot out and slapped him as though he was a child reaching for the cookie jar.
“Don’t. Touch. Anything.” She poked him in the chest with each period to accentuate the point.
Benson held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
She mumbled something unflattering about his possible ancestry in Japanese, then continued walking. They came to the source of the lights; trellises of tomatoes, squash, and grapes glowed brightly under strips of grow lights, exactly the same sort he’d helped to maintain years ago working in the aeroponics farm, solving the mystery of why some of the units they’d sent in for refurbishment had never returned from the shop.
At the epicenter of the farms and shacks stood a… something or other. To call it a building would be an insult to many centuries of architects. Its walls were a patchwork of sheet metal and plastic laminate built in and around the pipes and ductwork. It looked like an angular beehive with tree branches sticking out of it at right angles.
A worn shower curtain served as a door. Mei pulled it aside and beckoned him to follow. Inside, an old man leaned over a bonsai tree. Several others in varying sizes sat in tiny pots on a shelf to the left of his small workspace. He wore thinning gray hair tied back in a ponytail. On the other side of the large room, Lefty regarded him with a scowl. Next to him, a young girl no more than eight or nine chatted excitedly while she worked on her own project. Before Benson could see what it was, the old man stood up and approached him.
“Thank you for coming, Chief Benson. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Benson took his outstretched hand and shook it firmly. Something about the man’s face cried out for attention. Benson studied his eyes, cheekbones and jawline, trying to look past the wrinkles and liver spots to the foundation of the man. A flash of recognition burst into Benson’s mind as he realized he was shaking hands with a dead man.
“Ah, now you see me,” David Kimura said.
Benson blinked twice, dumbstruck. It wasn’t often he found himself at a loss for words, but shaking hands with a genuine ghost was enough to paralyze his tongue. David Kimura had been dead for thirty years. Longer. He was a legend, and his untimely death had been interpreted as a subtle warning to the cattle not to push too hard against their fences. But here he was, in the flesh, which didn’t appear to be reanimated.
“You’re David Kimura?” Benson asked. The older man nodded. “But you’re dead.”
Kimura raised an untrimmed eyebrow, then patted himself on the chest. “I don’t feel particularly dead. I do hope your deductive skills are usually better than that, my son.”
“I mean,” Benson struggled to regain his mental balance. “I mean, you’re supposed to be dead.”
The older man smiled. “And that is what you were, until this very moment, supposed to believe. Let’s just say that reports of my death were deliberately exaggerated and leave it at that for now. You’re a long way from home, detective. What brings you down here?”
“I’m investigating a murder.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. First one in years, thanks in no small part to your performance at the helm of the constables.” He placed an odd inflection on “performance”.
“Was that a slight, Mr Kimura?”
“No, not at all. You’ve proven well suited to the role.” The inflection again, on “role” this time. “But it does beg the question of what you’re doing here in Shangri-La’s basement. Aren’t you outside your jurisdiction?”
Benson shrugged. “Yes, but because of that, I can be more… selective in the sorts of things I remember to report when I get back.” He glanced over his shoulder to where Mei stood at the doorway. “And it’s a good thing, too.”
Kimura saw the disapproval in Benson’s eyes. He waved to Lefty and Mei, then asked them to leave them in private for a few minutes. Lefty, whose real name was apparently Huang, stared a couple of daggers at Benson as he passed, but said nothing. Mei bowed deeply and let the shower curtain fall closed.
Kimura put a hand on Benson’s shoulder and gently turned him towards the work station where he’d been pruning the tiny tree. He picked it up, delicately, reverently.
“Are you familiar with the art of bonsai, detective?”
Benson nodded. “You starve trees to stunt their growth.”
“Starve them?” Kimura turned and held the tree up for his inspection. “Tell me, detective, does this tree look like it’s starving to you?”
Benson played along and regarded the tree with more than just a cursory glance. The leaves, though in miniature, were full and a vibrant green. They even sported the beginnings of flower buds. He had to admit, it looked perfectly healthy.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Of course not. A starving tree withers and dies. But this one will blossom soon, and even produce apples. It is a tree, full and complete. The art is in finding the right balance.” He set it back on the shelf among its fellows. “Do you see the lesson?”
“Enlighten me.”
Kimura sighed. “The lesson is that beauty and fulfillment can be found even among great scarcity. Bonsai arose in Japan, and for good reason. With so many people crammed into such a small space, with such limited natural resources, it’s no wonder that they could make an art out of using less. We find ourselves in a similar situation here.”
Benson gritted his teeth. What was it with the tree metaphors lately?
“Yes, that’s a beautiful sentiment, but let’s be clear on one point here. Your little commune is adding to the scarcity. I’d be surprised if there was a single Code of Conservation you’re not breaking down here. Everything you have is stolen from everyone else.”
Kimura took the sudden assault in stride. “That’s one view. But I prefer to think of it as borrowing. Every liter of water we use is purified and returned to the same pipe it was siphoned from. We grow most of our own food right here, fertilized by our own waste. What we can’t grow or build for ourselves, we trade for. Things fall off the back of a truck even here on the Ark.”
“I’ve seen what you ‘trade’ for, Kimura. It’s not pretty.”
The true leader of the Ark’s lost tribe sat down heavily in his chair, old knees popping on the way down. “An unfortunate necessity, I’m afraid. But all of them are adults, and they volunteer for the duty.”
Benson snorted. He’d been chief long enough to know all the little tricks to make someone “volunteer” for just about anything.
“You know, at your prime, you were an inspiration to a lot of people. A hero, even. What do you think they would see now?”
Kimura waved off the question. “They would see a man who stopped trying to change society and instead chose to live outside it. But the same could be asked of you, Zero Champion. How many people did you inspire with your innovative formations? How many new rules were written in response? Now you dutifully enforce the rules without question. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know I was a little disappointed by your metamorphosis.”
“You follow Zero?”
“Of course. A beautiful game, all the grace of ballet mixed with the brutality of old American football. Sport has never seen a more perfect reflection of the human experience.”
“But how? You’ve been down here since before I was even born.”
Kimura held out his hands. “Just look around you. Information flows through fiber-optic cables just as surely as water flows through pipes. It’s only a matter of knowing how to tap it.”
In the far corner, the young girl squealed with glee and ran over to where Kimura sat, chattering excitedly. She hopped up onto his waiting lap and handed him a tablet. The screen lit up at his touch, and an approving smile grew on his face. Kimura opened a small box on his table and pulled out a piece of candy. The girl opened her mouth and pointed at her tongue. Kimura popped it in her mouth obligingly. She beamed up at Benson with a grin missing a front tooth, then jumped down and ran out of the room.
“Cute kid,” Benson said.
“Yes, and quite the little tinkerer.” Kimura handed the tablet over. “Ah, you might want to change your passwords.”
“What do you mean?” Benson looked down at the screen and realized it was his tablet, the broken one he’d brought for barter. Restored screen aside, the only difference was the wallpaper image had been changed to a picture of himself taken only moments ago, with the addition of a big orange mustache and a garish pink feather boa crudely drawn in with a crayon widget.
“How?”
“How did she fix it? Well, someone traded us for a tablet with a good screen but a burned out power core. As far as how she broke your password, I honestly don’t know.”
“Who is she?”
“My daughter,” Kimura said flatly, almost challenging Benson to push the line of inquiry. He wanted to, badly. He wanted to ask what gave Kimura the right to keep innocent children sequestered down here in the dark, cut off from the rest of humanity. He wanted to ask when they would get to choose if they wanted to live outside society, but decided to keep quiet. They were already drifting too far off track, and he wasn’t the first idealist Benson had met recently who’d run afoul of common sense.
“She’s beautiful,” he said simply. Kimura studied his face for a moment, perhaps trying to tease out Benson’s thoughts. “But that’s not why I came. As you’ve already heard, I’m investigating the suspected murder of this man…” Benson tried to bring up Laraby’s profile from the ship’s records, but the query was met with an error message. “Um, I’m not sure she fixed this all the way.”
“If you’re trying to use wireless, it’s not going to work in here.” Kimura pointed up. A thin metal screen had been tacked to the ceiling. “It continues into the walls, and under the floor. It’s a Faraday cage, you see.”
“A what?”
“Forgive me. It blocks RF inside this building. No signals get in or out, signals from your tablet, or–”
“Or my plant.” Understanding dawned. “You still have your plant. This is one giant foil hat. That’s how you faked your death. That’s how you’ve stayed hidden.”
Kimura nodded. “Along with the help of a sympathetic reclamation tech who recycled my ‘body’, yes.”
Benson couldn’t conceal his shock. “You’ve been living in this hut for thirty-five years? Without leaving?”
“Not this one specifically. The camp has moved from time to time, and I have a helmet for the occasional excursion outside my home. But most of that time, yes, I’ve been here, or someplace very much like it. My gilded cage.”
Benson’s opinion of the man changed ever so slightly. The sacrifice he’d made to live his ideals were extreme. He turned off the wireless transceiver in his tablet to get rid of the error message, then dug around in the case notes he’d kept firewalled and picked out an image of Laraby.
“Do you know this man? Has he ever come down to… visit one of your women?”
Kimura took the table and inspected Laraby’s portrait carefully, swiping it left to right to rotate the three-dimensional reconstruction.
“No, I do not know this young man. Is he the victim?”
“Yes. His name was Edmond. I fished him out of the vacuum a couple days ago.” Benson switched the picture to Chao Feng. “And this man?”
Kimura again took the tablet, but he recognized the face immediately. “Ah, our illustrious first officer.”
“You know him?”
“I knew his father, and I met him as a young boy. Is he your suspect, then?”
“He is suspected of involvement, yes.”
Kimura whistled. “Playing with fire, my boy.”
“Trust me, I don’t need to be reminded of that. Has he ever been down here to take advantage of your women’s services?”
The older man chuckled. “No, he has no need of our women. What does this have to do with my people?”
“Feng was in his quarters when Laraby disappeared, and we can account for all his movements for the day before and after. They were never in contact. Someone else put Laraby in the airlock. Someone we couldn’t track.”
“What makes you think there was anyone else involved? Why not suicide?”
Benson rolled up the sleeve on his right forearm, revealing the angry red slice held together with stiches.
“Call it a hunch.”
“I see.” Kimura leaned back in his chair. “And it must be one of my people because they don’t have plants.”
“I’m just covering my bases. I’d like to interview them, starting with the men.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. They won’t talk to you.”
“Because you’ve instructed them not to.”
Kimura tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “They honor my guidance, most of the time at least. Huang argued against talking to you at all. He believes your presence is a huge mistake.”
“Then why did you?”
Kimura held his hands open. “We’re coming to that. I speak for the Unbound, and I can assure you that none of us were responsible for these crimes.”
“What about your people in Avalon?”
The older man sighed heavily. “We don’t have any people in Avalon.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Benson said. “The same source that led me down here says there are people under Avalon just as there are here.”
“There probably are, but they’re not Unbound.”
Benson rubbed his face in frustration. Another crazy cult to deal with?
“There was a schism two years ago,” Kimura continued. “Between my followers and a young man with more, we’ll say progressive ideas. At first, the split was amicable, and he started a new colony much like our own. We traded supplies and news for quite a while. Members migrated between the two groups freely. But that ended abruptly five months ago after he expelled three people for ‘spying.’ We haven’t heard anything from them since. The people who returned said he’d taken to calling himself Mao and had grown paranoid and aggressive.”
“Hold on. You mean to tell me that a revolutionary terrorist cell’s been growing under my feet for the last five months?”
“That’s a bit of an overstatement, I think. I don’t know Mao’s intentions, you would have to ask him. Although I wouldn’t expect the same warm welcome you received here.”
Benson felt a migraine coming on. This just kept getting better by the minute, although it fit the facts of the case better. They still didn’t know which lock Laraby had been thrown out of, but his own attack had been in Avalon, and someone with intimate familiarity of the habitat’s bowels would be perfectly positioned to disappear after the murder attempt failed.
Still, Benson had trouble seeing why a revolution minded malcontent would be willing to work for Feng, even if it was to knock off a crewmember and a cop.
“Can you give me an idea where their camp is?”
Kimura shook his head. “No. Mao’s group is smaller and more mobile. They haven’t set up a permanent camp as far as I know.”
“How many?”
“Six, eight at the most.”
Benson chewed on the number. Few enough to hide easily, but enough to be in many places at once and cause all sorts of mayhem.
“All right. I can work with that. So, now’s the part where we haggle over how much that information just cost me.”
Kimura put up his hands. “No need to haggle. I have only one request.”
Benson waved in a “go on” gesture.
“I promise that the Unbound will provide you with any intelligence and support we can in finding your killer, in exchange for clemency for any code violations and sanctuary leading up to the Flip.”
Benson stared at him slack-jawed for a moment. But then, what else would he ask for? He’d been hiding here in the shadows for decades, but chose this moment to expose himself, his people. They were running out of time, and Kimura knew it. There was no way his little tribe would survive the month of hard deceleration coming in less than two weeks down in these quarters. He was desperate, but too proud to say it out loud. So, he’d found an opportunity to bargain.
“That’s… a tall order,” Benson said finally.
“Still, it is my price. Not for myself, you understand. I will take my chances down here. But the rest of my people are innocent and must be protected.”
“How many?”
Kimura hesitated, but gave in to the inevitable. “We are forty-seven. Forty-eight, if you include Mei’s baby.”
“She’s pregnant? How far along?”
“Two months, give or take.”
“You know how irresponsible that was.”
Kimura hung his head. “It was not foreseen.”
“I should hope not! She’s a child, for God’s sake!” Benson shook his head in consternation. There had been a moratorium on child licenses for the last five years, and for good reason. The day fast approached when the ship would Flip and everyone would be locked into deceleration webs for twenty hours a day for weeks. Dealing with pregnant women or toddlers wouldn’t make enduring the experience any easier.
“That’s a lot of people to make space for, Kimura. I don’t have the authority to make the call on my own.”
“I’m sure you’ll do your best.” Kimura stood uneasily. Benson held out a hand to help steady him, but Kimura waved him off. He had to be in his early seventies. Benson knew what a month spent decelerating alone down here would mean for the man. He was choosing death.
“But now, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s just about time to hand out the day’s rations. Mei will escort you back to the lift. We’ll be in touch soon, detective.”
Kimura put a hand on his shoulder and walked him back to the door. Mei waited just outside.
“Good luck catching your man.”
“Mr Kimura, wait, I have to ask.”
“Yes?”
“The skulls. Who do they belong to?”
The smile faded from Kimura’s face. “The Clock still ticks in the museum, yes?” Benson nodded. “So our shrine maintains the count down here. Good day, detective.”