CROWELL

4 “What did Jennifer say?” Forno asked when he came back to the office. I hadn’t moved from my desk since the conversation with the assistant director.

“Where did you go?” I asked him.

Forno poured from the pot, and the coffee had to be old and super strong by now. He plopped into his Helk-sized chair of tubes and mattresses and gave me a sour look.

“I’m trying to be a wise Helk, answering a question with a question,” I said.

“Uh huh.” He sipped the coffee and gave a sigh of contentment.

There was no accounting for taste. The taste of coffee taste, anyway. I didn’t drink the stuff, so I couldn’t tell a good cup from a bad cup.

“I went home,” Forno said. “Got some beauty sleep.”

“Keep work—”

“Don’t say it, Crowell.”

“Jennifer said no.”

“Then what did you say?”

“Pretty please.”

“She still said no?”

“Until I added a cherry on top.”

“Seriously.”

I had the DataNet open via the clunky terminal on my desk, and a notification pinged me. I thought it might be Jennifer, but she’d said what we needed would come to the comm card.

A message. The fact that it was there, and unregistered, instead of on my comm card, made me take notice. Shit was weird these last few days, leading me on an uncertain path, so naturally I didn’t think twice before accepting it and scaffolding it through various layers of Net security. Tucked in tight to the buffer, I opened the message. It was simple. Urgent, but unspecific:

I MUST SEE YOU. COME AS SOON AS YOU CAN. —D.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

“What is it?”

I didn’t answer. I thought I knew who’d sent the message, but I pulled up a locator prog and attached it to the message. The terminal whirred and clicked like the antique it was, and I waited for the origination trace. By association, I’d confirm who the sender was. A minute later, the trace came through, and I was certain of who’d sent it. The message had come from Ribon.

“It’s Dorie Senall,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s Dorie. An unregistered ping, but it’s her. She wants me to come to Ribon. Wanting to see me, but not saying what. Just said it was urgent.”

My comm card snicked with incoming data a bit later, and I picked it up from my desk. I stretched the flashpaper and confirmed what I’d received, then sent some of it on to Forno. “Visas to Ribon,” I said. “Leaving tomorrow. I just sent yours to your piece-of-shit comm card.”

“She gave in to your irresistible charm, huh?” He leaned as far back in the chair as he could. He rested his head against the plywood wall.

“You should check and make sure you got the visa.”

“My card’s at home.”

“Jesus, Forno, you shouldn’t leave that thing. There’s vital information in there. Private stuff. Your place isn’t very secure.” I added, “When you’re not there.”

“Forgot it.”

“How about your Helk-sized blaster? Bring that, did you?”

He nodded. “What about Barnard’s?”

“She’s working on those. It’s a bit more involved. She’ll send them when she has them.”

“Truthfully, what did you really say to Jennifer?”

“I apologized.”

“There you go. Not so bad, was it?”

“Four times, at least, and a promise not to do anything rash while I’m on Ribon or Barnard’s.”

“Doing something rash on Earth count? Because you’re already headed in that direction.”

“It’ll take a few more apologies, I’m sure.”

I’d told Jennifer I was visiting Dorie, but I knew she was curious why Forno was also going. Or why we were going straight to Barnard’s from there. I wondered if Jennifer had knowledge of Morgan. Probably. Probably knowledge that might be extremely useful. But I couldn’t bring her in on this right now. I didn’t know what she—or more accurately, the NIO—would do if they got wind of Terl Plenko being alive somewhere. I trusted her, but the rest of NIO brass still made me nervous, particularly after Ultra copies had been discovered inside the organization.

“So maybe this is all coming together,” Forno said. “All related.”

We stared at each other, waiting. One of us would say something, I was sure. Or maybe not. Forno made some Helky grunts in his throat, and I tapped the desk with my fingers to a little rhyme in my head. Stickman, Stickman, coming to our house . . . 

“Dorie will have questions, undoubtedly,” I said. “She’ll want to know what’s going on with Morgan. I don’t know how much I can tell her.”

“You don’t know what she has to say either. Her message.”

“Forno, it’s Plenko. If he’s truly alive, I honestly don’t know how she’ll react.”

“The same way when she found out he was dead, I suppose.” He leaned forward and the chair creaked. “She might already know. That could be why she pinged you.”

I nodded and drummed my fingers again, this time without any specific rhythm in mind.

“Tell her what you know about Morgan,” Forno said. “Everything. If he’s hiring us, we can’t be shy about that. He didn’t say we couldn’t. For all we know, Dorie knows him. Or of him.”

My card snicked again. I checked it and said, “We’re good for Barnard’s.”

“Jennifer?”

“Visas and travel vouchers. No excuse now.”

“Then we go,” Forno said.

“To Dorie first. We’ll see what she has for us.” I laid the comm card on my desk and picked up the Tarot cards. All that we had, including the Fool. Yeah. It seemed foolish, thinking these cards could mean anything at all. I hadn’t started this whole process for nothing, however. They meant something.

The chair groaned dangerously as Forno stood. “I’ll go pack.”

“Check your card for the time. I’ll see you at the Station. I assume you’re going to get yourself there. Run over, or something.”

“I’ll be there with chimes on.”

The next day, I stopped at the Emirates Building near the old Seattle Center. I entered the foyer with its glass and silver beams and holo windows that opaqued from time to time to reveal Union worlds and their attractions. They looked much the same as the ones I’d seen a year ago. Ted Hartman, virtual immersion star, still beamed at me and assured me I was in good hands.

The bubble-like reception area was home to the receptionist, and Jesus, it was the same guy from a year ago. They may have cleaned house of all the bad guys and Thin Men, but apparently Nick the receptionist was still in good standing. Did he ever go home? Did no one else have a shift? Nick’s perfect brown hair waved freely as he greeted me.

“Worlds Away,” he said. “I’m Nick. How can I—”

“Hello, Nick.”

“Mr. Crowell, so nice to see you.”

“I have an appointment with the director.”

“That you do.”

After several security checks (I hadn’t even brought my blaster this time), I was allowed into the back rooms, and Nick escorted me to an office on the second floor. It disturbed me, remembering the incident from last year that took me to the basement and the secret elevator inside the building’s hub. All the Thin Men and Ultra sympathizers were gone, and I should feel safe, but it still bothered the hell out of me to be here.

Terrence McCarthy smiled and held out his hand when I entered. He was a short, stubby man with deep black hair only on the sides of his head and nothing on top or the back. He looked to be in his seventies, so I figured the hair was dyed. I couldn’t tell how much of that hair pattern was natural, and how much was a fashion statement. Envoys didn’t tend to be showy and extravagant.

“My my, Dave Crowell,” McCarthy said. He smiled so broadly I thought he was going to start bowing any moment. Wrinkles bunched up under his eyes. “A pleasure to meet you at long last.”

“Good to meet you,” I said, sitting in the chair he pointed to. “How long has it been?”

“Been?”

“Since you became director of Envoy services.”

He beamed, then sat down in his own desk chair that looked a little like something he could drive around town. He activated the DataNet terminal on his desk, snapping keys. He glanced at it briefly before replying. I didn’t think he was looking up his own employment record. “Seven months.” He nodded. “Yes, yes, seven months. Time flies.”

His office had a few framed photographs of the Seattle skyline in better days, including the old Space Needle no one could go inside of anymore. I was surprised to see them, and not holovid scenic windows or flashpaper posters. A bit of the old nostalgia, then? Or left over from the previous Director Amanda Hoban’s belongings?

“How can I help you, Mr. Crowell?”

“I want to know more about your Envoy named Morgan.”

McCarthy’s cheery face drooped a little.

“Surely, you knew why I was here,” I said. “It’s not easy getting past Nick up front.”

He recovered and regained his happy smile. “Of course, of course. It’s just that your partner Mr. Forno already asked about him. Already did a check on him.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“No, he—”

“Which is why I’m here talking to you.” I took my comm card from my coat, pulled a flashpaper memo from the surface, and expanded it. “Morgan. Envoy for forty years. Retired last year. That’s quite a career.”

McCarthy nodded, still smiling.

“And quite a coincidence that he retired last year at the height of the Ultra scare and hired me now to look into something directly related to that entire mess.”

“I have no knowledge of what Mr. Morgan asked of you—”

“Of course not. Right now, it’s confidential. But I want to know how well you know him. If he was an Envoy for that long—you were an Envoy yourself before becoming director seven months ago—you likely worked with him.”

“Mr. Crowell, there are many, many Envoys in the Emirates, and most of them don’t come here to check in. They’re more likely to come to the major conferences scheduled throughout the Union. There’s no way I can know every Envoy—”

“But you know Morgan. If not in person, then by reputation. And you know him now, Director McCarthy, with your finger on the case files of everything Envoy-related.”

He dipped his head and looked down at his desk. Then he nodded. “Yes, yes. I know him.”

“Did you work with him?”

“A few times.”

“See? Not so hard to admit, right?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Have you ever known him by any other name than Morgan?”

He shook his head. “He’s been Morgan as long as I’ve known him, and that’s all I have in his records. I told your partner that.”

“How was he as an Envoy? I mean, top of the line? Average? Ever in any trouble?”

“Top Envoy several years. Near the top, most years.” McCarthy smiled. “He held court during some of the biggest agreements in the Union, participated in lucrative trade deals, mitigated inter-world squabbles, and mediated cases large and small.”

“He was good.”

“Very good. He reminds me of your dad,” McCarthy said. “One of the best Envoys we ever had.”

I’d been the last to know that about my dad, the information about his past hidden from me until I dug it up a year ago. He went missing when I was sixteen.

“It was a shame he passed on so early,” McCarthy said.

“Disappeared.”

“Yes, yes. I guarantee you, he would’ve had my job now if he hadn’t . . . disappeared.”

“Did you work with him?”

McCarthy nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, yes. I learned a lot from him. I asked to be assigned with him whenever I had a chance.”

“What about Greist Sahl-kla? Did you work with him?”

“Yes, Greist, too. Another fine Envoy, until—”

“He went missing, too.”

McCarthy spread his hands and laughed. “But found, thanks to you! And now he helps train our future Envoys.”

“Did Morgan know my dad? Or Greist?”

“Oh, I’m certain of it. I could look that up—”

“I’ll narrow that down for you,” I said, scrolling through the flashpaper from my comm card. “Chicago Conference at the Knightley Building.”

McCarthy paled. “The day the—I mean. Your father and Greist went missing. The day the—” He broke off.

“The day the Ultras first appeared,” I finished for him. “Yes. Was Morgan there?”

Terrence McCarthy folded his hands in his lap and stared at me. It looked like he wasn’t going to answer. His skin regained color, overly so, until it was obvious he was blushing. Whether from embarrassment or anger, or something else, I wasn’t certain.

I raised my eyebrows as high as I could, waiting for an answer.

“He was.”

“You’re not telling me something. What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing. I—uh—just find it awkward talking about it due to the—nature of it. I mean, the importance of it. The—” He glanced up and to the right. “The tragedy of it.”

“Did Morgan speak there? What was his schedule like?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“The DataNet will have it, and you know it.”

McCarthy used his feet to bring his desk chair closer to the DataNet terminal. I was pleased to see his terminal was as old and clunky as mine, and surprised his deluxe chair didn’t run the damn thing itself. A few taps brought light to his face, and he scanned the information I couldn’t see.

“Okay,” he said. “He had a solo talk called ‘The Best Mediation Practices in the 23^rd Century,’ a think tank table about Envoy recruiting—”

“Think tank table?”

“He’d sit at a table for the hour, and interested attendees could sit with him and ask questions about the topic. Very informal.”

“Okay.”

“Then a few joint panels. One called ‘Persuasion for Politics,’ and another called ‘The Fallacies of DNA Models and Techniques on Shared Memory.’” After that, just a few—”

“Stop,” I said. “Shared memory? DNA models?”

McCarthy nodded.

“Is there a description of the panel beyond the title?”

He looked. “No. Just the title and the participants.”

“Who was on the panel with him?”

He scanned the screen, then his eyes narrowed. “Well.”

“Well what? I mean who what?”

“Your dad,” he said. “On the panel with Morgan. Your dad, and Greist Sahl-kla.”

“Holy hell,” I murmured.

“What does it mean? So they were scheduled together on a panel. So what?”

“The topic. The goddamned topic.”

“Does it remind you of something? Mean something related to Morgan hiring you?”

“You could say that.” My brain whirred a million miles a minute, recalling when Terree put me into the Memory for the first time. The Memor concept of shared memory. And DNA? Who was it who’d been the big DNA lock expert? Terl Plenko. Terl. Fucking. Plenko.

“But Mr. Crowell,” McCarthy said, shaking his head. He pointed at the screen. “The conference was a sham. Almost all the talks were cancelled, or postponed, and none of those ever happened. Some, but—” He checked the screen again. “All of Morgan’s talks were cancelled.”

“Because of what happened when Greist made his deal with the Ultras. When he gave the Ultras some of the Envoys and the best physicists and structural engineers of the Consortium.”

And my dad, who had something special the Ultras wanted. I didn’t know what, but the Ultras took him and a few other Envoys to their own universe. Greist had been tasked with holding open the portal. It all made my brain hurt once again, and I thought I’d moved past all that.

“Very strange, very strange,” McCarthy said.

“Morgan left, didn’t he? Most of the Envoys, at least half of them, left the conference before all the Ultra stuff went down.”

“Yes.”

“But before that, he saw Greist. He saw my dad.”

“I guess—”

“You were at the conference, too.”

McCarthy nodded. “I didn’t have any talks. I was pretty new. I actually planned on attending Morgan’s think tank on recruiting.”

“You saw Morgan leave, didn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, but I saw his throat tighten. He was holding something back, and I needed to know.

“Tell me, Terrence, or I swear I’ll throw this all up to the NIO and get them to do another clean sweep around here. I have a good friend higher up in the organization, and trust me, I owe her big time right now.”

McCarthy reddened some more. “I was headed for his think tank, but then word came down about the cancellations. I saw Morgan just before he left, talking with Greist, very hush hush-like. Greist looked around somewhat guiltily. I don’t think he saw me, but he slipped something to Morgan, said something I couldn’t hear, and ran off.”

This had to be near the time the Science Consortium had been meeting about the Transcontinental Conduit, arguing about its worth, waiting for Greist while my dad tried to calm things down. But Greist never showed. Baren Rieser—in league with the Ultras—and his lap dog Alex Richards gathered everyone the aliens wanted and started the whole mess. I’d been there with my dad but escaped.

“You have any idea what Greist gave Morgan?” I asked.

McCarthy shrugged. “No. Something about this big.” He outlined a space with his hands. Smallish. Rectangular.

“Paper? A card?”

“Maybe?”

Could it have been a Tarot card? I hadn’t asked Morgan where he’d found the card, or why he knew so much about them. The Fool. Yeah, got that right. I would get back to Morgan soon about Greist. Right now, I had to mull this new information over and see where it led me.

“Do you know where Greist Sahl-kla is now?”

“Oh yes. He’s at the training station on Orgon. He just began a rigorous four-month workshop with new Envoy recruits. We’re all quite excited about his new position within the Emirates. He’s doing fine work for us, leading the new age of—”

“Good to hear,” I interrupted.

It looked like I wouldn’t be talking to Greist any time soon. I smiled calmly, stood, and put out my hand, trying to put him at ease. I wasn’t sure I had everything I could get from Terrence McCarthy, but it was enough for now. It rang true. The other files of note about Morgan I already had, thanks to Forno. “I appreciate your time.”

McCarthy stood and grasped my hand. “Sure, sure. Good luck with your case, Mr. Crowell. And let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

I might think of something. But for now, it was time to get to the port, find Forno, and head for Ribon. The next major step would depend on what Dorie had to say.

I pinged Forno and told him to meet me at my place. We had a journey ahead of us. I’d bring Plenko Death.

I’d bring every fucking Tarot card we had.