He rested his chin in his palms and slowly shook his head.
Yel‚n. Yel‚n. We've talked all through the night, and all that time your autons have been investigating and dissecting... and never a word that a man has died. "I asked you to keep an eye on him.
"Well, I decided not to. He just wasn't that important." Korolev was silent a moment. Something of his attitude must have penetrated. "Look, Brierson, I'm not happy he died. Eventually he might have dropped that `Third Coming' garbage and been of some use. But face it: The man was a parasite, and having him out of the way is one less suspect-however farfetched."
"Okay, Yel‚n. It's okay."
He should have guessed the effect of his assurance. Yel‚n leaned forward. "Are you really that paranoid, Brierson? Do you think Mudge was murdered, too?"
Maybe. What might Mudge know that could make it worth silencing him? He owned little high-tech equipment, yet he did know systems. Maybe he'd been the murderer's pet vandal, now deemed a liability. Wil tried to remember what they had talked about, but all that came was the little guy's intent expression. Of course, Yel‚n would be willing to play the conversation back. Again and again. It was the last thing he wanted now. "Let our paranoias go their separate ways, Yel‚n. If I think of anything, I'll let you know."
For whatever reason, Korolev didn't push him. Fifteen minutes later she was off the comm.
Wil straggled up to his bedroom, relieved and disappointed to be alone at last.
SIXTEEN
As usual there was a morning dream, but not the dream in blue this time, not the dream of parting, of gasping sobs that emptied his lungs. This was the dream of the many houses. He woke again and again, always to a house that should have been familiar, yet wasn't. There were yards and neighbors, never quite understood. Sometimes he was married. Mostly he was alone; Virginia had just left or was at some other house. Sometimes he saw them-Virginia, Anne, Billy-and that was worse. Their conversations were short, about packing, a trip to be made. And then they were gone, leaving Wil to try to understand the purpose of the hidden rooms, the doors that wouldn't open.
When Wil really woke, it was with a desperate start, not the sobbing breathlessness of the blue dream. He felt a resentful relief, seeing the sun streaming past the almost-jacarandas into his bedroom. This was a house that didn't change from day toy day, a house he had almost accepted-even if it was the source for some of the dreams. He lay back for a second; sometimes he almost recognized the others, too; one was a mixture of this place and the winter home they bought in California just before... the Lindemann case. Wil smiled weakly at himself. These morning entertainments had greater intensity than any novel he'd ever played. Too bad he wasn't a fan of the tearjerkers.
He glanced at his mail. There was a short note from Lu: Tammy had agreed to a three-month bobblement, subject to a ten-hour flicker. Good. The other items were from Yel‚n: megabytes of analysis on the party. Ugh. She'd expect him to know all this the next time they talked. He sat down, browsed through the top nodes. There were a couple of things he was especially curious about. Mudge, for instance.
Wil formatted the autopsy report in Michigan State Police style. He scanned the lab results; the familiar forms brought back memories, strangely pleasant for all that they involved the uglier side of his job. Jason Mudge had been as drunk as Yel‚n said. There was no trace of any other drug. She had not been exaggerating about his fall, either. The little guy had struck the rocks headfirst. Wil ran some simulations: A headfirst landing was consistent with the cliff's height and Mudge's stature assuming he tripped and fell with no effort at recovery. Every lesion, every trauma on poor Mudge's body was accounted for; even the scratches on his arms were matched to microgram specks of flesh left on bushes that grew close to the path.
It was all very reasonable: The man had been seen drinking, had been seen leaving the picnic in a drunken state. From his desperate eagerness of the afternoon, Wil could imagine his state of mind by evening. He had wandered down the path, self-pity and booze exaggerating every movement.... If it had been anyone else, he might have been stopped. But to approach Jason Mudge was to risk sermons unending.
And so he was dead, like any number of drug-related semisuicides Wil had seen. Still, it was interesting that the actual cause of death was so perfectly, instantly fatal. Even if Yel‚n's autons had discovered Mudge immediately after his fall, they could not have saved him. Except for multiple gunshot wounds and explosions, Wil had never seen such thorough destruction of a brain.
It might be worth going over the fellow's past once more, in particular Wil's last conversation with Mudge. He remembered now. There had been some strange comment about Juan Chanson. Wil replayed the video from Yel‚n's auton. Yes, he implied Juan had once been a chiliast, too.
Now, that was easy to check. Brierson asked Yel‚n's GreenInc about the archeologist.... Chanson was well covered, despite his obscure specialty. As a kid, he had been involved with religion; both his parents had been Faithful of the Ndelante Ali. But by the time he reached college, whatever belief remained was mild and ecumenical. He was awarded a doctorate in Mayan archeology from the Universidad Politecnica de Ceres. Wil smiled to himself. In his time, Port Ceres had been a mining camp-to think that a few decades later it could support a university granting degrees like Chanson's!
Nowhere was there evidence of religious fanaticism or of any connection with Jason Mudge. In fact, there was no hint of his later preoccupation with alien invasions. Chanson bobbled out in 2200, and his motive was no nuttier than most: He thought a century or two of progress might give him the tools for a definitive study of the Mayan culture.
... Instead he wound up with the greatest archeological mystery o f all time.
Wil sighed. So in addition to the late Mr. Mudge's other flaws, he had been spreading lies about his rivals.
SEVENTEEN
The next few days fell into a pattern, mostly a pleasant one: The afternoons he spent with one or another group of low-techs.
He saw several mines. They were still heavily automated. Many were open-pit affairs; fifty million years had created whole new ore beds. (The only richer pickings were in the asteroid belt, and one of Yel‚n's retrenchments was to give up most space activities.) The settlement's factories were like nothing that had existed in history, a weird combination of high-tech custom construction and the primitive production lines which would eventually dominate. Thanks to Gail Parker he even saw an NM tractor factory; he was surprised by a generally friendly reception.
In some ways the North Shore picnic had been misleading. Wil discovered that, although most people agreed with Tioulang's complaints against Korolev, few ungovs seriously considered giving their sovereignty to either the Peace or New Mexico. In fact, there had already been some quiet defections from the statist camps.
People were as busy as Rohan claimed. Ten-, twelve-hour days were the rule. And much of the remaining time was filled with scheming to maximize long-term gain. Most of the high tech giveaways had already been traded several times. When lie visited the Dasguptas' farm he saw they were also making farm machinery. He told them about the NM factory. Rohan just smiled innocently. Dilip leaned back against one of his home-brew tractors and crossed his arms. "Yes, I've talked to Gail about that. Fraley wants to buy us out. If the price is right, maybe we'll let him. Heh, heh. Both NMs and Peacers are heavy in tool production. I can see what's going on in their tiny brains. Ten years down the road, they figure on a classic peasant/factory confrontation-with them on top. Poor Fraley; sometimes I feel sorry for him. Even if the NMs and the Peace merged, they still wouldn't have all the factories, or even half the mines. Yel‚n says her databases and planning software will be available for centuries. There are ungov technical types better than anyone Fraley has. Rohan and I know commodity trading. Hell, a lot of us do, and market planning, too." He smirked happily. "In the end, he'll lose his shirt."