“Not at all. For show. He needed to show Susan that he was a good member of the ring, but he didn’t want Virginia to die. She was their senior member, after all. Nobody would die until she did.”
“Including him.”
“Correct. Also including Susan, who seemed certain to be useful to him. He was trying to get his hands on you, and he didn’t know—either because Susan hadn’t told him, or because Susan herself didn’t know—that we had booked on the Rani.”
“I see.” Chelle nodded. “We did that ourselves, online.”
“Exactly. From that point on, we can guess pretty easily what they did, and my guess is that Susan did most of it. The news would’ve told her that Virginia survived. She must have gotten her address from the hospital; quite possibly she had my researcher do it for her. When they got to the apartment, they found it empty, no woman and no clothing. They searched it because Susan hoped to find something that would tell them where she had gone, but they found nothing.”
“I’ve got a another question,” Chelle said. “Who planted the bomb?”
“Susan, of course, acting on Rick’s orders; and I’ll get to that in a moment. Susan quit a few days after we sailed. It must have been a blow to his plans, but she still knew everyone in our office. Somebody told her our ship had been hijacked, and that Mick was recruiting people to rescue us. Rick and Susan joined. They would surely have done that separately; Rick was much too cagey to have them come in together. When they were on Soriano’s boat they would have pretended they were strangers who had just met.”
“They acted like that on our boat, too.”
“Correct. Finding Virginia on the Rani must have been a shock, to Rick particularly. But he wanted to get his hands on you, and wanted Susan to help him with it. To get her, he needed to prove that he was a loyal member of the suicide ring. He proved it by having her plant his bomb in the social director’s office—a bomb he detonated by broadcasting a signal when he knew Virginia wasn’t in there.”
Chelle raised a graceful eyebrow. “Why’d he bring a bomb?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know that he did. Perhaps the hijackers had one. Rick was down in the hold, too. He may have found a small bomb and decided it might be useful. Or he may have brought one—in imminent danger of capture, he could threaten to kill himself and hostages. He may merely have thought that a device that would permit him to kill while he was elsewhere was apt to be valuable.”
“Okay if I ask why you’re not sitting down?”
“I was hoping we’d take a look around. Living room, dining room … You know.”
“Bedroom.”
“Yes. There, too.”
“Okay, we will. Only we’re in the living room now, so all you’ve got to do is turn your head.”
He smiled. “I’d rather look at you. Besides, this is the reception room. It’s where our guests take off their coats and our housemaids hang them up. The living room is where the party is, there and perhaps in the family room and the entertainment center.”
“No lounge?”
“And the lounge. I forgot.”
“The kids will be in the nursery, I suppose.”
“Yes. Or the entertainment center.”
Chelle nodded to herself. “You want kids?”
“Yes, if you do. Do you?”
“I don’t know.” She paused, staring out a window. “What about our round-the-world cruise?”
“We’ll take it, but not until next year. They don’t want you to leave the country.”
“I remember. Did you leave your gun on the ship?”
“No. No to both.” The colorful sofa was wide, deep, and comfortable. “Are you asking about my pistol or the submachine gun?”
“Either one, I guess—I’d forgotten about the subgun. Don’t tell me you tried to bring in that.”
“I did not. I threw it over the side, but I kept my pistol.”
“The pistol didn’t get you busted.”
“Correct.”
“Have you got it?”
“Not yet. Achille was supposed to take it ashore for me.”
Slowly, Chelle nodded. “If anybody could sneak it off the boat, he could.”
Watching her, Skip decided that her inquiry was far from idle. He said, “He’ll have to sneak himself off. I thought that if he could do it, he could bring my gun—or both our guns—easily enough. Did you get your own gun ashore?”
“Huh uh. I gave it to Charlie. He said he could do it. No problem.”
“No doubt he was right.”
“Only I don’t know where to contact him.” Chelle paused. “Do you know where he is?”
Skip shook his head.
“Do you know anybody who would know?”
“Certainly. So do you.”
“Give me a minute.…” Chelle looked thoughtful. “I got it! Mother.”
“Excellent.”
The lights flickered again.
“You know where she is?”
“No. I haven’t the least idea, and I’m not at all eager to find out.” Skip rose and opened a door. “What do I have to do to get you to look at our living room? From what I can see of it, it’s really quite beautiful.”
“Answer my questions, that’s all. I want to know where my mother is. My biological mother. Let’s not get into the divorce thing.”
Skip said, “I think we ought to call her Virginia Healy.”
“That was on the boat.”
“Yes. On the Rani—and here, too, if you’ll take my advice. There’s a company called Reanimation Incorporated. Have you heard of it?”
Chelle shook her head.
“I thought not. It probably didn’t exist when you went into space.”
“Reanimation—you’re saying they bring the dead back to life.”
“In a way, they do. Anytime anybody enters a hospital for a serious operation, he or she is given a brain scan. When things go wrong, the patient sometimes becomes brain-dead.”
“That’s dead.” Chelle looked decidedly uncomfortable, stretching her long legs out before her and drawing them up again. “If you’re brain-dead, you’re dead.”
Skip shook his head. “Legally, a person is not dead until he—or she—cannot be restored to life.”
“Bullshit!”
“Not at all. You have life insurance. I know you do, because all soldiers get it.”
“You’re right, I do. You’re my beneficiary. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Let’s say that you were taken to a hospital—the reason doesn’t matter. While you were there your heart stopped. That triggered an alarm, and a therapy ’bot kept you breathing and shocked your heart into beating again. Let’s also say that I, your beneficiary, knowing what had occurred, then tried to claim your death benefit. No court would award it to me.”
“I see. Because I’d been dead, but I was alive now.”
“Exactly. Brain death means that thought has ceased. The patient is no longer conscious and will never return to consciousness spontaneously.”
“Never wake up. I’ve got it.”
Skip shook his head. “Thought doesn’t stop in sleep, it’s just that its character changes. Dreams are the most obvious example, but there are others. When a patient is brain-dead, no thought processes are occurring. None at all. There are medical techniques, however, that will sometimes return the brain to normal activity.”
Chelle fidgeted. “Are we still talking about my mother?”
“In a way, yes. I was explaining why the brain is scanned. When a previously dead brain is returned to activity, a great deal can be lost. Some memories are always gone, I’m told. Certain skills may be lost as well.”
“Like, I might forget how to shoot?”
“Exactly. A brain scan permits the physician to remedy that. The revived brain is wiped clean—all its information is nulled. The scan is uploaded in place of it.”