“There,” Topaz said. “G-ss-ee. I can’t really pronounce it, nor can Dawn. But we’ve been calling her Gussie, and she responds to that and doesn’t seem to mind.” She stood up, moved over to Brewster, and bent down to examine him more closely. “What’s that on his face, and on the floor?”
“Sour cream,” said Sapphire. She beamed at Topaz, and in her pleasure at her sister’s return she seemed for the first time in days free of snap withdrawal symptoms.
“Sour cream.” Topaz sank back onto a chair. “You knocked Brewster out with sour cream? And it was Winnie Carlson that did it to him, right? And before that, he was poisoning your food. Nothing we got up to competes with that. I have to know what’s been happening here.”
“It’s messy,” said Winnie. “And I don’t just mean literally. The rest of you, be patient. Topaz and Dawn have to hear this from the beginning.”
She started again with her explanations. Josh found himself dividing his attention between what Winnie was saying and the actions of Dawn and the rupert. The latter two were completely silent, but while Winnie talked they constantly exchanged drawings. The rupert held a pen clumsily between two of her short fingers. She seemed to draw quickly and skillfully, and she and Dawn were obviously communicating. But what were they saying to each other?
One of Winnie’s statements suddenly caught Josh’s attention. She was adding to the ideas and suspicions that she had presented to them before.
“Actually,” Winnie was saying, “we were given a hint, very early, as to what Brewster might have found on Solferino. Do you remember when you were in the cargo aircar on the way to the Barbican Hills, and you heard an educational recording? It said that Solferino is only four-fifths the diameter of Earth, but that the surface gravity is almost exactly the same. And the recording went on to point out the reason, which is that the average density of Solferino is twenty-six percent higher than the density of Earth. What the recording didn’t say is that Earth is itself an exceptionally dense planet. In fact, it’s the densest world in the solar system. Earth’s interior is mostly solid iron. So Sol Brewster probably asked himself, what is it that makes Solferino even denser than the Earth? Well, it could be normal heavy elements, like lead and uranium and thorium. But most of the heaviest elements are radioactive, and there were no reports of high radiation levels on Solferino. Another answer, though, and one that probably occurred to Brewster, is that there could be lots of stable transuranics here. They are super-heavy, heavier than any elements formed naturally, but because they are stable they are not radioactive. I think that’s when he probably began to examine the geobotanical properties of the stable transuranics, and plan his search…”
Winnie went on talking, but Josh was suddenly distracted by Dawn’s actions. She had looked up from the pad, where the rupert was busily drawing, and she was staring at him. When she saw that she had his attention, she nodded and beckoned. He stood up and went to kneel at her side.
“What?” He spoke in a whisper.
“G-ss-ee.” Her pronunciation was much closer to the sound that the rupert had made than Topaz’s effort. She took his hand and placed in it one of the rupert’s paws. “Joshua.”
He suddenly realized what she was doing. It was his formal introduction, as a member of Dawn’s family, to the rupert. He didn’t smile—he couldn’t even guess the rupert equivalent of a smile—but he did his best to say “G-ss-ee” just as Dawn had said it. The rough paw rubbed backward and forward on the palm of his hand. It was surprisingly warm. Ruperts were warm-blooded, and they must have a body temperature quite a bit above humans.
“Outside,” Dawn said.
“Me?” Josh didn’t really want to go outside. He wanted to hear anything new that Winnie might have to say, and he was also starving. Rick looked as though he almost had something ready to serve.
“G-ss-ee outside.” Dawn stood up, and the rupert did the same. Fully upright, it was about his height kneeling.
“Wait a minute.” Josh stood up, too, and turned to Winnie. He waited for her to finish her sentence—she was talking now about the way Brewster had destroyed computer data banks—and asked, “Is it all right for Dawn and the rupert to go outside?”
“I think so. Will they come back?”
“Dawn will, if we ask her to. I don’t know about the rupert.”
“We don’t own her. Gussie can do whatever she wants to do.” Winnie nodded. “All right, they can both go.”
Dawn was already moving toward the door. The rupert followed, after a final sweeping survey of the group in the dining room. Topaz caught Josh’s eye. She had an I-told-you-so look on her face. He wondered just what she and Dawn had been doing in the two days they had been gone, and how long it would be before he found out.
“Where was I?” Winnie asked. “Right, the computers. We lost the ability to communicate off-planet. That’s when I really became worried about Brewster’s plans. I knew I might have to do something, and without any outside assistance.”
“That’s the piece I still can’t believe,” said Topaz. She stared at Brewster’s great length sprawled out along the floor. “He’s at least two meters tall, and he has all the muscles. I guess I’ll have to believe that you were able to fight him and knock him cold, because the others insist that they saw you do it. But I don’t see how. That can’t be any part of a Foodlines maintenance technician’s training.”
“You’re probably right.” Winnie looked sheepish. “Though I can’t say for sure, because I’m not really a maintenance technician. I haven’t been quite honest with you. I don’t work for FoodLines, and they didn’t send me here.”
That was enough to get everyone’s attention. There was a long, electric silence. Hag stopped looking longingly at the door through which Dawn and Gussie had left. Rick abandoned his cooking and came to join the rest of the group around the table.
“So who do you work for?” Sig asked at last.
“I am an agent for the SDSI—the Solar Department of Special Investigations.”
“A secret agent!” Amethyst said. “Wow.”
“It’s not what you might think.” Winnie smiled wearily. “Lots of nights with not enough sleep, and lots of being ordered around like dirt by crooks and creeps. I’ve been trained to look after myself, without needing weapons. Normally there is no need for them. Most cases involve some bending of a corporate franchise, and maybe a bit of illegal export. There’s usually not much action in my job.”
“Except tonight,” Topaz said. “You had plenty of action tonight. But you’re still not being honest with us.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“I don’t see that. If you were sent here by SDSI, you must have known all about Sol Brewster and what he was doing, before you ever left Earth. Otherwise, why come in the first place?”
“I was sent because SDSI believed that something illegal was happening, here on Solferino. But it had nothing to do with Sol Brewster, and Unimine, and stable transuranics. When I came through the node network, Sol Brewster was just a name—the name of the person I was supposed to report to. And the message to him, saying that I was on the way, didn’t come from Foodlines at all. It was a fake—like my credentials.”
Josh was losing track. Too many things were happening at once. Was he the only slow one in the group? If so, might as well admit it.
“I don’t understand this,” he said, and he saw other heads nodding in agreement. “Could you give it to us again. You weren’t sent here to investigate Brewster, or what Unimine might be doing on Solferino. And you weren’t sent here by Foodlines, to maintain their equipment. So why were you sent here?”