This sprawling, chaotic anthill was filled up, shift after shift, by five daily launches from the station, numerous unscheduled drops of specialized technicians and surveying crews, and a constant, completely unregulated stream of dilapidated ground vehicles shuttling back and forth from Shantytown. No one controlled access or knew, really, who was in the mine during any given shift. The pithead logs were convenient fictions, just like the pithead rules and the posted safety regulations and the rented Davy lamps and oxygen canisters. AMC’s control of the Anaconda was as illusory—even if the illusion had real financial and legal consequences—as a general’s control over a looting, raiding, pillaging army.
“If we can’t catch them going in,” Li finally decided, “we’ll tag them going out.”
The evacuation had taken five shifts, using every available shuttle on-station and every hopper that could be begged, borrowed, or commandeered from the four or five Compson’s World settlements within flight range of the Anaconda. Casualties had been high. The evac teams had begun triage within forty minutes of the first alarm, and they’d tagged and entered every evacuee on handheld monitors uplinked to the station net to create a running dead, wounded, and missing list.
When McCuen cross-referenced the triage lists with the station’s shuttle passenger manifests and the Shantytown hospital’s admission records, they got a solid freeze-frame of who had been where when the mine caught fire.
The list of people who had been underground but not down there on easily verifiable official business was surprisingly short. Jan Voyt, Hannah Sharifi, and Karl Kintz were on it. No surprises there.
But there was a fourth name Li didn’t recognize.
“Who’s Bella?” she asked. “And why don’t we have a full name for him?”
“Bella’s the witch. And that is her whole name, as far as anyone knows.” McCuen grinned lasciviously. “I can go talk to her for you. I’m just a slave to duty.”
“Very funny, Brian.”
“Just kidding,” he said, sobering suddenly. “Besides, anyone who wants to keep working and living on this station would have to be crazy to go fishing in that pond.”
Li started to ask McCuen what he meant, then decided she didn’t want to get sidetracked into a conversation about Haas’s sleeping habits. “What about Kintz?” she asked instead.
Kintz had been more or less invisible since her first morning on-station. What little she’d seen of him had led her to two conclusions. One, he’d gotten special treatment from Voyt. Two, he expected to keep getting it.
In the normal course of things, she would have shaped Kintz up or shipped him out posthaste. But if things went well, she wouldn’t be on Compson’s long enough to make lowering the boom on Kintz worth her while.
“So what was Kintz doing down there?” she asked. “And what was the deal between him and Voyt, anyway?”
McCuen looked like he’d sat on a tack.
“I’m not asking you to tell tales out of school, McCuen. I just need to know how to spin him.”
“I know,” McCuen said reluctantly. “But it’s my job if I piss the wrong people off.”
Li looked at him, eyes narrowed. “So it wasn’t just that Kintz was scamming Voyt. Kintz was Haas’s man in the office. Is that it? Or was Voyt in on it too?”
One look at McCuen’s face told her she’d hit pay dirt.
“So what were Voyt and Kintz doing for Haas besides passing along information?” she asked.
Again the hesitation.
Li kicked her chair back and lit a cigarette. “Christ, Brian. Tell me if you want. If not, don’t. We’re all big boys and girls here. I’m not going to waste my time dragging it out of you.”
“I don’t know anything,” McCuen said. “Honest. I’m just repeating rumors. But… Voyt had an eye on the bottom line. You always hear rumors about mine security being on the take. God knows there’s plenty of chances. But Voyt… the rumors about him were pretty persistent. And somehow if you knew Voyt at all, they didn’t surprise you.”
“And you think Kintz might have taken over Voyt’s sideline?”
“I’m not saying that. But it’s possible.”
Li put down the list of names and stood up. “Let’s go talk to him then. Before Haas’s little bird gets a chance to whistle in his ear.”
Kintz turned out to be a hard man to find. They finally caught up with him in one of the fifth-level strip joints. Li recognized his drinking buddies as company goons—one step above the bouncers who were standing around itching to kick them out before they broke something. None of them looked sober enough to operate heavy equipment.
“Like to talk to you,” she told Kintz.
He looked at her but kept his hand on his drink. “I go back on duty tomorrow at eight. That soon enough?”
“Jesus, Kintz,” McCuen burst out. “We’ve been looking for you since three in the afternoon!”
“And how the hell was I supposed to know that, Brian?” Kintz said McCuen’s name as if it were a dirty joke.
“You could answer your damned comm for one thing.”
Kintz kicked back in his chair, smiling. “Aren’t you the teacher’s pet,” he drawled. “Wag your tail a little harder and maybe she’ll let you sit in her lap.”
“Right,” Li said. “If I wanted to referee playground fights, I could have taught kindergarten. Karl and I are stepping around the corner for a nice quiet cup of coffee.”
Kintz didn’t protest much; Li was able to steer him out of the bar and down the street with no more than a firm hand on his elbow.
“What do you want from me?” he asked when she’d gotten a table and two steaming cups of coffee between them. “I’m off duty in case you didn’t notice. And I don’t fucking appreciate being dragged around like a child either.”
Li smiled and lit a cigarette. “I don’t recall asking whether or not you appreciated it,” she said pleasantly. “In fact I’m pretty sure I don’t give a shit. Personally, I’d have fired you the day I got here. Except I’m piss lazy, and if I shipped you out, I’d have to waste my time figuring out who Haas’s new rat in the office was.”
“Whatever.”
“What were you doing in the mine the day of the fire?”
“Working.” He sounded nonchalant, but the sudden tension around his eyes told a different story.
“Working on what?”
“Working for that dumb bitch, Sharifi.”
“You obviously got along. Must have been a real pleasure all around.”
“You wouldn’t think it was so funny if it was you who had to deal with her fucking attitude. I knew her before she ever got here. Not that she remembered. She was my fucking college physics teacher.”
Li blinked, uncertain whether she was more baffled by the idea of Kintz being a student anywhere Sharifi would teach or the idea of his being a student at all. “Was she a good teacher?” she settled on asking.
“Fuck no! You know how she graded us? She gave an exam with one problem on it, one problem that takes like three hours to solve, and I get it back and there’s one fucking sentence written on it: ‘Oops, you lost the mass of the universe. C minus.’ Like my whole exam was some kind of fucking joke to her. You lost the mass of the universe ? I mean, what the fuck does that mean, anyway?”
“I think it means she had a sense of humor and you don’t,” Li said. “So. What did your favorite physics professor have you doing in the mine?”
Kintz shrugged sullenly. “Standing around mostly. Security, I guess. Fuck if I know.”
Li drew on her cigarette and watched him in silence. “Did you know Sharifi was murdered?” she asked finally.