“It’s what shipmates are for,” she said. “But you’re just out of the clinic. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll get cleaned up, eat a good meal, and then go. By then I’ll have called them to schedule a visit.”
“Is it all right to wait? They won’t . . . do anything?”
“Not without legal clearance.”
“Then . . . I think I’d like to lie down a bit . . .” Sirkin looked even paler; Heris got an arm around her before her knees gave way, and helped her to her quarters.
“You’ll be better in a few hours,” she said. She hoped it would be true.
On the way to the morgue, next mainshift, Sirkin said, “I suppose I should find out about Amalie’s things. Or would the militia have done that?”
“They’ll have looked in her lodgings. I haven’t asked about that, but we can find out. Anything in particular?”
“Not really.” It was the tone that meant yes, of course.
“Did she have a will?”
“Not . . . yet. We hadn’t thought . . . you know . . . that she could die. Yet.” That complicated things, but not too badly. If Sirkin wanted a keepsake, something not too valuable, Heris was sure she could get it.
At the morgue, Heris called in to the militia headquarters to ask about Yrilan’s belongings. Cannibar wasn’t in; she spoke to his assistant.
“Her stuff’s in storage already, Captain Serrano, but if your crew has a legal claim—”
“No—she said Yrilan had made no will. I suspect they’d exchanged gifts, keepsakes—”
A long bored sigh in her ear. “Younglings. I wish she’d thought of this before we sealed the storage cube.”
“She had a concussion,” Heris said. “She was under medical treatment, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Well . . . she has to come by here for an interview anyway, doesn’t she? I suppose, if you’re willing to sit in, so I don’t have to waste someone else’s time—and it can’t be anything of substantive value. Does your—uh—Sirkin have the next-of-kin names and addresses?”
“I’ll find out,” Heris said. “Right now we’re at the morgue.”
“Young idiot,” said the voice, but with a tinge of humanity this time. “When can we expect you?”
“An hour or so, I expect, from here to there. She’s not supposed to ride drop-tubes for a few more days. I’ll call back if it’s longer.”
“If she comes apart,” said the voice, this time full of resignation.
“Have you caught the ones who got away?” asked Heris. Time to put the voice on the defensive.
“Not yet. I’d figured from the blood that at least one would show up in some medical facility, but no such luck. Maybe he died and they put the body in the tanks.” Heris opened her mouth, but the voice went on. “And before you ask, no, we can’t do the kind of analysis you could on a Fleet ship—this Station’s too big for that. We’ve always got some unauthorized recycs garbaging our figures.”
“Too bad,” Heris said. She glanced over and saw that Sirkin was about to go through a door into the viewing area. “Talk to you later,” she said, and punched off.
Oblo and Meharry stood on either side of Sirkin as she waited in the viewing area. It was cold and a sharp odor made Heris’s nose itch. A waist-high bar separated them from the polished floor on which the wheeled trays slid out from a wall of doors. Sirkin punched in the numbers she’d been given at the front desk. A door snicked open, and a draped form emerged so smoothly it seemed magical. The tray unfolded wheeled legs as it cleared the door, and rolled along tracks sunk in the floor until it stopped in front of their group. Heris glanced past to see an arrangement of visual baffles and soundproofing that would allow several—she could not tell how many—viewings at once. With a thin buzz, the bar lifted to let them through.
Rituals for the dead varied; Heris had no idea what Sirkin felt necessary for Yrilan. Slowly, the young woman folded back the drape, and stared at the face. Morgues were nothing like the funeral hostels of those religions that thought it important to make the dead look “lifelike.” No one had worked on Yrilan’s face with paint or powder, with clay or gum or needle to reshape and recolor it. Her dead body looked just that: dead. Heris guessed that under the rest of the sheet the marks of the fight and the autopsy both would be even more shocking. Sirkin had given one sharp gasp, as the reality of it hit her. Heris touched her shoulder, lightly.
“It’s so . . . ugly,” Sirkin said. Heris saw Oblo’s eyelids flicker. This was far from ugly, as they had both seen ugly death . . . but it was Sirkin’s first, maybe. “Her hair’s all dirty and bloody—” She touched it, her hands shaking.
“She had beautiful hair,” Meharry said. Heris glanced at her. She hadn’t expected Meharry to notice, or to comment now. But Meharry was watching Sirkin. “Lovely hair it was, and if you cut yourself a lock—over on this side, it’s just as clean and lovely as ever . . .”
Sirkin’s hand went out again, then she turned and grabbed for a hand, anyone’s hand. Heris took it, and put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. “You’ve seen enough now, haven’t you? Do you have a picture, the way she was?”
“I—yes—but that’s not the point.” Sirkin, trembling, was still trying to stay in control. “She died for me; the least I can do is look.”
Heris was surprised in spite of herself. She’d been impressed with Sirkin before, but death spooked a lot of people. Sirkin pushed herself away from Heris, but Oblo intercepted her.
“There’s a right way,” he said. “You loved her; we all respect her body. You take that corner; let the captain take this.”
What lay beneath the drape met Heris’s expectations. None of Yrilan’s beauty remained, nor any clue to her personality. In slow procession across the inside of Heris’s eyelids passed the dead she had seen in all her years, one blank face after another. She, too, always looked—and she had never yet become inured to it. Sirkin, only a fine tremor betraying her, stared blankly at the evidence of a violent death, and then, with Heris’s help, stretched the drape across the body once more. A last stroke of the hand on that fire-gold hair, and she turned away, mouth set. Meharry, Heris noted, had clipped a single curl and folded it into a tissue: Sirkin might want it later. Or might not—she trusted Meharry to know whether to offer it or not.
Chapter Six
Shifting the Sweet Delight from the Royal Docks to the decorators took only a few hours, but Heris felt she’d put in a full shift’s work by the time they had linked with their new docking site. First there’d been the formalities of leaving the Royal Sector, with a double inventory of all badges issued, and multiple inspections of the access area. That had made them half an hour late in departure. Then the captain of the tug designated to move the yacht, angry because of the delay, took out his frustrations with several abrupt attitude changes that strained Sweet Delight’s gravity compensators. Heris had to be almost rude to get him to stop. Finally, even the docking at Spacenhance presented problems. Although Heris had given them the yacht’s specifications as soon as the contract was signed, the slot had been left “wide” for the much larger vessel just completed. Heris had to hold the yacht poised, just nuzzling the dock, while the expansion panels eased out to complete the docking seal.
“They probably thought you’d tear up their space if they resized it ahead of time,” Petris pointed out. Heris wanted to grumble at him but there was no time. Somewhere on the dock, the moving and storage crews would be racking up time charges. Her crew would supervise the packing and removal of all the yacht’s furnishings, and the sealing of essential systems from whatever chemicals the decorators used.