“But that was to help people!”
“So was atomic energy, but they made a bomb first. I once investigated a case in which the murder weapon was an egg beater. Old laws of history. First, anything and everything can be misused and perverted. Second, anything that can be misused and perverted someday will be. Somebody had the thing built, either here or somewhere else and then transported here, and then they ordered the computer to do it. Then they ordered it all erased from the computer’s memory, so there’s no record, while their device is out there in the sea someplace, although that was probably an afterthought or a contingency. End result: Sir Robert killed by unknown monster, another mystery of the islands. We needn’t go on now, you know. It’s not really necessary.”
“Perhaps it is. It is for me, anyway. Please—lead me onward.”
He did so, and when they came to the fork in the trail she did hesitate, but then ordered the chair onward. It was a very tight fit, and several times he had to assist in getting it and her over an obstacle or exactly on line, but ultimately they made it to the cliff edge and the clear trail down to the beach. She had to stop, however, where the trail started down the cliff in a series of short switchbacks. “There is no way that this chair can be maneuvered down that,” she said flatly.
“I agree, and it’s too dangerous to let you try, but it was also not used by your father’s killer. It jumped from this point—you can see here where the brush is broken and a small part of the shelf has fallen down—to the beach below. Made a hell of a cavity you can still make out down there.”
“It is out of my possible field of view. Still, it is a long way down there. Nothing human, even inside a machine, would have likely survived it unscathed. I also find a robot walking on legs difficult to accept because it would have to have tremendous balance, yes? You, yourself said that they could not expect to have to chase this far. Would they have built all the little gears and levers and the like to have it right itself so easily after such a leap?”
He frowned, knowing that she had a valid point. “I can’t guess as to the nature of the thing without seeing it,” he responded a bit lamely. “However, I’m convinced I’m right. It’s either my way or we have to accept that a tremendous monster materialized in the meadow, chased Sir Robert down here, did him in, and then vanished once again. Which one is more plausible no matter what the loose ends, eh?”
But she did not answer him. She was staring out at the beach and at the roaring surf. The salt smell seemed particularly nice and the breeze that brought it and that wonderful roar of crashing breakers felt cool and comfortable. She felt a tremendous urge to run down to that beach and dive into the warm waters.
“Something the matter?” he asked her, concerned that actually viewing the site of her father’s death had been a little too much for her.
She sighed. “A feeling, one that I have not had or allowed in a long, long time, that is all. You take this beach and this sea for granted, and look down, missing its beauty, seeing only a crime scene. I look at it, and its very beauty beckons to me, and I am reminded exactly of what I have lost.”
He undestood it now, at least in abstract terms, and felt both pity and guilt. “I guess I shouldn’t have brought you here. Come on—let’s go back up the trail and over to the road and I’ll call for a car to take us back up.”
“No!” she. said sharply. “Not yet! Please! It is very important, this thing I am feeling. The water and the wind are warm, but it blows like ice in my face. In a small town one knows well with few attractions and fewer distractions, it is easy to fool yourself into thinking that everything is still all right, that you go on and do not look back. That is a lie now, I see, born of my ignorance and isolation. This life, this wider world I am now confronting, will always reflect back this thing, this loss. I will always after wish to do what I can not do. I feel, suddenly, the turtle, wishing to withdraw into her shell and remain there, yet I am no turtle. I know that I can not.” She paused a moment, noting that he was looking less at her than out at the sea, and she knew his discomfort.
“Tell me about yourself, Greg MacDonald,” she said to him. “You have read up on me, I know. Save me the trouble of reading up on you.”
He turned and faced her. “Me? I’m thirty-five, born and raised in Victoria, B.C., My dad was a desk sergeant with the city police, and I never much thought of being anything else, although I envisioned following in my dad’s footsteps as a constable. I went over to Vancouver to do it, though, partly because I really wanted to see if I could make it on my own, and I got the job and a rather rough beat and I took courses nights at university. After two years I got a bit bored with the beat and I wanted a degree, and so I applied to the RCMP, mostly on a lark, partly because they would help with grants to finish my degree. They took me on, I got the degree in sociology, and wound up spending another two years in Saskatoon, then two more in Whitehorse, then back to Vancouver where I took more training and then back to the Yukon, only this time certified in homicide work. I worked it in the Yukon, then Calgary, then back in Vancouver again, and I got rather good at it. I finally quit two and a half years ago to take a job as a security consultant with Magellan and, being the closest to the scene with homicide experience, here I am. Did I leave anything out?”
“Only the important details. For instance, are you married?”
“I was once. It didn’t work out.”
“Oh. Sorry. I did not mean to pry that much.”
“No problem. It’s all in my dossier anyway. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but it wasn’t anything ugly. I have few regrets about the way things have gone for me so far.”
“Tell me—why did you leave the RCMP? Whenever you bring it up I can feel your fondness for it. You loved that job and that service. Or is this something too personal I should look it up, too?”
He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Urn, no, well… It’s just difficult, that’s all. Difficult to talk about, particularly to you.”
Her curiosity was overcoming her sense of propriety, and her mind raced with thoughts of scandal. “If it was something illegal or immoral in their eyes it is all right if you don’t tell me.”
He mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch. “Pardon?”
“I couldn’t learn French!” he snapped irritably and in a very loud tone. He calmed down, looking a bit sheepish. “It’s the law. You can’t make lieutenant or get any further promotions in government service unless you pass your promotional tests in French, both written and oral. I had the best performance and job rating record in the entire west, but I couldn’t get promoted. 1 tried their classes, I tried Berlitz, I tried everything, and no matter what happened I couldn’t ever get the right case for a verb or stick a sentence together that made any real sense. Oh, I could have cheated my way through—some do—but what if I were posted to Montreal? We had a few Quebecois in the office and they knew it and teased me unmercifully, but they were ambitious bastards—pardon the language. I couldn’t stay in when I could be so easily exposed or blackmailed.”
“But they have a language requirement in university, no?”
“Yeah, they do. I took Spanish—don’t know why, except that I had a couple of friends who were neighborhood folk, immigrants from someplace in South America, and the Spanish department was small and they were doing double and triple duty with what assistants they could find. Spanish had do-it-yourself exams. I cheated, that’s all. Just plain cheated. Oh, I could remember the day’s lessons enough to fake it back, but as soon as I didn’t need it any more it was gone.”