Through gritted teeth, he said to Jacobi, “You’d better nail these thugs before other would-be vandals start terrorizing the people.”
Jacobi nodded. “We’re devoting all our resources to it, but there isn’t much to go on. Their faces were pretty well obscured by the hoods on their jackets—”
“You have voiceprints of what they said, don’t you?”
With a sad shake of his head, Jacobi replied, “Not clear enough for voiceprint ID, I’m afraid.”
Waxman stared at the sergeant. “Then what are you doing?”
“Initiating regular patrols along the passageways,” Jacobi answered. “The obvious presence of security patrols is the best way to prevent future incidents.”
“But what about finding the kids who attacked Dr. Gomez?”
“We’re bringing in kids by the carload and questioning them closely. Sooner or later we’ll get a lead.”
“Sooner or later,” Waxman echoed.
“Police work takes time, and patience.”
For several moments Waxman simply sat in the uncomfortable straight-back chair, glaring at Jacobi. At last he got to his feet.
“Keep me informed of how the investigation is progressing,” he said. Then he turned and left Jacobi sitting at his desk.
Watching his retreating back, Jacobi said to himself, Sure. I’ll send you written reports every day for the next week, then weekly, and then I’ll stop. You won’t pay them any attention and in a few weeks the whole affair will be forgotten.
He smiled knowingly.
Alicia could see how upset Raven was. The morning flow of customers was on the slow side, yet Raven hardly responded to the women’s questions and comments.
The crowd thinned to only two shoppers as the noon hour approached. Alicia pulled Raven aside and told her, in a low voice, that she should go to the hospital to visit Tómas.
“And leave you alone here?” Raven objected.
“I can handle things for a while,” Alicia replied. “You go and see Tómas.”
“You’re sure?”
With a smile, Alicia said, “I’m sure.”
It wasn’t until nearly closing time that Raven returned. She looked worried.
Alicia waited until the last customer sauntered out of the boutique. Then, as she lowered the window blinds, she asked, “So how is he today?”
Raven was obviously tense: her hands clenched into fists, her face looked strained, upset.
“He can’t remember very much about the attack,” she said. “It’s all a blur in his mind.”
“I suppose that’s typical.”
Raven nodded tightly. “That’s what the doctor said. She told me he was recuperating normally. But he can’t remember what happened! Not any details.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Alicia said, trying to sound comforting, sure of herself.
“I’m worried,” Raven replied.
Alicia went to her and wrapped her arms around Raven’s shoulders. “He’s going to be fine.”
“But who would do this to him?” Raven said, tearfully. “Why? Who would want to hurt him?”
“Some people are crazy,” Alicia said.
“But we were all tested during the trip out here,” Raven pointed out. “The psychotechnicians weeded out the violent ones.”
Alicia pulled up one of the wheeled chairs from the counter and sat Raven on it. Then she went to the water fountain and poured out a cupful.
Handing the cup to Raven, she said, “When I lived back in Chicago, there were plenty of cases of sidewalk violence. You couldn’t walk alone in some neighborhoods. People carried guns and knives.”
“Not here in Haven.”
“I hope not,” said Alicia. “It would be awful if this habitat sank into that kind of mess.”
FRUSTRATIONS
“It’s all a blur,” Tómas muttered. “It happened so fast.…”
Sitting beside the astronomer’s bed, Kyle Umber nodded sympathetically. “But you don’t remember what they said to you?”
Tómas started to shake his head, winced with pain, and said merely, “No, I don’t.”
“You can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt you?”
“Only that guy who tried to rape Raven, but he’s halfway back to Earth by now.”
“Noel Dacco.”
“Yes.”
Umber sighed. “We’ve never had an incident like this, not in the three years since we opened Haven to immigration.”
Through the dull pain throbbing behind his eyes, Tómas thought, It’s like he’s blaming me for the attack. Like it’s my own fault.
The minister leaned over and lightly patted Tómas’s uninjured leg. “Well, I’m sure the security chief and his sergeant Jacobi will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, you relax and get well.”
Tómas smiled weakly. “I don’t have anything else to do, do I?”
Umber pushed himself to his feet. “God be with you.”
“And with you, sir.”
Umber left the narrow enclosure. Gomez stared at the door as it slid closed behind him. Then he shut his eyes and drifted to sleep.
He dreamed. He saw the planet Uranus surrounded by dozens of tiny moons whirling around it in hyperkinetic orbits. Then a huge moon came hurtling out of the darkness of space and smashed into the planet. The small satellites were swirled into a frenzy of new orbits, many of them flying completely away from Uranus. The planet itself tilted over on its side as huge clouds of gas and debris erupted from beneath its clouds and spurted into space.
Tómas saw it all clearly. So clearly it hurt his eyes, numbed his soul.
And a voice from deep within him said, “Find the wanderers, Tómas. Find the wanderers.”
He asked, “How? How can I find a moon torn loose from its orbit when I don’t know what its original orbit was?”
He heard no answer.
Kyle Umber returned to the security department’s headquarters and asked the chief to allow him to review the surveillance videos of the passageway where Gomez had been attacked.
The security chief looked surprised. “I doubt that you’ll see anything that Sergeant Jacobi and his team haven’t noticed.”
Umber smiled tightly and nodded. “Probably not. But I would like to try.”
With a cocked brow, the chief asked, “You’re sure?”
“The Lord helps those who help themselves, you know.”
Suppressing a sigh, the chief spoke into his desktop phone and called for an assistant to bring Umber down to the security camera monitoring center.
It was a small, tight circular room, its curving walls covered with monitoring screens that showed every passageway and public space in the habitat. Umber’s guide, a petite brunette young woman in a snugly form-fitting blue uniform, showed him to a vacant desk. As he slid into its chair, she tapped the viewscreen built into the tiny table before him.
“It’s voice activated,” she said. “Just tell the screen what you want to see: call up the list of cameras, pick the one you’re looking for. That’s all there is to it.” Then she added, “Oh, and tell the screen the time you’re interested in. Otherwise you’ll have to wade through weeks of observations.”
Umber nodded gratefully. With the young woman standing behind him, he plowed through a diagram showing the locations of the surveillance cameras. He found the one he wanted, then ordered the monitor to start one hour before the attack on Dr. Gomez.
The screen showed an empty passageway. Umber asked for fast-forward.
A trio of young men walked into the scene, ridiculously jerky in the fast-forward mode. Their faces were shaded by the hoods on their dark gray jackets.