Hammer and Crucible Cameron Cooper (web ebook reader TXT) 📖

murder was involved. They lived an exclusionary life.

“If he switched with the crew, then the passenger manifest would be short,” she pointed out.

“Then we start with passengers, then check the crew. This thing has stayed buried for forty years. The trace won’t be in any of the obvious places.”

After three days of it, though, I began to wonder if the trace would be found at all. “Damn, Dalton really did just up and vanish, didn’t he?” I breathed, scrubbing at my hair. I felt thick locks and waves. Wheat-colored wisps flicked in the corners of my vision, drawing my attention because they were not silver.

I stretched and felt the tightness of unused muscles.

“What are you doing right now?” I asked Juliyana as she frowned at her pad.

“Trying an idea.” Her tone was remote. “Dalton couldn’t have flipped IDs with another passenger, because thirty passengers arrived and thirty passengers left. Therefore, he picked up a completely new ID from somewhere. Right?”

“It’s entirely possible he had the ID when he left, and only activated after he left the base,” I pointed out. “That’s how I’d do it. The moment the ship emerged from the gate and links were live.”

She noted. “So my theory is that he anticipated that someone would try what we are doing—checking everyone. It makes sense that as soon as possible, he would dump the new ID and get a second one.”

“New IDs that pass all the scans are not cheap. You found out for yourself.”

She looked at me. “He was a Ranger, and he only had to acquire one ID. So maybe he bought a second one, the same as I did.”

“Fair point.” I got up from the chair, twitchy from lack of movement. “And you’re testing that, how?”

She shrugged. “I’m looking up all thirty passengers’ statuses for today, here and now. If he dumped the arriving ID, then it would make sense that there is no trace of it, forty years later. It would have stopped leaving traces, a day, a month, a week or more after he left the ship.”

“It’s a good test. Have you found anything?”

“I’m up to passenger number twelve. So far, they’re all leading perfectly ordinary spacer lives. Three of them migrated to planetary status. Two are dead but led busy lives right up until they died.”

“No sign that those busy lives were faked?”

“There are photos of the guests at their wakes. Full family trees of mourners.”

“That seems somewhat elaborate for an ID he might’ve used for only a few days. Okay, then.” I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair.

“Where are you going?”

I grimaced. “Just going for a walk.”

“Right now?” Juliyana’s voice was flat with disbelief.

“It’s nearly midnight. I thought I’d look at the stars through the dome.”

She just stared at me.

“Okay, I’m going for a drink.” And I wasn’t thinking of the little wine bar at the end of the street, either.

Juliyana’s eyes narrowed. Then her expression cleared and she sat back. “There’s a joint across the way from landing bay ten that is a likely place for spacers. It will still be open, too.”

“That is the place I had in mind,” I admitted. I did not finish my thought aloud. The little spacer–favored bar had a doxy den tacked to the rear, with a discrete sign at the back of the bar, between the whiskey bottles, displaying an up-to-date certification and warranty.

Juliyana lost interest. She turned back to her pad, and I went to get my…drink.

In the three days since I had left the therapy complex, I had slept very little, except for that first night, when I digested far too many grams of organically grown steak.

Since that night, we had been hunched over pads and staring at 3D data arrays turning over the table, while we tried to sort out exactly where Gabriel Dalton was hiding. Being able to go for hours without sleep was a function of the young. I was enjoying those benefits once more.

Once I had cooled off my gonads with some very sweaty fucking with a pleasant and well-endowed professional, I came back to the little house and dropped back into bed, now willing to pay my sleep debt.

I had forgotten about the dreams.

I think, in the farther recesses of my mind, I assumed they were a symptom of my advanced age. Andrain’s geriatric research indicated that older people tended to linger inside their heads, revisiting old times and rejecting the far-too-modern times of their current days.

I figured that the dreams were my version of escaping a too-fast, too energetic reality.

This dream was different, right out of the gate. No beach. No anything, actually. The one thing that was the same was that no one was there.

In the empty box of nothingness, Noam stood with his shoulder to me, as usual.

“I wish you would fucking look at me, at least once,” I said/thought.

Norm turned to me and raised a brow, the way I had seen him do a thousand of times before. “Will looking at you make you feel any better? Will you listen, then?”

It didn’t bother me right then that he was talking to me. After all, it was a dream. Even though I didn’t process that it was a dream right then. I have never had lucid dreams, and this certainly was not one of them.

“What am I supposed to be listening to?”

“Well, to me, at least. Spare some of your energy to consider a few things.” He seemed amused.

It didn’t occur to me that he was dead. Not in my dream. Yet there was a sense of wistfulness whispering through me as I stared at him. “Okay, shoot. What am I supposed to be listening to?”

“There is so much to tell you…”

“No shit,” I said. “You left a fucking mess behind.”

Clearly, this dream brain of mine had grasped that he was dead. Only the knowledge did not touch me.

Noam shifted his shoulder. An indifferent shrug. “Creativity is supposed to be messy.”

“You were supposed to be a Ranger,