Chapter 8
Aboard the White Hawk, Martha sat at the control panel in the cockpit. The girls had been moved to the rec room of the interstellar yacht. It had a bathroom and a fully stocked refrigerator/stasis unit. Martha had nothing to occupy her mind with, and desperately wanted a distraction to focus on.
The remnants of the original Martha were feeling some remorse about the people she had killed. She thought of the first guard she had killed. Was it only two nights ago? she wondered. She had known the guard’s location on the first floor from previous “casings”. With little conscious thought, Martha had silently approached the woman from behind. She was still surprised at her own cat-like movements. Without hesitation Martha rammed her fist into, and partially through, the security guard’s head. Martha was shocked at the damage she had caused, but the shock quickly wore off and was replaced with a sense of power.
The next guard had been dispatched just as easily. A simple twist of the head a little further than it was designed to go. The crackling noises had sent a thrill through her body and aroused her sexually. She had felt more powerful after killing the six security guards than she had ever felt in her life. The last guard she had played with, breaking his arms and legs before caving in his skull.
Sitting here in the pilot’s seat of the White Hawk, Martha realized these feeling had been sourced from Raymond Ginyit. Those kinds of feelings had been completely foreign to her prior to the memory implants. She now suspected the implants were much more dangerous than she had been told. She wondered what kind of training Ginyit had received to kill so quickly and efficiently. Martha dared not go digging into his memories for fear of another flood of experiences, fear the memories would take over what little control she still seemed to have over herself.
The victims are weak and useless, good only for expressing your power to the world, a foreign thought counseled.
It would take another ten hours at fatal speeds to arrive at Cavanaugh Station. Martha desperately wanted to have the memory implants removed. She felt as though she had made a deal with the devil and her soul was forfeit.
Chris was introduced to Captain Javis, the chief of security for Corbin III. Javis was a few centimeters shorter than Chris, and lean with bad posture. Chris suspected he had hyperextended knees and this was the source of his misaligned stance He watched as Javis gave orders to his staff and asked why none of the satellites were operational. The satellite technician explained a visual inspection of the satellites would have to be made before he could give any kind of report.
Javis listened quietly and said, “Hold off on performing any inspections. I may need you down here.”
Lee interrupted to ask Javis for an update on the investigation.
Chris’ immediate assessment of Javis was of someone who was friendly and easy going, but in over his head. He seemed dazed and confused. Chris wondered if the man had achieved his position as chief of security by way of the Peter Principle (the seniority based promotion of someone to a position they can’t quite handle), or if he had gained the job through family connections.
“Well, there has been no change since my last report. I can’t get anything from the satellites, so I have no idea where the truck she stole is located. Right now, I’m just trying to get this place in some kind of order. I can’t get anything done until I get things organized,” Javis said with a bewildered look.
“Which way did they go?” asked Chris. Which way did they go? echoed in his mind playfully.
“We don’t know. There’s a sandstorm every night in this area. The storm covered her tracks. My best guess is west.” Javis answered, giving Chris the impression he had no idea.
Chris didn’t know which way west was, but he did know Javis was someone he could become impatient with very quickly. Giving Javis a perplexed look, he decided to take control of the situation and politely asked, “And which way is that?”
Javis stared back at Chris for an instant and then averted his eyes, while pointing and saying, “That way.”
Chris’ hand went to the medallion he was wearing under his shirt. This was the device Chester had shown him last. He hadn’t been sure about its usefulness because it was fairly primitive technology, being no more than a miniature video camera, a short range radio, and a few miniature antigrav motors for lift and directional control, but had taken it as part of a package deal at Chester’s insistence. He was now glad he had let Chester talk him into it.
Shifting his attention to Lee, Chris said, “I’ll need a fast land vehicle and a driver who knows the area.”
Lee looked at Chris with relief on his face. “I’ll arrange it.”
“I’ll go with you,” Javis said.
Chris looked Javis directly in the eyes and stated quietly, “Captain Javis, we need to come to an understanding. As Mr. Lee will confirm, I’ve been put in charge of tracking down Apela and the corbinite. Mr. Lee has been given directives to assist me in any way he can, and I’m assuming those directives extend to you and your staff. I will be happy to accept any help and info you and your staff can provide. However, make no mistake, I am in charge of this investigation from this point forward. Please make arrangements to have a ship for this technician,” Chris nodded at the man who needed to make a visual inspection of the satellites, “and whoever he needs, take off within the next fifteen minutes to perform their inspections. Also, please make arrangements to have the prisoner on the mining freighter transferred to one of your holding cells here for questioning. When I return from tracking down the stolen truck I’ll want to interrogate him.”
Javis’ face went slack as though someone had cut the power to it. A hangdog expression developed and he said, “Will there be anything else, sir?”
Chris felt sorry for the man and responded, “No, thank you. Not right now. Shall we go make arrangements for a vehicle and driver, Mr. Lee?”
Mr. Lee looked pleasantly surprised. “Yes, let’s go.”
Lee went to make the arrangements, giving Chris an opportunity to return to the spaceport and compare notes with Homer.
They were in a quiet corner of the spaceport, near the data jack Homer had been plugged into.
“Well, the surprise of murder and theft might have caused some unusual behavior patterns in Mr. Lee, but I didn’t pick up anything suggesting he was lying to us, or may have been an accomplice. How about you?” Chris asked Homer.
“No, Chris. I observed no evidence of microexpressions, nor did he seem to be answering a memory question with a thinking answer. I observed none of the symptoms of lying you described. I must conclude he was telling the truth.”
Homer had been on the lookout for microexpressions. People could control their body language up to a point, and some were better than others, but typically they would make minor slips expressing their true feelings. They might say “yes”, but shake their head “no” just slightly.
“So, Mr. Lee is clean. Javis, the head of security, is a possibility, but there should have been no way for him to have known we were coming. I’ll ask Lee if there was any way Javis could have known. For the time being I’m going to assume whoever made the arrangements for me to be taken out of commission got their info from a spy inside Intergalactic Mining’s main headquarters.”
“Chris, I am finding this concept of lying difficult to incorporate into my processing centers. Also, I have large amounts of information from our conversations and from my library studies I need to assimilate. I will have to shift into sleep mode soon.”
Chris looked at Homer with some surprise. He hadn’t been aware the the sentient robot slept. “When would you like to go to sleep?”
“Sometime within the next four hours would br appropriate.”
“We’ll find a safe place for you to sleep sometime in the next four hours, Homer.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh,” Chris said. ”You might want to observe the people here. I don’t know if you’ll get another opportunity to see a community of humans grieving over the loss of friends and loved ones.”
Chris left Homer to continue his studies of the colony library’s info on human psychology and went outside. Standing in the light of the two suns, Chris took the half-sphere off his medallion and made some adjustments to its controls. The half-sphere floated upward and the medallion’s screen came on, showing a view from the floating camera’s eye. The camera continued to float straight up for several hundred feet and Chris made adjustments to the zoom-in lens, as he scanned for some sign of Martha Apela.
As he worked the controls, Chris thought of Homer and their conversation on the Gipper about reading Henry Lee. Homer had been shocked by the idea humans might deliberately deceive each other. None of the League member races viewed lying as acceptable behavior. The idea of investigating missing supplies was understandable, but deliberate theft and lying had been difficult for him to comprehend.
“Homer, would you help me to assess whether or not an individual has been involved in a crime?”
“I would be happy to help you, Chris. What would you like me to do?”
“When humans lie there are a variety of body language clues they display. One is called microexpressions, which is a discrepancy between what they are saying verbally and actions or facial expressions suggesting they believe or are feeling something else. A microexpression lasts for about a fifteenth of a second. It might be a quick, almost unnoticeable shake of the head meaning ‘no’ while the person is saying ‘yes’, or there may be a brief expression of fear while the person is expressing confidence.
“Another way of spotting when someone is lying is to watch his eyes. Traditionally, when humans are remembering, their eyes will focus on an imaginary point in either the upper left or right hand corner of their field of vision. When someone is thinking or creating an answer in his mind, they will look in the opposite upper corner. If you ask someone a question requiring an answer based on his memory and he looks in the area normally used for thinking, there’s a high probability he’s lying. It’s best to ask a stranger a series of unimportant questions to develop a baseline of behavior. Then you have something to compare with when you ask the real questions.”
“Do humans lie very often, Chris?”
“Some do, Homer. Usually, people lie out of fear. Fear of hurting someone, fear of being caught in a mistake. Some people lie deliberately in an effort to manipulate other people into accomplishing some kind of short term goal. I believe most people are honest most of the time. The occasional lie, out of fear or stupidity, I’ll forgive, because humans aren’t perfect and make mistakes every once in a while. I personally try to avoid people who are casual about lying and use it as a tool to accomplish their goals.
“On my own world, a Gredorian knowingly communicating misinformation would be repaired or eliminated. I am astonished humans are allowed to deliberately misinform each other.”
“Well, we don’t eliminate them, but if they cause too much damage we do try to reeducate them, or, at the very least, isolate them so can’t do any further damage.”
“I am now concerned I may have been lied to on several occasions during my visit to Earth. The info I recieved might be inaccurate.”
Chris felt sympathy for Homer. “Most of it probably wasn’t. I think they did a poor job of providing info, but I doubt they gave you inaccurate facts. My advice is not to dwell on it. Just be aware sometimes humans may lie to you. As I said, I believe most humans are honest most of the time, and I try to stay aware of the symptoms of lying, especially with people I don’t know or don’t trust. Do let me know if you think there was something specific you may have been lied to about.”
“The human we will be interviewing...”
“Henry Lee is his name.”
“Why do you suspect he is involved in the plans to steal corbinite.”
“I don’t suspect him. But a limited number of people knew about my mission, and someone made arrangements to try and get me out of the way. For my own personal safety, and for the success of my mission, I have to know if Henry Lee was involved.”
Coming back to the present, Chris spotted a truck and campsite on the small vidscreen. The truck was empty and it seemed unlikely Martha Apela might still be there. The campsite was east, not west, of the mining community. His respect for Javis went down another notch.
A two-person hovercraft pulled up. Chris showed the driver where they were going using the floating eye. The driver said the site was about twenty minutes away.
Chris got in the hovercraft. “Let’s go.”
Arriving at the location, Chris was not surprised to find nothing had changed. The tent was still there and no one was in it. Marks in the sand suggested a small ship had landed and the corbinite had been transferred to it. Two separate sets of footprints marked the sand. The two individuals had approximately the same weight, based on the depth of the footprints, but one was taller. The length of the stride was longer.
Chris checked the inside of the tent and found nothing but a few cooking tools and a pile of small bones, what looked like the remnants of someone’s dinner.
Chris called to the driver who had been inspecting the pickup’s landing marks, “Get security on the radio and give them our location. I’ll be there in a minute. Also, avoid walking in this area. We don’t want to contaminate it before security gets here.”Chris inspected the ground carefully. Only one other person had helped Apela load the corbinite.
Had they known where to meet well in advance, or did Apela have some sort of homing device? Chris wondered. Did the pickup deliver the corbinite to a nearby ship or was it fitted with fatal speed equipment? Where are they taking the corbinite?
Walking to the two-person skimmer, Chris accepted the radio from his driver, a young man with dark curly hair who didn’t talk much. “This is Chris Black. Is Captain Javis there?”
“No, sir. Captain Javis isn’t available right now. May I take a message?”
“Is he anywhere close by?” Chris asked.
“No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t know where he is.”
“Please inform Captain Javis we have found the empty truck, and evidence suggesting the corbinite was transferred to a small cargo ship with the help of one other person. Tell him I would like a security crew sent out to take holographs of the site and to give the area a thoro examination. My driver and I will be returning shortly. Any news from the tech crew examining the satellites?”
“They’re in the process of checking out a second satellite. Both it and the first one were badly damaged by laser fire.”
“Very good. Inform the tech crew to make finding out which satellite was the last one to be attacked their number one priority. Please tell them I’ll need that info as quickly as possible.”
“This is Captain Javis, Mr. Black. We need to get a couple of satellites operational. Without those satellites we’re completely blind and our security is compromised.”
Sorry, Captain Javis, but my orders stand. They can begin repairs after they determine which satellite was last hit and its location at the time it was incapacitated.
No response came from the other end.
“Has the prisoner from the freighter been transferred to a holding cell in security?”
“Yes, he has,” said Javis. “He arrived a few minutes ago.
“Good. Thank you. We’ll be returning immediately. Over and out.”
After returning to the mining community, Chris located Henry Lee with fairly minimum effort (Lee was in his office) and gave him an update on the investigation.
“What’s the fastest long-range ship you have available? Something with some fairly high-tech sensory equipment.”
Henry Lee thought for a moment. “I think the ambulance is your best bet. It’s fast, long-range, and the most modern ship we have.”
“Sounds perfect. Do you have a good pilot to go with it.”
“I’ll assign Kelly Turner. She’s officially assigned to the ambulance. Between you and me, she’s one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen.”
“We may have to do some extensive traveling and we may be gone for as long as two or three weeks. Also, it might get a little dangerous. Ask her if she would be willing to volunteer for this.”
“I’ll ask, but I’m pretty sure she’ll want to go. She was close friends with one of the security guards who were killed.”
“What’s the scoop on Javis?” asked Chris, changing topics. “He doesn’t seem to be the most efficient security chief I’ve ever met.”
Lee looked embarrassed. “Well, this is a small community with not much going on. Nobody ever expected we would have this kind of trouble with all the security systems we have in place.” Lee paused and then continued. “Upper level management arranged to have Javis transferred here a little under year ago. But when he arrived, the historical information about his last assignment had been erased from his files. I tried to get the information from the main office, but was told to drop it. So I dropped it. He’s been okay in his position up to this point. A little self-centered, maybe, but okay. This situation, however, is way over his head and he doesn’t want to admit it.”
“Does he have a thoro security clearance showing on his records?” Chris asked.
“Yes, but let me pull his file up on my computer.” Henry Lee typed away busily. “Yes. Here it is. Cleared by both Intergalactic and the U.N. Bureau of Investigation. He turned the computer screen towards Chris. “Look, he’s got a good track record.”
“Well, I’ll cut him some slack as long as he stays out of my way,” said Chris.
“I’ll have a word with him and calm him down a little.”
“He didn’t know I was coming here, did he?”
Lee looked a little surprised at the question. “He shouldn’t have. I didn’t tell him, and I don’t know how else he could have found out.”
“Okay. Thanks, I appreciate the help. I’m going to interrogate the prisoner. If Ms. Turner is willing, I’d like to leave in about two hours.”
“I’ll let you know if there are any problems. Otherwise, let’s plan on the ambulance being ready for take off in two hours.”
“Deal!”
Chris walked across a field of sand on a bluish walkway, heading for the blue and white security building and its holding cells.
Things were moving pretty fast, but he didn’t mind. He was in his element. He just hoped he could catch up with Apela and her accomplices.
Javis was at the entrance to the security building smoking a cigarette and waiting for him.
“Your prisoner committed suicide,” Javis said sheepishly.
This news caught Chris by surprise. “How did it happen?”
“Some kind of poison in a plastic sack in his tongue. The guy actually bit his tongue in half to release the poison. We haven’t done anything with the body yet.”
“I’d like to see the body,” Chris said thoughtfully.
“Sure. This way,” responded Javis, grinding out his cigarette and putting the butt in his pocket.
When they arrived at the prisoner’s cell, Chris found a doctor leaning over the body. Moving closer he could see the man who had attacked him the night before had turned a very dark shade of purple and his flesh seemed to have collapsed in on itself.
“We don’t know what kind of poison it was, but it sure was toxic,” Javis stated.
The doctor lifted his head and said, “I haven’t been able to identify the poison. Don’t know I can. Whatever it is, it gets absorbed into the cell, as though it were a nutrient, and then begins to break down the DNA structures and organelles. If we don’t get the body into stasis in the next twenty minutes, it will decay so badly there will be no way to identify it.
One of the security staff approached and said, “The tech crew just figured out which satellite was the last one to get hit.”
Javis looked at the young woman blankly.
After a few seconds, Chris said, “Thank you. Please have the info forwarded to the ambulance. We’ll be taking it out to investigate.”
The young woman turned to Chris, smiled, and said, “You’re welcome.”
Chris looked at the purple corpse. The man had actually committed suicide rather than risk interrogation. And Chris wasn’t exactly into torture. Pretty extreme behavior! he thought.
Looking at the doctor, he said, “Please make arrangements for an autopsy. No great rush, but I’d be interested in the results. Whatever you can find out about him.”
Leaving the security building, Chris realized he had nearly an hour before meeting Kelly Turner at the ambulance. He decided to go find Homer, and then a twinge in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since the night before. First things first. He’d find Homer and then try the cafeteria at the spaceport.