"No."
"Anything unusual at all?"
Sara shot her a suspicious glance. "No," she said. "Considering what was happening outside, the villa was quite normal. Save that my son was missing."
"This was how long after the explosion?"
"Two hours, I guess. No more than that. Emergency teams were still arriving." She paused, shook her head. "These things happen," she said. "He was a good son. He had a lot to offer."
"Mrs. Baines, did you notice whether he'd left any notes or records about the mission? Anything that would help-" She stumbled, unsure how to proceed.
Sara's face hardened. "-I've heard all the rumors, Ms. Braddock. I can assure you if anything out of the ordinary had happened out there, I'd have been first to know. There was nothing connected with the flight in the house. At least nothing that I saw. No records. No visuals. Nothing"
"I see."
"I'm glad you do." She had recognized Kim's ulterior purpose, but she hadn't really taken offense. "When it was over I tried to sell the villa. But I was asking for too much in the beginning, and the chance to get rid of it passed. After a while I couldn't give it away. Eventually I donated it to a religious group. I understand they still hold the title. Waiting for the valley to come back, I suppose."
"You must have salvaged his belongings."
"His books. A few other things. I gave some of the furniture away. But I left most of it." She grew pensive. "There was a sculpture of a couple of hawks that I knew Mara would like-"
"Mara?"
"Benton's mother. And I kept a lamp. I'd given it to Kile for his birthday. And a set of bookends and a model starship for Ben."
"The Valiant," Kim said.
"Yes. How did you know?"
Kim smiled as a wild thought struck her. Why would anybody manufacture a model of a starship and forget to include the propulsion tubes? Was it possible that Tripley had taken a set of visuals of a strange spacecraft? Had used the visuals to build a scaled-down replica? It would be a delicious irony if Tripley was sitting there with the big secret propped up on his bookshelf, staring him in the face. "I have a passing acquaintance with Ben," she said sympathetically. "I know the model meant a lot to him."
"Yes." Sara's eyes were wet. "That's really all there was. Not much left out of a lifetime."
Kim wanted to ask flat out whether she'd seen any evidence that Yoshi had been there, any indication of a woman staying at the villa. But she could think of no way to do it without alienating her. Sara would not have admitted to any such thing anyhow. "Thank you, Mrs. Baines," she said at last.
"What's the title going to be?" Sara asked.
"Of what?"
"Of your book?"
"Oh." She thought it over. "Aftermath."
"You will be sure to send me a copy, won't you?"
"Yes," said Kim. "I'll be pleased to do that."
The National Archives was located at Kaydon Center in Salonika, the capital of the Republic, in the lake country 120 kilometers west of Seabright. Salonika was a trophy city, a showplace of skywalks and fountains and marble monuments commemorating the history of Greenway. Here was George Patkin proclaiming the birth of the Republic. And there was Millicent Hodge turning the first batch of salmon loose into what would later be known as Lake Makor. And in Liberty Green, the onetime astronomer Shepard Pappadopoulo, for whom Kim's household intelligence was named, launches a missile against Henry Hox, the dictator's son, at the battle of the Twin Rivers.
The Archives was a long, two-story utilitarian structure, fronted by a mall and a reflecting pool. The pool was surrounded by spruce trees. Walkways curved through the manicured grounds, and broad marble steps led up to the main entrance, which was guarded by a statue of Erik Kaydon, the first premier.
Kim sighed and looked once again at the picture of her target. Manville Plymouth, Assistant Commissioner for Transportation Records. Since Plymouth knew Solly, it was up to her to do the dirty work.
She was wearing a silver wig and contact lenses to change her eye color.
At the end of the day, he always comes out through Freedom Hall, Solly had told her. Solly had looked uncomfortable during the preparations, had used the term obsessed several times. Had urged her to think about what she was doing. Had suggested she think of their careers, both of which were being put at risk.
Had even threatened to walk away from it all. That would have left her without much chance of success, and he knew that. In the end, when he was convinced that she'd try no matter what, he'd stuck with her.
Freedom Hall was actually the structure's central rotunda. Here were the great documents of the Republic: the Instrument of Individual Rights, which denied the absolute power of Gregory Hox, the fourth and last in the line of dictators; the Articles of Governance, which established the mechanisms of government and defined the rights and duties of citizens; Joseph Albright's Statement at Canbury, which, in the darkest days of the revolution, gave new fire to the rebels.
There were numerous other journals, letters, diaries, and artifacts from the 327 year history of the Republic: Stanfield welcoming Brodeur when Earth lifted its century-long embargo; Amahl's handwritten notes detailing the sacrifices of the doctors at Dubois; the captain's logs from the Regal, the Republic's first interstellar vessel.
Kim casually circled the gallery, pretending to study the objects in the illuminated cases.
The Hall, Solly had said, was the only place in the building where they have serious security.
Surveillance here was round-the-clock. But the routine nongovernment records were kept in the east wing. They'd never had any kind of problem, so they didn't worry much about thieves. But you have to get into it. And to do that, a scanner has to identify your DNA and then approve admission.
That was where Manville Plymouth came in.
She waited only a few minutes before the man himself appeared from the east wing and entered the Hall.
He closed the door behind him and walked briskly across the rotunda, glancing neither right nor left. She checked her picture again to be sure, and fell in behind him, following him out onto Republic Avenue.
Plymouth was a fitness nut. He went every day, seven days a week, to an athletic center called the Blockhouse.
She followed him through the fading sunlight. The area was filled with public buildings, city hall, the courthouse, the licensing commission, the board of trade, the national legislature, the National Art Gallery. Plymouth moved swiftly, and his long legs gobbled up the ground. Kim had to hurry to keep up.
Once she glimpsed Solly standing unobtrusively beside a tree.
But Plymouth wasn't heading in the right direction. He was walking north, away from the Blockhouse, up one avenue, across a park, past a fountain. Eventually he turned into a clothing store. Moments later he came out with a plastic bag, and stopped again to buy something at an electronics outlet.
Plymouth's muscles rippled while he walked. He was big, in a world full of big people, with an extraordinarily narrow waist and wide shoulders. Once he glanced back, and she pretended to be gazing into the treetops. Then he was moving again, this time walking south, past the Klackner Museum, where he turned onto a long pathway that led directly through a patch of wood to the Blockhouse. Reassured, she now dropped back and stayed discreetly out of sight.
Despite its name, the structure was flared and curved, three stories high in front, lower in back, with a lot of dark glass. A dozen wide steps led up to a portico. Plymouth took them two at a time and disappeared inside.
She strolled casually in behind him. He was gone, into the men's locker room. But she was reasonably sure she knew his ultimate destination.
There were probably twenty people in the women's area, changing clothes and showering. Kim claimed a locker, picked up a towel, switched into a gym suit, and, following Solly's instructions, went into the Total Workout section. There were a dozen people of both sexes using the machines. Plymouth was not one of them.
She did a few knee-bends to loosen up while she waited. Presently he emerged in shorts and a pullover, with a towel draped around his neck. He glanced at her and she smiled, inviting his approach.
"Hello," he said. "I don't think I've seen you here before."
"First time. Thought I'd try it."
"It's a good spot." He offered his hand. "Name's Mike." She knew he didn't like Manville, and never used it.
"Hello, Mike," she said, taking the hand. "Kay Braddock."
"You new to the area, Kay?" They picked a couple of the duroflexes and climbed onto the tables.
"Just moved in. From Terminal City."
"You'll like Salonika," he said. "It's a good cultural city. There's lots to do here. It's a little less commercial-" He hesitated, suddenly worried that he might be giving offense, but he'd gone too far to back off. "-Less commercial than most other places."
She understood he'd intended to say than Terminal City. Not too quick on his feet, this guy. Just as well.
She reassured him, set the timer for twenty minutes, and climbed on board. If he was still in the duroflex when the time expired, she'd simply extend it.
The machine adjusted to her dimensions. Coils settled around her wrists and ankles. Pads pressed against thighs and buttocks.
"Do you do this regularly?" he called over to her. It was difficult to carry a conversation while the machine was in operation, but he wasn't going to be discouraged.
The duroflex began to move, gently at first, tugging at arms and legs, rolling her shoulders, squeezing her knees, massaging her buttocks.
"Yes," she said. "I like to work out."
Kim listened to occasional remarks about theaters and museums, how he'd come to Salonika at the end of the war, had found a home, and wouldn't live anywhere else, and how good the weather was. Eventually he got around to inviting her out to dinner. "There's a great place on the lakefront-"
He was likable enough for her to overcome her prejudice against bureaucrats, notwithstanding the fact that she was one herself. And he did have a modicum of charm.
"Sure," she said. "I'd like that." Yes. Dinner would not be a major sacrifice. That satisfied him and he quieted, surrendering himself to the machine.
So did Kim.
The duroflex gradually picked up the tempo. It stretched whole groups of muscles and ran a series of sit- ups at a reasonably fast pace. It chimed to warn her of a change in routine and then she was touching her toes.
She just rode with it for the most part, eyes closed, relaxed, feeling the glow that comes with moderate exercise. Kim was not an enthusiast of the machines; she preferred to get her exercise the old-fashioned way, but this system did indeed have its advantages. It was almost possible to sleep while you did push- ups.
It went on until she began to ache. Sensing her discomfort, it slowed somewhat, but not enough. Then she was aware that Plymouth's machine had stopped. He was climbing down, covered with sweat, wiping his head and neck with his towel. "Meet you in the lobby?" he asked.
The device was putting her through a series of knee-bends. It wasn't conducive to maintaining her dignity, or even at this point to getting out an intelligible answer. So they both laughed, and he glanced at her timer, which still showed six minutes. She nodded. She'd be there as soon as the system shut down and she'd changed.
"That's good." He tossed the towel in a bin, offered her a broad smile, and strode out of the room. As soon as he was gone, she hit the STOP button. The duroflex coasted to a halt and released her.
She would have preferred to lie quietly in the mechanism and wait for her back and shoulders to stop hurting. But there was no time for that. She climbed down and limped over to the bin, trying to look casual. The room had emptied somewhat and none of the three or four people rocking back and forth in the devices seemed to be paying any attention to her. She held her towel over the bin, retrieved Plymouth's, and dropped hers.
Ten minutes later, she handed a container to Solly in the lobby and then turned back to wait for her date.
By evening's end she felt uncomfortable about taking advantage of Mike Plymouth.
The restaurant he selected was a quaint little bistro called The Wicket. It had a lovely view of a lake and hills. It was all candlelight and soft music and logs on the fire. The food was good, the wine flowed freely, and Mike exhibited a wistfulness that first surprised her and then captured her imagination.
Born on Pacifica, he'd been in the war.
"Their side-" she said.
"Of course." There was an intersection here: He'd been on board the Hammurabi when Kane's small squadron blitzed it. He was cast adrift in an escape capsule, and had been rescued after eleven days by a "Greenie" patrol boat. "I never went home," he explained.
"Why?"
"I'm not sure. I made friends. Liked where I was. Everyone accepted me." The experience in the capsule, he added, had changed him.
"In what way?" asked Kim.
"I think I got a better idea of what I wanted out of my life. What counts."
"What does count?"
"Friends." With a grin: "Beautiful women. And good wine." His eyes drifted to the candles burning overhead in a wall rack. "The smell of hot wax."
This was a guy she could really learn to like.
My God, she told herself, he's a bureaucrat. Worse, he works for the government. He's an exercise nut.
Probably has this basic routine he uses on everybody.
He reached across the table and shyly touched her hand. She caught her breath, felt her pulse begin to pick up, imagined herself swept away by him, carried off to an island somewhere. She pictured them walking on a moonlit beach.
Right. He'd really be interested in a woman who's playing him for a fool.
She briefly considered abandoning the project. But she couldn't. No way she could do that. It was too late anyhow. She'd already lied about her name.
Nevertheless she wondered what Solly would say if she didn't show up tonight at their hotel.
They left The Wicket and strolled for an hour along the lake's edge. The conversation became intimate in the sense that she saw longing in his eyes, and heard the subtext to his comments about his job at the Archives or the three mixed-breed dogs he owned. "I enjoy sailing," he said. "I've a boat on Lake Winslett."
"Ever dive?" she asked.
"No. But I'd like to try it. You?"
She nodded. "You seem out of place in a government job." She realized immediately it was the wrong thing to say and wished she could call it back.
But he shrugged and smiled as if he was used to it. He explained he wasn't in it just to supplement his income. He had a taste for statistics and for order. He liked being responsible for dividing history-of which, he said, there was nothing more chaotic-into journals and diaries, into investigative reports and records of transaction, and then storing the documents in coherent form. "Cataloging events gives me a sense of control. And I know how that sounds."
Under other circumstances it would have struck her as a hopelessly mind-numbing career. But there was a lilt in his voice when he talked about it. And he seemed to understand exactly what she was thinking, that it was the work of a dull intellect. So he shrugged and laughed in a self-deprecating way that left her almost helpless. "Born to be a librarian," he said.
Holding up her end of the conversation was no mean feat. Having manufactured a false name, she was forced to construct a series of lies. She was a teacher, she explained. Of mathematics. She'd secured a position at Danforth University and would start in about two weeks. At first she had a hard time recalling that her name was Kay. A general sense of confusion seemed to have set in.
Toward the end of the evening she was having trouble remembering what she'd said, what branch of math she specialized in, the name of the school in which she'd worked in Terminal City, the exact date she'd arrived in Salonika. Had that question even come up? She was sure it had.
Where was she from originally?
"Eagle Point."
"My brother lives there, Kay. What part of Eagle Point?"