The Falls [05 Diving Universe] 2016 Read online

  He was trying to be a bit more delicate with his language than he had been a moment before. The team communications were recorded, and often played back by a variety of officialdom. Particularly if someone thought the death was not accidental or a suicide.

  He didn’t want to put ideas in his team’s head though. He wanted them to remember what they had learned about webbing. It caused extra marks on a body that were sometimes indistinguishable from the injuries caused by other means.

  So he was going to avoid the webbing if possible.

  “Everyone hear me clearly?” he asked.

  Novoa nodded. So did Zhou. Their hoods were attached.

  Dinithi had put the harnesses in Tevin’s van, along with the rest of the equipment. Then she ran a finger along the neckline of her suit, sealing the hood in place.

  “Cherish?” Tevin asked. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” Dinithi said with just a touch of sarcasm. She opened a hand toward the van, as if to say, It’s obvious, Tevs, because I put the harnesses away.

  She wasn’t good at procedure, at least procedures she thought were stupid. She didn’t like the communications check because she didn’t like being recorded.

  She had been a lawyer before she moved to Sandoveil to start over. Tevin had never understood how she had worked in law. She hated rules and regulations. She ran her own business now, creating signature beverages for locals and one-shot drinks for tourists.

  He asked for her on the team, though, because she was his most creative thinker, and she had gotten him out of tough patches more times than he wanted to think about.

  He turned away from her, not reprimanding her for the sarcasm. He doubted the other two had noticed. This team had been together long enough that they compensated for each other’s foibles.

  Before they started the mission, he checked the rest of the communications. First, he sent a ping back to headquarters, getting the usual response.

  Then he contacted Marnie. “Situation the same?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Marnie said. “No sign of the owner of the second pair of shoes. We’re checking on those now, but waiting first for a firm identification from you.”

  “I’ll send you a tentative one as soon as I have it,” he said. He didn’t do firm identifications. That was for the local death investigator to determine.

  Unlike Dinithi, Tevin followed the rules.

  He nodded toward the team. They fell in beside him. He double-checked to make sure their hoods were on firmly, and they wore their equipment belts.

  Dinithi had a catchall. So did Novoa.

  Tevin hoped two poles with their hooked ropes would be enough.

  He led them to the edge of the trail. Then he glanced at the team.

  This time, he didn’t speak. They could see his face. They knew they had to do everything right, or this recovery mission might turn into a rescue—of one of them.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and walked to the churning water of Fiskett Falls.

  EIGHT

  BRISTOL’S SUIT NOTIFIED her that the environment was fine. She pulled off her hood, then finger-combed her hair. Wèi watched her for a moment, then removed his hood.

  Even though the hoods were clear, they distorted the features somehow. Wèi’s face was broader than she had expected, his nose flatter. His eyes were brown, their expression sympathetic, something she wouldn’t have expected.

  She recognized him. She had seen him in the base many times; she just hadn’t known his name until now.

  She nodded at him. He gave her a bit of a smile, then turned his attention to the others.

  Tranh’s hood came off next, her face narrow, her chin slightly pointed. Her eyes were as black as her hair, which was cut very short. Bristol had seen her around as well. In fact, they both had lunch at the same time every day, and had had polite exchanges over the local concerts they both attended. They didn’t have the same opinions about the music, except that they both liked that the city could afford to bring in musicians from all over Nindowne.

  They smiled at each other, and Wèi looked at both of them in surprise.

  DuBerry removed her hood as well. She didn’t look much different, except that her reddish-blonde hair curled, like an out-of-control hat. Fitzwilliam had shaved off his hair, and his skull wasn’t quite even, which made him seem as if someone had poked one side of his face just a little too hard.

  Bristol frowned at that thought, then looked at the storage room for a second time. It wasn’t just the emptiness that made it feel off.

  She walked to the wall in front of her, and slowly ran her hand down the smoothness. In the very center, it felt gritty. And her fingers told her that it had bent outward just a little. The nanobits hadn’t compensated yet, but they would.

  “We need to measure this, now,” she said.

  “What?” Wèi asked.

  “Something blew out parts of the wall. The nanobits are repairing it, but right now there’s a bubble here. I’d like to send for more techs,” Bristol said.

  “Is that wise?” Tranh asked. “We don’t know what’s happened here.”

  “That’s the point,” Bristol said before anyone could answer.

  “We have procedure, though,” Wèi said. “Technically, I’m not supposed to let anyone else in here until we know what has happened.”

  “Well, we’re not going to know if you don’t bring more people in,” Bristol said. Now that she knew she was safe, she wished she hadn’t contacted the security team. She needed a tech team, and she needed them now.

  “All right,” Wèi said, even though he sounded reluctant. “Bring them in. Make sure that the team has a high clearance, and doesn’t have a tendency to talk.”

  Bristol nodded, even though he really wasn’t in the position to give her any instructions. It was her work space. She could call in help if she wanted, now that the security team had informed her that the area was clear.

  “DuBerry, I need you to check the base’s logs and see what they registered here,” Wèi said. “Fitz, please go over the recordings of the entire area and see who entered this room.”

  “There’s a possibility no one did,” Bristol said, suppressing a sigh. “The anacapa could have been activated from anywhere.”

  “I know.” Now Wèi sounded offended. “But I want to make sure it wasn’t accessed from in here.”

  He had a good point. Bristol didn’t add anything else though. She saw no reason to.

  His mission was now different from hers. He had to find out who or what caused the runabout to leave here.

  She needed to know what had happened technically. Because there was one other possibility, one she knew the security chief hadn’t thought of.

  The anacapa she had placed in that runabout might have activated on its own. Anyone who worked with anacapa drives knew that was one of the defects some of the older drives had. And an older drive in an older runabout might have caused some kind of interaction, particularly if the anacapa detected a signal from another ship built in the same era.

  She had used the anacapa drive that she had put in the runabout a dozen times before, but never in a vehicle that old, and never in one that would lose its diagnostics if the drive were not in place.

  Wèi had come up beside her. He touched the wall with his gloved hand, then he frowned and turned his head ever so slightly.

  “Something big happened here, didn’t it?” he asked quietly.

  She was a cautious woman. She wasn’t going to speculate—at least, not out loud.

  “I can tell you only one thing for certain,” she said.

  He looked at her directly. “What’s that?”

  She did her best to keep her voice level and as low as his. “The blast doors worked.”

  NINE

  SECURITY OFFICER BASSIMA Beck stopped in front of the tiny home, halfway up the mountain on the back side of Sandoveil. The homes here sat on a lot of land and had spectacular views of the city below. Most of the homes took up
a large portion of the land, but not this one. Instead, a garden covered everything except a stone walkway leading to the front door.

  The garden had approved plants from all over the sector (and beyond) as well as local greenery. On her left, Bassima recognized edibles. Everything on the edges and along the right were decorative.

  And amazingly decorative. She didn’t know the names of those plants; she specialized in edibles, not decoratives from off-world. But they had a pattern. They went from pink to red to purple to blue. Yellow flowers lined the edge of the path, and near the doorway, pots with hanging yellow vines tied everything together.

  The net effect was to make everything feel homey and welcoming.

  Except this afternoon. This afternoon, all this care and beauty made Bassima’s heart sink.

  The house had that quiet that empty homes often had. Bassima walked up the two carved rock steps leading to the wide, wooden wrap-around porch. The door was made of mountain stone, heavy and solid. On either side, a narrow ribbon of opaque glass added drama to the door’s design. A knocker, built over a digital pad, sent signals inside—probably from the moment Bassima had arrived.

  Still, she grabbed the metal ring on the knocker and rapped three times.

  Lights went on inside the house. She could see them reflected in the opaque glass. If she hadn’t know how the knocker worked, she would have felt better. But the lights went on in the default pattern. Kitchen and stairs first, then hallway, then entry, as if someone were trying to come to the door.

  She couldn’t hear movement behind all this rock—the house had been built to blend in with the landscape—but she didn’t see any.

  Even though she had never been up here before, she had known the Kimuras for nearly a decade. They had met on the Sandoveil Botany Committee, when all three of them had served.

  Locals had to qualify for the committee with either a year of training or degrees in botany and plant science. No new plant species could be introduced into the Sandoveil Valley without approval from the committee first.

  Approval came after a year or more of rigorous testing to make certain that no alien plant would become a predatory species against something in the local environment.

  So many communities (even ones elsehwere on Nindowne) used computer modeling to see if the new plant would become invasive. But Sandoveil protected its heritage and its local landscape better than any other place Bassima had ever heard of.

  She loved serving on the committee, and she had loved working with the Kimuras, although they left a few years back. They didn’t have as much time for community activities, not if they wanted to maintain their jobs and their own garden.

  Bassima had missed seeing Taji Kimura on a regular basis. Bassima had long ago accepted that she had a strong attraction to Taji. Bassima had never understood Taji’s love for Glida, who had seemed like one of the most difficult people Bassima had ever known.

  But Bassima was old enough to recognize that attraction rarely made sense.

  She could have that thought and still blame her own unusual height and extra weight for the fact that Taji wasn’t interested in her.

  Bassima knocked again, and took a step back from the door. She leaned sideways so that she could see the window that overlooked the porch. The window had shielded glass—no one could look in if the Kimuras didn’t want anyone to look inside—but the house’s designer had placed more opaque ribbons of glass around the windows, and hadn’t bothered to shield that.

  Bassima couldn’t quite see inside, but she could get a sense of movement—or she would have, if there had been any.

  She sighed, and walked around the left side of the porch, her shoes making the old wood creak. Two rocking chairs sat in front of the window, plants on the table between them, more yellow vines trailing onto the wood below. Some of the vines had bright red buds, which would probably become bright red flowers.

  Glida favored that combination—a bold red with an even bolder yellow. She often dressed that way.

  Bassima sensed Glida everywhere: in the design of the home, the placement of the plants, and the color scheme. In addition to the yellow vine plants, yellow pillows rested against the backs of the rocking chairs and a yellow-and-red checked chaise lounge pushed up against the side of the house, beneath another large, shielded window.

  Bassima knocked on the glass, knowing she was probably triggering some kind of alarm. But the city security office were the ones who dispatched her, so when the alarm came in, they would know she had triggered it somehow.

  They would only pay attention if she contacted them directly.

  She peered around the back of the house. The porch narrowed here, more of a walkway than any place to rest and enjoy the great outdoors. There were also no windows on this side of the house, which made sense since it butted up against the mountain. One narrow door provided an exit from one of the back rooms, but there wasn’t even some kind of mat in front of it to catch shoe dust or debris.

  Clearly, that door wasn’t used very often.

  She walked the rest of the distance around the house, moving just a bit faster now. If someone had been inside, they would have contacted her by now. The two knocks, then the window alarm, would have had them peering out, seeing that it was her, and then asking what she wanted.

  If only. She had had half a fantasy that they would be home. All three of them would laugh over the misunderstanding, and then they would get serious again, acknowledging that someone had died, just not one of the Kimuras.

  She walked around the porch one more time, looking outward this time, into the garden. The garden wasn’t one of those decorous things with tiny plants that encouraged walking and serious if trivial discussion. This was a working garden, the kind that harvested plants for others.

  There were neat rows, visible to other gardeners, but not trails. And no evidence that someone had plunged into the garden in haste, destroying the Kimuras’ hard work.

  Finally, Bassima gave up. She hit the comm link on her uniform collar, and contacted the security office.

  “No one’s here,” she said. “No way of telling when someone was last here, either, unless you give me authorization to tap into the private house’s private systems.”

  “I can’t give you authorization yet.” The response came from Amy Loraas, head of the security office. That surprised Bassima. She had expected someone else in the office, someone of much lower rank, to answer her.

  The fact that Loraas was now on this meant that someone was certain that the dead body belonged to Glida. They just didn’t have official confirmation yet. And doing things by the book was what the entire city of Sandoveil was all about.

  “You want me to wait?” Bassima asked.

  “No,” Loraas said. “You can always go back. Check downtown. See if anyone has seen either of them today. Maybe we just missed them.”

  “I hope so,” Bassima said and signed off. Then she looked at the beautiful garden, the flowers turning their blooms toward the setting sun. “I really hope so.”

  TEN

  RAJIVK LEANED ON a rock a few yards from the lower outlook. The sun was going down. On the upper path, there would still be light, however grainy and indistinct. But down here, it had turned dark suddenly as the sun vanished behind the mountains.

  Searchlights illuminated the overlook. Beyond it, the falling water looked like an ivory column filled with some kind of strange life.

  He hated being up here at night. It was too dangerous. It didn’t matter how much gear you brought or how well lit you were, one false step and you would tumble into the water, just like that person below had.

  He’d heard the conversations. Marnie believed the body belonged to Glida Kimura. He could see that. She favored that kind of bright clothing. But wherever Glida was, Taji was as well. And, aside from the shoes, there was no evidence she had been up here.

  If the shoes could be considered evidence.

  The YSR-SR was treating them as evidence. They had
bagged the shoes. He would have recommended taking DNA first, but he hadn’t been down here the entire time.

  Maybe YSR-SR had taken the DNA already.

  He crossed his arms. He was getting cold. He’d felt a little chilled ever since he had gotten wet when he found those shoes. He had dried off, but the chill had already set in. What he really needed was to finish his walk, get home, eat something, and take a hot, hot shower.

  The very thought of it made him even colder.

  The YSR-SR wanted him to wait until they identified the body for certain. But procedure kept him standing here, waiting. Because they didn’t dare let him go, in case he had been the one who had pushed the dead person into the waterfall.

  They had to make sure they knew who they were dealing with, and then they had to make sure he had no real ties with that person. Or at least, no obvious ties.

  Clearly, the YSR-SR couldn’t examine all ties, not while he was waiting here. They would have to take him somewhere.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait until they finished their investigation. If that was the case, he would ask—no, he would demand—to go to their headquarters.

  The lights were set up just a few yards away from him, and a clear block had gone up so no one could accidentally wander into the overlook without clearance. Not that it mattered here. Because Rajivk didn’t believe Glida or whoever that was had made it this far up.

  It was almost impossible to hit that side pool from this overlook. He’d seen bodies of people who had jumped off of this overlook, and those bodies had usually gone down the main part of the Falls. Those bodies had been slammed down by the force of the water, and usually popped up a few hours later at the far end of the main part of Rockwell Pool.

  If the bodies didn’t get tangled in the currents underneath the Falls and end up there for a few days. Those bodies never came out looking good. They were always battered and bruised, often with so many broken bones that it would take the death investigator a few days to reconstruct the face. If, of course, there was no DNA on file.