It was raining when I got to Sky Heights. Gray water came down in sheets, fracturing the orange light of Wireburn's helium seas into dancing autumnal shadows. Weather on a Jovian planet was an unpredictable mistress. Human evil, on the other hand, was only surprising in how simple, repetitive and mundane it was. If most of human life was as erratic as the glints of light from the sky then crime followed paths as predictable as a raindrop tumbling from the top of the neighborhood's pressure dome to the liquid granite streets below.
A man wanted something and did whatever was necessary to get it. Those he injured in the process would suffer what they must. Often his victims set out to get even. Sometimes that meant prosecuting a vendetta on their own. Rarely they would turn to the Lawmen.
Most of the time they called for a Theiftaker.
The dame who called me up to the Heights was named Sarah Carter and she met me up by the neighborhood beacon. Her raincoat was a bit tattered but it was originally of good quality. The tailoring and layers let the water wick off her easily but still proudly displayed the kind of body most men would kill for. Chestnut brown hair escaped from under a matching cap. She sauntered up to me as I cleared the beacon's arrival zone, asking, “Are you from the Theiftaker's Hall?”
“Yes, madam,” I said. “Elisha Hammer, at your service.”
I handed her my Casebook, the Theiftaker's seal prominent on the cover, and flipped it open to the active case. “I'm a certified slipsensor and qualified for forensic work both here and in the sidereal. If you'd like a demonstration?”
“That's not necessary.” She handed me her umbrella and drew the stylus from the Casebook as she perused the form. “So I just need to sign to officially open the case?”
“And deposit the retainer's fee.”
She bit her lower lip, looking a little unsure of herself. Or at least trying to look unsure. She didn't strike me as the type not to know the effect that kind of action would have on men. “Ten thousand lira is a lot of money, Sir Hammer.”
“If your case is resolved quickly enough that your entire retainer is unnecessary the balance of the funds will be returned to you,” I replied, doing my best to ignore her provocative manner.
“Do you think you'll need all of it?”
“We refund part of our retainers about a third of the time. But in my experience, madam, investigations require a lot more time and expense than you're anticipating.” I took the Casebook back from her and tucked it into my pocket then returned her umbrella. “I can't really predict how much this is going to cost you until I know a bit more about your case.”
She nodded, looking me over with the kind of judgment only a young woman could muster. I suppose it was only fair given the level of scrutiny I'd applied to her as a matter of course. The Theiftakers didn't have an official uniform like the Lawmen or the Wayfinders so I'd chosen to build a functional outfit to wear on the job. A heavy pullover tunic with a belt from shoulder to hip and around the waist of loose, heavy pants plus sturdy workbooks. It looked respectable enough but could still stand up to a nasty fight if it came to that.
Most villains don't give up quietly when you find them, after all.
Whether she saw through that purpose or not, Sarah didn't comment on it. She did hesitate a moment when she spotted the helmet and glasses case clipped to my waist on one side and the sliplash on my opposite hip. Ultimately she kept her peace on these scores as well. “I'll tell you about it on the way. Do you have an umbrella?”
“I'm afraid not. If it's a long trip I could bring in my slipcar.”
“No, just a few block from here. You can share mine, if you want.” Sarah stepped out from the pavilion over the local beacon and started down the street to the west taking us downhill.
Sky Heights was a part of Ashland I was somewhat familiar with. I'd visited it twice on previous cases and found it to be a pretty broad spectrum of the greater Ashland population. We were high up on the Prominence and the helium outside clung to the pressure domes in wispy film like the memory of a recent lover. At the highest elevations there were several streets of impressive mansions but the further down you went the more normal things became.
Sarah led us downhill for several blocks until every trace of Ashland's upper crust was gone and all that remained where two and three story buildings that slumped along to the surface of the Prominence like tired dogs. “My brother lives here,” Sarah said once we were away from the heavy foot traffic that you found around every beacon. “As best I can tell he got a new assignment from the Wayfinder's Alliance about two weeks ago. No one's seen him since.”
Missing people are pretty much the worst kind of case out there to work. Now, contrary to the name, Theiftakers will try and sort out just about any kind of crime there is, from blackmail to murder. Criminals don't constrain themselves to theft. Why should we?
But a missing person was a slippery thing to deal with in no small part because maybe he went missing since he didn't want the people looking for him to find him again. Maybe he went missing because the people looking did find him. Maybe he went missing because bad luck found him. And on and on it goes. At least when there's a missing necklace or a dead body you can make an educated guess what might have resulted in the death or disappearance. One thing was for sure. I didn't expect Sarah Carter to get any of her retainer back once the job was done.
“I'm sorry if any of these questions sound obvious,” I said. “I just want to be thorough. Have you contacted the Wayfinders?”
“That was the first thing I did. Unfortunately he didn't check in with them after he received the assignment and they say they can't share any details on it without breaching the confidence of their client, whoever that might be.” Her voice had a sharp edge to it. “Time was the Wayfinders considered looking after their own one of their most important responsibilities.”
“They've fallen on hard times of late, madam. How did you discover he was missing?”
She approached one of the apartment buildings and punched in a code at the door that let us into a hallway. The building wasn't nice enough for a lobby but otherwise it looked like it was in good shape. “Mum sent me down here to take Lloyd some leftovers from dinner on Seventhday because he didn't show up then. But when I turned out of the house I couldn't find his beacon.”
“Your brother had a private beacon in his apartment?” That was worth writing down in the case log. “Don't take this the wrong way but if your family can afford private beacons why are your worried about a ten thousand lira retainer fee?”
“Daddy worked for the Wireburn Militia then the Slipknot Guild before he retired. He built a lot of beacons and similar things in his time and he made one for both of us when we moved out of the house. He wanted to be able to find us if he really had to.”
Sir Carter sounded like a shrewd man, apt to look out for his children. Beacons were expensive because of how long they took to make and the massive demand for the expertise of those who'd mastered sliptech. The parts themselves were not hard to come by. I'd made my own blast glasses from a set of standard safety glasses and saved myself almost two hundred lira in the process. “So your old man tuned the beacons and sent 'em with you. Did you have him check for your brother's beacon?”
“He couldn't locate it either,” she said as she hit the call button for the building's lift. “And daddy has experience with interstellar travel so he didn't just check Wireburn. Lloyd's beacon isn't on Coldstone, Bluewave, Halogen or any other planet within a hundred lightyears unless someone's put it near a resonator.”
You only put things near a resonator when you want to make them invisible to the slipsense. “I take it that your dad didn't include an interrupter in the beacon he gave to your brother?”
“Daddy doesn't believe in interrupters.” We stepped into the lift and Sarah slid some kind of key card into the control panel for a moment, then removed it once the lights on the panel cycled. “He always said there's no sense including an off switch in stationary beacons. Seemed to think there's never a purpose in disengaging one unless you plan to move it somewhere through the sidereal.”
“Clearly he's never done any forensic work on that side of things,” I muttered.
“Like I said, Slipknot Guild. They make things and expect the rest of us to figure out how the thing fits in our lives. Adjusting the thing to suit us?” She gave an eloquent shrug. “Not something they tend to think about.”
“Is that the mindset of a slipknotter or just the Carter family?”
“Daddy wasn't that unusual among his friends from work,” Sarah mused, “but the again maybe like just attracts like. I also can't say I knew all his close acquaintances.”
I decided we'd wandered far enough from the main topic for the moment. “Was your brother's beacon on the standard frequency or did your father program them with a unique signature?”
“It wasn't standard but it was close.” The lift came to a stop and Sarah led me down the hall beyond it, chattering away without bothering to look back. “If you think it will help I can take you by my studio. My beacon is on the same frequency and you can familiarize yourself with it there.”
“It might be useful.” She slid the same card from the lift into the apartment lock and the door clicked open. “Did your brother give you a key to his apartment?”
“He left it with our parents and I borrow it whenever I'm planning on stopping in or they send me here on an errand.” She tucked the key card into a small handbag and gave me a sideways look. “I can let you in if you need to come back to double check on something but I can't lend it to you or let you make a copy.”
I wondered if her parents knew she'd hired a Thieftaker to look into her brother. Every once in a while you heard stories about women who developed an unhealthy fixation on someone and started following them, even going so far as to call the Lawmen or Thieftakers in to investigate made up stories about total strangers. Hopefully I wasn't dealing with one of those. “I should be able to gather most of what I need today but you never know.”
The apartment was typical for Ashland Prominence. Main room, kitchen, restroom and bedroom all laid out for maximum space efficiency. The main room had a sofa and armchair, an end table in the corner between them and a shelving unit holding the usual mess of entertainment and communication appliances. The first thing I checked was his home voicecaster, which was blinking with an indicator for messages waiting. I hit the replay and the display switched to a keypad. “Do you know your brother's security code for his voicecaster messages?”
“No.” Sarah went to the bedroom door and opened it, glancing inside as if she hoped her brother had miraculously come home and passed out drunk or something. “He didn't want any of us hearing Wayfinder business we shouldn't. You know how it is.”
I did, but that didn't prevent a lot of Thieftakers and Lawmen from leaving their casters unlocked so they could just come home, hit a button and collapse into an armchair with a glass of whiskey and the day's regrets. My estimation of Lloyd Carter's professionalism went up a notch. I didn't tell his sister that, however, because we Thieftakers do have our image to maintain after all. “Do you mind if I tamper with it? It may be possible to retrieve the messages with a little work.”
She gave me a curious glance. “Go ahead. I can always get him a new one if you blank it.”
The voicecaster was a Vannix Strato48, which was simple, reliable and easy to crack provided you had the right tools and knowhow. I picked it up off the shelf and turned it over, carefully moving the odd, brass knickknack sitting beside it off to one side to make a little more room to work before setting the device back upside down. Sarah came over to watch me over one shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“I'm going to pull the memory crystal and run it through my portable VC,” I said, pulling out a multitool and going to work on the screws on the bottom. “Vannix models don't usually encrypt their memory unless you spend a good chunk on aftermarket upgrades.”
“He doesn't really have the money for that kind of thing.” Sarah picked up the knickknack, a strange, funerary mask looking sculpture woven out of brass wires and attached to a small pedestal. “Doesn't really have the money for this kind of thing, either. What've you been doing, Lloyd?”
“Did you notice any kind of sudden changes in attitude in your brother before he disappeared?” I asked, setting aside the voicecaster's bottom plate. “Anyone new show up in his life?”
“He seemed normal when I saw him at mum's birthday party last month,” Sarah mused, “but he didn't spend a lot of time talking about his personal life. He never mentions ladies to me. If he talked about that kind of thing with our parents they kept his confidence because I never heard about it. The only change is how he apparently started collecting these weird sculptures.”
“Oh?” The back of the voicecaster was a mess of thread thin copper wires twisted into frequency coils and the various transmission, reception and memory crystals that let the thing receive and broadcast. It'd been a while since I'd done something like this so I couldn't remember which was the right crystal for messages. I started pulling and testing them one at a time. “Your brother wasn't a fan of art?”
“He never mentioned it.” She set the thing down with a sigh and looked around the main room. “But he must have found something about them interesting. There was another one I've never seen before over...”
She paused, pointing in the direction of the end table. I followed her finger, wondering why she's stopped, and saw that it was empty. Mentally I backed up to the moment I'd walked in and replayed my quick glance around the room, comparing it to how it was now. Nothing seemed out of place. “Something wrong?”
“There was this strange stone thing on the end table last time I visited.”
I paused in the process of slotting the memory crystal into my VC wristband. “What did it look like?”
“Some kind of fat bear thing with a lot of curly hair on its head?” She set the brass mask down on the counter and held her hands apart to indicate height, sliding them from ten to fifteen inches apart. “Somewhere around this size. I don't remember, it was a few days ago.”
“It was stone, you say?”
“It seemed like it. I didn't take a very close look at it before, Lloyd's brought a lot of weird stuff home from trips down into the helium and methane seas.” She shrugged. “You know, Wayfinder memorabilia. I thought it was more of the same.”
I hurriedly crossed over to the door, pulled it open and examined the lock, looking for any signs of tampering. “Who besides you and your brother has a key to this apartment?”
“The building manager, I suppose. No one else that I know of.”
The door was old and worn but otherwise fine. I quickly closed it and hurried back over to the corner, looking under the table then behind the sofa and chair for signs of this stone statue. There wasn't anything. I stood up in the middle of the main room and slowly turned a complete circle but there was no sign of anything like Sarah described anywhere in the room. “So who moved the statue between your last visit and now?”
She slowly turned the strange wire sculpture over in her hands. “You know, now that I think about it, I don't know if I remember seeing this here on my last visit either...”
The light from the windows caught and refracted off the brass wirework in mesmerizing fashion. I took the thing from her and checked the pedestal and back of the mask for some kind of maker's mark or artist's signature but there wasn't anything that I could recognize. I set it down where it originally sat and pulled a wallet sized flimsyscreen out of a pocket. After a couple of seconds of framing I recorded four or five images of the sculpture on it from various angles and saved them then stuck it back in my wallet. “I know a few antique dealers and pawn shop owners who might know what the source on something like that is. I'll ask them a few questions after we're done here.”
“Do you think Lloyd got caught up in some kind of art theft ring? Or forgery? He doesn't even know anything about art!”
“Calm down, Madame Carter,” I said, going back to the voicecaster and pulling the last of the memory crystals. “Wild speculation hasn't ever helped solve a disappearance.”
I started slotting the crystals into my wrist VC. Two of them wouldn't play which meant they didn't hold audio files but rather the operating system or something similar. The third one played just fine but didn't contain anything useful. Lloyd Carter had a total of eight messages waiting for him on his voicecaster, three from his parents, three from the Wayfinder's Alliance asking him to check in and two from the Ashland Museum of Fine Art asking for updates. None of them included anything particularly useful aside from revealing he was possibly working for an art museum.
I started putting his VC back together as I said, “I'll try checking in with the museum after we're done here and see if they'll admit to working with your brother. Unfortunately my experience with those kinds of people is that they won't unless they're forced to.”
“Why not?” Sarah asked plaintively. “What does it cost them to just be honest?”
“If they bought a forgery or were robbed it can seriously compromise their reputation,” I said. There's nothing like ego to drive horrible decision making. The only things better at it in my experience are parental and erotic love, though that's not the kind of thing I bring up in mixed company. “Don't worry too much. Thieftakers and Wayfinders have our ways of swapping information without breaking our contracts and I may be able to find something out via them as well.”
“I hope so. Did you want to look through his bedroom as well?”
“If I could.”
She didn't mind but I suspected her brother might so, while I did do a pretty careful search of the man's bedroom I'll hold what I saw there in confidence save to say that I didn't think any of it had anything to do with Lloyd Carter's disappearance. An inspection of the bathroom and kitchen was much the same. Once I was done and back in the main room I said, “Now I plan to turn sidereal and do another sweep. Are you able to come along? And do you want to?”
“Yes to both.” She loosened the collar of her coat and undid the knot on her scarf, saying, “Daddy made sure all his children were tested for the slipsense and taught those of us as had it how to use it safely. I don't know what your forensic work involves but I should probably tag along just in case Lloyd has something stashed on that side of things. I'd recognize all the nasty tricks daddy taught us right away.”
Something about this whole case had me off my game because I hadn't even put together the fact that a militiaman who went into the Slipknot Guild after his enlistment was up probably specialized in fortifications and traps until she hinted at it. Still, there were other, more dangerous things in the sidereal than what men could make. I don't like taking people there if I don't have to. But Sarah made a compelling point for going over with me so I didn't press the issue. “Well then, let's-”
A soft pinging sound from the voicecaster interrupted me. Not from my voicecaster, either, but from the one I'd just put back together some fifteen minutes ago. Sarah reached for the VC set but I grabbed her hand long enough to say, “You're alone here. You haven't hired a Thieftaker to look for your brother. Try to get them to tell you anything you can, understand?”
She nodded once and I let her go. She pushed the receiving button on the VC and said, “Hello, this is Sarah.”
There was a brief pause then a smooth, cultured voice with the long, relaxed vowels of the University accent said, “I am looking for Lloyd Carter. Is this his wife?”
“Sister,” Sarah said. “I'm here for a visit. Unfortunately you've caught us at a bad moment – Lloyd is out on assignment right now and probably won't be back for a bit. Can I take a message for him or would you like me to shunt you to the caster's messaging channel?”
“That's not necessary,” the voice said, “if you'll just leave him a note or speak to him when you see him. I've retained your brother's services to track down a missing shipment of crystal etching tools for Ermine University's engineering department and he was thinking of hopping up to Coldstone to see if they were misrouted at the junction there. He's probably still there. Tell him Oscar called and I've ruled out the Deuterium Prominence Junction as a potential location, the clerk there recently returned my call.”
“Oh, I see.” She scrambled to pull a flimsyscreen out of her pocket and scribbled a note on it. “I'll make sure he knows, thank you.”
“No, thank you. Give your brother my regards.” The voicecaster pinged once and the transmission went dead.
Sarah took the flimsyscreen and slipped it under one corner of the voicecaster then propped her hands on her hips with a hmph. “Well, I suppose that settles that.”
“Has your brother been to Coldstone before?” I asked.
“Once or twice,” she said. “Wayfinders did work up there as well down here on Wireburn, in fact they pursued their core mandate there longer than here because the environment wasn't as hospitable to life before we terraformed it.”
“No indigenous life like the Great Jellies to give us maps.”
“Exactly. So he could have slipped up there for a few days without telling us.” I could see from the set of her lips that she wasn't entirely convinced by that but she wanted it to be true. “Would he take two cases like that? From the Museum and a University?”
“I've done similar things. Speaking of cases, I can return your deposit, if you'd like?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “Could you wait a day? I think daddy knows a few people he can call up there to see if they've seen Lloyd.”
That wasn't the way Theiftakers were supposed to handle a case. Everyone in the world has their problems but the reason to hire a Theiftaker is to solve those problems not to wait while you solve them on your own. If the lady wanted to investigate by herself then I really should leave her to it and move on to my next case. Instead I handed her my VC card so she'd have my direct line. “Call me bright and early, day after tomorrow, and let me know if you're dropping the case or not.”
She took it with a grateful smile and tucked it into a pocket. “Thank you, Sir Hammer.”
We headed out of the apartment and she moved to lock the door behind us when I stopped her, patting at my pocket for a moment. I threw a glance back into the apartment and confirmed what my slipsense had just picked up. Then I pulled my multitool out of my pocket and said, “Sorry, couldn't remember if I'd grabbed this or not.”
“Ah. Wouldn't want to leave that behind,” she said. “I'll call you once I know anything for sure.”
“Of course. If you'll excuse me, I'll just slip back to the Hall and see if the dispatcher has anything to fill out my afternoon. Take care, Madame Carter.” With that I turned sidereal.
The building around me vanished and the familiar gleaming horizon that contained the brimming energy of Wireburn appeared beneath my feat. The pulsing light of the various beacons on Wireburn twinkled in the distance. However I wasn't interested in those at the moment so instead I backpedaled into Lloyd Carter's apartment.
Physical barriers are great for keeping the rain off your head and giving you some measure of privacy but they don't do a whole lot of good against someone who can turn to the sidereal and ignore those barriers entirely. It's only the lack of recognizable landmarks that makes it difficult to exploit the sidereal to its fullest extent. Slipknots can link the physical and the sidereal and create things like beacons which solves some of the landmark issue but building a beacon takes a long time and sliptech has hundreds of other uses that have always kept the number of available beacons low.
There are two alternatives to slipping through space while navigating by beacons. The first is a bit obscure, where you draw a bunch of power off the local planet or star and use it to stretch your slipsense in a chosen direction then jump to the endpoint of that stretch and see what you find. That's called dead reckoning by those who know of it, because I reckon you're more likely to wind up dead than anywhere useful. The second one is obvious to anyone with the slipsense and that's following someone else when they slip through the sidereal. If you're right next to a person when they slip through space it's very easy to follow them.
On the other hand if someone slips off even a minute or two before you show up and try to follow them the process gets much harder. Even recognizing that someone has slipped through the space you stand is difficult without training. Tracking them to along their route is basically impossible unless you know what you're doing. Fortunately that is a basic part of Thieftaker training. I slipped on my blast glasses and helmet, just in case, and looked over the sidereal until I found the snarl in the fabric of space where something had crossed over from the physical a few minutes ago. A quick check confirmed that if I turned out of the sidereal I'd arrive by the apartment's voicecaster.
When I glanced back through the door a moment ago I'd noticed the brass wire mask on the shelves there was missing. I suspected it was some kind of disguised listening device left to make sure no one was poking around in Lloyd Carter's apartment when they weren't supposed to. The stone statue Sarah noticed earlier was undoubtedly more of the same. Whoever was on the other end of these listening devices had noticed our presence and arranged for the very convenient call we'd just heard to try to get us to stop looking for Sarah's brother.
They'd missed a bet, though. I was a Thieftaker and when they recalled their listening device I'd caught an echo of its departure and now I was going to find them and see what they were up to. Sure enough, after a few minutes study I isolated a tunnel through the sidereal exactly like I'd expect from someone slipping off elsewhere. I probed it with my slipsense while pulling enough energy from Wireburn to slip myself after the sculpture.
A second later I was in a new stretch of sidereal. To my surprise the expanse of energy below me was much smaller and dimmer, consistent with what I'd expect from Coldstone. Not surprising, honestly. Oscar had lied to us over the VC but clearly he'd included Wireburn's moon in his story because Coldstone was already in the forefront of his mind. I probed to make sure I could turn physical safely. Once I confirmed the area was clear of obstacles and people I turned physical and found myself in a large room with vaulted ceilings full of skylights. In the windows overhead I could see the breathtaking orange and brown whorls of Wireburn filling most of the sky.
I was standing in an octagonal room. Two opposite sides of the octagon were doorways to other rooms, both closed at the moment, and the other six sides had alcoves built into them. Four of the six alcoves were occupied by statuary. One was the familiar brass mask. Another was a stone creature, about a foot high, that looked like a fat dog with curly hair on its head. The third was a strange mass of brightly colored yarn hanging from a hook. At first I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be but as my gaze slipped away from it and on towards the next alcove I saw it out of the corner of my eye and realized it was a very abstract rendition of a Great Jelly, one of Wireburn's odd native creatures. Interesting.
The last statue was a three foot tall structure made entirely of elaborately folded paper to make a strange toad-like structure with far too many joints in its six limbs and eyes drawn on the paper seemingly at random. I didn't recognize any of these sculptures but I could tell someone had spent a lot of time on each of them. Unfortunately that didn't tell me who was using them to spy on people. I glanced from one door to the other, wondering if I should pick one to go through or just turn sidereal and head back to Ashland Prominence for the moment.
I'd just started to turn towards the sidereal when Oscar's deep, cultured voice rang through the room, saying, “Welcome, Theiftaker. I was wondering if you'd come here to speak with us.”
I backed out of the sidereal and searched for the source of the voice. “And you're Oscar. Tell me, did you kidnap Lloyd Carter and set up in his apartment to dissuade people looking for him? Or did he give you the slip and you're hoping to follow his sister or I to his location?”
Oscar was quiet for a second. Then he said, “Very impressive pattern recognition, isn't it?”
“Rudimentary.” The new voice was thin and reedy.
“For us, perhaps, but very advanced for a human. I propose a multiplicative stance to facilitate progressing the situation.”
I spun around again, still trying to determine where in the room these voices were coming from. “Why don't you stop talking about me and start talking to me?”
“Agreed,” the reedy voice said. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or Oscar or both of us.
The brass mask shifted, the wires suddenly writhing and weaving themselves about like a pile of spaghetti had grown sentient. If the squirming movement wasn't bad enough it was totally silent as well. A moment later the mask was gone, replaced with an eight inch tall mannequin made of woven wires. The thing's face turned towards me with a disquieting regard. “Hello, Thieftaker Hammer. I am O-193118, known to most humans as Oscar, and as you have deduced I am attempting to locate Lloyd Carter via the observation of his residence. This has been an unproductive approach.”
I stared at the bizarre thing for a long moment, unsure what to make of it. Finally I lapsed back on my instincts and asked, “What does that have to do with me?”
“Simply put, Sir Hammer,” it said, “I would like to hire you to find him.”
People are as varied and surprising as the stars of the galaxy whereas their crimes as predictable as the driving rain. I work with crime every day so I know that's the case. I don't know as I like what that says about me, seeing as how I could predict his offer and my answer before they were even spoke. Still, the formalities need to be observed so I said, “I accept.”
