Chapter #23Interview with a Vulcan by: Seuzz   You're not getting enough sleep, or at least not the right kind. You don't understand why: you've actually been going to bed earlier than usual, and dragging yourself up later, but ever since that day you had to burn Davenport your sleep hasn't been what it should be. And now you've got Patterson to tell you what you already know.
"You were making all kinds of noises in your sleep last night," the girl says as you're waiting on the platform in the Underground. "Were you having bad dreams?"
"Never mind, Celia, sweetheart," you tell her.
"Is it stress? Gordon says he doesn't sleep good when he brings his work home with him."
"I guess I've been doing that. The last two nights, at any rate. Who's Gordon?"
"My mother's new husband," she says through gritted teeth.
"Don't take that tone with me, young lady. Your mother gave you to me today, so I'm in charge for now."
"At least you're still better than Gordon," she mutters.
"Thanks. Now, when we get to this lady's apartment—"
"Is she your girlfriend?"
"Do you have to be so precocious?"
"I don't have to be any way, I just am."
"She's just a friend, and I want to stay friends with her, so when we get there, you just take out your cell phone—" The arriving train drowns out most of what you say next. "—and if you just do those three things, believe me, boys will remember you for the rest of their lives."
"Whatever."
* * * * *
Deborah's eyes pop when she opens the door to you. "Terry?" She looks you up and down, obviously searching out the tats. "Oh my God, this is a— Er—"
"Hello, Deborah. I know it's been awhile. I shouldn't just pop in, I should've— Oh God, I'm interrupting something."
"No. No! You can come in." She steps back. "I've just got a— Oh, and who's this?"
Your "step niece" steps forward, looking skeptically at Deborah.
"This is my, uh, sister-in-law's daughter, Celia. She got dumped on— I mean, her mother is busy with something today, and I volunteered to—"
"Well, come in, come in you two."
The apartment is pretty much like you remember it. Lots and lots of white—white walls, white sofa, white sitting chair, white carpet—and all of it covered with dirty clothes and dishes, and pizza boxes flung over every surface. Deborah says, "I'll just tell Roger—"
"Oh, wow, I'm so sorry, I'd come back later, but—"
"No, it's okay, you brought your kid, I mean, your sister's kid, so this is—"
"Sister-in-law," interjects the girl.
"Sweetheart, why don't you go sit in a corner," you say, and gently pat your partner's bum while pointing to the only chair that hasn't got crap all over it. Deborah takes advantage of this to duck into her bedroom. You wander over to the kitchen and ostentatiously keep your back turned while murmured voices come through the doorway. You look over at Celia, but she's absorbed in her cell phone.
A door closes, and you turn back as Deborah back comes over. "How are you doing? You look good," you tell her.
And it's not a lie or a line. Her skin is still like alabaster, and her violet eyes are wide and slightly almond-shaped. She has a birthmark on her cheek, and she tucks back long, thick, luscious brunette hair behind an ear. And her figure— Well, she's always liked the retro look, and the Capri pants and torso-hugging t-shirt look great on her. She always put it down to the exercise equipment they had in the work gym at Project Vulcan, but you're pretty sure that was just a joke.
"Hmm?" you say, since you weren't following what she was saying.
She smiles. "I said you look good too. Well, you always did, no matter what—" She glances over at Celia, and her voice drops. "What's this about?"
"Astronomy."
"Mm. Well, Roger should be gone in a few minutes. I suppose the sprog over there—"
"She's not going to be able to make sense of anything we say. And this Roger fellow, I guess he's— Okay, it's not my business, sorry."
So you exchange a few more pleasantries, a little chit-chat, and she gets you a drink, until a small, sandy-haired man comes out of the bedroom. You withdraw as he comes up to Deborah, and she tenses as he kisses her on the cheek and pats her on the hip. You turn and avoid his face, but you can feel his eyes briefly raking over you. "Yeah, I don't want to cause you any problems," you say when he's gone.
"Oh, forget him. So. Astronomy?"
You open with caveats and disclaimers: You're not fishing for information about anything Vulcan is working on. You just want to know if a Vulcan researcher—as she is—could shed some light on a strange situation. She shrugs, but her expression of curiosity becomes a little more hooded.
"Suppose there's a girl," you say. "She's wearing clothes, obviously, but she changes her clothes. All of them, down to her skin. She puts on her new wardrobe, and tosses the old clothes into a dumpster. We retrieve the clothes and toss them for DNA. But there's no DNA on them. There's nothing on them, no skin cells, no sweat stains, no hair, nothing. Our tech boys say it looks like they're fresh from the packaging, never been worn." You shrug at her stare. "How would you explain it?"
"Well, there's dozens or hundreds of possibilities," she says after a pause. "If you're looking for something fancy. The fabric was treated with a static repellent field, or her skin was. Or, I don't know, lots of tiny skin-cell-eating nanobots—"
"Are you serious?"
"How serious are you?"
"Pretty serious, but I want to know if Vulcan is working on something that could explain this case."
Her eyes narrow. "I thought you didn't want to know what we're working on."
"I don't. And I don't think we stumbled onto one of your prototypes, either."
"Oh, so this is a real thing, not a hypothetical? In that case, the simplest explanation is that those weren't her old clothes you found, they were new clothes or clothes straight from a—"
"But they weren't. Trust me. Or, if it is something like that, there was serious sleight of hand going on."
"Sleight of hand is the best explanation, Terry."
"Humor me. Pretend it's the way I said it happened."
She sighs deeply. "No, we don't have anything in the works that would account for that kind of weirdness."
"What about a robot? Don't look at me like—"
"A robot?"
"Hey, it's something my boss suggested. Robots wouldn't leave skin or hair samples behind."
She rolls her eyes. "Well, we're not working on robots. I know I shouldn't be confirming or denying anything with you, but I can safely tell you that we haven't got any robots in our development labs. Jesus!"
"What about an artificial skin? Could you sheathe somebody in something that wouldn't leave any traces behind?"
"Aren't you guys the experts on artificial skin?"
"Maybe you know how to make a new kind?"
"Oh, Christ, Terry. If you're not fishing—"
"Then tell me hypothetically. Could an artificial skin act this way?"
"Do your guys leave stuff behind?"
"Yeah, we slough stuff off us. Managed to frame a few people for shit they didn't do."
She shrinks back. "You didn't have to tell me that. But your skins are the only ones I know anything about."
"Hypothetically, could it be a new kind of skin?"
"Hypothetically isn't going to help you, Terry, because hypothetically, in this line of business, anything is possible."
You fold your arms and hang your head. The pisser is that she's right. With nothing to go on but the evidence of the surveillance camera, the police search, and the lab report, you're caught between having no explanation and having too many.
"Okay, not that I'm fishing for info on what Diana is doing," Deborah says when the silence has grown too painful. "But aren't you the guys who are supposed to baffle other people with impossible stuff?"
"Let's just say someone interfered with one of our jobs. We're trying to find this person, and we can't because they didn't leave any forensic evidence behind. Even though they should have."
She hesitates, and for a moment you feel a rising hope that she might have an idea. But when she speaks: "If you can give me more details, Terry—"
"There aren't any more. I've told you everything. Really."
She shakes her head. "Then I don't have anything for you."
"Maybe you could talk to your colleagues?"
"Not a good idea. Anything else?" she asks after a pause.
But you shake your head. Parting pleasantries are exchanged—tense and strained both on account of Roger and because of the failed consultation. You call Celia over, and give Deborah a clumsy and perfunctory peck on the cheek when you leave.
Patterson trots along next to you as you walk down the hallway toward the front door of the apartment building. "Were you watching her?" you ask. "What did you think?"
"She sounded sincere. You sounded like a—"
Probably your partner was steering toward an insult. But before he can deliver it, a very tall and broad-shouldered man steps out of nowhere directly into your path. Eyes flash with amusement out of a pale face under dark bangs. He wears a rust-colored hoodie and work jeans. "So there you are," he says softly. "I missed you at the warehouse last week."  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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