Day Two
Earth
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
- Mark Twain
I had been sitting at the little fold out desk in my cell, making a few notes on the pad that had been provided. The night had been quiet and I had slept very deeply. The wall dispenser provided breakfast in the form of food bars and the sink was equipped with a fountain. I had dined like a king, a deposed king to be sure, but a king none-the-less. All that was missing to make my cell a palace was a rather large black feline.
The door to the cell opened and Mr. Jones walked in. She had two guards with her, however they remained outside the door. She moved a pace or two inside and the door closed behind her. She looked at one of the camera placements, then nodded. I suspected that she had just instructed whoever was at the other end of that camera to stop recording.
She sat on the edge of the bed and considered me for a moment.
"Well, Finder, you seem to have gotten yourself into a spot of trouble. And all in one day. I was warned about your methods, but decided to take a calculated risk. So far you have been an annoyance only, albeit an extremely powerful one. However, you are teetering on the edge of criminality here, and that I simply won't allow. I will need your word that you will continue your investigation outside the walls of this establishment, and that you will not attempt contact nor interfere with any of my employees."
I looked at her for a moment, then came to a decision. It is a well-known fact that Finders cannot lie. It is part of being a Finder, hinging on our access to hidden knowledge. It is a complete fabrication, of course, one that Finders in general seek to propagate. Finders lie whenever it suits their purpose, but we are careful to cultivate situations where what may have seemed like a lie could be creatively interpreted after the fact to have been an almost occult prescience.
"No." I said, choosing to tell the truth, or at least part of it. "The next step in this case lies somewhere here, and if I leave, I will have to search three planets and hundreds of stations to find the thread again." I was watching her carefully. "Not to mention the mining operations of Mercury and The Belt." A slight tightening about the eyes, and firming up of the face muscles to prevent expression. The mining operations were the key, and especially at the Belt. I now knew that my investigation would be leading me into space. This had to do with 3p corporately. At least she wasn't lying about Leena's importance.
"I still have work to do here," I said, "so I will continue to ask questions and peer under rocks. For example this."
I held up the pad of paper, on which I had written 'Long-range Exploration Expedition, Neptune Area' vertically.
"Who is LEENA, really?" I asked.
Mr. Jones looked at the paper, her face a solid immovable mask. I had not only struck a nerve, I think I had finally struck all of them.
"Three Planets Mining has no interests beyond the Belt. No one does, it is simply too dangerous and expensive." She was determined to hold hard and fast to the party line. At least this was more confirmation that this whole investigation had to do with space. Putting it together with the advanced shuttle program, I was creating a compelling theory. Leena, which would remain her name for want of a better one, had something to do with explorations beyond the belt, almost to the edge of the Giants zone.
The Giants, as the four planets beyond the belt were known, were popularly seen as either the prison guards or the protectors of the four smaller inner planets. More often than not, in popular mythology, they were both, keeping humanity locked into the inner system for its own good. Space was vast and dangerous and we were small and weak.
So who was Leena in all of this? That she had been a prisoner here for at least part of the time I was now sure. I recognized the paper in my cell as being the same type on which her scribbled formulas had been written. Unlike pads used throughout the company, this paper would dissolve in the presence of moisture, preventing a detainee from committing suicide by choking themselves on it. The stylus was also merely a flexible plastic that reacted chemically with the pad to produce marks.
"Are you sure you won't reconsider?" she asked. This was also very telling. Mr. Jones didn't ask, she ordered. I was perilously close to the edge of something here. In the deep recesses of my mind, I could hear the thunder of the dark clouds and see the flash of lightning. All of this skullduggery at 3p was connected, somehow, to the ominous foretelling of disaster that my mind had picked up on at the very beginning. We were not safe if all of this was left alone. Or perhaps it was a warning to back off. Finding is vague that way, sometimes.
"I believe, Mr. Jones, that you have overlooked one simple solution to your objections to my methods. Rather than trying to modify them, which I can assure you will not happen, you could simply fire me. The cancellation of our contract would remove me from your concern completely. You have other Finders on the case, who, by all appearances, are far less intrusive. You could simply rely on them."
She considered this for a moment then shook her head. "No. While I was warned of your methods, I was also assured of your expertise. And as I have said already, you deliver results quickly."
I waited. Silences in conversation are black holes, hungering to be filled with the sound of voices, and if you know how to wait expectantly, the other party will invariably feel compelled to fill in the chasm. The surface information having already been scraped away, this is when the emptiness demanded deeper data, and so some hidden information was almost always excavated.
"Most of the others are useless, anyhow," she continued. "I suspect that the majority of them are merely run of the mill private investigators, masquerading behind the mask of a Finder in order to add mystery to their names. The couple took off to the nearest space station as soon as they were hired. I have no idea what they based that decision on, but I haven't heard anything from them since. That was a strange meeting. I am no romantic, but you could feel the hate in that room coming off of them like waves. What is their story?"
"Their story," I replied simply. "It is not mine to tell."
"Discretion. How noble." she returned sarcastically. "Do you think you could spread a little more of that around here perhaps?"
"I have not shared anything with anyone who did not already know it. As you are well aware. And despite their interpersonal dynamic, Markham and Joy are very good. If they went into space, it was not on a whim. They were led there by something. They produce results, sooner or later."
"So you say. And Gregson has just vanished. Not a word. He is a weird one. He barely spoke and kept looking off into the distance. I hadn't even finished my request and he had already accepted the job. But since then, nothing. I have no idea whether he is actually on this or not. So you see, I need you."
"Gregson is involved," I replied. "Deeply so. He has even infiltrated your facility here, as I warned you he would. I have to admit, his resourcefulness has surprised me. He has not been this active in a case for a decade. And he is very, very good. He is also tenacious. He will find Leena, regardless of how long it takes, or who or what is destroyed in the process. You have let loose the hurricane, Mr. Jones."
"From where I sit," she replied, "you are the hurricane. Besides, how do you know he has been here? Has he contacted you?"
"No, he has not. I have seen him here, however."
She sat up. "Where?" she demanded.
I smiled. "Did it not seem strange to you that one of your well-trained guards kept showing a remarkable lack of discipline, insisting on calling you 'ma'am,' though I am sure that your prefer the genderless 'sir?' Gregson was here, and he had the run of the place. In fact, you escorted him out."
Mr. Jones face once again became a mask of rage. She grabbed her mobile. "Intrusion alert! Lock down!"
"It is too late," I said. "The bird has flown. He got what he came for and left."
She wasn't listening to me anymore. She was coordinating operations with security, and rising to her feet headed for the door. One tap and it slid open, the two guards still in position.
Before exiting, she turned to me and said, "You will stay here."
I would, for exactly as long as it suited my purposes. Then I would leave.
The cells, or detention rooms, were found in the lower floors of every medium and large company. Most of them were comfortable enough without being luxurious. While companies could be as hard as they wanted to be with their employees, it was a well-known fact that happy people work much better that oppressed people, so employees were kept satisfied without being pampered. Occasionally, some little indiscretion would cause an employee to cross company guidelines that would need to be addressed. This was usually done with a stint in the detention center.
Mr. Jones' penchant for firing was highly irregular. It happened, of course, but only for case of the most serious breaches of company security. Firing was irreversible, and unless one had special knowledge or skills, being fired meant a life of poverty, for very few companies would take on a person that had proved to be unreliable.
I was trying to sort out the facts as I currently knew them. I reached down to scratch Darwin's head. It was a reflex, a move I had done so many times that I no longer consciously thought about it. His solid presence grounded me, and usually gave me enough stability to keep me thinking straight.
But he wasn't there. He had disappeared again when we took our trip down here. He must have had his reasons, but for the life of me I couldn't puzzle them out. I decided to try to work my thinking out without the benefit his support.
Since corporate espionage was also still a factor in maintaining a competitive edge, these centers were also used to house and interrogate spies who were clumsy enough to get themselves caught. Once caught, however, these uninvited intruders were usually treated with care and respect, even though their movements were restricted. Often the spies were some of the top talent of a competing company, and the assignment to collect competitive data was seen as a means of expanding one's information dataset. In many ways it was a game, one that was never played out in the open, but without any serious consequences.
I was sure that if Mr. Jones was aware of these unwritten rules, she would ignore them. Her reign at 3p would be seen as one of the darker periods in its corporate history, if only by those who survived it.