Звезда Пандоры

“If I’d been alive, I would have turned up for rejuvenation,” Tara said sharply. “And I’ll thank you not to open that can of worms.”

“I understand. We do have to examine every possibility.”

“But perhaps not out loud when it can cause such distress,” deSavoel said irately. “This is not pleasant for my wife to raise such specters again after she has finally accustomed herself to complete bodyloss.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Paula said. “To make sure it won’t happen again.”

“Again?” Tara’s voice rose in alarm. She stubbed her cigarette out. “You think I’ll be killed again ?”

“That’s not what I meant. It would be most unusual for a killer to strike at you twice; and you have been alive for over twenty years this time. Please don’t concern yourself about the possibility. So, Wyobie didn’t have a gun?”

“No. Not that I remember.”

“You mentioned other affairs. Were you seeing anybody else at the same time as Cotal?”

“No. Wyobie was quite enough for me.”

“What about enemies, yours or Cotal’s?”

“I must have fallen out with many people, you do over a hundred years, but I can’t think of any argument or grudge that would warrant killing me. And as for Wyobie, nobody that age has enemies, not ones that kill.”

“His other girlfriend might have been angry enough.”

“Possibly.” Tara shuddered. “I never met her. Do you think that’s what happened?”

“Actually, no. If you and Wyobie were killed, then it certainly wasn’t a crime of passion, or at least not a spur-of-the-moment slaying. As yet, we don’t know where and when you were killed. To throw up that much uncertainty takes planning and preparation. Other than your ticket there’s no real proof you ever went to Tampico.”

“The divorce,” deSavoel said. “That was filed on Tampico. And all Tara’s things were sent there.”

“The divorce was lodged with a legal firm, Broher Associates, on Tampico. It was a pure data transaction. In theory it could have been filed from anywhere inside the unisphere. As for your effects, Tara, they were sent to a Tampico storage warehouse for seven weeks, then removed by your authorization into a private vehicle. The insurance company investigators were unable to trace them. What I find interesting about this is your secure memory storage arrangement. There isn’t one apart from the Kirova Clinic, not on Tampico, nor on any other Commonwealth planet as far as the investigators could find, though my Directorate will start double-checking that now. And you would have made one, everybody has a secure store they can update for precisely this reason: re-life. The ticket, your effects shipped out there, your divorce, it’s all evidence you were settled on Tampico. But to me, the lack of a secure memory arrangement calls the whole Tampico episode into question.”

“But why?” Tara asked. “What would be the point in killing me or Wyobie? What did we do?”

“I don’t know. The last time you were seen alive was when you had lunch with Caroline Turner at the Low Moon marina restaurant. If anything was wrong, you didn’t tell her. In fact, she said you seemed quite normal.”

“Caroline was a good friend, I remember. I might even have told her about Wyobie.”

“She says not, and certainly nothing about leaving Morton to go off with Wyobie. So if you didn’t go crazy wild and run off, we have to consider you got involved in some criminal event.”

“I wouldn’t!”

Paula held up a cautionary finger. “Not necessarily deliberately. The logical explanation would be an accident, something you saw or discovered that you shouldn’t have, and were killed because of it. My problem with that theory is where it happened. If it was here, then we only have a very small incident window to investigate. Morton had been away from home for two days, and was scheduled to stay at his conference for another four days. He says you stopped answering his calls two days after your lunch with Caroline, the same day your Tampico ticket was purchased. Now, your last memory deposit in the Kirova Clinic secure store was the same day Morton went away. So at the most you had four days for this event to happen to you. I believe we can safely say it didn’t happen in the two days prior to your lunch, which leaves us with just two days, forty-eight hours, for it to occur.”

“Police records don’t show any major crime incident that month,” Hoshe said. “Actually, it was a quiet year.”

“Then they were good criminals, clever ones,” Paula said. “You never caught them, and the only evidence is this ice murder. That doesn’t leave us with a lot to go on. I have to say that if Saheef and Cotal walked in on something bad, then the chances of discovering what actually happened are slim. Which leaves us with Tampico. You arrived and bumped straight into something you shouldn’t have. Our hypothetical Tampico criminals maintained the illusion that you were alive by picking up your effects and then filing for the divorce. That would explain the lack of a memory store.”