Daisy Wong, Space Marshal: The Case of the Runaway Concubine by Freddi MacNaughton (parable of the sower read online .txt) 📗

a private dinner together that coming weekend, but she wantedto beg off.  When I didn't agree immediately, she flew into a rage."

"Why did she want to cancel?"

"She worked at Celestial Cybernetics and Robotics,"Snakeskin said proudly.  "She was coming up on a critical deadline andneeded to work."

"Sounds reasonable."

"Yes, but I found out later that she had had no suchdeadline."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"She picked that fight herself," Snakeskin said. "I've come to believe she wanted an excuse to leave my household.  If shehad simply left, without any sort of reason, I would have become suspicious.  Iwould have investigated much sooner."  He added, "It is a time-honoredtactic."

"Especially among those with something to hide,"Daisy said.

Snakeskin chuckled.  "I see the Gweilo have not completelyaddled your wits.  I suspect she wanted to keep the baby for herself."

Or deny it to you, Daisy thought.

#

The taxi ride to the Pioneers of Mars Hotel was anirritation of traffic jams and grit.  The particles continued to rasp betweenDaisy's neck and the collar of her uniform.

Answering the latest of Muffy's questions, Daisy said,"If Snakeskin had wanted to find Meizhen earlier, he could have."

"Then why didn't he?"

"He had no reason to.  Remember he didn't know she waspregnant.  True, he figured she was hiding something, but he also figured it couldn'tbe all that important.  Whatever the case, he decided he could afford to lether sulk."

"Maybe he wanted her to think that he'd forgotten allabout her, that she was safe.  Perhaps that way, she would become careless andreveal the truth."

Daisy's estimate of Muffy's abilities went up a notch. "Good point."

Two notches.

Muffy gazed out the window, at the traffic snarl slowlyswirling them.  "What is she hiding, I wonder."

"That's the question of the hour."

"Very good, and how do you propose we go aboutanswering it?"

"We find the bitch."

But first, after a good night's sleep and a long hot shower,Daisy had a few questions to ask Dr. Lopez.  He'd been lying through his teeth,and Daisy wanted to find out why.

#

Arrangements were made, and at the appointed hour the nextmorning, Daisy and Muffy's taxi pulled up in front of an apartment buildingthat was old but stylish.

The building's neighborhood was old but not so stylish.  Thesaplings planted along the sidewalk and the new transit kiosks promised anenergetic comeback.  The graffiti scratched into the kiosks and the litterthrown into the gutters said otherwise.

The doctor's unit was on the building's top floor and facedthe street.  The decor was from the middle-gunsel period.

Daisy asked the doctor's guards, Rudy and Trudy, to take ahike.  They objected.  She asked them to think about it.  A man with two brokenribs wasn't going very far, and if they pissed her off, they stood a goodchance of pissing off Snakeskin Wong.  Trudy and Rudy thought about it and agreedto wait in the hall.

Muffy went into the kitchen and made tea.

Daisy sat Lopez down at his dining-room table.

They talked about Mars.  How different it was from Earth. How domed cities were inherently claustrophobic to anyone not raised in one. How space colonies were actually more viable than planetary or lunar colonies. How much Lopez was looking forward to returning to Chicago, assuming Snakeskinallowed him to go on breathing.  Lopez had made a lot of money.  Mars had beenfun, but home was where his heart was.  Blue sky and the wind off the lake. Fresh air with real dirt in it, not Martian grit.  What the hell was in thatgrit, anyway?

As far as Daisy had ever heard, grit was just grit.  It wasMartian soil that came in from the outside.  It came in on tires, tracks,wheels, and boots.  It sifted up through the foundations.  It sprinkled downthrough the joints between the dome panels.  It mixed in with the detritus ofhuman habitation, and it became something else, something other.

The tea arrived.

Muffy poured three cups of it.  The table was chrome with aglass top.  Their cups clanked on the glass.  Muffy brought placemats.

To Lopez, Daisy said, "Tell me about your medical practice."

"Pretty routine.  Pelvic exams.  Pap smears.  Imaging. Fertility issues.  Prenatal care.  'Oh, listen to your baby's heartbeat.  Isn'tit wonderful?'  Delivery."  He rattled off the categories as though hewere reading a restaurant menu.

"Mostly for Snakeskin's people?  Their families?"

"About half and half.  Half civilians.  Halftong."

"Any tong people not associated with the CelestialFraternal Benevolent and Protective Association?"

The caged look returned to Lopez's eyes.  "Some, butSnakeskin himself approved each of them on a case-by-case basis."

And had no doubt used those patients, and Lopez, to gatherand dispense sensitive information.

Lopez would be doing good to live out the year.  IfSnakeskin didn't go after him, someone else would.  The tongs were big inChicago.

"About the procedures, any abortions?"

"Yes, but not many.  Children are valued on Mars."

"Any miscarriages?" Daisy asked.

"A few," Lopez said.

"Did Meizhen ever have one?"

"No."

The answer had come way too quickly.

"Tell me, Doctor Lopez, how many more bones would youlike to have broken?" Daisy asked.  She glanced at Muffy.  "Mypartner here has completed more than her share of courses in physicalinterrogation."

Muffy glared at Lopez.

Daisy continued, "Oh, I know she looks like the sort ofgirl you'd like to take home to meet the folks, but that's only on theoutside.  On the inside she's a whole different story."

Lopez swallowed hard.  "Oh, all right," he said,his resolve visibly shattering.  "Meizhen had two miscarriages.  She andSnakeskin were trying to have a baby."

"Looks like the third try would have been thecharm," Daisy said.

"Not a chance.  She wouldn't have, couldn't havecarried it to term."

"Why is that?"

Lopez took a pad off a nearby shelf.  His hands flickeredover the screen and then he handed the pad to Daisy.  "That's why,"he said.  "Snakeskin's modified genetics—his snakeskin, if you will—isn'tcompatible with an unaltered human DNA profile."

Daisy looked at the screen and clenched her jaws together tokeep from gasping out loud.

The screen showed two stills, side by side.  The stills wereof malformed fetuses, fairly far along.  They had brightly colored scalesrather than human skin.

Lopez said, "The modified genes aren't supposed tobleed through like that, but every once in a while, they do."

"Why?"

"Blame it on random chance.  Blame it on Martian grit. Take your pick."

That explanation made about as much sense as it needed to.

"Why did you lie to