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

Double bingo.

The autopsy images showed none other than Meizhen's friendand coworker Raedan William Gilmore.

Maybe they'd gotten into a fight, or maybe he'd outlived hisusefulness.  One thing was for certain: he hadn't been nearly as handsome deadas he'd been alive.  Not a trace of his bad-boy charm has survived thetransition.

"Got a desk we can borrow for a few days?" Daisyasked.

"Sure thing," the sergeant said.

#

The sergeant assigned Daisy and Muffy to a cubicle, and for thenext few hours, they searched the security grid for traces of MeizhenFitzgerald.

They teased out multiple hits.  The hits spanned a period ofabout three months.

The heaviest concentration was at the Glacier View Resort,where she and Ray had apparently spent most of their time.

The next biggest group of hits was at the WillametteGenetics Foundry.

The inside of the building may have been way off the grid,but the outside wasn't.  Those cameras and sensors showed Meizhen and Raycoming and going on an almost daily schedule.  Some days Meizhen looked happyand bouncy, and other days she leaned on Ray as they walked from the transport vehicleinto the building.  On two occasions an orderly wheeled her out to a waitingtaxi.

"Treatments," Muffy said.

And then, two weeks before Ray Gilmore's supposed suicide,the hits stopped.  Nothing from Willamette, nothing from the Glacier View,nothing from the street cameras, nothing from the transportation subnet.

"It's as though someone has erased them from all of thedatabases," Daisy said.

"Who could be doing that?  Meizhen herself?" Muffyasked.

"Or someone she hired," Daisy said.  "It mighteven have been Ray Gilmore."

"What now?  Are you wanting to search for the spiderthat was doing her dirty work?"

"No.  We need to work this from the other end."

"What are you talking about?"

"Think of us as a couple of bloodhounds.  Meizhen haswaded into a river and we've lost her scent.  What can we do?  Sit on ourhaunches and bay at the moon?  No.  We have to go across the river and cast backand forth until we pick up her trail again."

"Oh, yes, but that spider could have reached anywherein the solar system by now," Muffy said.

"Possibly, but some databases are more secure thanothers."

Muffy's face lit up.  "And we have one thing her spiderdoes not have: space-marshal access codes.  They are absolutely the open-sesameto every node on the grid."

Suddenly Daisy felt first-year-rookie stupid.  Muffy wasright.  They had the one thing Meizhen hadn't had.  Of greater even importance,they had the one thing that Daisy's uncle hadn't had: the space-marshal accesscodes.  Daisy was so accustomed to thinking of the tongs as virtuallyomnipotent that she found it next to impossible to grasp their limitations.  Butthe reality was, there were many, many places the tongs could not reach,actions they could not take, things they could not acquire, andthe space-marshal access codes were one of them.

Her uncle had turned to her because, first, she wouldnot betray him, and, second, she had authorization to use the space-marshalaccess codes.

#

Using one of the semi-official templates, they put together aspider of their own and launched it.

"Time for dinner," Daisy said.

#

Two hours later, their spider reported back enough data forthem to take action.

Two days after Ray Gilmore's death, the spaceport in TsiolkovskyCity, the Moon, recorded the departure of a woman matching Meizhen Fitzgerald'sphysical description.  She was pregnant, traveling alone, and using excellentfalse identification.  Her ID was so good that it had fooled the geneticsniffers.  They registered her as one Florence Amelia Chang y Gomez, Ph.D., ofMexico City, Earth, traveling on business.

The only slight problem with this scenario was that FlorenceAmelia Chang y Gomez had died in a plane crash in Brazil, Earth, five yearsago.  The death certificate had been purged, but not quite well enough.

Not all spiders are created equal.

"Where did you say she was headed?" Daisy asked.

Muffy checked the screen.  "Ganges Four.  What luck!  Ihave always harbored a profound desire to visit there."

Daisy hadn't.

Ganges Four was one of the newer Earth-Moon Lagrangecolonies.  It was a hub for both genetic and cybernetic research.  Theuniversities and companies there melded lots of grant-funded theory with lotsof profit-motivated application.  Which meant that the place was top-heavy witha smorgasbord of pushers, pimps, and prostitutes.

Daisy and Muffy coded a special spider, pointed it at GangesIV, and hit the "launch" key.

Half an hour later it popped back with a cluster of hits inand around the Himalayan Android Works.

For the first time since taking on the case, Daisy got acold feeling in the pit of her stomach.  The Himalayan Android Works was anotorious android factory.  Exquisitely skilled and highly amoral, theydesigned and built everything from pet cats to willing sex slaves, fromobedient children that would never grow up to loving grandparents that wouldnever grow senile, from fearless soldiers to cuddly assassins.  Their clientbase ran the gamut from tycoons to tyrants and from goons to governments.

Moreover, with that one simple piece of information, the jobhad suddenly flashed out of control, morphing from a missing-persons case intosomething utterly different.  What that something might be, Daisy couldn't say. But it was now entirely possible that she would fail.

"The Himalayan Android Works," Muffy said.  "Whywould Meizhen go there?"

Daisy felt a surge of frustration.  "Link the pieces.  Meizhencame to New Telluride to save her baby.  She did.  What would her next logicalstep be?"

Muffy thought, then said, "That would depend on herstate of mind.  But we have nothing to tell us what that might have been."

"Which is why we have to go to Ganges IV."

After another pause, Muffy said, "By now she's had herbaby."

"I know," Daisy said.  "She had it three monthsago."

#

They were about to board the ferry to Ganges IV when Daisyrealized that she'd told Muffy a tremendous lie.  They'd been thinking likecops and not like a spoiled child with a grudge.  Worse, they had not beenthinking like an anger-filled woman capable of murder.

Daisy looked at the departure board and cursed the length oftime they would have to spend in transit.  They were working blind, proceedingon guesswork, and they were already far, far behind.

#

The Himalayan Android Works gleamed.

No surprise there.  Given the company's revenues, they couldafford as much polish as they wanted.

Daisy and Muffy's uniforms and badges got them as far as thesecurity