Chapter 4

The hiss of the talcha machine was a familiar buzz in the background. We'd taken our client into the Nice Room, which we kept for meetings with clients, revenue agents, people trying to shake us down, and other such formal events. She seemed to find being in a place which didn't smell faintly of smoke, even with the filters on full blast, to be reassuring. Which, you know. Was kind of why we kept it , the VIs had gone and cranked the lighting levels, colour, and wall-shades to asari-optimal.

Yeah, if you haven't had to deal with lots of species, you probably wouldn't realise what a big deal it is. But put a batarian in a room made to get a turian to relax, and they're going to be finding it too bright and all the colours too hot. Make sure you don't have any elements in the room highly reflective in the near-UV if you're going to have a salarian in. Humans start getting hilariously on edge if you set the walls to certain shades of red, but they also like a slight reddish hint to the light when they're talking to an asari. Makes your skin look more pink, you see. Kind of the inverse those bars that stupid Mothers go to on the Citadel to pick up human mayflies to be the parent of their child, which have strong blue lighting which makes the human's skin look like a proper colour.

Look, we all have little cognitive biases and short-circuits. And most people get creeped out by the walls being the colour of their appropriate species' blood. Even krogan, though you'd have to be pretty dumb to deliberately try to put one of them on edge. Dumb, or deliberately playing them. Which, admittedly, isn't that hard, because they're the second-most suicidal race in the galaxy.

And talking of the first-most suicidal race in the galaxy, Mara began to talk about her quarian boyfriend. Oh, sorry, "One true heart".

Blah blah blah. It took several minutes of nearly-tearful-but-never-quite-breaking down talking for it to emerge that she wasn't precisely his one true love. In fact, she was the 'other woman' to his quarian wife.

Yes, I could stop editorialising, but really, she was dreadfully boring. A mix of sob-story and sappy, white-washed romance. But if you insist...

"And you see, the two of them were working for the Admiralty Board." Mara shuffled. "I probably shouldn't have said that, but it was all legal! The quarian fleet isn't allowed in Illium's space, nor their agents, but they were an independent company legally who just happened to deal with the Migrant Fleet a lot! Xani was the captain of their largest ship, and Hal handled their things here on Illium. And I met him a few months ago, and... well, he was lonely, and things just happened! He was so sensitive... and yet mysterious, under that mask. It really is attractive, you know."

Blah blah, blah blah, yet another idiot fawning over the quarian "mystique". Clearly they're too lazy to go and look at the pictures on the extranet – for goodness' sake, there are quarian porn stars. It's not like it's hard to set up a sterile room if you know what you're doing. Tend to keep the masks on, because that's what those dextro-loving freaks who pay for that stuff are into.

Plus, you know. Some people tend to lose the romance when they see that their beloved's mouth is... well, you know what geth look like, right? Yeah, they kind of look like flayed quarians, in the way that that line of turian combat robots look like turian skeletons.

The light's in the maw.

She looked at me with large dark eyes. "I didn't mean to end up involved with someone's husband! I'm not that kind of person normally. But he was lonely and he was cute, with those sensitive eyes under the mask... and we never even melded! The bond was deeper than that!"

Yeah, right. Even assuming I believe that – and it might be possible; some Maidens can be rather repressed about melding... and no, I'm not repressed. I'm cynical and sick of being treated as a sex object by drooling turians or krogans who have got it into their thick skulls that an asari might be able to have little krogan womb-bursters. Goddess only knows how they can be that ignorant and still remember how to breathe. Guess that's one of the wonders of autonomous nervous systems.

What was I saying?

Ah yes, even if I believe that the relationship was meld-chaste, there are lots of other things one can do without melding, which frankly interest other species a lot more. Like wanting to stick various appendages and protrusions in your cloaca – which is disgusting and unhygienic, thank you very much. And she was talking to an asari, so of course she had an interest in appearing pure and naive and repressed, and playing off my cultural assumptions.

Pity for her that she was talking to me and Tatyre, wasn't it? Ever seen a batarian roll their superior eyes in weary cynicism? I have. Repeatedly. On a daily basis.

"Well, about a month ago, I was... well, with him. I'd been away on a short holiday up to Nos Cthon, you see, and so I'd been missing my beloved true heart. And then... well, that's when the news came. His wife was also away – she was away a lot, because she was with the vessel, but... well, she'd died of a stroke."

Immediately suspicious. There are so many other things which can be faked as a stroke, you know. Apparently it's one of the favoured ways for the salarian STG to kill people, although frankly anything you hear about them is probably lies. Everybody lies; I lie, Tatyre lies, but few things lie like a salarian spy. Apart from my grandmother. Who is patterned off a salarian. Who may have been a spy.

She sighed. "Well, he was heart-broken, and so was I. She knew about me and him, I think, and I'd gotten to know her a fair bit. She certainly dropped a few comments, and she was very nice. All understanding about such things. She'd even put some orders in with me."

Tatyre cleared her throat. "What did you say you did?" she asked, casually.

"Oh, that! I'm an artist!" Mara said. "You might have seen some of my works, at MoCC's latest exhibition! I work in organic materials... meat, bone, bile... all ethically sourced, and none of that cheap RNArtistry – only naturally evolved substances. I feel it reaches into the very heart of what it means to be alive! The beating of a heart wired up to a canvas painted in dark shades reaches inside and strips away the lies of civility! And the restriction of the artform inspires creativity... when your palette is so limited, you have to rely on the subtle shadings and the texture."

"Fascinating," the batarian drawled. "A unique field."

"Oh, not really; I'm building off Maldran's work. He was a salarian genius operating around a hundred years ago. He basically devised the entire field from scratch, as a rejection of late tertiary neo-Harrusianism and its focus on the aesthetics of sterility and industrialism. I saw his work, and I knew I wanted to bring it to the masses."

"Amazing," Tatyre said, her fingers twitching in a way which I knew she wanted a smoke. "I am in awe at the scope of your goal."

I made a note to check out some of her work. Not only to make sure it existed, but also because it sounded mildly interesting. Certainly, something which might draw a quarian. I should probably check that she wasn't murdering people for her art, I also decided. That much enthusiasm couldn't be healthy.

Clearing my throat, I tried to manoeuvre things back to a semblance of a coherent train of conversation. "So," I said, "you said his wife died. While I am sure that it was tragic, and I am sorry for both your and his loss... do you suspect that he was badly affected enough to," I cleared my throat, "make bad decisions?"

"No!" There was surprising vehemence at that. "He wouldn't do such a thing! He wouldn't! After... after she died, we ended up even closer. I was there for him, and... and we would sleep together in the clean-room him and his wife had, and..." she dabbed at her eyes, with a handkerchief procured from a pocket, "... and he cried and I was there for him, and... and..."

She trailed off, and then started again. "He wouldn't just vanish like that, if... if he was going to end it. This is Illium. If he was going to do that, he'd... I don't want to think about it, but he had a gun, and if he suddenly... lost control, that's how he would. Or by jumping off a building. I looked up the statistics on the extranet; I'm sure of it."

Well, she was certainly right there. People who kill themselves on Illium do it the same easy way that people do it all over the galaxy – they shoot themselves. Or for the local speciality, they jump off a building and leave a socially irresponsible and selfish mess at the bottom, which delays you when you're trying to get around and they close off a street for cleaning.

So inconsiderate.

"The thing is," she continued, "the thing is? In the last week, he started to get... well, erratic. He wouldn't talk to me about some things. He was getting messages on the extranet, though... threatening ones. I snuck a peak when he stayed logged in. And some of it mentioned his relationship with me, and about how he needed to 'remember what he had to do and not get distracted'. That's not the only thing I got from him!" she added, pulling out an omnitool memory card. "I copied what was on it, but he had most of it encrypted, so I can't see things. But you might be able to."

I took the chip, and handed it to Tatyre. "Hmm, a 4Kai Fire," she said, to herself. "Nice model, but tough security if the patches are kept up to date. Especially if custom software is in use – you know how quarians can be. I'll try my best, but don't get your hopes up," she said in a bare-faced lie.

I've heard her smug remarks about quarians and their indomitable urge to tinker with any hardware or software they get their hands on more than enough to know that she was lying. Most of them apparently just end up opening up security flaws when they bolt on custom plug-ins or jailbreak their omnitool's security lock to make it easier to mod. One of the ways you know they're serious is if they're watertight.

Mara smoothed down her short black dress, the movement – coincidentally? – showing more thigh. "Three days ago, he... he rewrote his will, writing me in as the major beneficiary," she said, a hint of shake in her voice. "It was signed and properly registered here, with witnesses. Well, without his wife, his old one was out of date."

"Who lost out?" I asked.

"That... uh, I think he mentioned people back on the Fleet, but he didn't name names," she said. "And then the next day... the day before yesterday, he disappeared. No sign of him. He didn't pack. There was nothing like anyone had broken into our... his apartment. He was meant to be at one of my art showings. No calls, no nothing... the first I knew was when he didn't show up. I waited up all night, and..." she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, "... still no him. Normally I'd have waited longer, but... well. I can't go to the police; they'll just suspect me because the will was just changed! And he's a quarian anyway! You need to find him, or find out what happened to him!"

Tatyre and I shared a meaningful glance. A suspicious disappearance of a quarian who had shown an interest in separating from the Migrant Fleet. Oh boy. A One People scenario in the making.

"Well, that's certainly an interesting case, ma'am," I said. "Very... puzzling." Did she just want proof of his death? Especially if she was the one who did it... or tried it and failed, or... well, I paused in my morbid contemplation for a moment. I guess she actually could be innocent now, if the quarian looked like he might have been One People'd.

Hard to tell. Interesting.

The batarian shot me another glance as if she suspected strongly what I was thinking, and cleared her throat. "Well, madam, our fees start at..."

The asari with the sky-blue skin tapped her wrist, bringing up a sleek deep red omnitool, and swiped her fingers on it. "I've linked an account with a month's worth of your standard fee according to your extranet site... that should be fine, shouldn't it? It's digitally signed, and backed by Belba."

Tatyre shot a glance at me, and I nodded. "We will provisionally take the case, madam," she said crisply, "while we begin preliminary investigations. The standard rules and details of the contract can be obtained in hard form if you wish, and since your payment was signed, we will consider that a mark of agreement to all the terms and conditions contained therein."

"Fine." An immaculately nailed hand was flapped at us. "Just find him, please, I beg of you!"

We saw her out – and yes, maybe I did appreciate those long, graceful legs whose passage up was only interrupted by her short dress – and retreated to the room marked as a storage room on the building plans to talk. The clients never see this place, and honestly I would rather not spend more time in there than I have to, because Tatyre has packed it wall to wall with hardware. This isn't your regular stuff, either; we're talking military-grade heat-sinks repurposed for cooling her computers, bubbling green coolant tanks, wires all over the place, the works.

Both of us lit up with a sigh of relief.

"So," Tatyre said, breathing out bluish smoke through her nostrils so it wreathed around her face, "you think she did it?"

I sucked in a lung full of smoke, and held it as I thought. I wobbled my hand from side to side, and said, "I'd give it maybe... forty percent? She's naive. Too naive... that was a persona."

"Hey, you read asari better than I do," she said with a shrug, sinking down into her chair. "I just found her fucking annoying. You think she's faking that personality?"

I snorted. "Such a cliché. The young radical Maiden artist, who's still nevertheless naive and open eyed and believes in love. I bet if we'd asked her, she'd say that she thinks that dancing in a club is a legitimate expression of artistic physiology or some crap like that, rather than a way for the watchers to get meld-happy or get the urge to go and deposit alien fluids in you. I'd be just as cynical about the uber-lethal hardcore Maiden mercenary who's the most deadly thing on two legs despite the fact that she's only about sixty, the ever-so-dark-and-wild hedonist who's into things which are so dark and radical and violence and radical dark wildness in the dark violence..." I coughed, and drew another drag. "Fuck, the only way she could be more nice-clichéd than as an artist is if she was some kind of ever-so-nice Mother's girl who never swears and who never got in fights except in self-defence and is... like, a plant biologist, or something like that."

Tatyre cocked an eye as she played with the memory unit Mara had given us. "Ow," she drawled, "you're being even more cutting that usual. She got you mad, didn't she?"

I glared at her. "I hate it when idiots like her – or at least the face she wants the world to see, which... yeah, might be real, but I'd prefer it not to be – mean that people expect me to be some blue-skinned whore who'll jump into bed with someone just because they're 'sensitive' or they 'want to get to know alien species'. And I'm not angry."

My emotions were totally under control I will have you know, by the way.

"What, sweet little her, who's a young naive idiot who's only, what, as old as my grandmother?" She snorted, smoke twirling out. "Yeah, you blueys are fucked in the head that you can be so stupid when you're older than my life expectancy."

"Are you going to decrypt that memory unit or what?" I said, mild – and no more than mild – annoyance creeping into my voice.

Tatyre squatted down by one of her many machines, searching for the right cable before plugging it in. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do my techno-magic. Hocus pocus. Alakazam. And... oh, I do not believe this shit."

"Oh?" I leant back against the wall, watching holographic lights dance in the smoke.

"Yeah." She shot me a four-eyed stare. "A good half the thing's completely unencrypted. Which means either our quarian was lazy, an idiot, a lazy idiot, she managed to snatch it at a time when all of that was totally unencrypted – that's not a realistic scenario unless he was going something really odd – or she faked it. So... file-names... okay, he was running BlueBlack... okay... yeah, the calendar is in the unencrypted stuff. What a surprise."

"A set up?"

"Maybe." Tatyre shrugged again, tapping off her cigarette into one of the ashtrays which always accumulate somewhere she spends time around. "If you're going to investigate it, go armed and go ready." She waved a hand, and brought up a list. "Have fun."

I glared. "I can't read that. I can't even read the alphabet."

"Oh, if you insist," she said. She always did this, you know. She wanted me to wear those translate-y eye-camera things, and I downright refused. Because, seriously? A piece of technology, with a camera inside, which had been in her hands? I'd never have got a moment's peace.

Putting that aside, I ran my eyes down the list of places – oh, how convenient, indeed. Yes, it was indeed his calendar, and the places he'd been in the past week, and that stunk to the highest treetops. I scanned over the places within... full of acronyms, abbreviations, and pet names. "Meet QV and Pinky at Ozorne's," I read out loud. "Mara's show – be there early." My eyes widened. "Meet QV and IV at Erzala's. Well, well, well. And that one even has a location."

"I presume you've remembered you left the kettle on before you went off on your family jaunt," Tatyre said, fingers clattering against one of her input devices as she got started on the encrypted bits.

"Go fuck yourself," I retorted casually. "I think I know who that one's talking about. Erzala is... a friend."

"Don't be silly. You don't have friends," Tatyre said, without turning around. "Oh... isn't that the bar you go to pick up poor saps who love a beautiful girl with a wonderful personality? I really don't know how you get away with fooling them like that."

That's not why I went to Erzala's, incidentally, but I wouldn't tell this sort of thing to my charming companion. She's a colleague, nothing more.

"She's a contact," I said coldly, stubbing out my cigarette. And no, not on Tatyre, and no, I wasn't even tempted. Honestly. "And I got a look at those numbers involved. If she can put down a month's payment just like that, she's not exactly poorly off even before the will comes into play. And this is a business."

Tatyre yawned, stretching. "So, let me get this straight. You think we should take the case where a quarian trading corp's head has gone missing. We are being paid by his mistress, who it's a good chance is the culprit. Other suspects include his supposedly-dead wife when we only have the mistress' word for that, any number of people on Illium who don't like someone who's almost certainly a spy for the quarian Admiralty Board, the quarian Admirality Board and their One People policy, and, oh yes, anyone who might have just shot a quarian and hidden the body." She blinked, all four eyes at once. "And you think it's a good idea?"

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. "This place's rent isn't cheap," I said, "and my savings exist for a reason. Which isn't funding day to day running. And this could have... interesting pay-offs for us. If she's innocent, we have good relations with the to-be-head of a shipping company. If she's not, we have blackmail material on the to-be-head of a shipping company."

"And if we get shot in the head, we have gaping head-wounds." The batarian slumped. "I'll go prepare our dead-man's handles and hostage-data upload sites then, while I leave this running," she said, swinging on her chair. "And set up some new ones. And change all our passwords, and check all the defence systems around the office are up to specs, and then install some more."

"That would probably be a very good idea," I said.