plenty of time for our meeting when you wake up."
The look in his weary gray eyes surprised her. It was gratitude. You didn't see much of that when you worked for the Argos Group.
She led him away along the corridor. John Hyslop promised to be intriguing to work with—even though he insisted that they didn't really need him for the Aten asteroid work.
And did they? What other reason could there be for his transfer? She could ask Gordy Rolfe, but he'd take that as a sign of weakness. Better to file the question away in Maddy's box of minor mysteries, and try to find the answer for herself.
5
From the private diary of Oliver Guest.
A peat fire is like no other: silent, sullen, and slow-burning, red in its hidden heart. Not unlike, to one of morbid imagination, the man seated in front of it.
Seth Parsigian fitted well into an ancient castle of western Ireland; better, perhaps, than I did. Burly, primitive, cross-legged by my broad stone hearth, he made a rather formidable leprechaun. His skimpy black singlet revealed long-healed scars on his chest and neck. His eyes, glittering in the light of fire and wall lamps, were like a snake's.
"A dozen of 'em, and countin'," he said. "We can do this any way you like. I have a ton of stuff with me, pictures, descriptions, video reconstructions, locations and murder method, plus ages and background for each girl. What foxes me—an' not only me, half the security forces an' probably all the amateur sleuths in the world—is the pattern. There isn't one. I mean, so far as normal people are concerned, there ain't. Mebbe you, with your special talent, can make sense of it."
Of course. Maybe you, Dr. Guest, with your perverse, sick, disgusting, psychotic mind, will realize at once who did it.
"Spare me the doubtful compliments," I said. "I will certainly read, and I will look, and I will think. I will do all these things—at my leisure. For the moment, I prefer to have your impressions. You were surely engaged on this effort for some time before you decided to seek me out. Tell me what you know, what you deem can be ignored, and what you conjecture. When I feel a need for information, I will interrupt. Surely you have observed some pattern, however faint."
"Yeah. The pattern is, never the same thing twice. It started on December twenty-fifth, 2052. Myra Skelton went to a Christmas party at a friend's place on level eighty-eight."
"Level eighty-eight?"
"Locations on Sky City are named from the central axis. The axis is level zero. The outer edge of the cylinder is level one hundred. Myra Skelton lived with her parents on the eighty-second level, so she didn't have far to go to her friend's. Down six levels, and a hundred-meter walk around. She left there at nine at night. But she never made it home. They found her body the next mornin', stuck in an empty storage room on level eighty-seven."
"What was her age?" I sat back in my chair with my eyes closed. For the moment I was not attempting logical analysis. I sought only a sensation, a certain feeling, the stir of the small worms creeping up from the base of the brain.
"She was fourteen an' a half. Actually, more like fourteen years and eight months. She died from a blow to the back of her head. No murder weapon, no suspect, no motive. I got full medical reports. Want to see 'em?"
"Later. Continue."
"No rape, and no sexual molestation. Of course, I know that don't prove a thing. In your own case, from all I've heard, you never even touched them, before or after—"
I opened my eyes. "At your peril, Seth Parsigian. This truce is fragile enough, without unnecessary provocation."
"Yeah. Sorry." He did not look it. "Anyway, she hadn't been touched. Big mystery, an' no clues, even though her family's well connected an' pulled strings to get high-powered investigators on it. They come up from Earth an' talked a lot, but they found out zilch. They said, we got us an unknown killer—brilliant—and January seventh, they
The look in his weary gray eyes surprised her. It was gratitude. You didn't see much of that when you worked for the Argos Group.
She led him away along the corridor. John Hyslop promised to be intriguing to work with—even though he insisted that they didn't really need him for the Aten asteroid work.
And did they? What other reason could there be for his transfer? She could ask Gordy Rolfe, but he'd take that as a sign of weakness. Better to file the question away in Maddy's box of minor mysteries, and try to find the answer for herself.
5
From the private diary of Oliver Guest.
A peat fire is like no other: silent, sullen, and slow-burning, red in its hidden heart. Not unlike, to one of morbid imagination, the man seated in front of it.
Seth Parsigian fitted well into an ancient castle of western Ireland; better, perhaps, than I did. Burly, primitive, cross-legged by my broad stone hearth, he made a rather formidable leprechaun. His skimpy black singlet revealed long-healed scars on his chest and neck. His eyes, glittering in the light of fire and wall lamps, were like a snake's.
"A dozen of 'em, and countin'," he said. "We can do this any way you like. I have a ton of stuff with me, pictures, descriptions, video reconstructions, locations and murder method, plus ages and background for each girl. What foxes me—an' not only me, half the security forces an' probably all the amateur sleuths in the world—is the pattern. There isn't one. I mean, so far as normal people are concerned, there ain't. Mebbe you, with your special talent, can make sense of it."
Of course. Maybe you, Dr. Guest, with your perverse, sick, disgusting, psychotic mind, will realize at once who did it.
"Spare me the doubtful compliments," I said. "I will certainly read, and I will look, and I will think. I will do all these things—at my leisure. For the moment, I prefer to have your impressions. You were surely engaged on this effort for some time before you decided to seek me out. Tell me what you know, what you deem can be ignored, and what you conjecture. When I feel a need for information, I will interrupt. Surely you have observed some pattern, however faint."
"Yeah. The pattern is, never the same thing twice. It started on December twenty-fifth, 2052. Myra Skelton went to a Christmas party at a friend's place on level eighty-eight."
"Level eighty-eight?"
"Locations on Sky City are named from the central axis. The axis is level zero. The outer edge of the cylinder is level one hundred. Myra Skelton lived with her parents on the eighty-second level, so she didn't have far to go to her friend's. Down six levels, and a hundred-meter walk around. She left there at nine at night. But she never made it home. They found her body the next mornin', stuck in an empty storage room on level eighty-seven."
"What was her age?" I sat back in my chair with my eyes closed. For the moment I was not attempting logical analysis. I sought only a sensation, a certain feeling, the stir of the small worms creeping up from the base of the brain.
"She was fourteen an' a half. Actually, more like fourteen years and eight months. She died from a blow to the back of her head. No murder weapon, no suspect, no motive. I got full medical reports. Want to see 'em?"
"Later. Continue."
"No rape, and no sexual molestation. Of course, I know that don't prove a thing. In your own case, from all I've heard, you never even touched them, before or after—"
I opened my eyes. "At your peril, Seth Parsigian. This truce is fragile enough, without unnecessary provocation."
"Yeah. Sorry." He did not look it. "Anyway, she hadn't been touched. Big mystery, an' no clues, even though her family's well connected an' pulled strings to get high-powered investigators on it. They come up from Earth an' talked a lot, but they found out zilch. They said, we got us an unknown killer—brilliant—and January seventh, they
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