Departures

“I am.” Cavendish sounded so positive, Bennett had to believe him. “Bloody odd, I call it.” With a shrug, he resumed his interrupted exercise. He shook his head the next several times the two of them bounded by the curious patch.

By the time they went back in to clean up, though, he seemed to have stopped worrying about it. Bennett, on the other had, was still chewing on it as he stepped out of the shower cubicle in his quarters. That was a piece of plumbing that had required less adaptation to Mimas’ conditions than he would have expected, though a stream of warm air, not gravity, kept the water moving.

Naturally, the phone chimed while he was drying himself. In his annoyance, he forgot to cancel the video feed. Rannveig nodded appreciatively. “As good as I remembered.”

More pleased than embarrassed, he draped himself in his towel. “What’s going on?” he asked, adding, “I thought you’d be with Jablonski.”

“He’s being questioned,” she said bleakly.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.I still think he’s innocent, but there’s evidence that points at him and none leading anywhere else, so what choice does Katayama have? I don’t blame you for finding the charge cubes, or anything childish like that. And that reminds me-you really are turning into a first-class troublemaker, aren’t you?”

“Am I? How?”

“Itzhak Zalman’s asked for political asylum.”

“He has? My God, with whom? Why?”

“With the Chinese, of all people; I think the Chinese coach must have been the first person he saw after he decided his cover was no good anymore.”

“His cover?” Bennett floundered.

Rannveig gave him an incredulous look.”You mean you don’t even know? He panicked when you told him there was a rumor about him being a member of the Second Irgun-because it happens he is a member of the Second Irgun.”

“I will be damned,” Bennett said. That had never occurred to him. “I suppose Katayama’s grilling him, too.”

“He’d like to, but the Chinese coach hasn’t let Zalman out of her suite; she’s up on her hind legs over diplomatic immunity.”

“That won’t last, not in the face of murder,” Bennett predicted. He could understand the Chinese coach’s worry, though; no quarter was given on either side in the clandestine war between the Arab World and the exiled Israeli nationalists.

Bennett dressed, then called Katayama. The security chief came on the line after a delay of a few minutes. His face was impassive, but there was something like warmth in his voice, and the fact that he was talking to Bennett in person showed how the broadcaster’s stock had risen. “Well, Mr. Bennett, you’ve helped me twice now. What can I do for you?”

“What’s the story with Itzhak Zalman?”

Katayama’s smile touched only his lips. “News travels quickly, I see. We have a recording in which he states he planned no violence, only a loss of face for the Arab World upon the disclosure of its slipshod security procedures. The value of this statement, of course, remains problematical. We would like to interrogate him in greater detail, but, ah-”

“I’ve heard.” Bennett nodded. “What about Jablonski?”

“About what you would expect. He denies any knowledge of the killings, says he was alone, asleep, and that if he were guilty he would have a better alibi.” A slight lift of one eyebrow showed how often Katayama had ran into that sort of infinitely regressing logic.

Bennett thanked him and let him go; no point in using up his store of goodwill by keeping the Security chief away from his job for half an hour. There had been something else the broadcaster had been thinking of doing when Rannveig’s call drove it out of his head. He snapped his fingers in annoyance, trying to remember.

He was on the point of giving up when it came back to him. He punched the chief maintenance engineer’s number.

He did not get the head of the engineering department; that worthy had no reason to drop what she was doing on account of his call. The assistant he talked to was a blond young man whose Anzac-flavored English was amusingly different from Cavendish’s. He described the frost he and the Scotsman had seen.

“We’ll check it out, mate, never fear. Don’t get browned off,” the engineer said cheerily.

“What was that?” Bennett snapped, sensitive to anything that sounded like a racial slur. Then he recognized the idiom. “Nevermind,” he said lamely. “Would you call me back when you find out what it was?”

“Will do, mate. G’day to you.” The screen went dead.

Having done everything he could think of, Bennett settled down to wait for the return call. He checked the computer for a listing of entertainment programs and found on one of the stereovision channels a docudrama he hadn’t seen.

The show was based on the works of a great twentieth-century author, and harrowingly realistic. Characters got killed off one after another; even the hero ended up in a cancer ward. The blizzards made Bennett feel colder than anything on Mimas had.