and three seconds later was back under the blanket guzzling fluid. The heater had already begun to buzz and creak, and moments later waves of heat rose through the air.
When I'd arrived here a few hours earlier I'd been so exhausted that I hadn't even bothered to change. I'd just dropped into bed in the same clothes I'd worn since I got off the plane. Part of my exhaustion was jet lag. Part was from the short walk uphill between the parking lot and the Centre. At home I would have taken those forty stone steps at a run, jogging up them two at a time. Here, I'd only been able to manage three risers before putting down my bag to rest. Then three more steps, and another rest. Even standing still it felt like I was breathing through a straw. No matter how hard I sucked there was never enough air.
I gulped down more of the water and felt my nose rehydrate and my ears begin to thaw. The bedside clock blinked 6:12 p.m. in red LED numbers, and outside dusk was falling. Mellier might be downstairs already, but I had a few things to take care of before I could meet him, and the first of these was to take a shower. I braved the cold and leapt out of bed.
Fifteen minutes later I was a new woman, dressed and ready to go, including wool socks, long underwear, and a down vest. If it was this cold here at the lower elevation it was going to be brutal on the summit. I checked the clock again and did a rapid calculation. In Ottawa it would be near midnight, too late to call Duncan with his young children, but Vancouver was three hours earlier. Sylvia would just be warming up. I picked up the phone.
As usual, she was already connected to the Internet. I could hear her tapping away even as she lifted the phone to her ear. "Hey babe," she said, before I even had a chance to say hello. "Duncan said you'd call."
Sylvia is the best science librarian in the federal government system, and both Duncan and I make use of her services often. Still, it was curious that Duncan would have called and mentioned me. "When was this?"
"Yesterday. He called me and asked for a search then told me to send it by e-mail to you. Said you'd be requesting it anyway when you got around to it. He knows you too well. How's Hawaii?"
I looked around at the spartan room and felt the itch of my long johns. "It's not your scene. Trust me on that."
"Yeah right. Try again." There was a clatter of tapping in the background. "Are you online?"
"Not right now. What's up?"
"I just sent it off. You have a complete reference search on Yves Grenier." Then I heard another burst of rapid-fire typing. "And there goes Andreas Mellier. Anything else?"
"Duncan requested a search on Andreas Mellier?"
"You bet. Looks like most of his work is co-published with Yves Grenier. Quite the publishing record, the two of them. What are they up to? Cooking the books? Creative data management?"
I didn't answer. My mind was preoccupied with another question. Why would Duncan have asked for that search? What was behind it? Then I came back to reality. "Can you add two more to the list?"
"Fire away."
"Edwin Eales and Anthony St. James. But there's something else."
"If I charge for it, it's yours."
"Physics is more your line than mine. Can you look over the stuff when it comes in? See if anything juicy hops off the page?"
"Give me a hint. What are we looking for? Fraud? Data theft? It helps if I know."
I thought about that for a minute, but the answer that came out of my mouth surprised even me. "A motive for murder."
There was silence at the other end. Even the tapping ceased. "What has Duncan gotten you into?"
Sylvia had become a little too maternal since my last brush with death, and I didn't like it. I'd already had one mother, and she'd been one too many. "It's my job, remember?"
"A homicide investigation? Last time I checked you did research fraud and embezzlement. When did your job description change?"
"Just find me anyone whose research might benefit from Grenier's death, or at the very least from his research notes." Once I had a list of possible competitors I could cross-check the names against the list of people on Mauna Kea the night of Grenier's death. If nothing else, I could pass the information on to Benson in fulfillment of the agreement I'd made with him.
There was a long-suffering sigh on the other end. "Just watch your back, O'Brien. I prefer my friends alive."
So do I, I thought, but some of us don't have that choice. I, however, kept those thoughts to myself. Sylvia hates maudlin, particularly when it's directed at her, and given the tumour growing in her brain — the result of high levels of estrogen used to transform her from a David to a Sylvia Delgado — it often is. I gave a rather too abrupt goodbye and hung up the phone.
My second order of business was a quick check of the e-mail just to make sure nothing urgent had come in. I plugged my laptop into the high-speed connection and within seconds my account was before me. There were the usual reams of crap: messages on the new interpretations of the workforce adjustment policy, nomination forms for brown-noser — that would be employee — of the year, and several contributions to the office humour file. I whacked it all without reading. Sylvia's e-mail reference searches popped up, and I downloaded them to my hard drive. I'd get to those as soon as I could.
Finally, and with trepidation, I opened an e-mail from my boss, Bob. He would be seriously ticked at my temporary appointment to the prestigious Minister's Office, and really out of whack if he knew the assignment was in Hawaii. The e-mail, I was sure, would be a written harangue ordering me to stay in touch (meaning tell Bob everything about the case, whether it was his business or not), a list of five additional files I should handle while I was away, and an order to be back in the office by the end of the week. Instead, this is what he wrote.
Morgan:
Don't worry about the office. Everything is taken care of here. Get lots of rest and come back when you're fit as a fiddle.
Bob
Get lots of rest? He thought this was a Hawaiian vacation. I looked outside at the sun setting low over desolate rock. If only he knew.
"I have not good news. I don't think they'll talk." That was Mellier, speaking for the first time on the entire ride up to the summit. I'd wondered if he was preoccupied with Grenier's death or just scared speechless by my driving.
From the Astronomy Centre there was only one road up to the summit, and it ran in a series of abrupt switchbacks up a steep slope of rubble. The road itself seemed to have been scraped out of loose rock. The outer edge was ragged as if ready to crumble at the weight of the truck, and if it did give way there was nothing to stop us tumbling from here to the Saddle Road miles below. As if that weren't enough, each turn of the switchback was so tight I had to fight with the lumbering four-by-four to bring it around in time. When we finally arrived near the summit the road flattened onto what looked at first like a wide plateau but was in fact a broad bowl. Like a scene from an apocalyptic thriller, it was an endless vista of lifeless rubble housing an enchanted city of pale domes. Cast against the blackness of the sky and crescent moon it was an eerie sight. Mellier told me to turn off the headlights.
"Who is ‘they'?" I said, slowing and keeping my eyes on the road.
"Shelton. And Elizabeth Martin. She is the staff astronomer on duty tonight."
Mellier
