I back you. All the way. Don’t you know that by now?”
She let the answer settle in, then pulled back from contact. “Okay,” she said, “but maybe the most important question is what the big boys will do.”
That, meaning the corporations, the politicians, the pirates. He swiveled his chair away from her and stared out the window.
“One step at a time, Dr. Addams,” he said. “Get it rolling. I’ll call in the eco-site people and set up a spot for you.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll start tomorrow if it’s ready.”
“It will be.”
He paused, checking to see if he’d left anything out. Nothing, except to remind her that working with Phase Psychosis was tricky. Unpredictable, especially for empaths. And especially when the psychosis ran as strong as it did in these women. If she didn’t block it, she risked getting caught in their illusions. He swiveled back around to face her, and looked blankly at an empty room. Silently, without even the sound of breath, she was gone.
He drummed his fingers on his desk, shook his head and went back to work.
He turned to his computer, and pulled up a file he’d compiled on another interesting criminal from Ranalli, Connecticut who’d recently arrived on Planetoid Three. Brendan Farley, convicted of setting off a pesticide bomb in a local mall.
As soon as Alex began to suspect his three new prisoners were exposed to Artemis he’d started checking on other crimes in their town. If there was a processing plant nearby, odds were high that other women would be feeling the results. He found aggravated assaults were way up among women, and there were an unusually high number of suicides in the last month. But the crime that really interested him was the mall bombing.
There was no evidence that Artemis affected men, so this could easily be some other form of madness, but Farley was from the same town. And now he was on the Planetoid, in his zone, under Supervisor Sheila Radowitz and Teacher Nance Faddegon, two women he had a good working relationship with. He could certainly pay Brendan a visit and see what turned up.
The information Alex had on him was just local news reports, so he continued staring at it only as a place to put his eyes while he waited for more. A knock on the door signaled that it had arrived.
“Enter,” he said, and the door opened. Team member Rachel Shofet came in and put three disks down in front of him.
“You find Jaguar?” she asked.
“Here and gone,” Alex said. “Is this the Farley material?”
“It is. You know he’s with Nance Faddegon?”
“I do. She’s good with recidivist con men and frauds.”
“I thought he was an ecoterrorist.”
“He just wants to make it look that way.” He shook his head at her questioning glance. “It’s just something I suspect.”
“Oh. That,” she said. She had reason to know the kind of empathic skills both he and Jaguar regularly used. “You need anything else?”
“Just some research,” Alex said.
Rachel’s face lit up at the prospect. She was his best researcher, and quickly becoming his best hacker, though he knew he probably shouldn’t encourage her in that.
He tapped a finger against his lips and thought. Brendan Farley’s file would include his testing report, psychological profile, personal and professional history. Alex wanted more.
“Just in case, go ahead and set up interview time with some of Farley’s co-workers, friends, if he had any. The usual.”
“Won’t that be in his prelims?”
“I’m guessing nobody asked how he felt about moon mining,” Alex said.
Rachel, long-time friend to Jaguar and the most trustworthy team member Alex had, knew all about his suspicions. She’d be the only one who could ask the right questions, if it looked like they had to be asked.
“You want me to poke around about it?”
“That’s the idea. And you’ll let me know if there’s any unusual reactions. I also want a list of all the existing Hague research facilities, who’s running them, what they’re doing at them.”
“That’s all public record stuff. Should be easy. Is that it?”
“Just one more thing. I want Board agenda memos.”
Rachel lifted her head from the notes she was making. “You mean - minutes of meetings?”
“I mean memos. The kind they shoot back and forth to each other over their private lines.”
“I don’t have access to that,” Rachel said. “Not officially.”
“But you can get it.”
She cleared her throat. “Technically, that’s a violation. In the code books.”
Alex swiveled in his chair and said nothing.
She sighed. “How far back?”
“Six months’ll be fine.”
She nodded. “What in particular am I looking for?”
“Any mention at all about the moon. Any discussion of the Hague repeal of moon mining. Like that.”
“Um – am I allowed to ask why?”
“You are, but you won’t get much answer yet. Except I’m hearing rumors about Planetoid interest in repealing the moratorium and I want to check it out.”
Rachel frowned. “Does Jaguar know about that?” she asked.
“Not yet. I don’t want to get her motor running until I have more than local gossip to fuel it with. If you come up with anything, I’ll let her know right away.”
Her frown deepened and Alex laughed. “We’ve avoided killing each other so far. I think you can relax.”
“I’ll work on it,” she said, still not quite convinced. “When do you want this?”
“No rush. Tomorrow is fine.”
Rachel groaned and rolled her eyes. But Alex knew her. First thing in the morning, most of what he wanted would be downloaded into his computer.
Chapter 2
The deep green coating of the night surrounded them, a liquid blanket of breathing leaves and moss, the scent of rotting and growing and growing and rotting smooth in their nostrils.
Jaguar surveyed the women crouched at her feet. Their eyes were big and their naked skin shone in the softly filtered moonlight. They stared up at her, not moving, not speaking, the rate of their breathing the only indication of their fear. They were her
