The room behind him is too informal to be an office at his company so he must be at home… I feel a little guilty interrupting him, but he answered, so…
“I’d hoped you could tell me what you found out about the crash.”
“I have had this conversation with Drift… I was under the impression he was the one in charge up there.”
“He is. But I have questions.”
“I probably won’t be able to answer them.”
“So you can’t divulge who the ship belonged to?”
“Unfortunately, I can’ttellyou, no.”
The stress he put on “tell” makes me wonder. “Can you tell me why?”
He looks regretful as he shakes his head. “No.”
But he doesn’t try to hang up, hewantsto tell me something.
“Can you tell me if it’s proprietary company information or if it’s related to CSS restrictions?”
“It’s the latter.” A small zurgle with green fur so light it might as well be white hops up on his desk, and he pets it without acknowledging it at all. “Are you familiar with my company?”
“Only so far as to know that you build spaceships.”
“Among other things.” He chuckles and picks the zurgle up with one hand, whispering something about Earth fruit to it before putting it back down on the floor. “I started this company back before… well,before. And when we were all looking for answers to all sorts of problems, I made a handful—as the humans say—of ships that were meant to bypass some regulations and get us places we needed to be quicker than we should have gotten there.”
“And this was one of those ships?”
“Yes. I had been under the impression that they were all destroyed.” He winces. “Getting to Earth without letting certain other species know where it is has only been possible by two methods. The one we use now… and one that punches holes in cosmic fabrics we should not mess with.”
“How many were there?”
“My company made three. They were never intended to be the end solution, they were simply the fastest option… a holdover until we could make what we have now.” He looks away from the camera and then back to me. “I have committed many sins in my life. This was not meant to be one of them.”
“I can’t absolve you of those. That’s between you and the saints.”
“I know.” Noa takes a deep breath and then says, “You can find the purchase records in the CSS files if you go back far enough…”
“They were purchased by individuals?”
He nods. “They didn’t want anyone to know rules were being broken, so I sold them to men who could afford them, pretending they were cargo haulers, and then those men worked with the CSS.”
“I don’t think you should be telling me this.”
“That’s ancient history. If you look in the right places you can find all of that on your own.
“Check the records and you’ll find your answers… I do want you to know that I didn’t know the men who purchased them. I’ve never dealt with them since… and I did not know what they would go on to do.”
A woman’s voice calls out from somewhere inside Noa’s home and he hangs up without saying goodbye.
I open up the CSS information archives and start to hunt.
Ten minutes later, Risk comes in to stand beside me while I sift. He watches the information for a brief moment before he asks, “Did the dead man send you on an errand?”
“He spoke in riddles and now I’m trying to solve them.” I’ve found the purchase records section of the archive, but it is very clearly organized with the intention of giving anyone looking for answers an aneurysm.
“I wonder if he’d have been more forthcoming if I could have told him how to keep himself from dying.”
