“Yes, in fact I’ve asked Ines to look into this.”
We bring my sister-in-law into the conversation, through the screen. Vela is asleep against her shoulder and the look on her face that I have learned, over two rotations of working beside her, meanssit down.“Oh good, you’re all together,” she says, low, adjusting the baby. “Saves me repeating it. Is that door shut?”
“It’s shut,” Roxy says.
“Right.” Ines shifts, and I can see she’s got her tablet propped somewhere out of frame, and that she’s been at this a while. “So. Andrew Wilson. I called in some favors on New Earth. I want to say up front that none of this is evidence, it wouldn’t survive five minutes in front of an arbiter, and most of it came from beings who’ll deny they ever spoke to me. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know what a pattern looks like.”
“Go,” I say.
“Three jobs in two years, that’s the story Mara tells, and it’s true. What’s not true is the part where it was somebodyelse’s fault.” She glances down at her notes. “Position one, he left ahead of an internal audit. Position two, some equipment went missing and he was quietly asked to resign, there were no charges, because the firm didn’t want it on record that they’d been robbed by their own tech. Position three, and this is the one that made me sit up, he was let go from a contracton his sister’s clearancefour years ago. Not Mara’s current one, an earlier posting. He was removed and she was never told why.”
Leah curses under her breath.
“It gets worse,” Ines continues. “Nobody ever pressed charges. Not once, across three positions. Every single employer chose the quiet exit over the paperwork, which means there’s no formal record anywhere and the only way to find any of it is to do what I just did and call a lot of people who owe you.”
“Why does a male steal from three consecutive employers?”
“Because he owes money.” Ines looks straight into the pickup. “That’s the answer, Scar. He’s a gambler and he’s been deeply in debt for the better part of a decade. Two different contacts of mine, who don’t know each other, used almost the same phrase about him. He always thinks the next one’s going to fix it. Every one of those three jobs, the audit, the missing equipment, the removal happened while he was working alongside Mara, or on her credentials, or in a position she’d arranged for him. Every time, she got him the next placement. Every time, she believed him.” Her mouth goes thin. “She’s been carrying him for eight years and she thinks she’s beensavinghim.”
“He’s got gambling debts,” Roxy says. “Fine. Terrible, but fine, that explains a male who steals equipment. That does not explain what’s happening here. This is anIllibrium mine.What is a broke thief with a gambling habit doing on the most valuable rock in the Four Sectors, asking me and my colleagues intel questions about Grytel?”
Nobody answers her.
I could.
A male with a debt he can’t crawl out from under is a male somebody can buy. But I don’t say it, not yet. “We don’t tell Mara.”
“Scar.” Leah’s head comes up.
“Not yet.”
“She’s myfriend.Mara sits next to me at lunch and you want me to keep having lunch with her and not warn her about this?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a horrible thing to ask.”
“Leah, if we’re wrong, we’ve destroyed a female’s relationship with the only family she has left, over a feeling and some rumors from New Earth. And if we’re right, then the moment she knows, he knows. She couldn’t hide it from him for a single diurnal. She loves him too much to be any good at it.”
Leah opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks away.
“He’s right,” Ines says quietly from the screen. “I hate it too, but he’s right.”
“Keep digging,” I tell her.
“Already am. I’ve got two more calls out. Give me a few diurnals.” Vela makes a small sound and Ines shifts her again. “And Scar, be careful how fast you move on this. He’s had eight years of practice at not being caught. I don’t want anything happening to you while you’re out there investigating. We never know when he’ll get truly desperate, or, tip someone else off for currency that could cause more harm than simply fraud.”
“Yes, you’re right. And there’s something else you should all know,” I tell them. “I have a witness.”
Leah’s mouth drops open. “You have awhat?”
“A witness. To the grid.” I pull it up on the wall screen so they can see it — the roster, the marked lines, forty years of the most boring document in the mine. “Maintenance schedules. Whowas physically in the walls of that grid, on which diurnal, doing what. I pulled the whole archive after Mara told me to look at it, and there’s one name on it twice.”
“Twice meaning — “
“Meaning he was down there in the fortnight before the first cascade. And again two moons ago, before the second.” I tap the line. “Ordek of Six.”
Leah frowns. “Ordek. Why do I know that name?”
