The One-Eyed Man by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

Author:Jr. L. E. Modesitt [L. E. Modesitt, Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

34

The rest of sixday was a blur of boring necessities. Even before I got out of my temporary quarters, the local patrol arrived, and I had to take them through what had happened. Then I ended up spending most of sixday going from shop to shop because Passova didn’t really have a unified link-shopping net. I just hadn’t thought about that, but such an infrastructure was anything but cost-effective for a low population consisting of isolated pockets of high density where everything was either in walking distance or within a short tunneltram ride.

Then … the kind of singlesuits I liked weren’t exactly in style in Passova, and that meant special fabrication and more duhlars, not to mention waiting and going back to pick them up late on sixday. Pretty much every aspect of replacing personal goods involved some degree of waiting and frustration. Given that it had been a long night on fiveday, and a longer day on sixday, I wasn’t surprised that I was ready to collapse early … although I did sleep fairly well.

First thing on sevenday, after the normal morning routine, I checked on what might be happening, or not, on my former quarters. All the debris had been removed, and a temporary barrier placed where the armaglass had been. The quarters were otherwise empty, and it appeared no work was scheduled for the day. That wasn’t totally surprising, given that it was indeed sevenday.

So I went to my space in the Survey office and immediately accessed all the measurements and reports on the storm that had savaged my quarters and belongings. In terms of wind velocity it had been below average, and it hadn’t lasted all that long.

Then why hadn’t the lights come back on until so much later?

Looking into that took another half hour, but the records were clear. The lights had been out for a little more than an hour. I’d only thought they came on at half past six.

Because you’d been gassed and your body was trying to recover?

Next I tried to find recordings of any linknews clips that concerned me. Short stories had run on every scheduled broadcast in the last day and a longer story was on the continuous news feed. Every single one mentioned that I was a Survey Service consultant sent from Bachman, and that I’d denied being an investigator. Every one of them also mentioned I was scheduled to brief at least one member of the Planetary Council, and most mentioned that the accident seemed freakish, since the storm hadn’t been that severe.

The news implications were that someone didn’t want me talking to the Council, and the only question was who benefited from such a story. My initial thought was that Melarez or her boss did. But why would they try anything that obvious? Obviously, there was something going on that I didn’t understand.

But … there wasn’t too much more I could do about that, and in the end I spent much of the day looking over the

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